I'm aware of the editing issues and inconsistent releases, but I'm more curious as to how the game plays at the table for those who have experience with older editions.  Personally, coming from d20/White-Wolf I've a limited view of how it actually works as a variation on (A)D&D, so I'm wondering about how it looks coming from a different angle.

If anyone here has any experiences, what did you like/not like about it in play?  Did it differ from AD&D substantially, or did it just feel like a more streamlined version?

We've been playing a C&C campaign for a year and a half, with a huge party, consisting of human fighter, human barbarian, human wizard, elf ranger and human assassin (plus a bunch of hirelings including a few fighters and barbarians, a bard, a thief and a cleric).

The core resolution system is the SIEGE Mechanic. A SIEGE check is roll 1d20 + attribute bonus + level (for class abilities and saving throws only), to match or exceed base difficulty (12 for Prime Attributes, 18 for others) + Challenge Level (CL for short).

For example, once you establish (as per Players Handbook) that finding traps is a Wisdom Check, this means that Eric the Cleric (1st level, 18 Wisdom, Prime) needs to roll a 9+CL to find a trap, against Keefe the Thief's (1st level, 11 Wisdom, non-Prime) 18+CL.

Since niche protection takes the form of a bonus equal to your class level when dealing with a class skill, the Thief will eventually surpass the Cleric, but (in the above example) only by 9th level.

So, the SIEGE Engine results does play havoc with niche protection (outside of combat and magic, anyway). The above specifically is not an issue, because as I've mentioned, there's no Thief PC, but it could be.

Other than that, though, C&C is awesome. The class line-up is excellent! The C&C Bard is not a singing rogue with crappy magic, but a rough and ready warrior-poet. The C&C Knight is a horseman and a war-leader. The Ranger is pretty much Aragorn. The rest are what you'd expect from AD&D 1e, as is the bestiary and magic item list (Monsters & Treasure).

I'm not familiar with the published adventures (our GM's been converting stuff from dozens of other systems), but the Guide to Arms & Armor (which I picked up in the Haiti bundle) is a decent, if workmanlike expansion.

All in all, a great game, with some minor flaws but nothing dealbreaking, and some solid, fun implementations of standard D&D fare. Not quite my favorite take on D&D (I'm partial to the D&D Rules Cyclopedia myself), but a good game nonetheless.

I've been thinking about my C&C stuff recently.  I only ran it twice.  

The only thing it really brings to the table is the generic skill mechanic.  I found it to be almost totally pointless.  Characters are always going to fail on checks against non-primes, and will likewise fail on any prime check involving a target level.  When and if a characters level applies to the check is poorly explained to say the least.  The examples seem to indicate the characters level never applies unless it explicitly lists so in the character class description.  There are just better and clearer mechanics than this.

The main goodness of the game came from the fact it was basically new and shiney classic D&D stuff.  It was nice having new books and modules.  It was also going to be the game system for Castle Zagyg!  But then...

1) The newness wore off.  I'd never use Castles & Crusades to run a old style D&D game when I can just as easily use Basic or AD&D2.  There was really no point in purchasing it.

2) The modules don't really do anything for me.  I purchased three and they're all pretty meh.  They're light on maps, so they don't really provide any salvagable bits for other D&D games.

3) Gygax's widow yanked Castle Zagyg away from the Troll Lord people.  The only Zagyg product which was the kind of thing I wanted out of the series was a box set produced in tiny numbers and sold direct only.  So, I wasn't able to acquire one, and I don't see myself paying the premium to acquire it.  The other Zagyg products are pretty much like the rest of the C&C modules and are bland things which don't do anything for me.

So, I have to say that C&C was interesting when it was shiney, but that's about it.  I already had older editions of D&D which were perfectly servicable.  It wasn't that the C&C modules couldn't be ported to older editions, it was simply that they couldn't compare to the true classics or even offerings from Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Oh, and then there's the Castle Keepers Guide.  That thing still isn't out yet.  Does it even have a release date?

None of this post is hatred towards C&C or Troll Lords Games.  It's just that I realized C&C wasn't for me.

Well, it isn't for everyone.  Either you're going to like the speed and simplicity the SEIGE Engine mechanic brings to play, or you're going to think it's way to simplistic and vague.

C&C is a compromise games, in a lot of ways.  It straddles the bridge between older D&D and d20 in a lot of ways.  It's a meeting ground.  

For us, it played fast, and had a definite classical feel to it, but some of our players felt it was a little unbalanced at earlier levels.  Really, as far as power curve at lower levels, I'd put it around where D&D 3e was.  I personally thought it felt a lot like every Rules Cyclopedia D&D session I ran between 1993-1999, mixed in with the race/class divisions of D&D 3e/d20.

All in all, it's been a good experience so far.  C&C isn't perfect, but it's really easy to run, and should have familiar concepts for those who started playing in 1983 or 2003.  Those are some of the biggest reasons I enjoy it.

EDIT: I personally very much like the guys who run Troll Lord Games, and the one time I had an order issue they made it right and then some, but their release schedule can drive you nuts.  And this is coming from a Palladium fan.

I'd like C&C a lot more if TLG wasn't running it.  No Offense, they seem like nice guys and all, but they also seem fairly inept.  The CKG has been in development for ever and the other support material (modules and source books) have been lame IMO.  The phb has had so many editing problems that it's like the poster boy for bad editing.  Compared to free rulesets like OSRIC, BFRPG, and LL, C&C looks weak in comparison.  I even like the art in the free games better.  

That said, it does play well.  It's fast and easy to run and I do like the character classes better than the originals.

So if it was a straight 3-way battle between C&C, DND Basic/Cyclopedia and Dark Dungeons, which would win?

I actually own all 3, but need to know which one to invest my time in learning properly.

Quote from: Lawbag;390349So if it was a straight 3-way battle between C&C, DND Basic/Cyclopedia and Dark Dungeons, which would win?

I actually own all 3, but need to know which one to invest my time in learning properly.

Well, that's the $64k, question, I suppose.

I consider Rules Cyclopedia the best single-volume rules compilation of all time, but C&C is a little more accessible to a larger pool of gamers, and it's easy to pull rules in from both 3e and 1e if I like.  It's been an easy game to houserule and homebrew.  So, for those reasons, I'd put C&C ahead of RC for my purposes, but I still think RC is a superior ruleset as written.

So if it was important that everyone in my group wanted access to the rules then it would be C&C. But seeing as I'm running the Chaosium version of RQ, I.e. My group don't care for copies of rulebooks, its going to be RC all the way. Plus I have access to the B series of modules too.

Quote from: Lawbag;390353So if it was important that everyone in my group wanted access to the rules then it would be C&C. But seeing as I'm running the Chaosium version of RQ, I.e. My group don't care for copies of rulebooks, its going to be RC all the way. Plus I have access to the B series of modules too.

Awesome!  Sounds like a good call!

Quote from: Gabriel2;3903363) Gygax's widow yanked Castle Zagyg away from the Troll Lord people.  The only Zagyg product which was the kind of thing I wanted out of the series was a box set produced in tiny numbers and sold direct only.

Actually, the CZ boxed set of the Upper Works wasn't sold exclusively on TLG. I got mine from Paizo, personally. Granted, they had a very limited number of those and I pre-ordered it months and months before it was published. It's just that its availability wasn't TLG-exclusive, is all.

As for my opinions about Castles & Crusades:

1. It's a fun rules set that basically strips d20 from all its intricacies (feats, skills, tactical combat etc) down to its bare bones and blends it with AD&D, adding a universal resolution system the SIEGE engine talked above, to the whole in the process.

2. One of the strengths of C&C is that it allows you to use pretty much anything d20 and any vintage D&D products for your C&C campaign with little to no prep work. It's a "D&D esperanto", if you will.

3. The SIEGE engine is used for pretty much everything in the game, and at times, that might seem counter-intuitive or problematic if you think that saving throws should work fundamentally differently than skill representations, for instance. For me, it sort of runs contrary to AD&D's spirit, in the sense that you have AD&D's dress, with this integrated mechanic running the show. It kinda rubs against my expectations of what AD&D is and isn't, since I actually like AD&D's "dirty bits".

4. Some design choices seem weird sometimes. They have this slick SIEGE thing going on, but keep the different EXP tracks for character classes. Just an example.

Overall really, it's pretty cool, if you don't get picky and don't start asking questions such as "why wouldn't I use [insert edition of choice] instead of this middle-of-the-road compromise?"

Quote from: Lawbag;390349So if it was a straight 3-way battle between C&C, DND Basic/Cyclopedia and Dark Dungeons, which would win?

Kinda weird to me to ask the questions using these particular examples. Dark Dungeons is a clone of Mentzer "Cyclopedia" D&D, so there's a redundance here, while C&C is a blend of AD&D and d20.

The battle, if there really is one, is happening on all sorts of levels between the original games and the clones, C&C and the originals, C&C and the clones (is C&C a clone itself? Some people will say yes, other will say no), C&C and OSRIC, C&C and any d20 variant of your choice, C&C and the current edition of D&D, whatever that is, etc etc.

The weakness and strength of C&C are one and the same, to me: the fact that this is a compromise product, for good and ill.

I've played several evening pickup games with C&C.  After a few games, we ended up dropping the siege engine mechanic altogether.  (The other players didn't really like it).  We just dealt with skills by roleplaying them, as we did with 1E AD&D back in the day.  After awhile we ended up dropping C&C altogether, and used AD&D or the Mentzer D&D basic or expert box set instead.

None of the C&C modules I recall stood out.  Largely unmemorable.

I don't have much to add to what others have already said.

C&C is a 'hybrid' of d20/3e and 1e AD&D.  Very roughly, it takes AD&D and 'streamlines' it in certain ways (standard ability score modifiers, a core d20 mechanic to cover everything except combat and magic, ascending ACs, etc.).

In favour of C&C, it is a snap to use pre-3e A/D&D material with C&C (3e material, at least if it is focused on levels 1-10, is also pretty easy to convert).  It is also easier to convince d20 fans to try it out than, say, 1e AD&D or OD&D (this was an issue with the group I was involved with around 2004-2005).

Also, the Castle Zagyg: Upper Works box set is pretty remarkable.  Definitely worth getting, if you can, in my opinion.  And one of the few products for C&C with decent (but not perfect) editing.  The Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh book is a decent city and region gazetteer, with a number of adventures and lots of adventure hooks, but pretty awful editing (and way too much trivial detail).

I was a huge fan of C&C around 2004-2007, although I only managed to run two short campaigns with it (one was cut short due to moving across the Atlantic, the other was an online campaign).  It was fun, but I increasingly found the SEIGE mechanic problematic.  

And, after a while, the question became: why not just run TSR D&D?  So I eventually decided to go with classic D&D (Basic/Expert) and Swords & Wizardry (the 0e retro-clone) for my old school D&D gaming.

If one really likes certain aspects of d20/3e, but wants a simpler system, then I think that C&C is a very good choice.  However, if one wants an 'old school' game, I would recommend either simply picking up the originals on eBay, or using one of the retro-clones (Labyrinth Lord + Advanced Edition Companion would be a good option for someone who wanted a 'cleaned up' or 'streamlined' version of AD&D).

I'm still grateful to TLG and C&C, though, for getting me interested in the older games again.  C&C was a helpful 'bridge' for that.

I don't have much to add to what others have already said.

C&C is a 'hybrid' of d20/3e and 1e AD&D.  Very roughly, it takes AD&D and 'streamlines' it in certain ways (standard ability score modifiers, a core d20 mechanic to cover everything except combat and magic, ascending ACs, etc.).

In favour of C&C, it is a snap to use pre-3e A/D&D material with C&C (3e material, at least if it is focused on levels 1-10, is also pretty easy to convert).  It is also easier to convince d20 fans to try it out than, say, 1e AD&D or OD&D (this was an issue with the group I was involved with around 2004-2005).

Also, the Castle Zagyg: Upper Works box set is pretty remarkable.  Definitely worth getting, if you can, in my opinion.  And one of the few products for C&C with decent (but not perfect) editing.  The Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh book is a decent city and region gazetteer, with a number of adventures and lots of adventure hooks, but pretty awful editing (and way too much trivial detail).

I was a huge fan of C&C around 2004-2007, although I only managed to run two short campaigns with it (one was cut short due to moving across the Atlantic, the other was an online campaign).  It was fun, but I increasingly found the SEIGE mechanic problematic.  

And, after a while, the question became: why not just run TSR D&D?  So I eventually decided to go with classic D&D (Basic/Expert) and Swords & Wizardry (the 0e retro-clone) for my old school D&D gaming.

If one really likes certain aspects of d20/3e, but wants a simpler system, then I think that C&C is a very good choice.  However, if one wants an 'old school' game, I would recommend either simply picking up the originals on eBay, or using one of the retro-clones (Labyrinth Lord + Advanced Edition Companion would be a good option for someone who wanted a 'cleaned up' or 'streamlined' version of AD&D).

I'm still grateful to TLG and C&C, though, for getting me interested in the older games again.  C&C was a helpful 'bridge' for that.

Quote from: Lawbag;390349So if it was a straight 3-way battle between C&C, DND Basic/Cyclopedia and Dark Dungeons, which would win?

Quote from: Lawbag;390353... its going to be RC all the way...

Well, you may want to keep a copy of Dark Dungeons nearby nonetheless.  It's essentially the same game as the RC, and addresses some of the inconsistent and vague rules in the RC.  Also, it has 36-level progressions for all classes, and thus avoids the weird 'attack rank' system for non-human classes in the RC.