Alright, here's my Foreword, how does it sound?
This supplement came about in the most unexpected way, at least for me as its author. My D&D journey began in 1992 with TSR’s Red Box, which I’d received as a 12th birthday present. I took it to school, recruited some friends, and we learned how to play together. From there we rapidly moved on to Rules Cyclopedia and almost as quickly to AD&D 2nd edition, which became a weekly mainstay for almost three years. Then in 1995 we quit D&D for greener pastures of other systems and I wasn’t to see it again for a long time. Two incarnations of D&D 3rd edition came and went, but I saw nothing there that appealed to me. The “old school renaissance” movement began, and once again there wasn’t anything for me there; I didn’t want to play the D&D of my youth, my tastes had changed.
Then in 2010 my current group gave D&D 4th edition a go, the charm of D&D was rekindled for me. Modern design that catered to where my tastes were, and the tactical skirmish minigame at its centre was brilliantly done. However, while I didn’t find the complaints about the non-combat parts of the game being lacking to ring true, combat still tended to dominate our sessions just because of the sheer amount of time it took. We’d struggle to get more than one combat in a normal session and two was a such a squeeze that it crowded out everything else. I also tended to find that unlike in virtually every other system we played, characterisation stopped in combat, and we switched into wargaming mode where we moved our pieces around the battlemat looking for the optimal tactics, rather than playing our characters. A significant part of this was the handling time, regularly engaging in anything beyond the tactical level would have slowed things down still further. I still enjoy 4th edition for short stints of 6-10 sessions every now and then, but it isn’t something we could do week-in, week-out for years on end.
I was left with a renewed interest in D&D systems, but nothing that really seemed to fit my goal of having a system that could do the swift combats of the old days, while retaining contemporary sensibilities on a range of other issues. In early 2013 I heard about Autarch’s evolution of the 1983 Moldvay/Cook Expert Set, Adventurer, Conqueror, King (ACKS). I did some research on the Expert Set, and discovered how deep the overland exploration section of the game was. It wasn’t something I’d remembered about my own experiences, and I found it intriguing. See the default dungeon-crawling style of play that people often assume is what D&D is about was never really my thing; we didn’t play pre-written modules either, which tended also tended to default to this mode of play. What we loved was overland adventures, engaging with the people and politics of the game world and all the complications that brought.
I also really appreciated how simple characters were; less moving parts and customisation meant much faster resolution and general handling in and out of combat. But what it also facilitated was the use of allied NPCs. 4th edition tended towards a focus on just the Player Characters (PCs) as the entirety of the party, because adding anyone else would decelerate the proceedings to an unacceptable level. In the older editions, however, simpler characters meant taking on henchmen wasn’t a great additional overhead, and added both a buffer against danger and variety to the party. They could also act as backup characters in the event something significant happened which prevented the original PCs from continuing. Turning the PCs from solo operators into leaders of their own retinues was something that really interested me. Instead of the focus being on building and customising your player character, it could be on building and customising your personal retinue.
ACKS promise was to enmesh the PCs in all that as they reached the domain-management endgame at higher levels. What made me take notice it was the way it tidied up the Expert Set and tweaked the rules towards simplicity and consistency. What I loved most, though, was the Proficiencies. While presented as an optional rule, for me they were anything but, they provided a neat way to differentiate characters without adding the sort of complexity created by Feats or having to account for skill points.
So to the final distinction of MLT: applying D&D to historical gaming. It’s a little ironic that despite the wargaming roots of D&D, steeped in many historical battle scenarios, most people wouldn’t think to use it for roleplaying games inspired directly by history. I know there’s an overriding sentiment that history is boring, which I think is a real shame because there is a lot of richness and depth that can be had by drawing on history. In particular there are many opportunities in the gaps between the surviving sources to take license with events and insert characters and stories of our own. There were a range of historical supplements for AD&D 2nd edition in TSR’s heyday, but I don’t know how well those sold; I suspect they were niche products. I love history, antiquity in particular, and I had my inspiration in the form of Christian Cameron’s two historical fiction series’ based around the Greco-Persian Wars (5th century BC) and the Hellenistic era following the death of Alexander the Great (3rd century BC). While each featured a main character or two, they were supported by an extended retinue of other people which plugged them into the world in which they lived. Additional mentions go to Simon Scarrow’s Roman Eagles series (1st century AD) and The History Channel’s Vikings TV show.
I could see those influences intrinsic to the Expert Set and thus ACKS, which could be teased out with some changes. Many of the elements were already there; you had compatible equipment, mounts and ships used historical reference points, mercenaries were based on types of units from antiquity and the medieval era; making a conversion pretty simple. I began with a discussion on Autarch’s own forum about how I might adapt ACKS for a historical game. This progressed into a lengthy exchange with Alexander Macris, the creator of ACKS, who it turned out was also a lover of antiquity and was a great help in refining and honing my ideas into practical results.
For the game I was to run, I had a workable system covering all the elements I required, which I called Mercenary, Liberator, Tyrant (MLT). There was the future prospect of using the upcoming mass combat system, Domains@War when it appeared for the battles that would come. Eight sessions of play ensued, which worked well and vindicated my belief that D&D could indeed be used for historical gaming. This was interrupted by the birth of my second child, but we have plans to return to the game at a later date. Further discussions elsewhere brought me to the realisation that perhaps I could turn my collection of house rules into a supplement for ACKS, so other people could also experience the fun. Which brings us here.
Much like ACKS is not really an OSR game, nor is Mercenary, Liberator, Tyrant trying to recreate something that existed back in the day. If ACKS is a 2nd generation OSR game (something evolved from the older editions of D&D with its own spin on things, rather than a faithful clone), this is 3rd generation, being a further evolution of that. I make no apologies for departing from the philosophies and play assumptions that are common to the OSR movement, conformity to those notions was never a goal in creating MLT. I’ve made changes to many parts of the system, coming from a differing set of assumptions about how the game is to be played. Obviously if you don’t agree with any of those changes, you are free to discard them and take the approach used in ACKS, or any other D&D-derived game. What I’ve done is pretty transparent, and converting to other editions should be pretty straightforward.
