Sable Wyvern
THAC0 Defender
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2021
- Messages
- 808
- Reaction score
- 2,554
So, I had planned to get ten or a dozen sessions under my belt before I started this thread. But I'm excited. So I'm starting now.
If you are a player in this game, you should not be reading this (unless the game has reached it's glorious conclusion, in which case, have at it).
I did this with my first foray into the OSR, using 1E AD&D over a decade ago, and it went over fairly well. This game has similar goals to that first one, but I hope to use what I learned the first time around to run an even better game this time.
Anyone interested in the original thread can find it here: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/1e-ad-d-kicking-it-old-school.464723/
One of my players also ended up doing one from their own perspective, which can be found here: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/1e-ad-d-being-kicked-old-school.485065/
The last game fizzled out after nearly three years, mainly because the group became a bit burned out on the centrepiece dungeon, and I wasn’t properly prepared to deal with significant events beyond the dungeon.
This time around, I hope to avoid the same problems via three main methods:
As I read up, I became enamoured of B/X, and I essentially grabbed ACKS because it appeared to be a B/X clone with more detailed rules for domain level play. A couple of players from AD&D had been disappointed the game ended just before they got to start building their temples and strongholds, so ACKS seemed like the ideal choice.
Imagine my shock and disappointment when I opened up my brand-new hardback and found FEATS staring me in the face. WTF had I done?
On further inspection, ACKS won me over, though. While superficially similar to feats, the proficiencies are not nearly as central to the character as 3e+ feats, mainly providing colour and minor benefits. The game is entirely playable without them, but they fell (just barely, with some minor adjustments) within my threshold of acceptable charop and skill-gating for an oldschool game, so I left them in. It does indeed have strong support for high-level activities, spell research, mad-wizard wizarding, waging war etc… The core systems are, for the most part, close to B/X, and there are a bunch of interesting classes that appear to play true to original game. I don’t have the aversion to race-as-class that I once did (I actually think, done properly, it offers a number of strengths), but I did find the traditional one-class-per-race a little boring. ACKS fixes that. So, good, I haven’t just dropped a decent pile of cash on some feat-ed up, 3e-fied , “OSR-in-name-only” pile of crud. While withholding final judgement because I haven’t actually played the game yet, I think this might, in fact, be just about right at the sweet spot of what I want for my personal take on OSR gaming. (With a few, relatively minor, personal tweaks. Like bringing back the REAL fireball. Yes, that’s right: your fireball sucks, Alex.)
I also picked up Worldographer, just for something different, to start making a world. In the past, I’ve always used hand-drawn maps. Choosing Worldographer instead was to turn out to be brilliant decision. After quickly ditching my first attempt, starting over, spending a couple weeks working on the next map, having to ditch it again because I’d completely screwed up the scale, I’ve ended up spending vast amounts of time over years putting together a map far, far larger than I have any call for. Then I spent time laying out the core region according to the ACKS economic principles. With some diversionary time spent making a faux-Egypt the players will never see, because it’s fun.
Then, a while ago, I stumbled across the The Alexandrian’s Hexcrawl system. This blew me away. Hexcrawling never really made any sense to me (albeit, I had never investigated it particularly closely). But here was a system that I read, and thought, “I can see how I could use that to make hexcrawling interesting. This actually clarifies what hexcrawling really is, and how it can work.”
This is where my decision to grab Worldographer suddenly proved to be a stroke of unknowing genius. Because I already have a hex map to serve as the foundation of the hexcrawling segment of the game. And away I went, keying my wilderness, drawing regions so I know which wandering monster tables to use for where. And, I was just recently sold on the Forbidden Caverns of Archaia, so I now have a fourth commercial megadungeon, although this one has been broken up and scattered across my wilderness.
All up, I’m probably more prepared for this campaign than anything I’ve run previously.
I have a massive pile of dungeons either ready to go or under construction. I have a solid wilderness hexcrawling zone I’m steadily expanding on and fleshing out. I have daily weather pretty much sorted for the length of the campaign (thanks, dwarvenautomata.com). I have three separate big, bad threats in the wilderness that might come into play, plus seeds relating to the wider world from Stonehell (hobgoblins) and Dwimmermount (Thulians, Termaxians, Eld etc), as well as a menacing threat ready to rise in the West. I’ve worked hard at not overdetailing most things I might not need, but I’ve developed enough details of the political situation in the starting realm and its neighbours that those things can come into play if/when the players show interest. I have extensive rumour tables to keep adventure seeds flowing and create a sense of events happening around the players, taking stuff from half-a-dozen different modules in use, plus things of my own invention.
Two years of on-and-off prep work have got me to this point. If I can’t run an awesome sandbox with all this at my disposal, I suck and deserve to fail.
That’s not really true, though. If the players immediately decide to pack up and head to a completely different part of the world to engage in corporate espionage, the campaign crashes and burns, because I have no interest in that.
So, the first objective is to have enough interesting things to do (right there, in your face) that they don’t want to go elsewhere, at least for a good, long while. I think I have that covered.
Beyond that, what I really want is for the game to cover the three formal phases of ACKS – Adventurer, Conqueror, King.
I want dungeoneering to be fun, and interesting, and exciting. Either players that are interested in exploring each dungeon for a while, moving onto the next, cycling back as the mood takes them, or players who become extremely enthralled by one of them and wanting to spend as much time as possible discovering it’s secrets.
To be honest, up until relatively recently, I would have said that if we have a full campaign of just that, I’ll probably be satisfied.
However, I’m also really looking forward to finding out what this hexcrawling thing is really all about. Heading into the wilderness isn’t going to be viable initially (it’s too dangerous), but I expect the players to give it a shot at some point, and I want to create a genuine sense of danger and actual exploration. Again, I want the players eager to press ever deeper into the wilderness, whether it’s in search of something specific, or just to see what’s there. And I want to add, “I can run an awesome hexcrawl” to my GM CV.
Finally, I want to give the players a chance to build to genuine domain play. I’ve only recently come to really understand the depth and scope that ACKS offers at domain level. The “King” part is intended literally. The “menace in the West” that I mentioned above was actually a recent addition to my plans, because I needed something that could trigger a reason to start conquering/uniting the squabbling principalities of my setting (and even if a trigger isn’t necessary, how the players deal with (or ignore, or whatever) the threat should prove interesting).
To some extent, this means some of my initial planning may be thrown into disarray as, until recently, I didn’t have any real expectations for the scope of the game to move beyond the starting principality and surrounds. But, when I started to internalise the fact that the game is designed so that the players can actually become kings, it also became apparent that they’re going to have to interact with kingdoms.
This is something else that will be new to me, and I have at least a couple of players that I know want to get there. I’m looking forward to pulling out Domains at War to run some mass combat. See them overthrow existing rulers, or establish new domains, or both. Engage the forces of Evil with armies numbering in the thousands, mighty heroes and foul lords of chaos stalking the battlefield, while soldiers clash about them.
Essentially, I want the campaign to be a shining example of everything I think traditional D&D is designed to be good at. Will I achieve my goals? Fucked if I know. But I won’t die wondering.
***
Comments, observations, questions, queries, feedback, thoughts, encouragement or whatever are all welcome.
If you are a player in this game, you should not be reading this (unless the game has reached it's glorious conclusion, in which case, have at it).
Introduction
This thread is to be an account of my ACKS game. It is not a “story hour”, or any sort of attempt to turn the events of the game into high literature. Instead, it will cover my thoughts on the game, the players, the characters and the rules. It will chronicle the process of running the campaign and, at times, will involve me rambling on about whatever semi-relevant topic comes to mind. Really, it should probably be a blog. But I don’t blog. So, here I am.I did this with my first foray into the OSR, using 1E AD&D over a decade ago, and it went over fairly well. This game has similar goals to that first one, but I hope to use what I learned the first time around to run an even better game this time.
Anyone interested in the original thread can find it here: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/1e-ad-d-kicking-it-old-school.464723/
One of my players also ended up doing one from their own perspective, which can be found here: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/1e-ad-d-being-kicked-old-school.485065/
The last game fizzled out after nearly three years, mainly because the group became a bit burned out on the centrepiece dungeon, and I wasn’t properly prepared to deal with significant events beyond the dungeon.
This time around, I hope to avoid the same problems via three main methods:
- Dungeon variety. I have dropped Dwimmermount, Stonehell, Barrowmaze, the Caverns of Thracia and my own large dungeon into the starting region. In addition, numerous smaller dungeons and adventure opportunities are scattered around.
- Life outside the dungeon. For the first time ever, I plan to incorporate hexcrawling into the campaign. If my previous, AD&D game was a discovery of old school dungeoneering, I’m hoping this one will be similarly enlightening when it comes to hexcrawling.
- I am also more prepared for general politicking at higher levels; I very much hope we have a chance to engage in domain-level play, mass combat and the like later in the campaign. As I will elucidate below, the planned scope of this aspect of the game is also going to be something new for me.
Why ACKS?
For no especially compelling reason, when I made the decision to go back to the dungeon, I decided I was going to give B/X or BECMI a spin, or use a clone of that lineage. I had played very little AD&D prior to my last old school campaign, and I’ve had even less experience with this part of the D&D family (maybe three or four disconnected sessions of BECMI Basic, back in the mid-80s).As I read up, I became enamoured of B/X, and I essentially grabbed ACKS because it appeared to be a B/X clone with more detailed rules for domain level play. A couple of players from AD&D had been disappointed the game ended just before they got to start building their temples and strongholds, so ACKS seemed like the ideal choice.
Imagine my shock and disappointment when I opened up my brand-new hardback and found FEATS staring me in the face. WTF had I done?
On further inspection, ACKS won me over, though. While superficially similar to feats, the proficiencies are not nearly as central to the character as 3e+ feats, mainly providing colour and minor benefits. The game is entirely playable without them, but they fell (just barely, with some minor adjustments) within my threshold of acceptable charop and skill-gating for an oldschool game, so I left them in. It does indeed have strong support for high-level activities, spell research, mad-wizard wizarding, waging war etc… The core systems are, for the most part, close to B/X, and there are a bunch of interesting classes that appear to play true to original game. I don’t have the aversion to race-as-class that I once did (I actually think, done properly, it offers a number of strengths), but I did find the traditional one-class-per-race a little boring. ACKS fixes that. So, good, I haven’t just dropped a decent pile of cash on some feat-ed up, 3e-fied , “OSR-in-name-only” pile of crud. While withholding final judgement because I haven’t actually played the game yet, I think this might, in fact, be just about right at the sweet spot of what I want for my personal take on OSR gaming. (With a few, relatively minor, personal tweaks. Like bringing back the REAL fireball. Yes, that’s right: your fireball sucks, Alex.)
Campaign Prep
It was a couple of years ago when I suddenly went, “I want to run another dungeoneering game”. I settled on ACKS fairly quickly, devoured the rules, started making a few adjustments, and planning the campaign. Initially, it was going to be Dwimmermount-focused (and, now that I think about it, that probably also played into my somewhat-impulsive initial decision to settle on ACKS as the rule system). Then I came across Stonehell, and thought, “that’s cool”. And a lot of people speak highly of Barrowmaze. And I still want to make my own dungeon. And that was the beginnings of realising I can probably help myself run a dungeon-centric game by providing a bunch of thematically different dungeons for the players to play around in as they see fit.I also picked up Worldographer, just for something different, to start making a world. In the past, I’ve always used hand-drawn maps. Choosing Worldographer instead was to turn out to be brilliant decision. After quickly ditching my first attempt, starting over, spending a couple weeks working on the next map, having to ditch it again because I’d completely screwed up the scale, I’ve ended up spending vast amounts of time over years putting together a map far, far larger than I have any call for. Then I spent time laying out the core region according to the ACKS economic principles. With some diversionary time spent making a faux-Egypt the players will never see, because it’s fun.
Then, a while ago, I stumbled across the The Alexandrian’s Hexcrawl system. This blew me away. Hexcrawling never really made any sense to me (albeit, I had never investigated it particularly closely). But here was a system that I read, and thought, “I can see how I could use that to make hexcrawling interesting. This actually clarifies what hexcrawling really is, and how it can work.”
This is where my decision to grab Worldographer suddenly proved to be a stroke of unknowing genius. Because I already have a hex map to serve as the foundation of the hexcrawling segment of the game. And away I went, keying my wilderness, drawing regions so I know which wandering monster tables to use for where. And, I was just recently sold on the Forbidden Caverns of Archaia, so I now have a fourth commercial megadungeon, although this one has been broken up and scattered across my wilderness.
All up, I’m probably more prepared for this campaign than anything I’ve run previously.
I have a massive pile of dungeons either ready to go or under construction. I have a solid wilderness hexcrawling zone I’m steadily expanding on and fleshing out. I have daily weather pretty much sorted for the length of the campaign (thanks, dwarvenautomata.com). I have three separate big, bad threats in the wilderness that might come into play, plus seeds relating to the wider world from Stonehell (hobgoblins) and Dwimmermount (Thulians, Termaxians, Eld etc), as well as a menacing threat ready to rise in the West. I’ve worked hard at not overdetailing most things I might not need, but I’ve developed enough details of the political situation in the starting realm and its neighbours that those things can come into play if/when the players show interest. I have extensive rumour tables to keep adventure seeds flowing and create a sense of events happening around the players, taking stuff from half-a-dozen different modules in use, plus things of my own invention.
Two years of on-and-off prep work have got me to this point. If I can’t run an awesome sandbox with all this at my disposal, I suck and deserve to fail.
Campaign Objectives
The copout answer here is to say the plan is to run a sandbox game, let the players do what they want, and see what happens.That’s not really true, though. If the players immediately decide to pack up and head to a completely different part of the world to engage in corporate espionage, the campaign crashes and burns, because I have no interest in that.
So, the first objective is to have enough interesting things to do (right there, in your face) that they don’t want to go elsewhere, at least for a good, long while. I think I have that covered.
Beyond that, what I really want is for the game to cover the three formal phases of ACKS – Adventurer, Conqueror, King.
I want dungeoneering to be fun, and interesting, and exciting. Either players that are interested in exploring each dungeon for a while, moving onto the next, cycling back as the mood takes them, or players who become extremely enthralled by one of them and wanting to spend as much time as possible discovering it’s secrets.
To be honest, up until relatively recently, I would have said that if we have a full campaign of just that, I’ll probably be satisfied.
However, I’m also really looking forward to finding out what this hexcrawling thing is really all about. Heading into the wilderness isn’t going to be viable initially (it’s too dangerous), but I expect the players to give it a shot at some point, and I want to create a genuine sense of danger and actual exploration. Again, I want the players eager to press ever deeper into the wilderness, whether it’s in search of something specific, or just to see what’s there. And I want to add, “I can run an awesome hexcrawl” to my GM CV.
Finally, I want to give the players a chance to build to genuine domain play. I’ve only recently come to really understand the depth and scope that ACKS offers at domain level. The “King” part is intended literally. The “menace in the West” that I mentioned above was actually a recent addition to my plans, because I needed something that could trigger a reason to start conquering/uniting the squabbling principalities of my setting (and even if a trigger isn’t necessary, how the players deal with (or ignore, or whatever) the threat should prove interesting).
To some extent, this means some of my initial planning may be thrown into disarray as, until recently, I didn’t have any real expectations for the scope of the game to move beyond the starting principality and surrounds. But, when I started to internalise the fact that the game is designed so that the players can actually become kings, it also became apparent that they’re going to have to interact with kingdoms.
This is something else that will be new to me, and I have at least a couple of players that I know want to get there. I’m looking forward to pulling out Domains at War to run some mass combat. See them overthrow existing rulers, or establish new domains, or both. Engage the forces of Evil with armies numbering in the thousands, mighty heroes and foul lords of chaos stalking the battlefield, while soldiers clash about them.
Essentially, I want the campaign to be a shining example of everything I think traditional D&D is designed to be good at. Will I achieve my goals? Fucked if I know. But I won’t die wondering.
***
Comments, observations, questions, queries, feedback, thoughts, encouragement or whatever are all welcome.