Adventurer Conqueror King System (2012) aka ACKS was one of the Old School Renaissance’s (OSR) big fantasy heartbreaker systems.
Based off Basic/Expert (BX) Dungeons & Dragons, ACKS was notable for providing rules to allow players to rule kingdoms, crossbreed animals into horrible monstrosities, design magic items, and more.
ACKS utilised a relatively standard class based character system with d20 rolls against check values. Like earlier editions, those check values were inherent to the class rather than inherent to the world.
Some people derided it as being BX with high-level campaign play bolted on while others complained it was overly complicated and therefore nothing like BX. The truth was somewhere in-between as there were a number of unique systems, such as attack rolls and race-classes that allowed unique classes for each race of demi-human.
Nonetheless, it attracted a solid audience for the strict way the rules were written and the concept that it was a tabletop roleplaying game developed from the bottom up to make fantasy worlds make sense.
There were a number of unique systems introduced through the original rules, such as attack rolls and race-classes that allowed unique classes for each race of demi-human.
Then the Player’s Companion (2013) aka PC was released. The PC had a number of new character races, classes and spells in the first half of the book. The latter half of the book, however, had full guidelines on developing spells and classes, and rules on how players can research new spells in the setting.
This lead to an absolute explosion in the power of each individual Judge to develop unique classes that fit their worlds, although new races were primarily developed by simply switching out racial powers on the original ones.
A year after the PC, the Domains at War (2014) system aka D@W was developed and released. D@W had rules for running battles involving anything from small skirmishes to huge campaigns, split across two rulesets. Domains at War: Battles (2014) is robust enough to be able to function as its own wargame, with tournaments occurring online semi-regularly.
Lairs & Encounters (2016) was the next book, which had a hundred pages for quick encounters and then the rest of the book was dedicated to creating monsters and determining what magic items you could make out of their various body parts.
The last of the big sourcebooks was the Heroic Fantasy Handbook (2018) aka HFH. HFH was designed to allow for a playstyle similar to Conan the Barbarian and Lord of the Rings, with evil magic that required casting implements and a suite of classes that fit to the theme and rules on how to build more of the same.
Alongside these releases have been periodical magazines titled Axioms, originally quarterly but then more commonly on a bi-yearly basis. Axioms had revised rules that the writer had decided were too clunky originally, new optional rules to be integrated into campaigns to refine and improve the game, and new races / classes for campaigns to use.
Functionally, this meant that your average group could have vastly different experiences using the ACKS ruleset, as a Judge could design a full set of races, classes and magic types to suit their own worlds.
Now imagine sitting at a table, a player being introduced to a new system, and your Judge pulls out half a dozen books and god knows how much random pieces of paper, some of which supersede rules in earlier books. It was, at this point, getting very clunky and difficult to clearly point players to what book needed to be read at any given time.
Therefore, in early 2020, the ACKS community started to ask Macris if he would produce a revised original rulebook with the various updates and supplementary systems in-built.
Now, 3 years on and 120 revisions completed, ACKS has a 2nd edition Kickstarter in place for the 24th October.
The initial goal of updating the rulebooks has grown to include revisions on every aspect of the game to improve clarity and remove ambiguity, as well as ensuring that ACKS can move away from Wizards of the Coast’s Open Gaming License.
There are now three books in the 2nd edition, consisting of:
Revised Rulebook aka RR - player-facing rules including characters, adventuring, advancement, mass battles, and the like
Judge’s Journal aka JJ - Judge-facing rules for creating races, classes, spells, campaign settings based off real world populations and kingdoms, and much more
Monstrous Manual aka MM - monster rules including monster creation
In truth, each of these books could have a full article written on it but that will be saved for after the final rules are released.
There is a lot more than what is included in the next few sections. What is being covered here are the main changes from the first version of ACKS. If you want information on the core rules, then please check out some 1st edition reviews.
It is important to note that ACKS is an OSR game without the typical “mudcore” aesthetic. Characters in ACKS are assumed to be somewhat heroic, and at 1st level are experienced enough in their profession to be competent.
The RR is the core book that both players and Judges draw from. The idea seems to be that players can reference the RR either via physical or digital copies, while the Judge uses the other two books on their own.
Inside the RR are areas on:
Characters - creation, advancement, equipment etc
Adventures - combat, dungeon delving, wilderness exploration etc
Campaigns - kingdoms, magic research, trading goods, mass battle etc
Characters (~280 pages) has, at first glance, relatively minor differences. The four original classes from 1st edition are included in the Core classes but the Explorer and Venturer have both been promoted into this area, as they are designed to be strong in two of the pillars of the game.
It is possible to miss the key changes in this section.
The first is that the stat recommendation is now to roll 5d6k3 for a chosen stat, 4d6k3 for two others, and 3d6 for the rest. This means that players should always be able to get to play the class that they want, which was uncommon in the original ACKS.
Secondly, the Thief class has been improved dramatically. In almost every edition of D&D, thieves and rogues have been something of a trap choice, with wizards being able to replace them completely by 3rd level.
2nd edition’s solution to the Thief problem is to give the class the ability to move in relative darkness, as well as to properly proceduralise stealth to give Judges a clear and appropriate framework to run the game.
Adventures (~80 pages) is where many of the major changes become obvious. It is broken down into delves within dungeons, expeditions in the wilderness, and voyages on the high seas.
These rules are either completely new or updated considerably to align together conceptually for the 2nd edition.
Delves are designed for short-term trips into the dungeon, with a strong proceduralisation of dungeon exploration to avoid what is commonly referred to as the pixel-bitching approach.
Expeditions are designed for longer trips across the outdoors. The expedition rules give a strong set of tools for running a hex crawl, with information on how long it will take to map hexes dependent on their terrain.
Voyages, of course, are very similar to expeditions but instead on the high seas. The book provides statistics for a large amount of sea vessels and how to use them for sea combat.
The last section in the RR is on Campaigns (~160 pages). The Campaign information relates to long-term player goals, such as establishing kingdoms, acting as a thief lord, building a magical sanctum and dungeon, and more.
A lot of the things in the Campaigns section are taken from earlier work and just collated into this book. Some examples:
As was mentioned earlier, that was the goal of these books, so it is good to have this in one place.
There are full new rules on Magic Research, updated to avoid some of the slightly more abusive ways players created magic items. There are now rules on designing undead and completely brand new rules on ritual spells past 6th level.
The book finishes off with a number of appendices, covering off information on the assumed setting, conditions that can happen to characters and what happens when characters get injured.
The JJ is the Judge-facing rulebook, which overwhelmingly consists of rules and guidance on how to make ACKS work for your home game.
There are four main sections:
Praxis - the principles of how ACKS works and how to make it work for you
Construction - building settings, kingdoms, dungeons and the rest for your own setting
Abstraction - running dungeon and wilderness adventures without needing players there for them
Customisation - building classes, races, spells and the rest for your own setting
Praxis (~180 pages) contains advice on being a Judge while avoiding being trite, as well as the broad structure of adventures and campaigns. There is also a section on treasure generator dependent on monster type. This section is currently incomplete as of this article being posted.
Construction (~120 pages) has a information on Macris’ recommended method for building a setting, methods for defining the size, bounds and population of kingdoms within the world, how to place and define settlements and dungeons, and information on non-player characters.
The kingdom and settlement rules will probably prove to be most useful to any Judge, as they allow historically aligned settings to be appropriately built while reducing the major issues that players can cause.
Secondly, the non-player character rules has information on the frequency and demographics of levelled characters, split across standard feudal human, barbarian humans and demi-humans. Interestingly, this feeds into many of the assumptions about why elves and dwarves are non-dominant within the default game setting.
Abstraction (~20 pages) has rules for characters to clear dungeons or explore the wilderness without players having to be directly involved, using a series of proceduralised rolls to determine dungeon size and outcome. The example given is when players send their henchmen on a separate excursion while they carry on.
Finally, Customisation (~140 pages) has rules on how a Judge can build classes, races, spells, full types of magic and house rules to best suit their setting.
Class creation uses a point buy system to design full fledged character classes, while spells uses thresholds and multipliers to determine how strong the spell actually is.
The two most complicated sections are on magic types and races, due to the sheer amount of options available for each of these. It does seem possible to build nearly any type of magic and race available in other tabletop games, and have it slot neatly into the rules.
The MM is the currently the least developed book, at revision 30.
It is split into three main sections:
Monster Characteristics (~20 pages) - how to read monster stat blocks
Monsters (~320 pages) - Listings on monsters from 1st edition
Monster Rules (~60 pages) - How to create monsters, how players can tame them, what magical items their body parts can be used for etc
The main change in ACKS II is that monsters have fully new stat blocks. A problem with using monsters in 1st edition was that some information was considered to be in a baked in and unobserved layer.
One of those unobserved layers was the size of the monsters, which came up in a number of optional rules and was used for determine whether players could actually ride the monster in question.
Now these are part of the standard monster block, which will be very helpful going forwards.
On a different note, some very standout monsters are in here, with massive customisation available to Judges who are restricting what types of monsters player face. As an example, dragons do not have default colours, but instead gain their colours dependent on their breath weapons. They also have a few pages worth of powers that they gain as they grow older and stronger.
When I found out there was a 2nd edition of ACKS coming out, I had reservations. Sometimes changes can be made that dilute and hurt the core essence of a system, and usually those changes are made for well intentioned reasons.
I am very glad for those reservations to be proven wrong.
If I had any criticism for the rules as they stand, it would be that certain choices could have been pushed further. I would have loved for the Crusader to be revised in a similar way to the Thief
ACKS II is looking to be an absolute tour de force of tabletop design. The rules have been tightened without losing their characteristic charm, and the customisation available to a group means that it can be adapted to nearly any setting.
If you would like to get the current ACKS II preview rules, then they are currently available here:
Otherwise, you can sign up to be notified on the launch of the ACKS II Kickstarter here:
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