ACKS Has Arrived!

A brief note! My ACKS (Adventurer, Conqueror, King System) core book, Playe's Companion, Heroic Fantasy Companion and Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu tomes have all arrived. I just wanted to point out that I often order from NobleKnight.com, and for exactly this reason: the books were all rated in EX/NM condition and that is exactly what showed up, in fantastic shape. 

I'll be bringing these along to show off to my game group next Wednesday. We're currently in a D&D 5E campaign in my Pergerron/River Kingdoms of Anansis setting, but it is heading to a finale soon and we will have a good opportunity to break if we want to try out something new. I actually have a campaign setting designed around a very gritty old-world theme, the Lands of Selentar, about which I don't think I've posted much on the blog (come to think of it, I need to get back to posting more on the other setting I ran PF2E adventures in, Oman'Hakat, as well). 

Selentar is a fictional analog to Europe around 60-90 AD if it turns out the Roman Empire analog collapsed abruptly after the totally-not-Nero like Emperor of the Eorma was killed in a vicious civil war driven by germanic-like people who realized that the aristrocracy of the empire was riddled with demon worship. All of the gods and beliefs in this setting are derived, at core, from what is known of the various peoples around the equivalent historical time period, albeit with some extra sword & sorcery twists. So...it might be an excellent fit for the ACKS system, in other words.

As long as I am posting something I just wanted to comment that Mothership Kickstarter just charged me for shipping so it looks like we may finally see the giant boxed set soon! I will in the interim continue our bi-weekly weekend Traveller games, which have been the polar , opposite of Mothership, especially this weekend's session when the group pulled off a Star Trek style rescue of stranded ships captured on an ancient asteroid turned into a relic defense weapon by a lost civilization. Not a shot was fired and yet everyone was gripped with excitement at the mystery and task at hand, followed by success in their rescue. It was a fun turnabout from games involving high levels of death and violence, and does reflect the fact that Traveller is above all else a multifaceted system reflecting the many  concept spaces in science fiction, allowing for a vast swathe of the genre to be represented. In other words....what I am saying is it would be hard to pull off such a pleasant and optimistic (yet still exciting and fun) mission in a system like Mothership. Even if I ran a completely straight mission in Mothership like that the entire party would be constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for mayhem and murder to ensue. But in Traveller? They can take it at face value and conclude that there was no need to assume a xenomorph analog around the corner. Next session they get invited to an Aslan wedding of high importance, and may discover a trafficking ring of non-spacefaring species who are being exploited by a local Evil Empire. If you are one of my players forget you read that sentence!  

Adventurer, Conqueror King System - My PDF experiment failed

Not too long ago I dived in to several systems, one of which was Adventurer, Conqueror King System. ACKS as it is known is an OSR-adjcent RPG from Autarch Publishing which has an interesting fusion of mechanical aspects from B/X D&D, AD&D 1E and AD&D 2E. It uses "class as race" for example but does so by constructing unique classes that are custom focused on the race. You don't play "elf" for example, you pick from elven spellsword or elven nightblade, with each demihuman type having a couple base classes in the core rules and lots more in the expanded companion books. It's a decent happy medium between simpler class choices that are also meaningful in flavor and style. "Spellsword" sounds cooler than elven fighter/mage, after all, or even just "elf!"

Anyway, lots of other things in ACKS appeal to me - proficiency systems, cool subsystems, a distinct sword & sorcery flavor that leans heavily into early pulp fantasy more than later post-Tolkien fantasy, etc. etc. But...ACKS is still ultimately another OSR variant, even if it is dolled up and more original than most. As such, I decided to try an experiment: I snagged all the ACKS books I wanted on PDF through DriveThruRPG.com and decided to see if I could engage with the system purely in PDF format. Could I, in fact, read, learn, and plan for a game with a system entirely held in electronic format?

As it turns out, months later, I have decided that the answer is a resounding no. While having the documents in PDF format is handy enough, actually sitting down and working with them on a tablet or big screen is far more utilitarian, and the horrible truth is that, at least for me, the tactile element of a physical rulebook I can flip back and forth through is more useful and honestly quicker than trying to do the same with a PDF. The only true advantage of the PDF is you can search fairly quickly (as long as it is indexed and your search parameter is correct). Beyond that, books hold the decisive advantage in that you can mark and annotate more easily (if you like defacing your books!), you can bookmark more clearly, you can search about as quickly but also with more intuition because you have a measurable quantity in hand and can know roughly where to look. It's just a more visceral, intuitive experience. Some may have adapted well to electronic documents, but for me? Nope. A lot of people I think feel this way.....it is evident in my son and his friends (of those who do read or play games) that the physical book is far more valued than a PDF. On the other hand, they are all playing D&D 5E, and there are no searchable PDFs out there, but they do use D&D Beyond for character generation in their middle school group, so whadda I know.

This is all a long way o saying I decided to buy the phsyical ACKS books instead with the idea toward running a campaign soon. I grabbed some decently priced copies on NobleKnight.com and the rest in POD through Drivethru. I will write more on ACKS as soon as I have the real books in hand! It is a very interesting system, managing to hew close to OSR norms while still innovating and achieving its own distinct flavor, and I like it. I may be able to blend it a bit or at least utilize it for some of the OSE modules I have accrued, too.....there's a lot to like about OSE, which takes a different and equally neat approach to consolidating various early OSR editions of D&D together, but its flavor is incredibly vanilla as a result, and I am really loving the sort of "Howard/de Camp/Carter/Wagner/Lieber" style that ACKS exudes. 

From the Old Dog Learns New Tricks Dept: Going 100% PDF in a Live Game?!?!?

 It started this way: last night, as I hauled out two 30-40 lb. bags of books and campaign material, I laid it all out for the following morning so I had stuff ready for the game I run after work. I then sat down, and while perusing Drivethrurpg noticed a new compendium from Autarch for the Adventurer, Conqueror, King RPG. In looking at it I realized I had the ACKS core book and Player's Guide on my account as PDFs from many ages ago. It dawned on me that I really had no idea why I had ignored ACKS over other systems, beyond my tendency to go for physical books as a sign of official status, and had never had physical ACKS books in hand...therefore never messed with it before.

The thing is, three years of pandemic and post-pandemic existence got me quite used to using PDFs of books to prep and run games online. I am more likely to have and use the PDFs these days when running Roll20. The first time I really brought out the old tomes for actual use beyond the visceral satisfaction of reading a paper-based product was our return to live gaming a few months back. Yet, when preparing the live scenario at home I am still mostly accessing PDFs now, and only using physical books for which I have no PDF alternative.

That got me to thinking: here's ACKS, a game system I admit I have not done anything with due to the PDF-only status it holds in my collection, but it actually looks like a rather neat game (especially if you enhance it with some of the many cool supplements it has). What if I....and yes, this if crazy talk for an old Gen Xer like myself!....what if I just, kept it as a PDF collection but also tried to use it that way, too????

Madness!!!! But also....yeah. I looked at the other ACKS books I didn't have, and started shoveling print+PDF editions into the cart, and looked at the $150+ price tag to get physical copies of what I wanted. Then I noticed I could get a lot more for a mere $50 and have a very nearly complete collection of all the ACKS stuff without breaking the bank.

I have, like, 3 or 4 active current tablets that can all handle decent hi resolution copies of PDF without any speed issues. I have a very nice laptop which can do this. So....what's to prevent me from showing up with a modest bag of just the campaign stuff, GM screen, and maybe one or two main books I need, and use the iPad or laptop for the rest? Only my own hang up about physical media!

Anyway.....I am now thinking about trying this out tonight, at the game table, and my newly discovered obsession with the ACKS System may be next, to try and run a game which is 100% in my digital bookshelf. 

As a side note on ACKS: definitely a variation on old school, but I love that it uses proficiencies, and while its a class as race domain, the way ACKS does it is rather cool, with unique classes suited to the species in question (such as elven spellswords). I'll post more about that later, I imagine.

Gathering Greyhawk

First it started with the dndclassics.com release of the original Greyhawk boxed set from 1980ish. This was a nice scan of a product that runs rather high in price on Ebay, and a look into one of the first published settings for an RPG (and the first officially defined setting for D&D). As a kid I knew it existed but could never find a copy and have cash handy at the same time. By the time it was feasible other stuff like Runequest and Tunnels & Trolls were too busy taking my money instead.

Buck back to now...this budding obsession migrated to looking at what else they had on offer over there in the way of Greyhawk PDFs. This led to a mixture of excitement and disappointment when I decided to jump forward a bit and check out the tail end of the 2E-era "year 591 cy" setting, post "Greyhawk Wars" era from the early 2E days. This was cool, but the scans for "Player's Guide" and "Adventure Begins" were terrible. These are the two books that collectively define this era and are also the basis for the 3E Greyhawk material, I am led to believe....but for some reason the scans are atypically poor with cropped pages and a dismal grey-bleed background that implies the books might have been printed on some off-color paper or had bad watermarks/bleed-through.

This led me to find the books on Ebay, for surprsingly cheap yet pristine copies. No idea now that I've seen the original as to just why the scans on sale are so bad....I could make a clean scan easily (and am tempted to do so then donate it to WotC, if I could figure out the donation process in a legal way).

But.....and here's where it all goes off the rails....

I'm rather enjoying exploring Greyhawk. Prior to...oh...the last few weeks Greyhawk has always been that old setting that I knew a bit about but never got to play in (or run) and mostly was a sort of relationship by association, as I converted most modules from the setting to my own worlds. In a way, that puts a bit of Greyhawk in all my games already.

But now I'm tempted to run an actual campaign in Greyhawk, possibly due to subversive propaganda, but also possibly because it's something that has the veneer of being both old and familiar and fresh and new to me simultaneously. If I do it, I'll set the game sometime around the year 591 cy, and start with the other three books I picked up: Return of the Eight, The Star Cairns and Crypt of Lyzandred the Mad. These are good modules...and the only reason I never investigated all of this before was that I just never used pre-made setting material back in the day unless it was obviously easy to reskin. It's not Greyhawk, personally....I didn't pick up Forgotten Realms stuff, either.

If this happens, I'll have to post some details on RoC. The next question is: what system? There's a temptation to use AD&D 2nd edition as was intended for these tomes, but it seems silly not to do the conversion dance and use D&D 5E. On the other hand I recently acquired the Adventurer, Conqueror, King System (ACKS) and that seems like a really great fit for Greyhawk, at least with the "escalating from hero to king" part (in other areas it lacks a bit...no halflings, demons, or other D&Disms that are core to Greyhawk). There are other OSR games that could work well, too. Hmmmm....decisions, decisions. I'll probably sick with 5E, because that edition speaks to me like no other has, and it will let me do some Greyahwk to 5E conversion blogs down the road, too....