Adventurer Conqueror King System - Shown in High Definition!

Yep, got my printed copy of the Adventurer Conqueror King System Gen Con Limited Edition in the mail today - simply awesome.

So I put a short together a short vid to show it.  Go figure ;)

Experimenting with the HD upload option, but if it makes viewing harder due to increased bandwidth I'll forgo that in the future.

Sometimes It's Good to be King (Adventurer Conqueror King System)

The Adventurer Conqueror King System play test document was recently updated.  I've no idea what the particular changes were (it's probably in the forum), but I'm looking at this with fresh eyes (and eagerly awaiting my printed copy to arrive).

Things I've noticed this time (but but may or may not have noticed before):
- High Int is just as good for Wizards as High Wis is for Clerics.  I've been using that as a house rule for ages and I'm happy to see it here.
- I didn't miss this the first time, but I am happy to see a game that gives options to demi-humans as far as classes go without giving them human classes.  Dwarves can be Dwarven fighters or Dwarven Craftpriests and Elves can be Spellswords or Nightblades.
-Thief skills are rolled on a D20, not percentile based.  Apples and oranges for some, but I like the D20 roll high method.
-Bard class is included.  Yay!
-Character inheritance: for when your PC is dead and you planned ahead to replace him.  Leave him a good amount of starting cash.
-Domain Rules - I really need to read these through.  Damn interesting.

K, all for now.

Sometimes it Helps to Hold It

The two copies I have of The Secret Fire paperback look awesome.  Hopefully I'll find some time to read this weekend (renovations never seem to end).  Soon I should have my pre-release copy of Adventurer Conqueror King.  I just found out earlier tonight that George Strayton plays in a White Box campaign run by one of the guys behind ACK.  The two games currently on my mind the most.  Go figure.

Think I may need to Frankendragon the two ;)

Or maybe not.  But stealing from one for the other is also fun.

Oh, and just to throw this out there, I don't think I could use descriptors in place of numerical modifiers as The Secret Fire relies upon.  That's one of those things that's been hard wired into my D&D brain.  I don't think it would suffer much from avoiding the descriptors.  Guess time will tell when I get to actually play it.

Eating My Own Words

A few months ago I posted that I didn't see the need for new games built on the same OGL / OSR inspired rulesets. I guess I was wrong.

Or maybe I was half right. We don't need them, but there is certainly an audience for them, myself included. My most recent OSR - OD&D inspired game that I'm enjoying reading is Adventurer Conqueror King. Not sure how much I like the title, but so far I like the system.

I'm still plowing thru it, but I like the way it makes fighting classes viable and special w/o resorting to the LotFP Weird Fantasy method of doing away with any sort of combat progression with the exception of pure fighters. There are other ways to secure a nitch for them, and ACK found a way. Actually, from my reading so far (and I am far from reading the whole document) I haven't seen much of a desire from myself to house rule the ACK rules. With Weird Fantasy, I loved the concept, liked a lot of the tweaks (specialists particularly), but I was house ruling in my head as I read my way thru.

I think the only ruleset I haven't mentally house ruled was Swords & Wizardry, and I wrote a Bard class for that, which u might say is a huge house rule ;)

It's not that the ACK rules are how I would have run a game back in the 80's. To my eyes so far, the rules read as how I would want to run one of my games from the 80's today, if that makes sense to you.