Castles & Crusades killed 5E for me.
Again.
I am keeping the pocket Tales of the Valiant books out for now, but the extra 5E books I have are going into storage for a while. 5E is a super-heavy game, like an old version of Windows, that runs slow, takes up gigabytes of hard drive space, and has thousands of complicated parts that nobody uses. You can play with the base three books, but why? Why would you? The world's most popular roleplaying game isn't D&D anymore; it is D&D Beyond.
Level Up A5E is solid. Tales of the Valiant is good. The alternatives are solid.
But they don't hold my interest. The "subclass choices" of 5E are not meaningful customization, not by a long shot. If I want "meaningful customization," I will play GURPS and have it all. Valuable, meaningful subclass choices are spread out; you need a shelf-full of heavy books to get any "range of choice" with the system and the sunk cost of thousands of dollars.
5E's design is bloated, and it nickels and dimes you with upgrade options. You need software to sort it all out. The game was designed to force you to use a character creation site, often for a subscription and added sales. Even ToV is like that, and Level Up is getting a site, too.
If you are not using software, you should play something else.
My problem is that I have to get better. Games that are just as fun deliver the same dungeon-crawling experience for far less work. I also have games with emergent gameplay, such as Dungeon Crawl Classics or Forgotten Lands. I have OSRIC, the best version of the original 1980s game; if I want complexity, I just go straight to the source and the original. I have "straight out of 1974" Swords & Wizardry, more like a rules-light zero-edition, which is massively fun. I have the new ACKS II, which is just eye-popping amazing and delivers on realm-level play.
Finally, there is C&C, the game Gary Gygax loved and played, and the one he finished his gaming career with. This game is the be-all and end-all of my hobby. All the silly charts are gone, and it plays and feels like rules-light AD&D. The multiclassing is better than 5E by far and gives you more flexibility and options for character types. Illusionist archer? Sure, we can do that. Wizard paladin? Bard barbarian? Dual class, class and a half, or mix however you want. It is all so easy.
C&C puts 5E's character builds to shame, and no software is needed.
Castles & Crusades is a simple, relatively small game. The core rules are a single universal task resolution mechanic and roll-high AC combat. All the rules are on a few pages. All the needless tables and charts are gone. You don't need saving throw tables, attack matrixes, thief skill charts, etc. You can play off a 3x5" index card and have more than enough room. It is compatible with all the classic adventures. It does everything; knock yourself out.
I put this game in storage to give 5E another chance, but I still came back to C&C. 5E, no matter what version I played, was way too much work. If I spend 45 minutes designing one character, I am going to play GURPS instead and get much more fun out of my time investment. Playing 5E is like being on an old, slow, 3G cellular connection at one bar and trying to browse the web.
C&C sits here with a 5G unlimited plan and laughs at everyone still loading a page.
Yes, with software, 5E flies. But since I don't play with a tablet or phone, that means printing out 4-8 page character sheets, per character, per level. It is a waste. Again, 5E is designed to "play better on a VTT," so that is how you are stuck playing. It is not that 5E is a bad game; it is a lot of work doing it the way they don't want you to, and you are stuck paying for things to make it easy.
Even Shadowdark gets it. I would play that version of 5E in a heartbeat since they don't waste your time. Get in and play. Characters are easy. Roll the dice and let's play a few rooms. Shadowdark is the mobile game compared to mainstream 5E's 100 GB day-one console game patch.
C&C is the same way, but characters go to higher levels and are more customizable. You get the high and epic-level play that works. You get that Pathfinder 1e feeling, the AD&D 2nd Edition feeling, the AD&D feeling, and the B/X feeling all in one game. You get all the classic classes, magic, monsters, and powers.
They are also developing an OGL-free version. The new Amazing Adventures (3rd Edition) is the first step on this path. It is a fantastic pulp game that uses the same rules. More on this later, but if this is what the de-OGL'ed version of C&C will be like, count me in.
Fewer books, faster, easier to play, fast-to-create characters, amazing multiclassing, better combos than 5E, classic feeling, and compatibility?
Eight shelves of 5E books have gotten too fat and heavy to play with, and I still need help getting the options I want. It is also still broken at the high levels. Even a ToV-focused collection has three shelves.
C&C does it all in a handful of books.
Welcome back.
No comments:
Post a Comment