I like Autarch. I like the company a lot. They managed to salvage Dwimmermount and the Adventurer Conquerer King System (ACKS) is a solid system that my group will be returning to in the new year. It annoys me to no end that their Lairs & Encounters Kickstarter has escaped my notice until now. It's funded with 11 10 days to go.
Needless to say I backed this the moment I saw it, but for the curious, this looks to be an amazing sandbox tool. Here's the skinny right from the kickstarter:
Lairs & Encounters is the ultimate supplement for fantasy RPG sandbox campaigns. Designed for use with the Adventurer Conqueror King System™ (ACKS™), it is readily compatible with other fantasy role-playing games built on the same core rules. In Lairs & Encounters you will find:
- More than 135 ready-to-play monstrous lairs - that's at least one lair listing for every possible monster lair mentioned in the Adventurer Conqueror King System. The lair listings are designed to be used both as dynamic points of interest that can be discovered while wandering through the wilderness and as obstacles to a would-be ruler’s attempt to secure land for a domain.
-New subsystems for sandbox play, including rules for populating 6-mile hexes with lairs based on the terrain and extent of settlements in the region, and rules for searching for lairs in the wilderness factoring in terrain density, aerial reconnaissance, splitting up to cover more ground (never split the party!), and more.
-Additional mechanics for monsters, including ability scores for monsters, proficiencies for monsters, and young monsters.
-A complete system for taming and training monsters, with details on the lifespan, roles, tricks, trained and untrained value, supply cost, training period, and the trainability modifier of every monster in the game.
-A complete system for creating your own unique monsters. In the ACKS Player's Companion we gave you mechanics to create balanced new character classes and new spells; now we bring our same rigorous attention to balance and customization to monsters.Even better is that you get a draft copy in PDF when the Kickstarter funding completes. Damn skippy! I won't have to wait to start putting it to it's paces ;)
It just reached a stretch goal today that means every backer is also getting a PDF of "Guns of War", the Pike & Shot/Renaissance themed expansion that gives you rules for firearms and cannon in both the man-to-man and Domains At War scales.
ReplyDeleteSo, two neat things for the price of one.
I backed Domains at War, I'll have to look into this - after I figure out what I have available after I buy the add-ons for the RuneQuest kickstarter.
ReplyDeleteThanks for mentioning this. I was one of the backers to Dwimmermount that was making a lot of negative noise (like about to start filing a lawsuit level) in regards to the delays with Dwimmermount. The Autarchs put in a lot of work to turn Dwimmermount around and deliver an excellent product. Unfortunately, I'm not sure they always get the credit they deserve for recovering Dwimmermount, or the fact that they learned a lot of lessons regarding KS with that effort. I think the delays with Dwimmermount negatively hurt their momentum in getting ACKS as a product line out into the public eye.
ReplyDeleteI have since backed several other of their KS, and have found the results of them all to be excellent.
I'll agree that they did not get the credit they deserved for Dwimmermount. I read one review where the reviewer gave James credit for the good that they added, and held them responsible for the bad that was original to James' version. This was easy for me to verify since I had the prerelease draft and the final copy to compare. But I wonder how many people left that review thinking they had marred James' masterpiece?
DeleteBacked! This is the kind of ready-to-play accessory that I love to use at my game table...
ReplyDelete