Rob

No no, Conjuration and Summoning are two separate things. They may have the same game effect, but the in-game explanation is totally different. Conjuration is akin to Evocation, in which magical energies are used to create a temporary creature. Summoning is teleportation, in which you find a creature out there in the world, and summon him to your spot.

I like the School/Domain distinction, but I don't fully agree with your School/Domain layout. How about:

THE FOUR AND TWENTY
Schools:
Faith
Hedge
Hermetic
Ritual

Domains:
Abjuration (protection, walls, and wards): FAITH, HERM
Alteration (polymorph, fly, wish): HEDGE, HERM
Annihilation (dispel magic, disintegrate, the void): HERM
Anointment (blessings): FAITH, RITUAL
Artifice (make golems and things, enchant mundane objects): HEDGE
Astromancy (teleport, dimension door, planeshift, spatial distortion): HERM
Cannibalism (eat hearts, souls, brains): RITUALDivination (revelations, scrying): FAITH, HEDGE, HERM, RITUAL
Evocation (blast magic and elemental forces): HERM
Exorcism (Banishment, curse removal): FAITH, RITUAL
Horology (haste/slow, timeportation, other time magic): HEDGE, HERM
Life (healing, curing, resurrection): FAITH
Jinxes (fumbling, stink, bad luck): HEDGE
Martial (war magic, law magic, crowd control): FAITH
Mind (fear, illusions, charm, dominate, geas, ESP): HEDGE, HERM
Nature (plants and animals, weather and elementals): FAITH
Necromancy (raise dead, draining): FAITH, HERM, RITUAL
Radiance (light, warmth): FAITH
Summoning (demons, elementals, etc): FAITH, HERM
Voodoo (disease, curses, blindness, damnation): RITUAL

In this scheme, the two Major Schools (FAITH and HERM) get 10 Domains, and the two Minor Schools (HEDGE and RITUAL) get 5 Domains, with some overlap and some unique stuff.

...

On a different note, here's some game design stuff that I found very helpful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_Theory

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/3/

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html

All articles are related. Good stuff I think. Most important is the social aspect brought up: the contract between the DM and the players.

The main point here, which I didn't appreciate until I started thinking about DiDFactory stuff, was that System Matters. I thought 3E D&D was a catchall and you could run whatever game you want. That's true, but only with enough 'house rules', and the point of designing a system is exactly this: to mechanize away the house rules.

I also think that System Rules and specific World Rules should be kept separate. We can work on a world in time.