Blogs

• Ascending v. descending armor class and attack bonus v. THACO
• Races as classes and racial level limits
• Vancian spellcasting
• The combat effectiveness of fighters
• Game mechanics for the thief class
• The D&D end game

One question we get asked a fair bit is whether the Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS) is a retro-clone. ACKS is not a retro-clone in the sense that it doesn't seek to replicate the experience of any particular rules systems. But it is built upon the excellent foundation that was laid by the retro-clones, in particular by Dan Proctor's Labyrinth Lord and Chris Gonnerman's Basic Fantasy RPG, without which our own work would have been vastly more difficult.  

Once I figured out the wage rate of a peasant and the value of an acre of land, that put ACKS on solid economic footing. From there I was able to extrapolate the income of a wide variety of professions, as well as the income of various levels of lords and nobles. Since the classical "gold for XP" mechanic drives the advancement of characters, the wealth of the society in turn told us how many characters of various levels could exist in the setting. Here, then, are the demographics of heroism...

In my prior post, I showed that each square mile of land supports 21 peasant farmers and their wives and 3 kids, or (21x5) 105 peasants per square mile. 105 peasants per square mile is roughly the historical population density of Medieval France. Other historical population densities are noted below.

Unlike many contemporary fantasy RPGs, the Adventurer Conqueror King System has been designed with the view that many gamemasters want to be able to simulate an ancient and/or medieval world in such a way that their campaign world makes sense. The income of peasants makes sense in relation to the income of kings. The cost of swords and the income of the swordsmiths who make them has some relation. Treasure exists in more forms than simply gold, gems, and magic.  The easiest and best way to achieve a world with versimilitude is to start with historical assumptions.

This email from Greg, dated 1/15/10, marks the beginning of Autarch. We didn't know it then, of course...

This is an early version of the ACKS cover. The blade-dancer has already become prominent, but here she is seen sitting on the throne rather than scheming to take it! Ryan wrote: