ACKS Player’s Companion
CDM: The ACKS Player’s Companion provides eight pre-generated
templates “ready for adventure” for each character class in the core rules and
the Companion. How did templates develop as an important feature of ACKS?
APM: There were a few factors at work.
First, fast
character generation is an important part of old-school play. Characters die
and need to be replaced. Random NPC parties show up in dungeons. Henchmen get
recruited. I think part of the reason henchmen disappeared from later
iterations of D&D is that it became such a pain to roll them up! ACKS has a
lot of equipment options and a healthy chunk of proficiencies available. I
didn’t want the expanded set of options to slow down character generation.
Second,
Tavis Allison pointed out that since players roll 3d6 to determine their
character’s starting gold, “Wealth” was effectively a 7th ability
score. He had the idea that you could use the Wealth ability score to guide
whether your character was starting as an outlaw or a noble, a pariah or a
princess.
The
templates combined fast character generation with a wealth result in a
flavorful way. When you use the template system, you roll 3d6 on the table for
your class. The templates are organized such that the lower results represent
lower positions for the class on the socioeconomic rung, while the higher rolls
represent higher positions. This isn’t obvious if you don’t compare the results
across the templates. But here’s an example showing the bottom, middle, and
upper rung for three classes, which makes it clear:
3d6 Roll
|
Elven Spellsword
|
Fighter
|
Mage
|
3-4
|
Exile
|
Thug
|
Hedge
Wizard
|
11-12
|
Swordmage
|
Mercenary
|
Magic
Scholar
|
17-18
|
Winged
Knight
|
Lancer
|
Court
Magist
|
Randomness
is also a great way to introduce flavor and setting material into the game
without forcing the player or Judge to read a lot of narrative. I tried to
build each template so that it implied a backstory.
For
example, the Dwarven Fury “Foe Eater” template has Goblin Slaying and Craft
(cooking) and comes equipped with 6 weeks goblin jerky. You know just how this
character is going to respond to an encounter with beastmen. The Bard
“Charlatan” template has Prestidigitation, Alchemy, Performance (oration), and
comes equipped with a mage’s cassock, a blank spellbook, and 4 pints of wine in
potion vials. It’s obvious how this Bard behaves in a tavern. These templates
tell a story that makes it easy to start role-playing.
CDM: The ACKS Player’s Companion includes a method for
creating custom classes, the same method used to create the classes in the core
rules and the Companion. This is a rare addition to a published fantasy
roleplaying-game. How did you decide to develop and publish a method for
creating custom classes?
APM: Way
back in Dragon issue 109 there was an article called “Customized Classes” that
I had used as a teenager to make my own classes. D&D 2nd Edition
had a similar system. Later I stumbled on the elegant mechanics that had been
developed on Pandius.com for developing custom classes, and those are the
primary ancestor of the system that appears in Player’s Companion. In a sense
the custom class creation system was meant to be the real “meat” of the
supplement. The classes themselves are just instantiations of the system.
Domains at War
CDM: Domains at War is Autarch’s next scheduled ACKS
product, but a free “starter” version is already available. What
should ACKS players and Judges know about this starter version of Domains at
War?
APM: First
off, it’s a thank-you to all of our backers who supported us on the original
Adventurer Conqueror King System Kickstarter. We promised it as a bonus goal!
I’m sorry it took so long to publish, but I wanted it to be great.
Second, although
it’s the free starter set, it’s still a complete set of rules. It covers
mustering troops, going on campaign, handling supply, and handling pitched
battles and sieges. It’s at least as detailed as the War Machine rules in the
Rules Cyclopedia, and it’s better integrated with the underlying mechanics and
activities of the player characters. For Judges with low-level characters who
aren’t engaged in domain play; or for Judges who are not overly interested in
mass combat; or for Judges who just want a baseline to improvise around, it’s
probably all they need.
But if
you want the same level of detail for your strategic and grand tactical gaming
as you want for your dungeon crawling, you will want the Domains at War Complete Set.
CDM: What should ACKS players
and Judges know about the upcoming full version of Domains at War?
APM: Domains at War is actually two books, Campaigns and Battles. The Campaigns book
is an advanced edition of the free starter rules. It is incredibly comprehensive. What happens if your army gets dysentery?
What happens if you steal the flag of an enemy unit? How long does it take to
build a circumvallation around an enemy stronghold? How much does it cost to
fire a trebuchet for a week? How long to build a trebuchet? How many men can a
huge siege tower hold, and how long will it take to cross the 200 yards to the
enemy walls? What information will you glean if you capture an enemy commander
and interrogate him with ESP? All
covered.
The
companion volume is the Battles book.
It offers a tabletop wargame that’s 100% compatible with ACKS. It lets you
fight your domain battles right on the tabletop using miniatures or counters. It
uses a hex grid, rather than rulers, because RPG players are more familiar with
grids. And it’s designed such that your PCs and NPCs serve as commanders,
lieutenants, and heroes in a way that is fun but also is coherent with the
“reality” of the game world. It will appeal to both RPGers and wargamers.
Ever
since D&D spun-off from Chainmail, there
have been many, many efforts to make a wargame based on its framework: Swords & Spells, War Machine,
Battlesystem, Birthright, etc. None of them have ever really succeeded. For
instance, gaming groups never said “let’s play some Battlesystem for fun” the way Warhammer
is played for fun. Since the games weren’t fun, no one wanted to use them
in their campaign, and they failed as campaign supplements, too. If you’re
going to include a wargame in your campaign, it has to be a great wargame that
you look forward to playing.
I think
with Domains at War: Battles we’re
going to be offering a great wargame. It captures the essence of ancient and
medieval warfare. Someone who enjoys military history, or DBA, or Armati, or Battelore, or Warhammer, can play Domains
at War and really get into it.
Early on,
I learned a lot about wargame design from my mentor Arty Conliffe. Arty designed
some classics of miniature wargaming: Armati,
Crossfire, Shako, Spearhead, and
Tactica. If you are into historical miniatures gaming, you will know about
these games. I wrote my first wargame supplement in 1997 under Arty’s tutelage.
A few years later, Arty gave me the chance to co-design Modern Spearhead, a 20th
century division-scale micro armor wargame. Modern
Spearhead was reviewed as “the best game there is for this level of modern
warfare” by the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers and is still actively
played, almost 15 years later. And that’s because we captured the essence of
modern warfare in a fun, playable way.
My goal
is to succeed at that same level with Domains
at War: Battles, so that in 15
years people are still playing it.
CDM: On the Autarch forums, you mentioned the possibility
of posting sample ACKS statistics for great military leaders from history. Recently,
I was reading about the battles of Marathon and Thermopylae, and I couldn’t
help but wonder about possible Domains at War statistics for Athenians,
Plateans, Spartans, Thespians, Thebans, Immortals and other Persian forces. The
cultural differences between these historical forces seem as striking as the fantasy
differences between beastmen, dwarves and elves. Have you used Domains at War
to replay any historical battles? How
does Domains at War handle differences like this?
APM: Yes, we’ve fought several historical battles using
ACKS. We usually use my DBA miniatures to fight the battles, so there have been
a lot of fights pitting the Carthaginians against the Romans, and the Macedonians
against the Persians.
D@W: Battles represents the differences between
armies in several ways.
1.
The
command characteristics of the army general. This will determine how many
divisions the army can have, as well as its overall morale. Armies with many
divisions tend to be more flexible and responsive. Armies with a few, big
divisions are more cumbersome and hard to deploy.
2.
The
number and characteristics of the division commanders. Skilled commanders seize
the initiative more often, can control more troops at once, and have a wider
span of command.
3.
The
number and characteristics of the unit lieutenants. Skilled lieutenants allow a
unit to react more effectively when it’s outside of its commander’s span of
command, or when it’s disordered.
4.
The
number of veteran units in the army. Veteran units are stronger, tougher, and
less likely to break.
5.
The
divisional structure of the different armies. Does the army keep all of its
cavalry units in one division in reserve, or does it assign half its cavalry to
a “left wing division” and the other half to a “right wing division”?
6.
The
type and formation of the units in the army. Does the army have light infantry?
Slingers? Bowmen? Light cavalry? Horse archers? Cataphracts? All of these play
very differently.
Auran Empire Gazetteer
CDM: How would you describe
the Auran Empire campaign setting in a sentence?
APM: The
Auran Empire campaign setting offers a world of adventure, where a
once-majestic empire is slipping into oblivion, and bold and ambitious
conquerors are rising to forge new realms from the ashes of the old.
CDM: My sense of the Auran Empire campaign setting is
that it is influenced by the real-world ancient and classical periods as much
or more than swords and sorcery literature. Do you agree, and, if so, where
does this influence come from?
APM: I do agree, yes. The Auran Empire resembles the
Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. I was an ancient history major as an
undergraduate, so the easy answer as to why the Auran Empire is an ancient
setting is because I studied ancient history in school. But that would just
lead to the question of why I studied ancient history….
I think the genuine answer is that there is an aesthetic
to the world of Late Antiquity that resonates with me very deeply. In Late
Antiquity, the most advanced and powerful civilization that ever existed was
falling apart. The wise could see that it was falling apart, but the problems were
too big and they were endemic to the system. They were almost insoluble given
the demographics and the culture. So it was a moment of existential despair. And
yet brave men and women kept struggling for their civilization. Think of a man
like Aurelian, who almost single-handedly saved the Roman Empire and gave it
another two hundred years! Awe-inspiring, tragic grandeur.
Although it’s more of a medieval feel, Middle Earth’s
grandeur is very much rooted in this same ethos. Tolkien called it “the long
defeat.” But Tolkien offers a vision of ultimate victory for good, whereas in
the Auran Empire the prophecies are of ultimate victory for evil. That’s not to
say that the prophecies are true, only that they exist, and hang over the
setting darkly.
CDM: Do you know yet what we
can expect the first Auran Empire Gazetteer to cover?
APM: Presently the sections are: Annals (overview of
history and timeline); Census (overview of ethnography, races and classes);
Atlas (overview of climate, geography, and special features); Gazetteer
(overview of the sixteen major regions); Mythopedia (overview of the major
gods, cosmology of the Spheres, and religious practices); Guidebook
(“traveler’s guide” to law, culture, and custom); Primer (an overview of the
Auran language); Bestiary ( listing 30 new monsters); Catalogue (a list of new
magic items and ancient marvels); and Apocrypha (covering obscure facts and
hidden secrets of the setting). I have about 100,000 words written and a lot
more content waiting to be consolidated from various adventures, notebooks,
session reports, spreadsheets, and so on.
One thing I haven’t fully settled on is to what extent
the campaign book will be written subjectively (from within the game world),
versus objectively (about the game world). For instance the Greyhawk campaign
setting and the Dark Sun campaign setting were both written subjectively, while
Ravenloft was written objectively. Subjective campaign guides have more flavor,
while objective campaign settings tend to be easier to integrate into game
mechanics.
CDM: Will we see any new
Nobiran, Thrassian or Zaharan classes?
APM: Definitely! I currently plan to include the Nobiran
Champion, the Thrassian Stalker, and the Zaharan Sorcerer-Priest. The Nobiran
Champion is a steel-jawed warlord who leads his men to hell and back. The
Zaharan Sorcerer-Priest is a Chthonic cleric/mage. The Thrassian Stalker is a
cold-blooded killer in the night. This is an area where backers will help guide
the product, though.
CDM: Thank you very much!
