How Quickly is C&C Catching on?

[gideon_thorne]

All that means is that you havent met my players

*laughs* I'll grant you that one. Although i find that people think my particular gaming style is passing strange as well.

Takes all kinds to make an rpg experience

 

[Captain Loincloth]

After reading Akrasia's review of C&C on RPGnet, I am strongly thinking about buying the game. Having just spent the past two hours reading all the posts in this thread, I decided to throw in my two cents worth.

First, I generally love having a lot of options to customize my characters. However, many people I play with don't. To them skills and feats are a hassle. They'd rather just "play a barbarian" than worry about which skills and feats they have to take. And to be honest, sometimes I'm the same way.

Second, having a lot of options allows the experienced gamers to become very good at optimizing their characters. This is not bad, even good, if all the players are experienced, but when you mix in newer players, it can be a recipe for disaster as the old-timers dominate the game, while the newbies can feel extremely frustrated. It also can be frustrating if you mix pure powergamers in with roleplayers as the roleplayers pick the skills and feats which best suit their conceptions, while the powergamers pick those which allow him to be more effective, thus the powergamers often dominate.

Third, many gamers like to individualize their characters by choosing appropriate names, appearances, and personalities which give color to their individual characters. Back in AD&D1 days this was quite common.

I like 3.x, don't get me wrong. But there are things I truly dislike about the game. Characters gain experience too fast for my taste, the system of CR's encourages DM's to hand out magic items at a standard rate, and the kenderized halflings make me want to throw up.

3.x did a great thing by getting a lot of former gamers back into gaming and bringing in a lot of new blood. But it does not suit everybody's style. Thus we have things like Conan, Blue Rose, and Castles and Crusades. Having options such as those are options I REALLY like.

 

[Melan]

My comments are really directed at those who've argued that you can do everything in C&C that you can with 3e. You can't. You have to make up a bunch of rules to do everything. Don't play C&C if that's what you want to do. Play C&C if you want to not have all that stuff and then add back only a few of the things you consider most important.
Bolie IV

Give this man a cigar, he speaketh truth.

 

[Akrasia]

... 3.x did a great thing by getting a lot of former gamers back into gaming and bringing in a lot of new blood. But it does not suit everybody's style. Thus we have things like Conan, Blue Rose, and Castles and Crusades. Having options such as those are options I REALLY like.

I could not agree with this more.

After a few years of 3E dominance, it is finally occurring to people that one shoe size does not fit all. But this is, to a great extent, something accomplished by, and possible by means of, the OGL.

 

[Von Ether]

*chuckles* Funny thing... check out Amazon and look up the Castles and Crusades book. There is a bit where some dealer offers the C&C players book and the Ebberon campaign setting as a package deal. The irony is epic.

Sides...there is nothing to converting 3.5 stuff to C&C. Just make feats into class abilities and prestige classes into base classes. Which amounts to no more than deciding what prime is appropriate to the class needing converting.

Hmmm. On a Eberron conversion, that depends on how CnC will have one create magic items. There's only one new PC class in Eberron and his biggest abilities are a unique ability to take the Use Magic Device skill to new heights as well as a "craft reserve" that give set number of point to be used instead of XP to craft an item (and if you don't use all your points, you lose them next level). But just creating a useful "Alchemist" that specializes minor magic items wouldn't be a copyright issue. I am assuming the illusionist is a specialized wizard, so it might be a tempting template.

There is also a race, the shifters, that focus on taking feats to improve their parital shape shifting abilities. This would almost have to be a class/race combo ala Basic, but a good set of multiclassing rules would give the race some variety back. ... A shifter wouldn't be the most "optimal" choice, but then again we've been chatting up that CnC attracts mostly the story telling crowd.

And there's Action Points, a house rule that emphasizes the "add what you want" aspect of CnC. I'll assume there's little to no mechanical changes to how races work so the humanoid shapeshifting of the Changelings and the laundry list of abilities for Warforged would work just right.

Part of the "engine" that make Eberron go is the much more common NPC classes being used by NPCs. Those could be used as is and we're done.

Thinking again about storytelling and older editions, let me tell you that in my playing DnD in the Midwest in the 80s was so not like that. I can't tell you how many times my "Middle Ages James Bond" or my "Professional Adventurer" or my "Robin Hood" PC was totaly ignored as we marched down yet another dungeon to find more traps for the group. During high school and college, if you wanted "storytelling" a GM or player knew he had to use another game to get the job done. Was the game designed like that? Hell, AD&D was the only RPG that I knew of that where people used minis to play. All the other non-DnD GM pointed to that fact to prove they were more storyteller vs. dungeon crawl.

 

[Breakdaddy]

Give this man a cigar, he speaketh truth.

Except for the fact that I cant remember having seen anyone in this thread say that you *could* do everything with C&C that you can with D&D out of the box. There is invariably that caveat that states that you must houserule it to do this or that. In that regard, I think he is a tad bit off the mark. No offense is meant here, bolie has been a good contributor to this thread, I just wanted to point that out. Of course, I havent gone back and reread each post en toto to make absolutely sure about this, this is all vague recollection at the moment. Feel free to quote someone making this claim and smack me down properly.

 

[Breakdaddy]

Hmmm. On a Eberron conversion, that depends on how CnC will have one create magic items.

Brother, if you get C&C and hammer out some type of Eberron conversion let me know, I will be ALL over that!

 

[Breakdaddy]

I like 3.x, don't get me wrong. But there are things I truly dislike about the game. Characters gain experience too fast for my taste...

This is one of the things I thought I would like most about 3.x D&D and ended up liking least. It's TOO much reward when you factor in the magic items (the way they are meant to be distributed, not MY way ) and gold distribution. Of course, I am a stingy ass GM (ask my poor players!), and make these guys earn every last gold crown they acquire. The system does not break when you play it the way I play it, so Its not HUGE, but it is very irksome to me nevertheless, particularly (as recently happened with my group) when you have an outsider come in and watch your game and comment on how you arent distributing loot the "right" way.

 

[cleaverthepit]

Hey breakdaddy

WFRG conversion idea - primes relate to profession instead of attibute. that's my first breakthough, next is how to do prefession and associated abilities - ugggg. and actually finding my old rulebook so I know what I am doing.

davis

 

[Breakdaddy]

Hey breakdaddy

WFRG conversion idea - primes relate to profession instead of attibute. that's my first breakthough, next is how to do prefession and associated abilities - ugggg. and actually finding my old rulebook so I know what I am doing.

davis

Excellent! I will happily lend you mine if you cant locate yours. Its not in great shape anymore (lots of mileage!), but its perfectly usable.