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Author Topic: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS  (Read 4781 times)

Abraxus

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Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« on: September 28, 2022, 10:14:13 AM »
As the tread says let me know the good and bad elements for ACKS.

Note not a thread to shit on the rpg or the creator so please don’t post if that is all you have to say.

Angry Goblin

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2022, 10:24:24 AM »
In case you want to watch instead of read, the YouTuber DmJames has done quite a few videos on pro-ACKS standpoint, if interested:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dmjames+acks
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Steven Mitchell

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2022, 10:54:04 AM »
ACKS has a lot of details put together in a precise manner, with a laudable lack of typos for that amount of detail.  The underlying math is well considered.

Whether or not the amount of detail is pro, con, or indifferent, that's up to each person.  What seemed useful and helpful to me in small doses in "Lairs and Encounters" was less so in "The Sinister Stone of Sakkara" adventure.   The latter to me seemed to have a heavy focus on mundane stuff only interesting to a group of players looking to play the money angle to the hilt.

Armchair Gamer

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2022, 11:12:11 AM »
The game's flavor is very much Late Antiquity/Conanesque Pulp Fantasy. Whether that's a plus or a minus depends on your tastes.

Steven Mitchell

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #4 on: September 28, 2022, 11:25:55 AM »
It has "race as class" done really well, especially with some of the supplements giving multiple options for each race.  If you really don't like race as class, doing it well might still not be enough.

PulpHerb

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #5 on: September 30, 2022, 12:01:07 PM »
It has some of the best construction rules for new options of any RPG. You get 80% of the flexibility of systems like GUPRS and Hero (although limited here to a subset of fantasy) with about 20% of the work. Not only is there class design but race design, magic system design, magic item design, and spell design. There is also monster design, but I find the value of balanced monster design less compelling than the others.

The author is not afraid to have an opinion. This isn't about politics, but about what is appropriate for D&D style fantasy and what isn't. Thus, the core books omit hobbits/halflings because he's not a fan. When he introduced his dark elves in the Player's Companion they are more Melnibonés than Drow. When he finally gave in and introducing halflings in The Heroic Fantasy Handbook the two classes are bounders and burglars, thus tying them very specifically to Tolkien.

His adaption of the repertoire plus daily casting limit to B/X works quite well as a substitute for traditional memorized spells without straying too far from the base.

The eldritch magic system, his traditional D&D magic plus corruption, is the best B/X magic system out there IMHO, capturing the effects of using various dangerous magics from Tolkien, Howard, CAS, and others very well. In the magic systems supplement it is adapted to cover alchemy (where instead of corruption it is risk of toxicity) and super science (a kind of insanity) showing creativity in reskinning.

It does a lot with economics. Much like I think Lion & Dragon deliver a usable version of the medieval feel Chivalry & Sorcery promised in the late 70s the economics of the pre-industrial world promised by C&S are delivered in playable form here.

Note, for a lot of the above I'm including stuff from all four rules books and all issues of Axioms, the magazine collecting their Patreon items.

If you can't guess, I'm a fan of the system and it is my go to form of D&D these days, slightly edging out OSE and RC/Dark Dungeons. I would recommend grabbing the "ACKS 2nd edition preview" notes from the Patreon, which were published several years ago as document from the future, specifically GenCon 2020. They don't really change much, but clean up some things. You can play with or without them, but they give a feel for where he is going.

PulpHerb

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #6 on: September 30, 2022, 12:02:50 PM »
The game's flavor is very much Late Antiquity/Conanesque Pulp Fantasy. Whether that's a plus or a minus depends on your tastes.

That's something I forgot in my long bit, but is another great example of his not being afraid to have an opinion. The default setting is essentially the fringes of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century.

It is very much a plus for me even if I'm less interest in Iberia or North Africa in the period (what his default reminds me of) and more Britannia.

Rod's Duo Narcotics

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #7 on: October 01, 2022, 01:00:22 AM »
The game's flavor is very much Late Antiquity/Conanesque Pulp Fantasy. Whether that's a plus or a minus depends on your tastes.

That's something I forgot in my long bit, but is another great example of his not being afraid to have an opinion. The default setting is essentially the fringes of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century.

It is very much a plus for me even if I'm less interest in Iberia or North Africa in the period (what his default reminds me of) and more Britannia.

There has been a fair amount of chatter on the ACKS Discord about Rorn, the region of the Auran Empire that's sort of a Britain analog - it's even next to the Elf Country!
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Stephen Tannhauser

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #8 on: October 01, 2022, 04:15:48 AM »
It does a lot with economics. Much like I think Lion & Dragon deliver a usable version of the medieval feel Chivalry & Sorcery promised in the late 70s the economics of the pre-industrial world promised by C&S are delivered in playable form here.

I'm intrigued by this because economics has been the one thing I've never really seen a game do particularly well, at least in any way that made the setting feel like an actual functioning society/world while still being both simple enough to be playable and detailed enough to reinforce verisimilitude. Exactly how does ACKS go about implementing rules for economics?
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Sailing Scavenger

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #9 on: October 01, 2022, 05:19:32 AM »
Exactly how does ACKS go about implementing rules for economics?

Most of it is invisible back end stuff (Archon shows his math in a few Axioms articles) but at the table the big and useful things are are Market Class tables and the Demographics of Leveled Characters tables, this grounds the setting logistically and gives the players and DM a consistens benchmark for the their power. If you adventure in a province of size X with urbanization rate Y you can figure out the level of the ruler, how many flasks of military oil you can find in the town market (and how many you could get per month if you commission them to find you as many as possible), you get the cost for having a healing spell cast on you (consistent with the expected level/wages of clerics/mages). If you then conquer that same province you know how much tax you're getting, and if you raise it to intolerable levels how many peasants become rebels, how big your garrison should be to keep the peace and how many people you can conscript if you want to raise a larger army. If you find a magic item you can calculate what it's in-setting price would be from the known effects and you can figure out which market is going to be big enough to have a buyer (few people can and would spend thousands of gps on a magic item).

In short, you can run the numbers from the book(s) and trust that holes don't show up that makes the logistics or economy broken.

(I've been running ACKS since 2017)
« Last Edit: October 01, 2022, 10:06:47 AM by Sailing Scavenger »

PulpHerb

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #10 on: October 01, 2022, 11:30:01 AM »
Some additional points to Sailing Scavenger good explanation of the economics:

1. The unit of measure for domains is the family. Cost and three revenue sources (land, services, and taxes) are measured in families. This allows some looking at averages and abstractions.

2. Towns are also in families and have similar cost and revenue structures.

3. There are rules for mercantile ventures that leverage the market class systems.

4. In keeping with the GP=XP culture domain income can provide experience if the ruler is below the expected level to have a domain of that size, allowing boy kings to grow into mighty rulers without adventuring.

5. All the systems are relatively short processes with few numbers. Averages let you abstract things like "you have 8 vassals who are barons so they produce $FOO each" if you want to avoid having to model each level of each holding. They are also quite amenable to spreadsheets (as are the design systems I listed). I wouldn't be surprised if people on the forums have several. In this place, the comparison to C&S is a tad unfair as in 1977 very few people had a computer. VisiCalc wasn't even invented yet. Even in 1983 when 2nd edition came out (and a few years later when Harn introduced similar systems) such machinery was uncommon. Yet, both C&S and Harn used much more complex systems. I can imagine managing ACKS domains by hand on paper but not the other two (and I tried).

Eric Diaz

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #11 on: October 01, 2022, 02:43:32 PM »
His adaption of the repertoire plus daily casting limit to B/X works quite well as a substitute for traditional memorized spells without straying too far from the base.

The eldritch magic system, his traditional D&D magic plus corruption, is the best B/X magic system out there IMHO, capturing the effects of using various dangerous magics from Tolkien, Howard, CAS, and others very well. In the magic systems supplement it is adapted to cover alchemy (where instead of corruption it is risk of toxicity) and super science (a kind of insanity) showing creativity in reskinning.

Which books are that could you elaborate in the magic systems? (repertoire plus daily casting limit)

Thanks!
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rhialto

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #12 on: October 01, 2022, 03:21:34 PM »
His adaption of the repertoire plus daily casting limit to B/X works quite well as a substitute for traditional memorized spells without straying too far from the base.

The eldritch magic system, his traditional D&D magic plus corruption, is the best B/X magic system out there IMHO, capturing the effects of using various dangerous magics from Tolkien, Howard, CAS, and others very well. In the magic systems supplement it is adapted to cover alchemy (where instead of corruption it is risk of toxicity) and super science (a kind of insanity) showing creativity in reskinning.

Which books are that could you elaborate in the magic systems? (repertoire plus daily casting limit)

Thanks!
The ACKS core rules use the idea of repertoire (i.e., spells you know, without needing to do daily memorization) and a daily casting limit (i.e., spells/level/day). The Heroic Fantasy Handbook introduces variant magic systems (essentially spell points, roll-to-cast, black-white-grey spell lists). I can't speak to whatever other variants were introduced in Axioms.

RandyB

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #13 on: October 01, 2022, 04:34:22 PM »
I almost recommended ACKS Core in the "one book RPG" thread. It would likely have been disqualified, though, because A. the mass combat rules are separate; there's a free version that works fine if you don't want to go full wargame campaign and B. some of the key rules sections in Core have been improved, in the changed-from-good-to-better sense, in Axioms.

ZeroSum

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Re: Sell/Unsell me on ACKS
« Reply #14 on: October 01, 2022, 06:42:57 PM »
To add to the previous ACKS praise, I'll say that one thing I like a lot about the system is how much thought went into it. This isn't just some fantasy heartbreaker D&D spin-off someone banged out because everyone else was selling their B/X house rules and it shows.