I just started a play by post campaign with some real life friends of mine who have since been scattered to the winds. I’m modifying the core setting created in 4th edition dungeons and dragons (Fallcrest, Nentir Vale, Nerathi Empire, etc.)
I don’t plan on adding any new players, but anyone can feel free to lurk, and if someone has critiques/advice on my execution of the ACKS rules, I’m all ears.
So far, converting the nentir vale has been very interesting. I had to take some liberties with the sizes of settlements.I gave fallcrest 2000-ish families instead of 2000-ish people, and counted the surrounding farmers as part of the city rather than a very very tiny domain (thus assuming there were still more farmers slightly farther out). Even with the bumps to population size, the city is doesn’t have a trade radius sufficient to create a trade route between any of the other settlements on the map. I suppose that will make it simple for players to find lucrative trade routes!
edit: I was Thinking about switching from 2000 people to 2000 families, but ultimately decided against it. Fallcrest is but a meager class V market.
Greg Tito, one of the ACKS co-authors, has also been running ACKS in Nentir Vale. He made things even worse by having an Ice Age strike the Vale. I think he put Fallcrest at a Class V market as well...It's definitely tough when that's the biggest city around.
It's actually quite illuminating when you compare ACKS' implied demographics (based more-or-less on real world data points) with the demographics implied in a D&D 4e "Points of Light" setting - you realize that the Points of Light are really 'pinpricks of light' and that human civilization is so meager as to qualify as post-apocalyptic.
I’m going to lurk your game b/c I’m fascinated by the Points of Light concept. I’m considering making my campaign a place where about the largest settlement around is going to be a Class IV town. Undead outbreak/Zombie apocalypse where everything that dies rises from the dead unless it’s burned to ashes. Don’t even think about going near a real city.
Yeah, I got a chance to tell Greg I liked ACKs after he did a panel at PAX East, and his enthusiasm pushed me from just reading the system as a curiosity to genuinely wanting to play it.
It’s definitely been interesting so far. You can see that off the bat they had very few henchmen to hire, and getting those henchmen equipped proved to be somewhat difficult when the entire city only has 1 of anything from 2-10gp immediately for sale. luckily, with the way commissioning works, it doesn’t actually take that long to get those 2-10gp items.
Things have taken a somewhat unexpected turn for the party. After a fairly strong opening salvo against a pack of giant rats, the Dwarf Vaultgaurd rolls a critical fumble AND max damage on his attempt to throw a burning flask of oil. I got a little loose with the rules to try and speed things along and maximize the insanity, but this wasn’t entirely what i expected to happen in the first round of the first combat of the first dungeon.
I’ve been looking over your game Jard and I am really impressed. My first successful D&D game was set in Nentir/Fallcrest before a lot of the area was fleshed out, and I’m always curious to see what people did with the setting. It’s been really fun read =)
Thanks for the kind words! We are still powering along close to a year later. We’ve lost one person, then gained and lost another in rapid succession. Play-by-post is slow going as only a few PCs have made it to 3rd level, but attempts to play online in real-time with Roll20 or TabletopForge have all failed as we genuinely are never online at the same time (except at work! shhhhh…)
