The "Adventurer Conqueror King System" (ACKS) is not the answer to all your D&D dreams.
Sure, it is an incredible retro-clone of BX and/or a re-imagining of the "Rules Cyclopedia" with all killer no filler. ACKS 2 is a Herculean achievement by its writer Alexander Macris. I am a member of the #PoplarCrowd and look forward to receiving my physical books from the ACKS 2 Kickstarter as soon as possible. I have nearly 200 sessions under my belt DMing my quintessential ACKS campaign "Dubzaron". Over 100 of the session reports for it can be found on this blog.
So why did I title this post "ACKS is not the answer"?
Recent History
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But here, dear reader, mine voice is all that echoes in your troubled mind. And your questions. Your own voice (if you can visualize an apple at least) says "but I love ACKS. I play ACKS all the time. I love solitaire play. Worldbuilding is fun! I have spreadsheets in my spreadsheets so I can spreadsheet when I spreadsheet. No one wants to session play with me :(". Perhaps not all of those... but fear not for I am here!
ACKS itself is well geared to an implication in Appendix N pulp fantasy like Conan. From Adventurer, to Conqueror, to King (natch). Conan did this. John Carter did this. So, ACKS wants PCs to do this. A lofty and laudable goal indeed. But, is it fun?
With Braunstein play and BROSR approaches, the answer is yes. With ACKS and its conventional approach to playing D&D the answer will often be no. "That's mean, Dubs! I have alot of fun playing ACKS!"
Yes you do because ACKS is the GREATEST EXAMPLE OF A CONVENTIONAL STYLE FANTASY RPG EVER CREATED. It mastered it. Focused it. Perfected it. Most D&D players have played weaker versions of a conventional fantasy RPG so the greatest one ever made is a big step up for them.
But even the GREATEST EXAMPLE OF A CONVENTIONAL STYLE FANTASY RPG EVER CREATED is not as fun as the dumbest and most shoddily ran Braunstein session and Braunstein focused campaign. To make my point, let's define conventional play.
Conventional Play
As Jeffro, in his blog post "Braunstein Play is Fundamental to D&D" he states "Conventional play ignores [Braunstein Play] entirely [and focuses] on the antics of a single party. When they reach a sufficiently high level, both those characters and the 'campaign' itself are retired."
ACKS players (and certainly its writer) would say "no we keep playing ACKS at high levels". Yes, you do. But in a Conventional way. Thus the campaigns themselves are still a dead end because ACKS "has lost the concept of the Braunstein entirely".
ACKS still keeps its focus on a single party, a fellowship of the Getalong Gang. Of course, a D&D player characters can have ALOT of fun in the Getalong gang. The original ACKS Borderlands campaign ran by Macris had over 200 sessions. I'm sure there was fun being had. But it was Conventional Play Fun. It wasn't BROSR. So, it wasn't Braunstein. So, it was less dynamic.
We know ACKS game design focuses on a single party. Here are a couple proofs:
-the much celebrated ACKS economy system assumes a single party. Many readers thought "well the rules state there are only 10 warhorses for sale in this town" but ACKS 2 clarifies "there are only 10 warhorses for sale in this town that the adventuring party can find". If there are 2 parties then party A can find 10 warhorses and party B cand find 10 warhorses. The amount doubles! ACKS 1 saw no need to even clarify the concept of multiple parties in the economic rules because Conventional Play of a Single Getalong Gang party was so foundational to ACKS' Conventional D&D design. I'd argue Dubzaron's success and our MANY parties made it impossible for ACKS 2 to ignore the multi-party campaign.
-ACKS allows PCs to waste GP into a carousing type mechanic in town. This "wasted" treasure becomes XP for the Players next PC should his PC die. This rule makes no sense in a BROSR style campaign with multiple PCs per player. Such that I removed it in Dubzaron. If your PC 1 dies but had 100k paid into his replacement you'd prefer to make a new PC with that 100k XP rather than play your 20k XP PC 2. But in Real D&D, your PC 2 is actually more interesting and dynamic. Little sucks worse than bringing an extremely high level PC into an ongoing campaign that no one cares about because he just showed up.
What we gather from this is ACKS is designed for the Getalong Gang of a single fellowship to level through the various tiers of adventurer, conqueror, and king together. If one of the fellowship is lost along the way, the player can replace him with another PC with about 80 to 90 percent of the XP his previous character had, and be the new Getalong Gang member. This is not what the BROSR is doing, this is not Braunstein play.
Braunstein Play
Why are multiple partes so important to Real D&D (thus Braunstein) approach to D&D?
-Braunstein play requires Convergences. The BROSR defines this as when the players' actions come together for interesting scenarios that are worth playing. The more PCs a player has the more personality and worldbuilding elements he will bring to the table in REAL PLAY that might create convergences.
-Having multiple PCs teaches a Player to put his PC on the proper D&D hierarchy. Which is rules over campaign over party over PCs over story. Most Conventional D&D players put their PCs and sToRy over all! I shouldn't need to prove this to anyone who has read most online D&D discussion. When you put the Campaign as a whole over the story/PCs then it's easier to really dive into a Braunstein scenario. You're not as worried your PC will die because you know the Campaign will live on and the Scenario itself is the thing; your interaction with it. Conventional Players can never truly accept this.
Convergence and Diffusion
Convergence is what makes a campaign fun and real. If an army falls in the Borderlands but no players are around to see it, did it really happen? Perhaps. But no one cares. It's not really part of the Campaign. It's part of Diffusion. Diffusion is when Players, PCs, or Campaign elements are off on their own. Sometimes necessary, never as fun as Convergence.
Conventional High Level Play
If you run ACKS with Conventional Play approaches you will reach mid to high level and want to do something with your army or thieves guild or College of Mages or Temple or whatever. You have three options for this:
1. Solitaire Play: If you're running 1:1 time or your Conventional DM has found some other way to keep the campaign on track timewise, you can play a solitaire game of D&D alone. You can take your army into the wilderness and smash NPCs alone. You can flog your spreadsheets and create magic items alone. You can add sheets to the Excel form with your Domain info and recruit troops, alone. This is bad because there is no Convergence. There is only Diffusion. ACKS 2 leans very hard on this and has the best rules for Solitaire campaign play ever created. This indicates ACKS considers this a good answer to High Level Play.
2. Solitaire Play with DM Adjudication: You can do your Solitaire Play with a DM making some notes to essentially do 1 on 1 session play. This can be done face to face or with discord or whatever. This is superior to true Solitaire Play and has some precedent with the Lake Geneva OGs. I recall a story of Gygax DMing 1 on 1 for a new player who rolled up a level 1 thief. Said thief decided to delve deep into his Castle Greyhawk alone to find where all the treasure was located but not engaging in combat. A fun night for both men, for sure. But it is Diffusion. What made it TRULY FUN, we can be certain, is when this Thief PC brought back his maps to the Legacy Party to tell them where they could find the best stuff. Did he sell it to them? Go along? Exaggerate? Lie? Who knows. But that would be Convergence and that is self evidently more fun than the Diffusion of the 1 on 1 session lost in its own bubble not impacting anyone else.
3. Session Play PVE: PVE is a video game term that stands for Player Vs Enemy. In this case it would involve the Getalong Gang of PCs pooling their resources to take on the DMs NPC bad guys. This is standard D&D stuff with which we're all familiar. It's the essence of a dungeon delve. But when you get to mid to high level it gets very lame indeed. For one, the number of resources a Party has at mid to high levels is going to overwhelm a DM and he will not have any fun at all. A DM will be expected to control an NPC domain, its armies and dozens of spellcasters, and come out on top in a mass combat with 3 to 5 players on the other side with MUCH MORE character resources and 3 to 5 more ideas and schemes on how to win. It's possible for a DM to win this, but it's not fun. I analyze the problems with this approach in detail here. Sure; you can say "well Dubs you're just a bad DM, I'm better than you". Maybe. But as I said at the jump, the weakest Braunstein is better than the best Conventional Play. The weakest Braunstein DM is the better than you. And you know it.
These three approaches are worse than running a Braunstein Campaign or even a Braunstein session. Imagine that instead of pooling all your resources to wreck your poor bedraggled DM's NPCs yet again, you take your army vs another PCs army and another PC with an Assassin's guild is cutting deals on who he's going to spy for and the PC mage college is doing a massive ritual or wish spell to turn one of the armies into atomic supermen because the PC cleric angered the PC mage months back by saying "science is lame lol".
This stupid scenario that I just laid out with zero thought and a run on sentence is better than any high level play you've had with Conventional D&D or ACKS.
Imagine that instead of my dumb scenario, you had a bespoke PVP Braunstein scenario with all your best mid to high level PCs Braunsteining eachother in just the same way. The schemes, the triple crossing, the dynamic PVP. It would be a session and/or scenario for the ages and your players would never stop talking about it.
The Solution
The bad news for you, and ACKS played in conventional style (as written) is the Braunstein is the solution. The good news is the BROSR Braunstein approach can be overlaid on ANY RPG game. Heck, we did it with Traveler!
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| A true revolution. |
But the Braunstein is better. And you can run it with ACKS. I did. And now, with BROZER, you can do the same. Jeffro and I tell you exactly how to do it.
BROZER is free to download on DTRPG because, while it would be incredible to make a living wage as a TTRPG designer, the call of the BROSR is deeper than this. We don't want your money. We want what's best for you, to love you as Christ loves His Church.
We're thankful for the opportunity to help improve the RPG hobby. We're thankful for you.
Merry Christmas and God bless you.
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ReplyDeleteThis is a fascinating read. Our group has run ACKS, Traveller, and Braunsteins in both. We have had great fun with both the conventional play and the Braunsteins and I agree that Braunsteins allow for interesting PVP. However, I don't think it's accurate to say that PVP is the ultimate goal of any TTRPG. Just because it's theoretically more interesting doesn't mean that it's intrinsically better. There are many players out there, especially those with busy lives and young children, who prefer collaborative play rather than PVP. Real life has enough drama, we don't want it in the game. That said, I still think that ACKS can provide the gameplay you're looking for within the rules. This can be accomplished in two ways. 1. The DM can create new incentives and divergent interests between the party members as they hit those higher levels. This happens in real life. When just adventuring, everyone gets along, but once we all have domains, my council of nobles wants the mine and your council of nobles wants the mine and now you and I have a problem that we can't just agree on without serious domestic blowback. Or you can say that your patron deity and mine are now fighting or whatever. The DM can create lots of different ways to give the party divergent interests. Option 2 is to allow those players who want to pick fights with everyone, because it's interesting, to have control over chaotic or otherwise aligned domains. The player group is now in charge of the Auran Empire? Well, now the pugnacious player is in charge of the Skysos.
ReplyDeleteTo me, this really does seem like the DM not using the tools available, and a catering to one play preference and being prematurely dismissive towards other play preferences. Either way, ACKS as a rule system is not the problem. ACKS is a tool that allows for local, regional, and imperial level conflicts with specific rules for adjudication of exactly how those interactions will occur. All Braunsteins inherently contain a large element of DM fiat whereas ACKS makes the whole thing mechanically stable and objective. If my army lost the battle in ACKS, it's because I made errors or the other guy was better or the dice hate me, but the result was reached by an impartial mechanic. In a Braunstein, the DM is necessarily involved in deciding these results which lends itself to the possibility of partiality between players. As a final note, it's interesting that a player base so dedicated to playing the rules as written and one that prides itself on rule mastery and player skill is so quick to abandon the existing rules and layer a separate and distinct game on top of an existing one. That approach seems inconsistent to me.