ACKS Wilderlands

If you miss it, rot grubs will crawl up your butt. So don't miss it!

Be me, just a simple demon horse, hanging out in the Wilderlands island grasslands, minding my own business.
Chuds in a big stupid boat crash into some rocks near my hunting ground. Ha ha ha, losers.
They go off in the direction of the trolls. Lul. Dumbasses. This is gon be good.
A couple days later, they are back. Wtf.
I trot up to say Hi. Maybe to eat one of them too. That lawful male human fighter looks pretty tasty ngl.
They think I'm just a normal horse . This gon be good. Billions must roll initiative!
I try to nibble at LMHF and they attack me! Rude!
I bite the fighter really hard and shake him until he stops moving. His blood is delicious!
Then the barbarian slices me open real good. Ouch!
Run away!
They strike again as I flee. That really hurt!
Everything is fading.

Dammit, all I wanted was a snack.

(copypasta from discord)

For those of you who aren't comfortable rolling them on your own yet.

We're getting rid of BtW for now and going pure ACKS 2e for a more traditional D&D experience, because I still get annoyed when I think about the old game for now.

It will still be set in Wilderlands of High Fantasy. Probably in Elphand Lands in the far northwest but I haven't really decided yet. That is a cold and savage area where cavemen ride around on mastodons and shit, so hopefully that will be pretty lit.

I haven't decided what stat generation method to use yet. I don't want it to be totally 5e superman like the default method, but I don't wanna do straight 3d6 DTL either, cos I want players to have some agency over what sort of character they choose to play (ie a noob ought to be able to choose to play a fighter or something instead of something complicated if they want to). I imagine it will be 3d6 DTL, then swap one pair of stats if you want to, but I need to do some of le' maths before I decide for sure. So don't roll anything yet.

But when we do roll, we'll do the usual thing of rolling 5 sets of stats, and keeping the best 3 sets. You'll roll up a primary dude with the set you like best, and two backup dudes which don't absolutely have to be done in time for the first session if you have a life and stuff.

No Zaharans. No Chaotics. Summon Manes is banned. Anything “Nobrian” is called “Avalonian” now, and you have blue-tinted skin. I'd rather not have anyone playing a class with ceremonial magic or extemporaneous invocations until I have wrapped my head around the move from AD&D 1e procedures to ACKS 2e procedures. All the usual classes are fine, including the ones out of the supplements. If you want to play something weird (something out of Kanahu etc) run it by me first.

Other than that, I am going to try to run it reasonably RAW, although I'm gonna be using some 3rd party stuff for some for the procedural randomization for hex and dungeon crawling.

I may decide to retroactively ban stuff later if it becomes a problem, but I don't have enough ACKS DM experience to know yet what that might be. In general, I want everyone to feel like they are contributing to the game, and stuff that subsumes other classes' abilities in a way that significantly devalues other PCs' contributions is annoying. This is why Summon Manes is gay, because in practice it leads to one guy being the tank, trapguy, and damage dealer for the whole party, while everyone else stands around with their thumbs up their asses. Whatever happens, I'll try not to screw you guys over in the process; if it's something you've worked hard for we'll try to replace it with something else of equal value, even if it breaks the 4th wall a little.

I haven't DMed ACKS before, so this is a learning experience. If I am doing something wrong, please don't hesitate to bring it to my attention. However, if you are one of those guys that likes to minmax edge cases to break the game in order to “win” in ways that the game wasn't intended to be played, you will be ejected after one warning. I have no patience for that shit, and highly crunchy games like ACKS tend to attract people who play like that. (edited)

We'll be using OSR-type-ascending-AC rather than the attack saves. Whyyyyy Macris, whyyyyy???