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On July 14th the Bitter War of Memes began. This content, designed to promote my upcoming crowdfunding campaign for Before All Others: The Cyclopedia of Elven Civilization, pitted dwarves versus elves in a contest of creativity, cruelty, and caption-fu. On July 31st, the Bitter War of Memes ended, and two mighty victors emerged. Today, their triumph is revealed.

The Dwarven Winner was chosen by the cold, impartial algorithm of X. Whichever meme had the most likes by the deadline won the contest. This superior dwarven approach was not only concrete and objective, it also favored X users with nepotistic clans of supporters who reposted their memes simply out of familial support - just as it should be.

Ironically that winner was an elf-lover. X user Alpen (@Alvaspirdoyas) carried the day with this post, “Behold short statured one — a drawing I have wrought, wherein the dwarf is cast in the semblance of the mewling soyjak whilst the elf is rendered as the stalwart chad.” With 2.7K Likes, it wasn’t even close; 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place were 156, 143, and 106 Likes. Congratulations, Alpen!

The Elven Winner was chosen by the capricious whim of my wife (@lifeonerth on X), supreme arbiter of elven aesthetics, based entirely on her 100% personal opinion of how it made her feel at that moment. The superior elven approach was not only poetic and emotional, it also favored artistic individualists who flitter onto Twitter like butterflies depositing pollinated memetic beauty - just as it should be.

After tirelessly reviewing all of the memes, Mrs. Archon settled on this animated meme by Dwarf Respecter (@Messerschmied14 on X). Be sure to click the link to watch the video, as Substack doesn’t allow me to embed X videos. Congratulations, Dwarf Respecter!

The two winners will have their names immortalized as NPCs in Before All Others and will get to commission one interior illustration each to their specifications (within editorial sanity).

Don’t forget that if you're interested in getting early access to Before All Others, you can sign up to become a Conqueror-tier members of the Autarch Patreon. And if you can’t wait to start fighting the Bitter War for real, emperor-tier backers in our Patreon have already gotten full access to Domains at War: Battles computer game and are playtesting it now.

ACKS II Now Available in Print on Demand!

The much-discussed and long-delayed print-on-demand editions of ACKS II are now available. Before making them available for sale, I ordered a set myself to verify that they met my exacting standard of quality. The titanic tomes came out surprisingly fine; while certainly no match for the grandeur of the crowdfunded leatherette cover and binding, they are still very nice books.

I took some photographs. Here’s the three books side by side. The Syrigos covers look great in print.

Here’s the books ready to be shelved. If you were hoping they’d be thinner than the standard edition, your hopes are dashed - the POD books are thicker than the leatherette books.

Here’s the Dwimmermount POD next to the ACKS II POD. It looks puny. The megadungeon is dwarfed by the megasystem!

If you’re ready to grab your print-on-demand copies of ACKS II, you can use the links below to purchase them from DriveThruRPG at a 10% discount. Note that these coupon codes do not include the PDFs!

What’s Grinding on ACKS to Grind?

Tonight at 9PM ET August 4th, I’ll be joined by game designer and youtuber Daniel Jones, AKA Primaeval Fantasy, to discuss his concept of intuitive simulationism. According to Daniel, “the goal is for the players to feel immersed in the Secondary World as real people. The primary tool is by playing in a simulationist fashion, but how do we accomplish that? It’s not by being buried in charts and Wiki pages, but primarily using our most powerful tool: Informed common sense, the power of Intuitive GMing.” Be sure to read my own Manifesto of Simulationism and Philosophy of Simulationism beforehand and then tune into the livestream:

Later this month, I’ll be joined on ACKS To Grind by writer, director, and gamer Pat Kilbane, creator of the documentary The Dreams in Gary’s Basement. This remarkable documentary tells the story of the creation of D&D from Gary Gygax’s point of view. It’s available https://rpghistory.net.

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Once you’ve signed up for the crowdfunding campaign, head on over to these community links:

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Victors of the Bitter War Revealed

ACKS II Now Available in Print on Demand!

What’s Grinding on ACKS to Grind?

Support the Community

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