Regarding ACKS and Autarch LLC

One of the few RPG products that carries my name in the credits is the core Adventurer Conqueror King rulebook. I helped out with editing and proofreading it, because someone I was friendly with in my New York Red Box days was involved and asked me to. I wasn't paid; I did it as a favor.

My involvement was honestly pretty limited. Early on I was a backer of ACKS products, and occasionally mentioned them on my blog and elsewhere. I wouldn't have done so if I'd known what I know now.

The game's designer has gone on to publicly align himself with alt-right provocateur and general douchebag Milo Yiannopoulos, apparently acting as his manager or publicist or something like that. I don't remember having much (if any) contact with Alexander Macris while working on ACKS, but if I had known of his white supremacist views at the time, I wouldn't have worked on the game at all.

I haven't supported or been involved with Autarch LLC in years, but I wanted to make my position known.

Update, November 12, 2018:

I now have very similar feelings to the above regarding my minor contribution to the Lamentations of the Flame Princess publication, Broodmother Sky Fortress. Bret Woods and I had written said contribution years before Jeff Rients chose to publish with LotFP.

At the time, I had believed that allowing James Raggi III to reprint our work in what I viewed as "Jeff's book" was of little consequence. I now regret that decision. I want to make it clear that I have never supported Raggi's trollish, puerile behavior, and certainly do not share Jordan Peterson's beliefs.

Unholy Matrimony

Hey look, more Adventurer Conqueror King content!

As I was a "Visionary" contributor to ACKS' original Kickstarter funding project, I was given the opportunity to place an art order for an illustration I'd like to see in the final product. Not long after I pledged my support, Ryan Browning, the lead artist for the game, contacted me and asked what I'd like to see. I had recently read a section of the draft rules document that detailed the creation of crossbreed monsters -- something that high-level mage characters can attempt in the Adventurer Conqueror King system -- and asked to see some part of that process.

(By the way, the crossbreeding stuff is just one small example of how ACKS goes out of its way to explain and support the backdrop of classic fantasy RPGs in its rules system: we now know why there are all these bizarre composite monsters roaming the countryside.)

Working with Ryan to nail down the exact image we wanted was a pleasure. We ended up with the illustration you see above: a giant centipede/shark hybrid bursting from its creation vessel, lunging out at the viewer. A new terror unleashed!

The Autarch crew recently posted a detailed account of Ryan's artistic process. As you can see, he did a fantastic job of working from my vague guidelines and turning them into something fun and dynamic. I'm proud to be a contributor (in my own small way) to ACKS.

You Have My ACKS

I've mentioned Adventurer Conqueror King on this blog before, but I probably did a bad job of describing it. I'll let Tavis Allison tell you what the deal is:

The way the Autarch crew has involved all of its supporters in helping to critique and shape the game is a smart move and will certainly result in a better game. There are already supplements in the works, both from Autarch themselves and from luminaries like Chris Kutalik of the excellent Hill Cantons blog.

I'm happy to be a backer of this project and can't wait to get my hands on the book. (It doesn't hurt that backing it at practically any level gets you cool goodies.)

Adventurer Conqueror King

There's a new old-school RPG in the works: Adventurer Conqueror King.

ACK is a retroclone in the sense that Lamentations of the Flame Princess and the upcoming Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG are retroclones. That is to say that they take the mechanics of classic D&D as their starting point, and then tweak them to suit the style of play the game is intended to encourage. In this case, the focus is on "providing integrated support for play across all levels of a campaign". To put it another way, it's built from the ground up to support things like domain building and that old-school D&D "endgame" people love to talk about.

Autarch, the publishing partnership working on Adventurer Conqueror King, includes luminaries like Alexander Macris (of The Escapist fame) and Tavis Allison (of The Mule Abides and numerous D&D products). The game is currently in its Kickstarter phase but it's evidently well fleshed out already, rules-wise, and also looks like it's going to be top-notch in the production value department.

I recommend checking out the design blog for a better idea of what the ACKS (Adventurer Conqueror King System) is all about.