Adventurer Conqueror King!

[Tav_Behemoth]

Picture an old-school game that has detailed rules for campaign activities like running a thieves' guild, recruiting an army, or constructing a dungeon beneath your wizard's tower so you can harvest monster parts for your spell components.

Would you want to include skill DCs, designing skill challenges, and other such new-school stuff if you were going to use these rules in the game you play now? And if so, how would you fit 'em in without it feeling out of place?

I'm helping develop a new game called the Adventurer Conqueror King System, and as you can tell from the title it's shooting for the feel of the original Conan stories where he starts out as a freebooter and ends up brooding in a throne. I don't think ACKS (we say it "axe") is just for old-schoolers - the OD&D rules and First Fantasy Campaign are big inspirations for us, but in one way or another that's true for every subsequent edition and retroclone too - so input from folks who want rags-to-riches sweep in any incarnation of the game would really be appreciated.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Sounds interesting, but you need commas. Or dashes, or something.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I wanted commas, but was told it made it sound like a firm of lawyers. Stabbem, Lootem, and Flee.

Let's not even get into the effort necessary to prevent people from abbreviating it "ACK" like Bill the Cat expelling a hairball. Names are really hard - if every kid in the world had to have a totally unique name there'd be a lot of really tough scrappers out there a la "A Boy Named Sue".

This tag collects more interestingness at The Mule Abides, with this post being the original wall of text I wrote here. The Archon blog also has lots of cool insights.

 

[amerigoV]

Let's not even get into the effort necessary to prevent people from abbreviating it "ACK" like Bill the Cat expelling a hairball.

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I would dig some Olde Skoole Bill the Cat - I'm talkin Bloom County style, not Outlands. If you can work on that, count me in.

 

[Argyle King]

I think I would probably prefer a level-less & class-less system for a game which included those elements.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I think I would probably prefer a level-less & class-less system for a game which included those elements.

So you'd do everything with skills? Would advancement happen by player choice (e.g. the Hero system where you get points and decide how to spend them) or by improving the things you use (e.g. Runequest or Oblivion)?

 

[Argyle King]

So you'd do everything with skills? Would advancement happen by player choice (e.g. the Hero system where you get points and decide how to spend them) or by improving the things you use (e.g. Runequest or Oblivion)?

A little of both. I think points could be used to improve, but time spent doing a particular task might provide points toward a set of skills as well.


The reason why I would prefer a game without levels and classes for this style of game is mostly born of personal experience. When I played D&D 3rd Edition, I used to love getting involved with all manner of castle building, political wrangling, and army building. However, it was quite the sobering experience when I spent time building an army only to find that one enemy who was even just a few levels higher could completely annihilate my whole army.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

When I played D&D 3rd Edition, I used to love getting involved with all manner of castle building, political wrangling, and army building. However, it was quite the sobering experience when I spent time building an army only to find that one enemy who was even just a few levels higher could completely annihilate my whole army.

My own experiment in this didn't get past the first few levels, but I had problems of the opposite kind: I found that it was really hard to balance the PC's barbarian henchmen, which they insisted had the 12 HP max at first level + Con bonus and could survive up to -9 HP, with the Chainmail-era assumptions about 'normal men' that were the basis of the First Fantasy Campaign and OD&D materials I was using (and are the foundation of ACKS).

 

[Argyle King]

My own experiment in this didn't get past the first few levels, but I had problems of the opposite kind: I found that it was really hard to balance the PC's barbarian henchmen, which they insisted had the 12 HP max at first level + Con bonus and could survive up to -9 HP, with the Chainmail-era assumptions about 'normal men' that were the basis of the First Fantasy Campaign and OD&D materials I was using (and are the foundation of ACKS).

Yeah, henchmen were great because they were usually only a level or two behind. It's the 'followers' that were often the problem. On paper it seemed really cool that I had 1000s of followers (the character I have in mind was a rather high CHA bard,) in actually play it was pretty lame when I realized they had no hope of fighting anything that was anywhere near my level... even if it was all of them against one foe.

Like I said, it was just a personal gripe. I don't expect my views to cover the experiences other people have had.

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the older editions of D&D. I would love to try them sometime, but material is difficult to come by.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I would love to try them sometime, but material is difficult to come by.

Because that's true, lots of retroclones are there to fill the gap. Adventurer Conqueror King will have a free online SRD when it's done; currently the rules are available only to Kickstarter backers of $5 or above, so that people understand they're still being polished and not be like "yeah I downloaded that and it still had comma faults." But Labyrinth Lord makes a great substitute for original Red Box, Swords and Wizardry likewise for Original (1974) D&D, or OSRIC for AD&D. And actually it's only OD&D that's that hard to find; you can get the Moldvay Red Box & Cook Expert set or the AD&D core books on Ebay for less than you'd pay for most modern systems.