C&C - A preliminary review

[tzor]

At Gen Con this year I managed to get Gygax's latest module (signed and personalized by him) which is set to the Castles and Crusades system by Troll Lord Games. A also got the extra fancy looking player's handbook and the monsters and treasure book. I finally had the time to give the PBH a once over and here is my first impressions of the book.

C&C is very 1Eish in its manner and style. In some cases it trims a lot of the complexity of 1E and in come cases it incorporates flavors of later editions (especially in the class types).

Attributes are the old and ancient 3d6 assign any way you like to the six attributes. The bonuses are non linear and your max attribute bonus gets a +3. Have no fear because there is a special sauce added to the mixture. In addition to your attribute scores two or three (for humans) of your attributes are "primary.' One primary attribute is chosen by your class, the other one or two by the player. An attribute check on a primary attribute effectively gets a +6 compared to a non primary attribute. WOOT!

Classes are expanded to 13 types. No multi-classing in any of the D&D incarnations. You can be a fighter, ranger, rogue, assassin, barbarian, monk, wizard, illusionist, cleric, druid, knight, paladin or bard. Only the fantastic four, wizards, illusionists, clerics and druids can cast spells by the way.

Races are the standard 1E fare, human, dwarf, elf, gnome, half-orc, half-elf, and halfling. The latter have hairy feet! Gnomes "have more in common with elves" than dwarves. Half elves can choose from a set of elvish lineage goodies or a set of human lineage goodies. Half orcs are a misnomer as technically any other half goblinoid counts as a half orc.

Magic is classic Vancian, even the clerics have to pray for their specific spells at the start of the day. Zero level spells are included. The first level wiz/ill starts off with 4 0th and 2 1st level spells per day (not counting the bonus spell) and the cleric with 3 0th and 1 1st level spell not counting their bonus spell.

Spells have the 1E flavor through and through. The open ended wish - made limited by the tried and true 1E idea of age limits and making wish age people. Genies can grant wishes but they aren't in any obligation to do so, so the wish economy trap may be possible in C&C if the Castle Keeper isn't clever.

Combat is exceptionally simple. The combat round is 10 seconds long and you get one action per turn. (Baring some odd circumstances and the fighter's ability to get multiple attacks on either 1st level creatures or at high level on anyone.) Initiative is rolled anew every round. you can move 1/2 your distance and attack, unless you are charging. Most "use an item" examples do not allow any movement at all.

I can't say about the regular book but assuming that the only difference in the fancy book was the cover the artwork is exceptionally good. Take a view over the art threads in Astrid's parlor and their idea for what good art will apply to the art in C&C; characters with expression in their faces, good depictions of characters both male and female and even the monsters all look good.

I haven't seen this system in action, but I think that if you want a simple 1E feel style game where the rules are just enough to work without having you to work then this is it.

As a bonus it probably has the best non gamer introductions I've seen in a 21st century game system so far.

[JonSetanta]

Damn it Gygax... that guy just creates stuff in a vault of his own imagination without any attention to what the general populous of gamers enjoys, or even considers simplicity/fairness/feasibility.
Still, he has some wacky ideas, and like a picture of Goatse Man I can never look away until it's too late.

[tzor]

Gygax didn't create C&C, he just created a module.
C&C was created by Davis Chenault and Mac Golden

[Maj]

set to the Castles and Crusades system

I've bought a lot of RPG books at my husband's urging. Many of them sit unused and unloved upon the RPG bookshelf in my living room. Castles and Crusades was the only one so bad that I actually took it back.

[Captain_Bleach]

1190592795[/unixtime]]

set to the Castles and Crusades system

I've bought a lot of RPG books at my husband's urging. Many of them sit unused and unloved upon the RPG bookshelf in my living room. Castles and Crusades was the only one so bad that I actually took it back.

In your opinion, what makes it bad?

[Maj]

1) It's needlessly complex where it shouldn't be. For example, every class has a different XP table.

2) It feels like an old man trying to relive his glory days.

Not having played previous editions of D&D, the system feels like someone who got mad that they were releasing a new edition of the game and tried to take it backwards in order to "fix it." The book is so poorly edited (they may have improved this with a new edition, I don't know) that it's a nightmare - tables and paragraphs were left unfinished, text was obviously copy/pasted without proofing - and the rules don't make sense to me at all.

Gygax may not be the author, but you can totally taste the fact that he stuck his finger in the pie. It's disgusting.

[tzor]

1190596124[/unixtime]]1) It's needlessly complex where it shouldn't be. For example, every class has a different XP table.

2) It feels like an old man trying to relive his glory days.

But are multiple tables really "needlessy complex?" One of the greatest fallicies of modern gaming is the fallicy of "balance." The d20 system under 3.5E is far from balanced, X levels in one class is not the sameas X levels in another class.

Which is eaiser to do, balance every level and every ability within a level so that they will contain exactly 1.0000000000000 units of advancement or tweak an experiece table so that everything balances out? I would maintain that it's the later.

And he's (once again Gygax didn't write the rules here ... ) is not trying to relive his glory days. The glory days of Gygax would not be anything like this product. I think he has only recently rediscovered the KISS principle in game design which was in OD&D only because being new there wasn't much complexity he could think of at the time.

Consider 1E AD&D and C&C. C&C is actually a lot less rules than 1E. The following (off the top of my head) are not in C&C.

• 
  
• Facing rules. (Even Back Attack is defined in terms of surprise.)
  
• Weapon vs armor types.
  
• Weapon speed factors
  
• The percentile hand to hand rules
  
• Multiclassing 1E style
  
• Dualclassing 1E style
  
• Rangers and Paladins with spells
  
• Min attribute requirements for some classes
  

Basically what C&C appears to be to this casual observer is a radical simplification of the 1E rules along with some flavor items from later editions. Yes the spell list is a general blast from the past but I don't think that's a bad thing.

If you want to see Gygax in his relive the glory days, then Lejendary Adventures is the system for you to yell at.

[angelfromanotherpin]

1190639155[/unixtime]]Which is eaiser to do, balance every level and every ability within a level so that they will contain exactly 1.0000000000000 units of advancement or tweak an experiece table so that everything balances out? I would maintain that it's the later.

It might be easier, but it's also not even close to balanced. Distinct XP tables have two possible effects:

1) The same encounter that levels up the guy who needs 1000 also levels up the guy who needs 1250. Now they're still playing together, one is more badass than the other, and has not actually paid more for it.

2) The encounter that levels up the guy who needs 1000, doesn't level up the guy who needs 1250. Now they're still playing together, one is more badass than the other, but he'll pay for it by being overshadowed later.

I'm sorry, there's also a third outcome...

3) The encounter that levels up the guy who needs 1000, doesn't level up the guy who needs 1250, but the guy who didn't level is still more badass than the guy who did, because the game isn't fvcking balanced.

Of these, option 2 is the least noisome, but I still consider it sub-par.

Also, while true balance between different classes is probably impossible, I'm not going to give the game writer a free pass to not even try because it's 'easier' for them.

[tzor]

You know this is really starting to sound like a freshman physics textbook. You make too many assumptions and suddenly you are making statemets about a system that doesn't exist.

Advancement, even at the exp level is never even. There are in every game individual awards, from roleplaying to individual accomplishments. It should never be the goal for every charcter to be "balanced." It should be the goal for every character to be "effective."

Yes the third outcome was really common in 1E. This is true for the monk who sucked at low levels but kicked ass at high levels.

Once again I'm not suggesting that non uniform experience / level advancement is more balanced. I am saying that a uniform experience / level advancement is an illusion of balance. I would rather have illusions for the character not the rule set.

[angelfromanotherpin]

1190642348[/unixtime]]Advancement, even at the exp level is never even. There are in every game individual awards, from roleplaying to individual accomplishments.

No, there are not. I have played in many games where advancement was completely even. There are games which mandate that advancement be completely even.

It should never be the goal for every charcter to be "balanced." It should be the goal for every character to be "effective."

I'm not sure what definition of effective you're using. Is this where you would rather have anything but a Fighter once the game reaches 3rd level, or where the Fighter stops being a better target for buff spells than the Wizard, at around 9th level? Or is it where a 20th-level Commoner can take 20 on Search checks with max cross-class ranks just like everyone else who isn't a Rogue?

The goal is balance. If it can only be approached asymptotically and the best that can be done is 'relatively effective,' so be it. This doesn't mean giving up from the beginning, or pretending the problem doesn't exist.

Once again I'm not suggesting that non uniform experience / level advancement is more balanced.

That actually is pretty close to what you said, which was...

Which is eaiser to do, balance every level and every ability within a level so that they will contain exactly 1.0000000000000 units of advancement or tweak an experiece table so that everything balances out? I would maintain that it's the later.

This next bit...

I am saying that a uniform experience / level advancement is an illusion of balance.

...has nothing at all to do with your previous posts in this thread. I went back and checked just to be sure.

Now, uniform advancement can contribute to an illusion of balance, but that's only because it is a necessary component for balance to exist in the first place.

Wings make a plane look like it can fly. Maybe it can fly, maybe it can't. But if it doesn't have wings, it totally can't fly.

[tzor]

1190647179[/unixtime]]Wings make a plane look like it can fly. Maybe it can fly, maybe it can't. But if it doesn't have wings, it totally can't fly.

There you go again. Now I have to go and calm some really panicked Goodyear Blimp pilots. There are high in the air and they don't have wings!

My statement was that neither are any more balanced than each other. They could be balanced or they might not be balanced, but there is no basis to assume that just because one uses a fixed experience path that it is more balanced. 3E uses a fixed path and the classes are far from balanced.

Effective means just what I think it means. No one character is a 5th wheel in the adventure. (Like my bard has been on various occasions.)

Uniform experience balane doesn't in and of itself contribute anything to actual power balance (witness 3E) because you have to balance a variety of divergent abilities at every level across levels (due to multiclassing posibilities). The entire matrix of class and levels must be perfectly balanced in the 3E universe in order to grand balance the system.

So let's consider some examples of the mythical balance.

Going from 4th to 5th level a paladin gets an additional smite evil per day and a special mount.

Going from 6th to 7th level a ranger gets woodland stride.

Balanced? You're going to have to prove this one.

[Lago_AM3P]

My statement was that neither are any more balanced than each other. They could be balanced or they might not be balanced, but there is no basis to assume that just because one uses a fixed experience path that it is more balanced. 3E uses a fixed path and the classes are far from balanced.

3E has a lot of problems with character advancements but little of it stems from the fixed schedule.

Here are some of the known advancement problems.

- Item Familiar. This is an overpowered feat. It won't automatically tear the game in half but as far as blatant unfairness goes it probably ranks in the top five. For those of you that forgot, you gain levels faster than the party.

- The Difference Engine: The trick where you abuse the order of operation of levels D&D pretends it has in order to have more power. This is directly related to the problem of:

- Level Loss: If you lose a level in 3rd Edition, you are never catching up to your party without a certain spell. Sorry.

- Fucking Savage Species: Sorry, I can't go into it. It'll just make me mad. At least the Word is awesome.

- XP expenditure: You intentionally stall your experience gain to accumulate more swag and thus you end up with more power than other people your level.


You know what's funny though? All of the problems in the above list exist because they inflict assymetrical character advancement rather than uniform character advancement like 3rd Edition wants.

Even if you don't like those examples, we have considerable experience what happens when we do that. I haven't played much AD&D but I always thought that it was complete bullshit that bards threw better fireballs than wizards and clerics summoned things better than wizards.

I therefore don't understand your assertion that bullshit like different experience tables doesn't introduce problems.

Well, I imagine that it if classes were meticulously playtested and balanced to ensure that characters with any given experience points (whether they have 2,000 or 98,311 XP) are equal to every other class assymetrical balance won't wreck the game. But seriously, fuck that. It's a bunch of extra work for no goddamn reason.

[tzor]

1190657182[/unixtime]]I therefore don't understand your assertion that bullshit like different experience tables doesn't introduce problems.

I would never say it does not introduce problems, but I would say that it introduces different problems. After all, you do effectively throw away all the problems with any level multiclassing. You don't have to worry about a FTR 5, 1 WIS balancing with a FTR 6 because the former never happens.

Remember this argument started because Maj claimed this was one reason to return the books to the store. Angelfromanotherpin argued that a 125 point difference in an experience table can destroy all posibility of blanace. (If everyone in the party doesn't gain a level on the exact hour of the exact same day it ain't balanced the're telling me.) Even without the obvious blanace breakers the foree form even experience level system requires just as much effort if not more to blanace than the non multiclassing non linear no uniform model.

Since neither puts any time to blanacing the system there for the grace of god are they balaced.

[Lago_AM3P]

Even without the obvious blanace breakers the foree form even experience level system requires just as much effort if not more to blanace than the non multiclassing non linear no uniform model.

What hidden advantage do the Gygax tables scheme have as opposed to just rewriting the classes?!

There isn't some hidden conspiracy or unseen paradigm in the rules that makes this anything but a shitty idea. It's like giving female characters a -2 penalty to STR and INT--it introduces problems and has no advantages to it.

The Gygax experience charts seems to me an after-the-fact way of dealing with the problem that different classes of the same levels don't have the same level of ass-kicking. If a level 2 wizard is better than a level 2 thief, then a level 4 thief is equal to a level 2 wizard! Yaaaaay!

This idea is completely unworkable even before we get into the stupidity of fighters advancing slower than blades.

[Username17]

At low levels especially, variable XP tables create the possibility in which one character will interact with another character at one level for some percentage of the time and another level for another percentage of the time. I don't think anyone even pretends that this is balanced, especially for one-time campaigns.

At higher levels, a character in one class simply interacts with characters from another class at a different level. If that was for some reason balanced, you could jolly well give out toys to the class which is supposed to get levels faster at a more rapid pace by level and have him advance on the same level scheme.

It's an extra variable. And like variable TNs in dice and TN games, it probably seems like it's an extra handle to make the game better. But it's not. It's just an extra variable that makes predicting results of system tweaks that much harder. To that extent it makes it harder to prove unbalance, but it also makes the game more unbalanced.

---

We have gone beyond the days where the players aren't "allowed" to see the attack matrix. In the old days adding extra layers of obfuscation made the game more fun because it took the players longer to figure out which parts of the game were retarded. But now that we're actually addressing problems, extra layers of obfuscation are bullshit that just makes our lives harder.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

There you go again. Now I have to go and calm some really panicked Goodyear Blimp pilots. There are high in the air and they don't have wings!

For the purposes of this metaphor, there are quite a few games that function like blimps. They are not class/level tactical wargames. They use entirely different principles. They work fine.

My statement was that neither are any more balanced than each other. They could be balanced or they might not be balanced, but there is no basis to assume that just because one uses a fixed experience path that it is more balanced. 3E uses a fixed path and the classes are far from balanced.

Yes, the classes are far from balanced. That's like if the plane has a fvcked-up engine. The wings are fine, but it's not going to get off the ground.

Effective means just what I think it means. No one character is a 5th wheel in the adventure. (Like my bard has been on various occasions.)

If you mean that all characters are roughly equal in contributing to the party's success, I'm not sure what the difference is between 'balanced' and 'effective.' If you mean something else, you have failed to communicate.

Uniform experience balane doesn't in and of itself contribute anything to actual power balance (witness 3E) because you have to balance a variety of divergent abilities at every level across levels (due to multiclassing posibilities). The entire matrix of class and levels must be perfectly balanced in the 3E universe in order to grand balance the system.

Yes, but non-uniform advancement literally cannot solve that problem. It's like looking at the plane with the broken engine and thinking that the wings are a problem. They are two different elements, and they both have to work.

So let's consider some examples of the mythical balance.

Going from 4th to 5th level a paladin gets an additional smite evil per day and a special mount.

Going from 6th to 7th level a ranger gets woodland stride.

Balanced? You're going to have to prove this one.

Okay, I don't have to prove that D&D is balanced in order to prove that uniform advancement is balanced. That's just retarded. I never said that D&D was balanced because it had uniform advancement. I said that uniform advancement is a necessary component of game balance.

[tzor]

1190660374[/unixtime]]I never said that D&D was balanced because it had uniform advancement. I said that uniform advancement is a necessary component of game balance.

And here I would strongly disagree. Uniform advancement is not a "necessary" component of game balance. It's a prety nice component to use. If I were to design a game I would probably use it because if you do it right it is simplier, but it is not necessary. If I were twenty years younger, or if I had the time to crank through a number of differential equations I'm sure I might be tempted to work on a non uniform non linear advancement system that would work, but that's no longer my cup of tea.

[Manxome]

Angel's already given a very succinct explanation for why nonuniform advancement guarantees power disparities at at least some points. My level X needs to somehow be balanced against part of your level Y and part of your level Y+1, and unless advancing that level doesn't actually increase your power, that flat-out doesn't work, full stop.

You could potentially say you have some hidden continuous function of power with respect to XP and claim that everyone is on the line at the moment they level up (or at mid-level, or whatever), even if that means no two people are on the same line at any particular point, and argue that this is somehow "balanced overall." But that doesn't matter. Games are actually played in discrete units and integrating over some theoretical continuum doesn't produce results that actually affect any real game, and besides, Frank's given detailed explanations for why no amount of power now makes up for sucking later or vice versa. Making the win/suck cycle smaller may reduce it's impact, but it's still a bad idea in principle.

Meanwhile, a uniform advancement system makes the system easier to play with (for numerous reasons), easier to design new content for, and if it's actually balanced (even approximately), gives you a highly efficient rubric for determining the general power level of a given character, all of which are very valuable things.

I'm not even convinced that allowing the XP scale to slide makes design or balance appreciably easier in the first place. The hard part is generally not putting together an advancement package of appropriate size, but figuring out exactly how valuable the bonuses you're handing out actually are. If you can figure out that your package is worth exactly 1.472 levels, it may be easier to charge 47.2% more XP for it than to redistribute features, but both of those are generally way easier than figuring out that it's worth exactly 1.472 levels in the first place.

[JonSetanta]

I concur, tzor. It's easier to balance abilities than arbitrate XP tables. I'd much rather have a uniform XP chart and center all classes around it that the reverse.

[RandomCasualty]

1190660080[/unixtime]]

It's an extra variable. And like variable TNs in dice and TN games, it probably seems like it's an extra handle to make the game better. But it's not. It's just an extra variable that makes predicting results of system tweaks that much harder. To that extent it makes it harder to prove unbalance, but it also makes the game more unbalanced.

On a side note, I actually do feel that variable TNs have their places in games like shadowrun and white wolf, the key is that everyone has to be rolling against the same TN.

TN's are a measure of how much entropy is in the system.

Using a basic d6 TN system, a TN of 2 effectively means that the guy with the bigger stat is going to win most of the time. That's great for a battle of strength or endurance, which is a pretty fixed quantity. So with two guys armwrestling, you want the guy with strength 6 to win almost all the time against a strength 4. Target number 2 achieves that.

On the other hand, sometimes you may want a lot of entropy, where extra skill grants only a small margin of extra success.

I only feel like variant TNs add problems when you try to have two people rolling on two different TNs.

Note that TN doesn't actually change the average winner, what it does however is alter the frequency of an upset victory by the underdog.

In fact, I've always felt the big advantage of a multi-dice TN system over a fixed die additive system (like d20), was that you can vary your level of entropy depending on the task. You really see that sort of problem with ability checks. Swartzenagger is only like 20% more likely to successfully force a stuck door than some guy with average strength and that just doesn't make sense.

[tzor]

I have to really take the time to do the math because in my mind I really have signifiant doubts. Basically speaking the question is between a uniform linear advancement system and a non uniform non semi linear (except for some classes at psudo-epic levels) advancement.

The basic argument is that it is a generally known problem that in a uniform linear advancement if one suffers a level loss then one is forever stuck with a level loss, short of magic. In the non linear model a disparity in level causes one at a lower level to advance (on a level basis) faster than one at a higher level because the amount of exp for him to go from level to level is greater than the amount of exp for you to go from level to level. So catchup is easier with disparties than in the linear model.

[angelfromanotherpin]

The basic argument is that it is a generally known problem that in a uniform linear advancement if one suffers a level loss then one is forever stuck with a level loss, short of magic. In the non linear model a disparity in level causes one at a lower level to advance (on a level basis) faster than one at a higher level because the amount of exp for him to go from level to level is greater than the amount of exp for you to go from level to level. So catchup is easier with disparties than in the linear model.

Who on Earth was talking about different level-up rates between low and high level characters? You just added that to the conversation. The discussion was about different classes needed different xp totals to reach the same level.

Permanent level loss is a really awful mechanic. Don't use it.

[Lago_AM3P]

In fact, I've always felt the big advantage of a multi-dice TN system over a fixed die additive system (like d20), was that you can vary your level of entropy depending on the task. You really see that sort of problem with ability checks. Swartzenagger is only like 20% more likely to successfully force a stuck door than some guy with average strength and that just doesn't make sense.

I don't have a lot of experience with TNs but I agree that it's one of the problems of d20.

Have you ever played Mutants and Masterminds? One of their ideas was that instead of having a linear increase for certain effects that they use a sliding scale. For example (this is not what the chart says), a superstrength score of 4 lets you lift a horse, a superstrength score of 7 lets you lift a truck, and a score of 10 lets you lift a building.

I was thinking that for a lot of out-of-combat tests (such as breaking open a door), a door has a fixed score you have to beat to break through it. Say that you need a 100 to break through a wood door.

Three people want to break through. One's skinny, one's beefy, and the other's average. They have strength scores of, say, 8, 16, and 12.

The average one checks the chart for his strength score. The chart tells him that rolling a 1 gives him a score of 400. So he rolls a d20 and instead of adding to the DC rolling higher gives him a multiple. Most of the time he isn't going to break through it but rolling really high will give him a chance. The skinny guy is never going to break through and the beefy guy--

You know what? This involves way too much math and calculations. Nevermind.

[the_taken]

My 8-stat based skill system uses a skill called Feng Shui to move and life objects. At four point you can lift a couch, at 8 points you can bust a door or move an enemy (still working on the battle grid system) and at 22 you can break thru stone walls. At 28 you can break thru anything.

[Manxome]

1190723039[/unixtime]]The basic argument is that it is a generally known problem that in a uniform linear advancement if one suffers a level loss then one is forever stuck with a level loss, short of magic. In the non linear model a disparity in level causes one at a lower level to advance (on a level basis) faster than one at a higher level because the amount of exp for him to go from level to level is greater than the amount of exp for you to go from level to level. So catchup is easier with disparties than in the linear model.

You're conflating uniform advancement (all characters advance on the same scale) with linear advancement (the distance between levels is the same at all points on the scale). The two are orthogonal (i.e. you can have either, both, or neither). The conversation up until this point was about uniform vs. non-uniform and no one was talking about linear vs. non-linear.

But the real problem in your particular example is that permanent level loss is a sucky mechanic.