Seasons come and go

General ACKS Forums General Discussion
1

For those of us who want to mix in other games with ACKS (I'm thinking 5e here),

are there some tips or strategies or houserules that have been discussed for having the 14 levels take a long time diegetically?

I'm not necessarily after them taking a long time in terms of sessions, just in terms of months and seasons inside the game.

Someone told me that in ACKS, characters can only have one level per diegetic month, but I haven't found the discussion about this in the book itself; maybe it was one here?

One variant I'm considering is this:

The level cap starts at 4 -- i.e. you can level as normal up to 4, and then it's stuck there.

Every second diegetic month the level cap goes up one, but it stops at 14 (we're using a version of the game that typically goes to 20 levels).

So if the game starts in the fictional month of Schmanuary, then on the first of Schmarch the level cap is 5, on the first of Schmay it's 6 and a player can go from a broke village fighter to regent of the realm in a little over a year and a half.

What I want most of all is for the players to see the world in all seasons, in winter and in summer.

I don't know, maybe this is

  1. just restricting them too much and I won't get buy in. Like, why not let them level as quick as the game allows? They can rush to level 14 then spend a lot of time there enjoying it? or
  2. too little, like if you're going to do it, do it, make it seven years rather than 20 months? or
  3. why not just change the xp system to closer match ACKS and it'll take more questing, more gameplay hours, and a longer time to reach level 14?

I think what I really want is to have the diegetic time be measured in months or years even though we're not playing any more sessions than our usual 5e pace... some how. Like another way to do it is the optional rule that long rests take a week. That'll septuple the diegetic pace in a blink

Even though it'll make dungeons near unconquerable, they'll have such a chance to re-recruit.

Also I'm thinking I'm going to ask the players about this too. They always have good ideas for house rules once they're on board with what I want to do; and if it's one of their own ideas maybe there'll be more buy in.

 

Anyway, if so, most of my suggestions here I can discard. What I'm after mostly is pointers to the previous discussions that have been going on about this aspect of ACKS.

It already has a lot of things in it that promote this. The growth rate of realms etc

2

I found that the game naturally tended to favor time passing by strictly enforcing recovery times for injuries, monthly purchasing limits in markets (especially recruiting henchmen), and travel times overland.  By the time we stopped posting, we had made it through about a year and a half with the players around levels 3 and 4.

3

Thank you, Jard!

4

I don't recall anything in the ACKS about requiring a month per level. I also know very little about 5E.

If you want the game to spread out over time, the main thing is to make things players want to do take time. In ACKS, this is recovering from mortal wounds, shopping for expensive items, researching spells/magic items, constructing strongholds, mercantile ventures, traveling to and from dungeons and lairs, hijinks, etc. Pretty much the entire campaigns chapter. ACKS also incentivizes this behavior by granting lots of carrots to players that go along and tightening access to magic that would completely bypass the system.

If what your players want to do is ignore all that and dungeoncrawl, level up, repeat, then I would recommend just introducing training time requirements to level up. If the wizard wants to learn his new spells or whatever, just rule that it takes some weeks of practice before he can perform it reliably. This may not work well if it feels punitive to your players; ensuring that NPCs follow the same/similar time restrictions, and showing it in-game when you have the opportunity can help with that.

5

Yeah, recruiting is huge. During the low-level parts of my first campaign, it was pretty typical to see two expeditions to the dungeon per month. The first and third weeks of the month were spent shopping (notable blockers in the class IV market they were based out of: plate armor, comfrey, war dogs, military oil, and eventually horses), healing, and recruiting henches. I think they took something like 4-6 months to extract all of the treasure from the first (3-level, 60ish? rooms) dungeon, which took the party from 3rd to 5th level.

At higher levels it slows down even more, because you start traveling further overland and recruiting mercenaries, and eventually domain activities start taking whole months (for hijinks and some wizard stuff). We tended to see about one wilderness adventure per month in the 6th-7th level range, unless it was just hex-clearing in nearby wilderness, which could happen more rapidly but was much less lucrative. That campaign ran to almost three years of game-time.

6

Yeah, in my game, they could only level up once a month pretty much by definition, just because the wizard's mentor was about a week's journey away and he needed a week to learn new spells and then he'd need a week to come back and all that assumed that nothing happened on the way over...

 

and that's even before you get into PCs spending weeks in town buying things and months constructing strongholds and magic items

7

I like your use of diagetic to refer to in-world! I love that word.

There is no "rule" that ACKS characters can level only once per month. However, in actual play, it tends to be the case that each session takes one month in-game. 

"The expected pacing of ACKS is one where between adventures the PCs have to travel back to civilization if they want to get a Restore Life and Limb. This, combined with the resting period after the spell is cast, and/or recuperating from wounds in general, tends to mean that adventurers go on 1 adventurer per month or so, and means that mid- to high-level adventurers will age 3-5 years over the course of leveling up (4 sessions/level x 8 levels x 1 month/session). That in turn creates time for alchemy, crafting, stronghold building, and so on. This was very deliberate, after bad experiences in 3.5 where PCs could go from 1st to 10th level in a season."

See complete discussion - http://www.autarch.co/forums/general-discussion/impact-demographics-mortal-healing

"1. Each session of ACKS tends to take about one in-game month.

2. It might take about four sessions to gain a level from one to eight, and about six sessions thereafter.

3. Most characters become domain rulers at around level 9.

4. A kingdom is generally ruled by a 13th level character.

Therefore, you would be looking at [9 to 10, 10 to 11, 11 to 12, 12 to 13] 4 level advancements, times 6 sessions per level = 24 sessions, times 1 month per session = 24 months to carve out a kingdom from the time the party acquires its initial domains. 

To get to level 9 it will likely take them (8 x 4) 32 months, give or take, or about 3 years."

See further discssion at http://autarch.co/forums/general-forums/general-discussion/how-much-game-time-does-it-take-build-kindom

 

 

8

Thanks to all!

9

I think there may have been a discussion around here at one point about a low-level character inheriting a Domain, and what would happen. Some part of that discussion was around levelling once per month, as there would be a lump sum of Domain XP at the end of the month, and a character can only gain one level per "shot" of XP...

10

[quote="Alex"]

"The expected pacing of ACKS is one where between adventures the PCs have to travel back to civilization if they want to get a Restore Life and Limb. This, combined with the resting period after the spell is cast, and/or recuperating from wounds in general, tends to mean that adventurers go on 1 adventurer per month or so, and means that mid- to high-level adventurers will age 3-5 years over the course of leveling up (4 sessions/level x 8 levels x 1 month/session). That in turn creates time for alchemy, crafting, stronghold building, and so on. This was very deliberate, after bad experiences in 3.5 where PCs could go from 1st to 10th level in a season."

 

"1. Each session of ACKS tends to take about one in-game month.

2. It might take about four sessions to gain a level from one to eight, and about six sessions thereafter.

To get to level 9 it will likely take them (8 x 4) 32 months, give or take, or about 3 years."

 

[/quote]

 

This is seriously blowing my mind. In some of my previous campaigns, one session could be anything from half a day to a week. 

How do you sell this to the players? 

11

There's nothing to "sell" really. Just apply the times for doing things listed in the book and it will happen automatically.

Case in point: One 1st-level party I'm Judging for has played four two-and-a-half hour sessions thus far. They are roughly half-way to 2nd level. In-game elapsed time has been about 40 days, and this is with an accelerated healing house rule (I'm running a more "heroic" campaign).

One example of time elapsed from play:

I use the Equipment Availability by Market Class table to adjudicate the prospects of selling loot. So in the settlement nearlest to the dungeon (a village), this is unlikely since it is a class V market. For example one treasure, a silver statue worth 500gp, could not be sold (failed 10% chance) and they did not want to wait a month to try again. They traveled to the next settlement (another village), 3 days away (120' movement rate) with the same result. They traveled to the next settlement, a city (class III market), 3 more days away where they were guaranteed a sale. Thus it took 6 days of travel time plus 1 day spent in each village. They spent at least a week in the city to hire more hirelings and buy better equipment. On the return trip, their movement rate was 90', thus the return trip took 8 days.

12

[quote="Korean Kodiak"] This is seriously blowing my mind. In some of my previous campaigns, one session could be anything from half a day to a week. 

How do you sell this to the players?  [/quote]

Were those prior campaigns ACKS campaigns? My experience is similar to Beragon's: there's nothing to sell. This stuff is a natural outgrowth of the ACKS rules. Moreover, none of this really takes more real-world time than your session in a prior system would. I'm guessing the whole travel to three different villages to sell loot Beragon described didn't take much more than 5 or maybe 10 minutes with Henchmen recruitment (generating Henchmen takes way longer than dealing with hiring them, in my experience).

13

How do you find this works with the monthly standard of living costs (page 39) and henchman / hireling costs? My players are having a really hard time just making enough money to pay these costs.

Like the example above, spending a week to sell a 500 gp loot item. 500 in a week is like 2000 in a month. If the total monthly expenses of the party are 2000 or above, spending a week for that is a loss in worth. 2000 is the monthly expenses of 5 5th level adventurers without any henchmen or hirelings.

14

This is why my players studiously ignore the standard of living table. As much as it would increase pressure in the game, I don’t think it’s worth fighting them (and honestly they throw so much money into reserve XP that if I averaged over good months and bad months, they’d probably come out alright).

15

The smart thing to do in that case is either:

A. Wait until you've got more items, and then do one BIG selling trip. After all, all five PCs can sell items at the same time, so just keep that Ming Dynasty Vase in the wagon a little longer. That way the party makes 2500 gp on sale week.  

B. Send a hireling. Ideally, recruit a Venturer for this purpose. 

C. Go after bigger treasure; I mean really 500 gp for a 5th level character? They should be picking up at least a thousand gold per PC every session, if I recall my XP tables correctly. 

16

In my example, they're two 1st level adventurers (with a party of hirelings). A two-week trip to garner 500gp is worth it and well above the average monthly expense for a 1st level adventurer according to the living expenses chart. As susan_brindle said, if they were higher level, they should be hauling in a "bigger paycheck".

About the Standard of Living chart, I currently use it to cover room and board for the characters. We were tracking the PCs day-to-day expenses (staying at Inns and meals mostly), but I realised that these expenses would fall into the 12-40gp range, so I went from daily tracking to monthly tracking. In other words, every 30 days, I randomly determine how much each PC spent that month, such that the amount will be somewhere between 12-40gp.

This is adequate at the moment in our campaign, but I'm not planning to adhere to the level-based expenses simply because the characters reach a certain level. We'll have to see how the campaign develops.

17

If you're talking about Beragon's example of travelling a week to sell a 500gp item, that's well worth it for 1st level PCs. 5th level PCs, on the other hand, should probably be making the trip directly to the larger settlement, and doing so on horseback in much less time. Once they get there, they are probably going to be selling a lot more than 500gp! A 5th level party that only scored 500gp in a month is having a very bad month.

Also remember that a 5th level party needs tens of thousands of XP to advance to 6th level. They are likely easily capable of knocking off a juvenile dragon (average treasure of 22,000gp), hill giant lair (average treasure 9,000gp), hobgoblin village (average treasure ~7,000gp), orc tribe (average treasure value 20,000gp), or wyvern den (average treasure 8,000gp). That doesn't even include the smaller stuff they'll run into.

Having one bad month, or a few here and there, is to be expected. But a 5th level party that only makes 500gp month after month is potentially doing something very, very wrong, or the Judge really needs to consider how they're doing things.

EDIT: Sorry, typed this up and left it sitting. Slightly redundant now.

18

All good information, thank you.