Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS) is one of those games that is like a fantasy novel so different from what you have read that your mind rejects it, and you go, "Ugh, what is this? This is not like what I am used to reading! Why are so many things changed?"
Coming from 5E this one is a shock. No plane-hopping. No anime influences. Not much silly smarmy, overly cocky smirking heroes. No pop culture transplants. No Starbucks, Uber, Internet, Harry Potter, cell phone replacements, or anachronism magic. No Muppet races or talking animals. Things are tied to one world and serious.
Coming from vanilla OSR, my first thought was, why so many setting-specific classes? Why all the small changes to spells and classes? And if you read the intro, you see this:
However, the system has also been designed to support the default assumptions that most of us bring to a fantasy world; spells like continual light and charm person are limited in power as compared to the original RPG, for example, so that a reasonably extrapolated world is not necessarily filled with the mind-controlled slaves of wizards and cities lit by lamps that never go out.
If you know and understand classic Runequest, ACKS becomes much more understandable. This is sort of like an OSR game like Runequest, where you have a more challenging life, fallen empires, settlement & conquest, wandering tribes, barbarians, beastmen, and a struggle to build and master the land around the few pockets of civilization. We are not out exploring the world; we are trying to fight and settle what is over the next hill.
And the game is clearly Middle Ages and not Renaissance, with a more south and eastern Mediterranean flair. Why does that matter? Aren't they all the same thee, thou, Renfaire sort of poofy pants and floppy hats sort of worlds? Not really. If you say your game is Renaissance, then you are embracing colonialism, the age of sail, the conquering of the world, pre-Industrial age advancement, and the rise of reason over magic. Renaissance societies were extravagant and decadent because they were off stealing everything from everyone worldwide, enslaving people, taking resources, and setting up banking and trade systems designed to subjugate others and pay for armies to kill the natives and take more.
The Renaissance was a dark time that set up the Industrial Revolution. Slavery, the rise of the wealthy class, and climate change started here. To see D&D whitewashing this era with a Disney-ified version based on "high magic" is honestly a bit disturbing and a bit disingenuous. Yes, "fantasy is fantasy," but modern fantasy has become an opiate and forgives far too many sins.
The Middle Ages is the era before the Renaissance. You don't get many of the institutions created then, such as libraries, science & reason, organized guilds, banks, colleges, nations and states, and much of what we are used to in the modern age. The world was still crawling out of the ruins of the Dark Ages and the fall of the Roman Empire. Most of Europe was this patchwork of small baronies and many unsettled lands filled with barbarian tribes. The church was the master of the land, and the kings and royals came later - but the church still held considerable power. Most settlements would start with a mission or church holding, and they would establish a town around a religious center.
The Middle Ages is this fascinating time before the age of nations, and when the Conan-like past fought against the beginnings of the modern world. There is a massive conflict here between magic and ritualism, and religion - and this is when the "old magic" began to be eliminated in the world by the faithful. You get to D&D and Renaissance-style games, and magic is often equated with knowledge - the Gandalf, Dumbledore, or Eleminster-like "professor figure" with great power. In the Middle Ages, ritualism and magic were the Conan-style snake cults, mystic Egypt, lost gods, Babylonian high mages, Cthulhu, and demon worship types of themes.
Magic in the Middle Ages was very much at odds with religion.
And yes, equating wizards with knowledge and technology is very problematic. You can't have that electric car and cell phone lifestyle without climate change and environmental destruction. You worship Gandalf-like figures, and essentially you give billion-dollar companies a pass on destroying the planet. It is a reach, but if you look at what we put on pedestals, the parallels and metaphors are there.
Is magic knowledge and technology? Or is magic tradition and ancestry?
As a metaphor, it can't be both.
And yes, the Middle Ages are the era of the Crusades. One of the major themes here is religion and the wars of conversion, but also one religion trying to destroy the mystic traditions of another. You get the concept of holy lands and the legends and myths of religions when tied to specific areas of the world that "prove" a god existed or walked the land to become a land worth spilling blood over.
See why I pulled ACKS off my storage shelf?
If you open a book and read and love history, 5E begins to feel like a fast food diet. It does not satisfy. The tropes and fantasy influences the game is based on are very narrow - at least for the modern version - and the entire cosmology is this nebulous grey goo of the MCU, 20th century pop culture, plus anime tropes.
The 5E experience is a very limited one, based on pop culture of the last few decades. It feels so detached from reality and locked into a Disney-like ideal it does not seem real anymore. This is corporate "prog-fantasy" designed to entertain but not educate. And it eventually recycles its own waste and becomes malnutritious for your imagination.
My ACKS sourcebooks? Actual books written by historians on the Middle Ages that I read and use the ideas for a fantasy world. Mentally I am "eating better" and getting smarter just by diving into the game, understanding it, and carefully choosing source materials - from real history - to support my game. The manufactured "cardboard box meals" of adventures and source content that come from 5E adventures and supplements are dozens of steps removed from actual history, and likely based off some movie or cartoon. The "RPG tropes" of the 1970 to 2020 era are a tiny and myopic limited experience to draw inspiration from - and often infused with modern bias and tons of corporate ideas.
And I draw ideas and inspiration from real things. This feels like eating fresh fruits and vegetables versus a diet of fatty processed foods.
No comments:
Post a Comment