Eyrie of the Dread Eye Review — Creative Homage to Dwellers of the Forbidden City

New adventures from Autarch have slowly been trickling out in the last year or so, with the latest being AX5 Eyrie of the Dread Eye by Courtney Campbell. It's purely a site based adventure for levels 6-8 (ACKs or B/X), with no plot, but it does have a fairly detailed and interesting back story. The Dread Eye of the title is not a euphemism for the classic D&D beholder, but a strange demonic entity called the Occulus, who was summoned and imprisoned in a city long, long ago. The Occulus reminds me more than a bit of Yog-Sothoth from the Cthulhu mythos, as it's both a gateway and an entity. There also a few other Lovecraftian flavored encounters, such as proto-oozes and intelligent apes.
 

Ruined City of Cyfandir Review — Low Level Adventure with High Level Boss

Although I am not a fan of the Adventurer Conqueror King System, from Autarch, I was deeply impressed by their first module (besides Dwimmermount that is) that supported their system, The Sinister Stone of Sakkara, which was a nice take on the Keep on the Borderlands type scenario. So I quickly picked up this, Ruined City of Cyfandir as soon as I noticed it was out. It's meant for levels 5 to 7 and for ACKs (so probably a little higher level for Basic/Original games) and is 30 pages for $4 in PDF.

The premise is simple enough, an elven city was overrun by a dragon and her lizardman followers. 200 years later, they are still there. The PCs either stumble upon the city or are sent there. Presumably they explore and loot. There's only about 25 or so special locations in the city itself, most of which deal with lizardmen or the newly arrived goblin tribe.

Adventurer Conqueror King System in new Bundle of Holding

While I personally think you'd be better off just using the old Rules Cyclopedia rules, or B/X with the various Gazetteers (a word I still cannot spell 35 years later), the Bundle of Holding currently has a heck of a deal on ACKS

For $9.95 you get

• Adventurer Conqueror King System
• ACKS Player's Companion
• Domains at War: Campaigns (the whole "Conquer" part they left out of the original book)
• The Sinister Stone of Sakkara (really well done adventure)
• Auran Empire Primer

For  $21.04+ (I think this changes you also get

• Dwimmermount (ACKS version)
• Domains at War: Battles (Rules for mass combat which weren't in the  original book)
• Domains at War: Troops and Terrain (See above)
• Lairs & Encounters (No idea)

That's a really good deal. They generally have pretty low prices to begin with ($10 for most PDFs) but this is pretty much half that already cromulent price. 

The Sinister Stone of Sakkara Review — The Keep on the Borderlands, Autarch Style

Thirty-Five years ago, Gary Gygax wrote The Keep on the Borderlands as an introductory module for Basic D&D, to replace Mike Carr's In Search of the Unknown for inclusion in the basic box set. It was different from most existing modules in two notable ways. Firstly, it described with some detail a home base for the players, the Keep in the name of the module. Secondly, instead of a providing a fairly static dungeon for the players to explore, it provided a more dynamic one ruled by different factions.

As such an influential module, it has spawned numerous imitators as well as a reboot from TSR/WOTC themselves. Most of these provide far more detail than the original, easy enough since the orignal was a scant 32 pages. The Sinister Stone of Sakkara is Autarch's attempt at producing an homage, meant for their Adventurer Conqueror King System (aka ACKS) but with the exception of armor class and some classes, is more or less Basic/Expert D&D with a focus on bookkeeping. And that sort of focus in one display here, with a large amount of detail in some areas and sparseness in others.

The Sinister Stone of Sakkara from Autarch on Kickstarter

Autarch doesn't put out a lot of products, but the ones they do put our are pretty high quality. Their latest Kickstarter is a starting adventure, The Sinister Stone of Sakkara. It uses the ACKS rules, presumably, but that's really, really close to B/X except for the weird armor class they use.

The adventure is intended for six to ten characters of 1st to 3rd level, with a combined total of 8-12 levels of experience in the party. In the tradition of classic TSR adventure scenarios such as The Keep on the Borderlands and The Village of Hommlet, The Sinister Stone of Sakkara features a detailed starting base and small wilderness sandbox in addition to a dungeon. 

• The adventure scenario is approximately 40,000 words.
• The starting base includes a villa, headquarters, hospital, chapterhouse, infantry barracks, cavalry barracks, bathhouse, traveler's inn, and forum, all mapped and keyed.
• The dungeon features two levels, the first with 75 rooms and the second with 39 rooms, mapped and keyed, along with two custom wandering monster tables. 
• Additional delights include the "Adventurer Motivation Table", "Random Philosophical Meditations Table", "Profligate Imperial Banquet Table," and "Settlement Demand Modifiers Table" (for the mercantile venturers!), as well as a menu of options available at an Auran fast-food restaurant, excerpts of Zaharan prayer-verses, and more!

The PDF is only $5, so pretty good deal there, and the print version is $25, which is perhaps not, depending on how many pages it is (I'd guess 90?)

Two new Pay What You Want Adventures

The Curse of Ravenmere which seems to be for ACKS, and Kanthor's Den, which seems to be for 1e (but generic)

Domains of War for ACKS is out

Autarch's Adventure Conqueror King System focused on the higher level play of D&D, yet somehow managed to not include any mass combat rules.

2 years and a Kickstarter later, that has been addressed with Domains At War. It comes as either a full set for $20, or in pieces: Battles (130 pages, $7.50), Campaigns (102 pages, $7.70), and then cards for the armies and such ($7.50).

ACKS: Domains at War Releasing July 4th?

The long awaited mass combat supplement for Adventurer Conqueror King System, Domains at War, is apparently being mailed out to Kickstarter backers and will be on sale to others on July 4th. Hopefully.

Adventurer Conqueror King System Player's Companion Review—All the Classes Fit to Print and Then Some

The Player's Companion is the first sourcebook for the Adventure Conqueror King System, or ACKS. While technically a complete RPG, ACKS was a fairly slim book, so there weren't a lot of options for characters beyond the usual. The Player's Companion goes a long while to addressing those lack of options offering a huge amount of new character classes, new spells, and rules for creating both new classes and spells.

Adventurer Conqueror King System Review—Companion D&D With Some Changes

I was one of those people who backed the Dwimmermount kickstarter, which has had something of a rough ride (though not as much as some others). As a way of apologizing for the problems (which weren't of their own making), Autarch gave out $10 off coupons for their products, which let me pick up this, the Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS) and the ACKS Player's Companion for free (the PDFs being $9.99 each).

Simply put, ACKS is like the old Basic and Expert D&D (generally called B/X D&D) by Moldvay and Cook with some stuff from other editions, including 3rd, grafted on. It does some things of its own, like using a different to hit method in combat, and has a focus, at least in theory, on ruling domains (either a kingdom or a criminal or commercial enterprise), though it's not all that much deeper (or different) than the rules found in the Companion and other D&D sets.