I've been playing ACKS for almost a decade now, off and on (admittedly, mostly off lately) and I have admit that my initial love of the system dulls the further into it I get. In this post, I want to document all my gripes, so that later when I do productive things I have a record of what I'm actually trying to fix.
An example of this is seen in the table of things that impact Morale: Taxes and Garrison both exist as GP values, which product Morale penalties, which can neutralize each other. "Festivals" exist as another way of converting GP into Morale. In ACKS terms, there's very little difference between a kingdom that taxes heavily but also constantly throws feasts, and one that has no taxes and no army. (Actually, since the festival costs 5 GP/family, a domain of heavily militarized killjoys would be happier!)
With regard to income, each family generates
3-9 GP per month from "Land"
4 GP from "Service"
2 GP from "Tax"
The book does note, for example, that service represents "these services are provided by freemen who offer a portion of their labor to the adventurer in exchange for the right to practice their trade on his domain." However, when adventurers actually need labor, they generally purchase it on the common market (there might be a rule saying there's extra labor available for the Lord, but this is handled as a bonus to the market interaction, rather than a separate pool.) As the book stands, there's no reason not to say "Each family generates 6+Land GP per month" because the GP all just land in your bank and are not, to my knowledge, part of a broader system.
One final example before I make my point- The Stronghold Construction rules include prices and construction rules for various towers and walls, and then uses the final price of the castle as the only meaningful thing. Every X gold produces Y effect, regardless of whether you've built hundreds of walls or towers or a single tower or what.
There's an old argument here that this allows for maximum creativity by letting players have majestic towers or piles of skulls without worrying about mechanical effectiveness. There's also an old counterargument that goes "Then what'd we write all these rules for dwarfs and wizards for, if we can just imagine that they're different and it's just as good?"
These are just three examples of a design philosophy that's pretty pervasive throughout the book- Almost everything eventually becomes GP or comes from GP, in a way that I believe negatively homogenizes kingdom building.
Liquidity can be a useful way of abstracting away the 'boring bits' based on what your game is actually about. But, given that 2/3rds of Adventurer Conquerer King's title suggests domain ownership, it's surprising that so much is barebones here. Domains really should have at least as many options and color as characters, if not more- They're likely to outlive your PCs!
Problem: Libertarian Liquidity Fallacy
One of the broader critiques is that domains are not well rendered, and the author's political leanings manifest in what I call Libertarian Liquidity Fallacy. Libertarian Liquidity Fallacy is the tendency of libertarians and economists to treat everything as "liquid;" that is, easily convertible to and from money- treating price and effect as more strongly related than they are. Essentially, they believe that welcoming someone to your house with a couple bucks worth of change is the same as welcoming them with a cold beer. Consider medals: How much does it cost to write "true warrior of the empire" on a piece of silver and add some ribbon? Would you rather have 6 GP or a Purple Heart?An example of this is seen in the table of things that impact Morale: Taxes and Garrison both exist as GP values, which product Morale penalties, which can neutralize each other. "Festivals" exist as another way of converting GP into Morale. In ACKS terms, there's very little difference between a kingdom that taxes heavily but also constantly throws feasts, and one that has no taxes and no army. (Actually, since the festival costs 5 GP/family, a domain of heavily militarized killjoys would be happier!)
With regard to income, each family generates
3-9 GP per month from "Land"
4 GP from "Service"
2 GP from "Tax"
The book does note, for example, that service represents "these services are provided by freemen who offer a portion of their labor to the adventurer in exchange for the right to practice their trade on his domain." However, when adventurers actually need labor, they generally purchase it on the common market (there might be a rule saying there's extra labor available for the Lord, but this is handled as a bonus to the market interaction, rather than a separate pool.) As the book stands, there's no reason not to say "Each family generates 6+Land GP per month" because the GP all just land in your bank and are not, to my knowledge, part of a broader system.
One final example before I make my point- The Stronghold Construction rules include prices and construction rules for various towers and walls, and then uses the final price of the castle as the only meaningful thing. Every X gold produces Y effect, regardless of whether you've built hundreds of walls or towers or a single tower or what.
There's an old argument here that this allows for maximum creativity by letting players have majestic towers or piles of skulls without worrying about mechanical effectiveness. There's also an old counterargument that goes "Then what'd we write all these rules for dwarfs and wizards for, if we can just imagine that they're different and it's just as good?"
These are just three examples of a design philosophy that's pretty pervasive throughout the book- Almost everything eventually becomes GP or comes from GP, in a way that I believe negatively homogenizes kingdom building.
Liquidity can be a useful way of abstracting away the 'boring bits' based on what your game is actually about. But, given that 2/3rds of Adventurer Conquerer King's title suggests domain ownership, it's surprising that so much is barebones here. Domains really should have at least as many options and color as characters, if not more- They're likely to outlive your PCs!
What Might Work
I'm not a game designer, so I'm just spitballing here. But it seems to me that two things are really needed here:
First, lower liquidity. For example, rather than saying "A 30 ft long, 20 ft high stone wall costs 5000 gp" we might say "A stone wall requires 2 tons of stone, and two thousand hours of labor." Now, rather than subtracting 5k from their inventory, the PCs have been given a two-part objective. Possibly their fort is built along a river and they're on good terms with a stonemason's guild and it is easy to convert gold into walls, but even so, this model emphasizes that they're in a good position to build a castle, and makes it easy for the DM to understand their castle's birthing process.
It also makes it easy to connect back to that earlier idea- That part of a domain's revenue is in "service." Depending on your resource/service/tax breakdown, your domain informs your power in interesting, distinct ways- Domains with lots of quarries and masons have lots of elaborate stone structures because that's what the local lord extracts from them as tax. Domains with lots of food probably have extra festivals, etc.
Second, de-linearization. Currently, most domain features do one thing, in a very linear fashion: Having an extra unit of spearmen gets you +1 Morale. Having an extra festival gets you +1 Morale. Having both is a +2. But we can easily imagine expanding these to have more complex, varied effects.
Lower taxes might also provide a population boost. Different types of garrisons might provide secondary bonuses- Cavalry to keep the roads clear for trade, infantry to enforce laws, and of course, deputized adventurers to deal with and create random weird problems.
It's almost criminal that festivals aren't already set up like this- As the lord, you get to decide the theme of the party you throw, and a giant state-sanctioned PR event for something should have an impact. A tournament increases the prestige of the small landholding knights, while a grand military parade in your honor would centralize power. Religious festivals are particularly interesting in a fantasy world where the gods are real. It's easy to justify tacking on supernatural effects! Festivals centered around rituals to ensure good weather, good harvests, ward off plague, healthy babies, whatever.
Combining these two creates a circular effect where a domain's initial resources influence your military and societal options, and your decisions there will determine future resources in a way that feels natural and meaningful.
TLDR: If I tell my players they can found their own kingdoms, they're going to want to invent Sparta, Rome, Sealand, and Rohan, and they're going to expect the rules to make their kingdoms maximally distinct. ACKS doesn't really provide much fodder for that as is.
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