Quote from: Benoist;453270I think my books are second printings (the color of the cover changed to the dark green with the 3rd printing, right?). They are much better layed out than the 1st printings, the paper is glossy... they're really nice books.

Mine have faded yellowish-gold colored covers, and a copyright date of 2007.  I don't know which printing it is offhand.

Quote from: Phillip;453256Isn't there more to C&C than "ascending AC"?

New takes on character classes and levels? Experience point awards? Progression of saving throws? Initiative system? Monsters, spells, magic items?

Not really. It's a somewhat streamlined version of 1E (1.5, actually), and if you leave aside some of the 3E stuff, it's a reasonable facsimile of what 3E could have and should have been.

The big problem any retroclone is going to have is twofold:

1) The D&D brand is burned into the hide of an entirely new animal

2) Anyone who really wants to play a streamlined version of 1E/2E can do so already at a fraction of the cost of new C&C books by simply visiting Half Price Books or Amazon, buying the old books, and discarding some of the more retarded sections.

QuoteFirst, I don't see any special complexity inherent in that. It's 'complex' only figuratively, not literally, and only in the aesthetic opinion of some of the people who insist on not using it as it was primarily meant to be used.

In substance, you are right: It's still adding and subtracting from a number. It would still have been much easier to from 0-20 (or 20 to 0) than -10 to +10, especially when you add/subtract magical pluses and minuses. It's not that big a deal but I favor simplicity whenever complexity adds nothing of value.

QuoteThe weight of evidence suggests to me that it was not Gygax who instigated counting down instead of up. However, as ACs beyond the original eight were introduced in the Greyhawk supplement, I reckon he is responsible for all that.

That might be true but it's also irrelevent. Gygax presented himself at the time as Grand Poobah of all things D&D. Even if he personally didn't write parts of it, the buck stopped with him. He was all too happy to take credit for the success of the game (deservedly so!), so it's fair to assume that he approved of the final product which bears his name (or at least didn't object), warts and all.

QuoteI think Gygax wrote briefly, probably in the DMG, chalking up retention of the scheme to this very consideration, but I can't find the passage just now.

I know which one you're talking about. My point is that it would have been easier back then to go 0-20 just as they were able to start at AC10 for unarmored rather than AC9.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;453268Elfdart is a fucking cartoon, ignore him.  I've explained why THAC0 doesn't "work" (in 1e AD&D), and ED got kicked in the nuts on the dragonsfoot and K&KA playgrounds so anything older than 3e makes him cry.

Looks like someone still holds a grudge against me for ridiculing his open letter to the OSR crowd.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;453269To get back on track....I find Castles & Crusades to be functional enough, but boring. I've run a couple sessions, and I can easily run my decades-long fantasy campaign with it, which is great. But when I flip through the book, it doesn't make me feel anything, except the crushing weight of boredom. I want to feel inspired when I flip through a gaming product, and C&C doesn't provide me with inspiration. It doesn't have the quirky Gygaxian charm of 1e, the awesome campaign settings of 2e, the options of 3e, and the balance of 4e.

I only have the first edition C&C Player's Handbook with the awful writing, editing, art, and layout. I've heard Troll Lords has improved the editing issues, though I'm not sure I care enough to find out at this point. Don't get me wrong. There's a serviceable system hiding in there somewhere, but presentation counts. If the presentation of a product blows goats, then I usually won't stick around to explore that product's strengths. That said....even with its huge flaws, I'd play it again, as I could run my campaign with it, easy peasy.

I have a couple of C&C charts and things (looks like pieces of a screen or something) I found at Half Price Books and it looks pretty well done as far as the editing, printing and paper stock are concerned.

Quote from: Elfdart;453291I have a couple of C&C charts and things (looks like pieces of a screen or something) I found at Half Price Books and it looks pretty well done as far as the editing, printing and paper stock are concerned.

Is it a DM's screen that you're referring to? Anyway, I've heard that the C&C Player's Handbook 4th printing or "4th edition"  has better editing. I hope that's true. Maybe I'll pick it up some time..

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;453293Is it a DM's screen that you're referring to? Anyway, I've heard that the C&C Player's Handbook 4th printing or "4th edition"  has better editing. I hope that's true. Maybe I'll pick it up some time..

I think it's part of a screen -it's cardstock. It came in a bundle of gaming odds and ends they let me have for two bucks.

Quote from: ElfdartIt would still have been much easier to from 0-20 (or 20 to 0) than -10 to +10

Not seeing it.

First, you once again ignore the fact that in D&D as published (in all editions prior to 2e), the ACs range from shorthand for "shield only", "leather and shield", and so on, to (post Supp. I) indications of to-hit numbers beyond those. They are coincidentally also useful for arithmetic -- about as useful as ACs in 3e and 4e, in my opinion (which I reckon is as good as yours) -- but that is not their primary purpose.

I'm not sure how even you see 20 = -10 and 0 = 10 (i.e., still 'descending', but from bigger numbers) as easier. -10, one notes, is significant only in Second Edition AD&D.

With OD&D Supplement I, a fighter could have plate armor +5, shield +5, ring of protection +3, dexterity 18, and invisibility, for nominal AC -19. That would be AC -8 by your "20 to 0" scale!

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012345678910
ABCDEFGH
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I II III IV V VI VII VIII
VL L LM M MH H SH EH

Still not seeing it.

On the other hand, if there's a "roll over AC on 2d6" rule, and no monsters have ACs yet because Chainmail used them only for the Man to Man tables, and included only a few of the monsters one is writing up, then it's just as easy to assign the values one is actually using -- 9 through 2 -- instead of whatever some wiseacre 40 years in the future is arbitrarily going to decide is 'better'.

When one is no longer using that rule, but has in fact switched to a system in which the AC numbers don't matter because they're not being used as numbers -- they're back again to being treated just as armor classes, the same way they were used in Chainmail when they were 'ascending' -- there is no apparent reason to change yet again.

What would actually have been a bit harder, with only a typewriter -- no digital word processors at home for the Dave Arnesons of the world in 1972, or for most of us gamers even in 1977 -- would have been changing every entry already made everywhere from any one code to any other.

I don't know of any evidence that anyone was agitating for such a change in the early years (1970-74). There is, on the other hand, evidence (in White Dwarf magazine) of objection to the change from starting at 9 to starting at 10 with the AD&D PHB. There is evidence of WHY the general scheme was retained right through the 2E era.

3e and 4e are such thoroughly different games, with so much new stuff to buy and look up and change in campaign notes (if one doesn't just scrap the campaign and start all over), that changing AC is just trivial in context.

QuoteNot really. It's a somewhat streamlined version of 1E (1.5, actually)

Q: HOW are rangers, paladins, bards and barbarians 'streamlined'? What do they lose, and what do they gain, vs. 1E? How do assassins and monks fit in, or do they? How about dual classed humans and multi-classed nonhumans?

Q: HOW is the chance of getting crisped by a fireball or turned into a newt (or doing same unto others) 'streamlined'? Is it greater or less than in 1E? By how much, and in what kinds of cases?

Q: HOW are experience points 'streamlined'? What are the default means of acquiring them, vs. 1E? How about the x.p. amounts and other prerequisites for advancement?

Q: HOW are expert hirelings, men at arms, henchmen and followers 'streamlined'? Strongholds? Ships? Wilderness expeditions? Cities? Aerial and underwater adventures? Elemental, astral, ethereal and other planes?

Q: ... and so on?

Quoteand if you leave aside some of the 3E stuff, it's a reasonable facsimile of what 3E could have and should have been.

Nothing wrong with 3E except the "3E stuff", eh?

Quote from: Spinachcat;452515It's an embarrassment. How nobody figured out ascending AC in the 80s is laughably shameful.

Perhaps a combination of

i) The people who wanted more logic were busy making armor reduce damage.

ii) Virtually everyone who wanted to fix D&D wanted to make it more complicated.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;453269To get back on track....I find Castles & Crusades to be functional enough, but boring. I've run a couple sessions, and I can easily run my decades-long fantasy campaign with it, which is great. But when I flip through the book, it doesn't make me feel anything, except the crushing weight of boredom. I want to feel inspired when I flip through a gaming product, and C&C doesn't provide me with inspiration. It doesn't have the quirky Gygaxian charm of 1e, the awesome campaign settings of 2e, the options of 3e, and the balance of 4e.

I only have the first edition C&C Player's Handbook with the awful writing, editing, art, and layout. I've heard Troll Lords has improved the editing issues, though I'm not sure I care enough to find out at this point. Don't get me wrong. There's a serviceable system hiding in there somewhere, but presentation counts. If the presentation of a product blows goats, then I usually won't stick around to explore that product's strengths. That said....even with its huge flaws, I'd play it again, as I could run my campaign with it, easy peasy.

I have the 4th printing of the player's guide. The layout and editing (only one big editing mistake that I've found) are fine (although I think races should come before classes, but it seems most rpg's disagree with me on this)

I've never looked at the setting books Troll Lords have come out with so I can't really comment on that. However, if you are talking about settings within the Player's Guide, um... DnD didn't have that either. Plus 1st and 2nd edition DnD were horrible to read and thoroughly boring/uninspiring. But that is probably a personal taste issue more than anything.

Actually, the Holmes fellow who wrote the blue book basic rules also wrote a what are roleplaying games book, the library had a copy and I skimmed through it long ago, he mentioned that he thought ascending AC would be an improvement.

Also, as I said before Thieves World had ascending ACs and called the Base Attack Bonus "To Hit AC 0" but it worked just like 3e's BAB.

So it most certainly was something people were aware of in the eighties.

Quote from: David Johansen;453348So it most certainly was something people were aware of in the eighties.

Mr. Gygax, myself, and others were "aware of it" in the 1970s.

Q: How long have people known that the "QWERTY" keyboard arrangement is less efficient than others?

A: Since the 1870s, when it was chosen precisely because of that, to slow down typists on machines that could not keep up without jamming.

Q: Which is the most common keyboard arrangement in use today, a century longer since its introduction than since D&D was published?

"Negative armor classes" (indeed, nominal "armor classes" 1 and 0) first appeared in a D&D book in Supplement I.

They appeared there only in a "Magic Armor Effects on Armor Class Guide".

Previously, per D&D Volume 1, magic armor subtracted its bonus from the dice rolled to hit. If one preferred, one could instead add it to the base number needed -- which would correspond to one of the 8 standard classes of armor.

That was not literally and formally changed until AD&D, which introduced tables incorporating AC numbers better than 2 ("plate and shield" class) and repeating 20s in the "to hit" numbers.

The matter actually being addressed in that chart in the supplement was the treatment of magic shields. The old rule was

Quote from: Vol. 1, p. 31If the shield's bonus is greater than that of the armor there is a one-third chance that the blow will be caught by the shield, thus giving the additional subtraction.

So, +2 armor and +2 shield subtracted only 2 points in the old system, not 4 as in Supplement I (and ever since). With +2 armor and +3 shield, there had been a 1/3 chance of getting the better bonus of +3. The new rule "stacked" them for +5 automatically.

That was a BIG change in the value of magic shields, especially coupled with the addition of magic armor and shields up to +5 (now potentially "doubled up" to +10, more than triple the previous maximum of +3).

Monsters listings in the books did not actually get ACs beyond the standard 8 until Supplement III (in which demons ranged as far as -8).

QuoteNot seeing it.

How do you describe a magic shield? If it's a shield +2, it adds two to AC (in addition to the +1 for the shield itself) -oh wait, It doesn't! It subtracts an additional two from AC. Now it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that +2 shield or ring or armor deducts 2 from AC (adding points makes it worse), but it would be easier overall to start at 0 and have pluses be pluses in all instances. This can be more of a headache for cursed items, where a shield -2 can be misinterpreted as a good thing.

Again, it's not a big deal but it's one of many needless complications in 1E and 2E.

Quote from: Phillip;453353Mr. Gygax, myself, and others were "aware of it" in the 1970s.

I believe Zeb Cook also mentioned it somewhere as one of the most-requested changes for 2e that they decided not to do because they wanted to stay compatible with all of the 1e material.

Quote from: Phillip;453353Mr. Gygax, myself, and others were "aware of it" in the 1970s.

Q: How long have people known that the "QWERTY" keyboard arrangement is less efficient than others?

A: Since the 1870s, when it was chosen precisely because of that, to slow down typists on machines that could not keep up without jamming.

Q: Which is the most common keyboard arrangement in use today, a century longer since its introduction than since D&D was published?

As an aside

Actually QWERTY wasn't designed to slow down typists, the goal of Sholes was to reduce typewriter JAMS. It was an arrangement that worked better with the mechanics of the typewriters of the time. It actually made typists go faster as they had less jams of the mechanics.

Quote from: jgants;453554I believe Zeb Cook also mentioned it somewhere as one of the most-requested changes for 2e that they decided not to do because they wanted to stay compatible with all of the 1e material.

Thieves Guild had an ascending AC system but in my neck of the wood nobody was really aware of it.

The obvious things for a more "realistic" system back in the day was  a defense rule like parry or dodge. That armor absorbed damange. System like Runequest made better sense to many gamers in my area compared to AD&D 1st.  However this doesn't change the fact the fact that many continued to like and play AD&D in of itself.

My view of Ascending AC is that it is a great rule and one of the few 3e mechanics that can be applied to classic edition without radically changing them. One of the reason I use Swords & Wizardry is because of it's dual support of ascending and descending AC.  

Mathematically it is the same other than the fact it doesn't handle the repeating 20 of the AD&D 1st chart.