Friend showed me it, I enjoyed as a player so much I bought it and ran it myself. Great common-sense system for both the players and GM

Very good updating of the BECMI/Basic engine, with superb integrated domain and economic management, that's also excellently scaling. No quadratic wizard, linear fighter issues - it's not "magic superheroes" but all classes get to shine all the way through in various different and interesting ways. Assumed setting is a "pseudo fall of magic Rome" as the various factors behind the collapse start rolling, and will suck players in. Also exceptionally reskinnable and easy to port, with good GM support (and seemingly infinite expansion via Axioms articles etc) which can be used or not used as desired.

The HFH adds or customises tonnes of features of ACKS to give you an experience at once more heroic - there's a vaiety of rules making characters just that bit more survivable - and more darkly sorcerous, moving from Vancian magic to a more mythical, Swords and Sorcery model of involved casting, rituals, and charm-like trinkets. Typical of Autarch, this is stuffed full of genuine game material, not fluff. Its only drawback is that some of the rules within are rumoured to be incorporated into the upcoming ACKSII revised ACKS system.

A MONSTER of a system that still plays fast, crisp and light at the table. Combat, injury, grand campaigns, you can go from a ground level adventurer to a crusader King and play balanced, working rules the whole way.

Good book. war game rules at different scales that are compatible with OSR or b/x style games. well thought out, detailed to a useful level for simulating battles ranging from the scale where we are just barely beyond individual soldiers to much more complicated things. The mechanics for the different scales line up properly so by comparison it does seem more like zooming in/out than changing rulesets.

What a fun to read and gorgeous to look at book. Most of the way through the book but I've already asked our group's GM about running a dwarf-themed campaign next... I really want to roll up a dwarf machinist! The automaton rules are just too cool. The sporecaller is also calling to me though with that power that lets him make explosive mushroom zombies--awesome stuff! Great book all around, even the stuff I didn't expect to be interesting like the dwarven mining rules were an entertaining read.

Really useful "grab bag" of ideas, background, world building, player side new & revised classes and DM side systems and subsystems. If you're an ACKs player you will find a lot to justify buying this; if you're not an ACKs player but run other OSR games, it's all very portable. If you're not an OSR player then there's still some good tidbits and things to mine for ideas, and if the whole shebang is too much you can always cherry pick the individual Axioms as fancied!

Like Dwarves in RPGs? This is your book. chock full of interesting things about them, their culture, history, economy, vaults, legends, characters, gear and magics! If you're an OSR player of any kind it's usable virtually out the box, if you're a player of other D&D's there's a lot of stuff to plunder anyway. Buy this ACKs, you won't regret it.

I recently started an ACKs campaign with my older children and thanks to By This Axe they are now all-dwarven, all the time. There are so many solid classes filling so many roles here that they never even considered anything else. They've read the BtA lore and have had a blast expanding on it; their own "real dwarves don't talk with beastmen; there is only extermination" means encounters have been merciless and hilariously vicious. The higher-level "domain-play" aspect of each class has drawn forward their fun into future anticipation; at 1st-level they are already seeing all of their hoard-gathering and dungeon-clearing as the path to founding their own dwarven vault (and then "delving too deep"). This book is enormously fun, highly and immediately playable, and has my top recommendation.

FYI, I am an early backer of the book, but an extremely satisfied one at that. Lots of cool stuff for Dwarves and Dwarf campaigns, fun new classes, new items, domain rules, lore, and more. Very happy with the book! Get it!

(Full disclosure: I backed the kickstarter for this book, and have been using the released drafts to work systems and ideas into my campaign for months now.)

First Note: YOU DON'T HAVE TO PLAY ACKS TO USE THIS BOOK (though to be honest, you probably should ;). If you play OSE, LL, B/X, or anything built off the same framework, most of the contents of this book can be used as-is.

Highlights: 1) ACKS' s unique take on "race as class" demonstrates its full value here: there are enough dwarven racial classes to run an entire all-dwarf campaign, easily. Each of them was playtested thoroughly (even did some myself) and are balanced with each other, as well as the "standard" classes you'll find in ACKS (or B/X, what have you). My personal favorites: sporecaster (dwarf fungus master with a surprising breadth of abilities), tombsealer (anti-undead dwarf fighter-type whose few unique abilities can come in quite handy in any dungeon session), rhetor (dwarfven barrister with more combat and campaign utility than one might expect from a member of the legal profession), and the dwarven machinist (see below).

2) The machinist and automaton rules are worth the price of admission alone. I'm not kidding. They are that good and that comprehensive, and in usual Autarch fashion, the numbers actually line up. I've already spent a lot of time monkeying with construct builds, the system scratches the same itch that Battletech design/customization does.

3) Gnostic magic - different enough from bog-standard D&D magic, yet close enough that it doesn't feel totally out of place in a "D&D" style world. The system was adapted from the "ceremonial" magic system in Autarch's Heroic Fantasy Handbook, which came out several years ago, and therefore has had plenty of time to have any rough edges filed off.

4) Presentation: The PDF looks great, the layout and trade dress are distinctive and easy on the eyes. I can't wait for my hardbound copy!

I would recommend a purchase to anyone who plays (and especially DMs) any sort of "OSR" system, you'll find plenty of ideas and mechanics to mine even if you don't adopt it wholesale. I'm not entirely sure what value (aside from the lore and "fluff") this book would have if you play the current iteration of WotC's system (or Paizo's, etc), so if you're dead-set on sticking with those systems, you might not get the same amount of utility that I have. Caveat Emptor.

This an outstanding book with a sole focus on Dwarves. Anyone who is running an OSR campaign with Dwarves would get a lot of use and flavour out of this book. The price point is excellent for the classes, lore, magicial items and just plain riff for ideas.

Buy This ACKS.

The best dwarf-focused source book published to date.

This is a book stuffed full of gamable content. new classes, new magic, new items; all the way through to new ecology and economics for worldbuilding, domain play, and strategic conflict. A new, grotesque and potent villain in the Sporecaster, and a series of horrible catastrophes to ruin a dwarven stronghold. Go primitive with flesh-runes and bear cavalry, or go "high tech" with elaborate and arcane machines that mere humanity, let alone the beastman hordes, just can't match! Take up the mantle of leadership and lead a Hold to glory or ruin. Rules for risking experimental mushroom farms and Digging Too Deep. This book is a goldmine.

From the Designer's Notes in the back: "In By This Axe, we’ve applied abductive reasoning systematically to make an in-depth look at dwarves. For each trope we could think of, we substituted “common trope” for “surprising fact” and then used abductive reasoning to develop an explanation for each."

Autarch has set out to take the things that make dwarves dwarfy, and explain why those things are so, in the expected ACKS way of fitting things in economically as well to make dwarven domains properly different from human ones when using the book with Autarch's system. I can't speak to how well the mechanical parts in it would convert to other fantasy RPGs (the classes should at least convert to any oldschool d20-based system without too much hassle), though the lore parts are sensible for anything where the common dwarf tropes exist.

For longtime ACKS players, some of the book retreads ground covered in AXIOMS articles (especially issues 3, 13 and 17), with little expansions and alterations here and there (Machinists in particular got much love with a full chapter of updated rules for automatons), as well as some other bits and pieces for other classes to lay the groundwork for the announced upcoming ACKS II.

Aesthetically, the book is possibly the most ambitious Autarch has done, a leap from the white pages with red trim of previous ACKS products (the brown pages in particular giving me a bit of early 2000s nostalgia). I don't always dig the art styles chosen for the pictures, but they do the job for the layout here.