I could play Old School Essentials, Shadowdark, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, and even Adventures Dark & Deep. I could play other swords & sorcery games such as Rolemaster, Palladium Fantasy, Dungeon Fantasy, Dragonbane, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Pathfinder 2, and many others. I could play 5E with Level Up A5E or Tales of the Valiant.
None of them "get out of my way" and have the speed of play as Castles & Crusades. No saving throw charts, no tables of thief abilities, no pages-long class descriptions, no spell charts (though those are fun in DCC), and the game plays from a character sheet the size of an index card, and it is a pure "get in and go" game. Where DCC brings a lot of fun to the table, the emergent play and imagination of that game are a close second to C&C's speed and ease-of-play.
If you have an issue with the SIEGE Engine, just use the primary, secondary, and tertiary ability score system in the Castle Keeper's Guide. This way, you get a nice, smoothly stepped feel to your ability score target numbers (12, 15, and 18; instead of 12 and 18) and you have better chances of success in a few more areas, giving you more choice and rounding out your characters better.
For the longest time, I had this feeling my "pulp-adventure cleric" build in C&C, with primaries of WIS, CHR, and CON (target number 12), had to sacrifice DEX, INT, and STR to the terrible target number of 18, and they could not creep along edges or kick down a door. She felt helpless in ways I did not expect, and in a point-buy system like GURPS, these are the areas you would buy 2 or 4-point skills in "just to cover" and not be helpless.
With the tertiary system, I can set STR and DEX to a target of 15 as my secondaries, and leave INT at the worst tertiary target of 18. Now, she feels more capable, and while every target number is not a "best in class" 12, those times she has to jump a pit, balance, or force open a door feel better, and I have a chance of making it happen with those 15's, especially when level and ability score modifiers are factored in.
If you are doing pulp games, think about that three-tier ability score system seriously.
Yes, I could just throw a positive modifier on there, but I hate having to modify every roll. The unmodified rolls should feel achievable at level one, and as she levels up, the challenges can increase. It helps that C&C is such a moddable game, and the CK's Guide has so many excellent suggestions for turning the game into whatever you want.
I still like the build options in 5E, but it is a typical modern design. With today's game designers, they need to specifically lay out every choice clearly, like they were programming a computer game, and the machine expects clear rules on exactly what the option does, when it can be triggered, what happens when you have it activated, and every special effect and game change it produces. This leads to a horrendous overdesign of the entire system, where the game reads like a pen-and-paper computer game.
There are times when I am in the mood for that, and other times when I am not.
C&C is a 5E-like design with leveled unlock class powers, but it does not go into subclasses or choices within the class. For that level of customization, use the multiclass system. Also, if you need to "invent" a class power or ability, such as a bard's "ability to identify music," you would simply make a SIEGE engine roll. In 5E, you bet some designer would make a subclass around identifying music, and then all of a sudden, every other bard can't identify a song once that subclass is added to the game. The more you add to 5E, the worse it gets for everyone else.
The same thing happened in Pathfinder 1e when they introduced social feats, and you needed a special feat to negotiate the end of a war. That is "story stuff," and it does not belong in the rules, nor should it ever be in a character design. Before that feat was added, negotiation could be handled by anyone. After that, only those with the feat could negotiate the end of a conflict. It is an exaggeration, but the net effect was this absurd, rules-induced paradox.
It also shows the dangers of trusting modern game designers too much when they rely on the MMO model of balance and design. MMO designs never last and must constantly be refreshed and rebalanced. D&D will probably be refreshed every few years just because of this design model; it has to be, since all MMOs break and need constant rebalancing. It is not an evergreen game since modern MMO designs are tied to iterative rebalancing and refresh releases.
We are stuck with D&D [YEAR] forever now.
They will sell through 7 years of books and reboot the rules forever.
C&C has not changed since its original release more than 20 years ago. Classes have been added and optional rules released, but it hasn't changed all that much. The design is a solid compromise between D&D 2.0 and 3.0. It does not use MMO mechanics. It just works as a solid design.
Good things last the test of time.
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