Shot Down & A Review Of Adventurer, Conqueror, King's The Heroic Fantasy Handbook By Alexander Macris From Autarch Part I

One of the most important things I've told dungeon masters in forty years of doing this hobby  is to have a back up plan. I wanted to run an Amazing Adventures campaign with some friends from Litchfield Connecticut. I got the go ahead from these friends.
Well I worked on a beginning adventure, new pulp villain, etc. And then I wanted a schedule commitment for a Saturday evening & no one could make it due to scheduling conflicts. I'm I mad?! No, these things happen & they sometimes happen hard. This is part of the reality of being in an adult in this hobby. So quietly on the side of things I contacted  Alexander Macris From Autarch. 
I wanted to grab a copy The Heroic Fantasy Handbook which  puts a different spin on traditional fantasy role playing with more Sword & Sorcery themed game book. This is really the book I wish that I had when my first first ACK's campaign came together. Why !? Because this book brings so many PC options to the table!


This what is met by Heroic Fantasy?! Here's what Alexander Macris says about the definition of the genre;
"The Heroic Fantasy Handbook is a rules supplement that brings the flavor of heroic fantasy to your favorite role-playing game.
But what do we mean by “flavor of heroic fantasy”? What’s“heroic fantasy,” exactly? As the quotes above make clear, arguing about fantasy genres is of course a beloved pastime in
our community, and we make no claim to offering the, or even a, definitive definition of genre. But for purposes of this book, we define “heroic fantasy” as what the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard have in common, once you remove what’s
different.
Now these two great luminaries are usually considered opposites– Tolkien writing British literary high fantasy, Howard writing American pulp swords & sorcery – and in some ways, that’s true. But though they are opposites, they are opposite faces of the same coin; and that coin is what we call heroic fantasy."

This book is wall to wall PC classes geared around the book's  premise of Heroic Fantasy & it does this with style & flourish;
"Heroes, provides new rules for character generation and 17 new character classes to expand your Adventurer Conqueror King System campaigns, including the beastmaster, berserker, chosen, ecclesiastic, elven spellsinger, halfling bounder, halfling burglar, loremaster, Nobiran champion, Nobiran wizard, occultist, runemaster, Thrassian deathchanter, venturer, warmistress, Zaharan darklord, and Zaharan sorcerer."

The Young Chosen, Charles Myers

So this book really hits the high notes to try & add more of a compromise between higher fantasy OSR Dungeons & Dragons style adventuring & Sword & Sorcery gaming as we've seen in games such as Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. It does this with skills & proficiency grounded in the Appendix N material that act as a guideline & bench mark for the generation of  PC's.
This is just my initial impressions and we'll get up to the rest of what hits in the high points in part II. Note that I'm taking my time to get through the two hundred & forty pages of this pdf. I don't want to speed through this book. But so far the layout, formating, & other avenues of the Heroic Handbook have me thinking of doing an ACK's campaign revamp.



Queen of Iron, Jarrod Maistros

In part II we'll get into the heart & soul of  The Heroic Fantasy Handbook 
& how this book gets things twisted in a slightly different OSR direction.


You Can  Grab a Copy The Heroic Fantasy Handbook Here