There is a class of games where many players tire of all the rules, bloat, books, website character sheets, and drama, and just want a simple game that works.
Old School Essentials and Shadowdark are two of those games.
Castles & Crusades is another.
Even games like Dungeon Crawl Classics, while simple in theory, are a mess to play since it is a huge, disorganized, chaotic book with numerous tables to reference during play. OSRIC? It is not ideal, unless you are such a mega-fan of 1E that every little percentage modifier matters to you. Adventures Dark & Deep? Wonderful 1E clone, but again, why do we need all these rules and charts? Swords & Wizardry comes close to C&C, but C&C is the more modern game with leveled class abilities and unlocks.
Those modern-style classes with the leveled abilities and unlocks that go all the way to 24th level are the secret weapon of C&C. The SIEGE Engine throws away every chart, ability score check, and special saving throw for a rules-light, simplified system. You can play from a character sheet on a 4x6" index card without opening a book.
If you want more than what a traditional BX or 1E game will give you, and you want "new stuff every few levels" where the OSR refuses to unlock powers and abilities, then C&C is the game for you. This makes the game easier than BX, as expressive in character builds as 5E, and with the original 1E math. The game is a hybrid 3.5E without damage scaling, and, in play, feels exactly like AD&D.
C&C is a step-up game from OSE and Shadowdark, if you want more character detail, lower complexity, and higher-level campaign play.
And the game is OGL-free. Honestly, you can play with the pre-Reforged books and see very few differences; just a few names have changed, but everything else is exactly the same. Anyone with a Castles & Crusades book, of any edition, can play and CK a game.
Any OSR, BX, or 1E adventure can be used easily. The math, damage, and AC values are identical. If you like the OSE adventures and their "easy peasy" bulleted formatting, you can use those. You can play the crazy DCC adventures. You can play the classic AD&D adventures. You can play adventures written for Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry. All of it is usable.
And the game has built-in modding support. The CK guide is mostly a "hacking guide" for the game. Don't like the primary and secondary ability score system being so harsh with target numbers of 12 and 18? Introduce a tertiary attribute level for 18 and have a secondary target number of 15.
This way, if I want my human cleric to have primaries of CHR, CON, and WIS (12), I can set DEX and STR as secondaries (15) and INT as my tertiary (18). If I want to force open doors or balance along a ledge, that middling target number solves a lot of problems people have with the system. My cleric is not so helpless with physical feats, and another reason to not play is gone.
Want feat-like "advantages"? There is a system for that, and you can set the rate of gaining them, or ignore the system entirely. You can create custom advantages, port in 5E feats, or do anything you want.
Porting in 5E races? This is super simple if you use the advantage system to cover the feat choices, and you can use the 2014-style ability score modifiers as-is. I can have any 5E race I want in my game instantly.
Pulp adventures? We got a SIEGE Engine game for that, too, with Amazing Adventures. This covers modern and science fiction gaming nicely. BYO starship combat system, though, or just use another game's starship combat system to handle it all.
And the multi-class system in this game lets you build anything you can imagine. It is a bit advanced, but the flexibility of combining any of the classes to build something new gives me near infinite options, and it beats 5E's system handily.
C&C will kill 5E anytime I get it out, so I am trying to give ToV a chance; it's currently in one of my closets. However, ToV is 5E, and it requires character designers and all sorts of technical hacking to get it to do what I want. Do I want a special character race? I need to enter it into Shard, set the values to match, perhaps create custom feat entries in the software, and do all this work for just one choice.
C&C will just "do what I want" with zero effort. I just write it down on my character sheet, make a few adjustments to the feats I want ported in, and it all works easily.
With the time I have for games dwindling as I get older, and my patience for systems that just take "too much effort to play," having games like C&C and OSE handy is the difference between "playing a game" and "playing nothing." I would rather be playing than flipping through books to find the rules for every little thing.
I can pick up a 4x6" character sheet on an index card and play without needing a book open.
Very few other games can do that.
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