What is it like? Is it useful for creating businesses as a DM? Or is it more for players creating a business in game? Or is it more like Strixthaven where it's an adventure with a few extra options thrown in?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Acq Inc. isn't for creating a "business" as people would normally understand it. The titular company is more like an extremely cloying, omnipresent group patron - the players work for The Company, which is inscrutible, confusing, contradictory, and nigh-omnipotent insofar as the characters' futures is concerned. It's a book that helps the DM turn their D&D game into an office comedy sitcom without actually giving up D&D, since The Company's business is adventuring.
Imagine Acq. Inc. as being a book for if your adventuring party was employed by the East India Trading Company of yore, except as run by bozos, clowns, yaybos, and Seinfeld characters. And your party has to put up with it because at the end of the day the bozos, clowns, yaybos, and Seinfeld characters sign their paychecks, which they need because they signed a contract that means they're legally obligated to turn over their loot to The Company for fair and impartial appraisal and a market-competitive finder's fee.
It's useful for playing a Penny Arcade style D&D game. That's about it. It has a pretty specific, zany tone - Yurei described it well - which might be the exact reason it never elicited any significant "this is ruining the game with its non-traditional anything-for-a-laugh approach, lots of non-combat intercharacter shenanigans and rule-of-cool soft DMing" type backlash Critical Role later received: it's so much more explicit about not being your middle-of-the-road kind of D&D that nobody thought it represented how the game should be played or that it might push their traditional style out of the mainstream. Which, in fairness, it didn't.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Its tone and style are an acquired taste. While I generally do not mind it, it is very far off from your traditional D&D tone and style, so it can be offputting. However, in terms of the actual substance and mechanics, I think it is great and I love it. That being said, I have not really read the adventure book portion much, and for me, this portion of the book really suffers from its unique tone and style the most. I tried reading it, but the tone and style is really distracting and I find it significantly more difficult to separate the tone and writing style from the subtance of the adventure. Imagine one of your favorite books, but it is written "lik dis w/ lols n yolos n :)s thru out da txt n wtf is comas n sentncs hahaha", that is how I feel about AI. I think the book is a solid 8/10 and the sourebook portion alone is worth the purchase, but its tone and style can be really distracting and offputting if you are not used to it.
If you are on the fence about buying the book and worried about potentially regretting the purchase, my take on it would be to mine the book for ideas and ignore the writing style. Brain storming and creating an adventuring franchise is pretty fun, battle ballons are pretty freaking badass, keg robots are pretty funny and useful NPCs, and there are quite a lot of magic items.
Is it useful for creating businesses as a DM? Or is it more for players creating a business in game?
Depends on what you mean by "business". In terms of handing assignments/tasks out and capturing the flavor of managing employees, I think AI is fine, but it is not really all that different from running any other organization patrons. And if you are sticking strictly with the book without exercising any creative muscle, as a GM, you will feel more like middle management than a CEO in my opinion.
If you want a business simulation and juggle profits and losses, or if you want your players to feel like management or even CEOs (rather than almost-bottom-of-the-barrel employees), you are better off having your players start up their own adventuring business using Google Sheets, and look to AI for sparks of inspiration rather than as a guide.
Or is it more like Strixthaven where it's an adventure with a few extra options thrown in?
The sourcebook portion of AI is a lot more beefy than SACOC. SACOC just feels like a straight up adventuring book with a university pamphlet attached to the front. While AI does have signficant portions of the book dedicated to adventures, if the adventures were removed, I feel I would have still gotten my money's worth of ideas and material in the sourcebook portion of the book.
If you are not using AI's adventures, I think the sourcebook portion can be easily incorporated into most campaigns, as it is basically just expanding on the patron options of the game. You know how warlocks, clerics, and paladins have their own patrons, dieties, and oaths? AI is basically like that, except for the whole adventuring group.
I have not read the adventures much, so I cannot say with certainty how well you can easily incorporate them into an existing campaign. But based on the first portion of the adventure that I have read, it takes place in Waterdeep so I think you can probably run the first portion alongside Waterdeep: Dragon Heist without much issue.
For me personally, I just use AI as a bank of ideas for my games and toss aside the lore and adventure.
What is it like? Is it useful for creating businesses as a DM? Or is it more for players creating a business in game? Or is it more like Strixthaven where it's an adventure with a few extra options thrown in?
What is it useful for? What's your rating of it?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Acq Inc. isn't for creating a "business" as people would normally understand it. The titular company is more like an extremely cloying, omnipresent group patron - the players work for The Company, which is inscrutible, confusing, contradictory, and nigh-omnipotent insofar as the characters' futures is concerned. It's a book that helps the DM turn their D&D game into an office comedy sitcom without actually giving up D&D, since The Company's business is adventuring.
Imagine Acq. Inc. as being a book for if your adventuring party was employed by the East India Trading Company of yore, except as run by bozos, clowns, yaybos, and Seinfeld characters. And your party has to put up with it because at the end of the day the bozos, clowns, yaybos, and Seinfeld characters sign their paychecks, which they need because they signed a contract that means they're legally obligated to turn over their loot to The Company for fair and impartial appraisal and a market-competitive finder's fee.
Please do not contact or message me.
It's useful for playing a Penny Arcade style D&D game. That's about it. It has a pretty specific, zany tone - Yurei described it well - which might be the exact reason it never elicited any significant "this is ruining the game with its non-traditional anything-for-a-laugh approach, lots of non-combat intercharacter shenanigans and rule-of-cool soft DMing" type backlash Critical Role later received: it's so much more explicit about not being your middle-of-the-road kind of D&D that nobody thought it represented how the game should be played or that it might push their traditional style out of the mainstream. Which, in fairness, it didn't.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Depends on what you mean by "business". In terms of handing assignments/tasks out and capturing the flavor of managing employees, I think AI is fine, but it is not really all that different from running any other organization patrons. And if you are sticking strictly with the book without exercising any creative muscle, as a GM, you will feel more like middle management than a CEO in my opinion.
If you want a business simulation and juggle profits and losses, or if you want your players to feel like management or even CEOs (rather than almost-bottom-of-the-barrel employees), you are better off having your players start up their own adventuring business using Google Sheets, and look to AI for sparks of inspiration rather than as a guide.
The sourcebook portion of AI is a lot more beefy than SACOC. SACOC just feels like a straight up adventuring book with a university pamphlet attached to the front. While AI does have signficant portions of the book dedicated to adventures, if the adventures were removed, I feel I would have still gotten my money's worth of ideas and material in the sourcebook portion of the book.
If you are not using AI's adventures, I think the sourcebook portion can be easily incorporated into most campaigns, as it is basically just expanding on the patron options of the game. You know how warlocks, clerics, and paladins have their own patrons, dieties, and oaths? AI is basically like that, except for the whole adventuring group.
I have not read the adventures much, so I cannot say with certainty how well you can easily incorporate them into an existing campaign. But based on the first portion of the adventure that I have read, it takes place in Waterdeep so I think you can probably run the first portion alongside Waterdeep: Dragon Heist without much issue.
For me personally, I just use AI as a bank of ideas for my games and toss aside the lore and adventure.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >