I bought C&C way back at the first printing as well. Still never played it.

In general, I thought C&C was a good attempt at what a 3rd edition of AD&D could be like. My favorite part was the cleaned-up classes - because AD&D 2e was a bit too restrictive, but AD&D 1e was a mess when it came to adding new classes like the barbarian, etc.

What I liked least was the SEIGE engine. Don't care for it. At all.

For me it's a perfect example of how to poorly attempt to graft in an ill-concieved and confusing unified mechanic and managing to get all the disadvantages of both a unified mechanic and subsystems while managing to not get the advantages of either.

Quote from: Phillip;623208On the plus side, many people seem to like C&C character classes very much. There are some interestingly different approaches to old standards.

I kind of like their take on Bards-as-fighting-poets instead of the 1st edition "prestige class" or the 2nd edition Thief-light.

Quote from: Melan;623232I kind of like their take on Bards-as-fighting-poets instead of the 1st edition "prestige class" or the 2nd edition Thief-light.

I'm a huge fan of their takes on the Bard (warrior-poet), Ranger (muthafucking Aragorn! Almost as good as the S&W Complete version) and Knight (proto-Warlord). I'm particularly fond of the Knight.

Quote from: Zak S;623097Speaking strictly as a professional artist, it literally would kill me to draw a woman with a lacklustre ass.

I would die. Literally die.

Literally?

Quote from: VictorC;623316Literally?

Have you see Mandy's ass, yeah I think it might literally kill him.

Quote from: CRKrueger;623086What garb?  Pete likes big butts and he cannot lie...

Don't we all?

Besides, Frazetta retired that trophy decades ago:

Quote from: Zak S;623097Speaking strictly as a professional artist, it literally would kill me to draw a woman with a lacklustre ass.

I would die. Literally die.

Speaking as an amateur cartoonist, I'm right there with you.

Including night hags and female liches?

It's hard to talk about C&C issues without some confusion by date-of-buy-in. Someone who's talking about the 1st printing PHB (or 2nd) is going to have no point of comparison with the people who've experienced the 4th/5th printing, for example.

I'll say this much: the Trolls have made mistakes, and started off with low-quality layout/design/editing, but over the years they have refined and improved to the point where I am confident that their latest offerings will look good and read without error.

Now, from my time running C&C I have run into a few issues that annoy me, but the core of the SIEGE mechanics don't bug me. From the earlier example I wouldn't let a cleric try to find traps or track, for example, without considering a greater penalty (on top of not adding level). Those are discreet class abilities and, in true old school form, not having that class ability means you ain't got it. In actual play these examples never came up, probably because the players reasoned that not having class ability X meant not being able to try it. However, C&C encourages free form decision-making on the part of the CK, which means that the rules perfectly well allow a cleric to track if one so desires or can justify it. Nor should a player feel slighted if the CK says, "what the hell is a cleric doing trying to track?" but all things considered it's a game that actively encourages you to customize it to what fits. They're not going to tell you how to regulate this, that's beyond the scope of what the game provides for. The CKG might have some optional suggestions (it does) but they're just tools for you to do with as you will. That's pretty well the crunchy center of what OSR means to me.

However, the SIEGE engine is a bit fiddly in actual play, especially if you're trying to get everyone on board with how it works. Every C&C game I have run had a sort of hurdle to get everyone on board with either the 12/18 split or the +0/+6 method. Saves are confusing unless you sit everyone down and precalculate it. These aren't necessarily problematic....just a bit of work, but when I look at S&W Complete with its "one save to rule them all" mechanic that is dirt simple to understand and deploy, it's hard not to lean in favor of it.

And I love Peter Bradley's art, and dig his women. However, they could use more artists, if only for variety (and some of their books have more artists now....but that's another issue of criticizing C&C then vs. now).

C&C also has studiously avoided replicating the demons from D&D, despite most of them being OGL, and I have never determined why.

C&C is also tied to Airdhe as a core setting, which I've never particularly cared for.

So....a teensy bit of criticism from a C&C fan (who never gets to run it anymore because Pathfinder's mind control ray has hit my local town hard).

Adding a minor criticism, I was annoyed when TLG asked some poster from Dragonsfoot to stop sharing his OGL compilation of the C&C rules.

That's some hypocritical bullshit for a tepid clone.

Quote from: Eisenmann;623158We ran a little experiment where we ran a session with Swords & Wizardry characters using the Siege Engine. It worked.

Oh, I am sure that it works.  The bigger question is whether it is superior to the other mechanical approaches or if it brings some advantages that they do not.  I do like how it makes it impossible to be strong against all forms of attack at once (saves based on stats and only three can be prime).  

But the wisdom=perception time was an unfortunate design choice in the d20 era games.

Quote from: Votan;623563Oh, I am sure that it works.  The bigger question is whether it is superior to the other mechanical approaches or if it brings some advantages that they do not.  I do like how it makes it impossible to be strong against all forms of attack at once (saves based on stats and only three can be prime).  

But the wisdom=perception time was an unfortunate design choice in the d20 era games.

I'm not certain if the Siege Engine is absolutely superior to how I usually run, say, Swords & Wizardry. But I do think that it comes down to the group, of course. Some are way okay with me saying, "Roll a D6" and winging it from there. Others like the distributed knowledge of rolling a prime/non-prime.

Sometimes I want to run with the Siege Engine and sometimes I don't. I consider C&C's saves a feature. Depending on what I'm running it feels just right. Heck, sometimes I run S&W with a single save and sometimes with the full spectrum. And most of the time I'm pulling bits from all over.

That's a bit of meandering to get to saying that I think Castles & Crusades is a nifty game that uses the nifty D&D API.

Quote from: Eisenmann;623633I'm not certain if the Siege Engine is absolutely superior to how I usually run, say, Swords & Wizardry. But I do think that it comes down to the group, of course. Some are way okay with me saying, "Roll a D6" and winging it from there. Others like the distributed knowledge of rolling a prime/non-prime.

Sometimes I want to run with the Siege Engine and sometimes I don't. I consider C&C's saves a feature. Depending on what I'm running it feels just right. Heck, sometimes I run S&W with a single save and sometimes with the full spectrum. And most of the time I'm pulling bits from all over.

That's a bit of meandering to get to saying that I think Castles & Crusades is a nifty game that uses the nifty D&D API.

Heh, D&D API, nice way to put it.