One thing which interested me is how suitable is ACKS for urban campaigns? A major element of the game is concerned with frontier and wilds exploration and building strongholds on the borderlands. Sure, there are hijink rules which are mostly urban, but I am under the impression that the main assumption of the rules is that the ACKS campaign should be run in the borderlands or outer wilds.
What I was considering is running an urban campaign in a city with several rival noble houses/factions/gangs and thus quite a lot of room for an upstart to exploit the conflict to carve out his own power base. One idea was a more "steampunk" city with multiple noble and industrialist families, the other is Zarnas, the last surviving Sakkaran city in my Barbarian, Conqueror, King setting which is a decaying city slowly consumed by the desert and the swamps and is governed by the mostly-absent undead Pharaoh, while the Pharaoh's supposed subordinates use this vacuum to fight for power and wealth in the decaying city.
Does anyone have any experience of urban campaigns in ACKS?
I haven’t looked into it in detail, but my suspicion is that it would be possible to adapt the existing rules for strongholds controlling an area with vassals and realms and such by changing the scale.
Map out the city in hexes, with perhaps 1 hex = 1 block, then check what happens if you just use the existing rules with relatively minor tweaks as if the 1-block hexes were actually 6-mile hexes (or 1-mile hexes, depending).
Some adjustments would certainly be needed, but I feel like you could get most of the way there this way, and then you’d have rules for controlling parts of the city and profiting thereby.
Sounds pretty accurate to me tbh, twelve blocks from any source of authority at all? That’s certainly not a good part of town, wilderness seems a reasonable adaptation Get an encounter throw every block, instead of every X blocks in a well-patrolled (civilized) neighborhood.
[quote="Aryxymaraki"]
I haven't looked into it in detail, but my suspicion is that it would be possible to adapt the existing rules for strongholds controlling an area with vassals and realms and such by changing the scale....
[/quote]
That's friggin brilliant. There's a whole microstructure in there for handling multiple hideouts and other sorts of guilds..."The East Frisian Trading Co. handles the docks 'round here, and it's Black Thom's gang what gets you things in ... under the docks, as they say."
Wow! This is indeed a very brilliant idea! Even for a modern or even post-apocalyptic (or sci-fi!) campaign! After all, organized crime even today in our modern age tends to follow old Feudal social structures...
Just as a small thing, but one thing I liked for my urban campaign was this:
I had a way to determine random locations in the city. (We had a detailed city map, and I had a copy that the player's couldn't see and dotted it with numbers 1-20, then I could roll 1d20 to determine where something was.)
I also had a table for "When you talk to someone, anyone, about something/someone you're looking for". It was 1-30.
"1." was "they don't know, but they pretend to know. Roll 1d10+6 to see what they want"
2-6 was "they don't know".
Then 7-30 was things like "They fear violence against them if they help the PCs."
I can't paste them in because I snarfed the entries from Silent Legions which isn't OGL, I chose the entries I liked and put them on one big table. 7-19 is "they want" and 20-30 is "they fear".
These two things in combination I could then use for anyone the players were looking for. They were tracking wanted criminal? I roll a d20, see that she's it's in location 6. They then start asking people. Their innkeep friend? Their henchmen's families? Random NPCs they grab off the streets? No matter who they grab, I roll on the same table. 20% of the entries are "they don't know" even though realistically it should be like way way way more. It's just that this makes it more adventurous, they maybe have to ask a couple of people but soon enough, someone will know. And then we RP it out and I really push it, like if they ask some random on the street and get that 20, "They fear violence against them if they help the PCs", I'm like trying to emote fear, and going "I don't know nuthin'... go ask someone else" and the players are trying to fish out if the NPC is telling the truth or not or how they're going to get to the truth and we have a long talk in character and either they get the truth out of them or they can go ask someone else. Worked great.
Get an encounter throw every block, instead of every X blocks in a well-patrolled (civilized) neighborhood.