ACKS, Autarch, & Ethical Role-Playing

Months ago I posted a review of the Adventurer Conqueror King System. Since then I’d occasionally have thoughts about it. It seems a little out of place with the rest of the blog. I don’t have any other reviews (besides The Black Hack and the GLOG).

More importantly, the reasoning behind the review's negative conclusion (in that, you should choose another system), seems abrupt in appearance. I don’t actually explain why Alexander Macris is a shitbag, which is certainly something you should do when you call someone a shitbag. The system I recommended to replace it, Basic Fantasy RPG, actually is not the ideal alternative. Finally, I should say that there are a lot of things about ACKS that I like. ACKS is not the worst system and some of its adventures are actually pretty good (see Courtney’s adventure or Dwimmermount, which also has a GURPS version!!). The primary figure within Autarch, nonetheless, by a really shitty person.

I’ll start this with an explanation of what Alexander Macris did to make him a shitty person. There are a number of different things but it boils down to two things. First, there was his involvement with gamergate on The Escapist, allowing it to flourish in its forum. More recently, there was his involvement with Milo Yiannopoulos. This out-shadows the involvement with gamergate, because this is not only a harassment of women encroaching into territory that has historically be reserved for men, but attacks people of color, queer and trans people, as well as women. Further, Yiannopoulos is a fascist – if this is news to you, consider his involvement with fascists and his propagation of fascist ideas. Alexander Macris was the CEO of Milo Inc., whose mission statement was “making the lives of journalists, professors, politicians, feminists, Black Lives Matter activists, and other professional victims a living hell.” Milo Inc. was founded after Yiannopoulos was fired from the fascist propaganda outlet Breitbart due to his remarks on pedophilia (so Macris worked with Yiannopoulos as CEO of his company knowing of these remarks). There have been claims that Macris is not racist; however, this claim is weak when it’s understood that he was CEO of an ideological company which cast activists protesting the proliferation of wrongful deaths/murders of black people by policemen as “professional victims.”

In the time since Yiannopoulos has fallen out of favor and gamergate has dwindled down to its phrenetic core of misogynists, Macris has attempted to downplay his involvement with gamergate. He’s attempted to cast himself as helpless in his involvement with Yiannopoulos and has tried to distance himself as much as he can. The record, nonetheless, remains. He was the will CEO of Milo Inc. He worked for it and went to court for the sake of Milo’s advertising. The stain will remain on Macris’ reputation until he … stops being a shitbag.

Now that that’s covered, we can move on to brighter things. As I said earlier, ACKS has some very neat features. Personally, I appreciate the Proficiency system it has. It also has a few novel and good combat systems (primarily the Cleave mechanic). If you have already bought ACKS, you should absolutely play it and use what material you've already bought. If, on the other hand, you haven't bought ACKS, don't support Autarch while a transphobic racist heads the company. If would like to get a B/X or (more accurately) BECMI game which has rules for domain-level roleplay, then get the Rules Cyclopedia clone Dark Dungeons (if it's just the adventuring, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Labyrinth Lord, and Basic Fantasy can offer what you're looking for). It's not a strict clone, and many of the rules are cleaned up. Dark Dungeons has detailed rules for high-level play, building & maintaining strongholds, fiefdoms, mass combat. There are also some additional rules for skills in Dark Dungeons (essentially AD&D 2e Non-Weapon Proficiencies). Dark Dungeons is in the public domain (excluding some open game content) and is free to play (there is a PWYW option on DriveThru RPG, if you would like to support the author's labor of love).

Note: The title of this post gave me some pause. I had initially derived the phrase from "ethical consumption." "Ethics" sounds a little elitist, a little high and mighty. Declaring what's ethical sounds pretentious. But there's not really a better way to phrase it. Ethics is determining what's good or bad, what's right or wrong. Knowingly supporting a chauvinistic, transphobic, white supremacist is wrong, unethical.