So what's the consensus on Castles&Crusaders

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Well I think the racial animosity part is from 1e and older editions where there was a chart dedicated to that. Personally I always have NPCs have a negative reaction to orcish types unless they have a reason not to. One thing I liked about 1e 1/2O PC is they were assumed to be from the small percentage who favor their human heritage over their crcish, but now they are depicted as barely different than full blown orcs. Glad S&W doesn't have them as a race. It will force one player to not make up another generic 1/2O Paladin!

I don't think you can hold bad DM'ing against the system. Personally I'd say make an ability check if necessary but if its not vital to check for success, they aren't trying to swim the Mississippi with an anvil strapped to their chest under fire from goblins, just have them make it across.

As for old school 3d6 roll em as they are. We made up PC for my S&W game and I was pleasantly surprised my players didn't whine when they rolled a 14/12/8/5/10/11 stat line. Maybe there is hope for them.

 

[amethal]

Well I think the racial animosity part is from 1e and older editions where there was a chart dedicated to that.

Well, female characters having a lower maximum strength than male characters was in older editions but that was not ported across to C&C. In this case the C&C designers designed to ramp up Dwarven "species-ism". In AD&D you could have a dwarf and a half orc in the same party. In C&C, per the PHB, you can't. (Interestingly the setting book dials back on Dwarven prejudices a fair bit - if you are playing in the default setting you can actually have a dwarf and a half orc in the same party.)

I don't think you can hold bad DM'ing against the system.

I'm not sure I agree with you 100% here - potentially you could have systems which make bad DMing more likely, and systems which make it more difficult. However, that wasn't the point I was making. I can (and do) hold it against C&C that the an example of play, in the core rulebook, shows what I consider to be terrible DMing as an example of how the game is supposed to be played.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I misread that, I didn't realize that the example of the swimming thing was in the book. Though honestly I can see why you would do that the more I think of it, a desert PC never seen large bodies of water, etc, but if it doesn't really add anything to the game I'd just handwave it unless there was some reason it needed to be an issue. Though if that was part of a barrier that was necessary to overcome, or force players to make decisions on how they are going to get past this I don't have a problem with it.

Per book C&C dwarves are more hostile to Orcs so just ignore or change that if it bothers you.

 

[amethal]

I misread that, I didn't realize that the example of the swimming thing was in the book. Though honestly I can see why you would do that the more I think of it, a desert PC never seen large bodies of water, etc, but if it doesn't really add anything to the game I'd just handwave it unless there was some reason it needed to be an issue. Though if that was part of a barrier that was necessary to overcome, or force players to make decisions on how they are going to get past this I don't have a problem with it.

I'm going from memory here, but IIRC since it is only a short example we don't know if the desert PC had never seen large bodies of water. There is nothing to indicate he is a 1st level character, or what he has been doing since he left the desert. There is nothing to indicate that it was ever discussed with the player in advance - e.g. if the DM went "cool background; I'll give you lots of free benefits whenever your desert experience would come in handy, but the downside is you won't be able to swim; is that ok?"

It is presented as "we need to get across the river" followed by a ruling from the DM that the character can't swim.

Also, there is no reason why the characters had to be rangers; it wouldn't have rankled me if they were any other class and so didn't have swimming as a class feature. Either the authors forgot the features of a class they had designed, or they deliberately made them rangers to make the point that the DM can mess with your character in any way he likes. The other ranger has no backstory given; on the basis of this example of play the wisest backstory is none at all.

Per book C&C dwarves are more hostile to Orcs so just ignore or change that if it bothers you.

I did consider not posting my opinion, on the grounds that somebody was bound to suggest I could just house rule the bits I don't like.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I've yet to find a game I didn't have to house rule in some fashion. It just depends on how much you have to houserule it before you are better off with a different rule-set.

 

[RevTurkey]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the C&C PHB is a bit vague and contradictory on purpose to encourage people to go off trail and change things or interpret them to suit their own style etc.. actually considered a feature.

I don’t allow Half-Orcs as such in my games and re-skin them as savage barbarians if need be. I also don’t usually think much of examples of play as they are mostly dry and boring anyway.

That said, you make perfectly valid points. It’s a game that can be a lot of fun with an odd choice or tweak to suit and I think that is the key thing to grasphold of. I have yet to find a game that doesn’t get some things wrong to my eyes.

 

[Robyo]

I ran a short campaign (levels 1-6) with it, and it definitely has AD&D feel, but less messy. It's really easy to convert stuff too. I think it does low level stuff really well.

I would probably run C&C for a quick one off, or teach some newbies. 5e is generally more involved chargen (using skills, and maybe feats).

 

[Toric_Arthendain]

I'm not sure where the idea that the ability to swim is a class ability of the Ranger is coming from. Looking through my Players Handbook, that does not appear in the class ability list of the Ranger. Now I'm looking at a 6th printing Players Handbook so maybe that changed in the 7th? But these printings haven't changed much since the 1st so I'm doubting that is the case. Class abilities are Combat Marauder, Conceal, Delay/Neutralize Poison, Move Silently, Scale, Traps, Survival, Track and Favored Enemy. I've even scanned the text of the class and see no mention of swimming. And the Survival class ability doesn't mention swimming either.

Regarding racial animosity, this is certainly a shout out to the same information in the 1e AD&D Players Handbook. Beyond that, I think the book points out generalities with regards to the relations between the different races and I don't read it as written in stone (dwarves hate orcs generally but some might be willing to give a half orc a chance however grudgingly). In fact, for half orcs it mentions that they often join adventuring parties because those sorts of people are often outcasts or ostracized themselves in some way. Dwarves are mentioned as having a hatred of goblinoids due to years of conflict and they do get a penalty to Charisma rolls when dealing with orcs and half orcs but I'm not seeing anything that explicitly says they can't adventure with half orcs. Certainly you can take all of the generalities mentioned in the racial writeups and apply them to your campaign if you wish but I believe most settings are a bit more nuanced than that. Sure MOST dwarves probably are gonna be unfriendly at best to a half orc but there are exceptions. If I have a dwarf and a half orc in a party that I am DMing, I don't enforce any implied racial hatreds on the two players. That's up to them to decide through play. If a half orc walks into a dwarven city, sure, he's gonna have a tough time, until such a time as he can somehow prove himself to the dwarves. But in a player character party of mixed classes and races, those sorts of things are best left to the players to decide.

 

[SPECTRE666]

AS&SH?

 

[mach1.9pants]

Astonishing Sorcerers and Swordsmen of Hyperborea. A cracking swords and sorcery take on 1e