4 out of 5 rating for Acquisitions Incorporated
This is an exceeding tricky book to evaluate.
The audience for this book is the narrow group that plays D&D but also enjoys the Penny Arcade live games. I’m uncertain how it will be received by D&D fans who aren’t Acquisitions Incorporated fans: even as someone who has watched the live games but not the C-Team games there was a lot of references I didn’t get. Like the new race. And because the book is so heavily focused on making your own franchise, it’s not really going to appeal to Penny Arcade/ Acquisitions Incorporated fans who don’t play D&D; the amount of lore & background on AI is very limited and viewers who have watched all the shows are unlikely to learn anything new. This is NOT a book of lore on the organization.
But, as a counterpoint, the book is just plain fun. It’s oozing with flavor and a distinct style. There’s also the great adventure that’s an excellent choice if you need four to eight sessions of adventuring. Even if you don’t plan on running an AI franchise for longer than this adventure, after it ends you might find yourself wanting to tell a few homebrew tales or figuring out what happens with the business next. If you’re not planning on running the adventure it’d be easy to adapt the franchise rules for use with generic adventuring companies or a different business, making this book useful if you plan on having a game focused around a mercantile guild or mercenary company (perhaps even a tavern). And while the book is dripping with humor, the actual mechanical elements of the rules are not inherently jokey and those aspects can be stripped away. (Such as the amusing names for the corporate roles.)
If this were one of the three official releases by Wizards of the Coast I could see a lot of people being upset by this product. But as it is a bonus fourth book and only semi-official it feels like a nice bonus. Even if you never plan on running an Acquisitions Incorporated game, the book is still an entertaining read and has a lot of fun ideas that might inspire your campaign, be at a traditional dungeon crawl or a much more fantastic guild-based Ravnica game.
Read my full review
here.
Also...
homebrew Binwin.