Some suggestions based on my experiences with domain games.
- a light weight resolution system that spares a DM bookkeeping is probably a mercy
- structuring how you accept moves/turn orders/etc. so that it reins in players natural urge to leverage the whole realm they have access to is also probably a good idea
- some kind of shared forum, discord or other text based arena for players to negotiate and snarl and posture at one another is good because it makes visible all the activity to those who might otherwise miss it. Without that everything has to route through the DM and is another burden they need to shoulder.
- games like this are the ultimate 'split party' - everything a DM can do to spare their energies for juggling all the parallel threads is a good idea - light book keeping, light resolution, players directly and publicly interacting, etc.

This was started by conversation on discord prompted by the 'Cataphracts' game. I had the privilege to play in a couple of big domain games - two of Mike Rastons recent ones- Empyrean Dynasty and Sagadarium and two different ones back in my college days - and the common point of stress/failure was the processing load mid-late game puts on the DM as things get complex.

My Ducal House table had an idea that, since the number of things on the parties to-do list had grown so collossal they would never get to them, they would parcel off some quests as things that could be run at my Friday open table games. Become quest-givers in other words.

On the face of it I love the idea, with the caveat that the first thing they proposed to carve off was a pretty grim problem that might just make mincemeat out of some uninformed adventurers. However, with a little finesse, I am sure this can be addressed.

The pros for me are that I already have a huge quantity of material for all the things they want to deal with - since they could well have gone to deal with it themselves. So in theory I just need to extract the specific notes for whatever is the objective, shape it into a one-shot session and see however a party does.

If red-teaming is having the opposition run by others what is this called? Not blue-teaming because the people playing the one-shots would be being blue-teamed by the Ducal House players. Consultation with experts of the deep interwebs suggests 'sub-questing', 'nested questing' or 'pyramid questing' and I have to admit liking the latter quite a bit.

To make this work first I need the Ducal House players to pick some tasks they are carving off which might be a wrench given their (well founded) view that nobody else gets anything right if they do not do it themselves. Once they deign to outsource some tasks, I need to frame them up in a way that it can run as a one-shot.

Thinking about it any given task is going to have the 'dial' of how hard or easy it is to get to. The first two things mentioned in passing were retreiving a magical item from a presumed abandoned temple complex deep in the jungles of the Land of the Dead. The second thing was the harvesting of a magical component from a mythic location that they are not quite sure where it lies. Both of which have potentially interesting terrain adventures to be had.

The main Ducal House campaign has a balance of swift change (due to high PC mobility through magic) and plenty of warning for me as a DM since they like to plan things out. I think the template I'll be using here is the Spelljammer Academy mini-campaign which was all done around 'big hook' for any given session and then built out with stuff to do around that - typically the voyage to the location or the flight from consequences afterwards.

On a pure DM'ing level, it is going to be a fun exercise in T2-3 play and running bad-guys worth their salt at that level. Not quite Tuckers Kobolds level of 'ye shall fear the enemy' but the signature foes for some of this are individually not so dangerous but collectively a hazard.

I was nudging the Ducal House players towards 'you are high level now, you should have others doing things for you' - me thinking hirelings, vassals, maybe a couple of friendly NPCs. Classic DM mistake, my players took what I was thinking and ran off over the horizon with it...

My home campaign players are venturing back into courts and politics after a big block quest on the frontiers with major implications and I need a quick way to work out court factions and intrigue.

My thoughts turned to GRENDEL MENDEL: Using Punnett Squares For Monster Design and Adapting Punnet Squares for Treasure on Mindstorm ... and why not use Punnet Squares?

In this case for politics one could go infinitely deep and subtle but since I have a crowd I need to make sense of, I'm going to just go with our Punnet set up.

Coming in to these courts I can work out lots of the players and what I need is a quick way to batch them up and figure what the groups and factions are. The quick method I am working to here is:
1. List who is present, NPCs, faction representatives, etc.
2. Place them all across the Punnet Square
3. Make sure factions have a representative NPC
4. Figure out what are the 'open court' and 'back channel' settings

Adapting the Punnet Square itself, I set one axis as positive/negative - I tag it 'admire/support' and 'fear/oppose' for a broad sense of the attitude of the NPC. The other axis is 'field/court' with 'open action' and political/intrigue on the other. This is more to reflect the persons strengths, not an exclusive box; you might run into them in open court or in backrooms but where they choose to act will be their preference.

Returning to our extracts from an old Birthright game I was involved in, playing the communist goblins of the Bluepeaks islands. Writing this up as a drop-in realm for anyone who might need a competent ally or a dangerously persistent foe - although these tactical ideas could probably suit many smaller scale foes as their 'grand plans' also.

Recalling the realm concept was of goblins having a vision and realising their ill-treatment at the hands of the world, then setting out on a hallucinogenic fueled messianic conversion spree and finding welcoming ears in the scattered minions of a recently deceased dark wizard.

The dark wizards old citadel became a Wizards Academy - the Labyrinth - and was a research powerhouse on the general theme of what can be done with shard-crystals - the crystallisation of magic and its use in various kinds of techno-arcanic lunacy. Large quantities its fairly harmless and inert - i.e. a shardstone vein would sit quietly under a village without having much effect beyond causing a fair few seers and two headed calfs - but broken down to crystals its causes mutations, nightmares, trees to walk, poisons wells, and if you go as far as powdering it, its explosive, unstable, addictive, and when snorted, spiked or smoked gives you incredible power - which you either use or it melts your brain.

In-game this was Birthrights meigbheal being used as these wicked crystals which went into both chargable magical items (straight lifts from Eberron Dragonshard) and into crazy Skaven and Cryx tech - Warpfire throwers, Jezzails and Deathjacks.
- Weaponry – Jezzails with shardcraft bullet, shardfire throwers, shardlightning casters, poison wind globes, explosives, incendiaries
- Artifice – mimirs, navigation arrays, scrying devices – mostly derivatives of well known things except that they would use shard-crystals as fuel and be inert without – real ‘Skaventech’ feel
- Breeding – using shardcraft to develop means to improve beings – would be reflected in ‘grafts’ both surgical and mutated – brains in jars to create rudimentary ‘computers’
- Augmentation – developing a subtler level of use of shardcraft – ingestion focussed. This would be the combat drugs, shardsnuff for magic enhancement
- Winnowing – magical plagues, shard-dust poison gasses
- Eternity Project – retaining the skills and knowledge of the talented through soulcapture

Essentially, the Bluepeaks were very conscious of being very small and very few, so anything that could fight and die in our place, from bacterium up to Helljacks, all to the good.

Below are some of the direct action concepts prepared against the day of need:

Extracted from an old Birthright game I was involved in, playing the communist goblins of the Bluepeaks islands. Writing this up as a drop-in realm for anyone who might need a competent ally or a dangerously persistent foe.

Realm concept was based around some goblins having a vision and realising their ill-treatment at the hands of the world was bullshit. They set out on a hallucinogenic fueled messianic conversion spree and found fertile soil in the realm of a dark wizard who had recently been killed leaving the shattered remnants of their minions behind and open to new ideas for self-governance.

The Bluepeaks were well aware they were starting well behind all the major realms on the power curve and could expect neither charity or mercy when their attention finally fell on these upstart gobbos so survival and the carrying of their Vision past any battlefield defeat, were the doctrines of the realm.

Major realm projects