Solo RPG Campaign - 2b. Timekeeping and ACKS Conversion

Timekeeping

After the death of my Halfling Thief Timbo, I wasn't sure if I should continue the delve, or end it and go back to town. I kinda just stopped playing for a while (pause-time style) and the time eventually stretched on into a traditional Christmas Hiatus (though I did play a few other wargames over that time). In the meantime, the ACKS II playtest drafts had also come out and I was starting to look at them more closely.

As the time ticked by, through January without me playing, I kept thinking about the concept of 1:1 downtime. I hadn't used it before (outside of the one month Orc Lords event a year earlier), and I hadn't yet committed to using it in this game... but could I? If I were to start up again, was I really going to pick up where I had left off in the fall, having just exited the dungeon with a dead party member? What would the alternative look like? It would mean handwaving my character's return to town, and it would mean that my characters were sitting around doing nothing for months simply because IRL I was to busy (or uninterested) to play. But this was easily explainable in-world as PC apathy (due to a PC death), festivities around a winter holiday, and inclement weather (which makes for poor adventuring). Besides, if I was pursuing other interests, so might the PC's.

It was really hard to mentally let go, and turn off the "PC spotlight," but as soon as I did, it was also very freeing to no longer think about continuously dictating the characters' daily activities. Even without taking advantage of any downtime actions, the resulting time off for the PC's became a breath of fresh air that jolted me out of my malaise. 

I should mention that at this point, I'd only started by implementing a coarse-grained version of 1:1 time, by ensuring that the in-game month matches up with real-world month. Within the month, I'm still allowing time to be a bit more flexible, at least for a while as I figure out how to make this work. This is partly due the fact that my sessions were spilling over multiple days, and I need to find a way to deal with that. But by taking baby-steps in the right direction, and dealing with issues as they come up, I hope to continue moving in the right direction.

Converting to ACKS II

I had decided in December that when I returned to this game, I would try to start phasing in ACKS II rules. I wasn't sure if this would be a slow piecemeal adoption, or a total big-bang conversion. The ACKS II rules are very lengthy, and even now, I still have not completed reading through the drafts, but I decided I could at least begin by converting the character sheets.

Because of the way ACKS assigns demi-human races their own sets of unique classes, I decided to begin with the sole Human character, Chadonius. A fighter is a fighter, and there isn't much more to say. Since he had a decent charisma, and I had been playing him as a negotiator, I gave him the Diplomacy proficiency. In BFRPG, he had a Weapon Specialization with Spear that increased his attack bonus. This doesn't exactly exist in ACKS, so I swapped it out with a Fighting Style Specialization with Weapon & Shield which provided a +1 to AC when fighting in that manner. Since I used a custom selection of proficiencies, and had already selected gear, I didn't bother with a template. 

I also decided that since I had previously lost a character, I should boost the party size to 6, so I rolled up a second fighter, Radnor and a replacement thief, Jelyssa (both human of course). Conveniently, these classes are some of the easier one for newcomers to play, while also differing in keys ways from other OSR games like BFRPG (cleaves for fighters, and shadowy senses and methodical/hasty skill usage for thieves). Radnor used the  Ravager template, giving him the Berserkergang and Endurance proficiencies. As a bonus proficiency for above-average intelligence, I gave him Healing, so that I would be able to have more than one character that could heal (though I hadn't yet read the healing rules).

Because I had previously bought the Player's Companion for ACKS I (though I had never played ACKS I), I found that it had an Elven Enchanter class, which seems pretty close in function to my Elven Illusionist, Marzipan. The class looked similar enough to ACKS II standards, that I just added Collegiate Wizardry and removed the ability to see in the dark. I selected an Occultist template, which aside from proficiencies, gave him the spells Beguile Humanoid and Choking Grip. I don't recall what his original spells had been (under BFRPG) and couldn't find where I had written them down, but I think one of them had been Charm Person, and at any rate, he hadn't yet cast any spells in the game. I also realize now that I left a bonus general proficiency slot unassigned, to fill in later, and have yet to do so.

The other two characters -- Grimace and Edelweiss -- I decided to leave as they were for the moment. Although there is a Dwarven Craftpriest as a divine caster class, it wasn't clear to me if this class is meant to fill the same role as a party healer. I also have the ACKS dwarf book ("By This Axe") but haven't had time to look at it closely enough to see whether it contains any alternative healing class in there. Furthermore, I was unaware (at the time) of whether there were any ACKS Halfling classes, and wasn't ready to learn the custom class-creation rules. At any rate, it's easy enough to convert basic AC, to-hit, and saving throw values, at least for level one characters. I had spent enough time reading rules, and needed to get back to playing relatively quickly, before I forgot them again.

Here is what the updated party looks like:
  • Chadonius - Human Fighter 1
  • Marzipan - Elven Enchanter 1
  • Grimace - Dwarven Cleric 1 (BFRPG)
  • Edelweiss - Halfling Scout 1 (BFRPG)
  • Radnor - Human Fighter 1
  • Jelyssa - Human Thief 1

Although I didn't use it directly, I later discovered that, for ACKS supplemental classes which didn't make it into ACKS II, there is a tentative suggested conversion available online. 

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