Name Level by Eero Tuovinen

"Coup de Main" is an in-progress campaign and an in-progress rule system by Eero Tuovinen, author of Muster. He is publishing the notes for his system in a series of pamphlet-sized PDFs called Coup Workbook Partials, CWPs for short. This is a review of one of his most recent CWPS, #33, Name Level. A disclaimer: I got the PDF for free in exchange for agreeing to review it.

First, the art:

 t's just the front cover of the zine, and it's made by a machine learning algorithm, I think trained on 2e-era TSR stuff. I think it's gorgeous. Reminds me of my old '80s Lord of the Rings paperbacks from Ballantine.

The zine is 24 pages long, including the front and back cover (which are, oddly, both in the front) and two pages of boilerplate. Pages are A5 with something like 12 point font inside. Might be written in LaTeX, I'm not sure, but the justification is pretty good. The text inside is breezy and reads easily. So you don't get a ton of content for your money, but, luckily, the zine is almost certainly coming to you for free, as it's against the terms of its copywrite to sell it -- the zine is primarily distributed through trades and acts of service.

Now to the meat of the thing.

We begin with a pretty unexceptional overview of the concept of name level. Basically, a high-level D&D character has two options: become a superhero or play the domain game. A character who plays the domain game has a lot of new options open to them, but will also be significantly restricted by the duties of running a domain, so the choice isn't obvious.

If you want to play the domain game, you need a Name. You can get a Name by default when you hit a high enough level "Name Level", as per standard D&D -- for instance level 9 for fighting-men in OD&D. Or, Eero adds, you can inherit the name or acquire all its accoutrements in some other way. So if you're the heir of a Lord, and he dies, you become the Lord of his domain, no matter what level you are. Or, if you conquer a domain, you become a Lord, no matter what level you are. I think most GMs will have instituted something like this in their own campaigns -- I know I have -- but it's good to see it formalized.

We then get a few brief mechanisms governing Names. They're really light and unobjectionable. Names soak up XP and have their own ranks separate from character levels, and they give you some bonus HP and bonuses to Name-related tasks. Easy enough, in theory. The specific tasks are left vague and situational, which is one of the hallmarks of Eero's writing. This will either really appeal to you, or turn you off immediately. He's more interesting in a flexible chassis for further experimentation than in a finished set of rules that practically play themselves. Anybody interested in using the CWPs will have to do a lot of work themselves to figure out how to model the world. The CWPs are simply tools to help someone model, and the fruits of prior modelling. They are not a DMG. They really are "partial".

Following this is a brief (lots of brevity here!) account of the ways a player might customize their Name as they advance through ranks, and the different kinds of Names different classes characteristically have. Again, this is more of a starting-point for experimentation on the part of the player and GM than a finished list of options. But it's a very compelling starting point. 

Then comes a section on what the Named character actually does. This is a bit of a whiff, because it really just says "See my other work on modelling a domain, and the things the leader of a domain might get up to". I don't have the CWP on domains, so I can't comment on it. Luckily, I think the system presented in this CWP is abstract, flexible, and concrete enough that you could bolt it on to any domain system you can think of. For instance, it could replace "Champion Levels" or whatever they're called in An Echo, Resounding by Kevin Crawford.

We end with two new classes: the Courtier and the Officer (which is actually a hybrid of the Courtier and the Fighter -- does the Officer get all the benefits of each at every equivalent level? How do hybrid classes work? This isn't a standard term.). They specialize in running the show for a Name in a domain, and actually require the backing of a Name to be functional. All their different abilities seem well thought-out and functional. I can imagine a player rolling up lots of Courtier NPCs when they need to get things done. It's not obvious, though, that anybody would want to play a Courtier or an Officer, or that they could effectively play one and still go on standard D&D adventures. This too is a divisive feature about Eero's work. He's more interested in modelling things, and seeing what happens, than creating a fun and balanced challenge where every listed option is viable. If it turns out that nobody can rack up more than 500 XP as a Courtier, he'll be happy having learned that. Will you be happy having spent a few sessions earning that XP as a Courtier, only to abandon the adventuring lifestyle for three months to oversee bridge construction? (I would, but I'm not everyone.)

In sum, this is an interesting but not totally substantial piece. There are few surprises but a decent amount of advice in an area where most of us are inexperienced. Anybody who was interested in doing a bit (or a lot) of legwork to enrich their domain game could view this as a potential starting-point, and it could complement any number of domain systems.