Let's Read ACKS Core at RPG.net

Yeah I like reading many RPGNet threads, but it could really do with a RPG Meta sub forum, where all the 'stuff that is not about gaming/games but gamers/writers' bile can be spilled. And I don't have to see it! Anyway I'm enjoying the thread and especially thoughts from thoe who don't really know ACKS

Hey Alex, where'd you get the rule that magic missile weapons have the plus applied to the throw, and ammunition to the damage?

[quote="thirdkingdom"]

Hey Alex, where'd you get the rule that magic missile weapons have the plus applied to the throw, and ammunition to the damage?

[/quote]

I made it up when one of my players acquired a +2 bow with +2 arrows and became game-breakingly dangerous.

 

aaaand I'm banned for using the term "newer-edition weenies" to describe my own players.  No wonder there are so many designers and bloggers banned from big purple.

edit: just for a day, but honestly shocking what a hair trigger it was over.  Honestly I got missed initially and thought about editing my post, I guess I should have!

The best part about RPG.net moderation is that I 100% guarantee you it would have been ignored if you had been commenting on older editions instead :stuck_out_tongue:

[quote="Aryxymaraki"] The best part about RPG.net moderation is that I 100% guarantee you it would have been ignored if you had been commenting on older editions instead :p [/quote]

 

well, volunteer force and all that. 

but yeah, if instead of talking about appeasing "later-edition weenies" I had instead suggested not being beholden to "grognard sensibilities" I wonder if I would have evaded his wrathful eye.  In fact I wonder if they get pinged every time the word "edition" is used and I could have stayed under the radar by saying "later-era".  The mind reels at the possibilities, really. 

It was also odd since someone on these forums is also a mod there and was participating.  Maybe they have a policy of not moderating threads they participate in.

That's why I stopped visiting that site long ago. I've never been banned but their moderation and forced politics are too much. My eyes nearly rolled out of my skull when I saw that you were suspended over something so trivial. I'm still following the thread though besides this one stupid incident it has been really interesting.

I'm enjoying the lets read, ive picked up a few tid-bits ive otherwised missed reading the rules too :)

Wow, those bans were massivly un-called for, and sounds like the mod didnt even read the posts they were attached to.  Especially when I've read far more volitile conversations on there and not a single ban handed out for them.

I like that he got the person who restated Jard's phrase before he took out Jard.

I'm proud of everyone that participates in these forums for keeping this place away from becoming another "Argument Clinic".

I also really like how Harrowed wrote out his example of working the mortal wounds table. Kinda feels like there's a way to goose the table around a bit to support that format/flow.

Indeed, was a rather interesting take on it that felt like it just fit with everything else.  For me that is what makes a great house rule :)

[quote="Jard"]

aaaand I'm banned for using the term "newer-edition weenies" to describe my own players.  No wonder there are so many designers and bloggers banned from big purple.

edit: just for a day, but honestly shocking what a hair trigger it was over.  Honestly I got missed initially and thought about editing my post, I guess I should have!

[/quote]

The RPG.net forum has had a history of extremely nasty DnD edition warring in the past. That's why the DnD section was seperated from the general RPG section. The Mods are thus particularly sensitive about the subject. 

[quote="koewn"] I also really like how Harrowed wrote out his example of working the mortal wounds table. Kinda feels like there's a way to goose the table around a bit to support that format/flow. [/quote]

Thank you. I had to write something like that out to work out how it functioned to my players. I believe I referred to it as Schrodinger's Status.

I think this has some interesting theological implications about gods and divinities in ACKS. Since divine power can be harvested by convincing people to worship a deity, it seems logical to assume that faith is itself what provides the motive energy, and not the deity itself. Likewise, the divine energy from blood sacrifices comes from the creature being killed.

It seems like this implies a world where belief gives rise to the gods, rather than the other way around, and that a god's puissance varies dependent upon their worshippers, and idea I like very much. I've always been a fan of the Terry Pratchett "Small Gods" approach to deities, and think this fits in nicely.

The metaphysics of the Auran Empire setting are, more or less, that physical life creates soul-energy and sustains its coherency, where otherwise it would be drawn off into a collective or world-soul. (You might think of soul energy as a wave that life particularizes). Most living things actually generate a bit more soul energy than they need to maintain the coherence of their own soul, and that surplus can be "spent" on worship, devotion, or magic. When a creature's body dies, its soul begins to reconfigure to transmigrate into another creature (Empyrean) or begins to dissolve back into the world-soul (Chthonic), unless some external method is found of maintaining its coherence. As the soul transmigrates or dissipates it gets harder and harder to resurrect the dead (hence the timeline). A meager amount of the soul does linger in the remains, enough to speak to with Speak With Dead or to use for spell components.

One of the methods of maintaining a coherent or particularized soul is if other creatures send you some of their ambient soul energy through worship of you or sacrifice to you. So, for instance, if Alexander the Great dies, his soul begins to dissipate. But if Alexander is worshipped as a god, that will maintain his soul energy even though his body isn't around to maintain it. If enough creatures worship Alexander, then he'll have enough soul energy to maintain his own existence and have a surplus to use for magic. The implication is that at least some of the gods are actually heroes and kings of the ancient past who were deified and worshipped.  

Another method of maintaining a coherent soul is to become undead and drain the life energy of other living creatures, either by eating their flesh (ghouls) or draining their souls directly (wraiths, spectres, vampires, etc.) Or you can seek to preserve the body in a magical way that keeps the soul present even though it otherwise would dissipate (mummies). Note that it's possible to receive soul energy from worship while still alive (a "living god") and while undead.  

What is unknown is whether, when a birth occurs, a specific soul is reborn from the world-soul, or whether it the sould dissipates entirely so that new souls are essentially a random collection of soul-energy. The Empyreans believe that souls are kept more-or-less intact in reincarnation while the Chthonic believe its dissipation into nothingness before rebirth. Conflicting interpretations of the facts above lead to the Empyrean and Chthonic theological systems. The Empyreans burn the body and seek to release the soul for reincarnation unless it was so exalted as to deserve worship (Imperial Cult, etc.) while the Chthonic seek to preserve the body and soul in undeath until enough spiritual energy is available to their gods to restore everyone to life (the Awakening).

 

 

Huh, that's cool. So, quick question about how this interacts with undeath: do free-will undead retain their own souls? What animates the lesser undead (skeletons, zombies, etc.)? Is it just a small amount of random soul energy? The implications for the question of "what happens to the soul after death" are that at a certain point the souls of the dead are absorbed back into the primordial soul cloud, which explains the duration limits of spells such as Speak with Dead; and Restore Life and Limb, although it appears that Reincarnation has no time limit, except for the requirement of having some physical piece of the subjects body.

 

As you can see, it encompasses a pretty fucking huge area. 281 6-mile hexes are considered to be Civilized, while 332 6-mile hexes are Borderlands. That means that 10,624 sq. miles are considered to be Borderlands and 8,992 sq. mile Civilized. The book will explore further implications of Civilized v. Borderlands v. Wilderness from here on out, but for right now what we learn is that Explorers can only found their domains in Borderlands or Wilderness, while demi-humans (elves and dwarves) must found their domains either in the Wilderness or Civilized/Borderlands areas of domains founded by their own race.

Wales is 8,016 mi², for comparison.

During the Middle Ages, the largest town in Wales was Cardiff, with a population of 1,500 to 2,000 inhabitants - 300 to 400 families in ACKS terms, making it a Large Village (Class V). Cardiff would not be big enough to evenmake Wales "civilized", in other words.

Even as late as the 14th century, there were only six towns large enough to qualify as ACKS Large Towns in the whole of the British Isles - London (4,500 families), York (1500 families), Bristol (1,200 families), Coventry (960 families), Norwhich (800 families), and Lincoln (700 families). There's 94,525 square miles in the United Kingdom. If we assume 8,992 square miles per town, with no overlap, that's 53,952 civilized square miles, still leaving half the islands uncivilized. But of course most of these towns are actually clustered near each other in an arc across the east and south of England, with Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland virtually absent of urbanization. In ACKS terms, England would be largely "Civilized", while Cornwall, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and the smaller isles would be Borderlands and Wilderness. The rules tend to create urban clusters with borderlands and then wilderness and assume adventure is happening at the borderlands. This is in contrast to the "points of light" in contemporary D&D, where cities seem to dot the landscape with huge wilderness in between. 

Since Every Campaign is a Law Unto Itself, you can, of course, assume a smaller radius of civilized and borderlands territory if desired. An approximate downward limit of size that an urban settlement can control is a number of hexes equal to (urban population / 31), based on a 10:1 rural:urban ratio and an average population density of 310 families per 6-mile hex (50 per square mile). London would need 145 6-mile hexes or 4,500 square miles just to feed itself and the peasants who feed it, excluding any smaller towns in its orbit. Anything less than that and you get into bad simulation - where does the food come from?

 

I liked how the thread mentioned that Neutral clerics do not have their divine power acquisition defined.

For me, this means that it’s up to their deity. I’d think that most Neutral deities would probably collect congregations, but a more savage deity might have blood sacrifice instead. Some deities might have both (perhaps they accept sacrifices of nonintelligent creatures, but not of intelligent creatures), or perhaps they have restrictions on it that Chaotic deities do not (since Chaotic deities accept only willing Chaotic sacrifices, perhaps a Neutral deity accepts only willing sacrifices of any alignment). Or perhaps they have fewer restrictions; a deity purely of death merciless might accept any sacrifice, while being Neutral instead of Chaotic due to their complete lack of any sort of caring about the living.

Interesting stuff, thanks for the further info :)

I'm sure Alex will chime in, but once that was brought up, I was thinking maybe there just *aren't* Neutral clerics, or Neutral gods. (a text find in the Primer for "neutral" reveals no results)

It kinda makes sense - the experience of being/achieving godhood perhaps necessitates 'picking a side'  - there's no way to be a diety and be 'meh' about things - you're pure will and ego, and there has to be a focus for that. It'd follow then that the cleric also must pick a side in order to channel that.

The cleric of death merciless may still be Chaotic, just not, you know, cackling, finger-steepled evil - uncaring but for what he or she wants seems to still fall under Chaos. The classic Nature God could fall either way - the reincarnation of souls (the ciiiiiiircle of liiiiife) and such could be argued as Lawful - there's a cycle, don't mess with it, don't build that dam, don't mine that mountain - while still a bit anti-civilization.

What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

[quote="koewn"]

I'm sure Alex will chime in, but once that was brought up, I was thinking maybe there just *aren't* Neutral clerics, or Neutral gods. (a text find in the Primer for "neutral" reveals no results)

It kinda makes sense - the experience of being/achieving godhood perhaps necessitates 'picking a side'  - there's no way to be a diety and be 'meh' about things - you're pure will and ego, and there has to be a focus for that. It'd follow then that the cleric also must pick a side in order to channel that.

The cleric of death merciless may still be Chaotic, just not, you know, cackling, finger-steepled evil - uncaring but for what he or she wants seems to still fall under Chaos. The classic Nature God could fall either way - the reincarnation of souls (the ciiiiiiircle of liiiiife) and such could be argued as Lawful - there's a cycle, don't mess with it, don't build that dam, don't mine that mountain - while still a bit anti-civilization.

What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

[/quote]

 

My assumption is that most Men are Neutral; it is those that are Lawful or Chaotic that are the outliers, those who have made the choice to participate in the cosmic struggle between disorder and anarchy. Regarding the worship of deities, I like the idea that most individuals worship a multitude of gods within a pantheon; those who worship a single deity are, like those Lawful or Chaotic characters, the outliers. That allows the average man to give offerings to both the gods of Law and Chaos, depending on which one they are attempting to propitiate.

[quote="Alex"]

Since Every Campaign is a Law Unto Itself, you can, of course, assume a smaller radius of civilized and borderlands territory if desired. An approximate downward limit of size that an urban settlement can control is a number of hexes equal to (urban population / 31), based on a 10:1 rural:urban ratio and an average population density of 310 families per 6-mile hex (50 per square mile). London would need 145 6-mile hexes or 4,500 square miles just to feed itself and the peasants who feed it, excluding any smaller towns in its orbit. Anything less than that and you get into bad simulation - where does the food come from?

[/quote]

 

This is extremely relevant to me, as I started my regional map with the assumption that i would make a class II market city, and the resulting spread of civilized vs. borderlands meant there was very very little actual wilderness for the players to muck about in within the region.  I might assume a highly urbanized pattern to try and make some little pockets of wilderness to play in.