Gygax's Canting Crew: Opinions?

[Kichwas]

See this thread on RPG.net:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?threadid=6581

The thread starts out by ripping into the book pretty hard. But later in the thread (at the time of my posting this to ENWorld) some people come to it's defense in fairly rational ways.

Now we all know RPG.net has it in for d20; but both sides of the thread there seem to be d20 fans.


So...

Anyone here seen the book yet? Read it? Formed a solid and informed opinion?

I saw it for all of about 5 minutes yesterday at the local store but the $35 price put it on my 'only buy if I determine that I really need it' list. So I don't have the ability as yet to form an opinion of it.

 

[Melan]

It seems to be that it is just a "rip into Gygax cuz it's sooo kewl and progressive" kind of thread - so far, I haven't seen any constructive deabte, just the usual anti-Gygax squad and Gary's fanatical worshippers going for each other's troaths. RPGNet is literally crawling with people like that. The opening piece is ridiculous - the guy kinda admits that he just glanced at it and he "knew" it was bad. Very well informed, I must say!

The book? No, I don't have it yet.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Not much I can do to dispell criticism...except to say that there is no random harlot table. There are harlots, though. ;-)

The book won't be for everybody. The CC focuses on a sample a unified "crew" of sorts for a large city and surrounding country. The goal is to get DMs and LMs to design similar settings, and it also serves as a dictionary of cant, symbols, and sign language for such a group of guilds.

The gygax books from TLG are more or less extrapolations of "realistic fantasy", and are designed to be dual stated with LA--the stats are more or less secondary compared to the main points. Gary's goal here is to more or less give DMs more creative tools for ALL games. For example.

World Builders Guide--more or less a collection of organized descriptors and tables, the "missing appendixes" from the 1st Edition DMG.

Everyday Life--Social Class details--think the original Dangerous Journeys: Mythus book. Incredible detail on how a society would be organized if it was based on the Late Middle Ages/Renninsance, taking into acount magic and active deities, of course. It's a real eye-opener and will probably give a lot of DMs great advice when creating a campaign.

IMO, the d20 content they have in the CC book doesn't totally fit within the book as well as the LA content. I didn't have anything to do with that other than one page--I probably would have focused on some special rules specific to the crew rather than new prestige classes and magic--they are still useful of course. (And unfortunately I didn't fix the mistakes in that one page...damn). I've assisted with a few of the other books more directly so the content should better fit the theme of the book.

As far as the criticism of it being $35.00 for rather large fonts--yeah, I think that's fair. IMO, they should probably make it softcover, and might need to consider that for the others in the line, especially considering the d20 content is secondary to the setting or encyclopedic content. But there is still a good deal of content here...

Hopefully enough people will like it.

 

[Glyfair]

I have to say, I saw it in the store this past week and decided against buying it after it was previously on my "must buy" list. The weighing factor? Far too much of the book was take up by the cant section. I think it was an interesting idea and some will eat it up. I would have probably enjoyed it in a smaller dose. However, the meager content for that price, IMO, just couldn't justify my purchase of it.

Glyfair of Glamis

 

[Shadowdancer]

I am interested in actually seeing this book, but so far have been unable to find it. At one time, I considered it a "must buy when it comes out," but the price tag now makes it a "I'll buy it if the content warrants it."

 

[enrious]

It does have plenty of interesting bits and can help you run a realistic theives guild or city.

The real knock on it for me is the percieved value - with the execption of the dictionary, the font is larger than any other publisher's fonts that I can remember. In other words, very low text density for the book (had this used smaller fonts, it would have been between 96 and 144 pages, IMO).

For the money, I don't think it's worth it. It is a useful product, but artificially overpriced IMO. If they want to keep the low text density, they should make future released softcover to help lower the price.

As it is, looking at Spycraft makes me think that CC is about $5-10 overpriced. It's the same feeling I have about Bastion's Arms and Armor or Alchemists and Herbalists - good products but don't need full color glossy pages, which raise the cost for no percieved benefit to me.

 

[Zappo]

It's been a while since I've last seen col_pladoh on the boards, come to think about it.

 

[7thlvlDM]

I saw Canting Crew at my local game store yesterday. My first reaction was, hmm, this seems thinner than what I'd expect. My second reaction was, wow, that text is HUGE! Then I put it back on the shelf.

-7th

 

[Butholios]

Cant versus Innuendo

So there's a whole section in this book that gives a word-by-word translation of "Cant"? Wasn't the whole ridiculous idea that thieves use a secret language kinda rendered obsolete by the Innuendo skill?

I mean, wouldn't it be easy to find criminals if they used a special language--not just slang, but an actual language?

 

[enrious]

My understanding is that the cant isn't used just by thieves, but by many in the lower classes period.

And there is historical support for such a cant, just as there are examples of modern day versions to be found readily.