We're pleased to confirm that the last, but by no means the least, of the backer rewards have been sent out. To everyone who pledged for a hardback or softcover: your book is in the mail. Comment here to let us know when it arrives!

We're working with Game Salute to fulfill these orders. Questions about your shipment can be best answered by contacting Game Salute  - although don't hesitate to communicate with us through Kickstarter or at support@autarch.co either.

Please accept our apologies for the delay between when we had the books at Gary Con and when you'll be getting them. One of the many pieces of wisdom we've picked up from Game Salute is that it is best to have everything ship to backers at once. Arranging for all the pieces (hardbacks, softcovers, and signed pre-release copies of the Player's Companion) to come together at this warehouse to make this possible has taken a little while. In retrospect some ways we could have done this better are evident. We appreciate that you've been there for us since the beginning, and hope you'll stick with us as we learn from experience; Dwimmermount and the final release of the Player's Companion will definitely benefit from lessons learned.

We look forward to hearing about how you'll use your Adventurer Conqueror King System books - share your stories with us at the Autarch forums, we do in fact want to hear about your character!

Alex, Greg, and I are proud to say that the Adventurer Conqueror King books are here for real! Don't take my word for it - we have video proof:

What this means for our backers is:

• If you are here at Gary Con IV and you are receiving the ACKS hardcover as a backer reward, you can come pick it up from us at the dealer's room! If you were just getting a PDF or beta reader, you can upgrade to hardback here at the convention (or anytime online).
• If you are eagerly awaiting your print backer reward or pre-order, it will be reaching you soon! Our fulfillment partner Game Salute will be putting together the shipments and sending them out over the next week.

What this means for those who want to buy their copy of Adventurer Conqueror King in a brick and mortar store:

• The Preview Nights program will begin as soon as our backers have their copies. Game Salute Select stores participating in the program will get their books early, and will be running demos helping introduce people to the ACKS system and also put them in the hands of those who've been awaiting them for a while now.
• Stores that aren't participating in the Preview Nights program will get their copies three weeks later.
• Owners of the PDF can use the coupon to upgrade to the hardcover at any store that carries ACKS, or from us online.

Thanks for your support - this is a great moment for us and we look forward to sharing the pleasure of holding these books in your hands!

We’re proud to announce that, thanks to your support, inspiration, dedication, and patience, we have completed the final version of the Adventurer Conqueror King System!

Q: What’s available now?

A: The complete illustrated PDF of ACKS’ first edition.

Q: How do I get it?

A: If you’re a Kickstarter backer, you’ll be getting emails with the details. If not, buy the PDF directly from us, or DriveThruRPG if you prefer.

Q: I’ve set up contributor access at autarch.co and downloaded the final illustrated PDF from there. Should I still get this new PDF?

Q: Probably! The PDF available now for sale and at the contributor area has some important improvements. The version dated 1/31/12 is the first to have an updated list of backers, a special thank you and acknowledgment of our inspirations, and teasers for some of Autarch’s forthcoming collaborations that you may find interesting.

Q: I’m a backer at the Conqueror level or above, when will I get my hardback?

A: ACKS iscontinuing a great tradition of RPGs printed in the USA by McNaughton & Gunn of Saline, MI. We’re expecting them to ship books to Game Salute in time for backers and pre-orders to have their hardbacks and softcovers for the next convention we’ll be at, Gary Con IV.

Q: When can my friends who weren’t backers get print copies?

Game Salute’s Preview Nights program will let stores get the hardcover + PDF bundle of ACKS a week after Kickstarter backers. Visit our forums if you want to find or create a Preview Night near you.

Three weeks after that, the print + PDF bundle will be available through Game Salute Select stores and our online store at shop.gamesalute.com.

Q: What about the Domains at War bonus reward?

A: The current draft can be downloaded in the contributor area at autarch.co. Backers of the Adventurer Conqueror King Kickstarter will get a free copy of the complete illustrated PDF before anyone else. We expect that Domains at War will take substantially less than the six months it took to finish our first ACKS book.

Q: Is the zero edition Gen Con pre-print still available?

A: No, only about a hundred copies were produced and they are now all in the hands of Adventurer Conqueror King's Kings of Kings, Visionaries, Legends, God-Emperors, Patron Deities, and creators.

Q: Why are you partnering with Game Salute and Bits and Mortar?

A: Game Salute’s experience fulfilling Kickstarters for other innovative game companies will help us treat you right. And because we believe in supporting local gaming stores, Game Salute’s retailer programs make it possible for us to work to ensure there will be people for you to play ACKS with in many more parts of the world.

Bits and Mortar lets us work together with brick and mortar stores to help bring together the two halves of the ACKS system, the electronic resources and the books we hope will see hard use at your gaming group’s table.

Q: Can I write a review of Adventurer Conqueror King?

A: Yes, please share your impressions of the game! Email tavis@autarch.co if you want to give us feedback in private, need images for a blog post, etc.

Q: What's next?

A: Download the PDF, visit Autarch's forums, or check our Facebook page to learn about the new projects we're excited about.

Thanks again for making this possible! It's been a blast, and we're just getting rolling.

Sorry for the lack of updates in a while, faithful Kickstarter backers! We've been communicating with lots of you at the developer forums, which makes it easy to forget that not everyone is over there (although all backers are welcome to be). Our public silence shouldn't be taken as a lack of activity; quite the contrary.

Version 32 of the rules reflected a final burning-the-midnight-oil push to complete our collective vision of the Adventurer Conqueror King System, incorporating tons of great input and feedback from our supporters. That draft underwent a final pass for proofreading and editing, and is now being laid out by Carrie Keymel, Greg Lincoln, and other members of our production team, complete with illustrations by Ryan Browning (often to specifications provided by our backers!), Jonathan Bingham, Chris Hagerty, and monster silhouettes collected from the public domain by Kirk Stone. Those who got the limited edition printing we had for Gen Con have a sense of how handsome this is going to be; with art and all the added content you've helped us develop, the final product is handsome as hell and something we can be truly proud of. 

Having the book in layout means that all our supporters should be receiving their PDFs of Adventurer Conqueror King within the next two weeks. The softcover and hardback books will follow shortly - softcover will probably be shipped sooner, due to faster printing times than the hardback.

If you know someone who might be interested in ACKS, send them over to autarch.co! Pre-ordering before the book is widely available gets you the free PDF of Domains of War, plus access to the developer forums where we're enthusiastically developing these mass-combat rules and examining how they fit into the ACKS campaigns folks are already running using the draft rules that are another benefit of pre-ordering.

We are back from Gen Con, where we had a great convention, made many new fans, gamed with some of our existing ones, and fell in love with Johnathan Bingham’s work at the Old School Renaissance Group booth and started talking about having him help Ryan illustrate Adventurer Conqueror King & Domains of War. Unfortunately we also so drained our reserves of energy that we’re only just now catching up! If you’ll excuse the delay, answers to some questions you’re likely to have are below.

- How do I get access to the downloads and developer forums?

We need to create an account for you at our Wordpress site. In order for us to get you set up with the permissions you'll need to access the downloads and updates, we'll need:

1. A preferred username for your autarch.co / forums account
2. the email you would like associated with your login.

Send these to ryan@autarch.co and he will get you in our system as soon as he is able. You will receive an automated email from the website with your login credentials shortly thereafter.

Once you are in, you'll find the login and contributor links (downloads and forums) towards the bottom of the sidebar at autarch.co. You may change your password when you login.

-          How do I get the Domains of War bonus goal?

The latest draft of our mass-combat supplement will be available for download in the contributor’s area. As a backer, you can give us feedback about this draft in the developer forums; when it’s finished, we will send you the final PDF.

- When will the final products be ready?

We expect Adventurer Conqueror King to be complete within the next three months, with Domains of War available shortly afterward. Three months is the lead time that distributors need information about a product to get it into hobby stores, which is part of our plan for getting Adventurer Conqueror King into the wider world of gamers. While we will be sending you your copies, we think that’s a good timeline for Ryan to finish the Visionary illustrations, Jonathan to provide some additional illustration, and for all of us to continue playtesting, developing, refining, and expanding the rules.

-          How will you know where to send my donor rewards?

Once the final products are just about to send to you (before they’re sent to stores – as a backer you’ll get everything first), we will use Kickstarter to send a survey requesting your email address and your mailing address, plus any other information we need to fulfill your reward (such as T-shirt size).

 -          What if I need international shipping?

If you didn’t add an additional donation to ship your books and maybe other physical rewards outside North America, don’t worry; we will set up a way for you to cover these costs via our online orders page, coming soon.

 
- What if I want to upgrade my donor reward?


We’ll handle this through our online orders page, coming soon. If there is a particular reward you want to be sure to get, send us an email at sales@autarch.co and we’ll help you out.

- What if my friends want to get in but missed the Kickstarter period?


We’ll take preorders through our online orders page, coming soon; in the meantime you can refer them to sales@autarch.co.

- What about playing via Google+ hangouts?

We came tantalizingly close to the bonus goal where we’d set up games of Adventurer Conqueror King for all our backers on Google+, and we know that’s an exciting prospect for many of you – us too! We will definitely be using Google+ to do playtesting and share the experience we gained running the Adventurer Conqueror King demo at Gen Con. If you want to be part of this, post in the developers forum or send an email to events@autarch.co.

 - How did the Gen Con demo go?

Fantastic! We will upload videos shortly, and here are some comments:

“I played in a roughly 5-hour demo this past Friday night at GenCon, where we played at both the Adventurer and King levels.  Adding to the ongoing campaign was very cool, and "switching modes' from Adventurer to King was seamless.” – tsw512

“Had a glorious time at Gen Con Indy! Got to demo Adventurer Conqueror King, an awesome D&D B/X-based game (but with quite a bit changed/improved/added on/etc!). I enjoyed the demo enough to hop on Kickstarter *immediately* afterward and back the project.” – Zach Hoefler

“I got to play a couple hours of the game (GM’d by Alex) and can vouch that this is a BLAST. We played pretty high level characters, “kings” as it were. The gameplay pacing and tone is instantly recognizable to D&D players. The game mechanic is streamlined in a very elegant way, but still feels decidedly “old school” (most every roll works like a saving throw, roll X or better). There’s great flavor in the classes and spells, you’re still picking a single race/class designation, but there are more options for demihumans and human characters. I’m stoked to get my fancy kickstarter edition!” – Lord Bodacious