Review - Five Ancient Kingdoms - Men & Mettle (Part 2 of ?)

There a lot in this little booklet of Men & Mettle. Enough to make you think about ways to borrow or steal for other OSR style games. Which is good, because the OSR works best when you you create the RPG equivalent of a Mongrelman to your own desires ;)

Hit Die and Hero Points for example. Heroes get Hit Points, but monsters and most NPCs just get Hit Die. One Hit Die equals one Hit of damage from a PC. If a player takes a hit, each Hit Die of damage is equal to 1d6 of HP loss, Kinda speeds up combat, which is probably already sped up by the focused use of D6s to resolve everything. Yeah, it takes a few readings to get the whole thing down, at least it did for me. YMMV.

Encumbrance and Movement is less about counting pounds of weight (although there is some of that) and more about bulk and ease of movement (or lack there of). Interesting way to handle it, especially for someone that generally hand waves this shit with most of the games I run. I tend to rely on common sense, and this seems to be much like common sense.

Experience Points and Level Advance should feel familiar initially - kill things and take their stuff, but there is more - taking damage and surviving, visiting strange lands, finding and messing around with artifacts and keeping to your alignment and motivation. Then there are "milestones" - events that are so important, so striking, they immediately advance the character to the next level. Of course, this is discussed in Book 3, and we are just about halfway through Book 1 ;)

Combat is the next part, and I expect that will need a post all it's own. It's different than what I am accustomed to, but it seems to work - and at the same time, it confuses the hell out of me. I expect I'll need to run a mock combat or two to full grok it - which I will do for the next post in the series.

Five Ancient Kingdoms is certainly an interesting read...

Review - Five Ancient Kingdoms - Men & Mettle (Part 1 of 2)

There are three books and one adventure (and dice if you buy it in print) in the Five Ancient Kingdom set, so I'm going to try and go through the books in order. I doubt I'll be able to cover everything, but I'll do what I can.

Men & Mettle is the first volume of the three rulebooks. The default setting is bases off of the Muslim / Arab / Middle East of 800 AD or so (sorry - I don't use CE)

First things first - a small observation: The organization of the rules is not exactly what I'm used to these days, although it is reminiscent of the "Original Boxed Set". Basic explanation of task resolution, followed by classes, followed by subclasses, followed by stats and character generation rules. I'm used to stats, classes, character gen... So, I needed to adjust to the flow of things.

FAK uses d6s for everything. "1"s are read as "0"s all of the time. There are NO exceptions (at least none that I've found thus far). FAK reads much like an OSR ruleset, but I suspect it plays out very differently while retaining a similar feel.

The core classes are Hero (fighter), Magician, Saint (Shaman for those that don't follow monotheism) and Thief. Pretty much the standard fair. What really ups it a notch are the subclasses. There are eight - two per core class. Each subclass's description takes up about 3 or 4 sentences. That's it. It's really a prefect way to handle it if you ask me. Just enough to make them different - not so much that they seem like a whole new class.

Characters have both an alignment (Law / Neutrality / Chaos) and a Motivation (fortune / glory / power / etc). Calling into play your character's motivation can have a mechanical bonus as well as a story effect. Heck, it's mechanics and a roleplaying nudge all in one, which is surprising when the author refuses to label FAK an RPG in the classic sense. I suspect that is much about splitting hairs myself.

The character stats are the ones we know well: STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON and CHA. Heck, even the order is classic. High prime reqs give and expo bonus, low scores give an expo penalty. High and low scores give an assortment of bonuses and penalties respectfully.

Stats are rolled using 4d6, drop the lowest counting all "1"s rolled as "0". The player may place the scores in any order they desire.

Hero Points are your Hit Points and are rolled each adventure (1 Hit Die per level, roll adjusted by class, all "1"s are "0").

Social Status is also rolled at character generation (and probably should have come before the description HPs, as Social Status is not determined each session but one time only). 3d6, giving a result of 0 to 18 - escaped slave to nobility. Social Status also determines starting gold - multiply by 10 and add 20 (although the example used later in this section neglects to add 20, so that might have been changed).

Last major thing to determine for starting PCs is their starting "advantage". Anything from extra wealth, failed magician apprentice (with some spell use), combat bonuses, story hooks - all are possible - 36 possibilities in all, it goes a long way to making characters unique and the concept easily translates to other OSR games.

Part 2 of the review will deal with mechanics, combats, saving throws, retainers and the like.

First Look at "Five Ancient Kingdoms" ("OSR" Ruleset)

What is Five Ancient Kingdoms? Apparently it's NOT an RPG but a Fantasy Adventure Game. Semantics aside, if you like OSR gaming (and are a bit of a completist) this is probably something you should take a look at.

It comes in with 3 booklets, a short adventure and a set of 4d6. These aren't your usual d6, as where one would normally expect to find a "1" you find a "zero" instead. I need to look deeper to find out how that effects the usual number spread.

So, you get your six "OSR" stats, which are generated using 4d6, drop the lowest and re-roll Zeros. You get the usual 4 core classes (even if they are renamed) and a butt-load of subclasses.

You also get "advantages", which is almost like a prior profession / skill acquisition. You get one randomly determined at 1st level.

Hit Points are randomly determined each session. That's damn interesting.

Alright, enough random observations from the first booklet - time to read this a bit more in depth.

Available in print only I believe, but a PDF version would look nice on my iPad ;)