Whizbang Dustyboots said:
Most C&C fans when they evangelize talk about it as an old school gaming system. Maybe Troll Lords didn't plan on it, but the results seem in line with what the players want.
I'd also agree with this statement. Me, I'm a huge fan of C&C. I already have AD&D and the RC if I just want an "old school" game. But most of the people championing C&C seem to be _really_ into playing the old stuff, and that's about it. Poking around the Troll Lord forums, it's all about old stuff too.
Of course whenever I see someone wondering about how well C&C would do with something like Eberron or Ptolus, I always see a pile of people talking about how you really have to use 3.5 to run the settings, because they're "designed" with 3.5 in mind. Which makes about as much sense to me as saying that you can't really run a horror game using d20, because d20 was designed with dungeon crawls in mind.
The single biggest thing I think that makes people dismiss C&C as being nothing more than "old school" with a new facelift, is the individualized XP tracks for the classes. I personally don't happen to like how every single class in D&D uses one XP track, because I don't think it's really balanced. But that's my opinion, and is no more wrong than saying I like the color blue. The second killer of C&C as being anything more than a game people like to dismiss as being good for nothing other than nostalgia, is the lack of a class building system. While Buy the Numbers works for me to solve that particular itch, it does mean some extra work.
The fact that people have to put in work to make new classes, that C&C isn't using a single XP track like D&D does, and that all of its products (and a majority of its fans) are focused on old style fantasy gaming, is pretty much what's going to keep it from reaching it's full potential for all except a relative handful of people.
And those folks (like me) that are using it for stuff other than old-school? We're around, we just don't bother saying much. People that don't like C&C aren't interested in hearing what we've done with it, and the C&C fans seem to be focused more on looking back than forward. Sure, C&C is worth a heck of a lot more than just "old school" gaming. I don't see much point in trying to change people's mind though. Despite the fact that I've never run a 3.x game, and don't ever plan on doing so (unless it were the d20 Lone Wolf game), I own a number of things for D&D/d20 and I'm quite pleased with 'em. So I'll just enjoy watching folks do all the heavy lifting of rules balancing and arguments, and then take what's built and strip it down like an auto at the chop-shop.
Seems like a win-win situation to me.
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