Adventurer Conqueror King System: Imperial Imprint Review: Adventurers Adventuring Adventures

   All the prep is done, we have our characters ready…so, what do? Well, handily enough, the next chapter is titled “Adventures”. Sounds fun. Maybe we should go on one of those. If we have a bunch strung together, we might even reach a couple chapters later, “Campaigns”.
   The rulebook here groups adventures into three different buckets; “delve”, “wilderness”, and “voyage”, with the last one getting its own chapter because that Odyssey stuff is a pretty different mode. Combat isn’t its own chapter, rather part of adventuring. Threw me for a minute, but makes sense organizationally after some consideration. If you’re like me, you immediately did twig on something big missing, but let us review first that which is, not that which ain’t.
   Delving is your D&D default activity, stumbling around in lightless depths with your only guide the thief’s vibes and a lantern held by a local whose only qualification as henchmen is that he was the lowest bidder. Dungeons, tombs, caves, lairs, sanctuaries, ruins…if it’s musty and abandoned outside of monsters, then you’re going to be doing what ACKS calls delving. The rules are, as expected, comprehensive but also not all that different from B/X. Thieves being the only characters with dark vision natively is an objective gameplay improvement, but there’s honestly not a lot to complain about in native B/X here, so there’s not a lot that changes.
   Wilderness adventuring is a little more expanded, but not immensely. It’s all your usual stuff, like “how to not get lost”, “how to live off the land when lost”, and “how to freeze to death”. I like that mapping is given consideration outside the dungeon too, keep that graph paper never busy while you’re outdoors as well as inside.
   This is where I’ll note that the term “ancillary activity” starts to crop up. Activities are split between “dedicated” (where it’s basically an all-day focused endeavor) and “ancillary” (where’s it just what you’re doing in the in-between times). They’re also classed as normal or “strenuous” (where you need to take regular breaks or else you get winded). Some will doubtless find this too rigorous, almost mechanical, but having everything broken down like this clears up a lot of potential rules arguments, plus these tags interact with proficiencies and spells and timekeeping in a comprehensive manner. It’s not obsessive like GURPS or Pathfinder, but these classifications do tamp down on the sillier adjudication debates.
   Combat section won’t throw anyone familiar with the hobby, either. As is only right and proper, it starts with encounter rolls, surprise rolls, evasion procedures, and reaction rolls, so there’s a good set of procedures to have interesting combat kickoffs by default. Once initiative gets rolled, the rules are, stop me if you’ve heard this one, comprehensive and well-explained. The only complaint I really have for any departures is ACKS’ lawsuit-avoidant replacement for THAC0, AC is ascending but starts at zero, which is then subtracted from the given character’s class-and-level-based attack throw. It’s not all that hard to process once you get used to it, but the difference is confusing for both old-school and new-school groups at first. I do like that the system assumes miniatures and battlemats, with things like facing and frontage actually mattering. It is so much easier to run theater-of-the-mind when there are real rules, rather than the “near/short/far” crap.
   Here’s where I must mention the odd omission. What I noticed missing, and you might have too, are cities as a potential adventuring venue, or at least a venue with special rules. City-crawls are odd and difficult to convey, not to mention less popular with players, but it’s odd that there isn’t anything special noted about urban adventuring. I’d imagine there’s another book for that, but we’re reading this as we go.
   Ship rules and seaboard adventures are where we start to depart far away from the stolid grounds of the Rules Cyclopedia. Do you need to know how a trireme handles crosswinds? We got that. Do you need to know how long a voyage from Rome to Gibraltar takes? We got that. Do you need to know what happens when the captain PC yells “RAMMING SPEED” in a mass battle? You betcher sweet bippy, we got that. Underwater combat and river voyages wrap up the ship chapter neatly and then its time to get into the real deal.

Running a REAL Campaign
   …because as solid and comprehensive as everything has been thus far, it is in Campaigns where ACKS differentiates itself from the rest of the hobby. We got domain and army and property and venture rules, and wooooo boy are these rules great.
   As discussed back in the classes section every single class in the game gets a custom stronghold when they ding level 9, netting them freebie followers and troops. How that stronghold is acquired is left to the Judge and player; some may be built, some may be renovated, some may be conquered, some may be manifested out of magic star-stuff after a yearlong quest. Where ACKS departs from a lot of the other “you get a stronghold” OSR systems is that it fully expects this building to be part and parcel of the GAME at this level, where your Adventurers, via Conquest, become Kings. Yeah boy, we’re into Domains.
   It’s difficult to properly convey just how complete these rules are. I’ve read a lot of RPG core manuals, and, because I’m silly like that, I’ve already read a lot of empire-building splatbooks stapled awkwardly onto said core systems. Many have good ideas for perfectly workable tack-on minigames to add to your game. Not so here. ACKS II makes ruling an empire central to the game, planned from level 1 as the final endgame goal. Rather than go through every single rule (trust me, your edge case is covered), I’ll describe how the level 10+ game seems to be designed.
   “How do I get a domain” is answered with a large number of examples, by the way, so don’t worry too much about that. Mr. Judge is assumed to dangle multiple domain opportunities in front of the players, something got conquered, don’t fret.
   First off, there’s a bit of a “main character” design here. The ruler is probably a fighter or something similar, with the other less-interested players acting as a ruling council. If multiple individuals want different domains that’s fine, but the game is assuming don’t-split-the-party here. All the characters are around the same level, so the domain has multiple strongholds, some (like the thief’s lair) not helping as strongpoints, but all adding infrastructure and interest. This is reasonable, out of my ~50 players in the main campaign, I have only 7-8 especially keen to rule something. We’re going to assume Dave overcame his intellectual deficits and is our well-advised king.
   King Dave, having built his castle within the newly-conquered border realm of Davetopia, now begins to attract not just henchmen, but also soldiers for the army and peasants to work the fields. There’s math to pay for all of this, but that’s handled by the wizard’s player. Zilban the Magnificent, speaking of which, has erected his tower and not only has apprentices, but is also beginning magical research, crafting magic items, and using ritual rules to cast level 7, 8, and 9 spells. Cleric…er, Crusader Alain makes a nice temple nearby, gaining not only henchmen but extra-fanatical troops, too. Finally, Scuz the Shifty is a full level ahead with his own thiefly hideout, embarking on “hijinks” which have real game-mechanical benefits but are also a wonderful method of introducing new quests into the campaign. Everyone is still very capable of entering a high-level dungeon and fighting a dragon, of course, but there’s also a ton of gameplay out and about, too.
   Dave the character is an idiot, but we don’t have to assume Dave’s player is. If he’s interested in getting into the nitty-gritty, he can do things like improve the lives of his people, plot court intrigues, deal with domain morale, and found new settlements. That math, and the gold income, is all there for the taking if he wants. Realms can also be left mostly in the Judge’s hands, being more or less inert nice showy houses for the party. Seems like a waste, though.
   If you noticed an organizational trend back in the adventuring section, then you know what comes next after domain-level campaigns…yep, we have four (!) chapters next for Armies, Maneuvers, Battles, and of course Sieges.
   This stuff right here? This wargame? That’s where the author’s true passion lies. Not only are the army lists comprehensive, realistic, and balanced, but they’re also FUN. Heck yeah I want to get into how Dwarven Crossbowmen and Elven Bowmen and Human Cataphract Cavalry work. Your units and armies can move around the map with a daily or weekly marching rate, there are cost breakdowns, mercenaries, bad guy (beastmen) army stats, specialists, conscription rules…I love this stuff. You might love this stuff too. Or you might not. But as long as at least one or two players at the table (including the Judge) are the kind of wargame nerds who like setting up these things, the battles themselves will appeal to everyone.
   Maneuvers are the preamble, but when we get to the battles all involved will have a blast. Despite the size and scope of army vs. army encounters, ACKS never forgets this is first and foremost a role-playing game. Heroes can have an enormous impact on the battle, charging ahead of the battle line in forays, risking character death in zoomed-in fights. Morale is key to victory in mass battles, meaning a lot of the prep beforehand and during the fight also impact that all-important morale score when arrows start flying. And once the losers break and run, of course you can loot all the bodies for XP.
   Sieges are more in the same vein, making all that obsessive construction and logistics matter once the baddies deliver siege to the poor embattled gates of Davetopia. Pitched battles may eventually result, but you also can also drive surrenders via starvation and disease, not to mention the usual intrigue-and-skullduggery options that player characters generate themselves. Once you take a city, you get XP for it, of course.
   This is all…really fun. It suggests a campaign, and this a game, rather different from the heroic set of buddies battlin’ evil that so much modern D&D assumes. All of these are the rules, but ACKS II ends with appendices and the most essential is probably Appendix A, the setting. There’s a direct setting document of course, but also an implied setting all these rules set up. In the next and final section of our Revised Rulebook review, we’ll look at both sources for setting to see how this game is played when the rubber at last hits the road.