Beacon is... a d20 fantasy game.

Beacon was designed to be light and simple while still feeling like D&D and to remain essentially compatible with (in 2010) modern d20 materials.  There are lots of interesting fantasy games, that use other systems or even rebuild classic D&D.  Some use dice pools, point economies or player and GM playbooks.  Tempting as it can be to play with these however, the core design of Beacon is the d20 system.  

Using the standard D20 mechanics you resolve most challenges using a DC or difficulty class.  The DC is assigned by the game master is determined by how hard the described action is vs the method used to attempt it.  A DC of 5 is for simple things, 10 for normal risk, 15 for hard stuff and 20 for really challenging things.  You can even go higher; DCs like 25 or 30 should be used for truly heroic tasks. There are additional rules but unlike older versions of D&D, with their many tables and charts, d20 really does try to standardize challenge resolution on this simple mechanic.  Even combat uses armour class (AC) as a special version of DC with its associated combat modifiers.

The best reason to use d20 is the amount of material that is available for it.  With very little effort you can adjust materials on the fly between sources.  I do remember the days when the most interesting modules were written for fantasy systems MERP or Role Master and converting these on the fly to d20 took some effort.  Years later, when the d20 Open Game License, came out it seemed that this was going to become the standard for a vast library of sourcebooks and games.  Now there are always going to be published materials that need tweaking for your campaign, adjustments to monsters, treasure, spells, the desired tone etc., however I wanted people to be able to use as much of the existing d20 material in Beacon with as little work as possible.

After 12 years has this paid off?

Well yes and no.  Using a simple d20 system has been great for running games and for tweaking rules.  Its a great baseline.  As for using other material, its not come up as much as I expected and to be honest most of the material I personally use for games is scaled and compatible with the older pre-d20 rules and so needs a lot of adjustment anyway.  The d20 materials I have read don't fit the tone I like, although the power levels are closer to Beacon (up to the point where they aren't).

I have had a constant tug of war trying to find that balance to maintain compatibility between the low values often seen in old AD&D style games and the higher values seen in modern D&D.  My preference for campaign materials seems to land in the older material - mostly the pre-d20 or more modern OSR stuff, however I am first to admin that Beacon which has d20 in its core tracks much closer to d20 monster manuals than it does to the old school monster stats I enjoy.  I have a simple monster stat system in the rules, but you can still easily pull 5th edition monsters right into your Beacon game for use at their intended threat level, where say Labyrinth Lord monsters would generally be too low powered and take a bit of adjustment.  I have mostly relied on generating simplified Beacon monster stats based on creature HD; type x number, and then adding special abilities from the source material.

I have many times lamented this and thought about making changes to down-shift this towards the old materials, but it would come at the expense of this initial design statement.  Twelve years ago that seemed like crazy talk to throw away d20 sources, but today with so many niche d20 experiences its not as wild a prospect.  The market keeps changing however, especially with digital VTT products coming out.  To be useful Beacon needs to be usable and so maybe its not so bad a novice GM can drop in their favorite 5e dungeons and monsters while still benefiting from the other streamlined features in Beacon.  As for my preferences, I can always adjust my favorite adventures on the fly.

As I was writing this post, The Alexandrian posted a thing about the difference in skill resolution between different editions of D&D which is a pretty good read and very relevant to this topic.  Beacon ties skills to leveling and already bounds 20 and 1 rolls with a critical hits and fumbles but that bounded accuracy does not apply to rolls outside of combat.  Its possible to roll a natural 20 and succeed a non-combat challenge but roll a 19+3 and fail one.  He does have some good discussion in that article why the different versions feel so different power wise.

The next design choice I want to talk about is related to how these d20 core mechanics are leveraged.

Beacon is... a rules-lite fantasy game.

So that's next time.

Influences Part 2 - Scum And Villainy

Continuing on the last post about Games that are influencing Beacon design.

One of the bigger influences I have had these past years is Blades in the Dark and the Forged in the Dark rule set.  The influence of this game is so much so that I almost decided to start on my own Forged in the Dark skin instead of coming back to Beacon.

I started to hear about Blades in the Dark on podcasts and on google+ (haha) quite a few years ago.  I was really into Ashen Stars at that time and was struggling with some of the downtime mechanics and the reputation economy and ship as a character in that game and the ideas I was hearing about from Blades in the Dark* sounded like they would be interesting ways to address some of those issues. I think that the stress economy and downtime mechanics was the initial big draw.  I really liked the idea that PCs would accumulate stress and need to take non-optimal actions to blow off steam in some way to get it back.  Stress and vice is universal story fodder, just like money being a real world game mechanics everyone is familiar with.  I also was taken by the idea of the PC group as a game entity in its own right.  I saw this idea first in a Warhammer RPG game, and in Ashen Stars there is a ship sheet for the crew but Blades takes this a step further.

But as much as I like the rules for Blades in the Dark, I really wasn't into the setting.  I mean I have nothing against the setting, its a fantastic setting and a lot of people love it, I would probably like playing in it, but I don't have any fire to run it unfortunately.  I like sci-fi games and I like games where there is a code of conduct or some other reign on the PC actions so it does not just devolve into murder-hoboism.  I really wanted to somehow merge the stuff I was hearing about Blades in the Dark with Ashen Stars and see if I could have the best of both.  I tried a few times to either re-skin Blades into a sci-fi, game or tack on the mechanics I liked onto Ashen Stars but nothing really stuck.

Enter Scum and Villainy.

I bought the book when it came out and although it wasn't an exact match for what I wanted, it was close and  I did want to try to run it.  Because I had been thinking of the mechanics so much in the context of the Ashen Stars, I decided to run it as a continuation of that campaign.  I originally wanted use the ideas I had for skinning the system to make it fit the space cops concept, maybe even tack on some Ashen Stars rules, but I decided against that since I wanted to understand how it worked first.  I played it pretty much straight, although I did mash in my own "Ashen Stars" setting material from past games.
If Scum and Villainy had come with a really detailed setting and I had to substantially work it over to play, I probably would have started adding in my own rules.  However S&V is pretty loose by design and with the more narrative system I thought I would be able to make it work pretty much as written.  I started the campaign on a 'lets see' basis and found that I didn't really have to change anything mechanical to make it work and I was even able to incorporate a lot of the setting materials that came with the game, they had a similar iconic feel as the Ashen Stars material.  The only substantial difference between the old game and the new game was that the players were no longer space cops, but bounty hunters.  That's a slight difference, but it did have a big impact and I'll get back to that point later.

I got lucky running it with a good group of players who were willing to put in some sweat because the first few sessions were very rough.  First off the players were not inclined to take any actions because the resolution system seemed too punishing.  Their perception was that so many rolls had consequences or bad outcomes that they didn't ever want to roll the dice and when they did they gamed things so much they had no room for roleplay.  Part of this I believe was based on the player facing system changed the dice mechanics so that bad rolls were very bad and even many of their successes seemed like failures.  This was not the case of course, but it felt that way since I wasn't rolling for the bad guys and their rolls now drove the game opposition.  So although from my perspective there was a net neutral outcome in this new system, and the PCs were actually very competent, from the player perception they were not able to do what they wanted and their characters were doing very poorly.
The second issue was that I had a hard time understanding how to scale things in a system without hit-points and levels and so things were either a cakewalk or devastating.  Either I was pulling my punches and they were breezing by challenges or I was giving out consequences and they players were taking on damage and serious conditions before the missions even got started.  Initially this because of the players not remembering to use their resistance, but it also took time for them to get used to spending stress to resist things, since they guarded their point very jealously.  I find that when ever you have points in a system players will hoard them.
Thirdly I really tripped up on the effect and consequences relationship and we didn't understand the concept of trading position for effect and so I was overusing harm as a consequence.  I didn't initially understand this dynamic so I was ticking off clock segments based entirely on the roll results instead of assigning an effect for an action and allowing the players to negotiate a better position or by using lesser effect as a consequence.

What saved this game was some whining good discussions with the players about what they were not liking and then I really had to go do my homework since we were obviously missing something.  It also really helped to find some good reference material.  By luck I found this great YouTube series Let's Learn Blades in the Dark.    This is a really good series stepping through the core mechanics and very useful for anyone thinking about running a Forged in the Dark system.  Between this and boning up on specific mechanics that seemed wrong, it gave me the insight I needed to understand how the various game systems work together.  The most important thing that our table learned coming from a more traditional roll 20 type background was understanding resistance and understanding how to trading position for effect.  Once we sorted that out there was a lot more flex in the system and players would take lesser effect as a consequence and spend their stress to resist harm more often.  Once we got that we started to appreciate how flexible they resolutions were and how they could model all kinds of conflict.

There is a lot of good stuff in the Forged in the Dark system,  Things like stress, conditions and the downtime mechanics are really interesting to play with and there is some similarities in how Beacon uses hit points and fatigue and the Forged stress mechanic.  There is also a lot of similarity in how the Beacon skill system and the FitD skill system work.  Even with keeping the resolution mechanics very d20, you can still take away the idea that resolving challenges can be more of a conversation and a negation in how to apply their stated actions into a roll.  Beacon already has the idea of matching skills to activities but I like moving away even more from all the incremental +1 -2 type modifiers and making things a little more organic based on the narrative and this is one of the reasons I want to bring in the advantage/disadvantage mechanics from 5e.  Advantage/disadvantage works well to model all sorts of situations, is easy to understand and speeds things up.

The idea of downtime is a bit more of a stretch to incorporate into Beacon without loosing the d20 compatibility although there are a lot of precedents in d20 games for something like this.  In the core game Beacon has built in downtime for stat healing, making potions etc and the times it takes for players to level up.  Conditions and stress are an attractive idea but I don;t know if they should be built in systems.  Also since its roll20 bases you can always add in campaign specific rules as well depending if you are playing a story type game or a hex crawl or a west marches style shared world.  I though about adding in more of these but I'm not sure if they should be in the core rules or just floating around out there.  Lots of these, like these nifty resource ideas I would be stealing from other OSR blogs in any case.






*When mentioning stress as a mechanic I also have to mention Torchbearer here and the amazing and related Darkest Dungeons video game which I was also looking at at the same time.  I don't remember all the details but apparently it was a heady time filled with madness, alcohol and self flagellation...

OPD 2020

I want to make sure that I plug the One Page Dungeon contest for 2020.  This contest has been going on for 10 years(!)  and its one of the great game resources to come out of the blogosphere.  

One page dungeons are cool, they are hip, they are super easy to adapt into your games.  I've used so many of these for inspiration, even dropping some whole on top of my players.  There is something about the format and level of detail that makes these so easily digestible and the competition makes the cream rise.  The reviews are a good read as well.

Influences Part 1 - Ashen Stars

Most of the writing I have done about other games I moved out to my other blog so that it didn't dilute this site, which is supposed to be about Beacon design commentary.  Now that I'm resolved to try to post something on here once a week, I thought it would be good to write about some of the games I've played in the last few years and what influence they've had.  Naturally there is a lot of overlap between what I'm playing and the game design process so I think since its relevant.  I'll try to bring it all back around to how it impacts that crisp hot Beacon brand in any case.

And I guess I should start with Ashen Stars.

Ashen Stars is a gumshoe based space police investigative game.  Players play Lasers who fly their space ship around the crumbling remains of a vast Federation solving crimes, kicking butts in a mostly non-lethal manner.  The game setting is one of the best I have come across, just the right amount of familiarity and the right amount of ambiguity to make good sci-fi stories happen.

I found space cops to be a really good game premise because the players have to follow procedures and maintain their reputations rather than just kicking in doors and shooting people.   Its great fun being able to parade a bad guy around and have him be untouchable because the players don't have the proof to take them down yet.  Players HATE this but it is really the best because they love hating stuff and it takes some time to nurture those relationships.
Also having mechanics that force players to own up to their actions is useful.  Having a reputation mechanic that offers the option for them to take the short cuts but at the risk of loosing future income is delicious.  There are so many good systems in Ashen Stars, the ship combat is simple but fun, the gumshoe investigation mechanics are good, it has the right level of abstraction for tracking items and money.

But.

I did find that some of the mechanics seemed a bit stodgy when the players were resolving physical challenges.  The d6 mechanic does not leave a lot of room point spend systems are are not my favorite.  I am probably not really running gumshoe on all cylinders so my games tend to be too easy and players seem to always have enough points to buy success.  I have tried ramping up the  challenge but once a few ability pools are used up the players want to rest and recoup, this is the 10 minute adventuring day of gumshoe it would seem
But I get the idea that as you use up your resources the narrative gets more tense but in my experience players will be miserly with points and when they run out, they will start feeling the game is against them more than if they had merely failed a roll normally.

I also felt that the game was missing a level of play at the party level.  Ashen Stars has a ship sheet and there is the idea of the crew as a business entity with reputation and shared resources, but I found it wasn't enough to really draw the players together.  The first time I ran the game the players either didn't care about earning money or they didn't have anything to spend their money on and so there was no real fear of loosing their reputation and not finding good jobs or having longer down times between them.  There were some ship modules to buy but for some reason they didn't glom onto these like I expected, maybe they were not as relevant to their PCs regular actions.  Again this might reflect on my GM chops more than the game system itself. 

When I next ran the game I tried to address some of these perceived issues by establishing a corporation for the party with a bank account and I gave them a large Traveller style mortgage on their ship.  I also added in some living expenses and a the concept of financial random encounters all in the effort to give the players something to hunger for and to make the reputation loss mechanics more meaningful.  If I were to run the game again I would incorporate these ideas into the game and pay way more attention for ways to compromise the crew reputation.

I don't want to give the opinion that Ashen Stars is not a great game as written, because it really is a fantastic and classic game.

Since Beacon is designed to be a Old school d20 system and have a high compatibility with other d20 systems there isn't a ton of mechanics that I would try to directly incorporate from Ashen Stars.  I considered adding in some kind of reputation mechanic and know this is done in other d20 games, but I don't think I would add it to the core rules, especially since Beacon is PC focused and not at all party focused mechanically.  I might someday consider some sort of party mechanics outside the core rules, maybe some kind of play supplement or campaign books.  So not much mechanically, however from a 'GM advice' perspective I would definitely take a lot from Ashen Stars, most importantly the gumshoe core concept of giving clues rather than asking for 'notice rolls' and having players get spotlights on collecting information appropriate to their skills and activities.  The Knowledge and Subterfuge skills stand out here but all the skills are easily applied to information gathering.  A player with a high Physical skill would notice an expert swordsman pretending to be a novice, a player with high Communication would naturally draw NPCs out in a conversation etc.

And this is longer than I thought it would be so I'll leave it there.  Would I play this game again - hell yes.  Here's my original thoughts on Ashen Stars from years ago if you are interested;
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Hot and fresh post for a new decade

Just like people, I suppose a lot of hibernating blogs get a sentimental poke right around the new year.  Well although I've not posted in a hell of a long time I have checked in now and again.  I've even started some posts on occasion so that people would know I'm out there and still playing games and stuff and I do think about Beacon now and then.


I made the Beacon Blog for the specific purpose of chronicling the design and play of Beacon d20 and so I don't feel its the right place to be posting about other games I'm running/writing/playing or writing about other topics.  I did make some other blogs for other writing and for posting about other games, but since I am not actively working on Beacon, I'm not taking making the time to write in general.  I have still been playing/running games pretty regular and been very busy working and doing the usual things we do to get by.

So why post now?

Someone is playing my game!  I was poking around the Internet and I ran across a blog called Provinto RPG that mentioned they had not only read Beacon but played it a bit, and even seemed to have liked it.  I am certainly very flattered by the review of the system and more flattered by the criticism/house ruling of the weapon system and posting a conversion of an old adventure. It means a lot to have someone read, play and get the system enough to push out elegant additions like this and man oh man converting a module is pure gold.  So thanks Provinto, you certainly made my day.  I'll be reading more of your blog for sure.

I also was trying to catch up on pod casts and hit a cryptic reference to Beacon on Happy Jacks from their 2017 season and it reminded me of days gone by.  Good Ol Stork may not remember the name of the system or anything about it, but he remembers quality.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with Beacon.  I mean I will keep the posts up and keep the rules up there for anyone who is interested in playing it, but will I ever update it again is something I haven't decided.  When I started working on Beacon there was a reaction happening online to the D&D 4e/Pathfinder game style and a lot of OSR blogs out and I had strong interest in getting back to a simple play style but with polish and new ideas.  It was a very successful movement.  Since that time a lot of changes have happened and some really good d20 based systems and material have been published, both independently and from the big guys.  D&D 5e was a solid revision and introduced a lot of really good changes to the franchise and systems like Dungeon Crawl Classics introduced a wealth of material of that style of game. In addition to that there have been so many new games put out, and game systems begging for tinkering with.  Since I started working on Beacon I have run/played campaigns in Gumshoe (Trail of Cthulhu and Ashen Stars), Mutant Year Zero, Dungeon Crawl Classics, D&D5e, Call of Cthulhu 7ed, Forged in the Dark (Scum and Villainy).  I've run one shots of Mecha, Mythender and Fiasco.  I've read a whole pile of amazing work and listened to a lot of great pod casts.  If I was to revisit Beacon I would be bringing a very different measuring tape to the genre.

And yet I still like the simplicity of Beacon and think there's a place for a super simple but comprehensive d20 system.  A number of years ago when I was running Ashen Stars on Roll20 I worked with a guy who helped my put a Beacon character sheet up on on that platform and I thought it was great to have a free and simple option for online play.  I think that Beacon stands up to that idea so maybe it would be good to take another pass at it, add some modern tweaks and polish up some of the rough bits.

Still playing the DCC

Been there, it's full of weirdos.

Game design is a slow process.  Or rather it's slow play-testing things when you do it as a hobby.  I haven't done much work on the Beacon rules for a while now, but I am doing some comparison study, mostly with DCC.  Our game group is still playing DCC and it is still quite fun.  Some of the crack are showing, but really there aren't very many cracks and if you run this game correctly it is a very good one.   Not everyone in our group is a fan of the randomness of the magic system (or of 20 in general really) but I think it's charming.  This is not the game for people that want to define and control their character development, but since I prefer making a story out of what happens in game and not what I want to happen, I think its pretty darn good.

What I really like in DCC?

• I really like using dice as a modifier over using fixed bonuses/penalties.  That's brilliant.
• I really like the leveling factor - 1-10 seems the perfect range and there are no padded or empty levels here.

What is an interesting mechanic?

• Mercurial magic is pretty good and it is fun to have these effects in the game.  I wouldn't port it to another game though and it does really have a feedback loop effect.  Daniloth the Elf had a -2 luck modifier (-%20 on the table!) and so he didn't do so well here with most of his spells barely usable - he was fun to play but there was not much chance he'd make it very far in the game with magic.
• All the charts and tables used to resolve actions make things very interesting.  Half of the gaming blogs out there are posting neat effect tables and it's a popular game style.  So here is a shit-ton of them at your fingertips.

What I am not so fond of?

• Luck is very metagamey.  It does work if you really clamp down on players and dish out consequences for low luck scores, but it's not a great design because it relies so much on the in-game implementation.   Also, I don't like bennies in Savage Worlds because players will lean on them instead of playing careful and they dilute the equation of ability vs the random factor of the dice so I don't like luck for the same reason.  I think luck is a bit too important and I can see it spiral out of hand in DCC.  I can see a high level thief being able to do anything they want to with their huge luck reserves.  Now take that with a grain of salt because I haven't even seen level 3 play yet.  Take all this with a grain of salt, this game was play-tested a heck of a lot more than Beacon.
• I don't like the thief skills, they seem bolted on just like in D&D and I'm not a fan of discrete skills in general.
• Mighty Deeds of Arms is way to open to abuse.  I like the bonus attack dice but the double down crit system is a bit loose. Again it can work if you make it work, but not because its a great mechanic.  In our game, even with good players, it is seen immediately as a way to bypass hit points and over-perform on the attack. This means the GM and players have to constantly negotiate to prevent abuse or over compensate, and the mechanic is watered down.  I think this would work much better if it was tightened up and there were a simple set of specific feats to select from like throws, disarms and called shots.  This is especially true considering critical hits are stacked on top.

What would I steal for Beacon?

I would very seriously consider changing many of the progression/bonus mechanics to use dice instead of set modifiers.  I very probably will take some aspects of this and incorporate it into Beacon, at least for multiple attacks and for dual wielding of weapons.  I might also use variable dice instead of set bonuses to drive the class and race abilities to some extent.
I've mentioned before that if I wasn't worried about generic d20 compatibility, I might delve into changing the level progression a bit so there were smaller number of them but they were all bigger jumps.  I'd probably take this a bit further and change the spell levels so that they were 1:1. Having something like 8-10 levels and 8-10 spell levels seems so simple - or I'd do away with spell levels all together leaning more on the HP system to scale the effects.  Changing the level ratio for advancement would be good, especially if I was substituting dice for +'s in some way.

That being said there are a lot of things that I think Beacon does right and that I wouldn't change.  I'm still in love with having racial hit dice instead of basing it on class.  I still like the aspect type skill system and using using hp for magic.  I wouldn't be interested in adding luck or any kind of benefit tokens.  I'm pretty happy with the simplicity of Beacon and I'm in no rush to chase the latest trend or redo it for a specific feel.

If I feel the urge to play something more like DCC, I'll just play DCC.  It's a lot of fun.

Dungeon Crawl Classics

Dungeon Crawl Classics

I really didn't want to get into Dungeon Crawl Classics for a couple of reasons.  Firstly I just didn't want to deal with another OD&D revamp.  I mean this is the Beacon blog and Beacon is what I thought d20 should look like, I mean that's the whole reason I wrote it right?  I did like what I was seeing from Lamentations of the Flame Princess, I thought that it was good enough that I wanted a copy of the hard cover, especially with the production quality it promises to have.  I also gave Adventurer Conquer King a try because it looked interesting and I'm an open minded kind of guy - always looking for new things to poke around with.  There's some good stuff in ACKS and LotFP, some stuff I might use in a campaign (domain game tables and charts) and some stuff that is very cool take on an idea but but which I probably wouldn't use (the LotFP skill system).  There is also stuff I certainly don't like about these systems and so I would probably use Beacon for any gritty Fantasy game and tack on bits from these others.

However, I stayed away from Dungeon Crawl Classics because I didn't think it had anything to add to the equation.  I flipped though the book and I thought it had too many charts and special rules and I really don't like that kind of game.  My biggest problem with ACKS is the proficiency system and the fiddly classes and DCC looked to take that even further.  It looked like a pile of disassociated mechanics and charts and probably something you'd have to house rule the crap out of to play a decent game with.  If you read this blog you'll recognize Mike (if you read this blog there's 33% chance you are Mike...) from his unreserved praise and zealous adulation - nay near worship - of Beacon, so it was a little surprising when he started toting around the DCC book and talking excitedly about how great it was and getting animated about all these luck rolls and corruption charts.  Really I felt kind of bad for him.

So then I played DCC.  It rocks.

I got roped into playing DCC as a funnel Mike ran for our kids. It was a lot of fun and ha ha it's a funnel and your guy gets killed by a mud man.  It seemed like it was a pretty solid game but I wasn't convinced.  I think people focus on the killing part of the funnel without understanding what the funnel actually does, but I'll get back to that.  It wasn't until we got a couple characters to first level that the game really became interesting to me.  The classes have interesting mechanics, the charts are many and varied but they work well.  The charts which I expected to hate I actually like because they aren't rule mechanic look-up charts you need to reference and memorize, they are modifier charts to make the game go places you wouldn't think of going.  The other big thing people remark on is the special dice and I, like a lot of other people, just thought that was a gimmick - and it is - but it's a good gimmick because dice substitution is a lot more fun than adding up bonuses and to do that right proper you need more granulation in the dice.  So in stead of getting increasing bonuses to hit as your warrior levels up, you get an extra dice and that dice goes from a d3 to d4 to a d5 which is way cooler and less unbalanced than simply adding +1's until you cannot miss.  This concept is used every where and it's consistent enough that once you get it, half the complexity of those tables goes away.  You aren't looking up rules, you are quickly referencing a die roll.

I'm so jealous of that idea.

I like the magic system too.  Push your luck mechanics are interesting and having the ability to cast away until you blow a roll and then pay the price is a greet mood mechanic that you just don't get with spell slots or spell points, or even a simple fumble table.  Teach you to cast that utility spell instead of getting the thief to do it, now you have an anus on your forehead...

As for the funnel - well it's fun to see characters die and all but I think the real value of the funnel is that you don't have folks coming to a campaign with a story already set up in their head.  More importantly you don't have 4-5 special snowflakes coming to the table with incompatible stories and then getting all butt-hurt when those stories don't progress or mesh well.  What you have is a story emerging out of the actions of these random characters who have learned to work together and seen their comrades die in interesting ways that make stories for them to talk about.  Those are some great stories.

I don't know how I'll like DCC once the higher levels kick in, and I don't know if I'll still be liking it as much a year from now or if something will pop up I'm not happy with, but I'm truly enjoying the game we're playing now (and not all due to the system, Mike can take some credit for being a good DM).  I haven't really felt a need to change a rule or disliked any design choice yet which is pretty good coming from me.  If I wasn't picky I'd still be playing AD&D probably.  We've started a DCC campaign now with our regular game group and after playing the kids game and getting a taste of classed characters, I'm really eager to see how this game works with a bunch of cantankerous and clever grown ups.

I'm still going to run my games in Beacon, but I might be willing to run something in DCC if I was filling in for the regular GM or the players already had characters or something.  Or maybe if someone was interested in trying it out - purely to examine comparative mechanics you understand.  Or if I had a good idea for a session...  That's pretty funny because I told Mike back in November that I might consider playing DCC, but I'd never run something with it.

Flame Princess Conqueror King

I've been reading the Adventurer Conqueror King (ACKS) system I picked up on Drive ThruRPG and I do like it but I have to admit that it is the Lamentations of the Flame Princess that is really drawing my attention of late.  I downloaded the free (sans art) PDF a while ago and I took a quick look at it but I didn't really look at it.  But lately I've been playing in a Labyrinth Lord game which is soon to be re-platformed to an ACKS game and so I've been looking at those systems.  While doing that, I found myself taking another look at the LotFP rules and I have to say that I think it's the best of the three.  I think that if I was going to run a fantasy game and I couldn't run Beacon I'd probably want to run LotFP and not ACKS or Labyrinth Lord.  Why?

• Fighters fight.  If I was less worried about general compatibility with d20 I'd man up and take away leveling attack bonuses from all the non fighter classes in Beacon too.  I won't though since that compatibility is one of the design cornerstones.
• Magic is chaotic.  This is great, re-purposing alignment like this and it revitalizes so many of the cleric spells and provides social consequences of magic.  I missed this bit until I heard Raggi talking about it in an Atomic Array interview.
• The specialization system is great and would be easy to work with.  Assuming any special skill you might need in a game requires a 1 in 6 and then allowing specialists to add pips is very flexible. (the thing I dislike most about ACKS is the long list of proficiencies/skills.  I prefer adding to a short list because a long list will never be long enough or exactly fit your campaign).
• ACKS just has too much going on with core mechanics.  It feels more like AD&D than D&D.
• Labyrinth Lord is great and I love what they've done with the place but I'd have to do some major renovations if I wanted to move in.  Also who puts saving throws halfway through the book and not in the character section.  Really.   

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot in the ACKS book I really like, especially the stuff focusing on building up social institutions as part of the game, but I think that Lamentations has it beat for basic adventuring rules.  The great thing is that additional campaign orientated content is readily applied to any fantasy adventuring rule set and I can see myself mining it for a Beacon campaign just as easily as it could be mined for a Labyrinth Lord or a Flame Princess campaign.  I am totally glad I picked up the Adventurer Conquer King PDF but I would seriously considering picking a LotFP Grindhouse book to keep beside the table just in case.