Mythmere1 said:
Almost every C&C thread posted so far has devolved into an edition war, as 3.x players dive in to say how much they would hate playing C&C and how wonderful 3.x is. It's a little irritating, since it becomes almost impossible for the C&C players to discuss the game or even describe it to the curious.
Why are the 3.x players so threatened by C&C?
Some of us aren't. At least from my PoV, I'm the only person in my gaming groups (there's 2 of them) who knows of it, and I would much rather run D20 Modern or play 3e. No other potential DMs knowing of the product = I'll never have to go through it.
I've never seen GURPS attacked so fiercely, or Hackmaster, and these are both FRPGs, so that doesn't seem to be the issue.
I know nothing of Hackmaster, but GURPS isn't D20.
I think the issue arises because a lot of DnD players do see the game as too complicated, but see C&C as "reactionary". It goes too far in the other direction, sucking away feats, skill ranks and other things that make DnD characters special. It's also vague on a lot of rules, eg magic items. (If your game doesn't use magic items, just say it.) I
really do not want to run a game where every NPC fighter is the same. I know it'll take me 20 times longer to stat up an NPC, and I
know I hate doing up their magic items, but that's still better than a 2e-style "30 seconds approach" NPC - IMO.
Plus, bringing back some 2e elements, like differential XP tables, was just a bad idea. And I have to say, I didn't think anyone could make a monk
worse than in 3e but C&C managed to do it. I've seen a lot of monk-types that failed (eg the Oathbound) but they're usually not
worse.
Now of course I could just add feats back to the game, or something along those lines, but that's going to affect balance. Let's face it, many of us DMs love the CR system because we're not too good at balancing things - that's why people get ticked when they see unbalanced PrCs and monsters with horribly inaccurate CRs. (Remember it's the professionals writing this stuff... and
they get a lot of it wrong.) Most of us are not DnD professionals, we're just gamers with a little extra responsibility. I don't want to add on the even greater responsibility of creating that many house rules.
The more skilled gamer can run a system without such crutches, but it's difficult to say "hey, I can run the game without these crutches, so why can't you?" without looking like you think you're better than everyone else. I get the same feeling when someone says they can successfully "run a low-combat
deep game... nyah nyah, you suck 'cuz you can't do it too".
IMO the only really complex part of
core DnD are treasure issues and excessive use of AoOs. The game only spirals out of control when you have three or four splatbooks being added to the game.
Ok, you can get some more flexibility (eg making sure everybody gets their moment in the sun, creating interesting NPCs, etc) but other that making stat blocks this isn't any different than in C&C.
Even C&C monsters get my goat, so to speak. Yes, they're simpler. I miss how in 2e I could throw together a monster in 3 minutes. Give it an appearance, HD, damage and special abilities, AC and toss it out. Of course, I hated
running such a monster, and I hated
fighting such a monster (if I were the player).
DnD has another serious problem - lack of flexibility, but I have not seen C&C do one iota to fix that. If you're going to make a "better" gaming system, you should try to fix that, too. Maybe DnD fans feel threatened because they think the game claims it's better. Even if the game isn't claiming it's better, when people proclaim "I'll never run 3e again 'cuz this is so much better" it can cause us to feel jealous. (Oddly enough, I rarely see D20 Modern getting this heat. I predict it will if D20 Past turns out to be any good and actually comes with a balanced FX system.)
Since splatbooks are "broad-brush" (eg they try to tackle many things) you usually end up with stuff you don't want ... frequently a lot of stuff. If the DM buys the splatbook, they frequently find themselves being besieged by vocal players who want to use this or that which the DM didn't want to use (he only wanted three feats, poor guy) but they feel they have to allow it to be nice to the players. Confusion abounds, the game gets more complicated, the DM spend even more time trying to maintain game balance and spotlight balance than on creating an interesting plot and NPCs, etc... It's worse when a player buys the book, since now the DM hs to find a way to "validate their purchase" without tossing out 90% of the material.
If WotC would put out more focused splatbooks, I think the "flexibility driving the game out of control" would be a much smaller problem. There would just be treasure, game inflexibility and AoOs to worry about. I could probably live with that.
Maybe I've been able to avoid a lot of of these threads (and make my Will saves) because I have an escape valve - D20 Modern. I'm not running DnD right now because it's too inflexible and focuses too much on items, and I might not run it again. D20 Modern doesn't have these problems ... but it still has feats, talents, skill ranks, and other things to make characters
special and
unique.
