Before I forget - Adventurer Conqueror King is coming out with a second edition. The kickstarter is in the last 24 hours. Alex had been posting playtest versions of the rules and we've been using them in our bi-weekly Greyhawk game - he's created procedures for thief skills and dungeon crawling that we've found immediately useful in our Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, so I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing. ACKS takes the promise of the BECMI line - Basic Expert Companion Master Immortal - with tiers of play where players engage in domain building and conquest - and packs the main arc into a concise levels 1-14 like the original red box/blue box Basic-Expert rules. It captures those high level campaign elements in a way that no other clone game has embraced, while still being a fully realized dungeon crawler if that's the end-all be-all for your style.
The two games I'm running - Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Adventurer Conqueror King - come at old school gaming and D&D from radically different places. It's worth a discussion! I'll write about it this weekend as I'll have some time. In the meantime get over to the ACKS kickstarter before the clock runs out: ACKS 2 Kickstarter - Last 24 Hours
I'm overdue to say something about Alexander Macris's video channel. Alex is the writer of Adventurer Conqueror King and he's been doing a YouTube channel for several months now where he tackles game theory and being a better referee. He's got a collegial style and well-articulated positions. Last week he tackled the question of whether your RPG should have "inherently evil races" (video is posted below).
This question has been around. It's been a lightning rod in D&D style games since the Keep on the Borderlands introduced tribes of humanoids just up the road from the Keep (and it's usually accompanied by a debate on colonization in gaming). Over 40 years, designers and authors have granted more sympathetic attributes to the humanoids in their game worlds, prompting Wizards of the Coast to declare there were no longer evil humanoids in modern incarnations of D&D, but rather they would have all alignments like humans - a sort of "Fantasy Star Trek", where through cooperation, inclusivity, diplomacy, and cultural exchange, everyone can find common ground and have a place in the Federatio… er, Forgotten Realms.
At that point, might as well admit James Raggi was right 15 years ago when he dumped fantasy settings for the early modern and said, let's just place adventures in the real world and have complex conflicts with human antagonists without the furry costumes… but that's another game, another post. Alex is clinging to heroic fantasy with its panoply of sentient races.
Alex offers a workable solution to the question of innately evil races. An "innately evil race" would be one where coexistence is not possible at all - the evil race represents an existential threat to human civilization. The example he uses in the video is the xenomorph from the Alien series. You're either on the side of civilization or you’re siding with the enemy and betraying it. The scientific term for this unresolvable clash of species is "competitive exclusion theory".
The problem is that humanoid depictions became relatable and too human. Orcs are a misunderstood culture, like a fantasy version of Star Trek's violent yet honorable Klingons. They're no longer Tolkien's implacable forces of destruction and death. In the movie Return of the King, there's a visceral experience of orc hatred of humanity when the orc commander proclaims, "The age of men is over, the time of the orc has come." The battle of Minas Tirith is an extinction event - the stakes are victory or the fall of civilization. In Middle Earth, Fantasy Star Trek is reserved for the humans, elves, dwarves, and hobbits to become kissy-kissy allies and cohabitants. The spawn of Morgoth (and the orcs) have no place in Eriador. (And yes, I'm side-stepping any broader discussion of the orcs based on Tolkien's letters or life experiences - here I'm just reacting to the representation in the fiction).
Tapping back into the Trek universe, maybe the Borg are the best example of that existential threat. Or the Gorn. In fantasy, something like GRR Martin's White Walkers are a foe with whom there can be no compromise. But for mainstream fantasy games, 40 years of treating orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins as variant people, has gone too far to reclaim them as an irredeemable enemy. Were the seeds sown as early as the 1E Monster Manual, with it's complex and naturalistic depiction of humanoid tribal life?
But we will do as we will, in our home games. Here is the video:
One parting thought - I'm intrigued by the idea that depictions of orc-like monsters and boogeymen in fairy tales and literature may hearken back to some "species-memory" of conflict between homo sapiens and the Neanderthals during the Ice Age. Instinctual memory sounds like goofy pseudoscience, but it's fun to think about. It brings to my mind the horrible "Wendol" from the movie The 13th Warrior (Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead novel), where the Wendol are a nigh-supernatural force of Neanderthal-like primitives that emerge from remote caves to terrorize Viking villages. There are no universal translators, parleys, or requests to negotiate anywhere in sight - just battle axes, swords, and a doughty crew of Northmen to hold the line and stand for the survival of mankind. Along with Antionio Banderas.
Last year I picked up a kindle book written by Alexander Macris called Arbiter of Worlds, a general collection of essays on how to build and run an old school campaign, and why this is the most satisfying and memorable approach to adventure gaming due to emergent story. Honestly, if you're still out here reading OSR blogs, even that of a 5E adopter like myself, it's stuff you probably already know (albeit collected into a handy guide and presented in a conversational tone). A lot of it's right there in the 1E Dungeon Master's Guide, nestled among all the purple prose and Gygaxian expository. Alex, incidentally, is the developer of the Adventurer, Conqueror, King system (ACKS), a BX-style retro-clone with the campaign and worldbuilding elements dialed up to 11, with an especial focus on economics, domains, and warfare.
Both ACKS and Arbiter of Worlds suggest a campaign building approach called "top down, zoom in" that mirrors how I like to approach campaign building, so I'm going to give the methodology a try as I start working on "Erda". Like it says in the name, you start with the world concept, develop a large area map, establish some broad brushstrokes around the history of the setting, and craft some notes on culture. Then switch to the local area where adventures will start for the "zoom in" portion, creating a small area hex map, points of interest, settlements, dungeons - the detailed sandbox area.
It's a rational model and mirrors how I think about world-building. I like to start with the big picture, but it's important to shift gears quickly into the pragmatic stuff that's actually going to matter at the table in the first few game sessions. Following a constrained methodology will help stay on a plan. With than in mind, as I develop the campaign setting and megadungeon for the Harrowdale campaign, I'm going to test-drive this "top down, zoom in" system and post the progress here.
As for the rest of Arbiter of Worlds, the essays are good. I'll pull it out to refresh and see which ones warrant discussion out here on the interwebs. I read it on the iPad during some air travel last year in a 3-4 hour burst - I get in most of my pleasure reading on work trips. (I'm currently working on Ovid's Metamorphoses, a gap in my classics knowledge). Arbiter of Worlds is a $5 kindle book over at Amazon (link here). However, if you already own ACKS, much of the top down/zoom in approach is already laid out in the campaign building chapter (Secrets).
I'll be back soon with more notes on the Erda campaign, and updates on my Adventurer's League gaming: Descent into Avernus - blech, and the start of Dungeon of the Mad Mage campaign - two thumbs up!! Plus my home game has started their exploration of Acererak's "Tomb of Annihilation" in Chult. We'll have stories.
I've got a few games running right now, using published settings, but the real thing I'm looking forward to doing this year is campaign development - picking an idea and getting back into the world of homebrew campaigns, either starting something new, or picking up an older idea again. However, I like a bunch of different rules sets and frequently switch between campaigns. How many of you guys have run the same rules for multiple years, versus switching rules when you start the next campaign?
Rules sets can be adjusted to favor the style of play you prefer, but I still get inspired by the differences inherent in the rules; mechanics help underline the focus of the game and what's important. Just like picking the right tool for a job around the house, the right set of rules makes the referee's job easier, too. Here are the rule sets I'm considering when pondering the upcoming campaign.
ACKS (Adventurer Conqueror King System)
ACKS is a retro clone built on the OGL as a spiritual successor to BECMI (the basic, expert, companion, master, and immortal rules published for Basic D&D in the 80's and early 90's). BECMI envisioned a rich campaign world beyond the dungeon, and included rules for dominions, wars, and rulership, as well as expanding basic D&D to include advanced facets of play like planar travel and artifacts. ACKS assumes that exploring dungeons and lairs will always be a part of play, but provides procedures for creating lair-filled hex crawls, populating a campaign world, and very detailed guidelines for players on crafting items and creating spells, build domains, establish guilds, and raise armies. ACKS expands the game from just controlling a character in a dungeon, to include a character shaping the course of the world.
Of course, the referee needs to have a specific campaign vision in mind to put in the overhead to build a campaign setting that will eventually support intrigue and conquest; it has to be something the players want to do as well. ACKS is almost a throw-back to the Chainmail days and the earliest campaigns, as it anticipated characters will recover tons of wealth from their dungeoneering, and invest piles of gold into building castles and armies.
LOTFP (Lamentations of the Flame Princess)
Anyone paying attention to the OSR is familiar with Jim LOTFP's penchant for pushing the envelope with his Heavy Metal magazine style of art and promotion. Because why not, right? The inmates rule the OSR asylum, and it's fantastic. But beneath LOFTP's occasional boob and dismembered corpse is a streamlined and trim interpretation of the old BX rules chassis for Moldvay's 1980's D&D and redbox. LOTFP has laser-focused niche protection for the main character classes (fighter, cleric, magic user, and specialist), a form of 'bounded accuracy' since no one beyond the fighter improves at fighting ability. It also has my favorite d6-based skill system for D&D. (Jeff Rients recently covered a comparison of Moldvay and LOTFP in articles called LOTFP vs BX; sadly they're not labeled for easy linking). The implied setting of LOTFP is the early modern period in a milieu based on historical Europe, featuring elements of weird fiction and horror.
A 'feature' of LOTFP is that it doesn't include a bestiary; monsters are expected to be unique and terrifying, for the most part. Jim has threatened to release an updated Ref Book for the past few years that includes more guidelines on weird monsters and running campaigns.
5E (Good Old Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition style)
Wizards of the Coast made an effort to reached out to old school players during their playtest of 5e, and delivered a version of the game that featured smaller stat blocks, 'theater of the mind' old school combat, and a play experience built on combat, exploration, and dungeoneering. 5E continues to sell very well, and appears to be growing the table top hobby in new ways with live streaming of games and celebrity games. 5E is also the game new players encounter in hobby and book stores; the brand appears strong and going well.
As an old school player, there are some issues that leave me cold. Characters are really powerful, even from level 1, and the game implies a high fantasy, high powered world where magic is ubiquitous - at least among player characters. 5E really only emulates one type of setting well - a high powered D&D setting! It's built on 40 years of self-referential lore and development, and has pretty much become it's own genre of fantasy. No wonder the Forgotten Realms is the default.
However, players seem to love the system. Going from 'zero to hero' in the old school style is an acquired taste for players, especially kids, and 5E's high powered laser clerics and zappy wizards are more in line with modern video games. Not every player likes having disposable first level characters that can be killed by a house cat and some good dice rolls. 5E character development includes the creation of personality facets like ideals, bonds, and flaws; old school characters get developed through play, and not conceived all at the beginning. I've noticed that younger players enjoy imagining that stuff right out of the gate, and it's improved their ability to roleplay their characters at the table. I need to get some Curse of Strahd game reports going - 5E has a lot going for it from the player's perspective.
Unfortunately, I really don't like the Forgotten Realms - a little too bog standard fantasy. A personal challenge is whether I could I structure a satisfying campaign setting using 5E when I'm done running Curse of Strahd. Maybe an older idea like Taenarum, my megadungeon featuring the Greek Underworld, would work as a high magic, high powered setting? Either way, the setting needs to be purpose built for zap zap pew pew style D&D.
Regardless of which system I land on, I'm sure it will involve a healthy amount of hex crawling and wandering the wilds; both LOTFP or 5E would need to borrow from other systems to accomplish that, as neither mechanically supports it today (either through lack of bestiary or lack of procedures). I'm still loving the Skyrim experience of free-range discovery of ruins, caves, and enemy holds, and want to see that expressed in a table top game! The campaign will feature a large-ish megadungeon as well. I'll reflect in the near future and decide if I should revive an older idea (Taenarum, the Black City, or Harrow Home) or start something fresh and new.
Is this common - do you switch rules per campaign, go for a best fit for mechanics, or use the same core for each game and just make it work?
It only took five years for my kids to convince me to start playing Skyrim.
Since I spent the past year and a half sequestered as an academic, lots of family stuff and hobbies fell by the wayside - limited vacations, no GenCon attendance, things like that. Each kid extracted a solemn promise to do something cool over the holidays; my daughter wanted to spend an afternoon at Barnes and Noble, hanging out at Starbucks and talking about life; my youngest wanted me to learn Madden '17 and try to challenge his crown; the oldest has been obsessed with getting me to finally play Skyrim and 'get it'. With the master's degree safely behind me, I took the plunge over the holidays and got the Skyrim special edition version for Xbox One. I've been enjoying the "open world" nature of the game, and it’s hard not to reflect on how we can adapt some techniques to enhance our table top games.
If you're reading this post based on the title, there's a good chance you know what Skyrim is already (or played one of the earlier incarnations). If your luddite tendencies have kept you cloistered from modern video games - and who can blame you, really? - this brief video review provides a decent summary of the game and game world: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Legendary Edition Overview - Newegg TV
Now that I've seen enough to become a 23rd level high elf destruction mage, arch mage of the college of Winterhold, and member of the Stormcloak rebellion, here are various sandbox techniques that I plan on borrowing next time I do a homebrew sandbox game: Through Line Quests
Regardless of what minor quest or story line the player is pursuing, there are some overarching "big threats" in the campaign setting that create verisimilitude as the player traverses the sandbox. Examples in Skyrim include a rebellion between the Stormcloaks (rebel Nords) and the Imperials from the south; a plague of vampires and the presence of the Dawnguard, fanatic vampire hunters; the return of the dragons and the threat of a powerful, apocalyptic dragon lord. Regardless of what you're doing, you might encounter patrols of Imperials and offers to join the Legion; voracious vampires and vampire thralls attack the towns at night; dragons wheel in the distant skies.
Thanes, Lordships, and Property
There are a half dozen major towns across Skyrim; each one is led by a Jarl, and there's a path to become a thane or lord in the Jarl's hall through service. This opens up the opportunity to gain a follower, buy a house, or develop a homestead land out in the wilds and build your own fortified manor and hall. After all, you need a nice wall to hang all those trophies!
Guild Memberships
There are a handful of major organizations where the player can climb the ranks - think of it like the thieve's guild, but covering other classes - so far I've encountered the mages, the assassins, and the companions (the companions are Norse mercenaries that can turn into werewolves).
Discovered Backstory
NPCs disburse elements of the history and setting through brief one sentence blurbs, like tweets, limiting the narrative dumps. Books are a much richer source of backstory - you're constantly finding books and notes in ruins and tombs; they tell history, and provide hints and clues on negotiating the current dungeon, too. You can ignore them if reading is tedious. Dwimmermount used this technique to great effect, and Jim LOTFP pioneered it way back in Hammers of the God, where the secret shame of the dwarves could only be discovered if you worked through the library of books.
Towns
Each town has a distinct character, lots of little subplots and stories, and a number of common services; an inn, a merchant or armorer, and an apothecary or alchemist. Plus the local lord and guard. There's a lot of value in putting more effort into the towns in your game.
Quest Overload and Organization
Skyrim overloads you with things to do, forcing you to prioritize your own story arc. However, all of the quest ideas and rumors are conveniently organized in a journal. As a busy adult who only plays once a week, it's really helpful to return to a game log and see my current options as a memory refresher.
In my Dwimmermount game, I made some play aids to help the players keep track of quests and lost knowledge. I can see myself generalizing it further to include all sorts of quests and rumors that get picked up. As old school DM's we sometimes view 'note taking' and memory as skill testers, which runs counter to casual, beer and pretzel D&D playing; if the setting is going to deluge the players with options and things to do, help them keep track of the options with a journal of some sorts. When you show up to game at the end of a bruising 40 hour week, the last thing you want is to have to recall obscure parts of The Silmarillion in order to play. (Or Forgotten Realms lore).
Level Scaling the Extreme Sandbox
This one is a bit controversial, but Skyrim uses what I'm calling "quantum difficulty" - the levels of ruins and dungeons get established when you enter them the first time. It's not 100% level scaling, or else you wouldn't feel like you're making any progress. For instance, a wolf that used to be a dangerous fight can now be dispatched with a single blow. But a newly discovered barrow, which might have contained Norse undead (draugr) when the character was low level, will feature more dangerous draugr variants if you first discover it as a higher level character.
I'm getting more pragmatic as I get older. If you're going to present a plethora of choices right up front, there might be an opportunity cost to choosing one thing, and ignoring something else. But if the dungeons aren't going away, the players may loop back to an earlier rumor and pick it up when they're more powerful. For instance, the early game has the players hearing about a group of "vicious bandits" that have made travel north in High Saddle Pass difficult. The players travel in the opposite direction and have a series of engaging adventures somewhere else. When they return to the north and go after the bandits now, assuming the problem persists, maybe that group of zero level men and humans they might have encountered as level 1 characters is actually a mixed band of humanoids and ogres that can challenge a higher level party. Is that palette shifting, or just-in-time development, because the nature of the bandits was never fully established in prior sessions? I'm choosing the latter.
However, there are a couple of things I haven't been happy with in Skyrim, but these are issues you can address on the tabletop:
Suspended Quests
You can be engaging with an apparently time sensitive quest (example: go ambush the evil guys when they cross the bridge near the town) but there's nothing stopping you from sleeping for the night, selling some gear, and heading out to the bridge a few days later. Whenever you pick up the quest, now is the time the bad guys happen to be crossing the bridge. Ouch.
Consequences
The game is full of shrines to the gods (Divines) and the demons of Skyrim (Daedra). There's nothing stopping you from swearing allegiance to a Divine for one quest, and then doing something terrible to win a Daedric artifact the next quest. For that matter, NPCs and characters don't pay that much attention, either; you can swear yourself to Meridia, the goddess/daedra of Light, and wield her holy sword, Dawnbreaker, but a priest isn't likely to know the difference, and there's no problem joining a quest on behalf of Meridia's arch enemy next game session (thanks for the fact check on Mara vs Meridia, +Grey Knight). Just about the only thing that gets you in any trouble is performing a public crime, especially with guards around.
I understand that in the video game context, all of these quest lines are just "content", and the designers want to maximize your ability to experience all of the content without having to create a new character. It's a bad video game experience to make choices that completely close other quests. However, in the table top, we don't have the same considerations and can handle both suspended quests and natural consequences in a way that reinforces the setting.
Overall though, I've gotten a lot of good tabletop ideas by playing and observing Skyrim - even if it is 5-6 years later than the rest of you. Adventurer Conqueror King would make a fine campaign system for a Skyrim style sandbox, since it envisions crafting, homesteading, economics, demographics, rulership and guild establishment - lots of world-building stuff that enhance the campaign side of play in addition to exploration and combat.
Since I've started blogging again, and the calendar turned to 2016, there have been a whole series of announcements on things I didn't expect to see this year.
Jim LOTFP is Going to Gencon
I was really surprised to see the news that LOTFP is going to Gencon. I ran some LOTFP at Gencon years ago, and there were controversies a few years back where some prudish Gencon organizers didn't want the LOTFP games or modules on display in the dealer hall and whatnot - can't have gore, horror, and boobs on display in Indianapolis! I never expected to see an announcement that Jim LOTFP is making the long haul from Finland to Indianapolis. I'd love to make it out there - get a bunch of missing LOTFP stuff in person. My teenager is looking to play some "edgy" D&D with his friends, and LOTFP's early stuff (Tower of the Stargazer, Grinding Gear, Hammers of the God) strikes a good balance between classic dungeons, weirdness, and horror, so I have him checking out Stargazer (he played through all those, plus Death Frost Doom, back during a game I called "Gothic Greyhawk").
Does that mean the long-awaited Referee Book is getting done this year? That one's been kicking around a few years now. That seems like the kind of product and release that would warrant an appearance at gaming's biggest convention.
Delta Green Trail of Cthulhu?
I like the Delta Green world, but haven't played BRP in a long time; any recent horror games have been Trail of Cthulhu. One of the bits of news coming out of the recent Delta Green kickstarter is that Pelgrane Press is doing a 1960's Delta Green setting book (written by Ken Hite, naturally) called The Fall of Delta Green. That one is going right to the top of the pre-order list. Maybe we'll see a full-blown Gumshoe Delta Green book at some point, too.
The Auran Empire for ACKS
The guy(s) over at Adventurer Conqueror King are making some moves; the president of a video game company joined the management team, they just had their Lairs & Encounters kick starter clear $25,000, they're publishing articles via a decent-sized Patreon, and now news that the Auran Empire setting is coming this year. I've played ACKS intermittently since it came out in 2011, and I thought the Auran Empire was going to be the company's "Castle Greyhawk"; that product that was talked about since the early days but never managed to see print. 2016 could prove me wrong! The Return of Strahd
It's been all over the blogosphere, the next 5E sourcebook \ adventure is a return to Barovia (The Curse of Strahd). Love it! Looks like it's going to include more about the lands of Barovia and an updated delve into Ravenloft in an adventure for levels 1 - 10; I guess they need something for those low level guys to do before they can fight Strahd. My players had a lot of fun beating that guy a few years ago in Gothic Greyhawk.
5E OGL?
I'm doing school on the weekends so there's no chance I'll be working on any grandiose 5E megadungeon this year. I eagerly await the efforts of an enterprising 5E designer with old school sensibilities who creates a (good) epic 5E megadungeon - I've got some money right here. 5E doesn't play out the same as the old school clones because of the power levels and wahoo magic stuff, but it's a really fun game and I hope this OGL brings some good things to the market. Splatbooks and rules bloat need not apply - although I could be persuaded by an updated setting like 3E's Midnight, or a well done Asian-themed setting. Speaking of which, I need to pick up a copy of Yoon Suin this year and check out Stonehell 2 - those were a few old school products from last year that slipped by while I wasn't blogging. I may get my first Indie game this year too, something like Dungeon World (after some recent recommendations here).
Now if someone could announce they got a Traveller license for Star Wars or Star Trek, 2016 would be completely bananas.
What are you looking forward to this year in the RPG game-o-sphere?
I'm taking a moment out of studying to post a kickstarter-related PSA: Lairs & Encounters, by Autarch (the publishers of Adventurer, Conqueror, King). The kickstarter has gone swimmingly well, funding in the first week and climbing up the bonus goals. Alex, the Autarch himself, has declared a promotional challenge in honor of the solstice: if the kickstarter gets another $500 or so by noon tomorrow, hitting the target goal of $18,500, then he'll unlock the next two bonus goals instead of just one. If you're thinking about jumping in, this is a good time to do it. Autarch has developed a cadence of timely releases and providing advance access to the draft manuscript once the kickstarter funds, minimizing the usual crowdfunding risks.
I like resource books full of pre-made content, whether it be something like the old AD&D Rogues Gallery or D&D's Shady Dragon Inn, or a book of ready-to-go monster hideouts like this Lairs & Encounters; they're handy to have any time the party is heading overland. The book includes 135 monster lairs from the standard bestiary, 16 maps featuring more detailed lairs, some treasure maps, rules for creating and balancing your own monsters, and various sandbox-oriented systems. Hitting the bonus goal adds 9 more lair maps, 5 more treasure maps, and a handful of new monsters. On deck are various Viking themed monsters and desert themed monsters. Naturally, I'm already a backer and would love to see a bunch of new monsters get added to the project!
Arise from the dead, sleeping blog; we have things to do. I have a couple of weeks break over the holidays, and I'm starting a new game. I've finally taken the weighty, hardbound version of Dwimmermount off the shelf and plumbed it's storied depths to run at the table.
I consciously avoided Dwimmermount after its kickstarter; the affair descended into a messy drama, and when I got the book after an interminable period, I had mixed feelings about the process. Quite a bit of time has since passed then, and curiosity got the better of me. Now, after having read the book cover to cover, and kicking off an actual-play adventure there, I state that Dwimmermount is amazing. Over the course of the next few blog posts, I'll take a deeper look at Dwimmermount and why it's one of the pivotal books in the OSR movement.
But I do need to step back and revisit some points about the publication's history to put my trepidations into context. There's a deep irony in the publication of Dwimmermount. The source campaign was heavily featured on the blog Grognardia, which catalogued James Maliszewski's exploration of early Dungeons & Dragons and the roots of the RPG hobby. His blog was a good read, and immensely popular. James used Dwimmermount to explore the modes of play espoused by Gary Gygax and embodied in Gary's legendary mega dungeon, Castle Greyhawk.
Castle Greyhawk has never seen print. It was a living, breathing dungeon created over many years and innumerable game sessions, a collection of scant notes, worn maps, and hazy recollections of the author. As fans, we hounded Gary for decades to commit Castle Greyhawk to a publication. There have been heroic fan versions, but for various reasons, Gary took the original with him to his grave.
After some years of running his popular Dwimmermount game (and reporting it on his blog), James launched one of the most successful OSR kickstarter campaigns I can recall, to fund a print version of Dwimmermount. The gentlemen over at Autarch, publishers of Adventurer, Conqueror, King (ACKS), had recently entered OSR publishing with their successful launch of ACKS, and they partnered with James to deliver it.
In a bizarre twist of history repeating itself, the project soon got into trouble. The effort of turning scant notes, worn maps, and the author's hazy memories, into a fully realized, printed megadungeon, turned out to be just as daunting for James as it had for Gary Gygax. James withdrew from the project, and Autarch, which had other considerations in play, such as their reputation as a new publisher, and a bevy of planned products, carried on with the commitment to the backers. The final publication of Dimmermount is a blend of James' original campaign and the embellishments added by Autarch to build out the raw notes, remediate gaps, and reconcile inconsistencies.
The final product is a triumph. But how do we assign credit and authorship? I'm perplexed by the ambiguities related to the creative process and the finished work. Is a creation diminished if the author fails to complete the piece and a second author, or even a third, comes along to see it through? I'm sure many projects are collective efforts and we are none the wiser for having been spared the details on "how the sausage was made"; in the gaming space, this project stands out because of the public way we came to know the visionary creator withdrew, the sordid response by a minority of fans, and how the remaining team stalwartly carried on. The mixed pedigree of the product has forced me to reflect on the permutations of collaborative art. Actually, working the discussion out as I was writing this brought me to an epiphany: is it perhaps silly to get caught up on authorship concerns and pedigree on the eve of "Star Wars Day"? I'm taking the family to see the new movie tomorrow. It's not like we even considered looking askance at the work of Disney or JJ Abrams because George Lucas is out of the picture; in fact I'm thankful there will be no Jar Jar Binks. (Don't let me down, JJ Abrams - I better not see Gungans).
This preamble to Dwimmermount is waxing long. I'm very fond of the book, and as you check back over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing my reasons for praising it highly. We'll look at the world of Dwimmermount, its role as Axis Mundi, how it embodies various old school ideals, and then take a look at the dungeons themselves.
To close this bit of blog necromancy, I'll offer a brief account on where I've been: I started a demanding master's program this past year, a 16 month grind calculated to launch me on that next career arc. Juggling family, 3 kids, a challenging corporate gig, and a master's program at an Ivy league school has put a serious crimp on creative output and gaming. I've been keeping up with some blogs, I ran some 5E over the summer, but I've mainly shifted into a consumer of gaming content rather than developing stuff whole cloth for my home games. That won't change for another year, but I do expect to write about gaming and keep up with the news in OSR-land. Glad to see so many of you are soldiering on while this place has been dark.
My new campaign started at the beginning of April. It's a Greek-myth inspired dungeon called Taenarum. The minions of Hades, the god of the underworld, have turned the legendary road to the Underworld into a sprawling megadungeon filled with traps, tricks, and wealth, to lure and defeat the followers of the other gods. I wanted a setting that was high fantasy and characterized many classic tropes of D&D and dungeon crawling, appropriate for my kids and family while also being interesting to the adult gamers. So far, so good.
I also decided to structure the campaign using ACKS - Adventurer Conqueror King System. Most of the games I've run the past two years have been a bit more horror-themed and used Lamentations of the Flame Princess as the rules. Both ACKS and LOTFP are OSR clone games derived from BX style D&D using the OGL. I picked ACKS for this campaign because I plan on building out the campaign world to allow military campaigns, domain rulership, and campaign roles, and that type of support is built into ACKS from the ground up. It's a solid campaign builder rules set. After the first month and a half of using the rules, here are some of the player-facing elements that have had the biggest impact on our games.
Character Creation
ACKS supports the various standard class types you'd see in BX, but the core book adds a number of alternative classes like Bard, Explorer (a ranger variant), and Assassin that you'd see in something like 1E AD&D. The Player's Companion adds a ton of additional classes, like the Shaman, Barbarian, and Paladin, along with demi-human hybrids that combine popular base classes.
As referee, I'm content with just the core classes in the game (fighter, cleric, thief, and magic user). However, the players in both groups immediately gravitated to alternate classes. We've had paladins in both games, dwarven craft priests, the elf magic user \ thief combo, a bard, an assassin, and an explorer.
The other player-facing option is the proficiency system. A few of the proficiencies are combat skills (like bonuses for a fighting style) but many of them are knowledge-based and have been popular with the players. Normally I have a first aid style house rule, but the Healing proficiency eliminates the need for a house rule and makes those proficiency decisions carry more weight - it's fairly important to have 1-2 guys with Healing skill to help with first aid, especially at 1st level.
I'm a huge fan of "templates". Templates are character concepts that include a few pre-selected proficiencies, a wealth roll, and full kit of starting equipment. It makes character creation really fast for the players and helps with generating NPC's quickly as well. Spell Casting
The biggest change to spell casting is not requiring memorization for Magic Users or selection for Clerics - no more Vancian magic. If a given spell is in the character's repertoire, they can use it on demand. They're still limited to the same number of spell castings per day, but if a character can cast 2 first level spells per day, they don't have to preselect them. The rub is that spell casters have access to a smaller personal selection; a magic user might have 2-4 total first level spells in their spell book. In other versions of D&D style games, casters aggregate a lot more diversity in their spell book over time.
As you can imagine, this approach has been very popular with the players. I've seen a little more use of utility spells than before - the Magic Users sometimes cast spells other than Sleep, for instance. I'm looking forward to seeing a level 2 cleric in action and whether this means less Cure Light Wounds and more creativity with the clerical lists.
Combat
Fighting characters in ACKS are remarkably fun at low levels. The default game has a cleave rule that grants a free attack when a fighter drops a foe, and it has allowed the 1st level fighters to shine on multiple occasions. Fighters also gain a damage bonus, reinforcing their ability to cleave. I'm always glad to see enhancements that help fighters in a more elegant way than AD&D's weapon specialization.
ACKS uses a different approach to armor class. Characters have a single base target they're trying to achieve with a to-hit roll - for all first level characters the number is 10 - and armor class is added to this number. A monster with medium armor might have AC 3 (10 + 3 means you need a 13 or better to hit) while a heavily armored opponent might have AC 6 or better (16 to hit). After a game session or two, it's been really easy to manage at the table.
One of the other big changes in combat is the death and dying rules. Dropping to zero hit points or below only means the character is knocked out of the fight; until someone stops to survey the damage, it's not clear if the person is dead, dying, or just unconscious. Factors for death and dying include whether the knocked out character is at zero hit points or lower; does the person trying to stabilize them have first aid; is magic healing involved; how quickly did you get to stabilize the person after the fight. Even when the character recovers, there's the chance to accumulate nagging injuries and scars, which add some flavor to the results. We've had guys that can't be saved due to mortal injuries, bleeding out on the ground; one of the fighters has a permanent limp, and another is basically 'punch drunk' from having his bell rung too hard (yo Adrian).
Overall, I'm really happy with how the ACKS rules are playing out at the table, and the players are definitely enjoying the variety, choice, and subtle increases in character power. It hasn't stopped the game from being challenging or deadly. It's been a great choice so far for this style of game. I haven't gotten far on building out the larger world, so I can't fully report on applying the campaign setting creation guidelines. I'm sure I'll be able to report out on those experiences within the next month or so.
Does anyone else have experience with ACKS, and what are your observations?
There are a handful of small things that are different between ACKS and the other retro clones in delivering that classic dungeon delving experience; the big area where ACKS is significantly different is the amount of space allocated to setting creation and campaigning. The core rules balance detail and utility to provide a straightforward approach to structuring domains, from the largest cities down to the smallest villages. If the player characters stumble into an otherwise non descript village, answering these types of questions is a snap - the odds of finding a few hirelings, whether there's a cleric with a cure disease spell, or just how tough is the local knight. There's nothing stopping a referee from winging it based on the needs of the story, but in ACKS, you don't actually have to wing it. There's an underlying method.
One area where I found the rules silent was the effect adventurers have on a local economy. Characters return to town with thousands of gold pieces over the course of a level, and the local lord is taxing them along the way. 10% seems to be a fair rate, both in ACKS and from the 1E DMG's recommendations. If the player characters are the only adventurers in the area, perhaps there isn't a noticeable effect from an occasional windfall to the local lord. If you’re using scattered lairs across the countryside, the effect of adventurers is diffused. But when you're considering a well-known megadungeon, with lots of rival adventuring parties launching similar excursions, the amount of gold returning from the dungeon becomes significant. A week ago, I pointed out how a standard party would return a few million gold pieces from a 10 level megadungeon. That's a lot of money to tax.
Castle Greyhawk wasn't that far from the free city of Greyhawk. Adventurer's gold wouldn't warp the economy of a major city. But how about that frontier village or borderlands castle where a stream of dungeon gold represents more revenue than the annual economy of the place?
What I'm doing in the Taenarum game is assuming that consistent exploration (and retrieval of dungeon gold) has shifted the economy of the village higher on the revenue charts. The charts use population to derive the base income, market class, and demographics of the village. The dungeon gold gives the town more income than an equivalent village that isn't near a giant megadungeon. This results in a higher class of market - more readily available adventurer goods and hirelings - along with a tougher local thieves' guild and a stronger local ruler. It's a nod towards the gold rush \ boom town effect where glory seekers head to the frontier to find their fortunes, along with merchants and specialists to service them. However, it's only shifting the class of market slightly when compared to other small habitations. The player characters still need to travel to the nearest major city for significant expenditures, powerful spells, and rare items.
Adventurers are knuckleheads, and putting a lot of them in the same place at the same time guarantees tavern-clearing brawls that spill into the streets. Our little frontier town needs a "sheriff". The higher income supports a demographic shift for the major NPC's in the town - an in-game explanation for why the local lord is a retired 8th level fighter, or why there's a higher level cleric on hand for 3rd level spells.
One area I'm less knowledgeable about is inflation. Do any of you put inflation into your games? In Taenarum, the village of Psammathous Bay is less than a day's journey by boat to the nearest city. It's not that far for resupply. Still, it seems reasonable to assume adventuring gear is at a premium. ACKS has some arbitrage rules. They seem like the next thing to look at to determine an appropriate inflationary modifier for adventurer gear on the frontier - as long as it's not too complicated. At the end of the day, it's still a game about the dungeons and the dragons, and not papers and paychecks.
I ran the first session of the new megadungeon last night. With any luck, I'll get a second group of players in there tonight, and it will be completely underway.
Last night was the kids and family game. They made characters with such names as Egrog the Spartan Gladiator, Holly the (Christmas)Elf, Leonidas the Paladin, Starbuck the prophet of Apollo, and Matthias the Athenian Magic User. For this game, I picked the Adventurer Conqueror King system (ACKS), one of the old school clones, for one main reason: world building. ACKS has extensive guidelines on world building - demographics, markets, armies, all of it. I plan on making a giant hex map of Mythic Greece and statting out all the major city states using ACKS demographic factors. I love classical mythology and it seems like a perfect place for characters to rise in power and carve out their own kingdoms. I'm expecting this to be the default family game setting for years.
ACKS also has an extensive set of templates for the character classes, and this made character creation with newbies a snap. Templates are character concepts - a fighter could be a mercenary, guardsman, gladiator, legionary, and so on. The template provides some pre-selected gear and proficiencies. So the kiddos rolled statistics, arranged them, picked a template, we gave them the default gear, and we were off fairly quickly.
At this point, I have levels 1 and 2 of the dungeon mapped and annotated - around 200 rooms. Level 3 is mapped and randomly stocked, but needs a lot of work on harmonizing the results, and level 4 maps are underway. The peninsula is loosely described, and the home base is well detailed. They're starting in the little village of Psammathous Bay.
I have a confession though. I miss the horror. I'm writing descriptions for dungeon bosses like the Zombie Master, and putting in a stitching room where he builds mutant zombies by stitching body parts together to make 3-armed zombies with too many legs and multiple heads, and then I have to catch myself. This is for the kids. I feel like Jack Skellington trying to be Santa Claus. "What is this uncomfortable feeling I'm chasing after? Oh yeah, that's what it's called… whimsy."
We'll see if I'm capable of whimsy. I'm still worried that instead of a jack-in-the-box, I'd deliver a decapitated head in the box, but here's hoping. Awareness is half the battle, amiright? I'll need to keep writing Harrow Home or the Black City on the side just for an outlet. Maybe I'll go review some of the new LOTFP stuff.
What would the readers like to see on the blog about Taenarum? Maps and guides to the levels as we encounter them? I'll definitely post game reports. I've never had multiple groups in the same dungeon - it should be really interesting. It's downright GYGAXIAN. One thing I'm considering is posting a weekly map showing what the other group explored, so the next group doesn't waste their session going over the same territory (unless they want it that way). I plan on building a restocking approach for each level, but at least the groups would know where to start fresh each week. There's an adventurer's guild hall back in Psammathous Bay, and we can create a rule that assumes they're leaving notes for each other back at the guild hall. I saw something similar when reading about the West Marches campaign a few years ago, and it seemed to work well for having multiple groups in the same locale on different game nights.
"I am that merry wanderer of the night?" I am that giggling-dangerous-totally-bloody-psychotic-menace-to-life-and-limb, more like it. --Peaseblossom, in The Sandman: A Midsummer Night's Dream
The other day, I pointed out that it's useful to have a character type in the campaign that combines excellent scouting ability, with excellent saving throws (my ill-fated Ode to a Dead Halfling). Stealth lets the party gather more information, which leads to tactics and strategy and fun, and durability makes it a bit easier to rationalize the risk. But not everyone likes those furry-footed crumb-snatchers that infest the Shire. I recently got the ACKS player's guide in the mail, and there's a thorough chapter on creating custom classes. Without further ado, I present the Goblin - a custom class for ACKS. (If I must choose an adjectival surname, I shall refer to it as the Goblin Skulk).
Goblins are mischievous, thrill-seeking wanderers from the realm of fairy (I wouldn't use the humanoid of the same name in the campaign). They delight in risk and adventure; they eschew creature comforts for the open road and the cold of night. They are the opposite of hobbits and halflings in every way imaginable.
Goblins use 1d6 HD, and fight like a thief of the same level, also limited to leather armor. Their saving throws are modified by their natural resistances (see fey-blooded, below). At 1st level, they Hide in Shadows, Move Silently, and Backstab like a thief of the same level. At 3rd level, they gain Pick Pockets (like a 1st level thief), and then gain Open Locks at 5th level and Climb Walls at 7th level. (I could be talked into changing around the timing and order the thief abilities unlock).
Because they are Fey-Blooded, goblins are naturally resistant to effects, gaining a +4 on all saving throws (but only +3 vs breath weapons). They have Infravision to 45'. Due to their ability to use Glamor, they are "difficult to spot", fading away from sight when remaining motionless. Goblins appear Inhuman, giving them negative reaction modifiers to humans and demi-humans, but gaining a similar bonus when dealing with fairy monsters.
Goblins need 1,600 XP to advance to level 2, and can achieve a maximum level of 13.
0
1,600
3,200
6,400
12,800
25,600
50,000
100,000, and each level thereafter
There you go - a simplified replacement to the Halfling, that focuses on stealth, murder, mischief, and durability. One of my players can do a spot-on Gollum voice imitation, and I'm sure he'd have a ton of fun skulking around the shadows with this type of character… SNEAKING.
Note: If you're not using ACKS, it's easy to take a sharpie, cross out the word "Halfling" in your Moldvay BX book, and write in there, GOBLIN. Halflings get some additional bonuses to AC and missile attacks, but I like the addition of the thief abilities and backstab here - more mischief potential.
*Inspirational image is Robin Goodfellow, Puck, the original goblin, from the excellent Sandman comic, A Midsummer Night's Dream, by Kelley Jones and Charles Vess. One of my all-time favorites.
Pleasant surprise yesterday - the Player's Companion for the Adventurer Conquer King System (ACKS) arrived. Wahoo. Looks great, inside and out:
Back when the Kickstarter backers gained access to the draft, I did a mini-review and survey of the preview contents - 19 new classes, templates (equipment packages and skill selections to speed character generation), 20+ pages on building custom classes, a large spell selection, and some supplemental rules - new proficiencies, tables for generating followers for high-level characters, things like that.
If you're not familiar with ACKS, here's a quick overview: I view it as the spiritual successor to BECMI, the Rules Cyclopedia, and the Mystara approach to expanding classic D&D play. It uses the basic D&D chassis, with a skill system that's an advancement over the Rules Cyclopedia; it adds domain management, economics, and campaign rules; quirky niche classes similar to the Gazetteer series for Mystara; unlike BECMI, it caps the class and level system around level 14 (instead of level 36 in BECMI); expecting a campaign to last to level 36 just seems nuts to me.
In my current campaign, now that the players have cleared most of the Transit Tunnels (in the Black City game), it's likely we'll get back to Gothic Greyhawk in the near future as I'll probably need a small break to design the deeper levels of the Black City below the caverns (covering play levels 4-5); with the publication of the Player Companion, I'm going to suggest we convert that campaign entirely to ACKS - we were already using ACKS to handle the economics and domain rules for the player's holdings, and I haven't been happy with using the AD&D 1E combat rules. The new classes cover just about everything we have in the Gothic Greyhawk campaign.
Kickstarter Updates
Meanwhile, late Kickstarters are the order of the day. Here's a bleak rundown on campaigns I've backed. The ACKS Player's Companion Kickstarter happened almost a year ago - glad to see it over the finish line. The woes of Dwimmermount are well-publicized (it was due last summer). The LOTFP Hardcovers are still MIA, with slow but steady progress (due last fall). The LOTFP grand adventures look like they'll be out late spring (due this winter); the guns supplement for LOTFP is probably going to be a year late. I signed up for Sine Nomine's Spears of the Dawn; that looks like it's going to be the first project that's actually early! Pelgrane's Drama System seems to be moving along right on schedule; Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man (for Call of Cthulhu) is delayed by a half year; although not technically a Kickstarter, MRP's Tales of the Sleepless City (a Cthulhu anthology of 1920's New York scenarios) is close to publication, but 6 months after preorders started. Horror on the Orient Express had a year of lead time, so Chaosium could be on track.
Savvy publishers are learning a few things - either have a finished manuscript before launching a campaign, and use the Kickstarter approach just for polishing and capital, or heavily warn backers that an item is unfinished and/or unwritten, and rife with the associated risks.
From time to time the DM might need to determine if a NPC professional succeeds at a difficult technical skill or craft - does the blacksmith make a suitable masterwork weapon on the first try, can the sage answer an obscure question, that kind of stuff. As I collate notes for my future (Caribbean-based) saltbox setting, this extends to solving for skills like sailing, navigation, and gunnery.
I've seen the simple 2d6 reaction chart from classic D&D turned into a skill resolution chart. It assumes a modifier scale of -3 to +3 using ability scores. (Historical note: Charisma was capped at +2 in the Moldvay rules, but this was changed for Mentzer and the Rules Cyclopedia). For professional skills, I'm using the following descriptors to determine appropriate "ability modifiers":
Professional Experience:
Skilled: +1
Expert: +2
Master: +3
Unskilled: -2
Unskilled characters may not even get a roll in some cases. The basic reaction chart goes like this:
An example usage: if the players hire a skilled navigator instead of a master navigator for their ship, they'll pay less in salary or shares, but there's a higher chance of getting lost on the way to that hidden island. As I develop the nautical rules, I'll work on specific guidelines when hired experts would make checks and how the dice results translate into specific outcomes.
For basic D&D, I like decoupling professional skills from the class and level system and treating them as background skills for NPCs; it keeps the major emphasis for class advancement on adventuring and developing adventurer capabilities. Nonetheless, I can see the players asking if they can develop any degree of professional skill (especially these nautical skills) if they spend enough time on a boat.
This post from an older blog (Skills: The Middle Road) provided some recommendations for education around professional skills, so I'll use those values as a starting point and will see how it goes:
If a player character commits to spending time in the rigging, learning how to furl and unfurl the sails, close-haul a ship, tie the right knots, swab the deck, and so on, they can be a skilled sailor after a month of effort and a bit of money on the side. (For sailing, assume the money goes to gambling, carousing, repairs, clothes, basic gear, dues, and so on; ordinary folks pick up the same skills at a slower pace without all the money spent).
Alternatively, I can look at a hybrid game like ACKS, that bolts a new-school inspired feat and proficiency system onto the old school chassis. Navigation and Seamanship are already represented as choices in ACKS, and Gunnery is easy to add. ACKS also addresses when someone would be qualified as a "master" by stacking extra picks on a proficiency. I'm not sure the high-fantasy tone of ACKS is what I'm going for, so the actual decision on rules flavor is for sometime down the road.
I mostly stopped paying attention to message boards when I began blogging, although perhaps that was a hasty choice - entertainment springs aplenty on them. I was drawn into reading a laborious thread over on the RPG site when Tenkar posted a link to a rant (the Osric guy rails against ACKS). After a few years away, the acerbic dialogue generated a bit of nostalgia for the good old days of boards.
Sprinkled liberally amongst the complaints about the Dwimmermount kickstarter were charges levied against the ACKS system by various folks, most of them fairly pedantic or priggish - like, was the right population density factor and historical sources used for determining the economic assumptions - or because the game included a chapter on campaign rules, doesn't that mean it's completely abandoned dungeons and wilderness for bookkeeping? In the aftermath, a few bloggers took up the call to discuss "How much reality simulation do you want in a fantasy game, anyway?" (I'm a little pressed for time, so I'll see if I can get some links - but I know Noisms had one of those posts: Medieval England did not have dragons...).
One of the complaints that's actually kind of interesting is that ACKS borrows too much from modern versions of D&D, like 3rd edition, by implementing a proficiency system that's reminiscent of 3rd edition's feat system. Although the authors all play or run old school campaigns as well, it's clear they've had their feet in the waters of 3E as designers, players, and writers. A handful of bloggers are running ACKS campaigns, but board discussion for ACKS seems to center on the big purple and Enworld, sites with more resonance amongst new schoolers, rather than old school hubs like K&K or Dragonsfoot.
The last poll I conducted out here is still on the pane to the right - 88% of the folks visiting the blog identified themselves as DMs. This corresponds to the prior poll, where the majority of folks indicated they didn't need mechanics to differentiate their characters. I wondering how much correlation there was between mechanics-light as a DM value, vs mechanic-heavy as a player value.
So how about this for a Friday theses; Folks that hang out on old school message boards and blogs are heavily skewed towards DM's that want to run lighter versions of D&D, without a lot of mechanical bits for player characters, whereas players generally would prefer a system with more player-facing toys. There's nothing too revelatory in that statement; in my own current campaign, The Black City, my players have been clamoring for us to switch to ACKS, whereas I've been fairly content running it using the stripped down and lower-powered LOTFP rules. I just think it's interesting to consider how we , players and DMs, come to the table with different expectations and agendas that need to be balanced. (I did tell my players we'd run an ACKs trial for The Black City in the near future and try it on for size - there's plenty I like about the system, and I certainly expect to feature it heavily in my Asian themed setting.)
My future campaign setting, Spirit Island, is heavily themed on feudal Japan. I'll post bits and pieces here on the blog and file them under 'Spirit Island' and 'Oriental Adventures'. While I work out maps and provinces in the background, I'm starting by posting a rundown of classes and character options here on the blog.
The most fateful decision I've made is to build the game using ACKS as the rule set - Adventurer Conqueror King. The career arc that's strongly supported in ACKS - dungeon and wilderness exploration transition to campaign roles and domain management - perfectly fits my goals for the campaign. The proficiency system in ACKS provides sufficient customization to the core classes to model archetypes from feudal Japan using core classes. I am strongly biased towards using existing classes where possible, since it encourages compatibility across editions. Where there's not a good fit, like new race-classes for an Asian setting, then I'll build them using the ACKS player's companion.
First off, let's look at one of the core classes in the setting, the Samurai template for the fighter class. We previously discussed here on the blog that the fighter covers everything from Roman legionnaires, Mongol horse archers, European knights, to the Samurai. ACKS does the fighter justice, equipping the class with extra damage, built-in cleave, and proficiencies to customize the fighting style. Between extra damage and cleave, a mid to high level samurai will be able to wade through lesser opponents in the finest Chanbara film style.
Perhaps the biggest reason to make the Samurai a fighter is the inherent social mobility in the historical period I'd like to emulate. During the Warring States period, there are many examples of common-born warriors distinguishing themselves on the battlefield, getting promoted into the ranks of the samurai, and eventually founding their own clans and daimyōs. Samurai shouldn't be a "class" that you have to start at level 1; if you’re not born into a noble family, you can still get a promotion to samurai status through service to a lord and feats of arms.
That's the essence of excellent old school gaming - where character is something you become through play and survival and advancement, and not fully formed at the beginning of the game.
The Samurai - A Fighter Template for ACKS
The samurai are the military elite of feudal Japan. The role is defined through service to a lord as a vassal. A samurai is oath bound to follow a moral code called bushidō, which requires loyalty to lord and family, martial prowess, maintenance of honor, and willingness to die in service. A samurai is expected to be an expert rider, archer, spearman, swordsman, and versed with various meditative arts, such as gardening, calligraphy, ink-painting, poetry, and the tea ceremony.
Suggested proficiencies
Riding, and either two-handed weapon fighting or precise shot
What's missing?
Perusing the standard ACKS proficiency list, there are not many gaps. One of the famous elements in the samurai media and literature is the quick draw capability, the techniques of iaijutsu. An encounter moves from parley or verbal confrontation into a duel at blinding speed, with katana whirring from their sheaths and striking down opponents all in one fluid motion.
Iaijutsu: The character excels at quickly drawing his or her weapon and making an immediate attack. The character gains a +4 bonus on initiative rolls during the first round of combat, before weapons are drawn.
The huge importance placed on etiquette and artistry seem affectations of a later time period, when court politics rose in prominence, but Zen has a long history throughout the period. I'm on the fence whether an etiquette proficiency should be added (even if a player believes calligraphy, tea ceremony, poetry, and so on is important for his samurai character); most likely, I would just treat arts proficiency as covering the samurai arts, and diplomacy covers etiquette.
The primary samurai unarmed technique was jujutsu, comprising a series of chokes, armbars, throws and holds, the forerunner of modern judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. ACKS has a proficiency that boosts unarmed striking.
Jujitsu: The character is skilled at chokes, armbars, wrestling throws and holds. When the character attempts to wrestle in combat, the normal penalty of -4 on the attack roll is reduced to -2, and the opponent receives a -2 penalty on the saving throw to resist the maneuver. (Note: I realize this is exactly the same as the 'combat trickery' proficiency, which actually does cover wrestling - I like the updated name for flavor).
Over on the Autarch forum, Alex (the author of ACKS) had posted a system for reputation that he uses in his home game; it would work well here and I'll see if it can be cross-posted.
Other proficiencies that make sense for fighters on the samurai career track include combat reflexes, command, fighting style, unarmed fighting (atemi waza!), and weapon focus. Useful general skills include art (samurai art skills), diplomacy (etiquette), intimidation, leadership, manual of arms, military strategy, and riding.
Intimidation raises a good question - what about the 'psychic duel' from Oriental Adventures? This was the idea that two swordsmen would have a battle of wills before a fight, with the loser admitting defeat before a sword was even drawn.
I can imagine a few different (and simple) approaches working for psychic duels; perhaps it's generated as a reaction roll modified by charisma, Intimidation skill, and reputation (since the reputation modifier is a factor of experience level and deeds). The character that gets the highest psychic duel roll in the stand-off gets a bonus on attack rolls if the fight actually happens. The loser has an opportunity to bow out before initiative is rolled.
Alternatively, Psychic Duel could be a new proficiency that allows a character with the proficiency to force a morale check before combat even starts with a successful throw. Like the Intimidation proficiency itself, it would be limited to working on lower level flunkies only.
A recent theme here has been evaluating alternative historical settings for suitability in D&D campaigns - I was articulating criteria for a setting, and making some notes on adjustments for moving D&D to the early modern. One thing I postulated was that it would be necessary to alter the D&D end-game, perhaps removing standard benefits like where a fighter gains martial followers or a cleric gains the ability to build a reduced price church and attract religious soldiers. Many of the commentators pointed out historical examples of conquerors in the 17th century, and brought me around to the line of thinking that a 17th century fantasy game should be able to support self-made conquerors, too.
The economics of domain rulership go hand in hand with building armies and conquering territories. The ACKS game (Adventurer Conqueror King) is my favorite development of economics and the D&D end-game, so I dropped a line over on the ACKS forum on how one would adjust the default economic assumptions of ACKS for use in the post-Renaissance years. Here's what Alex, the lead designer, had to say about adapting ACKS to the later period:
In terms of trade/commerce, you don't need to change much. The mercantile system in ACKS is more akin to the Ancient Roman and/or Renaissance trade levels, anyway. Medieval trade was substantially less prevalent than ACKS would suggest.
In terms of land, you should increase the land value of peasants by 1-3gp per peasant to reflect improved agricultural techniques. That in turn will make your lords richer, which will allow for larger armies (30 Years War style), or more investment in cities, infrastructure, science, and so on.
There may be some experts on the Early Modern period with more specific details. My sense is that as long as you stay before the Industrial Revolution you'll be fine.
It's a simple adjustment that will lead to building larger armies in a more populous time, so I thought folks in the wider audience would find that interesting too. An open question involves adjusting the standard mass combat systems to account for muskets and cannons, but I'll worry about that when we get there.
Slow posting week here at the Lich House; I've been spending a lot of time making notes on Harrow Home Manor and getting the Black City ready for the next campaign, and that cuts into my blogging time. (I wasn't kidding when I said Harrow Home Manor would be a long term thing). It looks like my group won't finish the current Cthulhu adventure this weekend, but otherwise we'll be ready to kick off adventuring in the Black City immediately after. The developed scope includes a sprawling island hex crawl, detailed exploration of the ruins, maps and keys for all of the extant surface structures, the first couple of dungeon levels, and an interesting trade town. I'm sure there are things that look good on paper or seemed great when I thought them up, but are going to absolutely bomb on the table, and I'm sure there will be surprises too. Man, I'm looking forward to posting some reports on that place!
I've been thinking about wilderness procedures and the issue around the 15 minute wilderness day. Here's the quick recap if you didn't read the other post: wilderness encounters tend to be infrequent, often days apart, so powerful groups can "go nova" and destroy the encounters by blowing all their Vancian magic and then rest, very similar to the 15-minute adventuring day. It's especially problematic if the wilderness encounters are "balanced for level".
With that in mind, a simple approach is to use wilderness charts where "anything goes" similar to what you see in AD&D. It doesn’t avoid the 15 minute wilderness day per se, but does lead to encounters where even a veteran group is going to have to think quickly and do something other than wade in swinging each time. For example, the AD&D wilderness encounter for orcs is 30-300. (-C posted examples at his place how those original wilderness tables could lead to some challenging encounters: The wild wilderness).
What about this idea I have that wilderness encounters are spaced too far apart, always allowing rest and recovery?
I decided to step through the travel procedures for a few of the D&D versions I use to see how the systems differ. There are striking differences. For purposes of the examples, let's say the group is traversing a large forest - a trip of 30 miles, which should take a few days. I tend to use 6 mile hexes, a BX standard. The group is hoping to run into some orcs while they cross, so I included the default chance of meeting orcs using just the standard tables, too.
AD&D
In AD&D, a group can move through a forest at 10 miles a day, so it will take 3 days to cross. In AD&D, there are 6 encounter checks per day, but each check is only a 1 in 10 (assuming this is the wilds).
Math isn't a strong suit for me, but I'm thinking that 6 checks at 10% gives a 47% chance each day of at least one encounter happening - so the group should meet something every other day. More specifically, there's a 35% chance of one encounter, 10% of two, and 1% or lower of 3 or more encounters. But this something that's important - an unlucky group in AD&D could run into a string of encounters each day of travel!
The other thing about AD&D is the chance of getting lost per day is 70%. That's massive. Without a guide or following a river or trail, the AD&D party will take longer than 3 days to make it across the forest.
The chance of actually running into some orcs using the standard tables is low - only 5% for meeting humanoids, and then a 20% of rolling orcs on the humanoid table, seems to be 1% or so. Gah, I wish I paid attention in statistics. You'd think a gamer should know probability.
BX D&D
Our BX party moves 12 miles a day through the forest (fairly close to the AD&D rate). They should clear the forest in 2.5 days, assuming they don't get lost like the AD&D group. The chance of getting lost in BX without a trail or guide is 33% per day, so they have a much better chance at clearing the forest quickly. There's only one encounter roll per day, and it's a simple 33% chance. I think that means a 55% chance of an encounter every two days or so - so the group has a good chance of making it through without a single encounter, and there's no multiple encounters a day unless the DM house rules it.
The chance of actually meeting orcs is also pretty low - 1/8 followed by 1/12 (compared to AD&D's 1/20 followed by 1/5).
ACKS
ACKS is influenced heavily by the BX style of D&D with refinements; it uses uses a 33% encounter chance for forest, just like BX. However, the encounter chance is rolled per hex, not per day; our party travels 12 miles a day, clearing 2 hexes, so there's two encounter chances a day - a 55% chance of at least one encounter each day, and a slim chance of two encounters per day (also making the "15 minutes wilderness day" a risky proposition). ACKS using the same chance of running into orcs as BX - 1/8 and then 1/12. The ACKS procedures for getting lost are a bit different, since ACKS has a lightweight proficiency system; the default chance in woods is around 30%, fairly similar to its BX roots, but having a woodsman with navigator proficiency knocks it down to 10% chance of getting lost.
The Orc Encounter
How about if the group actually does meet some orcs in the forest? How many is the group meeting?
In AD&D, the Monster Manual calls for 30-300 orcs (3d10 x10, I'm guessing) putting an average number somewhere near 165. There's a 35% chance they're in the lair, which means there would be females, young, and various lair monsters there, too.
A BX wilderness encounter with orcs is only 10-60 (1d6 x10) - an average of 35 - and no differentiation between a lair or not. In ACKS, the monster encounters express a hierarchy between dungeon encounters and dungeon lairs, and wilderness encounters and lairs. The smallest orc unit is a gang (2d4 members, average of 5) and a wilderness encounter is a war band of 2d6 gangs (lets say 7 gangs, meaning around 35 orcs). This is right in line with BX. However, ACKS went back to including "percent in lair" language like the original monster manual, so the orcs are 35% in lair like in AD&D; this bumps the number up to include 1d10 war bands in the lair, making an ACKS orc lair encounter at around 190 orcs. The ACKS lair encounter also includes the females, young, and lair monsters like AD&D.
Hope this brief survey is interesting to people - it was useful for me. Going back to my original "problem", the 15 minute adventuring day, here are my conclusions:
The default wilderness tables in AD&D (and the ACKS clone) are plenty dangerous, but the humanoid encounters in the BX tables likely won't challenge a mid-level party. In addition, the encounter frequency in BX supports a single encounter a day, unless the DM house rules something like "blood in the water" where a loud combat encounter triggers another check. On the other hand, both ACKS and AD&D provide the chance for multiple encounters per day, dialing up the risk and challenging the 15 minute wilderness day.
It's clear the situations I noticed the 15 minute wilderness day happened because I was using straight BX encounter chances as written, or running The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, where wilderness encounters are intentionally paced far enough apart to allow players to go nova without a risk. Running the wilderness AD&D or ACKS style should eliminate the issue.
Here's a follow up question - if you play AD&D, how closely do you adhere to the AD&D rules on getting lost? 70% chance of getting lost per hex seems to imply a significant amount of backtracking and remapping!
One tool that's been very successful for me was coming up with aids to help me identify the local terrain and what the party is doing at the moment an encounter occurs - some tables I put together back in December get frequent use during our hex crawls: Too Busy Looking at the Map to Notice the Monsters.
I'll be upfront in this post - I don't have the answers today, just pointing out what I've experienced as issues, and hoping to get a sense from experienced DM's if they see the same thing as a problem, what they do about it, and so on.
Here's the problem statement: The infrequency of wilderness encounters means that a party can unload all or most of their expendable resources against each encounter; it turns every wilderness encounter into a 15 minute adventuring day.
I really saw this problem when we dabbled in 4E, because there were these uber "daily powers" and players would dump their dailies against wilderness encounters while traveling. I didn't play a ton of 3E, but I know 3E moved away from random encounters. In our current 1E game, the group is mid-level (levels 6-7) and the magic users and clerics have serious firepower. They can brute force most encounters, knowing that hit points will quickly be restored through magical healing, and the mages can dump magic missiles and lightning bolts with little risk.
The referee has a couple of levers and dials to adjust the pace of wilderness adventuring:
The frequency of wilderness encounter checks
The probability of wilderness encounter checks
The difficulty of the encounters
Let me cite a recent example of failure - the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. The wilderness trek could be an exciting part of that adventure, but the encounters are a) staggered to each occur a few days apart, and b) set around the same challenge level of the party. The result is that a group can go "super nova" on each encounter, and the encounters are basically speed bumps and time killers. S4 Tsojcanth was originally a tournament adventure, so perhaps that's why the wilderness piece is crappy - either it was bolted on later, just for publication, or the wilderness encounters were just meant to delay groups before reaching the main structure.
Coming up with an effective approach to managing encounters in the hex crawl is a fundamental requirement. Wilderness encounter tables are "implied setting" - they should not be overlooked. It seems terribly important to me to get them right. Tosjcanth is a fail.
Anyway, this is what I'm thinking about right now in the D&D space. I don't know that anyone has done a survey on how the frequency and probability of encounters has changed over time, but it's an interesting subject to me. Default classic had a 1d6 check per day, with a 4-6 indicating an encounter when out in the barren wilds; there were lower chances in settled areas. The Rules Cyclopedia added a 1d12 check while camped or overnight. ACKS has a random encounter check occur for each new 6 mile hex.
Think of the variability in the types of encounters, too - there's a big difference between tables that include mundane encounters (like peasants) versus only monstrous encounters. Consider also the variability in difficulty; running into a weak group of goblins in one encounter, and then fleeing a wandering giant the next encounter, creates a much different experience than having most encounters in the same difficulty range.
I'm going to shift around the books and do some research. I have a high opinion of the ACKS effort, their conclusions have seemed rational so far, so I'm curious to see how their approach to wilderness checks compares to the editions. The ACKS hardcover just arrived, and I can research in a brand spanking new hardcover. Behold the glory:
Just last week I reviewed the ACKS core book, and Lo, the guys over there had already announced a Kickstarter for their next supplement, the ACKS Player's Companion. How could I resist? So here's some first impressions on the play test version that's been posted to the project backers. (You back the project, you get sneak peeks, and a chance to play test and make suggestions. It's great marketing.)
The Player's Companion extends the core rules by adding a series of new classes, the dwarven machinist and spelunker, the elven ranger, and some human classes - mystic (monk), shaman (druid), and priestess.
I'll come out and say it though, the thing that got me fired up with the book-love was the extensive list of templates. (I think they claim there are 144 of them). An ACKS template is basically some pre-selected options that speeds up character generation and gives the character a bit of early flavor. ACKS supports the old school roll-and-go - it's got basic 3d6 in order for abilities and simple classes, like classic D&D. The templates take it the rest of the way, by adding a preconfigured set of starting equipment, starting money, and suggested proficiency selections.
For instance, your 1st level fighter could be flavored like a Norse ravager, a knight, a Roman legionnaire, a mercenary, a gladiator, or perhaps a pirate. I love the support this provides for roll-and-go, and heartily approve of archetypical fast-packs of equipment. Maybe it's just me, but nothing drives me nuts quite like the guy that shows up late, then wants to roll up a character, and then has to wade through the equipment list - while everyone's waiting. "You mean now I get to pick some spells and a proficiency or two, as well?" GAH. Just put my head in a vise already. So I love fast packs and random equipment generators; that stuff's like gold. There's also plenty of inspiration for depictions of the classes, just by browsing the templates.
I'm beginning to see how race-as-class is evolving in ACKS. Remember that classic D&D used Dwarf or Elf as a class, effectively making all dwarves as fighters and all elves as fighter/magic users. AD&D separated race and class, allowing things like dwarven clerics and elven thieves. It's clear the ACKS approach is to give each race a selection of classes that are similar to the human versions, but different enough to maintain racial distinctiveness, and costing the racial benefits into the experience curve. Thus, a dwarf player can be a dwarven vaultguard (for a fighter flavor), a craftpriest (for cleric), or a spelunker (for a taste of thief). The new one is the dwarf machinist, which is totally new, and provides the ability to create automatons and clockwork creatures - assuming that fits into your campaign's vision of dwarves.
There's some extra stuff in there too, such as extended spell lists for the new caster classes, and a section on creating custom classes. This idea of expanding class coverage horizontally is very much in line with how Mentzer/Mystara evolved.
Okay, here's an interesting bit about this particular Kickstarter. It met the goal in what, 3 days? I've had questions whether the announcement of 5E, coming out presumably sometime next year, would dampen people's enthusiasm for backing OSR projects in 2012. Apparently that's not a problem. I can't say that anything I've seen from the 5E discussions has lit my world on fire yet. I also don't see the new game catering to the crowd that wants to see economics and domains in their campaigns. Games like ACKS will be able to keep on trucking.
ps: Haven't had the chance to sign up for the LOTFP indiegogo yet, I want to see how it differs from Kickstarter first. Who's in that one?
