To me the winds that die and start,
And strive in wars that never cease,
Are dearer than the level peace
That lies unstirred at summer's heart.
More dear to me the shadowed world,
Where, with report of tempest rife,
The air intensifies with life,
Than quiet fields of summer's gold.
I am the winds' admitted friend:
I share those ancient mysteries
They whisper to the trembling trees
Or roar along the heavens' end.
And when my spirit listless stands
With folded wings that do not live,
Their own assuageless wings they give
To lift her from the stirless lands.
Within the place unmanifest
Where central Truth is immanent,
Lies there a vast, entire content
Of sound and movement one-in rest?
I Know not this: yet in my heart
I feel that where all truths concur,
The shrine is peaceless with the stir
Of winds that enter and depart.
On the edges of the Jornada del Muerto a number of boom town cities have grown up around the great alien green black buildings, plazas, & step pyramids that sizzle in the deep desert heat. These appeared over night & the world marveled the golden artifacts,strange technologies, & weird glowing auroras that appeared around the skies around the pyramids. Mutants, adventurers, outlaws, gamblers, & aliens from 'elsewhere' all converge around villages, towns,etc. as fortunes are made and lost in the otherworldly locations surrounding these pyramids. The whole place is known as Las casas de putas de Satanás or Satan's whore houses because of the number of demons & monsters of myth & legend that have been seen & have killed people. Las casas de putas de Satanás is twenty five miles of some the most dangerous extra dimensional alien ruins, dungeons, & weird landscapes that dominate the desert floor.
The local army, authorities, & occasional CIA Vanguard teams try to cope with the mutant horrors, giant irradiated monsters, and worse that comes out of the deep desert & the volcanic lost world jungles. Meanwhile fortunes are made on the weird artifacts coming from the Las casas de putas de Satanás. Back in the Eastern United States & in South America a technological revolution has been taking place from these artifacts. But some are saying that these artifacts are allowing 'dark forces' to have influence on reality. Hidden alien presences & so called gods have been sprinkling cults throughout the states & beyond. Several joint US/Mexican militery bases have sprung up around the area including St.McCready, Plissken, & Hicks all named after various war heroes. So I've been wanting my own mega dungeon for a long time now & I'm going to start tackling it with this new project that I've outlined in the last entry on this blog. Personally I think that I'm going to take the Lovecraft Circle approach to the dungeon location & use some of the ideas of Clark Ashton Smith.
I haven't been happy for a while now with certain aspects of my DYI OSR gaming more specifically the lack of post apocalyptic & cult classic horror table top gaming. A work has been taking its toll on my life in certain aspects in a positive direction. We've gotten busier & busier in the home sewing machine repair realm. That's a great thing but its left me with a bit less time to blog & enjoy myself but today I decided to put down some of my thoughts on my corner of the OSR. The fact is that since about last Thursday or so I returned to Gamma World & Mutant Future. Yes I love both games go figure. But I like a much softer apocalyse then what's been presented in both of those game systems. Truth be told I add in bits of Fantastic Heroes & Witchery with Adventurer,Conqueror, King's rpg system to get the right balance of domain level play. Also my players weren't comfortable with the gun rules of Fantastic Heroes & Witchery's gun rules so we went with ADK's Guns of War.
Two things right off I don't care if certain authors or designers don't get along that's not my problem. Second I've paid for these games & under the games terms of fair use I'm going to use them at my table as I see fit. If my players are happy then I'm happy. So don't bother telling me that me that you got a problem with what I'm writing behind the scenes I don't have time for OSR pissing contests. You've got to understand that there's going to be damage adjustments & other system considerations using Labyrinth Lord & Labyrinth Lord Advanced's monsters & also a fair amount of Realms of Crawling Chaos.
So over the weekend I got a chance to view some cultclassic VHS era horror films that I love. Ghosthouse a horror film from 1988 has pretty much almost everything I'm looking for to kick off a campaign. "Ghosthouse (Italian: La Casa 3) is a 1988 Italianhorror film directed by Umberto Lenzi and produced by Joe D'Amato. It co-starred Lara Wendel and Donald O'Brien.
Its plot focuses on a deserted house where the visions of a ghostly girl and her haunted doll wreak havoc on those who enter it." The film is the unofficial sequel to Evil Dead II.[1] In Italy, The Evil Dead was released under the title La Casa (The House), and Evil Dead II became La Casa II. "
So basically this isn't our world at all. About 1920 or so the rise in interest in the occult & the supernatural reached a fever pitch. The occult was a fringe hobby along with a part time religion. The 'Dark Forces' of the world gained a toe hold. Events escalated in the Depression allowing Hitler and his cronies to gain in power but in 1940's both the Axis & Allies employed dangerous time & dimensional continuum shattering experiments. The Fifties saw the first mutants among mankind & the rise the giant monsters. The early Eighties saw the beginnings of the 'Little Wars' small scale atomic & dimensional warfare allowing even more supernatural seepage into our world & the rise of the mutant front organizations. The Cult of Cthulhu has been working its way into the foundations of society opening doorways for their masters. Meanwhile technologies have become incredibly dangerous as the US government & other world powers use agents, adventurers, and others to try curtail the advancing monsters destroying society from within. This is a world with a slightly higher technological level built upon the backs of genetically modified apes & other mutate animal species after finding the secrets to this genetic fount head out in the fringes of reality.
All is not well in society as the major religions are calling for the end of the world as NASA & other governmental organizations stock pile caches of technology, relics, and more in bunkers all over the world & the USA. Riots of mutate workers & servants have happened in several major world cities and these are on the increase even as strangely garbed travelers wander into our home towns & other cities from Elsewhere.
Much of this came from reading through the Mutant Future Wiki Gamma World Entry over the weekend & taking a look deeper into the first Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Gamma World Conversions again for the billionth time.
"The
world is broken in hidden ways. The truth is concealed for the sake of
mortal minds. The unendurable reality that boils behind the stars is
veiled by the pleasant blindness that human sanity requires. Yet every
comforting shroud must fall in time, and for these investigators, that
time is now." So let's peek behind the shroud of Silent Legion today!
So like a couple of years ago the Silent Legions rpg had its kickstarter. This OSR game by Kevin Crawford was successfully funded then it was put on a shelf someplace along with a myriad of very positive reviews. For months now I've had the pdf sitting on the dark corners of my hard drive & its time to do something with it. So what does Silent Legions bring to the table? A number of things that might look familiar to Stars Without Number dungeon masters.
Tools for creating eldritch gods, alien races, black sorcery,
unique Lovecraftian magical artifacts, fantastic demi-planes of dream,
and unspeakable cults of foulest evil. Make your players afraid of the
dark again- give them an enemy that's a genuine mystery to them!
Guides
for the creation of horrific monsters, building them from basic
templates elaborated by unique qualities and special flavors of horror.
Use the example templates for a quick abomination or flesh them out to
be a special nemesis for your players.
Region creation tools for building your own sections of demon-haunted Earth, including sixty
location tags to define the special torments of your land. These tags
are largely compatible with the other tags found in Sine Nomine products
such as Stars Without Number and Scarlet Heroes, so you can mix things up for even more dread chaos.
Adventure
templates for quickly producing an investigative adventure suitable for
sandbox use. You can create "blank" templates out of raw plot elements
and then drop them on top of your region; the blank spaces in the
template interlock with the location tags to create an instant adventure
no matter which location receives the template.
Cult rules that adapt the popular Faction system from Stars Without Number
for the dark machinations and secret feuding of the malevolent cults
you create. Keep your world in a steady downward spiral whether or not
the PCs are there!
So mechanically how cross compatible is Silent Legions with other OSR systems? Well according to the author's comments on Drivethrurpg;" Silent Legions, Other Dust, Stars Without Number, and Spears of the
Dawn all share the same system, albeit with a few genre tweaks for the
individual games. Scarlet Heroes uses its own system built for
one-on-one gaming, but even there, it remains basically compatible with
the SWN series, trading the skill system for "traits" and using a
slightly different system for saves."
I did a quick review of the beta rules way back in 2014 after a few edits & some tweaks the game was out in the wild for sale by Kevin Crawford. And that's all I've done with the game system. Sigh. The problem has been that players are used to Call of Cthulhu, Chill, Trail of Cthulhu, etc & don't seem to realize the strengths of the game system that make up Silent Legions as an rpg. Its far easier to get OSR or old school players into a game of Dungeons & Dragons then it is to get them into horror game but that's not all there is to Silent Legions. As an OSR source book well that's where this is one of the strengths of the game. It actually works well to enhance other old school & retroclone systems and can be used as a fast replacement system for Call of Cthulhu. But what does this mean? Well it means that your Fiend Folio 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons book just became a go to horror monster source book.
Now I've heard it argued that OD&D & AD&D 1st edition are horror games which to a certain extent is absolutely true depending upon the tone & take away of the campaign setting. But when you incorporate a family of berbalangs who are straight out of Filipino myth into a modern or a Dark Ages fantasy game using the bits that Silent Legions brings to the table well now your onto a full blown horror campaign. Several of the monster from the Fiend Folio are perfect fodder for the dream realms of Silent Legions ala HP Lovecraft's Dream Lands. Just the other week I ran a group of my regular D&D retroclone players through a modified version of The Outer Presence From Kort'thalis Publishing using Silent Legions. The results were both horrific and very satisfyingly from a dungeon master's perspective. The by play went very well as the players dealt with Miskatonic University and quickly headed to Papua New Guinea set during the 1600's. The results were a TPK but things went off very well. The players were very happy but wanted a bit more meat to their PC's then simply the profession rules of the Outer Presence. Sometimes less is not more especially for experienced players.
I'll be back with more commentary on Silent Legions as I get into the game a bit more but it looks like I'm going to be needing a hard copy of this game sooner then later. Well get more into some of the deeper aspects of Silent Legion next time. Until next time keep em rolling!
"Over a millennium ago, when the borderlands were in the dark grip of
the Zaharan Empire, the empire’s sorcerer-priests erected a profane
temple to house the terrible artifact known as the Stone of Sakkara.
Using the Stone, the sorcerer-priests could birth monsters and
abominations with frightening ease and magically command the loyalty of
chaotic creatures. The Stone brought its evil masters great power
throughout the fell empire. " Clocking in at eighty pages AX1 The Sinister Stone of Sakkara is an introductory adventure for the Adventurer,Conqueror, King system hearkening back to classic TSR era B/X adventures such as Keep of The Borderlands. By that I mean that it takes all of the existing ACK's products within the Autarch lines and puts them into play as a homage to adventures of a bygone era. The idea of the lone Auran/Roman style keep on an Ancient Egyptian/Mesopotamian border that they have conquered is used as the backdrop for a very well thought out adventure. Here the action is centered on the factions of the dungeon & the PC's must deal with the fall out of the evil that slumbers here. There is a bit of everything in this adventure as its meant to do exactly what the Adventurer, Conqueror, King rule book lays out. That is to explore, deal with, get hired, hex crawl, fight, battle, & play while getting an entire feel for the ACK's system with both the players and the dungeon master cutting their teeth on the The Sinister Stone of Sakkara . Everything has a pseudo Lovecraftinan sword & sorcery vibe mixed in with the Auran empire setting. Monsters & encounters have that late night Saturday matinee mixed with a Mountain Dew war game feel. There are actual motivations, as well as reasons why the PC's are here in this part of Türos Tem the place is presented as the stronghold of a realm controlled by a
high-level NPC, with its maps, buildings, population, revenues, costs,
and morale score all detailed and provided. This makes modifying and adding it into your own home game campaigns a snap. Many of your standard ACK's humanoids are present but there are far more sinister things lurking as lots of slimes, molds, jellies, fungus, & worse crawl through the AX1. If the players are stupid & make poor decisions their going to have their PC's killed in no time flat, this is a great module but parts of it can be very unforgiving as the writing and design is very tight. Its well done and easily modified but you're going to have to think on your feet. Yes your PC's might end up with their own domain but they might end up a victim of the very evils that they're investigating or being killed by one of the multiple factions of this realm. Action is fast, reactive, and the plot moves along. There is a sense and story to the history of the region that echoes bits of Robert Howard, Michael Moorcock, with a blend of Caesar and Rome thrown into the blender of this module. NPC's function as movers, shakers, possible patrons, or flat out enenmies of the PC's & the ambitions that they bring to the region & your table. This is a place of sand,blood, evil, & flat out mayhem. Expect no quarter if crossing the wrong person or their hidden agendas. The powers that use this region do so with intent and guile. This is because the whole adventure of AX1: The Sinister Stone of Sakkara is a guide as well as adventure intended to take the PC's through the whole of the ACK's system in miniature. Once again we've got that classic collapsing empires of earth’s Late Antiquity (250 – 750 AD) as the mirror of the age of Auran that AX1 is set. A
turbulent era in which ancient glories were drowned in a torrent of
violence & murder. So this is a perfect place for the PC's to make their mark as they come to explore the dungeons & environs of The Sinister Stone of Sakkara. I was somewhat shocked by how underpowered the NPC's are in this adventure, well not really. This adventure's NPC's reminded me of Dark Albion's 'anyone can be killed' in the Rose War attitude. Because there's also an almost boom town/end of empires set of circumstance that surrounds the setting of the Sinister Stone of Sakkara. This is so that the PC's can not only make their mark but possibly take over the local domain if their very lucky. Illustration of gnoll diplomacy, requested by Jeff Binder Certain things about this adventure stand out such as the fact that it integrates & plays around with Adventurer,Conqueror, King's Domains of War. The aspects of military & trade details is fitted in seamlessly within the adventure but its a weird fit in some respects unless of course you're used to war games being a part of your old school systems. The aspect of the war game as a part of the dungeon crawl hearkens back to the old school roots of OD&D when empire building was part and parcel of the gaming experience. Many independent companies kept this style of table top adventure going even as AD&D took another twist. AX1: The Sinister Stone of Sakkara builds upon & to some degree advances this concept on paper. How? By making the players take their PC's center stage or dying in the attempt. Even the description has this conceit built right in, "AX1 includes a two-level dungeon filled with chthonic horror along with
a friendly stronghold from which your adventurers can explore the
region." Illustration of a raven spying on Lady Valerian and Hometri Socolo, requested by Florian Hübner AX1: The Sinister Stone of Sakkara isn't Dwimmermount & for that I'm thankful. Even though I'm an experienced dungeon master there are several systems that Adventurer, Conqueror,King brings to the table that I need a bit of hand holding with. There is also the fact that introducing new players to this system is an added stress but reading through AX1: The Sinister Stone of Sakkara the experience doesn't seem so bad. I really like the Character Motivations table, which adds an interesting twist to the 'reason a PC is this way' and the motive for adventure.
The motives for the adventure in part are the war bands of beast men looting, sacking, pillaging throughout the countryside to gather sacrifices to power the
Stone’s birthing pools again. Local farms and hamlets have been laid low and destroyed. This sets up everything for the PC's to get into the deep end of this adventure & perhaps become entangled in the adventure's plot and weird horror that echoes through out. All in all I did enjoy looking through & reading AX1: The Sinister Stone of Sakkara. I think its a four out of five for the style, utility of use at the table, an economical use of writing and some fine gaming designing in the old school traditions. All in all I think that X1: The Sinister Stone of Sakkara does a fantastic job of presenting not only a great quality introductory adventure for Adventurer,Conqueror, King. But a great set up for a possible domain and base for the PC's all the while bringing the high quality Autarach standards we've come to expect.
There are times when I need to know facts about monsters such as background, where the monster is dwelling, how long the horror has been in its location, the social background of the beast, are there others of its species within a certain number of square miles, & more. All of this material sometimes needs to be joined together in a concise & coherent way. Well that's where Adventurer Conqueror King System: Lairs & Encounters comes in. This book breaks down all of these details & more. This book continues the high caliber standard set by the other Autarch titles. The physical book isn't out quite yet but the pdf sells for around ten dollars. Everything in this book is geared toward creating monsters that can deal with PC's on an even footing & then come back for more.
Some of the highlights of this include the following:
More than 135 ready-to-play monstrous lairs - that's at least
one lair listing for every possible monster lair mentioned in the
Adventurer Conqueror King System. The lair listings are designed to be
used both as domain and adventure plot points that can be shaped to the adventures that DM wants to run.
New subsystems for sandbox play, including rules for populating 6-mile hexes with lairs based on the terrain and extent of settlements in the region, and rules for searching for lairs in the wilderness factoring in terrain density, aerial reconnaissance,
splitting up to cover more ground (never split the party!), and these are one of my favorite bits of Lairs & Encounters.
Additional mechanics for monsters, including ability scores for monsters, proficiencies for monsters, and young monsters. This takes the monster from simple hazard & a quick encounter to a fully fleshed out NPC. This ties in with the Taming & Training rules which hits & then paves the way for fully fleshed out pets. The system ups the anty for taming and training monsters, complete system details on the lifespan, roles, tricks, trained and untrained value,
supply cost, training period, and the trainability modifier of every
monster in the game. All of this means simply that monsters, animals, pets, even live stock have a fair market value. Another addition to the dungeon that gives players even more trimmings to add to the PC in, out of, and as a part of the dungeon.
These are pretty well done a complete system for creating your own unique monsters.now we bring our same rigorous attention to details, customization, hacking of traditional D&D style monsters for the dungeon and the wilderness as well as urban materials.
There are samples throughout the book presenting the types of details on monsters that I haven't seen since the days of the 'ecology of' Dragon magazine articles. There are samples of monster lairs and the details that go with them. There are lots of uses for all of this material and I have to say that it back ties into the Adventurer, Conqueror, King main rule book. This is a welcome and wise decision to the DM who wants to bring the monster goodness to their tables.
Here's a good example of the level of detail that I'm talking about that appears in the Lairs & Encounters book:"
MEN, BRIGANDS
A fortified camp, with barracks, tents,
and a large command pavilion, surrounded by a log palisade, is home to
renegade mercenaries from the Company of the Black Thorn. They survive
by raiding towns and robbing caravans and travelers.
Cartography by Simon Forster
There are 100 Brigands (AC 3, Move 120’, HD 1, hp 5 each, #AT 1
weapon, Dmg by weapon, Save F1, ML +1, AL C) equipped with leather
armor, shield, sword, and shortbow, and another 100 mounted Brigands (AC
5, Move 120’, HD 1, hp 5 each, #AT 1 weapon, Dmg by weapon, Save F1, ML
0, AL C) with chain mail, shield, sword, and riding horses.
They are led by Inthorn, their captain (AC 7, Move 60’, F9, hp 45, #AT 1 weapon, Dmg by weapon +6, Save F9, ML 0, AL L/C), equipped with spear +2, sword +2, plate armor, shield, and a plate-barded medium warhorse. He wears a red-plumed bronze helm of alignment change,
which has turned him chaotic and led to his band going rogue, as well
as a dragon-hide sword belt studded with hematite (900gp) and a wrought
gold necklace set with thorn-shaped hematite (1,200gp).
Inthorn keeps a war-chest of 7,000gp, which is about one month’s
operating expenses for the band. In a small locked coffer, trapped with a
poison needle, he keeps 7 bloodstones (50gp each), 5 amethysts (100gp
each), 6 amber (100gp each), 3 topaz (500gp each), and 1 sapphire
(1000gp each). He keeps 3 wrought gold goblets (700gp), a gold decanter
(800gp), and gold bowl (500gp) in the command tent.
Inthorn has 4
lieutenants (AC 6, Move 60’, F5, hp 25 each, #AT 1 weapon, Dmg by weapon
+2, Save F5, ML 0), 5 sergeants (AC 6, Move 60’, F4, hp 20 each, #AT 1
weapon, Dmg by weapon +2, Save F4, ML 0, AL C), and 10 corporals (AC 6,
F2, hp 10 each, Move 60’, #AT 1 weapon, Dmg by weapon +1, Save F2, ML 0,
AL C), all equipped with plate armor, sword, lance, and warhorse.
Accompanying the mercenaries-turned-brigands is Dairin, a
powerful chaotic wizard (AC 0, Move 120’, M11, hp 22, #AT 1 weapon or
spell, Dmg by weapon or spell, Save M11, ML 0, AL C). Dairin wears elven cloak and boots and carries a wand of enemy detection (20 charges) and a scroll of cloudkill and conjure elemental. His spellbook has the following spells: burning
hands, charm person, detect magic, magic missile, shield, sleep; detect
invisibility, invisibility, knock, mirror image, web; dispel magic,
fireball, fly, invisibility 10’ radius, protection from normal missiles;
conjure elemental, cloudkill; death spell.
Inthorn’s new lover is Olyma,
a priestess of Nasga (AC 8, Move 90’, C8, hp 28, #AT 1 weapon or spell,
Dmg by weapon or spell, Save C8, ML 0, AL C). Olyma is equipped with
polished black plate armor +1, a whip, a spiked mace, a shield, an unholy symbol (a silver statuette of a bat-winged woman with a whip), and a potion of poison. She wears a pair of engraved silver armlets (600gp each) and a platinum tiara set with a ruby (1,300gp)." Needless to say that this sort of work is scattered across the board in Lairs & Encounters. This makes Lairs & Encounters a monster path book, that is not simply a source book but a source book that creates within its wake a way of detailing a monster as much as the setting within the context of an adventure or campaign.
Where ACK's is designed expressly for the purpose of providing interesting domain-level play, putting the "game" back into the endgame; Lairs & Encounters takes the domain level game applies that concept into the background of the monster. This means that the concept of the monster becomes two things one it becomes the competition, the horror, the mythological concept and antithesis to the PC's within their domains. The second thing it does is makes the animal or being that is being used within a game as much of a resource as any of the other natural game elements to be exploited by the DM. It means that those within your domains are going to be far more eager to seek the protection of those more powerful than themselves. This gives a whole other aspect to monsters as protection, rulers, etc. within those hexes that parties seem to continue to crawl through.
Another thing about Lairs & Encounters that's the 'encounter' part there is the gravity of history in many of the encounters that are created within this book. Many plug into the 'official' ACK's setting but they can easily be applied to your own campaigns for example:"
SKELETON
The ground here is torn up by the remains of nine ancient
Zaharan scythed chariots, broken and partially covered by webs, dust,
and sand. Here and there the jagged blades stick up from the scattered
chariot wheels. Each character passing through or searching the area has
a 1 in 6 chance of stepping on one of these partly-buried blades and
suffering 1d3 points of damage. 18 skeletons (AC 2, Move 120’, HD 1*, hp
4 each, #AT 1 weapon, Dmg 1d6, Save F1, ML N/A, AL C), with rusted mail
and jagged, broken scimitars, litter the ancient battlefield in
clusters near the chariots. They will rise to attack if blood is shed. " This is something to keep in mind when designing your own encounters and this book has the tools, guidelines, and more to help you out with that.
Something else to keep in mind is that Lairs & Encounters plugs into Domains at War, ACKS' expansion focusing on mass combat and how it
relates to all other aspects of the game, from monsters in domain management to
mercenary wages to mercantile supply and demand all centered around the aspects of the monster. By popular demand, they
have distilled just the mass combat system itself to an ~8 page kernel
which they are planning to add as an expansion but Lairs & Encounters slides right into the backside of this material. That means that all of those battle grounds, war fields, places of violence, ancient war sights and more have the real potential to turn into adventure locations unto themselves. This is something to keep in mind when running games after a party has passed through hex '5671' and they're entirely done with looting the bodies and the bandits, mercenaries are dead. Their foes can rise again to cause problems for the locals and you might have to back to clean up your messes. There are several reasons to really get into Adventurer Conqueror King System: Lairs & Encounters:
When you want a really well thought out lair for an adventure or hex crawl that not only blends into the setting but enhances the adventure material adding in another layer of adventure
Sometimes competition is good & monsters can add an entirely unforeseen complication for those domain owners. Monsters domains can also be a readily made domain for PC's to take over(Lairs & Encounters can make that process very wily and interesting as well).
Fast set up and lots of prefab encounters that can be dragged and dropped into your own adventure enviroments to serve as bridge gaps when you've got fifteen minutes before your players arrive and nothing written.
Expanded war game ties for domains of war that make those war games an actual part of the adventure with monstrous tie ins.
This book can be used to enhance, expand, and blow life into the factions and background of existing or classic modules to give new twists on modules or adventures that parties have already played through. Take Keep of The Borderland and suddenly it becomes more then a simple introduction adventure, it becomes an introduction to factional warfare with monsters surrounding a tiny island of humanity in the wilderness on the border of war! Drag & drop in some of the encounters and the entire tone of the adventure changes!
Adventurer Conqueror King System: Lairs & Encounters is a very useful book with lots of utility at the table the mechanics to create balanced new monsters, new spell powers, and other enhancements for foes itself is worth the price of admission because it can be applied for any OSR retroclone game with B/X D&D at its heart. Is it worth the ten dollar price of admission? Well in a word yes if you're used to creating your own adventures with in the confines of your campaign world and you want a book with the right tools for the job. Adventurer Conqueror King System: Lairs & Encounters ties directly back into the Adventurer, Conqueror, King main rule book making this one very thought out monster & encounters book. Do I think its worth the money for this book? In a word yes! Go buy it and will I be using it!
So I've been gone a good portion of the day & how this review came about is a bit tangled. I've been rummaging around the a great many Adventurer, Conqueror, King titles for the better of a year now. Yes, I have friends of mine who feed my OSR habit quite regularly & I've been off the ranch for a long time now. This means I review what I want when I want as well as how I want. Still there are titles that I don't have access to so I hit up Alexander Macris with an email. Well the gentleman is a very busy guy and all, so I don't like bothering him. At least that's what I thought. Wham two nights later I had a bunch of titles from the ACK's line up sitting in my inbox!? Among them was 'Guns of War', yeah great another 'fire arms' set of rules rattled through my head at about two A.M. Then I was zipping through G+ & came across this Lamentations of the Flame Princess play through. Wait?! There's a whole supplement on black powder weaponry that could be used with both ACK's & Lamentations? Given my obsession of wheel lock weaponry & my love of all things Lamentations colour me interested folks.
So what does 'Guns of War' bring to the table? Well its a supplement that brings the timeline for ACK's up to the age of black powder weaponry not simply for the humans but most of the major races of the Adventurer,Conqueror, King & Lamentations of the Flame Princess. This adds an entirely new dimension to these OSR games themselves. This brings that setting dynamic into a new light entirely. "Guns of War brings you all the rules you need to add the gunpowder,
firearms, and artillery of the Age of Pike and Shot into your fantasy
role-playing game. This century-and-a-half period was an age of war more
terrible than any that had come before, as the technology of battle
changed more rapidly than it had in any time in the preceding 3,500
years of human history. It was also an age of apparent anachronism made
real, as plate-clad knights battled rifle-armed soldiery, field
artillery fired on pikeman, and swords hung alongside pistols on the
belts of cavalry.
Guns of War is designed for use with Autarch’s Domains at War (D@W)
rules for military campaigns and battles. You will also need a copy of
Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS), Lamentations of the Flame
Princess (LOFTP), or a similar D20-based fantasy role-playing game to
use this book."
But is it worth getting into? Well from a dollar stand point my answer is 'yes' it adds whole new aesthetic to these games and it could be used with Dark Albion as well because its going to change events across the board in broad gun powder clouded strokes. The age of powder & shot becomes an entirely new set of dynamics & history stalking changes to the set up of games. This means that the material has a has a vaguely 13th-15th century feel to it in equal measure. Guns of War manages to do all of this in fifty eight pages of jammed black powder packed book. Does this really make a difference in the dungeon? Not really when your wearing twelve hand grenades packed with black powder called the 'twelve apostles'. Because your going to be facing down things like this Ifreet in some God forsaken megadungeon.
Guns of War does the job of taking ACK's from the dungeon into other realms of adventure into things like the a fantasy age of piracy, full on full city siege warfare with cannons, mixing up with the forces of darkness with powder, and much more. I make this book sound like one of the essentials for ACK's don't I? Well that's because technically in my estimation it is! When you have chain mail clad warriors fighting with pistols & swords then you've got a different mix of a game setting happening. Guns of War presents its material concise and well laid out details with the rules, tables, & descriptions being very easy to read as well as the content presented in a way that's easy on the eyes. The artwork is public domain with an eye towards the real world history whist keeping the book grounded in the ACK's setting (sort of). Because it moves the technological time table up there is a sense that Guns of War has at its core the OSR with an eye towards taking systems to the next level or at the very least the next time period. This book has lots of potential because of its use in ACKS Domains at War but that's a blog entry for another time.What it also means is that I can now run Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg materials within the ACK's system quite well. Things are not seamless but they work quite well so that suddenly that mini wall of Lamentations of the Flame Princes books has lots of potential in the ACK's system. This is another mark of the ulitity of the ACK's material at the gaming table. All in all I really enjoyed Guns of War so much so that I called the print shop today to get myself a copy of this pdf spiral bound. I give it four out of five because not only was I pleasantly surprised by Guns of War.
Yeah, I've been around the table top rpg hobby for a long while now at forty seven years old & I've seen my fair share of 'character guides' & companions. But then Adventurer, Conqueror, King shows up with its B/X leanings, proficiency system, and customization factor then more. So there are always books that are touted as essential out in the table top market but then you've got the Player's Companion for the Adventurer Conqueror King RPG. So what the hell is so essential in this book? Right off the top it features:" 16 new character classes to expand your campaigns, including the
anti-paladin, barbarian, dwarven fury, dwarven machinist, dwarven
delver, elven courtier, elven enchanter, elven ranger, gnomish
trickster, mystic, paladin, shaman, Thrassian gladiator, warlock,
witch, and Zaharan ruinguard." One of the strengths of ACK's is how the PC classes fold into the campaign setting material.
Everything in the sixteen new character classes ties in with the Auran Empire material and the implied setting set up from the character section of the main Adventuerer,Conqueror, King rpg rule book. This is a round about way of insuring the dungeon master & his players are going to be engaged in the world setting of the book but with enough room for customization. This is one of the differences between a second tier & generation OSR product or more 'modern' rpg systems. The amount of crunch helps to keep things wide open for player choice. This trickles down into the '238 character generation templates with pre-selected proficiencies,
spells, and equipment options to create archetypes such as the
Aristocrat Bard, Buccaneer Thief, Gladiator Fighter, or Runecaster
Shaman' These PC materials wrap character creation into essentially a kit like structure that actually works similar too but distinct from the old Skills & Powers second edition set up.You choose one of the "archtypes" to cut down on character preparation time to get up & playing as soon as possible. This section actually works & ties back into the Antiquity style of the Auran Empire. But it can be just as easily used with a straight up Sword & Sorcery style campaign setting of one's own design. Even magic system which adds new spells can easily be ported over to a sword & sorcery setting especially with dweomers such as dismember, earth's teeth, and trance, as well as ritual spells including cataclysm, plague, temporal stasis, and undead legion.
Do you have a favorite OSR PC class? Well there's a really nice DYI character customize class built section too. And additional domain rules that tie back into both the existing ACK's rules book & the Player's Companion;"A point-based customized class system that lets you create the perfect
blend of fighting, thievery, divine, and magical power. The custom class
creation rules are 100% backwards compatible with every class in the ACKS core rules and all of the classes in the Player's Companion." Once again there's more justification for dungeons & adventure locations to exist as the NPC can and will grow along with their PC counterparts;"Additional equipment and proficiencies to provide options for character
classes new and old, plus prices for building traps to defend your
stronghold".
There is an an emphasis on the political and kingdom building aspects as intended right from the main ACK's rule book which continues straight though the The Adventurer Conqueror King System: Player's Companion. This is something that makes it useful for the creation of both PC's & NPC's a welcome change of pace from many other rule books. All in all this well rounded approach to ACK's by the Player's Companion makes this one of the essential ACK's purchases. Its well put together, has a no nonsense approach to its subject matter and the sheer volume of material makes The Adventurer, Conqueror, King:Player's Companion a must have for any player or ACK's dungeon master. Clocking in at about thirty five dollars the hard cover has some really nice value for the dollar. You Can Purchase The Player's Companion In Hard Back Here
Essentially all you need to run a complete campaign is the ACK's rule book & the ACK's Player's Companion
The Adventurer Conqueror King System: Player's Companion is on my short list of books to get in hardback for 2016 at some point.
