Player guide 🏰

Open Table Policy

New players are always welcome at any session without prior warning or preparation and regardless of player count. I will have a few pre-gens ready at all times in case someone new wants to give the game a try. Please feel free to bring anyone along who you think might be interested.

Before Your First Game

If you’ve played in one of my campaigns before, I expect you to do the following before your first game:

• Read this guide.
• Read the setting primer.
• Create a character. Session time is sacred and only for playing the game, not character creation.

Character Creation

The procedure for character creation can be found on page 13 of the ACKS II Revised Rulebook. A PDF of this rulebook can be found pinned in the discord. All classes from this rulebook, as well as those found in the dwarven supplement ‘By This Axe’, and the work-in-progress elven class document can be chosen for your character. Some of the classes including the Barbarian and Witch, differ slightly based on the region they hail from. The regions in the rulebook differ from those in this campaign’s setting, but most have equivalents. You can find information on available peoples and their regions in the setting primer. You can follow this procedure to make a character in your own time, but you’ll need to run them past me before they can be played at the table. Whether you want to work with me to flesh out a character concept first and then build the character afterwards, or build them first and then come to me for a final check is up to you. I am also more than happy to sit down online or in person and build them together, but this must be arranged ahead of a session. A good option is for you to arrive at 6pm before a session to give us time to create a character together before play.

When creating a character, I do not expect pages of backstory, in fact I discourage it. A character with all the mechanical bits and bobs, a name and a reason to adventure is all you’ll need to begin.

Rolling Stats

The first step in character creation is to roll your stats. I expect you to follow these steps:

1. Choose the stat you want to be your best stat and roll 5d6, summing the best 3 for a total between 3 and 18. If this roll is less than 13, treat it as a 13.
2. Choose your two second best stats and roll 4d6 for each, summing the best 3 as before. If these rolls are less than 9, treat them as 9.
3. Roll 3d6 for each of your remaining stats.
4. Upon choosing a class, you may increase one or more of the class’ key stats by 1 point for every 2 points you subtract from a non-key stat. You may not reduce any stat below 9 when doing this.
5. You must play this character in at least 1 session.
6. Following this session, you may retire the character to me as an NPC or keep it as a backup, and roll another character.

Session Schedule

• Sessions will be run at my house every Friday from 6:30pm to 10:30pm.
• At 6:30pm, we will eat pizza and catch up.
• At 7:00pm, the game starts.
• If you are going to be late and have told me in advance, I will wait up until 7:15pm to start the game.
• If you are going to be late and have not told me, I will be starting at 7:00pm.
• If you are going to be later than 7:30pm, do not attend. It is too disruptive. Just play next time instead.

Player Count

• There will be an attendance poll for each session in the discord.
• On Thursday evenings I will check the poll and count confirmed numbers.
• I will run sessions as long as there are 3 confirmed players by Thursday evening.

Session Cancellation Policy

• Assume that sessions are going ahead every Friday.
• If a session is cancelled, I will ping all confirmed attendees with as much notice as possible.
• If a session is cancelled due to a lack of players, I will notify people on Thursday evenings, so be sure to check during the day on Fridays.
• Only I can cancel sessions.

Game Expectations

• Let others shine.
• Work as a team.
• Be inquisitive.
• Be punctual.
• Don’t be disruptive. Falling asleep, getting up and moving around and fidgeting all count as being disruptive. Bring a fidget toy if you need one, I’ll do my best to schedule in a break every session.

Campaign Timeline and Drop-in, Drop-out play

The nature of open table gaming is that it allows for players to drop in and out of play as their time and interest allows. I will also be carefully recording the passing of time in the campaign world, and it is important to understand the implications of these features. I provide a few examples here.

Example 1: One week, you go on an adventure with Anna and Bob. During the adventure, you delve into a dungeon for 3 days of campaign time. T he session ends before you can finish the adventure. Anna, Bob and yourself agree to continue the adventure where you left off the following week. When it comes to the day, Anna and Bob have an emergency and are unavailable, but Charlie and Danielle attend the session with you. The session starts at the same time the last one was paused in campaign time. Your character is still out on day 3 of the other adventure. You choose to create another character and set off on a different adventure with Charlie and Danielle. When Alice and Bob are free again, you can finish your adventure with them and then time will fast forward for all of your characters so they catch up.

Example 2: The same situation as above except Alice and Bob are not available again for a long time. The DM and you decide that it would be best to finish the adventure without them. Next week, Charlie and Danielle attend the session with you. The session picks up where you left off but Alice and Bob’s characters have been replaced by those of Charlie and Danielle. You and the DM come up with a plausible reason for the exchange of party members and you play the adventure to completion.

Example 3: The same situation as in Example 1, except Alice and Bob do turn up the following week! Charlie and Danielle both attend the session as well. Everyone works together to come up with a plausible reason for Charlie and Danielle’s characters to appear and you all complete the adventure together.

Example 4: You are playing a Mage of high level and want to research a new spell that the party need you to use in the next session. The research will take 3 months of campaign time. All of the other players agree to skip ahead by 3 months to allow your research to be completed by the next session. Everyone decides how their characters spend those 3 months. Baldur the fighter goes on campaign, Warwick the cleric prostletyzes for new congregants and Lappiln the Venturer goes searching for contacts in foreign markets.

Example 5: The same situation as in Example 4 except your spell research is incredibly self serving and the other player’s don’t really care to help you out. Your mage is unavailable for you to play for 3 months of campaign time. While you wait, you create a new Fighter and go on lots of adventures with everyone, amass huge wealth and forget all about your wimpy little bookworm. After 3 months of campaign time, the DM informs you that your spell research failed. You throw your Mage off his tower and spend your days ruling your bountiful Barony as a fat, happy ex-Fighter.

Character Replacement

Should your charcter die, retire or otherwise be permanently removed from play, you have a few choices:

• Take over playing one of the character’s henchmen.
• Start playing a backup character you created earlier.
• Create a new character.

New characters start at level 1 unless you have set up an xp fund or the old character’s party throws them a heroic funeral. An xp fund is how you can effectively increase the level floor of all your future characters by sacrificing treasure for no other tangible in game benefit. A heroic funeral is how the old character’s party can increase the starting level of your new character by sacrificing their treasure for no other tangible in game benefit.

New characters start with starting equipment only, unless the old character had established an inheritance.

See page 311 of the ACKS II Revised Rulebook for more information on xp funds, heroic funerals and inheritance.

Remember that you can always play multiple characters and switch between them session to session. It may sometimes even be required to fit the campaign’s timeline.

Bonus XP

I will award bonus XP for the following out of game activities:

• 5% Bonus XP if you bring snacks or drinks
• 5% Bonus XP in your next session if you produce a session summary. Examples include: A short text write up (200 words or less), a video, an image, a drawing.

Other Useful Things

A session log will be produced after each session on the session-manifest page.