What is best in life? Not spreadsheets.

I’ve been running an ACKs campaign of a sort for a few months now. A few months because it takes a considerable amount of time to resolve each turn.

In general, I really like the ACKs system, its smooth, its crunchy. Choices matter and things you do with it are well, fun and enjoyable.

However, we’ve started to discover it might not be the best for running a multiple player kingdom management game.

See the issue is that the weight of the complexity is making it impossible to really manage the turns and the decisions, and in the lack of automation, the players have been forced to rely on ever increasingly complex spreadsheets. This is because ACKs was never intended for tabletop Civilization style play. The kingdom management stuff in ACKs was intended primarily as backdrop, and I still think the complexity was designed for the express purposes of making players realize why Conan felt that settling down in a kingdom was so much of a sea change from his previous adventurer lifestyle.

The weight of managing Hexes, land values, populations, garrisons, strongholds, events, etc, quickly became too much, and I was building an increasing framework of house rules around the already overbuilt ACKs superstructure that made things somewhat overtaxed. See, again, ACKs doesn’t expect you to have to be dealing with MULTIPLE domains.

And thus, I’ve started building the system I’ve dubbed SKM (Spook’s Kingdom Manager). Since we don’t really care about the on the ground framework, I’m less worried about some of the issues ACKs is. However, there were some elements that had to be immediately addressed.

·         ACKs grants a hex a land value, service value and tax value. Ultimately, all of these turn into money (gp). Service value can be adjusted the easiest off of morale. Tax is adjusted by the ruler. Land is typically not adjusted at all. It all forms the foundation of a single resource (gold) which is used for damn near everything. This simplicity is based on the fact that ACKs uses gp at its xp granting mechanic. This game though doesn’t care about xp. So..at the moment I’ve actually added complexity in the form of eliminating these  values and replacing them with Subsistence, Resource and Tax (Well I kept tax). Subsistence represents the hex’s capability for feeding its people. Subsistence is a straight up ‘can you feed your people,’ Resource is a fungible thing I intend to be able to be used for various purposes (decreasing construction costs, research costs, conversion into gold or subsistence) and tax provides just straight up gold.  I’ll discuss this stuff more in depth in another post. It’s all WIP.

·         In ACKS, there was a ‘stronghold’ requirement for a demense. I felt this was unnecessary for a hex-based kingdom management game and opted instead for a ‘Defense Value’ or ‘Security value’ that could be provided by either a single output on a stronghold or an ongoing output on garrison forces (think hired guards).

·         In ACKS, the “Garrison” is based on the demesne. I believe that ACKs intended for a demense to encompass the entire held territory of a player, however, we added on a hex framework to provide a reason for exploration and more fun for management. I decided to ditch individual hex garrison and stronghold requirements earlier (last bullet point) and then further decided to just have a garrison for the entire territory. Each hex still has its overall requirement, but now the garrison is considered to be on patrol, out and about and checking up on the area.  

·         The stronghold requirements are still difficult. Representing the stronghold, with all of its delicious side things (drawbridges, parapets, etc) is somewhat necessary. As is the upkeep costs for the same. Particularly as one of the kingdoms in the game is in bad financial straights because of the overbuilt defenses they have. However, with the Security or Defense Value mechanic I’m working on, now all of those perks give a benefit. Whereas in ACKs they were just expenditures that didn’t give a specific mechanical benefit.

·         Raising an army and operating it was a freaking nightmare from a spreadsheet / management perspective previously. Everything in ACKs affects everything else, so the sheer level of IF/THEN statements I’d need to code would make things impossible to manage. I decided to simplify the army system, even if it lost a bit of its crunch.

·         At the core, as I continue working on SKM, I’m trying to keep to the following goals.

o   Player choices have to matter and events and decisions should have meaning. Players should worry about things like their people starving if they misappropriate resources.

o   Exploration is very important, and the players shouldn’t feel like they need relentless subsystems to handle ‘on foot’ mechanics.

o   Income and costs should be able to be easily apprehended. If a spreadsheet is required (and it likely will be) it should be simple and not require modification of dozens of secondary sheets.

o   Making decisions shouldn’t feel like one is filing tax returns.