Historical and fantasy roleplaying...for free
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Historical and fantasy roleplaying...for free
Dominion Rules is a simple yet comprehensive rules system for historical and fantasy roleplaying.
Based entirely on the 12-sided die, DR features elegant game-play and fresh approaches to familiar concepts such as combat, magic and religion.
DR is free to download from this web site or on Scribd.
You can also buy a print version from Lulu for US$11.99.
"You might as well torch your columns of AD&D and run Dominion instead....Dominion feels like a life work. It has that maturity and depth of a game that has evolved, aged and tightened over time. What throws me about Dominion is that it's nearly a complete game!..." The Free RPG Blog
"It is a very very simple seeming system on the outside but there is some lovely granularity that you can get into, especially when you get into combat....What I also like about this game is that it's very open and fluid in terms of what you can do with it. You can create any skill you want and slot it in under one of these stats so that you can basically personalize the game however you want." The Sage's Library (Me, Myself and Die)
"In Short: Your Weird Uncle's favorite RPG." Notepad Anon
"If you haven't checked out [Dominion Rules], shame on you! You owe it to yourself and your gaming group to give this game a try. Now, before I go farther, there is an old saying that you get what you pay for. With a free game, that usually means less than nothing. This is not the case with Dominion.... I'm biased as all get out over this free product and I think you will kick yourself if you buy a new system without looking at this one first. After all, when it's all said and done, do you really need a specific company's logo on a book cover to validate your gaming? Give Dominion a look. You won't be sorry." RPGNet
Combat in Dominion Rules is designed to be more exciting than in traditional RPGs. Rather than endlessly bludgeoning each other to death, combatants in DR strike, parry, feint and dodge in battles that are as challenging to players' minds as they are to their characters' bodies.
While death is always a possible result of combat in DR, killing or being killed is not the only way a DR battle can end. Combat usually ends with one side defeated rather than killed. Whether the victor then makes a killing blow is up to you.
In some RPGs, priestly characters are really just magicians under another name. Not so in Dominion Rules. Priests in DR channel the divine powers of their deities to smite their enemies, bless their allies, heal the sick and even work miracles. But priests must take care to remain in favour with their gods. An unhappy deity may forsake his priest, leaving him powerless.
Magic in Dominion Rules is more than just casting spells you read out of a rules book. While DR includes over a hundred pre-made spells for players to use, Witches are encouraged to make up new spells, even on the spur of the moment. Players do this by invoking one or more of the eight provinces of magic: Alchemy, Arcana, Conjuring, Enchantment, Hex, Illusion, Sorcery, and Summoning.
Magic in DR is unstable. Those who risk meddling with it may pay the price when their spells backfire with disastrous—and sometimes hilarious—results.
Dominion Rules offers players all the tools they need to create beasts of all kinds: mythical monsters, ghostly apparitions, fairy tale creatures, ordinary animals, humanoid character races and more. Players create such beasts using over 50 beast skills such as Bite, Claw, Clutch, Constrict, Gore, Hurl, Spit Venom and more.
Dominion Rules is designed to work in a variety of historical and fantasy game settings, known as dominions. If you want to play in a traditional fantasy setting, DR gives you the tools to do so. But if you want a historical setting, or a low-fantasy setting, or some other style of play, DR can easily be adapted. Just include the rules that fit your dominion and ignore the ones that don't.
DR is free to download and is released under the open gaming Dominion Rules Licence.
Dominion Rules 3.1 This is an 8.9 MB PDF with colour text and high resolution images.
Download: DR3.1.pdf
Dominion Rules 3.1 (smaller) This is a smaller (4.7 MB), mostly black and white, PDF with the same layout as the Lulu print version.
Download: DR3.1.1_small.pdf
Dominion Rules character record The simple, two-page character record used in Dominion Rules.
Download: character_record.pdf
Dominion Rules Licence The open-gaming-style legal document under which Dominion Rules is distributed.
Download: DRL.pdf
Get a paperback, perfect bound copy of Dominion Rules (233 pages) from Lulu here.
Dominion Rules has been on the internet in a variety of forms since 1999. It is no longer maintained or developed by its creator (kindly dubbed the Mysterious Anonymous Benefactor by Rob Lang in 2008). But people do seem to still play it, which is nice.
DR Beta Release (late 1999)
We can't quite recall when DR first hit the web, but the earliest pages in the Internet Archive are from late 1999. They show DR’s beta release on the old Dominion Games web site. Dominion Games called its concept “Open Source Roleplaying” and even “The Future of Roleplaying”.
That was a bit of an exaggeration. However, open gaming did later take off in a big way through Wizards’ d20 licensing scheme.
DR 1.0 and IDR 1.0 (2000)
Dominion Rules 1.0 came out in April 2000. An illustrated version, IDR 1.0, followed in October thanks to the terrific contributions of the Illuminators Guild (now defunct).
The first draft of the Dominion Rules Licence appeared online in July 2000. Version 1.0 of the DRL was published online by September 2000. The current version appeared with DR 3.0 in 2008.
DR 2.0 (July 2001)
Dominion Rules 2.0 hit the web in July 2001, together with a redesigned Dominion Games web site.
This version improved and expanded the game’s rules in several respects. It was also Dominion Games’ attempt to make some money off the game by offering the central components for free and other components for sale over the internet. Only very few sales were ever made, however, and the collaborative, “open source gaming” aspects of the game may have been undermined somewhat by this move.
DR 3.0 (April 2008)
Dominion Rules disappeared briefly from the internet around 2006 when a web squatter got hold of dominiongames.com. DR then relaunched in 2008 on dominionrules.org as an entirely free system.