Castles&Crusades: Is this "The One"?

[aramis erak]

4) An OSR variation (OSE, Castles & Crusades, Shadowdark, etc.)

Retreater, a serious question: do your players already play any other OSR or genuine Old School games?
If so, are they D&D mechanics? (OE, Holmes Basic, BX/BECMI/Cyclo, EG, OSE, DCC, S&W, AS&SOH, etc)

The mechanical differences of C&C for the old school player are signifcant, even as it's not too much different for the GM. I know that my attempts to get C&C to table were all stymied by exactly this issue - it looks like D&D, but the mechanics are not D&D. And that was with C&C whitebox...

I had the same issue trying to get D&D OE back to table, too. Just different enough to be uncomfortable, not different enough to justify the learning curve they faced. Well, more correctly, the unlearning curve.

 

[Retreater]

Retreater, a serious question: do your players already play any other OSR or genuine Old School games?
If so, are they D&D mechanics? (OE, Holmes Basic, BX/BECMI/Cyclo, EG, OSE, DCC, S&W, AS&SOH, etc)

I have two players who started (like me) in the TSR AD&D era. I have another (quite vocal player who also happens to be my wife) who is adamant that OSR games aren't fun. She argues that characters tend to start much weaker than they are in modern systems & you are discouraged from fighting (which is the "fun" part for her, because she's a slayer who likes doing big damage).

I really long for the old school type of game. I was hoping that C&C - which sort of blends OSR and more modern play - would be a compromise. It seems like the only compromise is 5E - which is the system they want to play.

To me, I'm not interested in 5E for a multitude of reasons.
1) Bad track record. We've tried it multiple times and it's never lasted.
2) Players tend to keep falling into the same routines. (For example, one player is always a rogue that does the same thing in every campaign.)
3) Players keep mixing up bonus actions and standard actions - and "farming" for bonus actions
4) I've been running it nonstop since 2014 and would love a break from the system.
5) I've run basically all the official adventure content that is well reviewed and don't have time to create my own adventures.
6) They don't try anything creative - it's just the actions and abilities on their sheets.
7) We have difficulty keeping a full party of players - so I have to run an NPC healbot to maintain balance. (An OSR system with henchmen would be an easier solution.)
8) I miss the monster design from older editions that had legends, lore, and story baked in. More modern games present stat blocks, which don't really inspire me.

Sorry for the off topic rant. I just wanted to explain why I want to run a system like C&C.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Retreater, a serious question: do your players already play any other OSR or genuine Old School games?
If so, are they D&D mechanics? (OE, Holmes Basic, BX/BECMI/Cyclo, EG, OSE, DCC, S&W, AS&SOH, etc)

The mechanical differences of C&C for the old school player are signifcant, even as it's not too much different for the GM. I know that my attempts to get C&C to table were all stymied by exactly this issue - it looks like D&D, but the mechanics are not D&D. And that was with C&C whitebox...

I had the same issue trying to get D&D OE back to table, too. Just different enough to be uncomfortable, not different enough to justify the learning curve they faced. Well, more correctly, the unlearning curve.

I've run into that problem myself more than once. Had a devil of a time teaching A5e to my group at first. And I still can't get them to play OSR games (though playstyle may be an issue there).

 

[Retreater]

I've run into that problem myself more than once. Had a devil of a time teaching A5e to my group at first. And I still can't get them to play OSR games (though playstyle may be an issue there).

We've tried two back-to-back campaigns of A5e (and they seem likely to want to start a 3rd this weekend).

• They can't run their characters without the Level Up Gateway character software - so the table is clogged with tablets and laptops.
• Some of the math isn't correct on the software, which causes a big issue every time it comes up.
• I think a player has thought to use a combat maneuver once. (They're oddly not very useful but take up more than their share of brain power.)
• They still can't get skills/expertise down correctly.
• They don't understand Fatigue and Strife.
• They bemoan Supply as a concept.

A5e certainly crossed whatever line existed between 2014 D&D and a failed sanity check that resulted from gazing at rules bloat. As a reaction to it, I want to do something much simpler.

 

[Micah Sweet]

We've tried two back-to-back campaigns of A5e (and they seem likely to want to start a 3rd this weekend).

• They can't run their characters without the Level Up Gateway character software - so the table is clogged with tablets and laptops.
• Some of the math isn't correct on the software, which causes a big issue every time it comes up.
• I think a player has thought to use a combat maneuver once. (They're oddly not very useful but take up more than their share of brain power.)
• They still can't get skills/expertise down correctly.
• They don't understand Fatigue and Strife.
• They bemoan Supply as a concept.

A5e certainly crossed whatever line existed between 2014 D&D and a failed sanity check that resulted from gazing at rules bloat. As a reaction to it, I want to do something much simpler.

Well, it certainly isn't for everybody. My group is getting the hang of it, but they forget about combat maneuvers too. It's too bad; I really like them personally. They grokked Supply, and Fatigue/Strife well enough, and they don't need Gateway (although I wouldn't begrudge them if they did).

All that aside, I too would love to play or run some OSR. I've tried DCC and ACKS so far, but my wife in particular has a neo-trad mindset and really doesn't like the greater fragility of OSR PCs. I on the other hand grew up in this hobby knowing your PC has no guarantee of success or living past any given session, so none of that is a problem for me. She hates henchmen too. Just not a fan of that subculture I guess.

 

[Retreater]

All that aside, I too would love to play or run some OSR. I've tried DCC and ACKS so far, but my wife in particular has a neo-trad mindset and really doesn't like the greater fragility of OSR PCs. I on the other hand grew up in this hobby knowing your PC has no guarantee of success or living past any given session, so none of that is a problem for me. She hates henchmen too. Just not a fan of that subculture I guess.

I may be an outlier, I've had more character deaths by an order of magnitude in the modern era of gaming (3rd edition and onwards) than I did in my TSR era. Part of that is I felt free as a DM. The rules weren't so codified as "have this many encounters in a day," "you can handle enemies of this Challenge Rating," etc. I felt free to present an encounter with a single goblin that hid a treasure behind a dialogue of riddles. A too-powerful magic item wouldn't dissolve game balance because the game didn't care about balance. The game was flexible enough to bend instead of breaking.

Today, I feel like I am an AI reading a script of a published adventure - and most of them are horrible. I'd write my own, but I am so drained after work, school, and other social obligations - not to mention that the rules are so darned thick they zap my creativity instantly.

 

[timbannock]

I hear you on a lot of this. I have a group that's willing to try stuff, but generally they would much prefer 5E, and in large part because of the power-fantasy aspect. They want to feel powerful. They don't want to start at 0, they want to start at about level 3-5, and then get up as high as we can in a campaign. It's all about skyrocketing numbers and feeling absolutely John Wick-style cool in these tactical fights where the outcome is most likely on their side.

Toward that end, I only have a couple recommendations: The first is to check out Nimble. It's really winning me over as a lighter 5E experience. It has loads of content already, plus the conversion and building tools for monsters and the like are extremely robust and streamlined at the same time.

Another one is simply trying to lean into very short 1-3 session adventures for other games. A sort of show-and-tell, "hey, just give this one a shot for a couple sessions" games. Don't bother with much presentation or anything, just schedule the days, give them a sentence or two about the game, and see who shows up. No harm, no foul. People that love the company might show up even if the game doesn't catch their imagination, you can maybe pull in some new players if you want to test them out, and maybe the game will stick.

 

[jolt]

I hear you. Anecdotally, in my experience, before 3E we never lacked for DM's; everyone wanted to run a game. Running a game was fun. From 3E onward, very few people seemed to want to DM. Too much work and it showcases too little of your own creativity. People I've talked to complain that they feel like the computer in a crpg when running a game.

 

[CleverNickName]

I hear you. Anecdotally, in my experience, before 3E we never lacked for DM's; everyone wanted to run a game. Running a game was fun. From 3E onward, very few people seemed to want to DM. Too much work and it showcases too little of your own creativity. People I've talked to complain that they feel like the computer in a crpg when running a game.

That was the biggest issue my table had with the 3.X/Pathfinder rules. It wasn't just the math either--it was board position, it was order of operations, it was synergy. You would roll a d20 and add a bonus, sure. But depending on whether you moved Here and Attacked, or if you Attacked first then Moved, or moved to a different spot and used a different attack, that bonus could be very different.

It was exhausting, and it was every single turn. It got better with 5E, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.