{"id":330,"date":"2023-07-29T14:06:32","date_gmt":"2023-07-29T19:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/?p=330"},"modified":"2023-07-29T14:06:33","modified_gmt":"2023-07-29T19:06:33","slug":"an-echo-resounding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/2023\/07\/29\/an-echo-resounding\/","title":{"rendered":"An Echo, Resounding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"An<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

An Echo, Resounding<\/em> was written by Kevin Crawford in 2012 for Labyrinth Lord, a house-ruled clone of B\/X Dungeons & Dragons. It attempts the laudable goal of adding domain level play<\/a> to the B\/X rule set. Domain level play was an assumed part of early editions of Dungeons & Dragons but its support was spotty. B\/X has prices for hiring soldiers, specialists and others and also prices for building parts of a stronghold. However, to handle domain level play a player needs to know what their domain produces for them and how often they get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Echo, Resounding makes a serious attempt to cover the bases involved in DLP (domain level play). Many people assume DLP is all about wargaming – putting miniatures on a table to fight out an engagement in detail. This book addresses that but does not make it the chief focus. Whereas Original D&D and B\/X D&D portray DLP as starting when a character reaches name level (usually 9th level), 1st Edition D&D supported it from the start with integrated prices for hiring people and x10 scale skirmish rules. An Echo, Resounding follows 1st Edition’s lead but focuses on roleplaying aspects without cutting out the wargaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 4 page introduction explains how controlling a domain can start at 1st level if the players choose. Advice is offered on some in the party controlling a domain while others are free to ignore such things. An innovation in this book is an expanded view of a domain. Rather than clearing an area of monsters and then building a fort to establish a domain, any location where NPCs live and accept a player as their leader is now a domain. What’s more, a domain can be made up of multiple locations separated by distance. This enables players to conquer a region in stages rather than just a fortress or tower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next chapter is 29 pages on creating campaign regions. The key is to offer a mapped region where a dungeon master can use locations and NPC domains to give the players materials for games for many sessions. Not only enemies to oppose but rulers and influential people to hire the players. At any point the players take an interest they can attempt to make themselves the leaders of a place on the map to start their domain. Many blogs discuss top-down vs. bottom-up design for campaign maps. This book seems to offer a new option in-between the two. Instead of starting with a large region or a single dungeon with nearby village, this would be a 200 mile square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next is 11 pages of rules to govern DLP. Domain actions happen roughly once per month (it can be adjusted in either direction depending on how much is happening in the region). Things like amassing treasure, attacking locations, moving troops or solving a location’s problem can be attempted. A full page table offers assets that can be built on a site in a player’s domain along with their costs, maintenance and benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the book is three chapters on mass combat, making player characters into heroes who can better influence troops and domains and a long chapter giving 32 example locations and the map containing them. Although several playtest sessions would be required to give a complete evaluation of the rules, an initial read-through motivates me to try them out. The region creation rules establish an interesting map with problems to solve and patrons to seek out. Rules for how much money a domain offers its owners along with mass combat rules and domain level options to pursue make this a solid option for your games. The fact that it encourages me to see domain in D&D differently than I did before makes this a worthwhile read for dungeon masters everywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Echo, Resounding was written by Kevin Crawford in 2012 for Labyrinth Lord, a house-ruled clone of B\/X Dungeons & Dragons. It attempts the laudable goal of adding domain level play to the B\/X rule set. Domain level play was an assumed part of early editions of Dungeons & Dragons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,9,7],"tags":[32],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338,"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}