My Life As A Gamer: Putting The Domain Level Together

Yesterday we did a straightforward clearing of wilderness to establish a Domain. Today we're going to expand on that with having multilple characters co-locate their Domains in the same space.

The Fighter has four companions: a Cleric, a Magic-User, a Thief, and an NPC with Sage-like functionality. The former three are also Name Level, and have their own personal retinues. (As for the NPC, I'll explain him below.) Together they are the principles of a mercenary company.

The four of them decide to collaborate on what to do about this territory. This is not mandatory. It could easily be the case that the Fighter does his thing while the others do their things independently of him.

They gather to assess the keep and the surrounding territory. They agree to the following course of action:

• The keep gets restored.
• The keep gets its presume functionality as a lighthouse restored.
• The keep will be the anchor for constructing a full castle, but there is a dearth of useful stone so interim construction will rely on the wood from the surrounding forest.
• The surrounding territory within a full day's march will be explored and mapped.
• The castle will incorporate a sanctum for the Magic-User and a chapel for the Cleric. The Thief volunteers to take up survey duties, so he takes chambers in the Keep to act as his headquarters. The NPC, wanting to establish an archival library, a laboratory, and a workshop, agrees to all of this.
• The surrounding territory needs to be surveyed, mapped, and monitored with an eye for useful resources and threats.
• The now-empty village ruins and single dwelling a mile away in different directions are to be occupied and turned into advanced watchposts and the ponds investigated as to their safety.

In addition, the following things are now routine operations that need to be checked for:

• Foraging parties into neighboring (cleared) hexes; this is to ensure suitable food supplies.
• Logging parties into those same hexes to thin the forest and generate building materials for construction.
• Archtechtural surveys--done by the NPC--to acertain potential for building out additional features such as a harbor or a shipyard.

I'm not going to get into building a wizard tower or a cathedral or a Thieves' Guild here. This, by itself, is enough to drive a campaign for months and furthermore it is at this point that playable scenarios for other characters can emerge organically from the surveys and other random encounter checks. I'll be taking some time to (a) map out the exploration of the area at a scale of one hex per mile (to be overlayed by a bigger-scaled hex map later), (b) do encounter checks and resolve what comes up, and (c) estimate the time it would take to do the various projects and in what order some need to be done.

Oh, and I'll want to make an actual hex map at some point.

As for the NPC, he's there for players that are not used to the true model of campaign play. In addition to acting as a Sage (with a surprising breadth of knowledge), he maintains an air of mystery as no one knows his name. He is simply "The Architect", and he is not a non-combatant, though he has not demonstrated any spell-casting capacity as yet despite command over theory thereof.

His metagame function is to provide just enough direction for new players to get them going. That's why he is at the center of events; he can point players that need to be prodded a place to go and something to do- and we all know those people who otherwise would be benchwarmers doing nothing, not even rolling dice, unless told otherwise, like drones without a master.

Folks like Jeffro, Bdubs, Mandalf, etc. don't need this crutch, but far too many coming from non-D&D traditions do because that's what they're used to.