Character Death! & Novels

[MoominT]

Hi all, this is my first post!

I have being playing recently adventurer conqueror king and think their take on character death is the best thing since sliced bread.

Your character goes down! until your attended to nothing happens. Then it is a roll on a chart with pluses and minus depending
on a few simple and easy to work out variables. Unless you were really unlucky your character will not die but you end up with
a gammy knee no forced march, lose a few fingers, bad scarring, lose a hand etc.

You might like our archer lose a hand and retire (new npc the party knows and trusts, ex characters make awesome npc's)
or you might have to make a few adaptations to continue and these effects build up to were your character can no longer
go on and dies from so many ailments.

Its not lethal, has so much role playing potential, can drive your character to be something different and the plus I really
do like is the creation of useful and known npc's.

Its not a main stream system but that chart is well worth a look at.


Part 2 the main reason I signed up, I read fast and extremely fast if I am really enjoying the book.
Gemmel, Asimov, Jordan, Sandy Mitchell. All Sci Fi or Fantasy based novels. If you could spare a moment
to stick down a couple of authors or titles I would really appreciate it.

 

[Blue]

Welcome to ENWorld! Have some XP for a meaningful first post.

To address your last post first, every month in the Misc. Geek Talk we have a thread about books we're reading and we have a decent amount of recommendations as well. This month's thread is a bit quiet so you may want to look for a few others as well, it's at: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?562357-What-are-you-reading-Jul-2017

I like that system - instead of the only lasting consequence being death there are others which add to the character's story. Of course, I'm a fan of lasting consequences I think that the battle scars add to the character's depth, and I'm also a fan of real reward can't come without real risk. But the flip side is that losing a character and all of the in-motion plot arcs around them is a bummer both for the player and the DM.

Not saying it's for everyone - back in AD&D where Raise Dead permanently drained a point of CON, I gamed with people who would rather roll up a new character without a penalty then invest time in a character that was "permanently weaker".

 

[Ath-kethin]

Personally, my favorite bits of ACKS are the attention to economics and demographics - worldbuilding in general, I suppose.

For my taste, making death and injury less abstract just adds a ton of bookkeeping for little to no benefit. Unless a player specifically seems interested in having a hobbled character, I doubt I'd ever inflict such a thing upon them.

One of my favorite novel lines is the Garrett, P.I. series by Glen Cook. His Black Company series is more popular overall, I think, but for my money and tastes the Garret books' mix of pulp noir detective stories and gritty Lieber-esque fantasy is hard to beat.

Oh! even by Lieber himself, whose Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories might float your boat.