When I began to write the game, my indication that I had matured in my study of TTRPG enough to even undertake such a project was that I felt as though I had at least one concrete opinion about every part of the fantasy adventure game formula that was at least partially unique. I had a “hot take” on every part of the game. One must be careful to not reinvent the wheel for no good reason, but I had no intention of writing a B/X clone.

There are 5 classes in the game. I feel confident there won’t be any additions or subtractions at this point. Three of those classes are human with the remainder being essentially elves and dwarves (here I am resisting a most pressing urge to elaborate) but they are a topic for another time. The human classes are Fighting-Man, Magician, and Sorcerer. The latter two are essentially alignment counterparts. Paring back classes so strongly was one my first and most foundational opinions.

Where Have the Thieves Gone?

Within the text of the game, Fighting-Men are described as “men of practicality”. My assertion is that “thieves” do not exist in my personal canon of fiction distinctly from fighters in such a way that they are mutually exclusive categories of person. It is most accurate to say that I rolled the domain of “thieves” into the core chassis of the game. Sneaking about and hiding and picking pockets are simply actions any character may undertake.

Alex Macris as produced probably my favorite variety of TTRPG thief class in ACKS. His musings on “mother-may-I?” play and the divide between character and player skill are completely on the money. My game does not revert to OD&D style trap arbitrage where players must painstakingly describe whatever hijinks they are performing to disarm a trap, we still rely on dice rolls to abstract these actions in an efficient manner. I have simply decided we need not an entire category of character dedicated to this sort of thing. The premise that many of the traditional TTRPG classes cast to narrow a net will be recurring.

Where Have the Clerics Gone?

If you are not a man of practicality, you are a man of impracticality. You are master of things unseen. You are a magician. Most simply put, I rolled the mechanical and roleplaying duties of the cleric into the magic-user, they are essentially one and the same.

One of the oldest and silliest TTRPG memes; what class is Gandalf? It’s a bad question that lacks a good answer because the ontology and literary framework of D&D does not have room for Gandalf. I argue he is closest to a cleric, but even that is rough fit. Gandalf is a character that is aesthetically a magic-user but materially a cleric and literally an angel. More importantly, he is a retelling of Merlin who is a retelling of Myrddin who was a crazy welsh guy who talked to animals and is also the foundational figure behind the northern European archetype of the wizard, Odinnic figures which advise kings and weave the fates of men. There does not exist a class in the tradition of D&D that really represents the Merlin styled Northern European Wizard. They are ontological magic-users. D&D’s resident ontological magicians are armored clerics.

It was my deliberate objective to actually realize a Merlin or Gandalf styled class in this game. I did so by combining the aesthetic and mechanistic trappings of a magic user with the cosmic mandate of a cleric, all held together by a few critical concessions. All magicians are theists in this game.

Where did all those other little classes go?

The highest possible echelon of a character is their race. The things granted to a character by virtue of their very existence. The second greatest echelon is their class. A class represents something very fundamental and immutable. A character’s class is chosen before they choose anything else, and in most systems it can never be changed. It is a formative period of training and education the character receives before play begins that shapes everything about their capabilities and outlook.

We love Adventurer Conqueror King System here at Bears and Barrows Internet Posting LLC, but it has to be said the Autarch Mega-fans commissioning these classes for Before All Others need to pump the brakes. Before All Others is an expansion book for ACKS all about elves from Autarch, which I gladly backed on kickstarter, and if one donated enough money to the project they could commission a bespoke class for the book. These classes range wildly in terms of my personal opinion, and there’s no accounting for taste, but a point I want to make is how some of these classes are framed in such a way that they start to raise uncomfortable questions about what a character’s class actually represents.

Take, for example, the Oakheart. This class is described as essentially an elven warrior who undergoes a ritual involving sacred tree sap to gain increased strength and endurance as they slowly transform into an Treant. My question is: why can’t you just do that to yourself as a 9th level wizard or druid? Why is this capability mechanically isolated inside a class? There are a handful of classes in the book which fall into this trap of isolating something that should not, in diegetic terms, be so exclusive into this extremely high echelon of character class. A class described as a fighter with ritual magic applied should be just that, a fighter with a ritual spell applied.

My dichotomy for determining whether or not a characteristic or circumstance is part of a character’s class, or demands its own class, is whether or not it could be imparted to a character reasonably after first level. In my TTRPG, a thief is just a low level fighter with the training and proclivity for subterfuge (high dexterity score, proficiencies). You might say that is no different than simply having a thief class, but the difference is that I am asserting that there does not exist a class of adventuring man who possesses those skills but is also somehow incapable of wearing or learning to wear chainmail or heavy armor should the need arise. He is a man of practicality, he is capable of these things.

There is a legitimate point to be made contrary to my own that this flattens characters and eliminates certain types of roleplaying, and I am sympathetic to this. My game also has a system of proficiencies, inspired by ACKS, but the scope and nature of this system is different. Proficiencies are broad encompassing skill sets that are strictly optional to have and come with an opportunity cost. Instead of asserting that “rangers” are a specific class of individual that one must specialize irrevocably into, in this game they would simply be a fighter with the ranging proficiency, which allows one to navigate wilderness environments, forage food and so on. The downside to having proficiencies is that they permanently increase how much experience a character requires to level up, and reduce their maximum level. Additionally, characters do not gain proficiencies automatically as a component of gaining levels. They simply cost time and gold to acquire through training and study.

Why then should we bother with classes at all? Why not use a classless system? Because classes do hold water on a broad level to describe a character’s role within the context of the game. It is the assertion of my rules that a fighter is a person so set within the path before him, as a would be hero and adventurer of adult age, that learning magic and taking on the role of Merlin is now completely impossible to him. His nature as a man of practicality is inalienable. In the same way, a magician so immersed in a relationship with God, fate, and the cosmos could not lay down his mandate and take up the sword as the fighter does. Whether or not you are practical and its immediate consequences (how well do you fight? Can you do magic? Do you use armor and weapons? Can you lead troops?) are the high echelon of characterization that a class actually describes. Particular things, like picking locks or tracking monsters, hang on that infrastructure in a much less foundational way.

Overall, I think players will find the broad classes of Kodiak-Game exciting and liberating to play. This is a game where magicians are very much empowered to do magic that will affect adventures in a big way from level one, and fighters will be leading troops to pad out the front line and battle monsters from the get-go. Flattening out all the little classes that get in the way of the fighter/magician dichotomy puts more focus back on the scenarios and situations at hand and away from a character’s class abilities.

My drafts grow by the day, and many of Kodiak-Game’s concepts are in flux so it’s hard to really say more. That being said feel free to comment if you want to pick my mind about another topic or just to argue about why the game needs 100,000 extraneous classes no one cares about.

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What compels me about Kenshi is that there is no semblance of a story. There aren’t many quests, hell there’s barely much dialogue. You pretty much drift from place to place picking your battles until you settle on some other objective. Usually this involves recruiting allies, building a base, and waging a little crusade against one faction or another. Maybe it’s just getting rich. Many people find a disconnect with the game because of this. Kenshi is more aptly described as a virtual rule system, you provide the roleplaying objectives much like one does in a TTRPG campaign.

As much as I’d could wax poetic about kenshi for a thousand or two words, I actually wanted to write about a particular part of the game I actually dislike. In Kenshi pretty much every skill and attribute is increased by doing. Run more to get your athletics up, pick locks to get better at picking locks, so on. You can increase your characters’ strength scores by having them carry heavy loads. A common early game ritual in Kenshi is filling your inventory with rocks, grabbing a dead guy to throw over your shoulder, and just walking around for 10 days to get that strength score up off the floor. This highlights a problem with progressive attribute scores.

In these newfangled D&D editions they let you increase your attribute scores. In old-school games, your attributes are fixed. They represented an inherent talent or physical limit. We have to assume that fighters are in-shape. The idea of letting a character increase their strength by eating enough beef and hitting reps is a little silly, we have to assume they are already doing this. There is no reason not to. Your strength score should be your upper limit. Mental attributes become even harder to grok if we’re going to humor the idea that your attributes represent your current state and not your inherent potential or maximum. Should magic-users get intelligence for leveling up then? Are they not learning even more? This may seem obvious, but it’s one of those things you take for granted until you go without it. Kenshi perfectly illustrates why it’s problematic. Sure you can argue there is some opportunity cost to spending all your time bulking up, but a few hundred gold cost-of-living for beef and rice would easily be worth that 18/00 strength score.

I don’t think 5e has a strong following amongst my readership, but it should be clear that I don’t care for ASIs from a design perspective. I think it casts undue aspersions about what attribute scores actually represent. This sort of “Abstraction-Hygiene” becomes more and more important to me as I draft my own TTRPG rules, which no you can’t read because they’re rough as hell and I need to write at least 30,000 more words before they are worth looking at. It’s important that we actually understand the nature of the abstractions a game is making. Without that understanding we can’t really deign to talk about whether or not they are effective or if we want to use them in our own games.

RPGs are chock full of abstractions, they are completely ubiquitous. Even something as simple as movement speed represents an abstraction. I recently had a conversation with a friend about movement speed apropos of my TTRPG ruleset. We were discussing why the movement rates per round in ACKS, a frequent benchmark for our discussions, were so slow and deteriorated so quickly with encumbrance. Movement rate accounts for little breaks, stopping to catch one’s breath or readjust a burden. They account for moments spent looking around or negotiating unsure footing. All that is to say it is important to some extent that we, as hobbyists and game designers, are willing to split some hairs on exactly what’s going on inside a certain part of a game.

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Anything arbitrary that doesn't both explain itself in the game setting and work the way it is explained is going to be disruptive to the possibility of effective emulation and immersion.

XP for gold is a fascinating example of an arbitrary concept, that may or may not be disruptive.

Because obviously in our world the amount of money you earn is not something that makes you more physically strong or more capable of casting spells.
In the default D&D game world, XP for gold is a kind of simplification (because it's originally gold plus training), but it doesn't really cause a big problem. The D&D World (generically speaking) is a world where it is presumed that gold does certain weird things, like leveling you up, but also being required to get help from a priest, Gold has a kind of more powerful force of currency than it does in our world.

But if you're playing anything other than the generic D&D world default, XP for gold is absolutely ridiculous and fails every time.
So for example in any of my games it wouldn't make any sense at all. When I started the Dark Albion campaign it was actually with lamentations of the flame princess. But as we started playing it it became evident to me that even the rules of LOTFP were too unrealistic to the context of what actual medieval society looked like.

To give just one example: In D&D the mirror accumulation of gold is what makes you a person of great political power in this quasi medieval setting. Which was never true in real medieval settings.

But much worse still in a medieval authentic setting there should be entire character classes that would never ever pause to loot a body.

It was actually one of the most significant moments that led me to make the changes that would eventually become the Lion and Dragon system, when one of my players was playing a cleric and he half jokingly but half annoyed said that "he's the man of God but if he wants to get more miracles he needs to check the boots of these petty bandits for every coin he can grab".

So there you are: Gold for XP would mean that St Francis of Assisi needed to loot corpses. Can you credibly imagine St Francis going around the battlefields of the fifth crusade and instead of praying for the dead or tending to the sick he's pulling off someone's boots to see if there's a coin inside, in the hopes that it'll let him make one more miracle per day?

That's an excellent example of how introducing arbitrary elements from into a game world (like a poorly thought out XP system, or like 1:1 TIME) ends up damaging immersion.

Boiled down, this is an appeal to realism styled argument against XP for GP which is the most common sort levied. What makes it frustrating to refute is that it’s correct.

Manifest Destiny: The Tabletop Game

D&D was never realistic and it was never about medieval Europe in a real sense. I think this is uncontentious. What may be more contentious though is that leveling up as a concept is also completely at odds with realism, and experience points as they are presented in D&D do not represent hard skills and practice but instead metaphysical and spiritual power.

There are two components to this argument. Firstly, that the feats of “non-magical ability” that player characters such as fighters and thieves are able to perform are well beyond the confines of any realistic upper limits as early as level 4 or 5 or so, and secondly the disparity of outcomes between leveled and non-leveled PCs.

Winning a hand-to-hand fight when outnumbered by more than 2:1 is pretty much impossible unless a vast disparity of armor, arms, or motivation is at play. By that reckoning the highest “realistic” skill level for fighters is probably level 4 or so. This is not a problem, TTRPGs, or perhaps more accurately “fantasy adventure games”, are not intended to be simulationist on that level. We presuppose the existence of “super powered” individuals. So is the conceit of the game that in this canon of fiction that men can progress their fighting abilities to supernatural levels? Yes, but not in the same fashion men did in real antiquity.

Conan is the Ur D&D character. How often do we catch Conan training his body or practicing his skills in a story? Sure we can assume Conan has done this “off-screen” so to speak but it’s evident that Conan’s skills rapidly outpace the skills of men who have served as warriors and soldiers years or even decades longer than Conan has, so what gives? Conan has experience points because he is adventuring. He is earning the crystallized spiritual and metaphysical power they represent and this catapults him past normal men. This is not the framing Howard had in mind when writing the character but it is the way TTRPGs as a science interpret this sort of character.

Experience points represent divine right. This is how Conan comes to be a king. When viewed through that lens, we uncover that TTRPGs are distinctly American and thus Protestant in nature. D&D is about cowboys, it’s about the wild west, it’s about manifest destiny. A “realistic” depiction of medieval Europe through an old-world Catholic lens would not have XP for GP, nor would it have leveling up at all. Building a man up from nothing with his only his deeds and his wealth was the promise of the American West. This is why AD&D has rules for converting characters from Boot Hill. This is not a value statement on old-world versus new world or Catholic versus Protestant ethics, just an observation.

Viewing a TTRPG as being evocative of real history, or literature, can be a trap. No one levels up in the Lord of the Rings. You may argue Aragorn levels up when he becomes king, but he was always king. He was born at domain level. That is the “realistic European” fantasy. The reason D&D never prescribed to that ontology is because it’s not a fun game. It makes for much better novels. This is why for as much as people have distanced themselves from XP for GP they cannot escape it’s second order trappings, levels, experience points, progressing through levels, so on. As Gary Gygax once said “all very realistic but conducive to non-game boredom.”

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I will grant that GURPS exists deliberately for this purpose whereas Skyrim essentially failed forward into being the Generic Universal Fantasy Video Game. There are some interesting mods available for Skyrim, and there are some interesting hacks available for GURPS. The difference between these two mediums is the barrier to entry.

Anyone who follows the OSR or it’s adjacent spheres is more than aware that the barrier of entry to writing and publishing PDFs about elf games on the internet is woefully low. Perhaps too low. Anyone with a grasp of the english language (and even some without!) can type up and publish a TTRPG product, system, module whatever.

Developing mods for creation engine isn’t rocket science. Being able to model and texture and program your own additions to the game does take a stack of skills that require at least a few months of front end work to acquire and years to master. One could argue writing in english is the same way but here in the west we do all that in school as children, you have to go out of your way to pick up blender or whatever.

Writing your own game engine from scratch is much more difficult. You might as well get a college degree first and even then you’re looking at a huge volume of work. This isn’t a technology substack so I’ll jump to the point. GURPS doesn’t solve the problem that skyrim solves. If you are a computer science drop out with a month to kill you can program a little skyrim mod that lets you realize whatever fantasy RPG adjacent ideas you have rolling around in your head without writing a renderer from scratch or whatever.

Perhaps I am some sort of Nietzschean super man of TTRPGs but I am able to whip up at least a playable draft of a rule system in a week or two. It won’t be tested or polished or refined but it’s not a huge expenditure of time or effort to imagine a dice system to resolve firing missiles at mechs or using magic to breed new types of orcs in a mudhole or whatever other application you have in mind.

My elder brother has never played dungeons and dragons. He’s 40 years old. He and my other brother played baldur’s gate 3 a number of months ago. He found the idea of using probability and dice to simulate complex tasks so enrapturing that on a flight overseas he drafted a ruleset for playing golf with dice. He even added attributes for various professional golfers. My brother is an avid golfer. What do we need GURPS for?

I think the GURPS phenomenon, and the homebrew phenomenon that exists in 5e/conventional play circles has a lot to do with how these people engage with rules and campaign structure. You will often hear people say that D&D is essentially an engine. “D&D is when you have attributes and skills and we roll d20s”. The skyrimification of Dungeons and Dragons. Much like Skyrim people like to stretch D&D far beyond its limits. I hear tell of people running political campaigns, sci-fi campaigns, steampunk campaigns and so on. You can create a simulacrum of a steampunk RPG from 5e but I ask you why? There is nothing implicit about the systems or design of 5e or really any edition of D&D that support that sort of thing.

I am not a game developer but I do study computers and I have dabbled with Unity for fun for a number of months. Using an engine or some prepackaged solution is a trade off. It will never be as closely suited to your vision as something written from scratch and it will leave its mark on the finished product. We suffer this because of the massive amount of time and effort it saves elsewhere that would otherwise stifle the project before it even begins. When writing a pen and paper game the time you save starting with someone else’s solution is way smaller. You still trade away the nuance and flexibility that comes with designing a from-scratch experience.

One of the funniest consequences of discovering D&D first and appendix N literature second was going back and doing my homework reading these stories and coming across something that made me stop and say “Oh my god it’s dungeons and dragons”. This will happen constantly if you actually read the books. The first instance of this I remember, and one of the best examples, is The God in the Bowl by Howard. If you have ever wondered where they got the idea for a “saving throw” look no further, this story has the most clear cut spell saving throw put to paper.

Conan stared in wonder at the cold classic beauty of that countenance, whose like he had never seen among the sons of men. Neither weakness nor mercy nor cruelty nor kindness, nor any other human emotion was in those features. They might have been the marble mask of a god, carved by a master hand, except for the unmistakable life in them—life cold and strange, such as the Cimmerian had never known and could not understand. He thought fleetingly of the marble perfection of the body which the screen concealed—it must be perfect, he thought, since the face was so inhumanly beautiful. But he could see only the god- like face, the finely molded head which swayed curiously from side to side. The full lips opened and spoke a single word in a rich vibrant tone that was like the golden chimes that ring in the jungle-lost temples of Khitai. It was an unknown tongue, forgotten before the kingdoms of man arose, but Conan knew that it meant, ‘Come!’

And the Cimmerian came, with a desperate leap and a humming slash of his sword. The beautiful head rolled from the top of the screen in a jet of dark blood and fell at his feet, and he gave back, fearing to touch it.

My point in bringing this up is that D&D has, or well had, a setting. It was one part Hyboria and one part medieval europe and one part a whole lotta other things. But as you played it a mental image started to coalesce in your mind about what was going on. How people’s armor and weapons looked, what the buildings looked like. What sort of names people had. The mechanics in the game reflected that too, and reinforced it. Saving throws were in the game because, in part, Conan used to pass them all the time in his stories. The rule’s nature was implicitly tied to the world of the game.

You could have hypothetically modified the rules of whatever napoleonic wargame they were playing with pewter miniatures in Arneson’s basement to accommodate Conan but why bother? They wrote D&D instead. I think there’s something to be said for how many blasted B/X clones we have and how few new modes of play are evolving. These games lack teeth, lack character, because they are not representative of someone’s personal appendix N.

I learned this running ACKS 2. I realized that by going in and imposing my own opinions on how magicians work or how clerics work or by modernizing the setting into medieval europe I was refusing the implicit nature of the rules Macris wrote. If I want to run that campaign I should to write my own game. Or find one which supports that implicitly or the campaign will feel incomplete. As if it’s wearing a skinsuit.

The takeaway is that you should, as a player, meet the game halfway. Don’t be that guy who shows up to a campaign set in the frigid northern wastes as a dune raider from distant Stygia. In the same way, don’t crack open your favorite edition of D&D to run a sci-fy game. Name your character the right way, pick a god for your cleric out of the book, and play the damn game. If you don’t like what’s printed in the book, pick a different game or write your own, I say.

Good RPGs are written with this push and pull in mind. The players and the DM need latitude to inject their own perspectives and ideas into their characters and the campaign, but the rule system has to have a cohesive vision behind it. AD&D and ACKS are both great examples of this sort of design. AD&D presents a present but unobtrusive canon of themes and ideas from the all throughout the scope of western fiction. ACKS conversely is more rooted in historical fantasy but still humors players with an entire slew of available cultures ranging from rome to persia to celtic europe.

There is a place for homebrew. Part of the essential promise of a pen and paper game is that it lives in the imagination of its players. My point to make is that the fiction of the game is as much of part of its nature as any rule. So perhaps the next time you think you need to homebrew a new class, or guns, or whatever into a fantasy RPG, don’t. If the game was about guns, it would have them.

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To prep or not to prep?

A perennial question; the arguments which spring up around the role of “prep” when it comes to judging have been a recurring topic for a number of years now. Your system of choice will inform how you approach prep. Rulebooks are prescriptive in nature. An anecdote is as much a rule as any enumerated chart or procedure if you possess #bookControl. As such, ignoring a prescription is in effect cheating by omission. As I’ve grown more experienced and more crotchety about TTRPGs I find myself sometimes paralyzed by the myriad prescriptions of rules dense games such as ACKS.

The obvious response to increasing demands on a judge’s mental bandwidth is increase his campaign prep, which I think is fine. Campaign operations which exist behind any degree of abstraction or abduction have a certain amount of flexibility which makes them easier to navigate. Irresponsible liberties taken behind the scenes can of course verge into undesirable outcomes (railroading) but learning to rely on your intuition to make decisions and abductions as a judge is an important part of mastering the game.

Having to determine market demand or the demographics of a settlement is nothing more than twenty or so minutes of homework. It can be inconvenient during a session if it needs to be determined on the spot, but it should be a simple enough task to foresee when those sort of things will become relevant or just prepare those things before the campaign even starts. Of late, my biggest gremlin has been encounters.

Entering the Thunderdome

Encounters are the crucible in which fate is cast in your campaign inevitably. This is where PCs perish or triumph. They often, but not always, carry great importance, the stakes couldn’t be higher for the players. Do or die. Unlike other parts of the campaign, they are completely player facing. The players are (except for cases of practical fog of war) entitled to the details of what’s going on. How far away are the orcs? Do any of them look like they’re in charge? I think most judges are familiar with these questions.

Encounters are also serendipitous. When setting out into the wilderness it’s not reasonable to explicitly prep for all the different monsters or people the party may encounter. Even if you could, you’re liable to encounter the same monster more than once essentially negating whatever was gained from that exercise unless you’re willing reuse your notes.

“Improv is difficult” is not really a groundbreaking take, but what I mean to highlight is that encounters are simultaneously impossible to consistently prep for, demanding of a high resolution of detail about the scenario at hand, difficult to abstract, and highly consequential. In this way they are a supreme trial for judges in most systems. This is to say nothing of the requirement for discrete battle maps and tokens, which certain games are challenging to play without and certain types of players feel entitled to.

Sometimes, I am almost anxious about encounters occurring in my game for these reasons. Questions like, “Do I have tokens for this? Do I have a map for this? Do I have a decent idea of who these monsters are and what they’re doing?” carry a lot of concern for me as a judge because of the expectations set by the culture of play in the campaign. My players expect roving goblins to not only have a lair but to be plugged into the broader scope of what’s going on in the region.

It either happens, or it doesn’t.

Ruminating upon the minutiae of combat encounters has yielded some interesting trains of thought. Everything is a 50/50, it either happens or it doesn’t. The party happens upon goblins, they either win or they lose. Depending on your game of choice and personal system of TTRPG idealism how we arrive at that outcome can range from a 15 to 120 minute long process.

Winning could mean evading the goblins, slaying them, or even recruiting them. Losing could be death, capture, loss of items, so on. In light of this, a better framing is to say that the 50/50 is between the party being able to act on the goblins versus the goblins being able to act upon the party. If we propose that every scenario in an RPG can be understood as a player attempting to act on a world which is also trying to act upon them, we can reconstruct the most fundamental possible form of roleplaying.

Roleplaying is differentiated from simply telling a story by the element of impartial fate. This can be accomplished by flipping a coin. An RPG could simply be a player stating what he wishes to do, then the second player (our Judge in this scenario) does the same stating what the game world wishes to do to the player. We then flip a coin to see who gets their way. Tails the goblins take your gold, heads you kill them all.

This primitive RPG could perhaps produce some interesting stories, but completely fails to deliver on “game” element. There are no meaningful strategic choices to make, the left and right boundaries of what’s possible within the game are completely nonexistent. Calvinball.

Complicated How’s and Why’s

Rulebooks are prescriptive. By adding more resolution of detail and more process to an area of the game you are dictating its importance to players. To paraphrase the great Mr. Gygax, it would easily be possible to create an infinitely complex series of rolls to simulate an exchange of sword blows, but it really wouldn’t be worth it. Because the minutiae of swordplay is not as interesting as the holistic experience of adventuring through a fantasy world, an experience that swordplay is but a single small portion of, and as such is not worth the time and mental bandwidth to simulate.

The attack roll is a microcosm of the “everything is a 50/50” paradigm. Our attack either causes damage, or it does not. The fact that we employed a fools guard to lure the orc into a lunge before penetrating his exposed throat with the tip of our rapier is not important or worth simulating it is abstracted behind a probability.

It’s increasingly becoming my opinion that the “tactical” layer of discrete, man to man, grid based TTRPG combat, which is more important than ever in modern game design, is similarly unimportant and should be abstracted behind a roll.

The video-gamification of TTRPGs

In the video game industry an RPG is a game where you equip different swords to get a higher crit chance. The purpose of this was to provide a strategic decision making layer on top of whatever is required to actually execute gameplay, whether that be some sort of hack and slash or a shooter or whatever. Turn based games embrace strategic layers on top of strategic layers with no “action” layer to interact with underneath.

The problem with this is that any numerically derived statistic system can, and will, be solved. There does exist a combination of options that is the strongest, or is tied for the strongest, in a given situation. Choosing not to use the strongest option is self imposed “role play”. We have run aground of the power gaming debate.

One of the members of UltimACKS plays Everquest 2. There are elaborate spreadsheets that have been constructed to mathematically determine whether or not a piece of gear will increase a character’s durability or damage. Despite the incredible plurality of statistical decision making options within the game’s ecosystem, it has been solved. What gear to use is not really a choice.

Where, then, is the meat and potatoes of actually playing these games? That is the role of execution and randomness. These elements serve as flies in the ointment of the otherwise deterministic strategic systems. If two characters with identical setups in Everquest fight the same monster they will perform slightly differently; because the players will choose different spells at different times and one character will roll more crits than the other and so on.

In terms of TTRPG, two first level fighters in first edition D&D with the same attributes are completely evenly matched. If we give them the same amount of gold to equip themselves but allow them to spend it freely before placing them in an arena to fight to the death, 9 times out of 10 the first fighter to roll a decent attack roll will win. In the context of an actual campaign there are myriad strategic layers above the tactical layer involving a one on one duel to the death, but within this tactical layer outcomes are broadly determined by the roll of the d20.

The intrigue of the game is in how you move through the game world. Take these two first level fighters and place them into different parties of players within the same campaign, starting in the same city. Allow these hypothetical parties to adventure for 3 months. One (or both) of the fighters will probably be dead, the other will be higher than level one. The fighter who is able to come out on top in this comparison represents a truly skilled player. Arriving unharmed and greater in level after 3 months of campaigning is the culmination of many different types of game play and decision making which has played out over 10 or more sessions. Only a portion of that session time was occupied by tactical combat scenarios. In the same fashion as a successful attack roll represents the culmination of many smaller and less important abstracted actions including feints, footwork, parries, lunges, and swings which we choose to ignore on an individual level.

When considered as part of the larger whole of the game, I am increasingly skeptical of what granular combat scenarios actually add to the chassis of an RPG. Simply put; I think tactics are a crock of shit. Our men are going to line up and prepare to stand to the charge and our archers will loose a volley as the goblins approach. What else are they going to do?

Video games must rely on these dense statistical and strategic layers because they cannot by their nature scale to the scope of a pen and paper game.

Off to the races

In a TTRPG what’s compelling about a combat scenario are the stakes, and the opportunity to beat the odds. This is often obfuscated behind the discrete details, but rolling that big swing you need to slay the ogre is what’s thrilling. Not so much making sure you’re in the proper 5ft square to qualify as flanking.

Where both video games and RPGs with fancy combat systems lose me is when I realize that as always we are participating in a race to the bottom. There is a solution buried in this system and sooner or later someone will find it. This landscape of strategic choice and consequence only exists as a product of my own ignorance of it’s solution. Once it’s discovered the only question which remains is can I get the dice rolls I need to win or not.

If you’ve been on twitter recently, you may have seen that horse game. Umamusume. As a Gen Z aristocrat of the soul and appreciator of our swift equine friends, I have partaken. I have seen a number of complaints online about how much randomness is involved in the outcome of the races. If the horse with the best odds won every race I don’t think horse racing would be very popular. Similarly, if the horse with the best stat total and the most skills won every race in the game I don’t think the game would be very compelling to play either. Its the pursuit of that shadow of a chance that is compelling to the human soul, being able to say “I did what everyone else thought I could not”.

Whether routing the goblin warband consists of one or two rolls with a bevy of modifiers or a 2 hour grid based battle what will be compelling is realizing you have to roll a 14 or the mage bites it. Just like taking down the raid boss in Everquest may come down to the group getting enough crits. Ultimately it’s not all the strategic levers we seek to control around the action, but the elements of the game we cannot control that are exciting. In a video game, the mage dying might be a game over. A path that cannot be walked. The brilliant truth of a TTRPG is that mage dying could mean anything. Each outcome is blazing a yet unseen narrative. As for this old groaner, just knowing whether or not we’re able to slay the dragon is good enough. The interesting part is spending his gold anyhow.

This article got a little off the rails but I hope you got something interesting out my stream of consciousness rantings. I realize the opinion that RPGs don’t need discrete combat systems is more than slightly incendiary, and I’m not saying that’s necessarily the case. Sometimes I just wonder if we miss the forest for the trees as gamers when we spend so much time rolling to hit, when its ultimately how that outcome factors in to the broader game that is important. The faster we get this combat resolved the faster something else can happen. TUNIC and all that.

Recently the Silver Spears pulled off what may be the heist of the century. While poking through a wererat infested cellar in the prefectural capital (never mind what’s afoot there) they came across a strange man and a strange map. The man was Bodil, and he spoke in a curious way. A werewolf bound to good behavior by a Quest spell, he was mandated to make sure the right people found whatever was to be found wherever the map led. He informed them they were “not the ones” but offered to take them there anyways.

The map would lead to the Sanctum of Zelicus Tarcalus, one of the greatest magicians of imperial history. Killed hundreds of years ago at his sanctum by dragons during the Dragon War (these things happen) he was renowned as the greatest human enchanter to have ever lived. Needless to say the party was up for it.

In reality, Bodil and his map were a randomly placed treasure map for the biggest treasure type in the book, R. I had prepared this whole island after determining the gang would likely discover the map. To make a very long story short my monsters blew it and now we have 4 wish scrolls in circulation. These things happen.

Lions, Hyenas, and Demons

The Sanctum was out to sea some distance, so a boat was in order. After 2 weeks or so of sailing the map proved reliable, the Sanctum was at hand. Something was amiss, however. A pair of black boats had beaten them to the punch, an entire village of gnolls (and presumably their nefarious leader) were encamped on the far side of the island. Bodil had warned them that if he was able to acquire the location, others may have as well.

The real challenge of the sanctum was overcoming the resident Merid (the lover of the late Tarcalus, being level 14 has its perks). While she wasn’t hostile she had no intention of letting anyone make off with the mage’s treasures. Additionally, a pair of lammasu had come to the sanctum to protect its loot from the forces of chaos and mighty as they were they had no chance against such a large beastman force.

Picking through the ruined and poorly protected outbuildings the party managed to collect a few items. From the ruined library they purloined a scroll of inferno. After a narrowly successful negotiation with a pair of frost salamanders, the sanctum was build on a well of elemental water you see, they acquired a pair of slippers that allow the wearer to fly through the sky. Finally, they acquired a ring of invisibility from a ruined house. If you’re beginning to understand where this is headed, congratulations you are smarter than I am.

Fate is a very real part of roleplaying games. What mud-core misery peddlers and heroic fantasy theater kids forget is that the double edged sword of fortune cuts both ways and if you let it hew as it will things even out in the end. I placed the treasure in this sanctum with some intentionality, but the treasure present was determined randomly. It just so happened that three of the items outside the Merid’s vault could be combined to allow a stealth inferno airstrike on the beastmen’s boats moored offshore.

As the peanut gallery realized the opportunity they had I began to pick through the TO&E of my hideous horrors to see if anyone over there had any means of detecting invisible beings. Being that I had already randomly rolled out their treasure and magic items I knew exactly what they were working with. Of course, they didn’t have anything that would allow them to detect the Darkblade as he whisked across the water, invisible, to set fire to their stupid boats. Considering that the boats were anchored with only a skeleton crew aboard they would be completely helpless to dash the fires even if they survived themselves.

As if that wasn’t enough, my “Random NPC location” matrix had determined that the Rakshasa in charge of the operation was brooding in his cabin aboard one of the vessels, which would also provide the darkblade the opportunity to unleash the disintegration beam of his ancient and evil magic sword (the NIGHTblade) only for the Rakshasa to fail his very easy death saving throw and get turned to ash like the dreadful chump he was.

In one evening the gnolls lost 1 of their 2 vessels (half of them are now stuck on this island) and their leader, for the cost of a single inferno scroll. Rolling for morale the next day, some of the gnolls had given up other turned on each other. In the end the gnolls would launch a suicidal attack on the sanctum to kill off enough that the cowardly survivors could use the remaining boat to leave.

The majority of the party struck out attempting to influence the Marid, until Myrddin, a random 3rd level mage henchman, managed to roll boxcars. Perhaps he reminded her of the late Tarcalus. Regardless, the party managed to loot the contents of the vault numerous magic items were had and they all gave three cheers and sang around the campfire.

Easy come, easy go

As the great Blues Traveler once said, “The mountains win again”. In this case the mountains are my clever and duplicitous campaign NPCs. If the party made a “mistake” on this adventure it was their choice to send their boat back with instructions to return in one month. Hirelings are not henchmen, and they are not PCs. They are awed and horrified by magical and supernatural occurrences. The boat left, and never came back. The crew figured the party had either died or wouldn’t be able to come knocking any time soon so they took the money and ditched. Heading back to the mystical island ruled by powerful magic creatures was not in the cards.

Fortunately for the party, they had allies (and enemies) in Marentium who organized another vessel to return. This would delay the party almost thirty days, plenty of time for rumors to spread about what the silver spears had found. Well paid sailors have loose lips, and it had already been established that the local syndicate was in league with a political conspiracy the party had previously run aground of.

Through a series of processes, hijinks rolls, senate votes and so on I had determined that the conspiratorial party in the senate would successfully move to have the party branded terrorists if they were unwilling to surrender the doubtlessly powerful magic artefacts they recovered from the legendary sanctum of Tarcalus (Various senators and their henchmen were able to pass loremastery rolls to verify the existence and value of the sanctum). All this would culminate in an encounter on the docks when the party finally returned, with two palatines and twice as many legates along with assorted henchmen, confronted and attempted to arrest our heroes upon their return. Needless to say they won’t give up their Staff of the Archmage and wish scrolls to such villains, but their next move will be the subject of another chronicle.

The point of explicating so deeply how I came to abduce this turn of fate is to show that I didn’t have to contrive a way to “balance out” their great fortune on the sanctum the flow of the campaign provided a consequence all on its own. The senate vote could have failed, or the syndicate could have received bad intelligence about where the party was. The Rakshasa could have survived his disintegration. The dice will push and pull the campaign in various ways if the infrastructure is there. This means factions with agendas, names and addresses. Other boring pieces of homework that no one wants to do before beginning a campaign. ACKS provides such a robust set of campaign rules that if you provide the pieces you will find that manipulating them, fairly, is delightfully easy. The mountains win again.

Situated in the southern portion of Moritea, an imperial province which insulates the empire from the arid uncharted southern regions of the continent, the small city of Marentium serves as a hub for trade and culture for an otherwise rural region of the world. When the might of the empire was marshalled in the west two years prior, a company of experienced adventurers living here answered the call and never returned. On the council of his advisors, Prefect Varrus dispatches letters across the country, addressed to friends, heirs, relations, and acquaintances of the ill-fated company; “Come and take up mantle, let the province know your name.”

The Silver Spears

You’ll forgive the lore-dump, but I felt it was necessary to give some context for what’s going on. Needless to say, the initial batch of player characters were recipients of the Prefect’s letter though only three of those characters still live. As you may remember from the first UltimACKS post, this campaign has a closed table of 6 players and is using a conventional stop-time structure (with careful timekeeping of course). You may also remember the purpose of the campaign was to “reach level 14 or die trying” and as of this past weekend we are officially one third of the way there…

The party decided to organize themselves into a guild, now known as the Silver Spears, and take over as the itinerant adventurer’s guild in Marentium at the start of the campaign. Though they’ve had some setbacks and losses, they are fairly well established now with a base of operations and members as high as level 5. I figure a short Dramatis Personae for the campaign is in order.

Guild Members (Player Characters)

Dogin (Explorer, 5th level) - An original member who often serves as leader and tactician, after Orton was eaten by a dragon. A somewhat taciturn and rugged man, known for his quick reflexes and rugged durability. Often found in the thick of the melee, despite his class. A Moritean local.

Solonius Bonus (Venturer, 4th Level) - “Good Solonius”. An original member, not the greatest in a fight but he has managed to survive great danger on multiple occasions. Charismatic and of sunny disposition, he often handles the guild’s matters or serves as a representative in settlements. Hails from the island city-state of Sula, known for its wealthy and corpulent merchants.

“Darkblade” Wendell (Elven Nightblade, 4th level) - A more recent addition to the guild that has made a big influence. Possessed of little charisma, Wendell is a decidedly subtle elf. He has a proclivity for cryptic expressions but has proven himself loyal to his companions, risking his own life to save them more than once. Recently, he has slain a prolific agent of chaos and recovered an ancient and powerful weapon, the Nightblade, though this has perhaps made him an object of suspicion from his peers. Hails from the elven kingdoms of Cuhlainn north of the sea.

Lloyd (Fighter, 4th level) - A farmer’s son from Compea, a province east of Moritea, he joined the guild after the death of his brother. A skilled archer and consummate fighter, he has proven himself since his arrival. Strong and agile in equal, his future in the guild seems bright.

“Sigilo” (Ruinguard, 3rd level) - A hulking figure with dusky features, skilled in both arms and magic. A source of some suspicion from his peers, he hails from Ramidiya far to the east. Accompanied by a strange familiar, a hairless cat, he keeps to himself. He has proven himself in battle, but only time will tell if the circumstance of his birth will catch up with him.

Guild Members (Henchmen and Hirelings)

Anicus (Crusader, 4th level) - An original member, Anicus serves Nereia goddess of the sea and good fortune. It is perhaps then no surprise he’s managed to survive the tribulations of the guild thus far, providing divine magic to bolster his companions. (Note: one of the 6 original players had to basically bow out of the campaign for personal reasons, Anicus was originally a player character.)

Meteros (Thief, 2nd level) - The darkblade’s “apprentice”. Hired by the guild to open locked doors and look for traps, he is not a typical thief. Disciplined and professional, he learned his art from working as a locksmith’s apprentice as a youth. The darkblade discovered him working in a local syndicate, desperate to work for a better cause, Meteros joined up despite Wendell’s unsettling atmosphere. Notable for incredible constitution, and only decent dexterity…

Early Reflections

UltimACKS has a fairly fleshed out setting. I spent a considerable amount of time writing it, and I have found it useful. It’s not groundbreaking, but it wasn’t supposed to be, what’s important is that it’s there.

RPGs are inevitably improvisational, as Judges and players we are constantly put in positions where we have to improvise and abduce. The useful effect of knowing what the people across the sea are like is that when it comes time to invent an NPC off the cuff I already know what a foreigner to the empire is like. I have already considered how they look, what sort of names they have, and how they act. Not only does this make abduction easier, but it also makes it more consistent. Even a handful of months into the campaign there have been plenty of incidents where providing consistent details about the world, even in improvisational moments, has allowed the players to draw their own conclusions (right and wrong) about thing going on in the gameworld, and I think that’s a huge success. Put together, my “lore” documents on the gameworld are more than 10,000 words long. My players haven’t seen them, and they probably never will, but I don’t regret writing them. If your campaign really represents a multiple year investment of your, and your friend’s time, I think that’s a small amount of preparation really.

As always, the food and drink of a roleplaying campaign is what the players actually achieve and not whatever artifice the judge constructs around them. Players will come to care about things that are a tangible part of their adventures. Early in the campaign the party caught wind of some prophecies, which were being suffered as nightmares by local priests. The visions were depictions of typical evil punctuated with a name, “Zimudar”. Later, while investigating an ancient ruin on the eastern reaches of the region Anicus (who has the prophecy proficiency) received a dream regarding a women, an agent of chaos, searching for something dark and dangerous in the depths of the very ruin they were delving at the time. They thought nothing really of these visions at the time, maybe they meant something or maybe they were just noise.

Recently, while the party was pursuing some other adventure in a nearby settlement they received word that the lands near the ruin were turning ill. Livestock and local animals driven mad, plants and crops turning brown and withering. They return and delve to the deepest reaches, only to discover that there was, in fact, a woman who had in fact recovered something dark and dangerous. In some campaigns, this series of events may have represented some sort of chicken and egg scenario wherein the deepest level of that ruin contained nothing at all until the vision was granted. A careful display of smoke and mirrors. Part of the UltimACKS experiment is the fact that it was not an abduction at all. The timeline on which the land took ill was defined before the campaign even began. The vision was granted as a piece of legitimate intelligence about what was going on in the region, through magical means. My players responded to this really well, there was a great moment where one of them even recognized their opponent from the vision (which had been given out weeks and weeks ago by then). The party is now concerned that this Zimudar figure may be real after all, and I can’t help but anticipate the upcoming dates on my campaign calendar. The forces of chaos operate on their own initiative. They’ll make it to level 14, or die trying.

The “stop-time” experience

I don’t think I’ve missed 1:1 time. The experiment continues. One positive I have noted is the party is moving much more efficiently. Details tend to fall through the cracks and characters tend to waste more time when we’re not resolving actions together in sessions. Characters still go off on their own from time to when it makes sense, but overall the guild feels like it has concrete goals and direction. How much of this is due to the fact that everything is being resolved “in-person” during weekly sessions and how much can be attributed to time not being 1:1 is not clear. Ironically, the campaign date and the current day are almost the same right now, the last session began literally on the same day. Perhaps 1:1 is inevitable.

The UltimACKS chronicles

I know I just posted the other week that I wasn’t going to be doing session reports, but perhaps this format could work. Every so often I’ll make a post which contains some details about what’s actually happening in the campaign combined with some reflections about campaigning in general, which I find much easier to write about. If people like this format I will try to keep it up.

The past few months have been rather busy, I have increased my daily exercise significantly and other daily duties have ramped up. Much of my free time has been devoted to building a massive and detailed Mordheim board from scratch. UltimACKS had some scheduling road bumps but the campaign continues. Personally, I find session reports a pain to read and write so I will not be posting until something truly important happens (the players are closer to one such opportunity than they believe).

More relevantly to substack, I have been carefully contributing to yet another notebook game which I believe has a lot of potential. Experience tells me that opening the lid on these things too early has a way of dispersing their energy so I won’t say much now. It is partially an evolution of my thoughts about magic-users which I have documented here on the stack, but it also incorporates some other concepts. I feel very strongly about it’s core vision, and I think it’s a unique game the deserves to exist. To speak very generally, it is a fantasy game which sees players taking on a role that is not that of the “adventurer” but instead something different with more specific responsibilities and goals. It has an original setting which will be pretty closely tied to how the game operates. If that sounds at all interesting than stick around, I’m sure I’ll be posting on it in more detail in coming months perhaps closer to the holidays.

Some context: progression and incentives

It has been a while since “you can win at TTRPGs” was a topical controversy but its still a topic the hobby is divided on. The objectives players pursue (typically increased power or agency, averting negative outcomes) can be broadly defined as incentives. Sure, we have all gathered here to play the game and have a fun time but what are we actually incentivized to accomplish today?

Traditionally in Dungeons and Dragons experience was the primary incentive and it was earned from the game world, either in the form of gold pieces (gp for exp) or from defeating monsters. Modern wisdom largely eschews those systems for milestone leveling, wherein certain tasks are given an experience value by the DM, or even “vibe” leveling wherein the DM basically decides where a new level is earned. I promise the latter is more common than you think. Though, I would argue that the theoretical divide between milestone and downright arbitrary leveling is smaller than you’d think and explains the prevalence of vibe leveling.

Progression systems which cannot be derived objectively are essentially false. Under milestone leveling the incentive of the players is to accomplish milestones, ostensibly. While that in and of itself may seem objective enough the way those milestones are determined presents an epistemological problem, how do we know the milestones are objective? Whether the DM or the players, or even the author of the module or adventure wrote the milestones someone somewhere had to decide how important they believe each milestone is relative to each other. Further, and even more importantly, the range of actions deemed valuable in the game is explicitly limited and necessarily obscure. In practice, the implicit incentive of milestone leveling and the obvious incentive of vibe leveling is appeasing the narrative and by extension the DM or pre-written adventure in play. Nothing besides the “narrative” (in this context interchangeable with the DM) can assess the success of the players in the game’s terms (levels, gaining power).

Therefore, the actual difference between milestone leveling and arbitrary leveling is whether or not the DM is considering the nature of his milestones carefully enough. When we apply more rigor to the criteria of a milestone, typically the magnitude of the adventuring challenge or the power of the relevant antagonist, we quickly approach an inflection point where we are no longer using “milestone” leveling at all. Instead of awarding a 1000 experience milestone for defeating the undead horde if we simply determine how much experience the liche should be worth we can instead rely on that notion and allow the players to know that threats like that are worth a certain reward. Congratulations we’ve reinvented the wheel. Instead of all this, we can simply accept that treasure is a practical material manifestation of power and by taking it from another you are stealing that power. Thus we arrive at gp for exp, a practical abstraction that seizes the measure of in-game success from the hands of the narrative and lays them bare for players to pursue in any way they desire. A fundamental aspect of fantasy role playing adventure games.

So what do magicians want?

Now that we have established the importance of an objective progression system that is derived from the reality of the game world, we can investigate what sort of incentives suit magic-users best.

Dungeons and Dragons uses the plunder of wealth as a flexible catch-all for the various character archetypes playable within the game. If we were to isolate and extract any one class from the milieu, its possible we could integrate some of the “realistic” trappings of progression without inviting any “non-game boredom”.

Magic user is a multifaceted archetype distilled from a host of different characters and stories. As D&D presents the entire canon of “adventurers” of which the magic user is just one type, this project is concerned with the entire canon of “magic users”. From a bearded hermit cloistered in his tower to a sword swinging battle mage and everything in between, I present the LORE model of incentives: Loot, Organisms, Reagents, and Enlightenment.

The Faustian Nature of Magic

Power in and of itself is not included in the LORE model, but I feel the need to comment on it. Practicing magic can be seen as inherently Faustian, the practitioner sacrificing some part of his soul or being to gain power over the natural order. In this way, power looms above LORE as an implicit aspect of each of the four constituent parts. Magicians are intrinsically in the pursuit of power, and LORE represents the different ways it can be acquired which in turn satisfies the meta-physics of accumulating experience points and levels.

The LORE Model

LORE models the four primary material incentives for magic users in my hypothetical wizarding RPG. As with GP for EXP players would earn experience points and gain levels for acquiring LORE from the game world.

While acquiring LORE grants experience points, we must establish why players should seek it. In D&D gold purchases castles, troops, and magic items in addition to providing experience. Simply telling players that LORE is the object of the game is not enough to foster role playing at the table.

Loot

Essentially gold, gems, and wealth. This concept shouldn’t require much explanation. While “loot” can be used as a verb to represent simply acquiring pretty much anything, for our purposes it refers to monetary wealth primarily in the form of precious metals and gemstones (though both could also be a Reagent under the right circumstances).

Loot would play a role in all other aspects of the game. It can be exchanged for O, R and E in limited amounts by purchasing them. Additionally it could bankroll other axes of power such as hirelings, land, forts, weapons, so on. Loot would also enable luxury spending that could shore up the roleplaying fantasy of being a powerful magician (gold embroidered robes and so on). Really, the manifold things gold is sunk into in most games would still apply, this is not new territory.

Organisms

Magic is nothing if not unnatural. Whether it be conjuring energy or matter from thin air, changing lead into gold, or even conquering death itself. As such, magicians of any alignment or sensibility have something in common with monsters and other fantastic creatures. We see this echoed across many stories. In The Scarlet Citadel Conan is aided by a wizard named Pelias, who summons a great beast from the heavens to spirit Conan on his way. In the same story, Pelias takes form of a bird himself. Indeed, a magician ought to be able to gain power from and over beasts, monsters, and fey creatures.

Gaining the service of a magical creature or monster either through a spell designed to bind their will or a pact fairly (or perhaps, unfairly) struck would be worth experience. Such creatures could perhaps be harvested or cultivated for Reagents or Loot. They could also be direct manifestations of Power, the vile warlock looses his black dragon on the innocent village or perhaps the white wizard’s Pegasus rescues an innocent from peril. An army of orcs hypnotized by magic marches against a sorcerer’s foes, or perhaps a werewolf stalks meddlesome adventurers in the nearby woods for its master.

Reagents

In the delightful film Excalibur there is a scene where Nicol Williams’ Merlin quizzes Morgan Le Fay on various substances to test her wisdom. Many minerals and plants, roots and glands, organs and sands are quite valuable to a wise magician and otherwise worthless to a common person. Their value lies in their latent magical or supernatural properties only accessible through alchemy or study. This quality separates them from Loot, as they hold value only to other magicians.

Collecting and using rare reagents useful in the creation of magic items, potions, draughts, and spells would be worth experience. These items could be traded to other magicians in exchange for Loot, or leveraged to create Power for oneself through alchemy and magical engineering. For example, creating a robe inured to flame through the application of powdered dragon horn, or fermenting a healing brew from the mucous of a black slime.

Enlightenment

Man has always sought enlightenment, whether to know himself or the mysteries of the world around him. Magicians seek knowledge of magic, mostly. Enlightenment takes two forms, wisdom earned from applying what is already known and the uncovering of new knowledge in the form of dust covered tomes and withered scrolls of course.

Using magic and discovering magical knowledge from other magicians would both be worth experience. This could take the form of combat, where magic is used to harm others and defend the practitioner. It could also take the form of research and development of new spells or techniques. A treatise on the minutae of teleportation uncovered from a (now disturbed) tomb would also be worth experience. Enlightenment provides Power directly by enabling a magician to use grander and more varied magic. A wizard versed in illusion magic could con local merchants into accepting illusory gold, or one skilled in enchantment could perhaps enthrall local nobles to consolidate political power.

Wrapping up

It is not in the scope of this article to speculate or plan the specifics of how any mechanics or systems will actually work, but rather to show the underlying framework of how the game would motivate players to act in the open ended game world. In a proper RPG players should be steering the campaign in the direction they want, because of this it is of utmost importance that the game itself can reward behaviors conducive to the fiction of the game without the DM being forced to employ heavy handed incentives like milestone experience.

As always, more to come and thank you for reading. Now, Begone! I must ponder my orb…

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Timekeeping or: How I learned to stop worrying and love Alex Macris

I have always considered myself as a BROSR adjacent. For the unaware, the BROSR is a community of TTRPG aficionados on X. I was first exposed to their ideas years ago, and learning about first edition D&D and 1:1 time completely changed my perspective on gaming and frankly restored my passion for tabletop RPGs. I would not be playing ACKS today if not for them.

However, there comes a day when every fledgling must fly the nest. My previous ACKS campaigns have employed 1:1 time or very similar timekeeping solutions. The largest change I have made for UltimACKS is actually moving back to “stop-time” timekeeping with time moving as required in session time. Activities occurring between adventures are being resolved at the table. Such heresy!

This is no spiteful repudiation or theory crafted nitpick, I simply don’t believe ACKS is at its best in 1:1 time. ACKS is not D&D, it is its own game with its own tradition and “Appendix N”. It is a simulationist game with its own levers and mechanics at play, attempting to apply Gygaxian (or post-Gygaxian) wisdom to it is simply inappropriate.

Recently in the Autarch discord, conversations about 1:1 living campaigns in ACKS have been going on. I contributed the following from my own experience.

“1:1 time with out of session downtime can get very messy for ACKS in my experience and I'm not sure its the way forward without the players submitting to substantial abstraction. We ran into a few different "problems" and tried a few different "solutions" at various points in the campaign. As a few people have pointed out ACKS is not really built to handle out of session downtime and my players began to develop a strained relationship with it.

People would worry about bogging down the campaign with lengthy actions like memorizing spells or mercantile expeditions, and these actions would cascade into other players filling their downtime with actions they wouldn't otherwise be taking if they weren't having to wait on a mage. This could create huge backlogs of work for the judge from time to time because communicating outside of session was less efficient than everyone deciding how they wanted to fill a given week of time in session.

Different players also reacted to that environment in different ways. Certain players would end up spending inordinate amounts of time pursuing bizarre and specific downtime endeavors largely because ACKS gives them alot of latitude to work with there. Guild buyouts and political action. That sort of thing works fine when the party is pursing it as a unified goal but you end with individuals pursuing that sort of thing on their own and it gets tedious.”

Macris himself responded to this post saying, “This makes sense. ACKS doesn't really consider "downtime" as downtime - it's just "campaign activities". In my own games we usually resolve that stuff at the table!” which was the push I needed to really complete my own conclusion on the subject.

There is a lot of wisdom to glean from using 1:1 time and much of it still holds water outside the context of timekeeping. 1:1 introduces time as a resource, and it allows asymmetries to emerge in the campaign. It broadens the scope of your game beyond one party and one group of adventurers. ACKS has many of these assumptions and concepts built in to the chassis of the rules. It present a huge array of campaign actions with well enumerated timetables and opportunity costs. Time becomes a resource by virtue of the simulation regardless of whether or not time is passing between sessions in real life. There are so many ways to interface with the political and economic aspects of the campaign world that the campaign will contextualize the party as a constituent part of an independent world regardless of how many parties or tables your campaign has running at a given time. The trade off for all this granularity is Judge and rules overhead, which is greater than something like AD&D. Attempting to ignore the vagaries of the economy or the world simulation in exchange for the the bandwidth to run 1:1 open tables feels like putting a square peg in a round hole. Nevertheless, my experience with that style of play continues to inform me as a Judge as to what sort of things should and shouldn’t be happening in the campaign and I am more confident than ever that I am prepared to run a truly legendary campaign.

I know articles have been inconsistent on here, but there is more to come on UltimACKS. After one session, there is not much to say yet but things are looking quite promising. As always, thank you for reading.

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Anything can happen in the outer-rim

Disney has been a disaster for Star Wars. This is not the topic of this post and I will not dwell on it. The only relevance this bears this article is begging the question; what do we include in a campaign setting for a SW D6 campaign? I am not afraid to say that I am a prequel apologist and a George Lucas appreciator. That being said, for this campaign we elected to move in the same space the writers of the rule book we were using did. Our campaign was not only Disney agnostic it was prequel agnostic.

It was set in 15 ABY (After Battle of Yavin for the uninitiated) which is 11 years after the events of Return of the Jedi. Any “canon” events, extended universe or Disney, that transpired in those 11 years were examined and largely ignored. Instead the situation was as follows, “The Empire has fallen, the core worlds are conquered and exiled Moffs consolidate power as petty warlords in the mid and outer rim. Borsk Fey’lya is head of state for the New Republic.” This would serve as the basis for our new Extended Universe, the stories wrought here would be our own. No assumptions were made about the clone wars or any other events outside of what had been shown in theaters in 1987.

This choice helped to ground the campaign in the actual context of the rules we were using and more importantly reinvigorated the aesthetic and narrative circumstance of Star Wars as a story. Star Wars is about good versus evil. The triumph of this campaign was that it created a compelling Star Wars story with no planning or linear game play.

It should go without saying for followers of this substack by now that we do not play “conventional” games and we do not run “narrative” campaigns. The Star Wars campaign began as a scenario based sandbox. We were given some information on the Inchon system, an outer rim crime den run by Rodians, and turned loose as any sort of character we wanted to be. We chose to be Bounty Hunters.

Order from Chaos

RPGs are not tool sets, they are technology designed to recreate the stories they are inspired by. The lesson we learned from this campaign is that when the rules are discharged properly and the players are engaging with the setting correctly these stories will arise on their own organically, and that the campaign shouldn’t shy away from that. Player agency is a means to an end, it is good because it allows players to spin their own narratives. There is a terminology problem in the TTRPG space regarding “narrative”.

A compelling campaign is a series of game sessions with a compelling narrative. The trouble is determining what techniques can be used to arrive at that outcome. Participation from the players in the form of agency is crucial, and downplaying that aspect is just one of many pitfalls to avoid when mastering RPGs. Without the proper direction unlimited player agency leads both into chaos and divergence which reaches a sort of critical mass where it completely unravels the campaign.

The role of the game system itself is to provide that direction. Games with a weak or nonexistent sense of self, lacking a proper “Appendix N”, self destruct for lack of direction unless one is provided artificially in the form of a mono-party, game-master lead campaign structure. The ability of a game to direct a player’s agency towards behaviors that create both convergence with other characters and interesting roleplaying choices is its prime quality and RPGs can be largely judged by that metric.

A prime example of a rule that is effective for its ability to influence player agency is Gold for Experience. Players can of course take any course of action they wish, but this rule informs them that acquiring gold is in their best interest. The fact that gold is protected by monsters forms the player’s assumptions about what sort of characters are desirable. Being a fighter is good because fighters can slay orcs and steal their things. These are simple examples but they are fundamental to the structure of the game. These tenets are so powerful in fact that simply placing a huge hoard of gold behind some threat is enough to power an entire AD&D campaign.

The Darkside is a pathway to roleplay that some would consider to be… unnatural….

Star Wars does not use GP for XP. Luke does not become a jedi by uncovering some trove of gold coins. Star Wars is not D&D. Star Wars uses the force.

The first few sessions you play in any TTRPG are sort of like the honeymoon phase. Rolling to blast a rodian with my DL-44 was great fun for the first few sessions. Bounty hunting tends to play out the same way after a while, and being a space rogue is only one part of the Star Wars tapestry. We were struggling to find high adventure after a few high paying bounties, but that was when the visions started.

The referee had secretly rolled to see if any of our characters were force sensitive before the campaign began. Being a force sensitive in SW D6 is a bit of mixed bag, on one hand you can accumulate more force points (use these grab a big bonus for an important roll) but on the other you gain Dark Side points for cowardice and evil. Earn too many and you are to surrender your character sheet to the referee and become a villain.

As it would happen, my character was indeed force sensitive and was experiencing vivid dreams and unease of the soul due to his rapidly accumulating darkside points. My days of immoral bounty hunting were over. To abridge the campaign, I ended up leading a rogues gallery of other PCs on a number of foolhardy crusades which culminated in the destruction of a criminal WMD and a showdown with a infamous mercenary. We cut a morally upstanding, selfless, and very dangerous swath through the outer-rim because the force demanded we do so, and not the referee.

Character Grading Strikes Back

Credits are nice to have, but they won’t level you up. SW D6 has no classes or levels instead your character is essentially a collection of skills, which are improved between sessions by spending Character Points. How character points are awarded and in what quantity are left up to the referee’s judgement, though some guidelines are provided.

When we first investigated this system, I had my doubts about allowing character progression to be entirely ref fiat. Having actually played, I am a believer. How characters should progress in Star Wars is a hard thing to grasp. Human beings improve at things through experience and hard work, but how should that be represented within the context of an RPG?

Characters in AD&D earn experience for gold pieces and slaying monsters because those are the metrics that define the size of characters legend within the sorts of stories D&D is inspired by. Star Wars was always less materialistic. “Take care of yourself Han, I guess that’s what you’re good at.”

Characters in AD&D are also subject to penalty for poor roleplay, the much maligned character grading rules. Awarding experience by judge fiat is essentially the same mechanism inverted, good roleplay earns character points and allows you to improve your character. Much like gold for experience guides players to seek treasure, character points for adventure encourages players to emulate the heroes and rogues of star wars. Finally, a system where the ref is free to reward the good players and ignore the bad ones. Han earns character points for episode 4 because he comes back to save Luke and not because he made 30 billion credits, player characters should be treated the same. This system prioritizes convergence and honest roleplaying as the primary metric for player success. Investigating this paradigm in contrast to a more conventional reward structure was extremely satisfying for our club.

So its a story game?

It is very easy to construe the game presented by SW D6 as a “story game” or whatever other D&D 5e stand-in pejorative because of the way character and force points work. These mechanics are not intrinsically linked to the trappings of conventional play, however. The defining characteristic of conventional play is the lack of real player agency. This comes in various forms whether it be a DM constructed narrative or the mono-party or stop time. By leveraging the mechanics of SW D6 players can use their agency to organically construct campaign narratives in the style of Star Wars, and the game is fully compatible with 1:1 timekeeping, Braunstein, and multi-table games.

Narrative gaming is the fully evolved form of roleplaying. A tradition of play where the fiction of the game empowers players to explore the source material to its fullest and interact with each other in entirely unrestricted and unpredictable ways. The rules serve to pass objective judgement on the quality of the players and their characters, and mandate the reality of campaign.

While simple in principle, currents of nuance lurk below the surface of this arrangement. Each point is dynamic in its demands and scope. Changes made to satisfy one often disturb another and can cascade into an impasse that can in turn precipitate an entire reconstruction of the project.

The Simulation

Truthfully, my time spent in Autarch’s ACKS has opened my mind greatly to the importance of simulationism. It has been my experience that a game system with an internally consistent world simulation provides two primary benefits. Firstly, it creates an environment where players can grasp an immediately evident “common sense” and make assumptions about how the world will operate using only information found within the rulebook and not a ceaseless deluge of questions directed at the judge. When all the relevant mechanisms of a fictive world and its inhabitants are laid bare, the options available to characters operating within it become complete and apparent. Secondly, simulationism can enforce a certain equity within the proceedings of a game. The judge should seek to hand down the shared imaginative reality of the game world. While there will always be portions of the experience that are entirely in the hands of the judge or referee, a game system should work to make the vast majority of interactions dictated by internally consistent logic and not fiat.

The concern of simulation is satisfied by ensuring no rule, mechanism, or aesthetic choice invalidates some logical precept of how the setting implied by the systems rules works. An example of a simulationist concern could be setting the price of a healing potion at double the weekly wages of a peasant without proliferating such potions across treasure tables widely. Surely something so inexpensive must be very commonplace. Simulationist concerns can often be satisfied in reaction to changes made elsewhere. It is easiest to think in terms of consequence. If something is so, how does that impact life in the game world?

The Game

Sitting down to play in a session should be enjoyable. No amount of esoteric design philosophy or inspired aesthetic choices can save a system that is fundamentally unbalanced and unintuitive to play. That said, many modern systems sacrifice too much at the altar of balance and too much concern for gameplay can cause a system to become sanitized and filed down. Such a system becomes an efficient machine that simply provides certain desired outputs with the soulless precision of clockwork.

The system should endeavor to provide sensible risk and reward structures that allow players to make hard decisions which will determine whether they win or lose. Obviously that is a reductive perspective of something that in practice is expansive and interconnected. Generally, the concern of the Game can be satisfied by evaluating rules from the player’s perspective. If a given option whether it be equipment, tactics, strategy, magic, or whatever else is dominant or pointless it should be amended. A less apparent facet of the game is simply to ensure there are mechanisms in the game that provide opportunities for particularly clever players to manipulate them. The dynamic nature of table-top games is always their greatest asset. Thankfully, time has proven that the premise of the fantasy adventure game is so alluring that one needn’t reinvent the wheel to create compelling gameplay and the dice will often do so entirely on their own.

The Aesthetic

How your system looks and feels is a complicated thing. Every player and referee who uses it will leave their own mark upon it and every game run using it will be slightly different. In a way, this concern is the playground of the creator. It’s his place to truly create, and while it is inextricably linked to the other concerns it is also the most powerful. It is first among its peers.

The vision that guides all other aspects of the game is truly what defines it. The “Appendix N” of the author is supreme in its ability to inform the rest of the game. That vision is what the simulationist concern is simulating, and what the gameplay is allowing the players to interface with.

What is to be done?

While I have certainly spent enough time pondering the topic and philosophizing about the elements of a successful magic system, I have not actually considered what form the solution will take. Building an entire game is a massive undertaking, and I lack to focus or inspiration to devote the same sort of consideration I grant to magic users to the rest of the core fantasy archetypes.

Using a successful system such as ACKS as a basis and simply creating a new take on magic to attach the game as a sort of module has promise, but ultimately I would prefer to make something entirely my own. Instead, I will construct a magic system using an original hypothetical TTRPG as context. The rules will broadly assume players wish to play as magicians of various type and will delve the forgotten places of the world in order accumulate power and wealth without extrapolating on any mechanisms outside of magecraft in detail. This will allow me invent a new paradigm for the core precepts of a magic-using class without the scope of creating a functioning rule system. In time, this project could serve as reference for a more complete work.

I cannot promise that updates on this project will be frequent, but I hope to be able to create something interesting to share with you all. Progress reports and summaries of my work will continue to be posted here on this substack. Until next time.

Those who have spent time in any of my campaigns, or know me personally, can tell you I’ve always loved wizards. The 1981 film Excalibur features my favorite wizard, Nicol Williamson’s Merlin. While Arthurian lore is beyond the scope of this article, it’s worth noting that like many wizards in fiction Merlin is not a very “Vancian” magic-user.

Despite this, in many TTRPGs magic-using classes fill the same molds. They have an ability to cast fireball but no actual discrete ability to recall lore about the nature of ghouls or the history of a place or thing. Some editions of D&D and other games have spells that can translate ancient languages, reveal some information, or augur the location of something but this paradigm leaves the magic-user himself as a clueless spellslinger who seems as though he personally knows nothing of the world or its secrets.

Dungeons and Dragons & Vancian Magic

It’s not a secret in “old-school” circles that the paradigm for magecraft in D&D, and by extension TTRPGs at large, originates from the works of Jack Vance. Older editions will tell you this outright. While I have not personally read Vance’s work as of yet I feel it’s important to say that I have no real hang-ups about either Vance’s novels or Vancian magic as a whole beyond that I dislike the consequences it has had for Magic-users as a TTRPG archetype. Whether or not D&D has a simplified or uncharitable transposition of the Vancian mythos is neither here nor there.

Within the trappings of the traditional Dungeons and Dragons magic-user paradigm, which I will simply be referring to as the “D&D Paradigm” in the future, magic-users are people who have studied enough esoteric lore and cultivated the requisite mental and physical circumstance to memorize and cast spells. Through meditation, the practitioner can ‘imprint’ a single casting of a spell into his mind allowing its casting through simple incantation and gesture at a later time. This discharges the spell from the casters mind and it must be “memorized” once more in order to be used again. As a given magician’s experience increases his mental and magical prowess expands allowing him or her to memorize more spells at a given time and to also memorize more complicated spells.

All the vagaries of working magic in the D&D paradigm can fairly be summed up in a single paragraph or so. The AD&D Player’s Handbook elucidates.

This is precisely my aggravation with this system. This is the entirety of a magic-user’s lot, save the creation of magical items and scrolls at higher levels. That process simply being a matter of having the right time, resources, and gold. Magic-Users are simply people who memorize spells.

AD&D long precedes the rise of discrete skill and proficiency systems, and it would have been in the tradition of these sorts of games for a magic-user to ask if his character could conceivably know of any herbs with healing properties or perhaps whether or not ghouls were vulnerable to silver as that sort of information was not intended to be player facing. Gygax even suggests that game masters should charge Sage rates for players who go snooping through the monster manual. Nevertheless, over time players inevitably accrue meta knowledge through play and with no actual game rules in place to govern that sort of interaction magic-users are-officially-just as clueless as any other character in those arenas.

It is often said that magic-users are the most powerful class in old school D&D. While this is (at a certain level) true, they are also the least interesting class to play when placed beside their peers. Their power speaks to their simplicity, there are no tactics to leverage or decisions to make. The trouble with magic-users is that 80% of spells are far too niche to ever bother to prepare for an adventure and the other 20% end encounters with no saving throw. The circumstance of magic-users during gameplay is that sleep defeats most encounters until you are high enough level to use the death spell instead, at which point the material world holds no further dangers for you (besides other magic-users of course). If a particular magician is unfortunate enough to lack the sleep spell at first level he will die a pauper in an unmarked grave abandoned by his fellows on account of his abject uselessness. This is admittedly a hyperbolic perspective, but there is truth to the idea that magic-users possess a very lopsided distribution of power in terms of interacting with the game world.

Let us compare Fighters and Magic-Users within the context of a combat encounter. In terms of power, this comparison varies based on level greatly. However, in terms of roleplaying potential and decision making the gulf between these two experiences is vast. Much of the tactical gameplay and decision making occurs before the adventure begins in AD&D. Fighters make decisions about how many mercenaries and other followers to bring, how to equip them and how to order them. Within AD&D Fighter Player Characters can serve as officers and sergeants for the men that follow them, and while magic-users can hire NPCs to fill that role such individuals can be expensive and difficult to acquire. Fighters will make decisions about what sort of weapons and armor to equip themselves with. The weapon tables of AD&D provide many factors to consider including weapon length, Weapon VS. Armor adjustment, damage against large and medium sized creatures, weapon speed, encumbrance, and special cases such as certain polearms being able to dismount cavalry. As for armor, obviously heavier is better but a Fighter must consider the length of his journey and the nature of his foe. Sometimes he may opt for lighter armor to increase his mobility or save additional weight for carrying treasure. Fighters are playing chainmail, almost an entirely separate game within the game. Magic users are preparing the same couple of combat-relevant spells they prepare every adventure. The tragedy is that the magic-user will end up dominating the game despite all this at higher levels.

Of course, there is more to an adventure than defeating monsters. The lopsided nature of the magic-user during monster encounters is ultimately a gameplay concern. Outside of these combat encounters a Magic-Users usefulness is determined entirely by whether or not the party finds themselves in need of some sort of detection spell, and whether or not the magic-user happened to prepare it. It is this scenario that vexes me so! D&D is a game where magic users don’t know anything!

The Ancient Vault of Ghoodsahn

Our heroes trudge through the mud, the earth slick with the constant rain that had dogged their journey for a number of days. Before them lies their destination: the Vault of Ghoodsahn. Inside the dark overlord Ghoodsahn is said to dwell. His minions have dogged Lord Thur’s lands for sometime and he has come with his companions to put a stop to it. With his henchmen and mercenary soldiers is Cedric the Wise, as wizard of considerable repute whose lawful inclination has compelled him to assist Thur in this task.

They arrive at the gate to Ghoodsahns vault, it is sealed. The great stone doors shut tightly. Some script in an ancient tongue adorns the wall. Cedric the wise has come prepared! He has the spell comprehend languages memorized! Of course, a great wizard of name level (11th level, up to 750,000 experience points) could simply know of this ancient tongue. Afterall, he has studied a great many tomes and recovered much lore from the ancient places of the world. Unfortunately, he actually has not. The entirety of his career has consisted of reading the same 15 or so scrolls over and over so he requires the use of the spell. Very well. He translates the riddle of the door.

The assembled minds eventually solve the riddle and open the door by speaking the correct password. However, during that time they were ambushed by goblins. Between the brief combat and the associated period of pondering 10 minutes have elapsed. The group heads inside. They begin to explore the dark overlords sanctum. After some time, a windfall. The party happens across one of the dark lords libraries. Surely Cedric the Wise can glean some valuable information from here about the dark sorceries Ghoodsahn is working on. Unfortunately, Cedric didn’t allot one of his four first level spells to read magic. Afterall, he expected to be doing battle! Perhaps he could at least decipher some of the records or notes here to learn of dark overlord’s agenda? An 11th level wizards read languages spell only lasts for 10 minutes of course so the ancient script is entirely beyond Cedric’s understanding as well. At this point, Lord Thur questions Cedric, “Wizard! You are known as great and powerful, how can it be you cannot understand a single scrap of this library?”.

Cedric the Wise shrugs his shoulders and says, “Legend lore is a 6th level spell. To be honest, I’m not even sure we’re in the right place!”

A wizard ought to do more than cast spells.

Post-AD&D Game Design

Many design philosophies and revisions have worked their way across D&D and the hobby at large since the 70s. The most notable introductions for magic-users since the old days have been skill systems. While certain aspects of spell use have been made easier to navigate, mainly wizards accessing new spells for free as they gain levels, the actual experience of using magic has remained mostly the same.

In theory, skill systems address one of my primary concerns with the D&D Paradigm. In 5th edition a wizard with considerable intelligence and levels of experience can acquire massive scores in his or her relevant skills. While allowing wizards to roll history or arcana checks to acquire knowledge about the various things wizards should be able to figure out is a good thing, the monkey’s paw curls when one looks over these modern editions holistically.

Even so, these skill systems cannot provide the actual aesthetic circumstance magic users deserve. Simply having an above average intelligence should not entitle someone to the mysteries of the arcane, which is what these mechanisms assert. While they may satisfy some gameplay issues, they raise simulationist and aesthetic concerns. Further, the way modern editions handle magic items, potions, scrolls and other magical topics have their own issues. In the future I may pick through some of the modern editions to find any pearls of wisdom which may be hidden within but for the time being they are largely irrelevant.

An arena where actual progress has been made is in Autarch’s Adventurer Conqueror King System or ACKS. While the general framework of Vancian magic remains, the removal of spell memorization in favor of the more flexible repertoire system is a great change towards increasingly the actual utility of Magic-Users or Mages as they are called in-game. Furthermore, a well implemented proficiency system allows especially intelligent mages to glean much more information about the world and its mysteries creating a much more authentic rendition of the archetype. Magical research and ritual has been retooled into something that can become relevant much earlier on in a Mage’s career and the most enjoyable magic-users I have ever played have all been ACKS characters. To attempt to condense any more of that game’s incredible scope into such short form is an insult and disservice to it.

Charting a course

It is easy to say that something is not to your taste, it is harder to synthesize something new. It comes as no surprise that in the current climate of internet ankle-biters, “Played for 40 years” boomers, OSR-fudds and other grumblers that the conversations around TTRPGs contain many more problems than solutions. To love something you must be willing to hate it. I hate magic-users.

The D&D Paradigm for magic-users has stood the test of time. I lean on AD&D as an example not because I believe it is outdated or dysfunctional but because it is so massively important. It is a forty year old game! It was the responsibility of the previous generation of gamers to take the wisdom of its yellowed pages and build something new, to iterate and push and pull its facets in new directions. Fiction, fantasy and games were in a very different state when the game was conceived. Gygax, Arneson, Vance and all the other intelligent and literate people who lent their imaginations to the game created something incredible. In their footsteps, I will tread a similar path. I will lend my preferences, my experiences and ideas, to something new and original. All great games begin the same way. It takes someone who gives a damn to make something for himself. Every man has his own little world, and the way wizards work in mine is not the same as what I see when I look around at the games I have played and enjoyed.

Upon my initial read of these tables, this entry elicited a laugh. My feelings exactly! I strongly believe in the oracular power of the dice, and I strongly believe adherence to the random encounter tables is as important as any other rule or system. Scenarios in which the judge must adjudicate what the players will encounter without the backing of a deterministic system are highest honor and responsibility of the game. The role of the judge is to interpret and mediate interactions with a game world that exists independently of himself and the other players. The rules alone create and maintain this shared imaginative setting. In this way, this scenario is a blessing. One opportunity to truly take on the role of God, to make anything into reality.

However, relying entirely on the rules is impossible. No quantity of written words could ever account for all eventualities, no random table however large could truly ascertain the nature of all things. We accept this as players and human beings, the judge takes it upon himself to make all these myriad small adjustments and assumptions during play. The pleasure of playing a system like ACKS is how many resources are provided to make this process simpler and more objective.

When the dice give you lemons…

I adjudicated a session recently wherein I was pushed into that uncomfortable position of having to decide what happens next. Three adventurers left town with the coppermonger’s lad in toe (0th Level henchman of course) in search of a fisherman’s remains. Stopped off the river to have a bite to eat and was swallowed up by giant rats, or so they say. Work is often unexciting for 1st level characters, such is the way of things. About 6 miles downriver, they begin to search for rodents of unusual size but uncover something more interesting.

What I had rolled was a random encounter incurred by spending an hour searching within a hex. The result was an unusual terrain encounter, I roll on the associated sub-table indicating there are in fact 2 features. A pair of follow up rolls indicate an empowering place and a portal. Great. We were a mere afternoons walk from a class IV market, what arcane phenomenon could possible lurk so close to inhabited lands? Nevertheless, the hunt was on.

I found the entry for the “Empowering Place” more immediately useful to planning this encounter. It suggests the random structure table to determine the physical nature of the place, and rolling a random magical item to determine the sort of effect it could imbue. It gave an example but no specific guidance about how the place should “work”. Regardless, I determined the feature was in fact a barrow mound and that it was capable of imbuing some mundane object with the ability to resist fire.

The more vexing task was determining the nature of the portal, the entry suggested that said portal may be subject to some strange circumstance, such as only working during a full moon or in the presence of some object or person. First off, I determined where the portal actually led using one of my favorite hex map tricks: roll a 1d6 to determine which hex facing clockwise, then a d20 to see how many hexes distant. The portal ended up jumping about 100 miles south, which was a relief. But what would be on the other side?

I figured some monster should probably be involved, so I started rolling on the rare encounters table until I rolled something sensible. Inspiration struck when I rolled Fire Giants, explains why the area can enchant items with fire resistance I figured, good enough. The portal would lead to a fire giant lair and require fire to activate.

Being put on the spot with an encounter like this is always challenging, and while my players were fine with a wait I always strive to be able to ascertain these encounters quickly. I could have chosen to invent something coherent entirely to my own taste and imagination instead of relying on dice-based procedures to check the process, but I’m not sure it would have resulted in less downtime or a more compelling scenario. Not only did the dice inspire my creative process, but their impartial nature ensured my own preconceptions did not muddy the waters of our shared imaginative space. These things have a way of working themselves out if the dice are trusted.

Prep Problems

Instances like this cause me to reevaluate my relationship with session prep. I believe in efficient low-prep game mastering, for a variety of different reasons, but often I wonder if increased encounter prep could serve to tangibly improve my game. Often times players empowered by true agency will interact with my scenarios so unpredictably that much of the prep will be ignored, as usual, but perhaps simply outlining the encounters in advance could save time at the very least.

As always, I will experiment and draw my own conclusions. Until next time, friends.

Good Sons: Good Players

Many different players came and went from our table over the past 6 months. All told at least 13 different individuals played, 3 of which served as judge at one point or another. As is often the case, many are seen but few leave their mark. Indeed, very few players had a character which actually left a mark on the campaign world. The highest level attained in the campaign was sixth (my own character if I may be so vain) but even Burzum, mighty shaman that he was, left little trace on the campaign besides his small cadre of followers.

Perhaps it was an unrealistic standard, but I had hoped more of our players would have struck out on foolhardy and grand designs. I wished to see more petty warlords and tight fisted mages- charging a fist full of gold just for an audience. Instead, we had Goodson.

No matter what the future holds for this campaign none will deny Goodson’s legacy. He was the first, and last, great leader of men the borderlands ever saw. In many ways Goodson’s player was the winner of the campaign, Haircut (as he identifies online) realized the promise of ACKS in way no one else truly did. He had moved into the conqueror phase of the game at the impressive level of 4 and had designs at becoming a duke or even king. Many of the greatest NPCs of the campaign were also his followers. The good knights- Mink and Flak had legacies larger than most PCs.

By my own admittance some of my own characters managed to accomplish less with greater resources than fair Goodson. The simple truth is that Haircut showed a greater ambition and a wider vision for his roleplaying than any other player in the campaign. Good players become a credit to the campaign. Some of the most lively and memorable sessions, even early on in the campaign, were a product of Goodson’s agenda. Dinkle’s demise, the goblin raids, instant classics that are well remembered.

I do not wish to disparage any of our players, but none among our number can honestly claim to have had the impact Haircut did. Players make the campaign, no amount of world building or lore can take the place of legendary player characters.

While its easy to look back across the campaign and pick out good and memorable players and characters, it is harder to quantify what circumstance precipitates these characters. I believe roleplay holds the secret to legendary characters, but the trick is understanding real roleplaying and integrating it into the campaign at scale.

Roleplaying: Embracing Fate

The sandbox campaign was created to train the faithful.

Roleplaying is a term taken for granted. Often thrown about all too casually by those who have never really considered its nature. Many of the most popular definitions offered for roleplaying are in fact only an aspect of it, leaping like a rainbow from the prism through which a player views their campaign. In this era of online TTRPG discourse its more important than ever to reconstruct the pure light of roleplaying from its myriad shades.

Goodson never really had much of a personality. If anyone had to describe him, they would probably say he was a down to earth and practical man. He was remembered for his accomplishments. What Goodson had was an aesthetic. His men wore uniforms, he designed the mark of his house and he had rules. He had policies- no mages, no priests. Cultivating a personality for a character is an ancillary concern, its a component of a larger picture. Goodson’s personality was: Fighter. His personality never informed his play, it was a product of it.

In life, people are shaped by those they spend time with and the things they experience. It is then apt to say that characters “are as they do”. While the details of how a character speaks and thinks may be fun to parse out, they are built upon the context of that characters experiences and actions. Gandalf is not memorable for his intense but wise candor underpinned by a softer grandpa-esque appreciation of life’s simple pleasures, it is his role in the adventure that characterizes him. There lies the trouble.

The sandbox game demands that you broaden your perception of your role. Acting is only a portion of a character’s aesthetic, which in turn is only a portion of roleplaying, the bulk of the task is in how you play! To play a role is to be Merlin, to invoke the Dragon, to channel the spirit of fantasy, to tap inherited memory, that is the spirit of it. Goodson was a Fighter, that was the role he played. It informed where he went, what we wanted to accomplish, who he associated with. Your role is a magic compass, charting your course through the sandbox. There is a perception that this approach places the character in a box, in truth this is the key to absolute freedom.

This is the great stumbling block for roleplayers, to slip the bonds of preference and embody an archetype. To accept that it is roleplaying to be a mage manipulating others and sinking your wealth into any opportunity to uncover new lore. To be a fighter selling his sword for coin. Embodying these roles allows your character to breathe and more importantly, sets them on the path of legend. Our history is filled with stories of heroes rushing in to meet their doom, to do battle with great beasts and suffering unspeakable curses. The sandbox campaign provides an opportunity for these roles to run aground of each other, that is the grand purpose of it all. Gandalf cannot meet Bilbo if the dwarves are not coveting their lost mountain home. It is a great arithmetic, a grand scheme that can unfold on its own only if the actors are willing to step into their shoes properly and without qualm.

The problem with conventional campaigns is that roles must be yolked to the thread of the campaigns narrative. Not all stories include the wizard, the augur, the mercenary. The sandbox allows these archetypes to move in the way they see fit, and not at the behest of circumstance. This wider understanding of the campaign, and really the concept of roleplaying at large is so often missing from TTRPG games. Indeed I think at times it was missing from ours. Onwards and upwards.

Treasure and Tribulations

There is no better feeling than learning the hard fought battles and perilous journey your character undertook is about to pay off, to hear the treasure roll as the party picks through the horde of some monster. Indeed, there were many instances of characters walking away from a session very wealthy, but how wealthy was too wealthy?

I strongly believe in the oracular power of dice, the nuance of game mastering lies in reconciling the the word of the die with the wider context of the game. Our campaign was very much a sink or swim, let the dice fall where they may, sort of ordeal and while I believe that is the way a sandbox campaign must be played it also requires a high caliber referee. Often times a game-master will be called upon to square a major circle when loot is rolled and some trick of the dice places something anomalous into the hands of players.

While it is exciting and indeed the stuff of myth and fiction for a hero to stumble upon some wondrous arcane artifact in the trash ridden den of a Kobold chief, in game this represents some trick of the dice. Some small percentage was rolled through random chance and through their oracular power the dice has deigned to place a wish granting sword into our campaign. Given the iterative nature of true sandbox play, the game master couldn’t have known these Kobolds had possession of such an item before the dice were rolled so he has a problem. Why hadn’t the kobolds used this weapon in battle? Why had they not simply wished for an army to sack the nearby town, or wished for a great dragon to serve? Its up to the game master to square this circle and make it all work together.

There were a number of instances in the campaign where this sort of thing did occur. Items far beyond the power of their protectors were recovered by fortunate adventurers. Often these adventurers were able to make off with, and use, these items to great effect, and this was ultimately a detriment to the campaign. Not because low level characters should not be able to find or use such items but because the campaign allowed them to encounter such interesting and important items in such an uninteresting and banal way.

The kobolds couldn’t have used the wish granting sword because its encased in granite, and only a lawful cleric of 9th level can remove it. The kobolds couldn’t have used the sword because it only responds to wishes spoken in a long dead language. This sort of imaginative, read between the lines thinking would have been crucial in making the inclusion of these items into the campaign far more interesting. One character in the campaign even retired a character because he didn’t want to play a level 2 thief who managed to swipe a wish granting sword! In the end it was too easy, and it unraveled the roleplay of the character. A thief doesn’t steal something like that and simply get away with it.

Over the Hills and Far Away

When the campaign began our map was a manageable size, approximately 40x30 in 6 mile hexes or something similar. Early on, I had been wary of letting the scope of the game world overrun what was immediately relevant to any characters circumstance. The rot was slow at first, characters hailing from far flung homelands or across an ocean but before long the world was already so much larger than it needed to be. The map grew and grew until there was hundreds of miles of hexes completely untrodden by players. If I were to call any of the decisions we made during this campaign a mistake, it would be this.

Building out foreign homelands and placing them on a map can be fun, many hours were spent between some of us carefully shaping and drawing out these places and imagining their peoples, cultures, and warriors. While creating a canon of different human races was often useful to grant some much needed character to NPCs, ultimately this world building did very little to impact the campaign. In fact, it often did more to push players apart.

Apologies to this particular referee (you know who you are) but looking back upon the campaign in its totality including the dwimmermount module some 200 miles east of the initial campaign location was most certainly a mistake. A mistake for which we all share blame as we all approved its addition. More than any other instance of world building this act threw the campaign into some amount of chaos. Suddenly we had characters an insurmountable distance away from the millieu we had been crafting for months. New assumptions rippled through our established canon. We now had to contend with “normal dwarves” and “dwimmermount dwarves” which were different in some capacity no one understood. We had new gods such as Typhon and new city states with cultures and aesthetics we hadn’t contemplated or imagined. Dwimmermount itself was not so much a bad module as it was foreign, no one was invested in that place. When characters became successful in Dwimmermount players would bemoan their detachment from the rest of the campaign, and seek to travel there. This should have been my first clue we had opened pandora’s box.

Given the compounding factors of multiple parties, multiple PCs per player, and multiple referees the campaign began to suffer from logistical problems. Players would sometimes be prevented from playing a certain character because they occupied a region of the map others were not interested in. Inevitably this led to many characters gathering dust waiting on the campaign to wheel back around to their neck of the woods. We tried different timekeeping methods and a number of other small things to remedy this, but in the moment none of us understood the root of the problem. Perhaps this approach and scale could work with a great plurality of 20 or more active players, but our campaign suffered for it. High level characters firmly within the King phase of ACKS might require a larger world with foreign nations, but our campaign was not ready for such a leap.

Searching through my memories of the campaign, our greatest sessions were those that simply began in Mountain Gate with a group of adventurers planning to travel less than 50 miles to sack some monster lair or dungeon. These sessions were blissfully unaware of the politics of the Zyranian princes, or machinations of the Church of Typhon, they were about heroes risking life and limb against some godforsaken beast. These sessions often started small, with unforeseen consequences rippling out to precipitate other great moments and I’ve truly come to see them as the food and drink of great campaigns. The death of the Henchman Fyr, Dinkle’s last trick, the Wyvern raid, the Goblin wars, all simple sessions that took place within 50 miles of our starting settlement

What’s next for the Borderlands

In truth, I am not sure. Perhaps we will revisit things sooner, or perhaps later. I’m sure I’ll be running some RPG soon enough. Regardless, much enjoyment was had and I’ve learned more about this wonderful and intricate hobby. The writing of this article was a pleasant surprise, and I found it very enlightening. I hope anyone reading who has been either following this campaign through this substack or actually participating has found it equally interesting. You can win at RPGs, you can improve at RPGs. Until next time.

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The group is still playing multiple times a weekend, every weekend, rain or shine, and much adventure has been had! We are literally suffering from success as far as writing these reports is concerned. Lots of updates here, and hopefully some clarification for a better look at what the characters are seeing day-to-day.

February and the Aftermath of January

In the recent past, Fighter Goodson, as he was formerly known, won his great victory against the Orcs, the Orcs suffered a devastating intelligence failure and were caught off guard and pushed against a river, and thereby annihilated by Fighter Goodson’s army. Then started Goodsons mad dash, in the space of a month he held a festival celebrating his victory, applied for and was granted the position of a minor baron on the western border of Mountain Gate, collected a Wife- a princess from a Nomad tribe whose chief he had been frequenting and making friends with during downtime, and traveled north to Bravay to the Church of Isen, one of Bravay’s patron Gods to be confirmed as a member of the church so that he could hold office lawfully. I cannot exaggerate the amount of work done in downtime on this front. For those interested I will include a list of the Baron’s court at the end of the report. 

This month in the Good Domain, the Fighter-Baron Goodson returned from his appointment at the church of Isen in Eastern Bravay a baptized man, fit to rule his realm. Goodson had been graciously granted an apartment in the Ducal palace in Mountain Gate while his stronghold fortress is under construction, the first part of which is set to be completed in mid March. The Baron was alerted by a harried and disheveled figure that the nomadic tribe from which his wife the Baroness hails was afflicted by some malefact circumstance, which the Baron immediately rode out to correct. Goodson took his cadre of Knights; Mink, Flak, Edmund, and Winston, as well as the old Cleric Krev down into a dungeon which had been disturbed by the Nomads temporary camp, not more than 30 miles south of his Barony. They found therein ancient ruins, populated by skeletons and tribals through whom they battled until they came upon an antechamber. This antechamber had in it four scheming devils, each had surfaced from hell with their own accursed powers, and through grit and might alone did the Baronic party triumph over the Cacodemons. The Baron has confided in the writer that his court mage Cairn has been put in charge of a small effort to reveal further secrets of the dungeon, and to travel its lower floors where the Barons party did not go. The Baron is otherwise known to have spent time arranging the mercenaries under his command, tasking a Paladin from the Order of the Sapphire Crown, an order dedicated to the honor of King Freihern the First of Bravay, founder of Freihern city, with gathering men and venturing in the dark western swamps to bring ruin to Lizardmen found therein by the Mage Cairn during his time adventuring the blackened area.

In Goodsons’ realm, several PC’s have been actively involved in doling out the Baron’s will, notable amongst them Cairn, his court mage, Pierro Pizarro- a Zyranian explorer, and Llewellyn, a paladin of The Order of the Sapphire Crown, as well as Finnegan, a pugilist (The class from ACKS1). The group of them recently made quite the team dispatching a massive snake from a portion of swamp after ferreting out its underground lair, depicted below.

It is also rumored that a party of adventurers, led by the magnanimous Dark Gotthard out of Usraich in Urdom Province, were brought to ruin in battle with a lawful titan of some descript. This occurred miles south of the Urdom border, and the casualties from the party are assumed to be total, though rumor persists that Dark Gotthard and a few lucky companions survived the ordeal, and now travel under assumed personas. No doubt, fearing the wrath of the Antagonarch of Ur, the Dark Lord of Urdom, Peredor, who tasked Gotthard with clearing the area of obstacles to his rule. It is said that Gotthard’s associate mage, a madman named Batzorig, died with a smile on his cracked lips, proclaiming his victory even in death, none are quite sure what he meant by that. Whether Gotthard was lost to the titan is a matter of some debate amongst concerned gossipers, only time will tell.

A thief named Charlie Ream was dogged through the Mountain Gate docks by the agents of the local thieves syndicate after he transgressed an area of the city reserved for thieves of high caliber, it is assumed he is in hiding, as nothing further has been heard from him since.

In the far and foggy lands of Shirudo, Hengist Seaxhand, H.W. Grinkletop, and their associate Bravayan Cleric have made some headway into the capital of the country. They met with a local lord, who granted them bed and bread for some time until they can make themselves useful, schemes are thereabound. The three are currently intensely focused on learning the local language, with the help of their guide Shang Wushi.

In green and leafy woods, after long and dangerous travel, Shaman Burzum and Barbarian Walden encountered a Dwarven Vault, in which the two had little immediate interest, being men of the wood as they are. In a farther flung neck of the woods, Burzum has commanded the fealty of several enclaves of local wildlife. Walden did battle with a wooly rhino who he, with no small blessing from the Shaman, was able to decapitate to show the supremacy of his sword, and the way of his patron Shaman. Burzum plans further control over the area, next seeking out monstrous foes magnitudes more dangerous than ordinary creatures of the wild.

A party of adventurers including Finbar the soldier, Stirner the Venturer, Ferdinand the elf, and Nieran the Nightblade were seen to disappear into thin air in the vicinity of Breakfast Valone’s tavern, just south of the Bravayan Border. The group apparently appeared by teleportation in an elven enclave in the woods hundreds of miles to the East in the region of Adamas, where party members scheme to make use of their circumstance. Stirner has hired a captain and crew, as well as bought a sailing ship after making a high dollar sale of a magic item in the city. The “Selfish Endeavor” will set sail for a long, long voyage soon, to be protected by Ferdinand and his band of crossbowmen.

In the misty month of January, the Cleric Roi of Typhon, native to Adamas and explorer of Dwimmermount was given a quest by his respected superior, Bishop Sidon of the church of Typhon. Sidon bid him to collect a salary of 10,000 gold from the church coffers and make ready a group of brave crusaders to travel across the continent and bring the light of faith to pagan lands (Bravay, lol.) So Roi did make ready, and gathered nearly every player character in Adamas including the Mage Cedric, as well as hundreds of laborers and men at arms. They left in the middle of the month and after nearly three weeks of walking had barely crossed half the territory they had planned to cross in entirety in a month. After battling wyverns, meeting orcs of strange nature, and striving to not lose more time, supplies were running low, as was morale, when disaster struck. Plague descended on the caravan, putting more than 80% of the men in an inoperative state. Roi was struck with nihilism, believing his god had abandoned him, and that his path so far had not been so divinely lit as he had been led to believe. As Roi cratered in his misery, Cedric picked up the slack. Cedric departed on a quick footed horse with his elven henchwoman and collected rumor and whisper of a being in the region of incomprehensible power who governed its local affairs. With no other options apparent, and a natural inclination for the strange and powerful, Cedric rode to a giant mountain in the center of the region and ascended its peak. There he found an ancient dragon, who perhaps amused by the young wizard's bluster, humored him with a conversation. Cedric pleaded with the dragon for mercy, or an opportunity, and as his bargaining chip presented a magic item he had recently acquired through trials set in the tower of a mage clinging to the vestige of a truly ancient life, a Rod of Cataclysm, or as we have taken to calling it “The Staff of Nuking” (read the entry if you haven't already done so, very funny) Cedric bargained with the dragon for a scroll that Cedric himself could not activate because of its divine nature, and gave up the rod to the dragons hoard. 

Cedric spurred his steed back into camp, and rushed to the tent of Roi, still stuck in an apostatic malaise, and presented him with the scroll, which Roi recognized not only as a scroll of Miracle (wow) but also a scroll created by a worshiper of the God to whom the servants of Typhon are sworn against back in Adamas, Tyshe. 

Full disclosure, I am Roi’s player, hence the following insight. Roi had a decision of some consequence to make here, and two options were on his mind. Option 1: request that the caravan be saved. Option 2: Nuke bishop Sidon for sending Roi to an ignominious death totally unprepared after Roi had done nothing but serve perfectly faithfully and with full heart. It was really a lot closer than you might think, I really, do not like Bishop Sidon. But Roi prayed that the caravan might be transported from this hellish wilderness and be saved. And so the entire party of 200 was transported instantly to a mysterious locale, a field, just outside Breakfast Valone’s Tavern, just south of the Bravayan Border. 

Roi rid himself of the iconography of Typhon, and during reflection, was struck with a dream, wherein a new god commanded his service, an old elven god called Rhiannon, who beckons Roi south to Mountain Gate.

The Mage Cedric departed the fortunate few who survived the disastrous crusade, and made his way North to the Tower White and Wise, the headquarters of his Order, the Arbiters. Some explanation is merited here, the Arbiters are the magical collegiate order to which Cedric belongs, details have been murky at best until recently because of the nature of the Orders concerned business. The Arbiters work to monitor and trim the hedge of chaotic magic across the realm. They are not the CIA, not all powerful or all seeing, but they are a body of many bodies, and get around pretty well. At the Tower White and Wise, Cedric met The Badger, the Arch-Mage of the Arbiters, who is as cryptic as he is skilled and indeterminately elderly, as well as the Pilot, the operations officer of the order. They took his account of the crusade and the scroll and informed him it would be reviewed, and that for the time being he is discharged from a direct duty, and should travel the realm executing the will of the order to his judgment, which at 6th level, is merited I think. Cedric received a rumor before he left that in the dark realm of Urdom the city of Usraich had popped up on the orders radar, and that strange energies were circling there. So to that place he departed.

Baalzebron the black, a ne’er do well out of Urdom, has taken several associates: Abberox the Warlock, and the necromancer known only as “The Traveler”  out to the easternmost settlement of Urdom, a town called Crab Leg. In Crab Leg there was rumored strife as a recent plague had badly maliced the town's population and government. Upon landing in Crab Leg the party found the town under the control of Sister Lilythe of the Blade Dancer order The Sisters of the Wyrd. She told Baalzebron that there is a band of brigands menacing the river that runs south out of the town through the swamp called the Snakes Neck. Baalzebron negotiated his way onto a vessel and led the party and the sailors downriver in a day's search disguised as a usual merchant vessel, hoping to be harried. Harried they were as two small sailing ships flying black flags with minimal crew set upon them, but in a clever surprise attack the black cloaked warrior was able to slay a number of brigands as well as the present lieutenant and drive them off while capturing one of the brigand vessels, which he has rebranded “The Carrion Bird” after his familiar, a servile vulture of untoward nature. The party has reported their success and been tasked with clearing out the rest of the brigand band, the number of which they do not yet rightly know.

The Venturer Rhys Pink, recently inspired to a life of risk to reward ratio’s that would give the average merchant a heart palpitation, took it upon himself to purchase a barge, and hire a crew of sailors to escort a fine cargo of oils, dyes, and fine timber upriver from Usraich City in Urdom to Mountain Gate’s docks. His First Mate Poop Deck Pete and himself made a respectable profit, and was well received as the first genuine arbitrage trader of the campaign thus far.

 To give a brief overview of the campaign world as much has transpired behind the scenes in the effort to craft something worthy of the label “Table Top Role Playing” - a thing we hold in high esteem, this is a map of the entire continent to which all our player characters are native. 

Perhaps familiar to some is the “Dwimmermount” module’s landmass in the far east, with some added terrain for aesthetic and interest, to its direct west the large grassy region encircled in the north by dark green forests and to the south by a mountain range and accompanying desert is the middle region where the crusader’s from Adamas dared to venture and were so brutally struck down. 

Further west of that, Mountain Gate, and to the ultimate west in the turquoise is Urdom. 

North of Urdom outlined in Red is the realm of Bravay, real civilization and the mother country of most Mountain Gate-rs. To the south in the desert is currently unexplored Brazalaant, and the farthest southern clime is a land called Shurazzuranach, also unexplored. 

The Italian-esque boot to its west is called Zyrania, a soon-to-be-visited work in progress which I anticipate being “playable” very soon thanks to the well oiled machine that is Alexander Macris’s genius mind making everything sensible in generation.

Other Happenings

Baalzebron, who in his fortunate debut made a pretty good showing of himself, is a Zaharan Ruinguard, which is par for the course because its a class organic to ACKS, but was actually a lot of fun to tool with as a Ref working with Baalzebron’s player, because in our milieu, we strive to keep things organic to the campaign world as we have imagined it. We do not play in the Game Designer's imagined setting, though ours is not a far departure from the basic idea which Macris posits, because we are of basically similar taste. The Ruinguard has a background which locks it pretty firmly into place as a “Macris-Lore” class, its origin is directly tied to the world of the Auran empire, so when Kodiak presented it as an idea I was a little skeptical but I put on my big boy pants and thought for a minute about how we could make it work because Kodiak is frankly a good player and responsible for the thematic homogeneity of the campaign as a whole as the Tyrant Game Master of the world, so we set to work. 

In our setting, the Ruinguard, rather than being of the Zaharan race, is a being of “Witch-Blood” from a yet completely codified population, which conspicuously similarly to the Zaharans, has a dwindling shadow of whatever population it once had. (We actually rolled a d100 for how many of them are left in the world at present moment) This doesnt seem like a noticeable departure from the Macris-Lore we are given, because it really isnt divorced heavily from his concept, but just making it vague enough to fit our world better was a really satisfying exercise to me. Kodiak and I have talked ad nauseam about the importance of the loop between crunch and fluff in TTRPG’s, and it was good to see that theory being put to work, and working satisfactorily. 

A secondary note, Cedric’s adventure with the dragon is to me one of the more “truly fantastical” things that has happened in this campaign, and was really cool to be party to as Roi, who I was suffering as in a tent in a wet field surrounded by the sick and dying (I designed the spell list of Crusaders of Typhon a little too thematically aggressive, so uh, no heals.) Cedric has been a power player in Adamas for a while, having found a plethora of magic items by dice god favor and smart play, and he really flew the colors of a leveled character and experienced player here. 

More on the topic of game mastering and mastering the game, a collaborative effort has been incited between refs here in the borderlands to detail the gear and likelihood of presence for mercenaries from every place in the world. This will mean in practice that when you are in Urdom, and make the necessary rolls to hire 30 light infantryman, the ref then rolls on a table crafted for Urdom to determine what the ethnos of those light infantryman is, and based on that, can cross reference a further chart and say: These are Manarnian Light Infantry from Shuranazzurach here in Usraich City selling their services, they are equipped with leather armor and axes (as per Light Infantry D). This will be the case for every “region” in the game with a distinct ethnos. The ref can then move forward with the established lore about Manarnians and give those mercenaries a personality and agenda, rather than saying: “Yep, passed your roll so what next.” We look forward to playing with this implemented as more and more characters reach the stage in the game where commanding bodies of men becomes a necessary factor in life in pursuit of the crushing of enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of their women, etc. Certain peoples will begin to acquire reputations as mercenaries of a certain type and caliber and should therefore populate the players imaginations with accurate and interesting visions of the world as we play in it. 

This idea comes from the ref’s shared history as wargamers, and enjoyers of history and the postulations of our Simulationist Archon. Never walk in front of a recently underpaid Zyranian crossbowmen- unless of course, your Brazalaanti bodyguard has been recently underfed as well.

The Court of Goodson: I had some fun with the trait generation in ACKS for Goodsons crew here. Simon, Llewellyn, Cairn, and Father Dominick are PC’s belonging to other players. 

-Baron Goodson, Gray Very Light eyes, platinum blonde, straight hair, pale skin, broken nose, dashing facial scar, average build, 5’10, 141lbs

-First Knight, 

Sir Mink Cadwalader (5’8 118lbs) light blue eyes, golden blonde hair, pale skin, skinny build, perfect teeth

-Good Knights: 

Sir Flak Beddoe (6’6 200lbs), light blue eyes, golden brown hair, pale skin, broken nose, good posture

Sir Stipe Dee (5’6 130lbs), blue-gray medium eyes, golden blonde hair, pale skin, weather beaten skin, slim legs

Sir Edmund Beynon (5’9 124lbs), blue-gray light eyes, dark blonde hair, pale skin, large birthmark on face- also a beauty spot, honest face

Sir Winston Coslett (6’6 280lbs) blue-green medium eyes, golden brown hair, pale skin, different color eyes, youthful countenance, lustrous hair

-Junior Knight Paladin Sir Llewellyn

-First Minister, Sir Simon Marec

-Court Mage: Cairn

-Legalist: Father Dominick

-Oswin the Translator, a subject of mine, speaks the Nomad Tongue

-Baroness Maev Brwydrwr 

The Order of The Sapphire Crown:

A political order sworn directly to the throne of Freihern the First, and to the current king. Llewellyn the Paladin is their representative in the Borderlands, and has joined the court of Goodson for the time being.

Editor’s Note:

As campaign master I owe a huge debt to my players for their myriad uncountable contributions to the campaign and hours of collective work to keep the dream alive. This campaign has been ongoing for at least five months now I am very happy with where we have ended up. We’ve learned so much about the hobby, what works and what doesn’t, and have had uncountable hours of enjoyment.

I doubly owe a debt to “Haircut” the tortured mastermind of Goodson et al. for not only his consistently impactful play but also for committing the immense labour to write and compile this report. I myself have been distracted with other endeavors and topic of late and thanks to his efforts we can provide another report despite that.

A group of young men are cooped up in an apartment unwittingly auguring massive disappointment at the hands of a particular TTRPG from the 1980s. Indeed, the peanut gallery was unable to penetrate the chromed up carapace of Mr.Pondsmiths ubiquitous Cyberpunk: 2020 when we attempted to play the game a number of years ago. This failure has always tormented us as we moved forward in our careers as gamers. Recently, both myself and a number of my friends have been chippin’ in to CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077 video game in light of the recent “2.0” update and Phantom Liberty DLC and it has left me fiending to take another crack at the pen and paper version.

Returning to Night City

I wanted to record both my and one of my fellow gamer’s experiences as we attempt to pick up the pieces and reconcile our previous experiences with the system in this article. I plan to quickly make a single character and run him through a simple combat scenario and take some notes about the strengths and weakness of the “Friday Night Fire Fight” combat system and the interlock system at large.

As I continue this article, it will include both my own thoughts and my co-authors thoughts who I will be referring to as simply "Haircut” who is also the man behind the legend of Goodson.

Create-a-Gonk

Some initial thoughts on character creation

Haircut: “One thing that stands out to me is I think pondsmith is much better at creating vibes in his rulebook than being the guy who actually tells you about the rules. A big part of cyberpunk for me is the mental aesthetic picture. I think pondsmith is a great writer.”

It’s definitely apparent reading the 2020 rulebook for actual rules comprehension that it is a document absolutely dripping in flavor as Haircut notes. It does get in the way of reference for actual numbers and values from time to time however.

To create a character in 2020 you must first generate some character points. There are 3 methods described for doing so. The first generates a random total which can be freely split across your attributes, sort of like a point buy. The second is a quick and dirty “down the line” which seems as though it could produce some very weak or very strong characters perhaps. The third is similar to the fist but instead with a fixed value based on the desire “power level” of the character, seems suitable for GMs making NPCs to me.

Haircut: “Even though pondsmith gives you a lot in terms of determining “who your character is” I think that Pondsmith is still experienced enough as a TTRPG guy to know players will just sort of make the kind of character they want [Mechanically]”

For the purposes of our test-choom I think I will just use the first method. I roll 9 D10 and get a total of 44 points to spend on my various attributes. I figure our test character should be some sort of steel jawed solo since we will be using him for a combat scenario, so I set about distributing my attributes accordingly.

It seems I didn’t roll too well, but it is what it is. We end up with fairly balanced stats with good reflex. Good enough.

Haircut: “I think attractiveness[the attribute] is an interesting attribute to fit into the tabletop roleplaying puzzle”

Life Paths

I find the life paths very interesting and very useful both for players and GMs. Allows you to use dice as an oracle to generate a starting point for your roleplay and provides hooks for a GM to use as it generates boths friends, foes and family to go along with your characters style, goals and personality. However, it’s a little beyond the scope of what I want to investigate today so I will be largely skipping over it.

Haircut: “Its not necessarily a bad thing, but it does feel like baby steps for roleplaying. I am not personally interested in it.”

Skills

Cyberpunk uses a big fat skill list to generally determine how good your character is at various tasks. You get a big bundle of points to put into your class skills and then a small pool to spread out however you like.

These sort of big shopping list skills are sort of a mixed bag for me. On one hand they can lead to “button pushing” gameplay where the game becomes a matter of which button can I push to win instead of actually interacting with scenarios in character. But on the other hand, in a big futuristic world like cyberpunk it does pay to have a number sitting there to indicate whether or not your character knows how an AV works or if you character knows how cyberdecks work or not.

Haircut and I both agreed that some of the skills feel either redundant or just do not feel like they really “need to exist” especially many of the social skills like “interview” and “social” where resolution of those sort of things should really just be left up to the GM and the roleplaying. It can feel overwhelming to look at. For the sake of simplicity I split my class skills evenly with 4 in each skill filling in a few gaps with my pick up skills.

Equipment and Cyberware

In the interest of efficiency, I simply selected a primary and secondary weapon for our hapless solo and then made a quick runthrough of the available cyberware picking out a few things.

We end up with a handgun, SMG, an armor jacket, a cyberarm, some boostware and a dream. Ready to go up against whatever junk night city has to throw at him.

The opposition

We need some more gonks for our hero to fight, but I’m not interested in doing that whole process over, luckily we don’t have to as the rules provide a “Quick and Dirty Expendables” generator. Using this, I generate two rubes for our Solo to beat up on.

I decided though that I didn’t want to roll any more dice or write anything down, so instead I found a nice website to generate my goons for me. Its picking through different cyberware, weapon and armor options that really makes generating throw away goons troublesome. Simultaneously I don’t want to standardize everyone’s gear but hand selecting every loadout is tedious. There must be some middle ground. For now, this website shall do. (https://www.laurelcadre.com/cp_goon/)

Finally, cracking skulls

All the pieces are set, I’ve created my example character, who we will now call goodson, and the two goons who plan to cross him have also been created. The scenario: Goodson walks home with eddies hard earned when he bumps shoulders with two boosted out gonks looking for a reason to blow someone away.

Turn 1:

Insults have been thrown, and Goodson senses violence. He throws himself into action hoping to get the drop on these no good skavs. He is declaring the quick draw action on this first turn allowing him a +3 to initiative. A stellar roll almost allows long hair to seize initiative, but goodson clenches it with an 18.

Goodson leaps into action drawing his SMG and flicking off the safety to fire a burst of 10 rounds at old long hair, 7 of which find their mark. When determining the first 2 hit locations, I roll a 1 twice indicating two headshots. This particular choom has nothing protecting his dome, and thus the weapon deals a cripping amount of damage producing a death save he cannot make. He is killed instantly and the 9mm bullets tear through his grey matter. Goodson ends his turn by ducking for cover around the bend.

Bald seeks to avenge his choombatta and reaches for his own SMG to open fire. Moving around the bend to follow goodson he lets 20 rounds fly, but thanks to a poor roll managed to miss our solo. Initiative must be rolled again.

Turn 2:

Goodson seizes the initiative again on a 23 versus a 20 going into turn 2. He opens fire with the remaining rounds in the magazine of his SMG, the bullets dance through the dark streets and bald is struck 4 times. 3 of the shots are absorbed by kevlar but the last shot bounces off his steel helmet rattling his dome pretty bad. He is now seriously wounded with a -2 Reflex modifier.

The gonk retreats behind the concrete and fires off his 10 remaining rounds to no avail.

Turn 3:

Goodson has won initiative for a third time. Boldly he jumps into action rounding the concrete barricades with his 11mm pistol drawn. Managing to roll 10s back to back, he expertly places a round through the assailants kneecap, sending him to the ground.

Goodson holsters his weapons, picks through these losers pockets, and takes off into the night. Stone-cold and unafraid.

Conclusions

Haircut: “I am ever enthralled by everything about Cyberpunk. But I still cannot imagine actually playing the game at scale. I think it could be fun to play a solo campaign with a dedicated DM or maybe two players. Also, it needs a monster manual.”

Where my head is at after dipping my toes into the combat system, which I found fairly workable much moreso than I remember, is trying to imagine what a campaign in this ruleset would actually look like. How would downtime work? How would travel and timekeeping work for instance. Perhaps the way forward is actually running some sort of small scale campaign for a very limited amount of human players. Where I could get a feel for the combat and the limited campaign rules presented whilst getting some more experience with the system overall that could inform my process for really understanding how to make a Cyberpunk campaign work.

Its easy to imagine a group of players taking on various jobs across night city, shooting up business and warehouses, doing battle with booster gangs and corporate guards, but where these things fall apart is between the concept and the execution.

Haircut: “Yeah let me make 30 guys for this booster gang for you to fight. It’s going to take hours.”

I completely agree with this sentiment, getting those ideas to the table in an efficient way seems to be the most important roadblock to overcome. Researching that aspect of play will be my next goal. This article became a little disorganized, but I enjoyed writing it with live commentary from Hairct/Goodson. I enjoyed adjudicating the little skirmish, found it to be very tense. Overall I am pleased with the experiment and I am curious what you all think about this style of post, feel free to comment. Until next time.

The campaign continues to chug along, sessions are still convened every weekend oftentimes more than once or even twice a week. However, session reports have gotten left behind due in part to the incredibly frequency of play each week. Ultimately, the details of many of these little sessions have been lost though the fates of first level characters are only interesting for so long and the campaign must evolve and change. Some characters have nearly attained fifth level! Going forward, session reports will be reserved for sessions of consequence or particular intrigue to keep the workload of writing the reports manageable. Otherwise, monthly updates on the state of things should suffice, granting more time to write about specifics of the campaign instead like the emerging cultures, races, peoples and places of the borderlands.

Mountain Gate

Many characters come and go in Mountain Gate, but the major players have remained mostly the same. Thermos the Paladin met a demise in pitched battle against goblin warg riders, Goodson and Simon continue to ply their bloody work against monsters in the plains south of settled lands. Slang the Snake Cultist was publicly executed for the crime of high treason. Captured by the lizardmen of the western mire and placed under a Geas, he found himself with little choice but to play along with the beastmen’s foul schemes to the bitter end attempting to lure a local baron to this demise. Slang relied to readily on the help of Goodson’s men, who instead risked the ruin of the Geas to warn the local authorities.

An expedition was almost made the the chilly north to Bravay, the largest local Kingdom and patron of Mountain Gate itself. Headed by Neff, who goes by many names, a group of adventurers took the perilous mountain pass north crossing the plains that lie beyond, stopping only to eat at a curious tavern. Eventually they were greeted by the neat way castles and rippling crimson pennants of the Lawful Kingdom of Bravay even making it as far as Freihern City, the Capital. Being a class 1 market situated on the ocean, many opportunities abound for those with the eyes to see them.

Urdom and Elsewhere

The Chaotic domain of Urdom situated west of Mountain Gate has seen little activity the past month, save a small delve or assassination here and there. Though rumor has it that the beastmen of the swamps grow restless, and tribal chiefs conviene in dark court to plot moves against Mountain Gates outlying settlements.

Far to the east we have dragged and dropped the Dwimmermount module in to the campaign world, and some of the characters located there have seen some significant success. Mostly the dungeon has been pillaged, though a daring rescue was launched to recover and revive a dead first level character as the Bishop came to owe us a favor. The drawbacks of being lawful perhaps.

Moving into the New Year

Goodson means to raise an army against a significant orc warband, so the remainder of the year will probably be concerned with the preparations and aftermath of that mission. Should our hero survive, he also plans to host some sort of years end festival at his compound. We are also planning to convert the campaign officially to ACKS II in the new year, with congratulations to our fearless leader for his incredibly successful kickstarter campaign. I eagerly await my 3 hardcovers.

Scenes from the Borderlands

Bing AI has been an entertaining way to preserve some of the memories of the campaign. Below are some scenes from the borderlands.

Start Date: 10/7/23

End Date: 10/16/23

Location: Mountain Gate

Characters

Skyrin Forkus 2nd level Dwarven Pugilist, Neutral
Burzum, Third Level Shaman, Human, Neutral.
Horf, Henchman Explorer of first level, Burzum’s Henchman
Neff "The Archeologist", second level Thief, Neutral

Session

Neff, “The Archeologist”, of some repute, saddled his mare, and having collected a new Dwarf ally, and Burzum, known wolf cultist, made tracks from Mountain Gate into the wilds outside the domain of Lord Jeffrau. Having heard tell of a ruin some miles to the east, sequestered in the foothills of the nearby mountains. Making quick time, the group was able to arrive in a few short days of unmolested movement and quickly located the entrance to the ruin. It appeared as though the door was set into the back wall of a small cave, but the door had been disturbed, crudely shoved aside by unknown forces. The adventurers crept inside, toes tapping lightly against a long staircase that led down into the earth. It led to a grand entrance chamber, long tables were bedecked in dusty cutlery and ancient chairs lay on their sides long since vacated. There were three doors in this chamber, the first appeared to lead simply to an abandoned service room, dishes and spare furniture were stacked to the ceiling. The next room was barred by heavy flagstones pulled up from the ground and set against the door. The veteran nose of Neff twitched, and he listened closely for signs of life.

Behind the door, a low canine growl was barely audible. Taking no chances, Neff organized the removal of the flagstones before the Dwarf yanked the door open and Neff hurled bottles of burning military oil into the snarling faces of a pack of Dire Wolves. Most of the wolves either burned alive or suffered such horrific damage they could do little more than weakly protest as Dwarf and Henchman laid them low. The den seemed to have been intentionally blocked off, so in went Burzum, known wolf enjoyer, and for his trouble he was greeted with a connecting room, also full of Dire Wolves, which met a gruesomely similar fate at the throwing arm of Neff. Burzum, tiring of killing his beloved wolves, beseeched his ancestors, guide him to treasure, show him what lay in this place, and the spirits did, they bade him go further still.

Wolfless and curious, the party moved to the third door, into which they crept. Beyond the door was a long chamber with many doors lining the walls. Between these doorways and in the midst of the hall was a band of Goblins, who reacted too slow to jump the adventurers. A melee followed, arms were severed, eyes gouged, and at the end the goblins had retreated into the surrounding doors and the rooms beyond. The party caught their breath and examined the hall. In the center was a tarp, covering a huge object of some kind. Ol’ death or glory Neff ripped the tarp off and marveled at what stood below; A golden throne, its opulent seat perfectly preserved, its gilded arms caught the torchlight and reflected purest gold. Excitedly, Neff began to inspect the throne, and discovered it came apart into several (Very Heavy) pieces

Determined to uphold his reputation, Neff began dismantling it, even while under harassing fire from Goblins who were too cowardly to come into the open to fight, merely shooting through cracked doors. After some time the chair was dismantled and carried back up through the dungeon, and laid in pieces across the backs of the parties horses. They made their merry way at speed back to Mountain Gate, where Neff approached his acquaintance and client Viscahle, Nephew to Lord Jeffrau, with the artifact. Viscahle was taken aback by its beauty and the quality of Neff’s pitch, and ordered it be examined and appraised for its value over the course of a week. A week later, after nail biting speculation, the party was again summoned to the chambers of Viscahle, and he announced his buying price of 2,000 gold, and his appreciation, which Neff gladly accepted.

Campaign Master’s Note

Another Rusty session, Burzum has another auspicious outing loath as he is to kill all these poor wolves. He’s sniffing around level 4 however, which is nice. I intend to beast friendship as my second class proficiency so that I can start taking wolves as henchmen.

I dipped into some undiscovered country and allowed Dinkle’s player to inherit a portion of dinkle’s wealth as experience as the late gnomes actually considerable fortune was lost as a result of his untimely death. This allowed his next PC, Skyrin to start at level 2.

Start Date: 10/1/23

End Date: 10/10/23

Location: Mountain Gate

Characters

Dinkle Fizzlebang: Second Level Gnomish Trickster, Chaotic. Ferret tamer extraordinaire

Jack: First level ruin-guard. Dinkle wanted to run two PCs.

Slang: Second Level Shaman, Neutral. Serpent wielding cultist.

Thermos Praxos: Second Level Paladin, Lawful. Solar crusader, slayer of goblins.

Goodson: Third Level Fighter, Lawful. Burgeoning Hero of the borderlands. Leading his men on yet another crusade.

Father Dominick: First Level Priest, Lawful. Pious healer, vowed to poverty.

Session

The first day of the tenth month, an auspicious day depending on who you ask. Goodson assembles other likely rogues in Mountain Gate with a new plan. Far to the west, rumor persists of a sunken mine which predates the current civilizations of the borderlands. Goodson plans to have a great barge built and floated down the river many miles into the wilderness in search of a lake the mine is said to reside on.

Many preparations are made, and a barge is commissioned. The modest docks of Mountain Gate were unable to provide a barge of Goodson’s original specifications, but a smaller 20’ x 30’ barge is eventually procured at some cost. Poor Dinkle was banished from the barge on account of his gnomish nature and giant ferret henchman (henchcreature?, henchbeing?) and instead followed behind in a canoe.

The eight day long journey downriver through the swamps remarkably went off without a hitch. Some giant leeches were encountered in the murky waters, but the handful of nearly 4’ long monsters thought better of attacking such a large vessel. On the ninth day, our adventurers found what they believed to be safe harbor in a rocky alcove on the northern side of lake the river emptied out into. Lord Jeffrau’s scouts had reported the sunken mine to be situated on the northern end of this lake in the mountainous region beyond.

All was not as it seemed, however. As the barge pulled into shore, something from below rocked the great vessel. Our worthy heroes gathered in the center of the vessel and prepared to repel whatever monsters may lurk below. Then they emerged, heaving themselves over the edges of the barge with their great claws and chitinous legs. Crabs larger than a man with great snapping claws powerful enough to split a poor soul in two. Goodson and his two loyal henchmen, Fyr and Mink, leapt into battle. Praxos and slang bolted the other direction. Behind the barge, Dinkle’s canoe was destroyed by gnashing claws.

The gnome abandoned his vessel, swilling a potion of invisibility he acquired from the thief Neff. In this way Dinkle was able to evade the crabs and swim to the barge, while his poor ferret was torn to pieces. Meanwhile, the battle raged on and the giant crustaceans proved a deadly foe. Jack was slain early on, and Slang’s serpent was also killed by the gnashing claws, causing the Shaman to fall unconscious. The battle eventually turns in our hero’s favor due to Goodson and his men. Victory would ultimately come at a steep cost as Fyr, one of Goodsons most trusted men, would be slain.

When all was finally still, mischievous as ever, Dinkle saw fit to use his gnomish magic to create a harmless illusion of yet another round of snapping crabs leaping up over the sides of the boat. Needless to say, the rest of the adventurers were not amused. Many of their number had been slain, and Dominick had been trying to tend to the wounded. Goodson especially was disturbed by this as he had taken the loss of Fyr very hard. In the end, Goodson and his remaining followers cornered and slew Dinkle as vengeance for his trickery. The party chose to remain in the cover of the cove and heal their wounds for some time before pressing on to the mine

Judge’s Note

I was surprised to have PvP pop up in the campaign for the first time, but it was exciting! I don’t think PvP is a bad thing overall, but your mileage on may very. Dinkle’s player was suitably disappointed, but I allowed him to inherit a portion of Dinkle’s lost treasure as experience for his next character. Overall I think it was a good display of role playing and character agency and I am satisfied with how it unfolded. Perhaps the gods of fate were on Goodson’s side as he did roll a 20 to hit Dinkle, slaying him in a single blow with the help of weapon focus. Goodson’s magic sword, Mage-Slayer, living up to its name thus far it would seem.