It's not just the rules. It's the way the book looks. The way it reads. These things are part of what make up the "feel" and "tone" of an RPG. I think you'd have a hard time getting people to disagree with the statement that "Castles & Crusades was intentionally modeled on 1st edition AD&D."
True enough, perhaps, not so long ago... but then I started to notice that at very high levels, the C&C-style SIEGE mechanic can really start to break down. So I decided to scrap it.
One thing that everybody used to complain about before 3e is that skill/ability checks didn't take the difficulty of an action into account, and that only thief skills really imrpoved with levels. After taking a look at this, I realized that (at least IMHO) 3e really takes things way too far. If a particular task is DC 30, a 1st level character doesn't have a prayer of succeeding, while a 20th level character can probably yawn and do it with his eyes closed. I can see how this is important for something like an attack roll or a saving throw, but for a skill check? Too hard at low levels, too easy at high levels, and I can't go back to the AD&D system, because that doesn't account for difficulty.
Inspiration struck when I remembered WoD. For the record, I friggin' hate Vampire, Mage, Hunter, and all of 'em. Just for the record. But I was kind of impressed with how the d10 system works to resolve (out of combat) tasks. Then, when I was browsing through Unearthed Arcana, I noticed the rules for complex skill checks. And that was it! Halleluja, my prayers were answered. It was a simple matter of coverting skill checks to simple ability checks, with a "DC" ranging from 1 to 4+ that gives the number of successful checks rolled against a base target of 10 that you need to successfully use the skill. It's my holy grail: level is mostly taken out of the equation, but difficulty is still there, and experienced characters can still spent multiple proficiency slots to add +3 bonuses to the checks, thereby keeping some sense of "my 12th level rogue with expertise in Stealth is far better than your 1st level rogue who only has basic proficieny in Stealth."
I've also decided to take things
in a bit of a different direction. I always loved how those old basic, expert, etc. D&D books just detailed a few levels of character advancement. Kept things neat and easy to read (and actually, easier to sort through as well). So that's what I'm doing here. My first document will just describe all the core rules, and character advancement up to 5th level only. Should make things less of a monstrous read for those of you who would actually like to take a look at this and offer some criticism.
