19th Level

I have a special place in my gaming heart for early editions of D&D. I'm not quite enough of a grognard to have played the original D&D when it came out - my gaming career began in the early 1980s. I played a lot of the Basic and Expert D&D incarnation as well as a ton of Advanced D&D. But they didn't quite make it this high in the list. One of the things I loved about the Companion rules of D&D was the way it brought about domain play. Early in this list I had Pendragon as a game I really like but didn't get a lot of time playing. I really like the idea of PCs ruling domains. It's a reason I greatly enjoy George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. But there were a few frustrations I had with D&D. I liked the idea  of demi-humans having their race as their class - it added a certain amount of character - but I also found it a bit limiting. When I played, I liked being a magic-user but I was frustrated by the limits of low-level mag...

With a two week break between classes at Brandeis, I had a little bit of time to goof off and make use of the PS4 I received as a birthday gift last month. I finally made my way through Naughty Dog's The Last of Us . This isn't really a review of the game, there's about a gazillion out there on the internet - though I will give a brief overview of it. I'll also note there are spoilers about the game in this post so if you've not played it and want to play it unspoiled, you should read no farther. A bit unlikely for a game released in 2013, but just in case... The Last of Us tells the tale of Joel and Ellie in a post-apocalyptic world. Joel is a survivor of the original outbreak in his late forties. Ellie is 14 and for unknown reasons, is immune to the infection. In September of 2013 a mutant Cordyceps fungus wipes out civilization.  Cordyceps is a real kind of fungus and is a parasite, with some species able to alter the host's behavior. Luckily for us, ...

"Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it... Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle." - Marcus Aurelius I've been going through some of my newer stuff for the Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS) over the past week or two. Of late I've been thinking of fantasy RPGs, especially with a focus on the ability for characters to be movers and shakers of the world. (I've also been reading the new Laundry novel by Charles Stross and checking out some of the newer DCC stuff - the fun of being scatter-brained... Though in Icons our heroes have met their first aliens. More on that in a few days I think...) One of the things I liked about ACKS was its implied setting, one that has begun getting more fleshed out with the ACKS Player's Companion , The Sinister Stone of Sakkara , and the quarterly Axioms  digital magazine. The ten thousand foot view is it is a...

Part of the reason for my lack of posting of late has been doing actual gaming and some prep work around it. (Another part is due to family life - my eldest daughter somehow managed to have her third corneal abrasion and man do they appear painful.) One thing that might be of some interest is sharing the background to my ACKS Campaign Setting. I use lots of Google tools for my gaming and personal/family life. I've been using Google+ and Google Drive to manage my ACKS campaign and you can link to the document here . It's an expanding document - I'm trying to avoid the trap of avoiding every detail about the setting but rather keep it a place I can easily add to. I've found inspiration from a variety of sources. Autarch has given glimpses of their official Auran Empire Setting for ACKS. I'm not using that setting directly but I like a lot of what they've revealed about it so I am gladly porting much of it. I really like the implied pre-medieval/late-antiquity ...

After the first fatality in our Adventurer Conqueror King System game the player of our sadly departed thief asked if there was any way he could play a necromancer. I did some experimenting with the ACKS Player's Companion and came up with the following class. It's balanced per the class creation rule but with only one session so far I can't yet vouch for how well it works in play, though we had no issues in that session. The Zaharan Necromancer has some inspiration from the Death Master of Dragon Magazine 76. by Lenard Lakofka. I might try an alternate version more alchemical in nature as was that class.  The background for this class is from the version of Zaharans I'm using in our game and differs slightly from the official Autarch version. Zaharan Necromancer Class Summary Image credit: katalinks / 123RF Stock Photo Prime Requisite: INT Requirements: INT 9 Hit Dice: 1d4 Maximum Level: 11 (can continue advancing to 14 HD if becomes undead) ...