Player's Companion for Adventurer Conqueror King

[tavis]

I wanted to let folks here know that we've launched a Kickstarter for the Player's Companion, ACKS' first supplement.

Orion at The Moldy Vale says:

If you like the quality of the Adventurer Conqueror King System book that has just been released (and it's a great work, why aren't you buying it right now), and you read The Mule Abides, and you know these guys can write good stuff, just put your f'ing money down now and get the bennies of being in on the ground floor.

Modesty forbids me from commenting on his appraisal of ACKS' quality, but reviews are compiled here if you want to check it out.

The Player's Companion has new classes for ACKS, which might be of interest to players of a wide range of OD&D-related games and simulacra, and templates that show how to use the different character customization options to achieve different themes within a given class (and also help deal with the bete noire of character customization; using one of these templates you can put together an ACKS character in between the time your last one dies and when it comes up to be your turn in combat again).

The thing that is maybe most interesting to the widest range of folks are the guidelines for creating your own character classes, following in the footsteps of Paul Crabaugh's "Customizing Classes" from Dragon #109 which, thanks to Jeff, all right-thinking people venerate. My son made himself a fighter-thief-magicuser kind of class with an early playtest draft, and it made him as happy to be sneaky and stabby and spelly all at once as it did me to think 'yes that's not going to outshine or under-perform existing classes, and I saved myself a bunch of the skull-sweat I usually put into considering that stuff'.

[kesher]

Um, you ALREADY exceeded your funding goal?

Autarch's on FIRE!

[tavis]

Yes, we hit our funding target in less than 100 hours, which is pretty awesome!

There's also been a lot of growth in Kickstarter and its use by RPG fans - witness the Order of the Stick one which may set all-time records - so it might be a case of us riding a rising tide rather than being particularly on fire. Either way it's good news for the Dwimmermount Kickstarter.

[Deleted]

"A rising tide lifts all boats ..."

[tavis]

Feb 14, 2012 18:55:27 GMT -6 @dubeers said:

"A rising tide lifts all boats ..."

Even the burning boats!

It looks like we will hit our first bonus goal - adding the barbarian and elven enchanter to the book - later tonight. One cool thing is that it turns out one of our backers is Peter Aronson, who asked for us to add the illusionist - THE CLASS HE CREATED IN STRATEGIC REVIEW #4. Before he told me this I was all "hey I think Gygax based this class on the guy in Carter's World's End series" and Peter was like "uh yeah I can attest that's true, except it wasn't Gary although he did add the dexterity stat requirements." My jaw dropped; if one is going to be schooled, it's good to be schooled by the oldest of old-schoolers!

So the elven enchanter is the closest ACKS approximation of the illusionist, unless one of our Patron Deity backers decides to make a dead-on illusionist, and it'll have feedback from the creator of its inspiration!

[tavis]

[The Player's Companion is now available in PDF and as a hardback & PDF bundle. I contributed relatively little to this one, so I can say without modesty that I think it is a real advance in old-school design. Using the guidelines for designing new classes in here you can also separate race and class, or do 2E kits, or remove ACKS' proficiency system and replace it with equivalent class features. That's not even getting into the spell research guidelines or templates, both of which address real needs in my White Sandbox campaign.