Adventurer Conqueror King System: Imperial Imprint Review: Welcome to the Auran Empire

   Well we’ve reached the end. After a long journey, we’re finally at the appendices, mostly filled with essential-but-not-particularly-interesting-to-comment-about-in-review stuff like “Conditions”, “Index”, and “List of Kickstarter backers”. Of far more interest, though, is the appendix detailing the baseline Auran Empire Setting. It’s pretty decent, although spare. Far more details are found in official modules and splats like the ACX series, the dwarf-focused By this Axe, and soon in the upcoming Before All Others for elves. For the purposes of this review, though, I’ll be keeping to the baseline Revised Rulebook. The other two core books Judge’s Journal and Monstrous Manual also will expand setting information, so I’ll note that when I come upon it.  
   First off, a note on RPG setting documents (books, appendices, modules). They’re…interesting. Technically, no TTRPG system needs a setting, because while rules do imply certain setting assumptions, there’s a lot of flexibility in terms of milieu and that’s the first lever most game masters will fiddle with. If someone tells you “I’m playing ACKS”, certainly don’t assume they’re playing in the Auran Empire. Nevertheless, these kinds of setting bibles are fun to read for entertainment if nothing else, and if they’re well-designed then the setting itself should inspire the reader, suggesting adventures and campaigns just from how all the pieces are set up on the board. At the very best end of the spectrum there are some settings so compelling that people play them even in different systems than intended. People playing Dark Sun in Shadowdark, for example…that’s the pinnacle.
   The Auran Empire is basically Rome. Yeah, yeah, I know, that’s not very specific, and a lot of settings have “Rome, but X”, here though you are in a very specific Late Rome, where I describe the current situation as “what if Septimius Severus heard about the Mongols and left along with the Persians to go fight them in the Steppe”. The Empire is crumbling on the borders, with many outer provinces lost recently to revolt or conquest, leadership completely focused on infighting, and a general sense of doom and gloom hanging over everything. Terrible place to be a peasant, but a nice hearty stew for adventurers. Couple it with all the neighboring kingdoms in a Mediterranean Sea region (but east and west flipped…don’t worry about it, most of us are a little Eastwexic), and you have a nice region ripe for adventuring, conquering, and yes, even kinging. 

   You might notice on the map and in my description that there’s not a lot of territory devoted to the Fantasy Standards of “dwarf holds”, “elf kingdoms”, “orc lands”, etc. Demihumans do exist in ACKS but they are very much given a short shrift in the core book. Dwarves occupy a dwindling territory inside a couple mountain ranges, while the elves only occupy the one woodsy kingdom to the east over there. “Bad guy humanoids” like orcs, ogres, goblins, etc, were all magically created by the Standard Ancient Bad Guy Empire From Long Ago via cross-breeding, so they’re all irredeemably evil beastmen with animal features (who’ve eaten every missionary they’ve ever met). Other sentients like giants, dragons, lizardmen, etc all do exist but they’re also pushed to the edges. You can play with your standards, but the setting assumes most stories are humans dealing with humans.
   Fantasy “races” aren’t at the forefront, but given this is a historically-focused setting, much attention is given to the different human races (nationalities, ethnos, etc). They might have different names, but there are Romans, Persians, Egyptians, Norse, Gauls, Greeks, Huns, and every other equivalent for the complicated mix of peoples profiting from the Fall of Rome. It’s made explicit by the table outlining Cybelean languages and their real-world equivalents. It’s cleverly done, even extending to how the lizardmen language (draconic) is derived from a real-world language isolate (Sumerian). Which means we should all get very nervous when the Judge starts speaking in Basque. We’re in a world extremely grounded in actual history here.  
   This does not, however, mean that we’re in a low fantasy, or sword and sorcery, setting. Magic is very common, with about half the classes some manner of spellcaster, and percentages found in population numbers (because of course there are) conveying a picture of a world where low-level casters can be seen daily in a city and at least monthly even in rural locations. Every race and species has access to magic, too, although the default classes imply that dwarves are restricted to divine lists while elves trade only in the arcane. The immediate objection from the genre-savvy “but what about tippy-verse”, where magic is so ubiquitous as to be silly, is answered by the fact that most spellcasters cap out at only level 6 spells, while the highest-level stuff is restricted to ritual casting out of special locations. The old “Gandalf was a 5th-level magic-user” canard is given the contempt it deserves, but high-level wizards and crusaders are pretty rare and even their worst manifestations aren’t in command of the whole world…
   Because ACKS II does something very deliberate with its balance; warriors command armies, and those armies are expected to be used as a core part of the game. Core AD&D is more balanced at high level than it gets credit for, but that’s mostly via fighters getting highly magical gear to keep up with the magic-users and clerics and druids and whatnot (thieves get nothing and they’re happy). ACKS certainly will have its high-level fighting types well-kitted out with magic, but even more by default every high-level fighter comes at the head of an army. With all the import and world-definition that implies. Your wizard may summon demons or unleash fireballs, but your fighter commands a canal to be dug or a city to be razed. The game doesn’t speak just in terms of half a dozen people in caves but wants there to be adventures dealing with battlefields and cities, too.
   Which, in turn, means the world is set up for different stories. In Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms, a dread necromancer raising up vast armies of undead is dealt with by sneaking into his tower and killing him to break his McGuffin of Undead Control. That happens in ACKS II, but the story might just as well go that King Dave calls in favors from his allies and their forces meet in a pitched battle leading to dread necromancer’s defeat, or indeed even a massive campaign with multiple battles. Heroic man-to-man engagements still happen here, but not everything depends on a small band of adventurers. The State itself fights, and the world thinks not in terms of a pair of hobbits chucking magic rings into the nearest volcano, but in the collective story of evil being defeated by the Senate and the People of the Auran Empire. Which, curiously, makes how the game setting treats Law and Chaos very different.
   Rather than the Good vs. Evil focus of most D&D lineages, ACKS II has the one axis, Law vs. Chaos. This is reflected in the polytheistic pantheons, where Empyrean Lawful gods are set in opposition against the more primordial Chthonic Chaotic gods, and PCs are expected not to be dispositionally Lawful always, but by default are on the side of Law and civilization against the nihilistic Chaos. Game mechanics reinforce these defaults, in a way that ironically baseline D&D contradicts this tendency. Small-band D&D is fundamentally about the homeless, be they murder-hoboes or the more common band of well-intentioned drifters. Not so in ACKS; the game is focused on giving characters property and thus a stake in society. This isn’t the most heavily emphasized explicit message of the rulebook, but it’s an implicit assumption that seeps from every pore. The setting’s Auran Empire is in trouble, and while in some D&D games that would mean “hey, awesome, more quests get generated”, here in ACKS that means the world is set up to break down and threaten the beloved domains given so freely to the players. That’s a form of quest-generation too, but it means that your heroes of the setting at fundamentally defenders of order and stability.
   Clever, clever game. This setting teams up with the mechanics to make ACKS more focused on Law vs. Chaos than any other game in D&D’s storied lineage, and it does it not by shackling players by game-mechanical oaths and explicit alignment rules; it does this by handing them crowns. And then threatening those golden rewards.
   But of course, players are players and they also want to fireball dragons. Next time, I’ll move over to the bestiary and we’ll look at the much more workaday set of threats that will be the conscious focus for King Dave and his companions.