It’s time for me to do a readthrough of ACKSII. I can’t believe I haven’t done one yet. I will be using my standard scoring system of Love It (++), Like It (+), Meh (-), and Hate It (x), keeping these in chronological order as presented in the book. This time I’m adding a new category, Confused by it (?).
Although ACKSII isn’t on the docket to get played any time soon, I suspect its tendrils will work their way into every game I run for the rest of my life, in some form or fashion.
Given that the three books that make up the entire ACKSII work amount to more than 1500 pages and a million words, I suspect this read-through will never be finished.
As always, this exercise is an excuse to force myself to carefully read through the entirety of the book’s rules. I tend to skim and skip around, and this is the best way I have found to read and process in depth. It’s harder than a prescription for ADHD medication, but also free.
I will be referring to the game’s author Alexander Macris, throughout this readthrough, since he is the sole author of this work.
Key
(++) Love it
(+) Like it
(?) Confused by it
(-) Meh
(x) Hate it
Book 1: ACKSII Revised Rulebook
Introduction
(+) A very clear explanation of the type of game this is. This section includes an outline of the contents of the book, explaining what each section contains. A lot of this is well-known to experienced players of D&D-type games, but defining terms is never a bad thing.
In particular, defining a “throw” is important, since it’s used everywhere.
(++) Throws have absolute values at various levels. One of my favorite parts of the ruleset is that most Throws have a threshold determined not by the Judge but by class and proficiency features. This means the level of the character is typically more important than its stats.
(-) Bonuses applied as negatives being an improvement. An example given on page 10 talks about how a character with a 16+ lockpicking throw who gains a +2 to lockpicking could simply write Lockpicking 14+ on his sheet. While this makes perfect sense to me, I have found that adding bonuses as a negative throws some players in dramatic loops, often resulting in what the kids call “crashing out.” I don’t know why, but negative numbers make people’s heads explode.
(+) Nonproficient characters cannot crit on a 20. I never noticed this. That’s the power of reading.
(-) Crits and Botches. The official terminology for rolling a 20 or a 1. Crit is fine, but I don’t much care for the word Botch. I prefer Critical Fail.
(?) Limiting random chance with a d6. Macris describes situations that are more heavily influenced by skill or ability should be resolved with a d6. I find this very curious, since any chance on a d6 could also be mapped to a d20 or d100. I suppose this is to prevent the bonus from changing. Still, with the amount of calculations he has us do, surely he could have doubled or tripled a bonus, then applied it to a different die. Right?
(+) Monster reaction philosophy. Monsters will generally react cautiously, fight with moderate resolve, and occasionally be very friendly or hostile. I recently compared the Shadowdark reaction tables to those of standard AD&D, and found that Shadowdark skews toward aggression and violence. While I appreciate Macris’s philosophy here, I have not seen that it is accurately reflected in the rules as played. Then again, one could make the argument that I have not accurately reflected these rules in play at my table.
Characters
(+) Character creation is semi-random, as Gygax intended. Note that characters treat hit point rolls of less than four as four, then add or subtract CON modifiers as normal.
(+) Clear outline. This section lays out the entire process of character creation, and later pages provide greater detail. Good organization.
(+) Class templates are the default. If you don’t like your template, you can select from any of the items on the table that are LOWER than the result rolled. Experienced players can just go shopping for proficiencies and gear, if they prefer.
(++) Choosing stats before rolling. Players pick their primary stat and roll 5d6, dropping the two lowest dice (minimum 13). They pick a second and third stat to roll 4d6, dropping the lowest die (minimum 9). The rest are 3d6, no minimum stat.
(x) Experience point bonuses for stats. I think this is poor game design. These characters are already rewarded for having good stats, and now the rich get richer. This disincentivizes characters with poor stats from getting playtime. I would rather see the XP bonus given to characters with poor stats. This is a Gary Gygax construction, but that doesn’t mean we have to use it.
Combat Characteristics
(+) Classes are differentiated by weapon and armor skills. A lot of words are spent on explaining why certain classes can wear or wield certain armor and weapons. I feel like it’s kinda… overexplained here? Why does it take a full page to explain this?
(+) Combat progression. All classes advance in attack and saving throws differently, and it’s not tied to stats.
(++) Cleave rules. One might argue that ACKS is the only system to truly fix the “linear fighters, quadratic wizards” problem. All I know is that cleaves help balance out a weak action economy in the late game.
(++) Hit points pool rerolls at level up. Minimum 4 on the dice roll at level 1, plus or minus bonuses. Reroll all dice at each level, keep the new result, and add CON bonus to each die. If it’s the same or lower than before, increase total by 1. I don’t know why other OSR games don’t do this, as it helps smooth out the randomness of rolling dice at each level.
(x) AC. The way ACKS handles AC has been a constant issue for just about everyone who has played the game; it’s neither ascending nor descending; it’s ACKS AC. Although we eventually got our heads around it, I found that at a virtual tabletop, it became very annoying again.
(++) Proficiencies. Perhaps one of the best ideas in ACKS. It gives characters who might otherwise be very similar (see OSE or Shadowdark) and allows players to choose some feat-like options that allow customization. Best of all, most of these features are not necessarily combat-focused, but world-focused. For example, animal husbandry allows one to train animals, which might later be used in combat.
(x) Four combat speeds. Ugh. I get it, we need this kind of information to run in a simulated world. Ultimately, a lot of this stuff just isn’t used most of the time.
(x) Stone weight. The best argument for virtual tabletops is weight and inventory tracking. ACKS has my least-favorite system for this. It even mentions how backpacks convert stone to coins, which is the system OSE uses. This game is just BEGGING for VTT automation, if not requiring it outright.
(-) Languages. PCs with an Intellect penalty are illiterate. I’ve never seen language rules result in interesting gameplay.
(-) Starting Age & Dying of Old Age. I think these rules are funny and a bit preposterous. However, it is required by the simulation.
(+) Alignment. Another of ACKS’ positive contributions to the tabletop gaming world is Macris’s philosophy about Alignment. This oft-poorly-explained and vague system finally has some value in this game.
(x) Dedicated Activities. This elaborate breakdown of what does and does not constitute an activity for the day is the exact kind of shit that makes me not want to play ACKS. I understand that Macris is using abductive reasoning to figure out why Gygax did things a certain way, and these rules serve to explain why an adventuring party must rest every 6th dungeon turn, or every 6th wilderness day. I get it: It’s all part of the simulation, yadda yadda, but this kind of explicit, heavy rules application is just glue in my gearbox.
Classes
(+) Each of the core classes specializes in a specific area of gameplay: Fighter is combat, Explorer is wilderness exploration, Thief is dungeon delving, Mage is arcane casting, Crusader is divine casting, and Venturer is mercantile ventures. This structure was not obvious to me when I first read ACKS, but it makes a kind of sense. The additional human classes are meant to demonstrate to prospective Judges how classes can be tailored to fit a given setting. The advanced classes given here are meant for the Auran Empire setting.
It would be entertaining to design advanced classes to fit a particular setting. We saw a bit of this when my dear friend Ben designed two amazing (and unique) classes for our Kings of the Forbidden North game. Sadly, no one ended up playing them.
(++) Class templates. These are flavorful packages of equipment and proficiencies that roughly correspond with a poor-rich bell curve. The lowest (and rarest) kit for a Fighter is a Thug, and the richest is a Cataphract (a well-trained military strategist). More likely, players are going to be an Auxiliary (trained for the military but awaiting orders while working). In general, I find the class templates to be an excellent solution to a serious problem, while also doubling as a character background.
(+) Classes. I’m not going to read through every class and its features. It’s very dry work. Likewise, I’m not going to be reading through proficiencies. I already did that work long ago when I put all of the proficiencies on a spreadsheet for me (and my players) to enjoy. As far as I’m concerned, making a spreadsheet to manage ACKS information is a rite of passage for prospective Judges and players.
(x) Variable XP tables. This is a strange holdover from old AD&D, and it seems like an antique balancing mechanism. We don’t see any modern games have different rates of progression for different classes. It just calls attention to how goofy and strange old versions of D&D were.
(+) Campaign Classes. This is an interesting idea, and one that definitely fits with the wildly overambitious tendencies of ACKS. The idea is that the core classes are always available for players, but the Judge would use the rules in these books to create five or six campaign-specific classes. For example, in our Gods of the Forbidden North campaign, one of my players did just that and created two classes that could only exist in that game world. Like a fool, I only added them to the existing pool, rather than removing any of the existing ones.
(+) Demi-Human Classes. An interesting evolutionary break from the old games, in which Elf and Dwarf were classes. In this game, players looking to play as non-humans have entirely different classes available to them. I’m not sure if this is better or worse than how most games handle it, but it’s interesting and different.
(+) Equipment. Another great feature of ACKS is the economics, and in general, the value of things. Having the backing of a well-considered economy has brought me much peace as a Judge over the years, even as players found ways to exploit my people-pleasing tendencies and lack of rules mastery to become millionaires.
(++) Market classes. I’ll likely write more about this in later sections, but the addition of market classes was transformational for my games. Even now, I use market classes in all of my games, even if I’m not trying to simulate economics.
(+) Adventuring Equipment. There’s something to be said about a thorough, detailed list of equipment. Our recent forays into Shadowdark have shown us that ambiguity must be quickly eradicated (I’m looking at you, caltrops). ACKS’ maximalist paradigm, while arguably burdensome in many cases, is quite welcome in this context.
(x) Exception-Based Design. Going from any modern and tightly designed TTRPG to ACKS will be jarring for anyone, including me. ACKS is an exercise in learning that no two in-game systems are alike, and that new rules are written for basically everything. There really is no simple resolution or rules of thumb that can be referred to; everything must be looked up, every time. I’m having a hard time describing the problem. I can tell you that with two brilliant rules lawyers at my table, with full access to PDF and online search tools, our experiences playing ACKS is often clunky and janky.
(x) Optional Rules. Masterwork equipment. I’m speaking generally here, but this game already has enough subsystems, and adding more is overwhelming. In my experience, players latch on to certain ideas for this game, and expect certain systems and subsystems to be included. I’m looking at you, monster part harvesting. This game is already hard enough to DM, and I often surrender certain parts of rules mastery to players.
(x) Encumbrance and Equipment. I’ve already written about this. This game is the worst of all worlds when it comes to encumbrance.
(x) Hirelings and Henchmen. I realize they’re an important part of this game, but they fucking suck. Tracking how much money players owe their hirelings, treasure shares, managing multiple characters in combat, it’s awful. I see why Shadowdark did away with this mess (but that causes other problems)
(x) Reaction to offers. Another clunky mini-subsystem.
(x) Hireling morale and loyalty. Because the players and judge didn’t have enough to track already. This needs to be managed by a computer.
(+) Specialists. A lot of these make sense for this type of game. Hiring someone to research something for you, identify a magical item, or train an animal, etc. It’s clunky and slow at times (and basically serves to time-gate certain results for players), but have generally been a positive addition to my games.
(+) Spellcasting services. Sometimes, you just need someone to cast Remove Disease. It’s good to know what it costs.
(-) Living expenses. It’s nice to know that players get to pay taxes, even in their imaginary playtime. Look, I understand the need for this, but geez. The simulation often goes too far in this game.
(+) Spellcasting Repertoires. This game codifies a popular house rule about spellcasting, and I think it should be the standard: You can cast any spell in your spellbook. I’ve never understood why you would require casters to prepare a pre-set list of spells for the day. I really think Gygax hated casters, and there are mountains of evidence supporting this theory.
(x) Reversed Spells. This is on my list of grievances. I despise reversed spells. It adds absolutely nothing to the game other than making some spells harder to look up. Just separate them and call them different spells. Genuinely frustrating bit of game design.
I got this far in my reading before I took a long, long break. I'm still taking that break, actually. I may eventually return and finish the reading here, but it's tough. I have a serious love/hate relationship with this game, and seeing this many red highlights has helped clarify the exact parts that chafe. The best D&D I've ever played in my life was with the original version of ACKS. But I don't know if I can ever play it again.
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