My White Whale
I love me some domain play. It's an integral part of the Fantasy Adventure Game and any system which does not include proper rules to run it is incomplete. It's therefore a shame that I have deep-seated issues with all published rules for Domain Play (I'm aware of).
Take a look at your favourite system. How many pages are the Domain play rules? I'm guessing it's a fairly hefty section. Looking at ACKS for example, we can easily count things. The reworked system in Axioms 3 is roughly 60 pages. That's about 60% of the LBBs, and arguably more, since the LBBs are A4 whereas Axioms are printed in A4. Not only that, they're generally complex reading. Lots of categories (Wilderness, Borderlands, Civilized, market classes), lots of highly specific rules, and generally a lot of dry bean counting.
So why are they like this? I have thoughts on it, and thoughts on how I'd like to see things done instead. You'll have to go with me on a journey though, as I try to convince you why these rules are doctrinal in nature.
Doctrinality
Doctrine - Principles by which the military forces guide their actions in support of objectives. Doctrine presents codified best practices on how to accomplish military goals and objectives.
Military operations are highly complex, and the lessons learned from previous ones are written in blood. To help each layer in the hierarchy make good decisions, (as well as having a sense of predictability between elements of the military working side by side) doctrine was created. These are a complex list of best practices. If you find yourself in situation X do Y. If it's situation Q do Z. These are necessary for the simple reason that war is too complex to make stuff up on the fly.
These doctrines however, are not set in stone. They may change based on circumstances, or as technology improves. The doctrine of "form up into tight formations, shields overlapping, don't break rank" works great against a charge of infantry or cavalry. Against massed artillery fire, it's suicide. These are best practices based on the fundamental "physics" or war. The existence of weapons that can take out large masses of troops leads to the best practice of "don't bunch up".
Now, which of the two, physics or doctrine, are existing domain play rules? I'd argue they are obviously the second. ACKS for example, tells you how much you need to pay per family per month on garrisons to keep your domain safe. ADnD tells you that only after mapping your fortress' hex and the hexes surrounding it you can bring in workers to start building. These aren't the fundamental physics, but practices that have been created by studying the underlying fundamental physics of things.
So what's the problem here?
Doctrine is a best practice, a behaviour. These complex behaviours come about from the simple underlying rules interacting with one another. In effect, doctrine is a second (or third, or fourth) order effect, which in complexity and size vastly outstrips the underlying physics from which they have been derived. If we were to create a set of domain play physics instead, who knows what we could pare those 60 pages of rules down to. 5 pages? Less? We don't know until they try.
Not only that, the system itself would be more robust. As intimated above: doctrine is squarely based on physics. If you were to change these physics, doctrine needs to change. How would the doctrine of domain play change in the face of changes in technology in the setting, or if instead on on solid ground, we'd have floating islands in the sky? Each different setting might require its own set of domain play doctrine; it doesn't scale.
An argument ad absurdum
Let's have a look at the other areas of rules and look at under which category they fall. Do our combat rules tell us that we must lead with our heavily armored troops in the front, a light source behind, then the rest and then a rearguard of decent fighters? Do our hexcrawl rules say that if we do an expedition to a place further than a week's travel from our base we must take at least one mule per 6 men? Does fireball say that you cannot cast this spell on groups of enemies of less than 10? Of course not. These are all best (or good) practices that we either know already, or will quickly learn through failure.
The question I ask myself is "so what makes domain play so unique"? What is different about domain play that here we have doctrinal rules, instead of explaining the physics and letting players create their own doctrine?
So what do your domain play physics look like then?
Honest answer? I don't know; yet. I have ideas and notions, but nothing concrete yet. I know I'll need rules for extracting resources, for trading, for incursions at the borders. I have ideas on how distances from administrative centres reduce efficiency, but it's all still vague notions that aren't written down properly as of now, much less playtested. Hell, if I'm honest, I don't even know if it will even be fun to play. But I'm willing to try.
I'm working on it, and I'm voraciously reading through other systems. I'm hunting my white whale; the Domain Play rooted in physics instead of doctrine.
While I am sailing these waters, count your torches and keep on mapping.