Retreat Forward

A long time ago, I began to cobble together some GM aids that put all of the pertinent rules of ACKS into a 7 or so page document. Don’t get me wrong, ACKS uses OD&D as its base and is hardly a complicated game. The crunchy bits it introduces to that rules set are all things that I enjoy, such as clear mechanics for hiring henchmen and mercenaries. However, the book’s organization is a wee bit scattered, and I found myself flipping around more than I would have liked. Some of that will go away with experience, of course, but I’m now very motivated to finish said GM aid. As a further thought on organization, Dwimmermount has a few warts. Some of the important general information is set aside in its own chapter (doors, wandering monsters, etc.), which is very good for finding what you need during GM prep, but not so good when you’re trying to find something in the heat of the moment. For example, Zazik’s coughing fit was supposed to call for an encounter throw each round that ...

It all began in a tavern, because I love that cliché, I really do. To be more specific, it all began in the “Flask and Scroll Tavern” inside the walled city of Muntburg. One Zazik [not his real name, but mages who study at the Tower of the Silver Pentacle always take on properly acroamatic names upon graduation] was discussing a business proposition with a slightly-built thief named Killian Goodpipe [who insisted that everyone call him “the cave snake” for reasons known only to himself]. Besides the two PCs, the bar was populated with a small crowd of late-afternoon drinkers; farmers, lumberjacks, and other lower-class types. A roll of the dice also indicated the presence of a named NPC, an arcanist named Climent, who was sipping wine and eavesdropping on aforementioned PCs. [The boys decided that their characters knew each other from past business dealings. Killian was in the business of acquiring illicit relics, and Zazik is the type of guy who thinks history is far ...

With my oldest two sons getting out of school early every Wednesday, I decided to run a few games that have been sitting on my shelf just collecting dust. One game I’ve always wanted to give a try is Adventurer Conquerer King System, a “neo-clone” that takes an OD&D base and adds some cool house rules, new classes, and a neat system of economics and domain management. It’s cool stuff and I may write at length about why I was drawn to ACKS to begin with. My first hurdle to running ACKS was finding a suitable adventure. I’m traditionally a build-your-own rules kind of GM, but with adulthood comes way less time to design D&D stuff. Besides, I’m not sure that I fully grok all the trade modifiers, hex management, and other fun bits that ACKS brings to the party, so a pre-made dungeon of some kind would let me more effectively focus my prep time. I had set my sights set on Barrowmaze, another cool product I’ve been meaning to get some use out of, but I realized that I owned a ...

The Puzzle Box During a recent session of Rise of the Runelords, an attempt to teleport from a remote region back to Sandpoint went awry. According to the rules, the misfired spell was supposed to send the PCs to a similar area, defined as “ an area that's visually or thematically similar to the target area.” As they were aiming for the Rusty Dragon Inn, it seemed clear that they should be in a tavern somewhere , but where? I pulled out the Inner Sea World Guide and had them generate a random number using some wacky zocchi dice. A few rolls later, we determined that the hapless adventurers had somehow landed in the city of Katheer, the capital of Qadira (gateway to the east). What would a startled, pseudo middle-eastern barkeep do if a few adventurers materialized in his business? Try to sell them something, of course!   When I was in Turkey, one of my favorite memories was browsing through the wares of the various shops in the area known as “the alley” just outs...