Axioms of an Addled Antillectual

Dissocial Behavior

You may have noticed in Part II that we didn’t directly account for extrinsic character traits corresponding to wealth or influence such as Wealth, Independent Income, Status, Allies, or Rank/Duty—each of these traditionally accounted for with point values in GURPS Fourth Edition.

There are a couple of primary reasons for this:

• These elements are very much in flux in ACKS and naturally ebb and flow depending on player choice and circumstance—while treasure is integral to progression, wealth and status largely exist as their own systems isolated from character sheets themselves.
• These elements go almost entirely unaccounted for in DFRPG, which shares a similar focus on primarily intrinsic adventurer traits as part of character creation. As DF: Exploits declares on page 13, “Dungeon Fantasy is about killing monsters and getting rich – not social interactions.”

As a result, the progression in the previous post is a relatively abstract one which is open to some interpretation. It is a fairly straightforward interpolation of character point values using 1st- and 14th-level approximations as “known values,” making no effort to explicitly account for the qualities of wealth or social connections.

Such elements didn’t go entirely unaccounted for however—after all, some of the GURPS Classic: Who’s Who 1–2 characters we used as points of reference while creating said progression had Wealth, Rank, and so forth. Individual PCs certainly could use character points received from “gold-as-CP” through adventuring to acquire Status, Allies and such during play of course, it’s just not assumed—one of GURPS‘ strengths being its accommodation of player choice during PC progression.

Ditching the Party

None of the above is to suggest these elements are unimportant, but rather certain observations form the basis of a compelling argument against accounting for them in a way that assumes stability. For campaigns where PCs can suddenly acquire certain traits and shed them just as easily, it doesn’t make sense to track every fluctuation in point value—much less charge character points acquired via adventuring for their acquisition.

Another consideration is that if PCs are allowed to purchase such traits normally during play, it creates the potential for characters to become much wealthier or more influential than intended, much earlier than intended, which could either push our “gold-as-CP” from Part II into irrelevancy or completely break it.

Since DFRPG already ignores character growth in the realm of traits related to social influence (and most elements of Wealth as detailed in the Basic Set, too), it would be easiest to assume such traits do not exist in a GACKS campaign and to simply run ACKS‘ external systems as-written in combination with DFRPG—with PCs gaining or losing money, relationships, rank, and similar as appropriate during the campaign without accounting for them at all using discrete character points.

Saving Face

On the other hand, these extrinsic elements are accounted for in the larger GURPS ecosystem and since this series is intended to enable people to play some variety of GURPS more or less as-is alongside some of the tools from ACKS, it seems a violation of the “GACKS” acronym to leave people dangling in the wind should they decide to include such traits in play.

Additionally, explicitly factoring in these elements could be considered critical for emulating mid- to high-level play in ACKS and as a result, accounting for them in some form or fashion may be desirable. In fact, at level 9 ACKS practically shoves players into the shallow end of domain play by bequeathing PCs with mechanically explicit Followers accounted for within each class progression.

That may be something we want to steal for ourselves, actually. Let’s take a brief look at how to help guide players out of the dungeon (and the decidedly abstract “town”) and into domains and realms, where such traits might gain some additional importance.

Growing Pains

Domain play can be difficult to incentivize. It requires broadening the scope of the campaign beyond just the PCs, which can be difficult for not only the GM but for the players as well.

Part of the issue is that if players are given the option of staying on the simpler character-focused path of progression versus expanding the scope of material they need to interact with at the table, the tendency is almost always to stay the current course.

Given the choice between purchasing or otherwise pursuing Rank, Status, Allies or even Wealth, most players will opt for simply raising their character’s Broadsword skill and taking a few more levels of Enhanced Defense before hoofing it to the next town rather than further intentionally complicating their lives. This effectively adds overhead on the GM side, with the onus being entirely on them to provide and sustain incentives and opportunities to engage PCs in domain play.

ACKS addresses this issue in part by allowing players to focus on their characters to the exclusion of other considerations early on, but as campaigns progress the amount of wealth PCs have laying around will increase dramatically, begging to be spent on building strongholds and securing realms and domains.

We already stole this monetary incentive in Part II by ensuring that the amount of gold required to gain a CP goes up with character point value—PCs should be salivating at the opportunity to drop a wad of cash on some new digs or some hired help once they pass the point of worrying over buying a horse and a fancier sword.

There’s another critical assumption ACKS has built-in though, which is the notion that PCs will somewhat inevitably become involved in domain play—notably due to the fact that PCs automatically have access to Followers at 9th level.

This isn’t some hand-wavey feature that simply “allows” PCs to get involved “if and when they want to” or “when the GM thinks it’s the right time,” it’s an integrated mechanical feature in every PC’s progression, which offers concrete effects achievable with an explicit in-game trigger.

Importantly, there is no “convince the GM your PC has done ‘enough’, by some nebulous subjective personal metric of theirs, in order to justify buying a new Ally or raising your Status” step.

All it takes for PCs to collect the followers corresponding to their character class is the expenditure of 15K GP (in some cases only 5K) to build or otherwise establish a stronghold of sorts—typically a fort, sanctum, church or temple of some kind, or a hideout in the case of thieves.

At 9th level, both in ACKS and using our progression from Part II, 15K GP is only about a session’s worth of loot on average. This means acquiring followers is not only mechanically hard-coded, but it’s also eminently accessible at that point in a PC’s progression. There’s little thinking or choice required or involved—it just happens upon being triggered, which effectively removes several barriers to entry from a psychological perspective.

Our progression from Part II doesn’t have that trick, so if we want to further incentivize player engagement with domain play and thus be able to utilize even more ACKS tools then it’s certainly a technique we want to borrow.

Before we can do so, however, we need to take a closer look at wealth, influence and follower implementations in each game which will allow us to compare and get a better idea of how to tie it all together.

A Place to Call Home

A big issue to contend with is one of choice—being generic by nature, GURPS and by extension Dungeon Fantasy and the DFRPG have a variety of treatments for extrinsic traits related to wealth and influence. Sure, Status and Wealth keep the same names across rules supplements—but crack open Social Engineering, Fantasy, Banestorm or DF: Guilds and you’re going to find differing treatments which vary widely in scope, realism and complexity. We need to pick one, ideally a treatment of these traits that doesn’t mess with the assumptions in ACKS.

ACKS has the benefit of being mostly a singular treatment for all these elements, with optional abstractions in places such as cost of living. Despite all its extensive systems for economic simulation, at its core, ACKS is still a game about adventurers adventuring, then conquering, then king-ing. Status and Rank (in GURPS terms) are simply the logical extrapolations of PCs engaging at different points in the natural progressions of ACKS‘ various systems. Wealth is just “well, how much money ya got and how much do you need to spend?”

So, what’s the least intrusive GURPS treatment of these elements we can use, that won’t step on any toes? Certainly not the detailed treatments in Social Engineering with all its complex interactions between Wealth, Status, different types of Rank, and so on. No! At the same time, we want to include some detail for these elements beyond what DFRPG offers (which is to say, almost none).

Dungeon Fantasy to the rescue! While early in the series DF largely leaves aside things like Status and Rank, including only a very bare treatment of Wealth (similar to DFRPG), later on we find DF 15: Henchmen, DF 17: Guilds, and even some material in DF 23: Twists which each contain valuable input on such traits (but still with a lighter touch than even the Basic Set).

Such traits exist in DF but explicitly do not interact—there are no imputed bonuses from Wealth to Status, for instance. Our peas stay separated from our carrots, and complexity is kept to a minimum. These traits are also greatly curbed in their utilities and have much more explicit benefits with narrower scopes (which makes them easier to handle in many ways). The focus remains on adventurers adventuring… with a little extra oomph for side activities, courtesy of the listed supplements.

DF 2: Adventurers (p. 23): “‘Society’ can be summed up as ‘town, where we buy and sell stuff.’ To give Wealth impact once play begins, assume that it represents business contacts. For all loot except coin and gems, it determines the percentage of an item’s new price that the adventurer can get when selling.”

DF 17: Guilds (p. 6): “Status in Dungeon Fantasy isn’t boosted by Rank or Wealth, doesn’t guarantee fancy duds or digs, and doesn’t use the standard rules for cost of living – in fact, ignore Cost of Living (pp. B265-266). Holdings aren’t liquid assets, and while they pay whatever costs your station might demand, they don’t give any cash in excess of that. Anyone who is set on being rich should buy Wealth, too.”

DF 23: Twists (p. 5): “Optionally, delvers may raise Wealth to match their Status (or Rank, read as Status) on the table on p. B517, either when buying Rank/Status or later. This doesn’t provide money – it represents having paid cash, as above, for the ‘connections’ to get a better price for loot (GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons, pp. 14-15). It’s rarely worthwhile to go past Very Wealthy [30], even at Rank/Status 4+.”

In the context of ACKS, Status best represents the standing of those with Titles either bestowed by a ruling class (accounting for “true” nobility in particular at Status 3 and above) or granted through conquest or settlement of unclaimed territories, while pretty much everybody else has Rank (usually by individual professions, orders or guilds as described in DF 17). Neither trait provides residences or servants, or costs money to maintain (ignore associated Cost of Living, outside of normal expenses for staying a week in town which Status can alleviate), and neither Rank nor Wealth grant “free” Status.

Wealth itself is not indicative of cash-on-hand at all, past character creation—it’s representative of connections, most explicitly for the purposes of loot sale. In order for a character to have income, they need to adventure or else get a job (even if that job happens to be as grandiose as “lord of the realm”).

Kromm expounds on the nature of Wealth here.

Thus, these traits as outlined and defined in the Dungeon Fantasy supplements for GURPS play very friendly alongside the default assumptions in ACKS—for that reason we’ll use the DF line specifically for comparisons as we proceed.

Facing Off

Followers and Hirelings

As mentioned earlier, ACKS characters reaching 9th level obtain a number, type and level of Followers dependent on their class—these will include some number of NPCs with class levels themselves. In order for these followers to show up, a PC need only spend 5–15K GP (up to about a session’s worth of treasure acquisition at that level) to establish a stronghold of sorts—none if they’ve built, been granted, or taken one by force already—and wait for a period of time to elapse for the followers to arrive.

Followers are a special type of Hireling which will undertake the same tasks as Henchmen—typically moderately loyal NPC sidekicks, companions and associates willing to take reasonable risks, and also the only type of hireling which will generally accompany an adventurer into a dungeon, lair or ruin. PCs can naturally hire additional hirelings, but these will often be less loyal and otherwise more unreliable.

If the PC opts to pay these new followers the normal rates for henchmen they stay to serve, otherwise leaving the character’s service.

In comparison, Dungeon Fantasy usually treats a loyal, brave companion (or group thereof) as an Ally—the primary difference here being that allies don’t normally have to be paid to stick around, and there are no specific requirements for gaining them outside of character point expenditure and GM approval (the latter of which could mean any number of in-game justifications, including none at all).

Per DF 15: Henchmen (p. 29) there’s no explicit requirement to pay henchmen allies wages, but they’re entitled to a cut of the loot and equally they’re obliged to ante up an equal contribution for party-wide expenditures.

Instead of treating followers as Allies, it is probably best to treat automatic ACKS Followers as DF Hirelings—Followers and Hirelings both require pay, and neither is 100% loyal, making them more alike than Followers and Allies.

The straightforward solution to importing ACKS Followers, then, is simply offering the arrival of a number of automatic hirelings upon a PC establishing a stronghold, which the PC can then opt to pay wages to keep around (or not). The specific number of potential hirelings arriving could be determined by Rank or Status as per the tables in DF 23: Twists (p. 5) which doesn’t break anything, but it’s just as straightforward to use ACKS guidelines (though you might have to break out “funky” dice and decide which delver template approximates to which class, at least until we write a post about it).

In any case, this initial wave of follower-alikes should have some degree of assured loyalty over ordinary henchmen hired right off the street as they do in ACKS—an olive branch saying “here, take these guys, they’re not going to stab you in the back and you don’t even need to pay points for them.”

For this purpose, we should assume an initial automatic reaction roll result of 11 or “Neutral” (per the table on B561) to determine starting loyalty scores for arriving hirelings. It is also fair to declare no random unexpected traits in this influx of hirelings—if using the table in DF 15 (p. 31), assume a roll of 9–12.

We want to make all of these facts clear to the players in advance of their decisions on whether or not to pay to keep these hirelings around.

In ACKS, the loyalty of followers can vary depending on various character elements such as class and Charisma score—Crusaders will attract very devout followers, while Thieves are guaranteed at least one follower which is secretly an infiltrator working for the thief’s local rivals, sent to keep an eye on the character!

We can choose to modify the default reaction roll above for such circumstances if desired, but that can wait until we work on adventurer demographics and class/template matchups ala Niche Substitution (DF 15: Henchmen, p. 5) in detail in another post.

If you want to “eyeball” it though, simply step up the reaction roll result by one for each –5 points of PC disadvantages related to social cohesion or strength of belief such as a Fanaticism, Vow, Disciplines of Faith, Code of Honor, or Sense of Duty (to a cause or political/religious organization, not simply to adventuring companions) and step down the reaction roll result by one for every –5 points of disadvantages related to selfish or antisocial behavior such as Greed, Loner, Bad Temper or Trickster.

This creates an effect of “like attracts like,” with particularly devout or dogmatic characters attracting similarly devout and therefore loyal hirelings, and self-interested PCs attracting similarly selfishly motivated hirelings with dicey loyalty scores.

In general, hirelings showing up to serve PCs should somewhat align with the delver template of the PC in question. Thieves attract ruffians and other thieves, knights attract mercenaries and soldiers, so on and so forth.

Other traits could optionally influence the result as well, following the advice in DF 15: Henchmen (p. 31).

Optionally, the player can choose to roll loyalty anyway for arriving hirelings and test their luck. If the player desires, any hireling whose Loyalty achieves 19+ can be purchased as an Ally, complete with all the normal perks the trait includes.

Status and Rank

Status in ACKS (as defined in Dungeon Fantasy) is, in effect, dictated by title in accordance with the scale of any realm they rule, which (by default) are organized in a fairly feudalistic hierarchy. Per the RR (p. 343), specific titles of rulers and nobility (whether awarded by their lord in a previously established realm, or secured through other means) are determined by:

• The size of his personal domain
• The number of vassal domains he has
• The overall size of the realm he rules

An adventurer can claim any title they wish upon claiming territory through conquest or settlement of course, but other realms will not necessarily treat them as such. A self-proclaimed “king” ruling over only 160 families in a territory categorized as “outlands” (thinly-settled wilderness) might still only effectively command the equivalent of Status 2 or 3, for example.

This means we need to tie Status to corresponding titles—see the table below.

Ruler Title	Status
Emperor	8
King	7
Prince	6
Duke	5
Count	4
Viscount	3
Baron	2

The above, in combination with the Titles of Nobility table (RR, p. 343), Personal Authority Table (RR, p. 348) and the NPC Rulers of Aurëpos section (JJ, pp. 246) will tell you pretty much everything else you need to know as far as what it will take for PCs to get their hands on additional Status (and Wealth, potentially). Character level (which we covered in Part II) also factors into certain elements referenced above, such as how their authority is perceived by their domain as a whole and whether that influences its morale accordingly.

For a quick look at what ACKS values imply for Status and Wealth, see the table below.

Ruler Level	Title	Status by Title	Avg. Ruler Salary (monthly)	Wealth by Salary
3	Baron	2	100	Wealthy
4	Baron	2	200	Wealthy
5	Viscount	3	400	Very Wealthy
6	Viscount	3	800	Very Wealthy
7	Count	4	1,600	Filthy Rich
8	Count	4	3,000	Filthy Rich
9	Duke	5	7,250	Filthy Rich
10	Duke	5	12,000	Multimill 1
11	Prince	6	32,000	Multimill 1
12	Prince	6	50,000	Multimill 1
13 + 14	King	7	135,000	Multimill 2
14	Emperor	8	350,000	Multimill 2

Rank, on the other hand, is largely implied through class features in ACKS. Assassins, Nightblades and Thieves can build secret strongholds called “hideouts” while Venturers can build “guildhouses”—both of which can evolve into “syndicates” of organized crime and/or commerce. Arcane spellcasters can build “sanctums” and dungeons (potentially gaining sovereignty over the dungeon’s inhabitants), and so on in addition to the normal effects of ruling domains.

The above implies that such characters are probably the highest rank within their respective organizations, but the bottom line is that Rank as a generalized concept isn’t directly accounted for in ACKS. We should be able to allow Rank to continue existing and being purchased normally as presented in DF 17: Guilds, since it nicely fills out a few areas that ACKS doesn’t have a whole lot to say about—such as in the case of PC thieves joining NPC syndicates, guilds, or other similar endeavors.

Should a PC decide to start their own organization, a GM may choose to limit the highest available Rank for purchase (which the PC occupies themselves) to half their character level +1, rounded down. As a result, if there are a total of 8 theoretical ranks in their organization (as outlined in example guilds in DF Guilds) it will take them until 14th level to fully realize their ambitions as founders of potentially powerful or widespread organizations—less influential organizations with fewer ranks can be “capped out” earlier.

Character Level	Max Rank
1	1
2–3	2
4–5	3
6–7	4
8–9	5
10–11	6
12–13	7
14	8

If desired, one could potentially leverage GURPS Social Engineering: Pulling Rank here, but its framework is both too abstract and its effects too specific relative to the subsystems present in ACKS (some of the ones we want to take advantage of, mind you) to be of much use here. Thus, we’ll leave this aside for the purposes of this post.

In GURPS Fourth Edition, Rank in particular is often associated with Duty—but Duty does not appear as a trait at all in either the DFRPG or Dungeon Fantasy! In keeping with DF‘s narrowing of scope and effects for both Rank and Status, Duty is not implied as a result of these traits whatsoever. This suits ACKS well, as Duty there is largely just a byproduct of how inclined PCs are to protect and provide fair, benevolent treatment to their vassals, hirelings and peasants as well as how they choose to run their domains—if they choose to treat everyone poorly and run things like crap, it’s going to come back to bite them.

In keeping with both games, then, we’re not going to account for Duty in GACKS either—if PCs abuse the privileges or shirk the expectations of their Rank, they’re simply liable to be demoted or lose it entirely depending on circumstance! Status hardly precludes backlash, either.

Wealth

In ACKS, Wealth is simply a question of how much money you have and how much you’re able and willing to afford. With regard to domains specifically, rulers opt to pay themselves a salary (JJ, p. 250) depending on their title, level and expenses (such as paying NPCs in their retinues)—as far as GURPS is concerned, ruling over a domain is essentially getting a Job and potentially purchasing some amount of Independent Income in order to support the level of Wealth equivalent to their whimsy and budget (both monetarily and character point-wise).

In Dungeon Fantasy, Wealth represents connections rather than actual, literal wealth—just because you have a bunch of gold, doesn’t necessarily mean your Wealth is above average or vice-versa. This is a good thing, because it means having Wealth on the character sheet doesn’t create a mismatch of expectations in relation to domain incomes, ruler salaries or other integral ACKS elements.

DF 23: Twists (pp. 4–6) expands on this with treatments for Titles, Wealth, Followers and Strongholds which are interesting frameworks for reference purposes but since they use different underlying assumptions from ACKS‘ economic simulation, it’s not the best idea for us to use them outright.

DF 23: Twists contains a nice suggestion, which is to allow PCs to purchase Wealth at essentially any time up to their highest Status or Rank (per the table on B517)—this doesn’t provide them any money, instead reflecting that they’ve greased the right palms through a combination of power and cash to afford them the connections to get better prices on loot. As noted though, it’s not worthwhile to go past Very Wealthy even at Status/Rank 4+.

Rulers in ACKS can collect XP from their domain income (RR, p. 423).

They can in GACKS, too! If their domain income in GP exceeds the threshold on the table below according to character level, take the difference and divide it by the “GP/1 CP” column according to the character’s level in the last table of the Gold-as-XP post. The result is the number of CP gained by the character through ruling that month (minimum 1).

As a ruler rises in level, either in this fashion or through adventuring, they will naturally reach a point where ruling over a domain of a particular size no longer grants them CP—encouraging them to pursue promotion or expansion of their territory.

Level	Monthly GP Threshold
1	25
2	75
3	150
4	300
5	600
6	1,200
7	2,400
8	5,000
9	10,000
10	20,000
11	45,000
12	75,000
13	150,000
14	425,000

Getting Some Game

So, with the above reasoning it seems we can pretty much use the guidance in Dungeon Fantasy for Status, Rank and Wealth as-is without breaking anything. What about making such traits work for us in the context of GACKS, though?

Firstly, the question of character points. Does the GM charge CP for traits? Does the GM simply assign additional traits and raise point values as PCs advance?

I’m going to advocate for purchasing these traits more-or-less normally as they appear in the Dungeon Fantasy line, with the following caveats and suggestions.

Traits

1. Allow PCs to purchase Rank (or Tenure) as desired and deemed appropriate by the GM within individual organizations/guilds normally (including barbarian clans wherein it serves as Status per DF Guilds, p. 5). When in doubt, limit maximum Rank level to half character level +1, rounded down.
2. Allow PCs to purchase Status, up to the maximum allowed according to the title they have achieved (per the table up above) corresponding to the domain they rule. PCs may purchase up to Status 2 without ruling at all (including at character creation).
3. Allow PCs to purchase whatever Wealth they want at character creation (up to Very Wealthy)—afterwards, Wealth can be purchased with CP at any time but only up to their highest level of Status or Rank (per the table on B517). Cash-on-hand is irrelevant for this purpose.

Followers

Instead of linking the appearance of hirelings to a specific level, this initial influx of potential hirelings can come at any level—but only to PCs with a Status or Rank of 2+. As written earlier, these hirelings come with the guarantee of being somewhat loyal and without any baggage in the form of unexpected traits.

All it takes for PCs to trigger this effect is to spend the mandatory amount (usually 15K GP, or $600,000) to construct/establish a stronghold of some variety—or acquire one for free through other means—then wait 1d/2 months for them to arrive, at which point the PC may opt to hire them normally. If the PC did wait until level 9 to pay for this stronghold, it would amount to the value of around a single PC’s share of a single session’s worth of loot.

If the PC chooses to hire them, and the PC has also established a new domain (which the stronghold they build can count towards for the purposes of securing territory), then as described in the RR (p. 339) these hirelings also bring with them a number peasant families to settle their territory according to the “Families Arriving with Followers” table depending on how the territory is classified.

These details should be clearly broadcast to players when the campaign begins. As their wallets fill up thanks to our progression from Part II and they begin wondering what to do with all of it, this concrete option for establishing a stronghold and attracting hirelings (as well as potential subjects in the form of peasant families) should be at the forefront to help encourage them to leap into domain play.

Hirelings which reach a Loyalty of 19+ can be purchased normally as an Ally or Ally Group (for multiple faceless/identical hirelings whose loyalties rise and fall together). Hirelings with adventurer levels themselves (commanding higher wages as a result) should receive complete writeups, as if they were Allies.

For leveled hireling writeups, it’s easiest to take the point total for a given character level and simply treat it as a budget for the purchase of appropriate modules from Delvers to Grow or nearest-valued template from DF 15: Henchmen, adding or subtracting a few skills or attribute levels as needed to squeeze them into the “right level” (or simply not worry about it too much).

Saying Goodbye

While this post largely poo-poos the idea of going into extensive depth on traits related to wealth and influence in the context of GACKS, we’ve hopefully established some useful guidance on how to actually integrate these traits into play in a way that makes sense as they relate to both Dungeon Fantasy and ACKS.

Alternative to the suggestions in this post, you might take a cue from the line of thinking under “Ditching the Party” and simply decide to award these traits free of charge as gameplay dictates! In that case, I would encourage keeping this “wealth and influence” running point total for such traits separate from “adventuring character points” (if you track points for them at all) for the purposes of our progression from Part II—added point values from freely awarded traits should not help PCs “level up,” and in fact this is more or less how the character writeups look in Citadel at Norðvörn (with adventurer CP totals spent within templates listed separately from traits such as Wealth).

Next Up

I’m still in the process of deciding where to head next but one thing that keeps coming up is adventurer demographics, so it’s a likely candidate.

See you then!

One last little bonus suggestion:

For GACKS GMs using GURPS Basic Set currencies and not ACKS coinage, optionally halve all ACKS GP rewards from looting dungeons and similar, and award that number directly as GURPS gold coins (worth $80 each) instead. This awards same amount of “GURPSbux,” but in smaller volumes and much lower weights!

Alternatively, multiply GP rewards by 10 and award that number as silver pennies (worth $4 each) instead…

Up Next: GACKS, Part III: Adventurer Demographics