Thanks for the heads-up!

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/194008/Axioms-Issue-3?term=axioms&test_epoch=0

The “ignorance as a Wealth disorder” makes more sense when you pair it with poverty. As Dickens famously portrayed in A Christmas Carol, poverty and ignorance often go together, the former leading to the latter. I presume that merchants combat poverty just as sages combat ignorance — and likewise, prophets and magistrates counter despair and corruption respectively.

I own a bunch of Paradox games, having picked them up as a package deal from a GOG sale, but I haven’t really played any of the others (though I’m looking forward to trying out EU Rome). I started Hearts of Iron 2 once, but gave up immediately when I realized I had no idea what I should do first. So I can relate to what you’re saying. I’ve only barely scratched the surface of CK2 (I’m a few years into the learning scenario), but FWIW I get the impression that it lends itself better to casual play than the others. Sure, it has tremendous depth, which you can really sink your teeth into if that’s your thing, but you can also just let the game run and see what happens, as I’ve been doing. Kind of like a very zoomed-out, medieval dynastic version of The Sims.

As long as you make sure the tone of Obstacles continues to feel right for the power level of Exalted, I expect AER could be a very good fit for it. Kevin Crawford’s recent Godbound is a pretty stunning vision of Exalted woven into D&D. (In case I haven’t been clear enough about this, Kevin Crawford is kind of blowing my mind these days, and I think he’s one of the most excellent creative voices in gaming right now.)

Military, Social, and Wealth get converted to a modifier, starting at +0 and scaling up theoretically as far as needed (but practically, very large scores would be bad for keeping tension in the game). Add this modifier to a saving throw roll when you use NPCs rather than PCs to solve the domain’s problems.

Social represents a domain’s harmony, the knit of its fabric. Things that increase Social include society-wide missionary zeal, obedience to top-down control, the domain being founded by outcasts (who had to learn to work together just to survive), clear legitimacy of rule, that kind of thing. Prophets and Magistrates are the Social hirelings.

The six types of Obstacles are Disorder and Uprising (Military), Poverty and Ignorance (Wealth), and Despair and Corruption (Social).

Resources have Obstacles like Flooding, Relic Golems, No Workers, and Bad Feng Shui.

I have not played Crusader Kings 2. I played just enough Europa Universalis 2 to be completely snowed under with its complexity. I’m aware of Paradox’s games as heartbreaking works of staggering genius that I just don’t have time to study – lots of my friends are huge fans of them, and I trust their tastes.

– What are the mechanical benefits of the domain scores, besides being used to pay for upkeep of troops?

– Just what does Social represent? Is it used in diplomacy, for instance? And if sages deal with Wealth issues, what kind of hirelings deal with Social problems?

– What are the six different types of Obstacles? And what are some examples of Obstacles a Resource might have?

Btw, I played a bit of Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes a few years ago, and absolutely loved it. I think it may very well be a contender for my favorite computer game ever. I plan on giving it another go once I’ve finished with some of the other games I’m currently in the middle of.

Have you ever played Crusader Kings 2, and if so can you draw any parallels between the way that game handles your advisory council (particularly with the Conclave expansion), and the rules in Senatus Consultum Ultimum? (I wonder how policy objectives, for instance, compare with the different voting stances of councillors in CK2.)

There are still one or two systems left to cover, if you can believe that!

On a simulation level, my only real issue with ACKS is that it LETS you trade in cattle, spices, or whatever non-coin wealth you like, it doesn’t push that approach to a historically plausible degree. Talk about your nitpicky issues! I would love to play an ACKS campaign if you were running it. 🙂

One of these days I’ll get you in a game of it. 😀

I’ve covered a whole mess of systems so far. Not one of them has been, from first principles, system-agnostic. There are huge variances in how easy they would be to lift from their core adventuring systems, though – AER, Magical Medieval Society, Mentzer’s Companion, and 13th Age are all on the Very Easy end (it’s literally hard to go much lighter on attachment), while Stronghold Builder’s Guidebook, Birthright, Ultimate Campaign, and some others have their core systems deeply integrated. ACKS is sort of an ambiguous middle ground – its ultradeep economy design means you can choose whether or not to adopt it, and you can kinda get away with not, but really weird things happen down the line if you don’t. For example, without GP -> XP that it assumes, things start slowing down even more than intended at mid-to-high levels, as you have few ways to accumulate XP from rulership.

There’s a whole separate conversation about whether close integration of rulership and core systems is beneficial. In general, the stronger the connection, the more your nature and stats as an adventurer inform your nature and stats as a ruler. That can extend to “fighters can’t be good kings because they aren’t good at diplomacy,” or it can just mean “all those magic items you collected can be useful for your stronghold once you outgrow them.” It’s a tough balancing act for every rule set.

MOST things that were built for any edition of D&D could be ported to any other edition with a minimum of fuss, though the 2e/3e threshold is a difficulty spike in either direction. If there were a domain rulership system for 4e, it would likely be radically different and nearly nonconvertible.

But after reading this post, now it has me wondering. Are these various Domain Rulership variants system agnostic? Are some of them designed for a very specific RPG system? Are they very flexible? It seems from this post that the AER system is highly flexible and able to be adapted to various RPGs. And maybe the ACKS is as well?

In my previous musing about how a campaign centered around domain management felt like a “different animal” (to me at least) than a “typical” D&D campaign that was centered around the adventuring lifestyle. As I consider this more, it seems that if the domain-management rules are, in fact, not system specific; in other words, they aren’t written for “D&D Edition X”; then they are more of a “tack on” system or “replacement system” from the core of the D&D (or other specific RPG) rules.

I guess the heart of my question is this: which of these are specifically written to be used with a particular RPG, and which of these is more “system agnostic”?