In the interest of disclosure, I’ll start out this review by making it clear that I am a huge fan of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, which to this day I consider the best official version of D&D ever to see print. No other feels as complete in chronicling a player character’s life from to tomb-robbing ne’er-do-well to respect adventurer to landowner, lord, king and possibly even god (well, Immortal).
Adventurer Conqueror King System (henceforth, ACKS) is a second-generation Old School Renaissance (OSR) game. Where once OSR games focused on reproducing, and sometimes slightly streamlining, original editions of D&D (the so-called retro-clones: OSRIC for AD&D 1e, Labyrinth Lord for Moldvay B/X D&D, Swords & Wizardry for OD&D), the new crop of OSR games focuses on modifying the sturdy TSR-era D&D skeleton to better accomplish a certain sort of game: Jim Raggi’s Lamentations of the Flame Princess delivers fantasy with horrific overtones straight out of Weird Tales, and Newt Newport’s Crypts & Things tones down the fantasy hodgepodge of D&D to a more focused “low fantasy” sword-and-sorcery approach straight out of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber.
In ACKS case, the designers drew from a latter edition (D&D 4e) the concept of “tiered” character progression. D&D 4e used Heroic, Paragon and Epic tiers which differ little from each other in actual play, except in personal power level. ACKS takes the much-talked-about-but-seldom-executed “D&D endgame” of strongholds and baronies, and uses it as the basis for the tier system that’s explicit in the game’s title. Adventurers are the dungeon-crawlers, the mercenaries, the archetypal starting PCs. Conquerors are those who earn their lands and titles and set off to tame a poorly-populated wilderness, and shape it into civilization. Kings are, of course, the rulers of well-established enclaves, possibly with “Conqueror-tier henchmen” sworn as vassals.
The Foreword goes on a bit about the playtest campaign and its setting (to be detailed in future gazetteers), a distinctly sword-and-sorcery deal that’s very evocative of “Dark Ages”, pre-Carolingian Early Medieval Europe, presented as in-game fiction and interspersed with authorial notes about the game’s baseline assumptions, often referring the reader to specific chapters.
Chapter 1 is the obligatory Introduction, complete with “what is a RPG?”, dice notation, etc. It’s also got a three-paragraph header about which dice to use on certain circumstances, good advice for the Judge (the game’s term from GM) who’s new to old school D&D.
Chapter 2 is about character generation. Ability scores are handled alçmost excatly like BECMI/RC and B/X: default generation is 3d6 in order (STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON, CHA), with modifiers following a Gaussian bell-curve standard deviation distribution, from -3 to +3. Ten classes are presented. The four core classes are the usual Fighter, Mage, Cleric and Thief. Of note, the Fighter gets a level-progressive damage bonus (+1 at 1st level, +5 at 14th) and, at 5th level, a morale bonus to henchmen. Mages and Clerics get to research spells and create scrolls and potions as early as 5th level.
The campaign classes read mostly like “variants” or “hacks” of the core four. Assassins read like Thieves who trade almost all Thief abilities (except move silently, hide in shadow and backstab) for unrestricted weapon selection, 1d6 HD and the Fighter’s damage bonus. Bards get 1d6 HD, a Thief’s armor and weapon selection (but no Thief abilities), the usual Inspire Courage and Loremastery stuff, and the ability to use magic items (no spellcasting). Bladedancers strike me as a particularly clever twist, an all-female order of warlike Clerics who are banned from using armor, shields and blunt weapons, and may only use slashing slashing and piercing weapons. They get a level-progressive AC bonus, and cast spells and turn undead as normal clerics. The ranger-like Explorer plays like a lightly-armored Fighter with a few wilderness tricks up his sleeves.
The dwarven classes read like fairly straightforward versions of the Fighter (Vaultguard) and Cleric (Craftpriest), while the elven classes read like a fighter/mage (Spellsword) and an assassin/mage (Nightblade).
Significantly, all ten classes gain followers and may build strongholds at 9th level.
Alignment follows a single-axis Law/Chaos system, but a “team jersey” mentality and Chaos = Evil are strongly implied.
Chapter 3 is Equipment, complete with detailed hireling tables. I love their choice of weapons and armor, and to my only vaguely educated (in Medieval arms and armor) it feels like they’ve truly done their homework, while keeping things simple. Equipment prices and availability are modified by “Market Class”, a rating that varies from settlement to settlement.
Chapter 4 is about Proficiencies. Unlike previous editions of D&D, which used these as an incipent skill system, this one expands their role well into D&D 3e+ Feat territory. There’s a General list, which reads a lot like 2e’s Non-Weapon Proficiencies and a class-specific list. Thde list is extensive and covers from Animal Husbandry and Theology, to Berserkergang (that’s right, berserk battle-rage is a Proficiency) and Swashbuckling (a level-dependent AC bonus for lightly-armored characters) and Weapon Focus (the ability to deliver a critical hit with the chosen weapon). I’m still not sure what to make of it… I’ve never been a fan of Feats is 3e or 4e, and I can’t help but think that certain Proficiencies will feel “compulsory” in ACKS as well (e.g. the above mentioned Swashbuckler for Thieves and Assassins). But not having “Proficiency trees” at avoids or at least, curtails the emergency of a “character building” mini-game like the one I detest, that we’ve seen with 3e and 4e.
Chapter 5 details Magic. The game pays no heed to Vancian spell memorization or preparation, granting all casters what 3e called “spontaneous casting”. Spells are mostly cribbed from BECMI/RC, with arcane spell levels 7-9 and divine spells levels 6-7 notably absent from the lists (the game caps levels at 14), being handled as rituals (similar to Akrasia’s house rules for S&W, IIRC), and available to casters at 11th level and above.
Chapter 6, Adventures, lays out the usual procedures for dungeons and wilderness adventuring (complete with rules for sea travel and naval battles), as well as combat. The game uses ascending AC values, with AC 0 as unarmored. Attack resolution uses an “Attack Throw” value that’s dictated by class and level (or monster HD): 1d20 + STR, DEX and magic modifiers - opponent’s AC should beat the Attack Throw value. I found it almost as confusing as THAC0 (which is to say, a little bit, no deal-breaker), but it should be easy enough to convert to a more straightforward BAB system. Lots of combat maneuvers (disarms, knockdowns, etc.) are covered. Characters hitting 0 HP roll on a Mortal Wound table (1d20 + a bunch of modifiers based on negative HP and so forth) that may result in instant death, or a chance at recovery with 1d6 permament wounds, varying from scars that ache in bad weather, to lost eyes and limbs, to emasculation and paraplegia. Fun stuff. The next page has a similar table of mishaps for magical revival.
Chapter 7, Campaigns, is my favorite. It kicks off with a discussion of magic research: creating spells, magic items, and ritual magic (which handles all spell effects levels 7-9 for mages, and 6-7 for clerics). A few classics, including wish, are given as sample rituals. Rules are also provided for spellcasters who wish to create monsters, including contructs, crossbreeds (chimeric hybrids resulting from magically combing two distinct species) and undead. Divine magic “research” is explicitly dependent on congregations, with Chaotic clerics getting the option of human sacrifice.
Next up we have rules for securing, building, populating, mantaining and expanding strongholds and their associated domains. On a cursory read, there are a few similarities to the D&D RC’s system, and seems to function on a similar level of detail, but the whole feels a bit more consistent and lifelike. For instance, domain morale levels are cribbed straight out of the RC, but the determination of domain morale score is much easier and can be done off the top of one’s head. PCs can only run one domain at a time, but clustering multiple domains into a realm by way vassals (which are handled exactly like henchmen, including in reagrd to loyalty. Genius, I say) is encouraged.
Special rules for demihuman and Chaotic domains are provided, as well as thief and assassin hideouts (domains) and guilds (realm-like multi-hideout expanded organizations), mage sanctums and dungeons (that’s right, PCs are provided with rules for building dungeons of their own. How awesome is that?), and mercantile ventures (care for a little Traveller with your D&D? Here you go). Experience awards from domain-level activities is also discussed.
Chapter 8 is the Monster section. Most of the usual B/X and BECMI/RC make themselves known here. Of note, Dragons have their stats grouped only by way of age categories, independent of color (which only affects breath weapon type). Not a lot of undead (vampires are the top of the undead food chain here) and, other than elementals, no planar beings to speak of.
Chapter 9, Treasures, again reads a lot like the RC trasure tables. I am aprticularly enamored of the “Special Treasure” tables, which expand on the idea of valueable merchandise (from animal pelts and bricks of salt, to tapestries and religious images) as treasure, and which have been designed to be compatible with the merchandise tables given in the “Mercantile Ventures” subsystem on ch. 7. Magic items and weapon tables (with bonuses capping at +3) are also given.
Chapter 10, Secrets, starts with a fairly systematic setting building section, with extensive tables that tie in with the chapter 7 subsystems. A dungeon building section follows, very similar at a glance to the one from Labyrinth Lord. Also offered are rules on aging, poisons, a discussion on slavery, and “sinkholes of evil” (locations blighted by evil supernatural influence). A page-and-a-half section on campaign managemnt suggests tips for playing campaigns witrh advanced characters, multi-tiered campaigns with PCs playing multiple characters at distinct tiers, and so forth. A half-page-long list of inspirational literature, a la Appendix N, concludes the volume.
I wrote this review after a two-day-long read of the PDF. It’s one of the nicest-looking OSR PDF products I’ve had the opportunity to peruse; though it’s not indexed (I can’t fathom why), it’s clearly laid-out, and seeded with links (e.g. a spell name in bold blue letters, when clicked, takes you to the spell description). The art is mostly good, all B&W, feels fairly S&S without being exploitative (no gore or boobies that I can remember); there are no horrible pieces to speak of, but no brilliant attention grabbers either. I think it does a good job of illustrating the game without distracting you from it, positively or negatively.
tl;dr: ACKS is clearly a D&D RC or BECMI (BEC, to be precise) tribute game, but not a retro-clone. The system has been optimized and streamlined with viable and exciting domain- and realm-level endgame play in mind. For the experienced DM, it is evident at a glance that these revisions have been grounded in considerable and systematic playtesting. The monsters chapter feels a bit anemic, but the easy cross-compatibility of TSR-era D&D and its simulacra provides an immediate solution. I feel some design choices (Proficiencies, in particular, and the way they’ve been handled) push ACKS into middling territory between TSR-era “old school” D&D, and more modern iterations. While it executes this marriage between old and new far more deftly than, say, Castles & Crusades, this may be enough to turn off some prospective players and Judges. However, I feel every D&D player or DM who’s interested in domain-level play, every D&D BECMI/RC fan, and TSR-era D&D gamers who are not averse to a bit more character customization, owe it to themselves to check this book out.
Review Summary