Castles & Crusades standing the test

[scadgrad]

...
D&D was based on a wargame. All of its rules, all of its (not-really-archetypical) archetypes, all of its complexities and oddities owe their origins to that basic fact. D&D was wargaming-with-roleplaying - and it shows.

AD&D 2e tried to remake D&D, wargaming-with-roleplaying, into the inverse. It largely failed.

There was a very strong story-based theme to AD&D and classic D&D. Sure it involved a lot of combat, but what do you expect given the genre it's coming from. The point is that the game itself was designed to be played without any miniatures at all and it functions quite well like that. I played D&D in one form or the other without minis or so much as a battlemat for basic placement for probably 7 years.

How many war games can you name that don't use either chits and hexes or minis of some sort?

Even today, I can easily run C&C encounters without even needing the minis. 3.X is hardly different at all from Battletech in that the game assumes that you need minis and a battlemat of some sort to play properly. The wargaming aspect is DESIGNED INTO the game and is a fundamental part of it.

Your assertion about 2nd ed completely ignores the fact that most players left not because it became "more roleplaying," but rather because of the ridiculous changes from 1st ed all of which were only enacted as a part of the "De-Gygaxification Agenda" foisted upon us by She Who Must Not Be Named and her toadies at T$R.

...A level-based, combat-oriented system of rules based on killing things and taking their stuff just doesn't work very well for roleplaying-with-wargaming.

C&C is trying to do the same thing as 2e, and to my mind what it's doing is doomed to fail.

A good point here that the age-old mechanic can get a bit worn and I'm not taking anything away from GR's T20 which seems an excellent idea, but the source material for D&D is reasonably consistant w/ the "improve over time through acquisition and experience" model. It's just taken to an extreme degree for game purposes.

By Crom, Conan has always been about killing other beings and taking their stuff. That's how you become King of Aquilonia.

The level-based mechanic, which I readily admit can be a big problem for some folks, is a simple abstract to carry the game along with some degree of balance (but only some degree).

Boy I hope you're wrong about C&C and T20 for that matter. At this point though, the future for C&C looks reasonably bright.

 

[scadgrad]

With regards to Mythmere's thread...
...Let's face it, there are still monsters and treasures, and the general ideas is to kill stuff, and loot the corpse....I'm playing in Scadgrad's game currently, and if he wasn't such an excellent GM (truly) and thought outside the box with regards to the C&C rules, I'd probably be pulling my hair out if I had to play C&C as written....

Having played C&C for a few weeks now I was hesitant at first to give up skills, but I don't miss them at all. Scadgrad uses a background template concept that sort of defines my background, and who I am, and that pretty much encompasses what I do and don't know...

...In Scadgrad's game, I hardly even notice that I'm playing C&C. We use miniatures, there are flanking rules, feats, and even criticals (albeit slightly different). The players still have flexibility in how they build their characters, and Scadgrad has the rules simplicity of C&C, so he can make up monsters quickly, and resolve combat relatively painlessly....

Hell, I think we may have found the holy grail of gaming.

<scadgrad blushes>

Gee, that's very nice of you to say Curtis, just want to add a few thoughts.

I still contend that what we're doing is role-playing, albeit with a good dose of combat. Again combat and heroic struggle are a large part of the genre.

Yeah, I was concerned about skills and the loss thereof, but no one in our group has really missed them. It all boils down to "is your setting well defined" in such a way that the DM and the player can make logical assumpitons about what skills the character would be good at.

And yeah, I consider C&C to be my official houserules for 3.X. We just use "the good parts."

 

[scadgrad]

...
Kluge, if you and Scadgrad have found that Holy Grail, I'd love to see it on paper or on screen sometime. C&C forums are glad to take house rules variants.

Drop me an email and I'd be happy to send our C&C houserules PDF and anything else you'd like to see.

 

[der_kluge]

Yeah, I was concerned about skills and the loss thereof, but no one in our group has really missed them. It all boils down to "is your setting well defined" in such a way that the DM and the player can make logical assumpitons about what skills the character would be good at.

I think this is key. It works less well if someone is just running a couple of modules. I've always felt that having a really well defined world where cultures are present, and people can understand their relationship with their environment really helps when fleshing out character development. I think a system like C&C doesn't work as well if the world is not well developed in this regard.

 

[Dragonhelm]

No such thing as weapon finesse in C&C RAW last I checked. So, there's no way to truly represent a dex-based fighter, or one that favors speed over strength.

Yeah, you'd have to add weapon finesse in then take Dex as one of your primes.

I want the rules to make sense, and I want the rules to represent that some weapons are faster than other weapons, or more graceful. Like I said, even 2e had weapon speed, so there was a tactical advantage to using certain weapons over others.

I've played in games that used weapon speed, and it slowed down game play some. I never used it myself.

All things equal, players are simply going to pick weapons based on damage alone, since that's the only attribute of a weapon in C&C.

I can see your point. I don't agree 100%, but for those looking at things like weapon speed and what not, it can be a disadvantage.

My current C&C character sheet is 4 pages long. I like characters and roles, too. I don't like "boiler-plate" concepts, and there is no swashbuckler in the C&C rules. Imagine my struggle when I created a female dex-based fighter who duel wields a rapier and main-gauche. Well, I could have created it easily enough, but I also wanted one that didn't suck, and that was not easy.

There was a swashbuckler class listed on the C&C Wiki at one point, but the Wiki went poof. There were some other nice variant classes as well.

Perhaps, but not without a fight.

LOL! Keep smiling, man.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I didn't quit GMing C&C because I have any problems with C&C. I quit GMing C&C because my players (with one exception) fundamentally don't get the fact that C&C has a different gaming objective than 3E, and the effort to focus on that objective as a GM is wasted if the players aren't going to pick up on it.

My players (again, one exception, to be fair) aren't grasping the fact that C&C is quite different from the wargame-with-roleplaying. It is roleplaying-with-wargaming; this is the reason for a new set of rules - not just to make them lighter. My players are locked into the idea that they are still playing 3E, just with fewer rules. If I can't (and I have given up at this point) get them to understand that C&C is deliberately not 3E, then I'm just banging my head against a wall. I've had a player ask me "since we keep using 3e rules to resolve the ambiguities, why not just play 3e?" That's a total "don't get it."

It's a matter of having a fundamentally different approach to the game than my players do, not because I'm dissatisfied with C&C. For all they complain about the rules, they never learned to play the game.

I'm sorry to hear your C&C game didn't work out, Mythmere. Mine didn't either. My players bitched and whined about no feats, no skills, no AOOs (ugh), until I gave up and we went back to 3e. But now I'm a player, instead of a DM. I can't see myself dming another 3e game, but I can play and have a little fun - as opposed to a lot of fun in a C&C game. :-(

Last night's 3e game entailed 2 encounters. One with an obsidain minotaur (golem-like creature from the Tome of Horrors), and another with a marilith. The marilith fight lasted most of our 5 hour session. There were so many modifiers and everyone just sat around and did math most of the night. _2 for rage, +1 for prayer, +2 for magic circle against evil - wait, that doesn't stack with my +1 ring of protection, so -1 for that, +4 for bull's strength, but that doesn't stack with my gauntlets of ogre power, +1 for this, +2 for that. I handle that pretty well, though I do often forget effects like prayer or favored enemy. A couple of the newer players, though, son't realize that magic vestment doesn't stack with magical armor, or in general that modifiers from different sources sometimes don't stack. So the ones of us who do are constantly reminding them. I basicly do the math for 2-3 other players - and I have an English degree, I'm not fond of math. I can do math, I just don't like to. I'm supposed to be playing a game, not bookkeeping. Meh, I'm rambling now.

Anyway, if you're ever down Alabama way, I'd be happy to play in a C&C game. I'm currently trying to patch one together, but so far only 2 guys are interested, and one is on swing shift, so it's hard to schedule games around his work schedule.

 

[Turanil]

The marilith fight lasted most of our 5 hour session. <...> There were so many modifiers and everyone just sat around and did math most of the night. <...> I'm supposed to be playing a game, not bookkeeping.

This is the kind of games I find boring.

 

[Akrasia]

I didn't quit GMing C&C because I have any problems with C&C. I quit GMing C&C because my players (with one exception) fundamentally don't get the fact that C&C has a different gaming objective than 3E, and the effort to focus on that objective as a GM is wasted if the players aren't going to pick up on it.
...

I'm sorry to hear about this, Mythmere, especially given all the great support that you've given C&C over the past several months.

I was a bit more fortunate with my group. One player preferred C&C over 3e (though he moved away before the campaign properly got going), and one player preferred 3e over C&C (JohnSnow, who posts here regularly). The rest were largely neutral between the two systems, and even the player who preferred 3e nonetheless liked C&C well enough to go along with it, for the purposes of my campaign.

Having open minded players is the key for success when trying different/new systems. If players are stuck in a certain mindset (in this case, the 'number-crunching', 'rule-for-everything' approach of 3e), then no amount of cajoling will succeed.

I really hope you find a new group of players willing to give C&C an honest shot!

 

[Breakdaddy]

Drop me an email and I'd be happy to send our C&C houserules PDF and anything else you'd like to see.

Dude, I would love to see your adaptation. Would you fire a copy over to breakdaddy [at symbol] gmail dot com?

thanks!

 

[Dragonhelm]

Dude, I would love to see your adaptation. Would you fire a copy over to breakdaddy [at symbol] gmail dot com?

thanks!

If you don't mind, could I get a copy sent to me at (trampas [at symbol] dragonhelm dot net)?

Thanks in advance.