I'll Always Play That Way
I recently had an online scuffle with a few people regarding domain play and wargames, and its role in DnD. They argued that it was good it was taken out, and that doing so made the game better. I, unsurprisingly, strongly disagree.
I want the complete progression from dungeon delving to hex crawling to domain play. This isn't some misguided sense of nostalgia; it's the complete D&D experience as originally designed. In the words of Gelatinous Rube: I want to interact with the breadth and depth of the fiction. Yes, this includes dungeoneering, but Conan did more than kill snakes in holes. He was a mercenary in battles, a wanderer in wildernesses, a pirate, a king.
If I can't do everything in this game built on the ideal pure freedom and Appendix N emulation, what's the point? It's like a shooter where you can't reload; once your magazine is empty, you stand there waiting to die so you can start over and do the fun stuff again.
A game that only gives you one mode when the fiction demands all modes is fundamentally broken. The source material didn't limit itself to dungeon crawling. Why should the game?
The cost of choosing one mode
This is the world we live in: modern systems chose one well-designed mode of play over multiple modes that weren't really explained well enough. B/X streamlined OD&D by cutting domain rules. 5E perfected the dungeon-to-level-20 experience. Modern RPGs evolved past these mechanics for good reasons. Game designers recognized that domain rules were clunky and removed them through superior understanding of game design.
Here's what that decision and that 'superior game design' cost us. Most campaigns die around mid-levels because that's where the single-mode design breaks down. In B/X you've accumulated 10-20K gold with nothing meaningful to spend it on. Magic-users become so powerful that referees introduce kludges to keep fighting-men relevant. Players lose interest because it's just more of the same without feeling like they're building toward something lasting.
Domain rules fix this by giving meaningful progression beyond bigger numbers. Your gold becomes armies, your influence becomes political power, your adventures become the stuff of legend that affects entire kingdoms. Without domain play, you're trapped in an endless middle game that grows stale because the scope never changes.
DnD without domain play and its wargame roots is like Marvel movies. Iron Man fighting his company's CEO was fun, then it became an escalating cavalcade of "Oh no Earth is doomed" to "Oh no the multiverse is doomed." Same mechanics, bigger stakes, ultimate boredom. If you're doing the same thing for years, it becomes drudgery no matter how well-designed. Switching between modes keeps it fresh.
The contradiction at the heart of the opposition
Now here's where the arguments against domain play get philosophically interesting—and by interesting, I mean self-contradictory. It's revealed preference. Players themselves chose not to engage with domain rules because they found them boring.
You can't have both. Either game designers made the choice for players based on superior wisdom, or players made the choice themselves through natural selection. If designers evolved past domain mechanics for good reasons, then how exactly did players reveal a preference against something that was decided for them?
More importantly: you can't reveal a preference you never knew existed. Most of the OSR runs on B/X, which cut out domain rules entirely. Nearly nothing else had a functioning dungeoneer-to-kingdom pipeline until ACKS brought it back. You can't demonstrate revealed preference when the option was removed from your chosen system.
You see this inherent contradiction in what players ask advice about. If I had a dime for every time someone in a modern system asked "I have this large siege—how do I give players something meaningful to do?" without realizing the answer is mass combat leadership, I'd have enough for a six-pack to drown out the cries of wargamers everywhere.
The simple ultimatum
To poorly paraphrase Patrick Henry: Give Me All Modes of Play Or Give Me A Good Book. If I can't emulate the fiction, I'd rather read it.
I want the rush of exploration when I'm mapping unknown hexes. I want the tactical depth of dungeon delving where every door could be death. I want the satisfaction of building something lasting—not just accumulating gold, but turning it into keeps, armies, trade routes. I want political intrigue where my words carry weight because I command battalions. I want mass combat where I'm not a spectator but the general deciding the fate of kingdoms.
This isn't number-crunching power fantasy. In the Blackmoor documentary, Griff shows a letter sent by Gygax, roleplaying a secretary of state in a wargame campaign spanning continents, pleading with "His Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain" to intervene on behalf of his nation. That's what domain play looks like when it works—not spreadsheets, but statecraft. Not optimization, but actual roleplay at scales that matter.
A game that promises freedom but only delivers one narrow slice is worse than no game at all. The books don't artificially limit Conan to dungeon crawling; why should the game? Either give me the complete experience the rules originally provided, or I'll get my adventure fix from the source material instead.
At least Robert E. Howard understood that his hero needed to grow beyond swinging a sword in underground rooms. And as long as I do, I'll always play that way.