I am looking for a few players to embark on what I hope will be a fairly cinematic game of ACKS. ACKS is a modern b/x clone that incorporates several additional features (tweaks to the economic model to enable a smooth transition to campaign play, a proficiency system that helps you to customize your character, etc). I'm also going to add some house rules from various places around the internet that I think are cool to see how they play out. No experience with acks is required, just a willingness to give it a try
My intention is that the game will begin at 1st level with human characters local to the oasis. There will be several adventure sites, and leads, and characters can set their own goals, whether these be trading between the oases, tomb robbing, fighting bandits and/or beastmen, exploring lost cities. You name it.Our adventure begins in the Oasis Kingdom of Kuntan, a small city on the edge of a huge desert the locals call "The Great Thirst" or "The Desert of Death". Legend has it that this land was not always a desert, but was transformed in a magical cataclysm generations ago. Ancient battlegrounds, ruined cities half buried in sand, and more are reminders of that ancient history. Nomads somehow survive out in the desert, among lizard men, giant insects and other things. Rumor has it that giant sandworms swim through the deep desert one hundred miles to the north, but no one you know has seen one.
Kuntan is one of a string of oases fed by streams from a forbidding mountain range to the south known locally as the "Teeth of the Dragon". The mountains are populated by giant creatures, beastmen, and more, but the runoff from the mountains sustains human life here in the desert. Bandits make their camps in the foothills of these mountains, from which they strike out at caravans moving between the oasis strongholds.
Meanwhile, in Kuntan, unrest is brewing. The peasants strain under the high taxes imposed by their foreign king. Guards clamp down on dissent in the taverns, but you have heard whispers. Is trouble brewing? Is it trouble for the king, or for those who dare to plot against him?
