Last week I started running my game again. That was cool.
I also have been doing a lot of rules-brewing/synthesis and world-building. I've almost finished mixing ACKS Elf classes with the Theorems & Thaumaturgy Fey Elf idea and my own contributions.
So let's see if I can get back in the swing of things at all. For today, Random Wizard has posted ten questions that I'm going to answer about my game.
(1). Race (Elf, Dwarf, Halfling) as a class? Yes or no?
No, but I do love the ACKS idea of demi-humans having their own classes. So we use that.
(2). Do demi-humans have souls?
Elves are Fey, so they probably don't have souls. Dwarves are mortal, so they probably do. I keep everything pretty ambiguous and not spelled out; there are even some sects that don't believe Men have souls.
(3). Ascending or descending armor class?
Ascending. My players threatened to revolt when I mentioned considering switching to descending, and it just works well for us so I've worried about messing with other rules areas.
(4). Demi-human level limits?
Probably, maybe? We haven't hit any yet, so it's kind of up in the air.
(5). Should thief be a class?
I actually really like my Scoundrel class. And what this guy said.
(6). Do characters get non-weapon skills?
I have this great d12 skill system that both my players and I really like… that never gets used in play. I've been strongly considering switching to ACKS proficiencies, or scrapping them altogether.
(7). Are magic-users more powerful than fighters (and, if yes, what level do they take the lead)?
At some point, probably, since we're playing S&W. My players haven't gotten there yet.
(8). Do you use alignment languages?
Nope.
(9). XP for gold, or XP for objectives (thieves disarming traps, etc...)?
XP for playing, which I'm strongly considering ending, save for my fear of player revolt, and XP for gold spent.
(10). Which is the best edition; ODD, Holmes, Moldvay, Mentzer, Rules Cyclopedia, 1E ADD, 2E ADD, 3E DD, 4E DD, Next ?
Probably ODD, just for its incompleteness. Home-brewing is a big thing for me, and it's an attitude that it took me a while to acquire; being forced to make decisions helped a lot with that.
Bonus Question: Unified XP level tables or individual XP level tables for each class?
With my latest round of rules revisions, we're moving from unified XP tables to ACKS individual XP level tables for each class.
Exploring games that were published before I was born - and the games inspired by them.
Showing posts with label ACKS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ACKS. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Friday, August 17, 2012
The DMG, Section by Section, Part 13: Henchmen
This section is taken up with two main topics: acquiring henchmen and the loyalty of henchmen (and hirelings) once acquired.
Before we get into that, though, I want to point out something that comes up a few times in this section: why henchmen sign on with PCs. Gary is clear that henchmen sign on with the PCs because they aren't doing well on their own; henchmen are professional adventurers who are unsuccessful, for whatever reason. This explains why the PCs must provide equipment for henchmen and why only first level henchmen will be attracted to PCs of fifth level or below; if they were doing well enough to have advanced in levels or even well enough to keep or provide their own equipment, they wouldn't be desperate enough to apply to be another adventurer's follower.
Gary first outlines the steps that must be taken to acquire a henchmen. Basically, the DM must first determine how many henchmen are available wherever the PCs look, and of what race. Gary is extremely vague here, throwing out some rough numbers (one prospective henchman per 1000 people), but then advising that they should be adjusted situationally… without providing guidelines on how to do that. (ACKS, which it's basically impossible not to compare these sections of the DMG to, is immensely more helpful, detailed and streamlined here.)
After the DM has done this, the PCs must advertise, spending their money posting notices in public, hiring criers, hiring agents or going around to taverns and inns, buying rounds for the house and paying barkeeps to send potential henchmen their way. Each of these methods cost different amounts of money and have different rates of effectiveness – that is, the percentage of actually available henchmen that will hear and actually be attracted to apply to join up with the PCs. Using more than one method decreases the over-all effectiveness of all methods used (du to "overlap"), but not by enough that it isn't theoretically worth doing if you want to have a wide choice of henchmen.
Once that number of potential henchmen who will respond and apply has been determined, they begin to show up at whatever location the PCs indicated they would take applicants over a period of 2-8 days. The PCs interview them, but must be careful not to ask questions about religion or alignment or to frisk or search them or cast any magic upon them except for Know Alignment or Detect Good/Evil, as these will probably offend the potential henchman and make him unwilling to join the PCs. There doesn't seem to be much justification for this, especially in a world where crazy evil/chaotic characters are likely to be infiltrating parties for their own or a master's nefarious ends; this possibility actually strikes me as exactly the reason why Gary banned inquiries in this direction. The personality and other characteristics of the prospective henchmen should be rolled up on the NPC traits generator further on in the DMG.
If the PCs want to hire the prospective henchman, they make an offer and the DM rolls percentile dice; if the roll is at or under a percentage determined by how good of a deal the PC is offering and the PC's charisma modifier, the prospective henchman accepts the offer and is now a henchman. (It was interesting to me that ACKS leaves the specifics of this up to the judge, but LotFP:WFRP actually has a short, simple list of modifiers that are quicker to tabulate than AD&D's. I'm unfamiliar enough with Basic D&D not to know whether that's something LotFP inherited or if that's just another of Raggi's mechanical innovations that is overlooked because of the atmosphere of LotFP.)
Gary then moves on to the loyalty of henchmen and provides a good page or more of variables that affect henchman loyalty. Unlike D&D systems for morale and loyalty that I've seen that use a d12 or 3d6 system, AD&D uses a percentile system; henchmen begin at 50% loyalty and that score is adjusted as situations arise and conditions are met. For example, on the extreme, if a PC kills a faithful henchman in front of witnesses, that's -40% to the loyalty score of any henchmen from that point on. If a henchman has known or been a follower of a PC for more than five years, that's +25% to loyalty. If the PC is Lawful Good in alignment, that's +15%, but if the henchman differs from the PC in alignment by two places, that's -15%, and so forth.
Finally, I find it interesting that Gary allows for the PCs to recruit NPCs they've captured as henchmen. This is a rule I don't think I've ever heard about. It's the once exception to the rule that henchmen come unequipped and also seems to be the only way to get henchmen that are higher than third level – henchmen (or associates as Gary calls them, presumably because they will rank and be compensated on a comparable level to that of the PCs) acquired this way may be up to two levels above the PC recruiting them, though they will only stick around for one or two adventures. If prisoners are forced to join the PCs, they will have very low loyalty, but if the prisoners are offered very good terms and given a genuine choice, they may sign on as permanent henchmen with a good loyalty level.
Before we get into that, though, I want to point out something that comes up a few times in this section: why henchmen sign on with PCs. Gary is clear that henchmen sign on with the PCs because they aren't doing well on their own; henchmen are professional adventurers who are unsuccessful, for whatever reason. This explains why the PCs must provide equipment for henchmen and why only first level henchmen will be attracted to PCs of fifth level or below; if they were doing well enough to have advanced in levels or even well enough to keep or provide their own equipment, they wouldn't be desperate enough to apply to be another adventurer's follower.
Gary first outlines the steps that must be taken to acquire a henchmen. Basically, the DM must first determine how many henchmen are available wherever the PCs look, and of what race. Gary is extremely vague here, throwing out some rough numbers (one prospective henchman per 1000 people), but then advising that they should be adjusted situationally… without providing guidelines on how to do that. (ACKS, which it's basically impossible not to compare these sections of the DMG to, is immensely more helpful, detailed and streamlined here.)
After the DM has done this, the PCs must advertise, spending their money posting notices in public, hiring criers, hiring agents or going around to taverns and inns, buying rounds for the house and paying barkeeps to send potential henchmen their way. Each of these methods cost different amounts of money and have different rates of effectiveness – that is, the percentage of actually available henchmen that will hear and actually be attracted to apply to join up with the PCs. Using more than one method decreases the over-all effectiveness of all methods used (du to "overlap"), but not by enough that it isn't theoretically worth doing if you want to have a wide choice of henchmen.
Once that number of potential henchmen who will respond and apply has been determined, they begin to show up at whatever location the PCs indicated they would take applicants over a period of 2-8 days. The PCs interview them, but must be careful not to ask questions about religion or alignment or to frisk or search them or cast any magic upon them except for Know Alignment or Detect Good/Evil, as these will probably offend the potential henchman and make him unwilling to join the PCs. There doesn't seem to be much justification for this, especially in a world where crazy evil/chaotic characters are likely to be infiltrating parties for their own or a master's nefarious ends; this possibility actually strikes me as exactly the reason why Gary banned inquiries in this direction. The personality and other characteristics of the prospective henchmen should be rolled up on the NPC traits generator further on in the DMG.
If the PCs want to hire the prospective henchman, they make an offer and the DM rolls percentile dice; if the roll is at or under a percentage determined by how good of a deal the PC is offering and the PC's charisma modifier, the prospective henchman accepts the offer and is now a henchman. (It was interesting to me that ACKS leaves the specifics of this up to the judge, but LotFP:WFRP actually has a short, simple list of modifiers that are quicker to tabulate than AD&D's. I'm unfamiliar enough with Basic D&D not to know whether that's something LotFP inherited or if that's just another of Raggi's mechanical innovations that is overlooked because of the atmosphere of LotFP.)
Gary then moves on to the loyalty of henchmen and provides a good page or more of variables that affect henchman loyalty. Unlike D&D systems for morale and loyalty that I've seen that use a d12 or 3d6 system, AD&D uses a percentile system; henchmen begin at 50% loyalty and that score is adjusted as situations arise and conditions are met. For example, on the extreme, if a PC kills a faithful henchman in front of witnesses, that's -40% to the loyalty score of any henchmen from that point on. If a henchman has known or been a follower of a PC for more than five years, that's +25% to loyalty. If the PC is Lawful Good in alignment, that's +15%, but if the henchman differs from the PC in alignment by two places, that's -15%, and so forth.
Finally, I find it interesting that Gary allows for the PCs to recruit NPCs they've captured as henchmen. This is a rule I don't think I've ever heard about. It's the once exception to the rule that henchmen come unequipped and also seems to be the only way to get henchmen that are higher than third level – henchmen (or associates as Gary calls them, presumably because they will rank and be compensated on a comparable level to that of the PCs) acquired this way may be up to two levels above the PC recruiting them, though they will only stick around for one or two adventures. If prisoners are forced to join the PCs, they will have very low loyalty, but if the prisoners are offered very good terms and given a genuine choice, they may sign on as permanent henchmen with a good loyalty level.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Brendan's 20 Rules Questions
Though I recently suspended the Skype campaign I've been running since 2010, I decided to answer Brendan's questions concerning how I ran my campaign and, hopefully, more or less how I'll run it again one day. In any case, it's likely to reflect the rules no matter where I'm running a table in the near future. Enjoy!
1. Ability scores generation method?
Player's choice between 3d6 down the line or making up whatever they want within ranges of 3-18. Thanks, Jeff, for that idea (and, incidentally, Brendan for bringing it to my attention).
2. How are death and dying handled?
If a major character hits 0 hp, they roll on The Table of Death, Dismemberment and Dangerous Damage. Each time they take a hit and are at 0 hp, they roll on the table again.
3. What about raising the dead?
Nope. The PCs probably couldn't afford it anyway at this stage in the game.
4. How are replacement PCs handled?
They show up, somehow, whenever the player rolls them up. Often they'll wait until the end of the session or the beginning of the next one. That's actually probably because my players usually play two characters at once so it doesn't get boring when one character dies.
5. Initiative: individual, group, or something else?
I have this really complicated initiative system that is based off of this. I'm considering replacing it with this.
6. Are there critical hits and fumbles? How do they work?
Yep. Roll a natural 20, roll on the Arduin Critical Hits table. Roll a natural 1, roll on the Arduin Critical Fumbles table. Same goes for monsters. Combat is deadly (actually, deadlier than Arduin was intended, as the tables were designed to be used with percentile dice and confirmations of criticals).
7. Do I get any benefits for wearing a helmet?
They come in very handy when you roll on the Table of Death, Dismemberment and Dangerous Damage.
8. Can I hurt my friends if I fire into melee or do something similarly silly?
Can you ever! If you fire into melee and miss, you roll to hit on another, randomly selected target. I've had characters fire into melee, miss their target, hit an ally, critically hit them and kill them.
9. Will we need to run from some encounters, or will we be able to kill everything?
Run!
10. Level-draining monsters: yes or no?
Strictly speaking, no. When the party does encounter monsters that normally drain levels, they will just drain XP instead, per Raggi's idea.
11. Are there going to be cases where a failed save results in PC death?
Yes.
12. How strictly are encumbrances and resources tracked?
Not as strictly as I'd like them to be… I at least keep my players aware of them and they calculate them. It's just harder for me to figure out how far they can go in a dungeon during a certain length of time, to do that on the fly and actually run the dungeon. Tips on this would be appreciated.
13. What's required when my PC gains a level? Training? Do I get new spells automatically? Can it happen in the middle of an adventure, or do I have to wait for down time?
PCs level up at the end of the session. No training is involved. If an MU is an apprentice, the master will send spells of the appropriate new level; otherwise the MU will have to procure them himself.
14. What do I get experience for?
Coin spent and sessions played.
15. How are traps located? Description, dice rolling, or some combination?
100% description.
16. Are retainers encouraged and how does morale work?
Retainers are encouraged but seldom used; another side-effect of allowing players to run two characters at once, I think. Morale is another item I try to include in my games but don't often succeed at. I wish Swords & Wizardry included morale rules so I didn't have to look them up in other rule-sets.
17. How do I identify magic items?
Trial and error, a spell your MU has or taking it to another wizard, probably in a city, who is willing to identify it for you for a price.
18. Can I buy magic items? Oh, come on: how about just potions?
On a roll of 1 on a d6, Shrelft the Pilgrim Peddler shows up at the beginning of the session, selling magical items that you can't get anywhere else. They are usually minor, but are more than just potions and have definitely gotten PCs out of scrapes before.
19. Can I create magic items? When and how?
Yes. According to the LotFP:WFRP rules (and, when the campaign is re-started, according to the ACKS rules).
20. What about splitting the party?
I'd rather you didn't, but it's allowed. I'll bounce back and forth between the two sub-parties. Since this is on Skype, I don't worry too much about isolating players. My players are good players and usually play as if they didn't know what was happening with the other sub-party.
1. Ability scores generation method?
Player's choice between 3d6 down the line or making up whatever they want within ranges of 3-18. Thanks, Jeff, for that idea (and, incidentally, Brendan for bringing it to my attention).
2. How are death and dying handled?
If a major character hits 0 hp, they roll on The Table of Death, Dismemberment and Dangerous Damage. Each time they take a hit and are at 0 hp, they roll on the table again.
3. What about raising the dead?
Nope. The PCs probably couldn't afford it anyway at this stage in the game.
4. How are replacement PCs handled?
They show up, somehow, whenever the player rolls them up. Often they'll wait until the end of the session or the beginning of the next one. That's actually probably because my players usually play two characters at once so it doesn't get boring when one character dies.
5. Initiative: individual, group, or something else?
I have this really complicated initiative system that is based off of this. I'm considering replacing it with this.
6. Are there critical hits and fumbles? How do they work?
Yep. Roll a natural 20, roll on the Arduin Critical Hits table. Roll a natural 1, roll on the Arduin Critical Fumbles table. Same goes for monsters. Combat is deadly (actually, deadlier than Arduin was intended, as the tables were designed to be used with percentile dice and confirmations of criticals).
7. Do I get any benefits for wearing a helmet?
They come in very handy when you roll on the Table of Death, Dismemberment and Dangerous Damage.
8. Can I hurt my friends if I fire into melee or do something similarly silly?
Can you ever! If you fire into melee and miss, you roll to hit on another, randomly selected target. I've had characters fire into melee, miss their target, hit an ally, critically hit them and kill them.
9. Will we need to run from some encounters, or will we be able to kill everything?
Run!
10. Level-draining monsters: yes or no?
Strictly speaking, no. When the party does encounter monsters that normally drain levels, they will just drain XP instead, per Raggi's idea.
11. Are there going to be cases where a failed save results in PC death?
Yes.
12. How strictly are encumbrances and resources tracked?
Not as strictly as I'd like them to be… I at least keep my players aware of them and they calculate them. It's just harder for me to figure out how far they can go in a dungeon during a certain length of time, to do that on the fly and actually run the dungeon. Tips on this would be appreciated.
13. What's required when my PC gains a level? Training? Do I get new spells automatically? Can it happen in the middle of an adventure, or do I have to wait for down time?
PCs level up at the end of the session. No training is involved. If an MU is an apprentice, the master will send spells of the appropriate new level; otherwise the MU will have to procure them himself.
14. What do I get experience for?
Coin spent and sessions played.
15. How are traps located? Description, dice rolling, or some combination?
100% description.
16. Are retainers encouraged and how does morale work?
Retainers are encouraged but seldom used; another side-effect of allowing players to run two characters at once, I think. Morale is another item I try to include in my games but don't often succeed at. I wish Swords & Wizardry included morale rules so I didn't have to look them up in other rule-sets.
17. How do I identify magic items?
Trial and error, a spell your MU has or taking it to another wizard, probably in a city, who is willing to identify it for you for a price.
18. Can I buy magic items? Oh, come on: how about just potions?
On a roll of 1 on a d6, Shrelft the Pilgrim Peddler shows up at the beginning of the session, selling magical items that you can't get anywhere else. They are usually minor, but are more than just potions and have definitely gotten PCs out of scrapes before.
19. Can I create magic items? When and how?
Yes. According to the LotFP:WFRP rules (and, when the campaign is re-started, according to the ACKS rules).
20. What about splitting the party?
I'd rather you didn't, but it's allowed. I'll bounce back and forth between the two sub-parties. Since this is on Skype, I don't worry too much about isolating players. My players are good players and usually play as if they didn't know what was happening with the other sub-party.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Frustrations in Map-Making
One of the many contributions that roleplaying has made to my life is that it is a form of escape. When things aren't going well and I want a break from reality for a few hours, I can immerse myself in a world of dice, tables, magic and evil sentient mushrooms that are 1000 times nastier than whatever I'm going through.
Today I wanted an escape for a few hours, so I decided to work on beginning to create maps for my campaign. It hasn't gone so well… quite frustrating actually.
First off, I decided I'd use the ACKS hex-maps. The four levels of zoom is really cool. I go to the ACKS section on constructing campaign settings. The text of ACKS only calls for two levels of zoom; it's frustrating to me that the ACKS hex-maps and the ACKS text aren't, as far as I can tell, strictly compatible; that is, the ACKS text's directions are for a "standard sheet of hex graph paper, 30 hexes wide and 40 hexes long," while none of the ACKS hex-maps have exactly those dimensions, though two of them come close with 32x48 hexes. I do wish the ACKS text was written to fit hand-in-glove with the ACKS hex-maps.
So I print off the two hex-maps that have the middle two levels of zoom, as they seem to correspond to ACKS' campaign map and regional map sizes. The first step, ACKS says, is to come up with a map, so I go to Fight On! #2, where there's a set of terrain generator tables. I grab some colored pencils and start rolling on the tables. I get about four columns of hexes colored before I decide that too many types of land are looking like columns oriented along the North-South axis and scrap that idea. To be fair to the tables in Fight On!, the articles that accompany the tables indicate that these tables are intended to create settings on much smaller scales than I was generating; still, frustrating.
So then I remember that Trollsmyth has this really cool series on creating a hex-map for a sandbox campaign, and that I'd been meaning to use it whenever I got around to, well, doing what I'm doing today. I go over and check it out. First step, Trollsmyth says, in creating a map is to get the shore-line. Hmm.
I end up printing out and staring at the most zoomed-out ACKS hex-map for at least 15 minutes, which felt like half an hour. Then I remember the awesome Free Map Monday maps over at the Labyrinth; I look through the ones I've downloaded and settle on this one, as it seems like it would fit on an 8.5x11 piece of paper pretty well. I print one off in grayscale at 40% the size of the actual image and hold it up alongside the most zoomed-out ACKS map- looks like they'll fit together really nicely!
How to do that, though? Unfortunately, I have absolutely no experience with Photoshop or GIMP or anything of the sort. A low-tech solution, though, is to print the ACKS map out on a transparency, then scan/copy the map with the transparency over it. Should work great, right?
Off I go to Staples to buy a few transparencies; I know I won't be able to buy just one, but I figure buying 10 transparencies won't be so bad, since I'll probably come up with more uses for them in the future. I get to Staples and find the transparencies… and they only sell them in 100-packs and 50-packs. And the cheapest cost $50… yeah, not worth it… very frustrating.
So now I'm back at home, typing this out. While I've been typing I've figured out that the best plan is probably to tape the map to the back of the hex-map and trace the map onto the hex-map. I'm not a very good tracer, so I'm not happy about that, but I'll give it a shot.
Anyway, sometimes game-prep can be frustrating. I shudder to think of what I'd be up against if I didn't have all the resources I've mentioned in this post, and I think it's important to point out that the reason I've been encountering frustrating delays isn't because these are bad resources (quite the opposite; they're great!), but just because I haven't ever really done this before and so I'm figuring out what works for me, which is slow and difficult work. On most days that makes things like this "hard fun," but today, when I really wanted to be able to distract my brain from problems by following directions and rolling dice, because I wasn't in the mood for "hard fun,"it was just frustrating. Thanks for reading.
Also, if anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to them, as I'm still trying to figure out what works for me.
Today I wanted an escape for a few hours, so I decided to work on beginning to create maps for my campaign. It hasn't gone so well… quite frustrating actually.
First off, I decided I'd use the ACKS hex-maps. The four levels of zoom is really cool. I go to the ACKS section on constructing campaign settings. The text of ACKS only calls for two levels of zoom; it's frustrating to me that the ACKS hex-maps and the ACKS text aren't, as far as I can tell, strictly compatible; that is, the ACKS text's directions are for a "standard sheet of hex graph paper, 30 hexes wide and 40 hexes long," while none of the ACKS hex-maps have exactly those dimensions, though two of them come close with 32x48 hexes. I do wish the ACKS text was written to fit hand-in-glove with the ACKS hex-maps.
So I print off the two hex-maps that have the middle two levels of zoom, as they seem to correspond to ACKS' campaign map and regional map sizes. The first step, ACKS says, is to come up with a map, so I go to Fight On! #2, where there's a set of terrain generator tables. I grab some colored pencils and start rolling on the tables. I get about four columns of hexes colored before I decide that too many types of land are looking like columns oriented along the North-South axis and scrap that idea. To be fair to the tables in Fight On!, the articles that accompany the tables indicate that these tables are intended to create settings on much smaller scales than I was generating; still, frustrating.
So then I remember that Trollsmyth has this really cool series on creating a hex-map for a sandbox campaign, and that I'd been meaning to use it whenever I got around to, well, doing what I'm doing today. I go over and check it out. First step, Trollsmyth says, in creating a map is to get the shore-line. Hmm.
I end up printing out and staring at the most zoomed-out ACKS hex-map for at least 15 minutes, which felt like half an hour. Then I remember the awesome Free Map Monday maps over at the Labyrinth; I look through the ones I've downloaded and settle on this one, as it seems like it would fit on an 8.5x11 piece of paper pretty well. I print one off in grayscale at 40% the size of the actual image and hold it up alongside the most zoomed-out ACKS map- looks like they'll fit together really nicely!
How to do that, though? Unfortunately, I have absolutely no experience with Photoshop or GIMP or anything of the sort. A low-tech solution, though, is to print the ACKS map out on a transparency, then scan/copy the map with the transparency over it. Should work great, right?
Off I go to Staples to buy a few transparencies; I know I won't be able to buy just one, but I figure buying 10 transparencies won't be so bad, since I'll probably come up with more uses for them in the future. I get to Staples and find the transparencies… and they only sell them in 100-packs and 50-packs. And the cheapest cost $50… yeah, not worth it… very frustrating.
So now I'm back at home, typing this out. While I've been typing I've figured out that the best plan is probably to tape the map to the back of the hex-map and trace the map onto the hex-map. I'm not a very good tracer, so I'm not happy about that, but I'll give it a shot.
Anyway, sometimes game-prep can be frustrating. I shudder to think of what I'd be up against if I didn't have all the resources I've mentioned in this post, and I think it's important to point out that the reason I've been encountering frustrating delays isn't because these are bad resources (quite the opposite; they're great!), but just because I haven't ever really done this before and so I'm figuring out what works for me, which is slow and difficult work. On most days that makes things like this "hard fun," but today, when I really wanted to be able to distract my brain from problems by following directions and rolling dice, because I wasn't in the mood for "hard fun,"it was just frustrating. Thanks for reading.
Also, if anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to them, as I'm still trying to figure out what works for me.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
ACKS Proficiencies
… are really cool and they deserve more attention and praise. They're not exactly skills, and they can work easily in a system with no skills or a stripped-down skill system like I use. Some tweaking would probably be needed if it was used in a system with an extensive, complex skill system like what is used in Type III, as there would be overlap.
My three favorite things about ACKS proficiencies are:
My three favorite things about ACKS proficiencies are:
- These are really easy to understand due to brevity and limited choices. The explanations of all proficiencies takes up less than eight pages, and, in actual use, no player would have to read all of that, since every character class has access to only a fraction of the proficiencies. This trimming down of choice means that 1) choices become meaningful again and 2) a newbie can easily use the system without feeling that they are missing something or at a disadvantage to veterans of the system who are familiar with the esoteric ins and outs of the system (what some gamers call "system mastery").
- The number of proficiencies a character can "take" is also very limited. At maximum, a 1st level character can have six proficiencies, and most characters (those without above-average Intelligence scores) will only have three; on top of that, one of those proficiencies is automatically Adventuring, which is just ACKS' way of formalizing the assumption that every Old School game I've ever heard of already has: the PCs are competent in the basics of adventuring. At the pinacle of a PC's career, the maximum number of proficiencies a PC could have is 13, and that's in the unlikely case that the PC is a Fighter, Assassin, Dwarf, Elf or Explorer with 18 INT.
- The proficiencies don't require a "build" mentality. They don't need to be carefully chosen to interact with each other for maximal benefit; in fact, most of them can't, and when they can, it's spelled out for you. They all have both concrete, in-game explanations and mechanical consequences. A player who wants to build characters and a player who is just interested in the narrative growth of their character should both be equally comfortable using these.
I'll try to write more on this at a later date; I'm rushed for time right now, but this needed to be said, I think.
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