Barbarian Conqueror King (Dinosaurs & Sorcery ACKS)

I ahve too many ideas running around my mind. Of course, I am still sticking to ACKS: Dark Project. But Would teh following work well with ACKS?

I have a rough setting idea in mind - a wet, tropical sword and sorcery setting with a strong focus on reptiles (dinosaurs, lizardmen, yuan-ti), insects, cthulhu-type “Outer Gods”, city-states, a lot of abberations and less “typical” D&D-fantasy tropes (no Elves and Dwarves - just Men, Lizard-Men, Deep Ones and their kin and Serpent-Men-Blooded Men). Maybe some technology. Maybe aliens and high technology.

Dinosaurs and their kin (as well as insects) replace mammals (except for humans, that is) both as wild beasts and domesticated enemies. Dinosaur Riders! Triceratops egg omletes! Random encounter with a T-Rex!

Maybe even Men came millennia ago in a colony starship, crashed and lost most of their technology and forced into medieval barbarity by the crash-landing.

Think Carcosa but with more orthodox magic (and D&D-type magic items), a bit more hope, a bit less weirdness, somewhat less randomness - and more urban (city-states rather than villages) and technologically advanced.

I love this idea! I converted elements of Carcosa over to ACKS for use during a foray to the moon in our long-running Auran Empire campaign (long story…)

You could create custom races, custom classes, and custom spells for the setting using the Player’s Companion rules. To play up the “wierdness” of magic, you could require that all magic research be experimentation, so that mages inevitably begin to acquire weird mutations, strange signatures, and so on.

I think dinosaurs make a great opponent in ACKS - being stupid means they can be outwitted by smart Adventurers who have an old-school relationship of trust with a Judge flexible enough to make rulings based on the imagined situation, and being huge piles of hit dice means they can challenge Kings. Wizards riding charmed dinosaurs are a fearsome foe, perhaps best handled by ruining your own dinosaur-ranching economy by sending the herds stampeding at the enemy...

There's been a lot of discussion in the OSR about the awesomeness of dinosaurs in the B/X legacy. The first links that come to mind:

- about situational rulings, http://rolesrules.blogspot.com/2013/01/boring-combat-4-how-boring-are-high.html

- house rules for climbing up dinosaurs to stab them in the eye, http://rolesrules.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-climbing-on-bandwagon.html

OK, ACKS it is! A side-project between ACKS: The Dark Project hijinks…

Let’s look at the ACKS monster list and see what fits here:

Ankheg
Ant, Giant
Basilisk
Bee, Giant Killer
Beetle, Giant
Black Pudding
Caecilian
Caracass Scavenger
Centipede, Giant
Crab, Giant
Crocodile
Doppleganger (note sure it’ll fit well)
Dragon Turtle
Elemental
Fish, Giant
Fly, Giant Carnivorous
Gelatinous Cube
Ghoul
Golem (especially Flesh)
Gray Ooze
Green Slime
Herd Animals (representing small to medium dinosaurs)
Invisible Stalker
Leech, Giant
Lizardman
Lizard, Giant
Locust, Cavern
Men
Morlock
Mummy (usually of a Lizardman)
Ochre Jelly
Octopus, Giant
Pterodactyl (needs house-rules for riding)
Purple Worm
Remorhaz
Rhagodessa, Giant
Rot Grub
Rust Monster (maybe?)
Scorpion, Giant
Sea Serpent
Shadow
Shark
Shrieker
Skeleton
Skittering Maw
Snake
Spectre (usually representing powerful spirits summoned by Lizardman Shamans)
Spider, Giant
Squid, Giant
Statue, Animated
Stegosaurus (might need a slight deflation of HD)
Stirge
Swarm (Insect or small reptile - maybe even a snake swarm?)
Toad, Giant
Triceratops (possibly trainable as a massive draft animal)
Tyrannosaurus Rex (needs a significant HD deflation, way too many HD for an animal of it size; most whales have less HD)
Wraith (another spirit for Lizardman Shamans to summon)
Yellow Mold
Zombie

Let’s look at the D20 SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/) monster list and see what fits here:

Aboleth and Aboleth Mage
Allip (another spirit for Lizardman Shamans to summon)
Aranea
Assassin Vine
Behir
Chaos Beast (isn’t that a Shoggoth?)
Choker
Chuul
Cloaker
Couatl (now THAT’s what high-level Lizardman Shamans summon)
Darkmantle
Destrachan
Digester
Dinosaur, Deinonychus
Dinosaur, Elasmosaurus
Dinosaur, Megaraptor
Ethereal Filcher
Ethereal Marauder
Ettercap
Formian
Frost Worm
Fungus, Violet Fungus
Gibbering Mouther (another Shoggoth candidate!)
Grick
Homunculus (needs house-rules for creation)
Kraken
Mimic (actually a cursed chest)
Mohrg
Mummy Lord
Naga
Otyugh
Phantom Fungus
Phase Spider
Phasm (Shoggoth?)
Roper
Shadow, Greater
Shambling Mound
Shield Guardian (reskinned into Security Robot)
Shocker Lizard
Skum
Spider Eater
Tendriculos
(i)Thoqqua
Yrthak
Lizard, Monitor

Monsters that need adding as house-rules:

Alamosaurus
Ankylosaurus
Avatar of K’tulu
Cacodemon
Carnotaurus (possibly ridable)
Charonosaurus
Dagon
Dark Young
Deep Ones
Edmontosaurus (probably ridable)
Frog, Giant
Lizard, Komodo Dragon
Lizard, Megalania
Lizard, Mosasaurus
Lizard Brute (think of a a dim-witted Lizardman the size of an ogre or hill-giant)
Lizard Brute, Greater (regenerates like a Troll)
Magyarosaurus (possibly ridable)
Plant, Carnivorous
Plesiosaurs
Pyroraptor (maybe a replacement for rats?)
Serpentman, Hybrid
Serpentman, Degenerate
Serpentman, Undead Sorceror
Servitour of K’Tulu
Shoggoth
Toadmen
Torosaurus (possibly trainable as a draft animal and/or raised for meat and eggs)
Troodon (SMART! maybe a common pet and/or guard animal)
Wasp, Giant, Parasitic

A few more monsters to the houserule list:

Brain Lasher
Cockroach, Balroach (even bigger than a Giant Cockroach)
Cockroach, Giant
Ghast
Mi-Go

I’m not sure about how the campaign area would look; on one hand, dinosaurs go well with warm, shallow seas and tropical islands, on the other hand they go well with a Pangaea. I’m thinking of a compromise of a huge landmass occupying two thirds of the campaign map and an island-ridden shallow sea occupying the other third…

This is what I was told about this on the Dragonsfoot forums:

"On another note, ACKS is great but I think you should be careful with it when it comes to numbers. My impression is that it’s really based on a strong, specific assumption that the campaign world is more or less your Ye Standarde D&De Olde Worlde with a generally medieval technology and social level and with a single barrel of ale costing a gold coin (or whatever the case may be, you’re familiar with the Solid Gold Bedrock 3’ Under trope).

If you’re trying to do a sword& sorcery world where man is trying to carve out a narrow niche in a primeval universe of swamps and dinosaurs, many of those numbers and assumptions might no longer make sense. Items might only be available in much larger population centres than indicated in ACKS, if at all. Prices, incomes and everything built on those would probably be also very different. And, in fact, I’m not quite sure if the basic assumption of a feudal society is applicable."

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=59729&p=1325710#p1325710

What do you think about that?

Here's my thoughts:

1. The commenter is correct that ACKS is based on assumptions of labor productivity, food price, and so on, that are based in the historical pre-industrial world. To the extent that a campaign setting widely varies from the historical pre-industrial world, ACKS needs to be modified.

2. Whether you use ACKS or another system, if you want the trade/realm type rules we offer, you will have to answer basic questions like "how much money does a peasant earn" "what items are available in a city" and "how much does a horse cost". f you want the setting to be coherent, you have to make assumptions and build from them. The virtue of starting with ACKS is that you are starting from a functioning set of assumptions and can tweak them. If you start with other systems, they are generally less coherent.

3. The problem with "An Echo Resounding" lies at the interface between its realm mechanics and the underlying game's mechanics. For instance, if you find a dragon hoard, and want to convert that into "+4 Wealth" the system doesn't provide a clear interface to do so. It's left to the Judge to decide. The reason ACKS is built on a hardcore set of assumptions is specifically to be able to answer questions like "how much is a dragon's hoard worth relative to the income of the local duke". 

4. The assumptions in ACKS are probably more robust than the commenter suggests. If your standard is the rate of change of the modern era, the most surprising thing about human history 10,000 BC - to 1400 AD is how slow the progress of technology is. ACKS can model 1000 BC, 0 BC, and 1000 AD with respectable efficacy. As long as your "Dark Sun"-ish world is closer to a pre-industrial world, ACKS will work well. I think ACKS would have more trouble with, e.g. Eberron. 

 

ACKS has an economy which is self-consistent and scalable to different levels. You can skin that however you want, if your goal is to have an interesting end-game that mixes well with the early-game.

ACKS also puts a number of the initial assumptions under your complete control. For example:

Athas: multiply the cost of metal goods by x100, and use the centralized settlement pattern (2 rows) on p. 231. This—without any further work by you!—makes certain items harder to get in smaller towns, and produces large city-states while stripping urban population from the more difficult to sustain villages and towns.

Can you make it more complicated? Yes, but you don’t need to, if your goal is a plausible and flavorful setting with a fun end-game to match the early- and mid-games.

The post arguing against ACKS seems to imply that you ought to run a proper and correct economic simulation—for a setting for which there is no historical antecedent!—or give up. I think that’s ridiculous.

(I also think that An Echo solves the “some GM calls required” problem by saying, “Okay, now everything is a GM call, but we’ve made things simple and bland so the GM calls are easier to make.”)

Thanks for the input - I’m sticking with ACKS!

My setting has a lot in common with the Mesopotamian (or Levantine) city-states of the Ancient World, as well as the Mesoamerican city-states (especially when Lizardmen are concerned. If ACKS can model these, it can model my setting well enough.

Think Athas with jungles and swamps instead of deserts and with more common metals.

Talked this over with my fiancée. Turns out she bought my sales pitch and wants to play this kind of weird sword and sorcery now, and ACKS: Dark Project later!

And out first game is set to our anniversary, geeky couple that we are. So I have to have the basic campaign stuff, adventure and miniatures ready before March the 22nd!

That's awesome! Does she have a character rolled up?
 

Not yet, she’s still thinking about what to play, I’ll give her the ACKS book and the Companion to thumb through today :slight_smile:

I’m thinking about using the ancient Levant, Egypt and Mesopotamia as inspiration to the Human city-states of this setting (while the more civilizaed of the Lizardmen will have Mesoamerican inspiration). This does fit very well with sword and sorcery. Both sword&sandal and sword&sorcery go hand-in-hand with this ancient world of city-states, commerce, vengeful gods and towering ziggurats.

This setting’s equivalent of ACKS’ Zahar would be an Egyptian-style kingdom with pyramids, undead and huge opulence coupled with enormous stagnation. Now all that remains of them are tombs to loot, guarded by undead!

The setting’s history goes roughly like this:

First were the Serpentmen, who worshipped terrible Cthonic gods. They made the Lizardmen as slaves by crossing their own blood with that of giant lizards. Then the Lizardmen, led by a messiah of a new, Lawful goddess, rebelled, smashed their old rulers, and built a sprawling civilization in the tropical south.

But then came Men, from across the sky, and their arrival upon a shooting star shattered the Lizardmen Empire. Men also arrived in bad shape, and, at first, regressed to savage nomadism, sometimes used as slaves or mercenaries by the Lizardmen city-states which rose after of the Great Cataclysm. But some Lizardmen and many men, without the guidance of the old Lizard Empire’s Matriarch, turned back to the Serpentmen’s dead gods, and their bloody rituals.

Out of the chaos then rose the great Empire of Man, upon the River of the Desert, worshipping Chaotic gods from beyond the grave and investing their resources in their immortal dead kings much more than in their living subjects. But the empire, after a millennium, eventually stagnated and fell back into barbarism, leaving behind ruined temple-yards and ancient tombs filled with gold and peril.

Finally, in the more temperate North, beyond the Great Desert and its River, tribes once subjugated by the Empire of Man won their freedom, establishing their city-states. Some worship the Lawful gods of Man, while others pay homage to the blood-soaked idols of the long-dead Lizardmen.

Let’s start naming stuff:

Human name for the Lizardman tropical region (south third of the map): Punt
Old Human empire: Sakkara
Human City-States: Irem (in the desert), Yimara, Khishron, Zarnas (only remaining city in Sakkara)
Lizardman City-States: Cibola (Human name for the richest city), Tollan (ruined old capital), City of the Sunken Moon (Chaotic! Beware), City of the Crescent Sun

Lawful Gods:
Anat: Goddess of Love and War (followed by Blade-Dancers)
Ashera: Mother Goddess; Goddess of Nature, Birth and Fertility
Eshmun: God of Medicine, Herbs and Healing
Hadad: God of Rains, Storms, Lightning and Agriculture
Ixchala: Lizardman quasi-monotheistic goddess of birth, death and rebirth
Khasis: God of Craftmen
Nikkal: Goddess of Agriculture
Shalim: God of Dawn and Dusk
Shapashu: Sun Goddess
Yam: God of Seas and Rivers
Yarkhibol: Moon God

Neutral Gods:
Mawat: God of Death

Chtonic Gods:
Atlach-Nacha: Chaotic God of Spiders
Bokrug: Chaotic god of Lizards
Cthugha AKA Moloch: Chaotic god of Fire; Lizardmen call him Xiutecutli
Dagon: Chaotic god of Fish and Fish-Men
Hastur: Chaotic god of Sorcery
K’tulu: Chaotic god of Oceans and Rains; Lizardmen call him Kutlaloc
Shubbniggurath: Chaotic Fertility/Nature goddess; Lizardmen call her Tocia
Yig: Chaotic Father of Serpents; chief god of the Serpentmen; Lizardmen call him Mexcoatl
Yogsothoth: Chaotic god of Knowledge; Lizardmen call him Xolotal

History in four paragraphs:

First were the Serpentmen, who worshipped terrible Cthonic gods. Their empire was forged in eons before the dawn of history and lasted for millennia. In search for slaves, they bred themselves with giant lizards to produce the hardy Lizardmen, and, for ages, lorded over the Lizardmen masses while constantly honing their blasphemous sorcery. But then, millennia before our time, the great goddess Ixchala revealed herself to a Lizardwoman known only as the Prophetess. With her Lawful divine inspiration, the Prophetess roused the Lizardmen masses in rebellion, shattering their chains of old and overthrowing their masters into oblivion. Freedom was won; and the great Lizard Empire arouse in the jungles, with the Matriarch ruling it with an iron fist from the top of the Great Pyramid in fabled Tollan.

But then came Men, from across the sky, and their arrival upon a shooting star shattered the Lizard Empire. Men also arrived in disarray, and, at first, regressed to savage nomadism, sometimes used as slaves or mercenaries by the Lizardmen city-states which arose from the ashes of the Great Cataclysm. But some Lizardmen and many men, without the guidance of the old Lizard Empire’s Matriarch, turned back to the dead gods of the Serpentmen, and their bloody rituals.

Out of the chaos then rose Sakkara, the great Empire of Man. It grew upon the River of the Desert, worshipping Chaotic gods from beyond the grave and investing their resources in their immortal dead kings much more than in their living subjects. But even great Sakkara, after three thousand years, eventually stagnated and fell back into barbarism, leaving behind ruined temple-yards and ancient tombs filled with gold and peril, as well as the dying city of Zarnas, where the immortal Last Pharaoh rules, in name only, over his ruined empire.

When Sakkara fell, its former vassals to the North, beyond the Great Desert and its River, won their freedom, establishing the new City-States, a mere shadow of Sakkara’s old glory. Some worship the Lawful Gods of Man, while others pay homage to the blood-soaked idols of the long-dead Serpentmen. Meanwhile, the ancient Lizardmen Cities of the tropical South squabble and scheme, some worshipping the Lawful Ixchala, others following the dark Cthonic path of the Serpentmen gods of old.

Updated List:

Lawful Human Gods:
Anat: Goddess of Love and War* (followed by Blade-Dancers)
Ashera: Mother Goddess; Goddess of Nature, Birth and Fertility; El-Elyon’s consort
El-Elyon: Father of the Gods; God of Mankind and Civilization; Ashera’s husband
Eshmun: God of Medicine, Herbs and Healing
Hadad: God of Rains, Storms, Lightning and Agriculture
Ishtar: Goddess of Love
Khasis: God of Craftmen
Nikkal: Goddess of Agriculture
Shalim: God of Dawn and Dusk
Shapashu: Sun Goddess
Yarkhibol: Moon God

Lawful Lizardman Goddess:
Ixchala: Lizardman quasi-monotheistic goddess of lizards, dinosaurs, birth, death and rebirth

Neutral Gods:
Mawat: God of Death and Judgement
Yam: God of Seas and Rivers; also God of Judges

Chtonic Gods:
Atlach-Nacha: Chaotic God of Spiders
Bokrug: Chaotic god of Lizards
Moloch AKA Cthugha: Chaotic god of Fire and Wealth; Lizardmen call him Xiutecutli
Dagon: Chaotic god of Fish and Fish-Men
Hastur: Chaotic god of Sorcery and Undeath
Rahab AKA K’tulu: Chaotic god of Oceans and Rains; Lizardmen call him Kutlaloc
Shubbniggurath: Chaotic Fertility/Nature goddess; Lizardmen call her Tocia
Yig: Chaotic Father of Serpents; chief god of the Serpentmen; Lizardmen call him Mexcoatl
Yogsothoth: Chaotic god of Knowledge; Lizardmen call him Xolotal

Some initial thoughts on classes in this setting:

Allowed Classes:
Anti-Paladin
Assassin
Barbarian
Bard
Bladedancer (follows Anat)
Explorer
Cleric
Fighter
Lizardman Gladiator (AKA Thrassian Gladiator)
Mage
Mystic
Paladin
Priestess
Sakkaran Ruinguard (AKA Zaharan Ruinguard BUt with an Egyptian flavour)
Shaman
Thief
Venturer
Warlock
Witch

Disallowed Classes:
Dwarven Craftpriest (no Dwarves in this setting)
Dwarven Delver (no Dwarves in this setting)
Dwarven Fury (no Dwarves in this setting)
Dwarven Machinist (no Dwarves in this setting)
Dwarven Vaultguard (no Dwarves in this setting)
Elven Courtier (no Elves in this setting)
Elven Enchanter (no Elves in this setting)
Elven Nightblade (no Elves in this setting)
Elven Ranger (no Elves in this setting)
Elven Spellsword (no Elves in this setting)
Gnomish Trickster (no Gnomes in this setting)
Nobiran Wonderworker (no Nobirans in this setting)

New Classes:
Lizardman Hunter
Lizardman Priest
Lizardman Warrior
Lizardman Witch-Doctor

Here is my blog post about Lizardmen in this setting:
http://spacecockroach.blogspot.co.il/2013/02/lizardmen-in-barbarian-conqueror-king.html