I haven’t yet started a proper game of ACKs, but I had the chance to sit with a couple of friends yesterday and make characters and run a quick battle just to give them a taste of the system. Combat went well enough, demonstrating the brutal nature of the old school (my friends agreed we had all been coddled by years of 3.5/Pathfinder). They demonstrated an interest in playing with the domain system, but the opportunity did not arise.
Not all is well in ACKsville though. While I’ve looked through the book a few times, yesterday was the first time I needed to find stuff while people were waiting on me. The book seems poorly organized, this is further compounded by outright errors in the index. We also noticed a few typos which in one instance led to some confusion over the rule in question.
I’m going to try and keep my group’s interest and run a proper game so they can see its merits, but the phrase that was coined by one of my friends was “I’ll get on board when second edition ACKs comes out.”
If you mark up your copy of the text with errors you notice in play, and then send it back to us, we'll send you back a new one - thus bringing us one copy closer to running out of this print run and bringing about an errata'd 2nd edition!
However, having been coddled by years of 3.5/Pathfinder, you may be forgetting that in 2E the art will suck, assassins will no longer be supported, and the text will tell you about how going into a dungeon to get rich is Doing It Wrong (even though that's what the rules will still be designed around).
just to chime in and give you some thoughts. i also played 3.0/3.5/PRPG since around 2000. Before that I played BECMI and AD&D 2nd. When reading ACKs I was in a similar situation: Because of 3.0+ I was now used (and am still) to looking for rules for all situations. 3.0+ killed in some sense improvisiotion/DM’s ad-hoc ruling, because you were expected to have a rule. This not only pertained to me a DM but also to my players. “There is no rule, so I cannot do this and that”. “There is a rule, then use it and go by it (even if this means stop the action and read the text.)”.
So, there are two points here: 1.) its a new system and it’s normal to do searching and pageflipping books if you are playing something new game. All books are organized differently - i have to search, too. 2) with ACKs do not expect a rule to be found for all things a character can do. 3) get used to improvisation and teach your players to accept your rulings.
I would also be interessted in what rules are contradicting so that i can know and prepare ahead. i have the cr and from first read-through there was nothing i found that was contradictionary and also found no glaring errors. There a few typos, yes BUT these are raletively rare when compared to other books - i have read far worse books…
I’m not frustrated in the least, I intend to soldier on. I want a fully realized, old-school experience and I’m confident ACKs will deliver once I know what I’m doing! I will attempt to take more specific notes on the problems I encountered as time permits.
I’d be interested too. I recently finished my read through of the core book and other than a couple of typos, an index inaccuracy, and a couple of head scratcher moments that I’d like to simply ask a question on the forums about, I thought things made a lot of sense. Admittedly, this is coming from someone who has a lot of experience with older systems and their peculiarities, so perhaps some of the questions arise from being more well-heeled in newer systems design tenets.
I don’t know if this counts, but the index lists Henchmen Acquisition as being on page 140. There is indeed a section about that, but it’s specific to criminal guilds. Someone who wanted to know how to acquire henchmen in general would actually want to look under Hirelings on page 49. That’s one of the bits that threw me for a loop.
