I saw the news on Vox's blog and was going to write to congratulate you, but instead I'll do it here. That's absolutely fantastic news!
I played D&D extensively from my childhood up through college, and from everything I've read of ACK it seems like it is a considerable improvement and a monumental achievement. Unfortunately, finding a group to game with has been a challenge as I've gotten older, thanks in no small part to my nomadic lifestyle.
My last two campaigns were played using a VTT online. One guy lives in Canada, Neal, the publisher at Pilum Press, in France. One in Boston, and so on. What matters more is setting aside a few consistent hours each week.
I have embraced the online ttrpg experience, after insisting on f2f only for many years. Not only is it easier to get the gang together virtually, and they can physically be anywhere in the world, but with a discord server we can do "always on" 1:1 scale (1 game day is 1 real world day) action. Keeps me busy now that I have like 14 active players at a time.
Oct 25, 2023·edited Oct 25, 2023Liked by Tree of Woe
Congratulations on your achievement! The Hour is Late; but "world-building" of such a vast sort is definitely a worthy achievement! I reckon even the Djinn & Demons will have a Jolly good time when playing with these :'P What's the term again? "Cross-Species appeal"... Ah yes!
I haven't played a role playing game in over three decades, but I'd still get a copy if I wasn't ultra busy and broke. I hope you print enough for future sales when my situation changes.
I will point my gamer friends to your kickstarter.
This looks brilliant, man. I don't do kickstarter but I will definitely be checking this out when it launches. Any idea where it will be available for sale?
Congratulations on your achievement. I have been playing D&D and other game systems since high school, and have been playing regularly with old friends since internet voice and vision software became available to the public years ago. We have created so much high-quality content that my brother and one of my friends, and I, decided a few months ago to publish a free D&D 5e intro module followed by a 10-module story ark (in our spare time - we have real jobs). We thought about creating a new gaming system but decided that the barriers to entry where just too high, and yes, it's a monumental task. However, we are taking advantage of AI to streamline our module creation process. I will definitely check out ACKS II. We can always port our modules to other gaming platforms. Good luck with it going forward!
Congratulations! Getting noticed in the vast sea of rpgs is in itself a wonderful achievement but this level of success looks truly inspired. I’m afraid I’m to old and jaded too start on a new rpg system (I’m so old I started with the white box edition in 1976, admittedly at the tender age of 11) but it does look great and as a publisher I’d like to say the books are things of beauty
Congratulations again! It's gratifying to see how successful your project has been so far. The ultra-woke RPG market is ripe for disruption. Proud to be a backer.
Wizards of the Woke has smeared the rainbow all over Gygax's masterpiece, to the point where the only resemblance to the original is the name. Even the artwork is execrable - like something off of a Tumblr blog.
Which is probably where half the employees got their start.
Absolutely. The future is in third party modules. Wizards of the Woke rely on revamps the old classic dungeon modules to make their money, such as Ravenloft. Like moviemaking today, it's run by untalented hacks who give us stinky regurgitations of the classics.
5e is perfectly serviceable as an introductory system. Although at this point I wouldn't give them money, and the material quality of the 5e books is substandard.
Just avoid their "reimaginings" of old adventure modules and campaign settings. The great thing about running a game for your kids is they don't have 30 years of grognard standards and trope fatigue. They'll have a great time if you whip up the most basic "save the town from the goblins" scenario. They've never seen it before.
These days I mostly run custom systems and settings. If you don't have the time for that Savage Worlds is worth a look but my son pooh-pooh'd the damage system, so YMMV.
As someone who has played the original edition for years, I'm looking forward to this. For those who need an introductory system, go ahead and buy this, and then get Sinister Stone of Sakkara, inspired by the classic basic module B2, Keep on the Borderlands.
As I wrote in a recent writeup, little of this is actually new scope or rules, but instead a consolidation and refactoring for clarity and consistency (and to avoid the OGL license). Most of these rules already existed in expanded articles beyond the core rules. And you can ignore them until your characters advance to the point of building fortresses, or researching new magic spells from scratch. I've run three campaigns, one from SSoS, one from Dwimmermount, and one a mostly wilderness crawl, and outside of some classes from the Player's companion and a bit of magic research.
I haven't played TTRPGs consistently since my youth in the 70s and 80s. But then there was ACKS. Now I happily play ACKS II with my young adult children (in pre-release). ACKS II is like a shift to an alternate universe where the original D&D ethos was never lost, but instead continuously incrementally expanded and improved by precision engineers into a game for the ages. I backed the Kickstarter and can't wait to get the physical books. I can't see myself ever needing another fantasy TTRPG and predict this will be a cultural milestone we'll all celebrate in years to come.
Game creation is a fun art, and one that I wish I had had the good-fortune to turn into a career so hail to thee mon ami, sincerely happy for your success. Acks 2 is all I'm hearing about these days and am keen to order a copie of it soon.
What tips might you give a fantasy writer new to Substack? Once again congrats on your great success! 1.500 pages sounds like it is far, far too small though ;)
A wonderful achievement. And to have completed your Magnum Opus in such an aesthetically pleasing manner. I'm not an RPG guy, but we're around the same age so I get all the references, and I went to middle and high school with D&D guys. My thing was comic books.
Congratulations! Looking forward to getting a copy or backing soon. I am curious, does Acks II deal with different time periods well? I DM games and I have always wanted to do a bronze age collapse style game, would it be better to wait for the Conan tie in or might Acks II do it well out of the box?
I saw the news on Vox's blog and was going to write to congratulate you, but instead I'll do it here. That's absolutely fantastic news!
I played D&D extensively from my childhood up through college, and from everything I've read of ACK it seems like it is a considerable improvement and a monumental achievement. Unfortunately, finding a group to game with has been a challenge as I've gotten older, thanks in no small part to my nomadic lifestyle.
My last two campaigns were played using a VTT online. One guy lives in Canada, Neal, the publisher at Pilum Press, in France. One in Boston, and so on. What matters more is setting aside a few consistent hours each week.
I have embraced the online ttrpg experience, after insisting on f2f only for many years. Not only is it easier to get the gang together virtually, and they can physically be anywhere in the world, but with a discord server we can do "always on" 1:1 scale (1 game day is 1 real world day) action. Keeps me busy now that I have like 14 active players at a time.
Congratulations on your achievement! The Hour is Late; but "world-building" of such a vast sort is definitely a worthy achievement! I reckon even the Djinn & Demons will have a Jolly good time when playing with these :'P What's the term again? "Cross-Species appeal"... Ah yes!
Well, it's Wednesday, October 25th and the world hasn't ended.
Congratulations!
I haven't played a role playing game in over three decades, but I'd still get a copy if I wasn't ultra busy and broke. I hope you print enough for future sales when my situation changes.
I will point my gamer friends to your kickstarter.
This looks brilliant, man. I don't do kickstarter but I will definitely be checking this out when it launches. Any idea where it will be available for sale?
Congratulations on your achievement. I have been playing D&D and other game systems since high school, and have been playing regularly with old friends since internet voice and vision software became available to the public years ago. We have created so much high-quality content that my brother and one of my friends, and I, decided a few months ago to publish a free D&D 5e intro module followed by a 10-module story ark (in our spare time - we have real jobs). We thought about creating a new gaming system but decided that the barriers to entry where just too high, and yes, it's a monumental task. However, we are taking advantage of AI to streamline our module creation process. I will definitely check out ACKS II. We can always port our modules to other gaming platforms. Good luck with it going forward!
Congratulations! Getting noticed in the vast sea of rpgs is in itself a wonderful achievement but this level of success looks truly inspired. I’m afraid I’m to old and jaded too start on a new rpg system (I’m so old I started with the white box edition in 1976, admittedly at the tender age of 11) but it does look great and as a publisher I’d like to say the books are things of beauty
Congratulations again! It's gratifying to see how successful your project has been so far. The ultra-woke RPG market is ripe for disruption. Proud to be a backer.
D&D in particular has been ruined. The races don't even have defined attributes anymore. Giving an orc -2 Int and +2 Str would be racist, you see.
I wanted to introduce my kids to D&D and bought a 5e Starter Kit. It was horrible - not at all the original first edition game I loved.
Wizards of the Woke has smeared the rainbow all over Gygax's masterpiece, to the point where the only resemblance to the original is the name. Even the artwork is execrable - like something off of a Tumblr blog.
Which is probably where half the employees got their start.
Absolutely. The future is in third party modules. Wizards of the Woke rely on revamps the old classic dungeon modules to make their money, such as Ravenloft. Like moviemaking today, it's run by untalented hacks who give us stinky regurgitations of the classics.
5e is perfectly serviceable as an introductory system. Although at this point I wouldn't give them money, and the material quality of the 5e books is substandard.
Just avoid their "reimaginings" of old adventure modules and campaign settings. The great thing about running a game for your kids is they don't have 30 years of grognard standards and trope fatigue. They'll have a great time if you whip up the most basic "save the town from the goblins" scenario. They've never seen it before.
These days I mostly run custom systems and settings. If you don't have the time for that Savage Worlds is worth a look but my son pooh-pooh'd the damage system, so YMMV.
We will always have 3.5e.
These look beautiful. Congrats!
As someone who has played the original edition for years, I'm looking forward to this. For those who need an introductory system, go ahead and buy this, and then get Sinister Stone of Sakkara, inspired by the classic basic module B2, Keep on the Borderlands.
As I wrote in a recent writeup, little of this is actually new scope or rules, but instead a consolidation and refactoring for clarity and consistency (and to avoid the OGL license). Most of these rules already existed in expanded articles beyond the core rules. And you can ignore them until your characters advance to the point of building fortresses, or researching new magic spells from scratch. I've run three campaigns, one from SSoS, one from Dwimmermount, and one a mostly wilderness crawl, and outside of some classes from the Player's companion and a bit of magic research.
https://lastredoubt.substack.com/p/getting-started-acks
I haven't played TTRPGs consistently since my youth in the 70s and 80s. But then there was ACKS. Now I happily play ACKS II with my young adult children (in pre-release). ACKS II is like a shift to an alternate universe where the original D&D ethos was never lost, but instead continuously incrementally expanded and improved by precision engineers into a game for the ages. I backed the Kickstarter and can't wait to get the physical books. I can't see myself ever needing another fantasy TTRPG and predict this will be a cultural milestone we'll all celebrate in years to come.
I'm going to back this at some level. I look forward to seeing what you've done with it. Gonna share it with my network, too.
Game creation is a fun art, and one that I wish I had had the good-fortune to turn into a career so hail to thee mon ami, sincerely happy for your success. Acks 2 is all I'm hearing about these days and am keen to order a copie of it soon.
What tips might you give a fantasy writer new to Substack? Once again congrats on your great success! 1.500 pages sounds like it is far, far too small though ;)
Congrats!
A wonderful achievement. And to have completed your Magnum Opus in such an aesthetically pleasing manner. I'm not an RPG guy, but we're around the same age so I get all the references, and I went to middle and high school with D&D guys. My thing was comic books.
Nice work man.
Congratulations! Proud to be a supporter.
Congratulations! Looking forward to getting a copy or backing soon. I am curious, does Acks II deal with different time periods well? I DM games and I have always wanted to do a bronze age collapse style game, would it be better to wait for the Conan tie in or might Acks II do it well out of the box?