The prose draws one in as though someone from Hyperborea was writing the game.
The feeling of the alien and the familiar at the same time.
The amount of detail for the world is just right.
The art describes for the eyes what the writing describes for the imagination.
I can make this world mine.
The system reminds me of a simpler time when play trumped rules.

Around the time Jeff began publicizing development of AS&SH, I was re-reading REH, broading my HPL exposure and digesting CAS for the first time. I really enjoyed it all, so I was naturally primed to enjoy a game inspired by them. When I saw Ian's art, I thought he had really great vision. When I finally received the box set and started reading the gazetteer, I was glad to find that I really liked Jeff's writing as well.

There's just enough setting detail to inspire me, but not so much as to feel encumbering, which is awesome. I hate feeling like I have to read and master history books before I can run a setting. I'm just not that smart, heheh. Plus, I've always been partial to all human settings, but I still get a variety of races here that really feel different from each other. I also like the bias toward a mostly neutral and chaotic set of gods, as I think this helps create reasons for people to have adventures. Throw in some super science, lots of lotus, lots of ale and I'm pretty much set.

Although I like some of the rules variations, like hit die-based healing and damage reduction from armor, the core of the system is ultimately something that I'm very familiar with, so I feel pretty comfortable running it without too much prep. If I need to wing something, it's not a big deal. 

So, overall, I guess I'd say that it's the sort of thing I wish I had done myself.    

It's the first version of the AD&D rules that I actually understand. Castles & Crusades was also relatively easy to figure out, but doesn't really try to be anywhere close to the original rules. While ACKS seems to be a decent game, I don't like how it deals with classes and races.

Reading AS&SH, I now understand how AD&D could have gotten so popular. If you actually explain the rules in a comprehensible ways, they are really good rules. And I really like the small but very sensible improvements, like Tests of Strength and the d12 Thief skills. Percentage rolls never looked appealing to me.

mabon5127 wrote:

I could probably add that ASSH is one of the few if not the only game that created a desire in me to read the source material. HPL and CAS hadn't hit my bookshelf until I popped open ASSH!

Agreed. Usually reading a book makes me want to pick up a RPG book, but this RPG makes me want to go back to reread my books. REH is one of my top authors of all time, and I find that AS&SH really hits the flavor of his fiction.

The hooked tentacles of some dark elder beast from the outermost dark beyond the stars. 

Ghul wrote:

JasonZavoda wrote:

The hooked tentacles of some dark elder beast from the outermost dark beyond the stars. 

You just described my mother-in-law! ;)
 

Well, now we know where you are getting your ideas from.
 

I could go on for pages about the authors or the setiing laid out so richly, but to put it simply, I like how grounded and real the game feels.  I like it for the same reasons i like old star wars bettar then new, because everything doesnt need to be so over the top "epic"(used to love that word) to be a good game and when every scenario hangs the fate of the world in the ballance or quest for "thou art chosen by the gods"  it all loses any meaning and becomes just stupid.
    Not in as&sh, where the world is gritty and dark, almost like what would happen if those "epic" heros f*d up, and the best you can hope for is to make a quick buck without your second in command slitting your throat for it.  When you try so hard for so little, it makes actual success that much more meaningful, as opposed to if there is a line out the door of extra planar ambassadors begging you to save their civilization, well, you'r problems just might be a little too big for human players to relate to/care about.  some people like to pretend to be gods, but i always found a lot of satisfaction in proving human potential.  I like that no matter what "race" you pick, your just as human as the rest of us,  with minor (mostly cosmetic) differences.   
      Like chainsaw said, this is the game and world I wish I developed, and very close to the atmosphere I paint in any of my dnd settings.  

The darker atmosphere is definitely something that ASSH has going for it, but I generally make my own settings, or at least revamp published settings to make them my own, so I can get the grit regardless of what rule I'm using.  (Just so long as they don't write plot immunity for PCs directly into the rules...)

I think the three things that really grabbed me about ASSH over all the other retroclones out there are:

1) I like the FA/CA/TA and saving throw mechanics.  They nicely simplify and unify a lot of the standard mechanics.  In particular, players who are deathly allergic to THAC0 seem to deal just fine with "roll d20+FA+AC for 20+", even though it's the exact same thing.

2) The setting actually integrates Lovecraft without either being all Mythos, all the time (CoC, etc.) or just slapping a superfluous Cthulhu on the side and leaving it at that (like pretty much everything else that contains Cthulhu, but isn't specifically focused on HPL).

3) Most of all, it's the first game I've seen in ages with interesting writing (rather than reading like a dry technical manual) that actually writes up to the reader rather than down to them.  I can't remember the last time I encountered a rulebook that has had me reaching for a dictionary, but it was probably sometime in the 80s, when AD&D was the primary RPG I was playing...  The nonstandard spellings of various words are fun, too.

I've always been more drawn to settings that have linkages to either real Earth or Mythic Earth's history, so the setting originally drew me in, but after first getting the pdfs and the box-set shortly thereafter, I was struck by the quality of the writing, and the way it set my imagination on fire. Enough so, that I managed to rope 3 of my geek friends who had never played a Pen-and-Paper roleplaying game, into playing and it's been a blast. My only regret is that we've all been so busy lately that we had to suspend things for a couple of months.