Axioms of an Addled Antillectual

When Worlds Collide

In this blog’s first series of posts, I will be sharing my thought processes, tools, and worked examples in the design pursuit of what I’ll call “decoder rings” to help translate material between ACKS (the Adventurer, Conqueror, King System) and GURPS (the Generic Universal RolePlaying System), especially the DFRPG (the “Powered by GURPS” Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game).

How Worlds Collide

My intent is to enable people to play GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and/or the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game whilst utilizing the tightly refined “old school” gameplay loop and internally consistent “world sim” framework, including the subsystems supporting it, from the pages of ACKS products and publications. All while doing as little actual conversion work as possible.

Speaking of which, this explicitly will not be a series of conversions—you won’t find any exhaustive lists of converted monster stat blocks, spells, gear or anything like that—but rather you’ll find my approaches to integrating certain ACKS elements into GURPS more-or-less “as is”… while still primarily playing the game using the rules of the latter.

Why Worlds Collide

Cheeky mashup of acronyms aside, let me explain why I’m going to the effort of shoving these games together and forcing them to kiss… in a manner of speaking.

I’ve been playing GURPS in some form or fashion since the ’90s and while I’ve played and enjoyed a good many varieties of tabletop roleplaying games over the years, GURPS has always been my first and ultimate love in spite of (and perhaps in part because of) its flaws.

That hasn’t changed. What has changed is my taste in gaming over the years. More accurately, I’ve come to understand my own tastes better—which types of games work for me at the table, and which don’t. In the last few years I’ve become somewhat re-enamored with the tight procedural play loop present in classic (read: old fart) D&D editions as well as certain contemporary OSR offerings.

Chief among those I found inspirational is ACKS, due to its attention to detail and consistency in game world simulation, particularly in the realm of economic and demographic modeling which its author Alexander Macris has gone to extensive lengths to research, design and implement. This has knock-on effects—in a rules environment otherwise externally similar in many ways to B/X, AD&D and so on, it creates a very solid and consistent foundation for related rules frameworks laid over the top such as domain management, building construction, mercantile ventures, warfare logistics, magical works, henchmen and hirelings, and similar. These individual elements existed long, long before in older editions of D&D of course… but ACKS has done a lovely job tightening and refining many of them, as well as making them more logically interconnected.

To me, such consistency and detail go hand in hand with GURPS. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that GURPS is by its very nature “generic” and so largely glosses over specific setting elements such as economics and demographics—it expects the GM to do any necessary work for their setting and tweak the rules and options to fit. That’s one of its strengths! For GMs who want to go heavier on the world simulation and don’t feel like starting from scratch though, borrowing tools from people who have already put the elbow grease into designing them is a sensible approach. That’s where ACKS comes in, for the purposes of this series.

I’m not the only one working on this type of endeavor, either! Over at Generic Universal Eggplant for instance, you’ll find exceptional work Eggplant has done on not only importing play procedures from ACKS into GURPS, but also extensive conversions of many old-school spells, monsters, and similar. I’ve also corresponded with several others in the wilds of the internet, each themselves working on their own approaches. I swear I’m not the only madman!

Whose Worlds Collide

At time of writing, ACKS has had its second edition (dubbed ACKS II) release after a series of successful Kickstarter campaigns, not only for the new edition itself but for several first-edition supplements and now one second-edition supplement. The most recent successful campaign was for the ACKS II Treasure Tome. I am an avid reader of not only the published products, but also the Patreon content published under the ACKS and Ascendant (another game published by Autarch LLC) umbrellas. I own all published ACKS products for both editions, and I’m currently a Patreon subscriber.

GURPS, as always, has a number of exciting products coming down the pipeline thanks to Steve Jackson Games. The one I’m maybe most excited for is Mission X, being published by the third-party company Gaming Ballistic LLC. Douglas Cole of Gaming Ballistic is an excellent writer, designer and publisher, and as I came to find out while writing Shields Up for the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game, a strong editor as well. I have purchased every single GURPS Fourth Edition and Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game product, both first- and third-party, ever released (in some cases, multiple times), and many if not most GURPS Third Edition products as well (both editions are lined up in my shelves, and in my OneDrive as well). I’m currently a Patreon subscriber to several GURPS authors.

Suffice it to say, I like good games. I understand there has been controversy surrounding the author of ACKS, Alexander Macris, and frankly… I don’t care. Neither do I care about the political sensibilities or affiliations of the authors with published work under Steve Jackson Games, nor in fact those of Steve Jackson himself.

I have my own political, ethical, and moral perspectives. Other people have theirs. I don’t intend to facilitate discussion of either here, so for any of those inclined to comment on such matters: please, kindly do everyone a favor and keep it in your pants.

What and Where Worlds Collide

So then, what foundational elements are the most critical to create these “decoder rings” for?

At the highest level, the elements I consider to be the most important to translate across game systems, and which many integrated features are reliant on, are the following (which themselves are highly interconnected):

• Approximate currency conversion between games
• ACKS Gold-as-XP, in GURPS
• ACKS adventurer progression, in GURPS

I have already written extensive notes, discussed with various authors and contributors, and created several tools for tuning my approaches. Much of what’s to come in the next posts in this series will be my attempts to wrangle myriad notes into useful, legible chunks…

… beginning with currency conversion.

See you there!