who else loves the C&C...?

[Philotomy Jurament]

I also agree C&C as written wasn't perfect for me, but with a couple of house rules, and tweaking a couple of the classes a little bit, and being able to use monsters and modules from every version of D&D (and OSRIC), its the best game for me.

Yeah, that's my experience, too. I house-ruled some things and draw on all the other editions (although I know some of my house-rules and such are different from yours). That seems to be very, very, common. C&C campaigns remind me of OD&D campaigns, back in the day (not the rules, themselves, but the attitude towards tweaking and house-ruling). Every DM made the game his own. That seems to be the case with C&C, too.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Regarding modules:

It's funny, but I haven't run that many C&C modules. I'm running campaigns in Yggsburgh, and that book is full of adventures and adventure hooks -- I highly recommend it. I also ran Dark Chateau, which I think was solid, but needed some tweaking, for my tastes. I also really liked Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom, but that's an OSRIC release, not C&C. I've read The Mysterious Tower and Palace of Shadows. Of the two, I think I prefer Mysterious Tower, but I haven't run them, yet, so it's hard to say.

Most of the stuff I've run has been homebrew based on the Yggsburgh hooks, or it has been older stuff (B1, B2, B4, X1, etc.)

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Well, with that kind of attitude you wouldn't be welcome at my table.

Oh, no.

FWIW, I don't even require a roll most of the time. If you're a sailor then you can climb rigging, no roll required (unless it's during a storm, or you're encumbered, then it's a Dex roll). If you're a woodsman you can track things, no roll required (unless there's something problematic with the trail, such as that they target has been making an effort to coneal its movements... then roll your Wis).

But, see, that's reasonable.

The problem is, there are a lot of unreasonable GMs - I've played with some and heard many stories about others - who use a rules-light system where "what a character can do" isn't well-defined and left up to GM fiat in an unreasonable fashion.

They're the sort of GMs who say to themselves, "Man, I want this guy to get away" and therefore simply make it impossible for the highly-experienced tracker to follow the trail, even when it's not plausible that the bad guy could cover his tracks that well.

It's not just about jerkoff GMs, though. There are plenty of corner cases, where the player has an expectation of what her PC can do which is at odds with the GM's idea of what her PC can do. To use an exaggerated example: historically, many sailors couldn't swim. If the player expects her former sailor to be able to swim because he's a former sailor, and the GM's assuming that he can't swim because of this historical fact, then you can run into problems when the sailor gets washed overboard during a storm.

Likewise, the more a player wants her PC to do, the more the GM has to rule on how it's done. That doesn't really happen any less in Third Edition D&D, actually; in my experience, no GM will make the PCs roll Climb checks when there's no pressure on them to climb quickly and they've got at least half an idea of how they're going to help the weak or inexperienced climbers up. That's just like your assumption that a sailor can climb the rigging automatically when there's nothing hindering him.

The more ad hoc rulings the GM has to make, the less content I am as a player or a GM. I mean, at some point, it simply becomes easier to use a system where the rules are already written up.

It's also the case that your schema doesn't really seem, at first glance, to have room for actually getting better at something your background has trained you to do. If climbing in difficult conditions is always a Dexterity check, for instance, is Dexterity forever the only arbiter of climbing ability under pressure? Is it impossible to learn from experience and get better at climbing in difficult conditions? One response would be, "Oh, if you're deliberately practicing or you've done it a lot, I'll give you bonuses or reduce the penalties" . . . but that's just a half-arsed skill system.

I mean, I get that the way this stuff works is via negotiation between the player and the GM - or, worst case scenario, via the GM's arse. I just get to a point, pretty rapidly I'll freely admit, where it just seems so much easier to use a rule that's been thought up by an experienced game designer.

 

[Treebore]

Actually, the screen is available.

While I agree there's not a whole lot of "Castles & Crusades" trademarked material at this point, I don't find that to be a problem at all. To me, one of the huge draws of C&C is the ease with which you can use other editions' products with it. I've been using ALL my old material (1E, 2E, and B/X), plus 3E stuff, too. Plus new C&C and OSRIC material.

As far as "why not just use 1E/OSRIC," that's certainly a valid option. C&C isn't really a 1E clone, though. Material from earlier editions is trivially easy to use with C&C, but the rules aren't exactly the same. I guess the two biggest reasons someone might choose C&C is ascending AC/BAB instead of THAC0 (although that doesn't matter much, to me), and the SIEGE engine for handling skills and feat-like actions. If you don't consider those enough of a draw, then running a different system would be fine. C&C is great, but I'd happily run 1E or B/X or OD&D, too.

Not to mention C&C makes it easy to use material from every editon of D&D (and close interpretations), where OSRIC and others don't. Plus I can use OSRIC too.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

It's also the case that your schema doesn't really seem, at first glance, to have room for actually getting better at something your background has trained you to do. If climbing in difficult conditions is always a Dexterity check, for instance, is Dexterity forever the only arbiter of climbing ability under pressure? Is it impossible to learn from experience and get better at climbing in difficult conditions?

In C&C, you add level to ability checks that fall within the realm of your class. That means your PC constantly gets better at class-appropriate actions. Obviously, this is a broader approach than d20 takes, but in practice it works out much the same, just with less bookkeeping.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

True, but how do you handle improving at tasks which fall outside the strict scope of your class?

Like a fighter with a piratical background. Climbing isn't strictly a warrior's skill, but if he can do it because of his background, how would he get better at it if he wanted to?

Of course, in D&D proper I favour eliminating class skill lists and therefore the extra expense of cross-class skills, which makes customising your character easier.

 

[Michael_R_Proteau]

heh, so its floating in gaming limbo. Maybe it can say hi to the Castle Keepers Guide while its there. :\

James recently announced his first release will be part of Free RPG day,a 16 page module called Tell-Qa detailing a small village and the adventure sites nearby. It is C&C based and for Wilderlands of High Fantasy, not the Wilderlands of High Adventure spin-off based on his own campaign developed Wilderlands. He just finalized the deal with the Gree RPG organizers, so we should see the Adventure Games Publishing debut then, with hopefully mor eproducts to follow after that. I think Ruins of Rogaloon is first up according to the plan, but that may have changed. James is an editor for Scrye and Gaming Report, both of which keep him pretty busy, and he is still getting the infrastructure in place for AGP (website, operating capital etc.) and I would rather see a small company take it slow and have the infrastructure to survive than rush in with a big splash only to disappear overnight because of infrastructure problems.


-M

 

[Michael_R_Proteau]

True, but how do you handle improving at tasks which fall outside the strict scope of your class?

Like a fighter with a piratical background. Climbing isn't strictly a warrior's skill, but if he can do it because of his background, how would he get better at it if he wanted to?

Well you could use the optional skill bundles developed by Gary Gygax for C&C in the Castle Yggsburgh book.

It also provides rules for multi-classing that some people were mentioning as missing.

As to the CKG/DMG, both Stephen and Davis have stated that C&C is intended to run on only the 2 corebooks (PHB & M&T). The CKG will be a book of options that CKs can use or not as they see fit.

I ran C&C for 6 months on just the collector's boxed set before the PHB was released. I run 3.x far more often now, but I enjoyed C&C and would run it again (and am in process of prepping a new C&C game so hopefully it won't be too long).

I enjoy both 3.5 and C&C for different reasons and use whichever toolset works better for whatever I am trying o accomplish. However haven written for publication in both, it is a whole lot easier to write for C&C and I can pack a whole lot more actual game ideas per page than I could with 3.x. I went back to working on a 3.5 manuscript today after doing a handful of stuff to help Casey/Bowbe out with his Haunted Highlands stuff and one of the Yggsburgh town expansions for Gary, and I forgot how tedious working through some of the statblocks were. To keep the flow of the writing going I wound up just skiping the statblocks after doing 1500 words or so of them, and will come back to them tomorrow after I finish the rest of the text.

Don't get me wrong, I like 3.x a lot, but sometimes I think the idea gets lost in the execution of all the highly detailed rules, and I prefer the focus be squarely on the ideas and concepts of a fantasy game, not on the rules and details of a game system. 3.5 can accomplish this, but it is a little more difficult than with a system like C&C where the ideas and fantasy concepts are front and center. 3.5 can do this very well at lower levels, but it gets trickier the higher the PCs advance and the more stuff there is to deal with on a regular basis.

-M

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

True, but how do you handle improving at tasks which fall outside the strict scope of your class?

Like a fighter with a piratical background. Climbing isn't strictly a warrior's skill, but if he can do it because of his background, how would he get better at it if he wanted to?

There're a couple of ways to address stuff like this.

If it's just part of his background, and is something he's good at, but no longer really practices, I'd cover it with primes. Make him a fighter with Str, Dex, and Wis prime. The primes give the equivalent of a +6 bonus, so he'll be reasonably good at climbing, using ropes, survival, etc. If he was an officer, maybe make Int prime instead of Wis.

If the pirate-type skills are an integral and continuing part of his character, then I'd allow him to use them as class abilities, adding his level. (If the additional abilities were significant, I'd probably want to bump the XP progression -- essentially giving him a custom class). Another approach is to use the optional secondary skills rules from the Yggsburgh book (essential buying leveled skill bundles with XP).

If it's just adding a point or two of climb over ten or twelve levels, then I wouldn't bother with it. (IMO, many "but what about" examples fall into this category.) You don't need an entire skill system to handle edge cases like that; just give him a +2 circumstance bonus and have done ("having been on and around ships for months, you've become more familiar with climbing the rigging, so take a +2 on your climb check while pursuing Black-Heart Bill...").

In general, C&C is a very class-oriented system. That means skills are handled broadly, and in relation to the class. While it doesn't cover every conceivable situation and degree of skill, I find that it covers the majority of what's needed, and that the decreased complexity is worth it. YMMV, as always.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I don't get this need for a DMG. Everything you need to know to run the game is in the PH, except for a way to handle magic and treasure, and that is in the M&T.

There's a mold set down by AD&D that says there must be a player book, a DM book, and a monster book. M&T sort of put two books together. So it's just an expectation based on an industry trend.

I also agree C&C as written wasn't perfect for me, but with a couple of house rules, and tweaking a couple of the classes a little bit, and being able to use monsters and modules from every version of D&D (and OSRIC), its the best game for me.

Same here. Personally, I like a skill system. What I did was borrow the basic D&D skill system, then tweaked it slightly for use with C&C. When class abilities doubled with skills, I just added a +2 bonus to the skill.

I don't care for encumbrance, so I dropped it. The only other thing I'm uncertain of is primes. If I ran C&C as-is, I'd use them. But with me using a skill system, that sort of defeats the purpose of primes. I guess I could use them for saves and other class abilities/attribute checks. *shrugs*