The Hardcovers are Here!

My ACKS II hardcovers are here! Finally!

Wow, these are impressive books - huge, heavy, with leather covers and thick, glossy paper. They look like religious tomes, and I am impressed.

I opened these up, and they are so full of tables and charts that I had a 2001: A Space Odyssey moment. I see charts! So many charts!

This is seriously better than AD&D or even my current favorite, Adventures Dark and Deep. The tables here are packed with information that I can use in every type of situation, and are focused on each section of the book very nicely. The charts in the first edition tended to be random miscellanea.

The game has this unified look and feel that I love. Previously, ACKS I had this split personality between the base game and the Heroic Fantasy Handbook. Now, without the OGL? This is its own world and game. This is a d20 answer to RuneQuest, but not as alien and strange in some aspects. We have no ducks, trolls, dragon-newts, or other special races; we have only humans, elves, and dwarves. There are many human kin to choose from, too, so they are amazingly diverse.

We have two spheres of gods: the Empyrean and the Chthonic. This is a nice order versus chaos split, and helps define the setting's faiths nicely.

We have condition and recovery charts, almost like the crit charts from Rolemaster.

There is no OGL to be seen anywhere. We are finally free, brothers and sisters! ACKS II is its own game. Familiar monsters of myth are all presented, and the spells are all de-OGL-ed. While this looks and feels like a B/X-style game, it is its own thing.

The depth of this game is fantastic on every level, and you can drill down as deep as you want anywhere in the game. You can run a wilderness exploration campaign, a sailing game, a kingdom game, or just wander about as adventurers. You can clear land and settle it. Attract settlers. Collect taxes. Build improvements. Construct a class stronghold. Establish a senate. A wargame is built into the rules for mass battles. There are costs for town services, market rules, item availability, monster harvesting, and so many little details are everywhere if you ever need them.

This is more than an OSR game. This is a comprehensive role-playing world experience, spanning three books. Three shelves worth of 5E books could not give me a game like this.

My name is in the book as a backer.

Life is good today.