Castles & Crusades vs. Old School Essentials vs. Low Fantasy Gaming

[daddystabz]

Which do you prefer between Castles & Crusades Old School Essentials, and Low Fantasy Gaming and why?

 

[Libertad]

I own copies of C&C and OSE, but haven't read Low Fantasy Gaming, so my answer is rather incomplete.

Castles & Crusades is still going strong and it may have been errata'd, but during the time I read it the underlying math of the SIEGE engine was screwed up. As a "rules-lite/old-school D&D" system, other OSR games quickly occupied my interest, a lot of them broadly compatible with each other and official TSR modules. Although one of the newer retroclones, Old School Essentials continues on in the footsteps of games like Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry, but with stellar layout and reader-friendliness.

Castles & Crusades was meant to be a stripped-down version of the D20 system, and so has its inception lodged during the 3rd Edition era. I've long since moved on from 3.5 and Pathfinder, and find OSR and 5e games a lot more approachable. Thus OSE is the best choice of the 3 for me.

 

[Malmuria]

Just got OSE advanced fantasy and it is great. I like that you can run all the early modules with little problem, plus more modern modules.

 

[Retreater]

Of the three, I've played only OSE and C&C.

As mentioned before, C&C's SEIGE Engine is kind of wonky. It feels backwards compared to the rest of the d20-based mechanics. C&C was okay when we had only 3.x D&D in print, but now there are so many other rules options. In fact, I would prefer just to go with 5e D&D and try to run it a little more streamlined.

OSE, I didn't really like. My nostalgia isn't for BECMI D&D. There's not enough options (even in the advanced genre rules), and the options that they give are widely imbalanced (thieves and acrobats stink, for example). It tries to be too faithful for a system - while great in its time - most of us moved away from in the early 1980s.

Of all of the OSR systems, I probably prefer Swords & Wizardry. It's completely free in PDF, and while it has some of the same problems as OSE, it's at least a little more streamlined and simplified.

 

[Marc_C]

Didn't like Castles & Crusades Siege Engine.

Low Fantasy Gaming is an hybrid d20 OGL game.

OSE, did quench my thirst for a revamped publication of the B/X books. I did a few solitary games with it. Fun to thread that path again for nostalgia purposes.

I would say Advanced Labyrinth Lord is the best book for Old School gaming. It contains the basic Labyrinth Lord book (B/X) and the advanced options you can turn on as needed. 272 pages of goodness between two covers.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I played a ton of C&C back when it was new. It hit at the right time for me, just when I was getting worn out by 3e. But these days, I think I'd pick Old School Essentials over it. OSE hits the nostalgia buttons just right, and is an even more streamlined system. Can't speak to Low Fantasy Gaming, though.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

We moved our 3E campaign to C&C when 4E came out, as I needed a break from the increasingly cumbersome 3E system as everyone leveled up. It hit the sweet spot for me, with its broad compatibility with everything from OD&D through 3E (and probably 5E), but I never stopped having to puzzle through the Siege Engine, which isn't nearly as clear as the Troll Lords think and is an obviously subpar resolution system. But I loved that we could grab monsters, spells or even whole character classes from other editions of the game and throw them into C&C without breaking stride.

Their class design is great and the class-and-a-half system lets groups create unique classes that feel like 1E classes. A balanced, spell-less ranger and spell-less paladin by default (and a knight class, for folks who want their paladins to be entirely free of supernatural influence) are great, and you can then add back in spells through the class-and-a-half system. My campaign had a ranger with druid spells and one who had cleric spells through her worship of the goddess of home and hearth, and they both had a distinctive feel to them. Likewise, C&C gives you the 1E assassin, which you can turn into a 3E assassin by doing class-and-a-half with illusionist.

Some of their supplements, which have gone through multiple systems and have been converted by people without real system mastery (Book of Familiars, I'm looking at you) are kind of a mess, but it's the excited puppy enthusiasm of early Dragon magazine articles, rather than a cavalier attitude about putting out good products.

They've also put out a really solid line of various cultural takes on C&C (for the most part -- the Germanic and Norse books have a large overlap with each other and probably should have been one book, rather than asking people to buy the same material twice), something I'm surprised other companies haven't emulated in the same way.

The whole line could use a serious edit (at one point, their two main monster books had competing versions of Zork's grue, which no one at Troll Lords headquarters seemed to have realized) and I could not care less about their official setting that they increasingly focus on. But the Troll Lords themselves seem to be just about the nicest guys in the roleplaying business and their love of early to mid 1E radiates through the whole line (as opposed to Goodman's focus on early 1E flavor).

I would love to see someone come in with a ton of money and help them upgrade their line to more professional polish and maybe pry the Siege Engine from their fingers in favor of a more standard D20 resolution system, which I think would make their game instantly more accessible.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I haven't played OSE, but it has a great reputation. When I looked at the Kickstarter earlier this year, I think I bounced off not having racial classes (which I've come back around to liking as an option) and I think it uses decreasing AC, doesn't it? That's also a dealbreaker for me nowadays -- once I got a unified resolution system with 3E, I am never going back in D&D games.

 

[Retreater]

I haven't played OSE, but it has a great reputation. When I looked at the Kickstarter earlier this year, I think I bounced off not having racial classes (which I've come back around to liking as an option) and I think it uses decreasing AC, doesn't it? That's also a dealbreaker for me nowadays -- once I got a unified resolution system with 3E, I am never going back in D&D games.

In OSE there are options for ascending AC and the advanced genre rules lets you separate race and class.

 

[TwoSix]

I haven't played OSE, but it has a great reputation. When I looked at the Kickstarter earlier this year, I think I bounced off not having racial classes (which I've come back around to liking as an option) and I think it uses decreasing AC, doesn't it? That's also a dealbreaker for me nowadays -- once I got a unified resolution system with 3E, I am never going back in D&D games.

OSE uses racial classes (the core game is a faithful recreation of the B/X rules with a very nice layout); I think the Kickstarter was for the Advanced Fantasy genre rules, which convert a lot of 1E stuff into the B/X rules, but also has an optional race&class section in the book for those who want more of a 1E feel.