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Adventurer Conqueror King System Imperial Imprint (ACKS II) is coming to Kickstarter on October 24th. It will consist of three books: Revised Rulebook, Judges Journal, and Monstrous Manual.

ACKS II Revised Rulebook will be everything BECMI and Rules Cyclopedia wanted to be.

ACKS II Judges Journal will be the contemporary OSR Dungeon Master's Guide.

ACKS II Monstrous Manual will set the standard for OSR bestiaries.

Here are five reasons why I will back ACKS II on day one:

  1. If you ever read early issues of Dragon Magazine, you have surely spotted various letter and articles proposing various tactics to cheese the game and one-up the Dungeon Master. A lot of Gary's rule modifications were his responses to players attempting to break the game. That's how we went from original Dungeons & Dragons booklets to the legendary Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. We wouldn't have had the game we had, hadn't it been for all the players that tried to break the game. ACKS II went through more than a decade of brutal play-testing. It survived players trying to break dungeons, economies, kingdoms, and planets.
  2. Basic D&D was about dungeon delving, Expert D&D was about wilderness exploration, Companion and Master D&D were about domains, warfare, and rulership. BX/BE procedures held up extremely well, as attested by a deluge of retroclones built on them. I attribute that to all the play-testing these rules were subject to. Domain and war machine rules, on the other hand, were mostly penned by a single man (probably a small team to be honest), and briefly tested. D&D was never known for tight economy. Some try to fix it by introducing the silver standard, i.e. switching all costs from gold piece to silver piece. ACKS II is built ground up to have tightly integrated economy which works. It is based on thorough research of historical data, followed by careful modelling and simulation, followed by playtesting above. “Oh no, is this a spreadsheet simulator?” Only if you want it to! ACKS II summarises everything in gameable tables. You know the numbers work—you can roll and play, being confident in the results given.
  3. Common complaint (lament?) in OSR circles is that player characters rarely go over 10th level, hence a lot of cool higher-level BECMI stuff doesn't get played. ACKS II fixed the problem by building everything from level 1 to 14. There is domain stuff you can play with from level 1; there are warfare rules covering small gangs as well as whole armies; there is something to challenge character of every level and every class.
  4. It evolves and builds on decades of gaming experience. Innovations it brings are firmly in the spirit of TSR's D&D, while fixing many, many small issues. Linear fighters, quadratic wizards? Fixed. Monsters of myth and legend that have very little to do with actual monsters of myth and legend? Fixed. Thieves that suck? Fixed. The list goes on (really, campaign description has 40+ bullet points). And the best part? Everything is presented and explained in such a way a Judge can simply lift part of ACKS II they like and use it.
  5. Because Gary Gygax would've been proud.

I'm very much looking forward to Adventurer Conqueror King System Imperial Imprint.

#News #ACKS #OSR

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25% on many titles. Here are few I'm happy to recommend to all OSR Judges, sorted by publisher. Most of the books bellow are settings and procedures, which makes it easy to take out elements you find interesting and use them in your game.

Arduin

Dave Hargrave was a mad man. A very creative mad man. You might never play Arduin as written, which just like Palladium Fantasy was a bunch of AD&D 1E house rules, but you will walk away inspired like never before.

  • Arduin Trilogy. Compiles Arduin Grimoire Vol 1, 2, and 3. I still use special ability charts presented herein.
  • Arduin II. A first attempt to make a functional, stand-alone game after TSR and Gary turned on anyone who dared hack it.

Palladium Books

Palladium Books is a troubled publisher, but I still have a soft spot for their early fantasy work. Black and white illustrations galore!

Palladium Fantasy RPG 1E

Weapons, Armours and Castles

These are illustrated guides to various weapons, armours, and yes, castles, one might use in their fantasy game. I love thumbing through them for inspiration.

Chaosium

A well known publisher of Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, and Pendragon. Although I'm not interested in their rules, I've always been fascinated by Glorantha.

Glorantha

These are all modules from the first edition era. Just how I like them.

Goodman Games

Goodman Games might be best know for their Dungeon Crawl Classic system, but I love their system neutral supplements, as well as opulent re-releases of cherished classics. I like most of the stuff written by Michael Curtis, whom also authored the amazing Stonehell megadungeon.

Modules & Settings

Supplements

Hack & Slash Publishing

Columbia Games

Columbia Games publications don't go on sale so often.

Harn has beautiful, well thought out materials that are usable with many fantasy systems. The maps are gorgeous and personalities are fleshed out just enough to drop them into any world without too much fuss.

Below are select brief supplements I found useful:

Two crunchier, but amazing resources are:

Campion & Clitherow

Weather? Weather! Never worry again. Never.

True Mask Games

Factions? Factions! Never worry again. Never.

Geoffrey McKinney

Seriously, for less than $10 you can get material that will last you a lifetime whenever your players decide to go somewhere you haven't prepared for. As a bonus, below supercharges B1 and B2.

Simon Forster

What, you want more variety than in Mike's dungeon. “Production qualities?” Well then you are in luck, because Simon Forster has written splendid digest-sized books of lairs:

Autarch

Autarch is the publisher of Adventurer Conqueror King System, marvellous system built on B/X chassis. It offers superior take on domain management, race-as-class, functional and tightly integrated economy, and plethora of play-tested options for ambitious Judges and adventurous Players.

Rules

Adventures

All adventures, except Dwimmermount, are set in Auran Empire, which is an ACKS setting. I've found all the adventures superb and easy to adjust (and steal from). AX3 has some great tables for urban dwellings.

Expeditious Retreat Press

The first publisher of OSRIC material. A lot of good stuff, but I picked few of more generic offerings I often use.

#Sale #OSR #Arduin #OSRIC #XRP #Chaosium #RQ #PFRPG #ACKS #GG #DCC #Harn

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Autarch is the publisher of Adventurer Conqueror King System, marvellous system built on B/X chassis. It offers superior take on domain management, race-as-class, functional and tightly integrated economy, and plethora of play-tested options for ambitious Judges and adventurous Players.

Rules

Adventures

All adventures, except Dwimmermount, are set in Auran Empire, which is an ACKS setting. I've found all the adventures superb and easy to adjust (and steal from). AX3 has some great tables for urban dwellings.

#BlackFriday2022 #Sale #ACKS #OSR

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Lairs & Encounters:

Lairs & Encounters

Capital of the Borderlands:

Capital of the Borderlands

Smith-Waite Tarot Deck Centennial Edition:

Smith-Waite_Tarot_Deck_Centennial_Edition

Smith-Waite_Tarot_Deck_Centennial_Edition

#Postbox #OSR #ACKS

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The Book of Lairs Vol. I & Vol. II Urban Encounters:

The_Book_of_Lairs_Vol_I_II

The Book of Lairs: Vale of the Iron God:

The_Book_of_Lairs_Vale_of_the_Iron_God.jpg

#Postbox #OSR #ACKS

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The Heroic Legendarium:

The_Heroic_Legendarium.jpg

ACKS Axioms Compendium Volume I–VIII:

ACKS_Axioms_Compendium_Volume_I-VIII.jpg

#Postbox #OSR #OSRIC #ACKS

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