Second Edition or ACKS?

A strong, themed world, with classic classes? Races designed to fit the worldbuilding? The challenge of low-level play? Simple rules that don't fight you? Classes designed to enhance roleplay and not overdo it on personal power gain.

I have a game like that. It does the First and Second Editions better than the originals, but it is strongly themed around sword-and-sandals gameplay. The Second Edition has nostalgia and feels for me. The First Edition is a solid base. Everything is compatible and works, and I am not chasing games or trying to buy myself out of a broken game and spending money to make it enjoyable again.

ACKS is the game I see for Gold & Glory, but it offers much more, including mid- and endgame. Like FG&G, it is a solid package, through and through.

Everything I have in the Second Edition with For Gold and Glory, ACKS delivers more of, in a high-quality package, without a day-old and damaged Forgotten Realms world. There is everything I would want and need here, including the classic gameplay. ACKS does a better job at delivering "the full experience" than anything in the first or second edition, since it supports a complete mid- and endgame.

Yes, starting off in OSRIC or FG&G will be about the same as ACKS. You are a nobody, walking around a vast world, and fighting to get a few coins to upgrade gear and find a nice, safe place to sleep at night. You get those first levels, train, and improve your abilities. The level one to three run is about the same in any of these games.

With ACKS, at the third or fourth level, things begin to change. You start unlocking class powers, which are like D&D 5E's subclass powers, but inspired by the old school abilities unique to each class. You unlock proficiencies, your character begins to change, and you prepare for a mid-game where you will start seeing the world in a new way.

You will begin to consider your legacy and future.

Will you conquer land and start a domain? Will you build a wizard's tower and dungeon for magical research? Will you start a trading company and begin to establish trading routes? Will you start a thief's guild? Will you unite the barbarian tribes of the north? Will you retake ancient elven lands and spread the elven kin's power and dominion? Will you dig deeper and forge a dwarven kingdom in the grand mountains? Will you build temples and spread your god's influence and religion? Will you establish a monastery and a new order of fighting monks devoted to wisdom and physical perfection? Will you make a sanctuary and train paladins to smite chaos and bring justice to the land?

You can do all that in ACKS. The endgame exists.

In the First and Second Editions? You find higher-level dungeons. In the Second Edition, your stories become "more epic" and are worth "more XP" since you are fighting "tougher monsters." In essence, 1E and 2E never change, and you are just doing "the same things, just higher level." The comparison to a video game is apt, since you are just "fighting to get more power" by the end. D&D is a very consumerist game, actively discouraging you from thinking about legacies, changing the world, or endgames. Like an MMO, they need to keep you "in the power grind" and "chasing the next thing" without "touching our unchangeable sandbox world."

While the starting points are the same, in ACKS, your view of the world and your legacy change. There will be a moment in every game where a character needs to answer the question, "Why am I here?"

If they survive, they can begin to answer that question through their actions.

Yes, I know what I said about piling on abilities as you level, and I still like Second Edition for its simplicity. ACKS borrows some from modern designs, and each class unlocks powers as you level. It does not overdo it, and there are only a handful, so the game gets a pass over modern designs that pile on a dozen or more powers in the mid-levels.

OSRIC, For Gold & Glory, Adventures Dark & Deep, and ACKS feel rock-solid to me. Any one of them is a great time. OSRIC is rock-solid First Edition fun. I like FG&G for its presentation, second-edition improvements, and streamlining. I like ACKS because it is a complete game, full of worldbuilding and flavor, with the endgame built into the experience, and everything serves that goal. Where FG&G falls short, such as in the endgame, ACKS delivers and is built to handle those types of games.