Game Mechanic Hi-light: ACKS

After looking through several retro-clones I decided I would start hi-lighting various mechanics and system tweaks that I found better than the norm. In the Adventurer Conqueror King System there are three related mechanics that I like.

The first is that Autarch went back to basics and rebalanced their economy around how much income a peasant family could make from farming wheat. This is not an amazing work of economics, but it does give them a starting point to determine how much gold there is in the system and from there a method for determining how many NPCs of various levels you would find in a city of 10,000 people.

The first related mechanic is that PCs gain experience by bringing treasure back to civilization. So, if you bring back a magical sword and sell it for N gold you receive N xp. One condition on this is that you cannot have used the magic item during your adventures. If you benefit from the item you do not get to benefit from it again. This is likely to stop characters from getting bonus xp ever time they find a more powerful item and attempt sell their now obsolete items.

Tied into this concept of loot equaling xp is the concept of banking xp. If instead of gaining xp from your loot you can instead spend it on non-beneficial things (Nick Sly's notorious 10k gold drinking binge), and then if you character retires or dies you receive 90% of the value of that misspent loot as xp for your new character (Nick Sly later dies to a flumph, but fortunately the party finds an experienced wizard who wants to join the party).