Lords & Lands
Roles: Project Lead System Designer
Lords & Lands for DnD Fifth Edition is a homebrew additive framework created for late game and veteran players. Many of the systems including combat, population, and building upgrades were created by me. I also tested and balanced costs of each building and created the outlines for the various organizations.
Project Objective
The goal was to create a late game supplement for DnD 5e similar to the Companions book published for the early editions of the game back in 1984. We wanted to capture both the Role play components of running a large organization or kingdom and the mechanical costs of maintenance and large scale combat. Additionally, this book had to cater to both players and dungeon masters with enough flexibility to be adapted to preexisting adventures players were already engaged on.
Outcome
The final 49 page book included all of the objectives and was able to balance between the mechanical rules and role play elements. By creating various organizations with role play suggestions while simultaneously having buildings that were listed separately the flexibility of players to build and choose their paths held true to the spirit of the core game. The mass combat system is also extensively fleshed out providing a good framework for dungeon masters and players who wish to engage in macro combat.
Key Contribution
This project was an idea I had begun to fiddle with as a Dungeon Master myself a few months prior. As we began working on it we decided that we needed to create not just a mechanic set of rules but also a role play framework. It was at this point that I separated out the Institutions and Buildings so that the mechanic and roleplay elements could be mixed and matched by users. This decision drove the rest of development by dividing up the systems and frameworks instead of trying to create an infinite combination of possible player created factions.
After this was created I worked on creating and refining the various things buildings could do. I focused on making each meaningful but flexible. It was important that buildings served a purpose in game but that they were not so restrictive to just one use that a Dungeon Master would have to create new content to fit players requests. This was a major issue that I balanced through production; we wanted the framework to be additive so we didn't rewrite and preexisting rules or lore but also didn't want it to force DMs to have to change their world to use our systems.
Lastly, I created and worked on balancing mass combat. This took many iterations and various excel sheets to test simulations to get the math balanced correctly. It was also important to take the preexisting races, weapons, and spells from the book and incorporate them in such a way that was true to the original text. Eventually I moved to only using the Armor Class value instead of Armor Class and Saving Throws to help simplify the combat experience. I then used multipliers for damage to avoid having players roll dozens of dice each turn. Finally, after all the combat and costs had been balanced I worked on a new sub system for 'unbalanced combat' when an army might clash against a single dragon.
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