BX vs. Castles & Crusades

If there is one universal rule in the hobby, it is that Castles & Crusades beats every other game. C&C is easier than BX, requires less reference during play, and it is a modern set of rules that is backward compatible with any classic adventure you throw at it. The entire game plays from an index card. The characters have depth and a curated collection of modern abilities. The multi-classing in C&C makes nearly infinite combinations of characters to play.

If you want a modern game that does not feel like "walking away from 5E," then Castles & Crusades will make an excellent home for you. The game is still very old-school in its playstyle, resource management, danger, and feel, but very modern in its gameplay mechanics, with a dice roll for any situation that arises.

I still love Old School Essentials! There is a "toy factor" to these books that can't be denied, and I mean that in the best way. For a game this small, compact, and easy to use, having it be so expansive, infinite, and amazingly playable is a masterstroke. If you ever remember the magic of bringing home an NES game cartridge and having the feeling that "an entire world exists in this tiny object," then you understand the true power of Old School Essentials.

The Latin phrase for that is "microcosmus in parvo," and it fits perfectly when holding a copy of Old School Essentials. The universe is reflected in the smallest thing.

When I hold the OSE books, I am holding the universe in my hands, two tiny books, and infinite worlds and possibilities. With C&C, I am back to the "arcane tome" feeling of AD&D, where the books are big, serious, weighty, and scholarly, and arcane guides on how the world works. While the C&C books are each singularly amazing and a masterclass in game design, the OSE books have a "power in the tiny" that is undeniable.

Using the optional tertiary ability score rules in the CKG makes the game feel more modern and gives your character a lot of customization options. I am a super fan of those rules, and they broke the game wide open for me, so I don't feel my characters are making too drastic a trade-off between primary and secondary scores. Now, I get a smooth progression between my primary (12), secondary (15), and tertiary (18) ability scores.

I used to feel my human "survival cleric" lacked in DEX, having her primaries set to CON, CHR, and WIS. With STR and DEX as secondaries (15), and INT as her tertiary (18), I do not feel she is being punished as hard when she wants to balance along a ledge and force open doors.

Chef's kiss.

Seriously, the optional rules in the CKG turn C&C into about five different-feeling games and fix a few of the game's strange-feeling parts (when coming from the OSR), especially when compared to modern rule sets. You will find the game you want in C&C, and it can be a direct superheroic-fantasy replacement of 5E if you want it to be.

With BX, my survival cleric is just a cleric. I hope she has a high STR or DEX score, and that will do the same thing, but the SIEGE Engine invisibly handles the game's "skill system" without requiring one. In C&C, marking an ability score as "primary" tells us, "If this game had a skill system, I spent a lot of skill points in this ability score area." The SIEGE Engine forever fixes D&D 3.5E's massive, bloated, overdone, and cumbersome skill system by designating a few ability scores as primaries, secondaries, and, optionally, teritiaries.

Like Swords & Wizardry's single save number, the SIEGE Engine as a whole is a genius piece of game design. Rarely do we get game mechanics this good that simplify our lives and solve entire overdesigned systems with a simple, clean, and clear rule.

BX is the simpler game, with a more straightforward gameplay loop. If you have the BX gameplay loop down pat and want a modern set of rules? Want characters with something more to them than a few abilities?  Want that 1E feeling without all the complexity? Play C&C.

If you want the classic, tight, almost board-game-like gameplay loop? Play BX. Easier choices, more iconic selections, a game not overconfused by dozens of races and class choices? The rock-solid, core choices and options that make the game a classic? BX all the way, preferably the classic rules. Once you start adding "stuff" to the game, you water it down, confuse the choices, introduce classes that were never a part of the core experience, and you lose something.

You lose the game under a mass of optional stuff that ends up distracting everyone from what was there. It comes off like adding optional expansion boards to Monopoly or Axis & Allies, and all of a sudden, that core, solid, tight game experience becomes muddled, slow, heavy, distracted, and confused.

The original game is lost.

People who knew the original can see the beauty through the chaff, but any modern player will see a weaker version of what they already have in 5E and similar games. If you want modern classes and roles like those in 5E, but you don't want everyone to feel they're lacking powers or iconic class abilities, C&C will be a better fit.

There is an argument that if you play BX, you should play without all the distractions and enjoy the game as it was played back in the day.

Sure, Advanced Fantasy is the more popular game and has the most "stuff" - but an abundance of choices doesn't make a good game. Some can't play without the bard, druid, or ranger, and I am one of those, too. For me, those classes in C&C feel much better and keep other games out of the equation. I am more than happy with the C&C designs, and they fit my vision of what the modern classes should look, feel, and play like.

The BX versions of these classes are weaker and are slow to "come online" with signature powers. In lower-level play, the feeling between playing a fighter and a paladin will not feel like much in BX, where in C&C, those two will feel and play vastly different.

Your class identities are much better represented and feel in C&C than in BX, especially for expansion classes, which in the original game took quite a while to begin to feel and play differently. C&C also lets you houserule in "class skills": if a ranger should know how to do something, you make a SIEGE Engine check on the closest ability score, and do "the thing" on a success.

C&C makes adjudicating "class skills" a part of the system by default. In BX, you will rely on the referee "pass or fail" allowing it, and most of the time, if a ranger knows how to do something, they will just be able to do it (or make an ability score roll for it), and that will be it. C&C starts with the modern notion of the "skill check" and lets the SIEGE Engine drive it all simply and in a unified manner.

But do you prefer a more modern set of rules with ways to handle any situation that comes up? Rules mods that fill up an entire book? Characters with new abilities that unlock as you level? Then, C&C will be better for you. C&C does everything BX does, but with a modern rules framework that stays out of the way and handles much of the heavy lifting for you.

For me?

Castles & Crusades easily replaces 5E for me, as a game that "does anything and everything." This is my 16-bit Genesis console that "brings home the arcade."

OSE is my "game on the go" and daily driver for everything else, being cross-compatible with so many things (and even C&C) that the investment is great for every game I buy. This is my 8-bit NES or Gameboy, the tiny thing I hold in my hand that does so much.

Microcosmus in parvo.

BackerKit: Castles & Crusades Adventurers Spellbook Reforged

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/troll-lord-games/castles-crusades-adventurers-spellbook-reforged

Troll Lord Games launched the reforged, OGL-free Adventurers Spellbook today. This is another winner, and I look forward to it. Check it out if C&C is your thing!

GURPS, Castles & Crusades, and Dungeon Crawl Classics

My seven shelves in my room are my gaming shrines.

5E just left the room for my storage shelves, and it is likely heading into the garage this week. I can't support a game where my characters finally get interesting, only to have the character sheets be dozens of pages long. Sorry, I can't support that. I don't have the time, and I don't play digitally. 

I am left with my three best games.

GURPS is my toolkit, the best character creation system in gaming history. Forget what game designers "think" I should have in a class build, I am just going to pick it myself. After you are fluent in GURPS, there are a lot of games you don't need, and you begin to see the held-back character options that these game companies pull on the community as another way to drain your wallet on a slow drip.

You are the game designer. And the idiots in these companies that tell you they know better can pound sand. You can do it better here, and they give you the tools. I don't need Kickstarters to sell the parts of the game they left out, or the things I need to build great characters; none of the modern grift is needed.

If you don't like GURPS, Champions, and Hero System are nearly the same thing. Buy a robust, useful, and buildable point-buy system and stop being taken for a ride by modern game designers. You are smart enough to do it all yourself, and you frankly should stop wasting your time.

Even with character creation programs, my character sheets are typically a page-and-a-half long. That isn't too long. For a game with enough depth to enthrall me and give me complete control of my character designs, GURPS works better than any 5E alternative.

Another reason I love GURPS is that I have eight crates of Pathfinder pawns. The hex-based combat system in GURPS is amazing, and I have mega-hex tiles from The Fantasy Trip to play on. This is my miniatures and figure-based gaming these days. I play a variant, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy version of Pathfinder 1e (original Golarion), with low magic and brutally realistic characters, and I have fun here. Am I creating my own stats for monsters? Yes, but I don't care, and I can always convert the BX monsters to GURPS and be close enough.

GURPS-Finder, original 3.5E Golarion is the way to go. This is the best version of the world as I remember and began to love it, before it was ruined by retcons, the removal of savagery for boring, modern, pedestrian writing, and the fear of upsetting others ingrained into the world.

My pawn storage will fill the space 5E vacates on my upstairs storage shelves. 5E went the way of Pathfinder 2. I don't have a group to manage complexity, so I can't play the game, and it would be too much work to slog through it myself.

And if I don't feel like doing it all myself? Castles & Crusades beat out all my OSR games with a system that is so straightforward and easy, it does fantasy gaming in the blink of an eye, and remains compatible with all the best of my OSR adventures. Yes, the designers are in control here, but the design is so good that it was the last game Gary Gygax played in, and it has stood the test of time for 20+ years. Great things don't need to be constantly rewritten and rereleased.

All the silly charts and tables in OSR and 5E are gone. The save system is the ability score system, and those scores mean something. Everything else is so streamlined that the game puts your characters and the story first, not artificial builds ot systems for VTTs. You are not buying the game a few times on different VTT platforms just to have the privilege of designing characters.

C&C also has an amazing pulp game called Amazing Adventures, which feels like a d20 version of Savage Worlds, and covers modern, pulp,m or science fiction settings just as effortlessly. The game has a lot of tools it can bring to the table, and this could be your only game, and you would not need to touch anything else.

C&C is the best OSR game in a sea of pretenders, designers trying to outdo each other, and crowdfunding chaff. You don't need much else once you have tasted the best.

Oh, Dungeon Crawl Classics takes a lot of heat in the OSR community, but those of us who know, oh, we know. Frankly, I don't care about the company's policy of including everybody, who cares? Everyone can play together, and should.

I love the game because it embodies the spirit of playing it as we did in the 1980s. It embraces the nerd culture, the outcasts, the gamers in the smoke-filled van with the neon felt paintings, and the whole end of the hippie counterculture that ended up in fantasy gaming. D&D has become corporate and soulless, while DCC's soul is what keeps the game's heart beating strongly.

If D&D lost its soul, DCC cut it out, took it, and owns it.

And the designs here are fun to play with. This is designed for fun at conventions and around the table, where D&D can turn into a game of Advanced Squad Leader, with deciding what to do during a turn. DCC designs each class with resources, special dice, and fun things to contribute to party-based play. The dice are amazing, quirky, cool, and fun. The emergent play and random tables are a shot of unpredictability in a hobby where D&D can feel like a long slog, feeling more like Warhammer 40K than a fantasy game where players play imaginary characters.

Strange and hilarious things can happen in DCC.

In D&D, I rarely have anything cool happen other than killing things with the same boring, predictable, the party wins outcome. D&D is boring in comparison. I would rather be heavy metal swords & sorcery than I would some overdesigned character build with a character sheet longer than my arm.

There is no shame in DCC, you can have bare-chested barbarians and chainmail bikinis here, and no one will tsk-tsk and judge you. Orcs, goblins, and kobolds are evil here and worship demons (which are also evil and not character options). Werewolves are lycanthropes and insane killers on the full moon, and not character options. Modern games with this demon, noble monster, and animorphic influences bore me, and the worldbuilding is not great. Tieflings are the demon-blooded spawn of Satan. Frankly, we are sick of it all and just want a game that embraces the Gen-X spirit and tosses out all the tail-tucking and pretentious BS rampant in gaming these days.

These are the games that have endured multiple rounds of purges and reorganization.

These will be the games I carry forward, and most of the rest, save for a few exceptions, can go to Goodwill.

Castles & Crusades Players Handbook – Collector’s Pack

https://trolllord.com/product/castles-crusades-players-handbook-collectors-pack/

Oh, this is beautiful. Troll Lord Games is coming out with a Castles & Crusades Players Handbook – Collector’s Pack, with a new cover and the 11th Edition printing. Nothing has changed, which is wonderful, but we are getting a new cover!

There are some other nice things in here, such as a coffee mug, canvas printing, a mouse pad, stickers, and a few other goodies to be revealed. The preorder is up now!

The best dungeon-crawling game just got better.

Do You Have the Skill for That?

One of the defining differences between Castles & Crusades and most other games is the lack of a skill system, though an optional one is available. The game eliminates the referee question, “Do you have a skill for that?”

This streamlines play to a degree I don’t think many designers appreciate. The system works on assumed knowledge. If the roll is skill-like and “something your class should know or do,” then add your level to the roll. If not, don’t. You could disallow the roll or penalize it. The system is elegant and simple.

Skill-based games have this “do you have the skill for that” question on almost every roll, inserting an extra referee question and player character sheet check in every die roll in the game. It gets cumbersome and tiring, and some games go to a pedantic level of depth for every action, requiring skill rolls for searching, spotting, and bifurcating every sense and type of searching into a separate skill.

How do you get “trained in seeing something” anyway? While yes, there is honing your perceptual abilities, it goes way too far into levels of depth that should just be covered by a simple ability score roll, if needed at all, and the game should move on. If a player guesses the correct place and thing to search, no roll is even needed.

Some games force unnecessary dice rolls, and they suffer for it.

Some games go to such a deep level of simulation detail that they suffer for it.

Castles & Crusades does a beautiful job of erasing the need for skills. Is this a skill check that your class should know something about? Great, add your level to the check, and you may get a bonus. Is it outside your character’s realm of knowledge? No level is added, and there could be a penalty on it if the roll is even allowed.

Add Conan: The Hyborian Age to the Hot List

Wow, interest in Castles & Crusades and the new Conan game from Monolith is super-hot right now. Hits on all my C&C and Conan articles are exploding.

They are great games, I am not really surprised, but wow, we are at six times the average traffic right now.

Like DCC, C&C has a cult following hungry for news and content, and the Conan game does as well.

Castles & Crusades is Hot Now

My hits are way up for Castles & Crusades articles. I suppose this game is not "really" in the OSR, and many are using it as a replacement for 5E. I can see why, it is quick, simple, does the "D&D thing" and does not require much in the way of computerized support.

I am beginning to feel that if your game requires an application to design characters, then you are no longer a pen-and-paper role-playing game. You are a wannabe computer game that lacks application code and a GUI. If you had the budget to make a computer game, that is where you would be; instead, you load the complexity of designing software onto other companies or the community.

Sunk costs can do amazing things, like get the community to write application software for you for free.

Castles & Crusades needs none of that. I can create a character in 5 minutes on a piece of notebook paper. My group does not need a "session zero" since we are playing in about 15 minutes. Any game that needs a "session zero" where it takes 8 hours to design characters has a serious design flaw; it is offloading unneeded work onto the players.

Imagine Monopoly taking 8 hours of session prep.

You would get a subset of players who love to go into autistic detail, trying to justify why setting your firm's "bank interest rate" and "subprime mortgage exposure" are needed details for Advanced Monopoly, along with 200 other financial factors you need to calculate for your firm. Not to mention the need for a collection of character cards for your firm's personnel and their salaries, along with going through several hiring phases.

You need three hours to set up the city's economic status indicators and the city government, since that affects housing and building, too. Along with the country's broader economic context, the optional Wall Street expansion gives you an add-on board that lets you play the market, the Federal Reserve expansion board simulates the economy, and the Futures Market board simulates another part of the economy. By the time we get to the Big Oil and Auto Industry boards, we are left wondering why the focus on building houses on Baltic Avenue has been lost in the shuffle.

That reminds me of a certain game....

D&D has gotten too detailed and complicated. It rivals GURPS in complexity. With C&C, dungeon crawling is a game again that you can pick up and play. Without all that detail, subclass options, action types, and magical attacks, my characters feel more focused on "character and story" and less on "rules and builds."

No wonder hits are up for C&C.

You can play a dungeon game in a few hours, start to stop, and you don't need to be constantly sifting through rules. This is almost exactly like a 2d6 science fiction game, like Cepheus Engine. You can get started in 15 minutes, have characters good to go, and start playing in a future universe quickly and without endless rules reference.

These massive games have a shelf life of 7-10 years, and then they collapse and die under their own weight when people no longer have time for them. While they are hot, they are fun. When the bubble bursts, we are left with piles of books and cardboard pieces that people no longer have the time to play with. I still love my books and pieces, but a part of me knows the magic is gone and the era is over.

C&C has lasted so long because it is, at heart, a simple game.

Simple games endure much longer than these games designed to be an all-encompassing lifestyle.

Castles & Crusades: Speed of Play

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.

Castles & Crusades: Classes

While in the base Castles & Crusades Reforged book, there are 13 classes, in the Player Archive, there are a total of 36 classes (repeating the 13 base game ones, so 26 new ones), and in Amazing Adventures, there are 16 more (repeating only 2 of the ones found in the player archive).

This gives us a total of 50 character classes.

With these, we can multi-class (advance in two classes at the same time), for roughly 1,225 combinations (50 x 50, minus the disallowed same-class multiclasses, divided by two since the reverse combo is the same as the first).

We can also class-and-a-half, and this works both ways, so we get another 2,450 possibilities.

So we are talking about a total of 3,675 (very roughly) possible class combinations using both, for just two of the 50 total classes across the two games. Now, you can also triple-class (or more), and the number of combinations becomes truly insane. My numbers are just for two classes.

Just using the core C&C player's book, we have 78 multi-class possibilities, plus another 156, for a total of 234 combinations. What matters isn't the number of combinations, but how they combine and if the end result is worth putting together. Many of these combinations can describe characters with a wide variety of builds, and I can put together classes that synergize very nicely for many types of characters.

Want to be that fighter/wizard/rogue? Or an assassin/ranger? A bard/illusionist? A barbarian/cleric? Combine these with a race selection, and even in the base game, you have almost infinite possibilities. Combine these with custom races, and my mind spins with how many different character types are possible.

For example, I have a character for whom an illusionist/bard would be a good fit, but she is more of an illusionist than a bard. I would probably do a class-and-a-half illusionist/bard for her, saving the high-level bard powers for the "pure bard," but still giving her that element of music to her class, while focusing fully on illusions. This keeps her XP/level within reason, while still keeping that musical element to her illusions and class powers.

I get that class-dipping 5E is potentially more combinations, but there is something very fun about crafting a multi-class build in C&C and knowing how your powers will progress. But the overruling aspect of this is quality, not quantity. 5E classes tend to be more in-depth than a comparable C&C class, with OSR-style classes being the least in-depth.

The C&C classes hit the right amount of depth for me, and the SIEGE Engine covers the rest. If I need a new "class ability" for a bard, make a check for it and let it be. I don't need it written down in some subclass ability or buying an expansion for 70 dollars and not having it in my online character designer.

The "gardeteeer/powered" character from Amazing Adventures can cover a lot of ground. For a class that slowly mutates or gains powers, like a sci-fi mutant, demon, dragon, or angel that grows into powers, or another class that gains spell-like abilities as they level, this is perfect, and it multi-classes very well. Have a cleric that is slowly turning into an angelic valkyrie? Multi-class cleric/powered and slowly unlock powers. Make these unlocks a part of the story, and pick powers that fit the theme. By level 5, if you saved up enough power points, you could get their wings by buying a "fly" power.

C&C and its classes, combined with the multi-class system, especially if you know how to work the combinations and options, are far more expressive and powerful than your average OSR game or BX implementation. Amazing Adventures opens up a lot of flexibility and is a great addition to the system that covers many genres.

Poor Timing on My Part

The same day I pull my Castles & Crusades books out of the closet, the Tales of the Valiant Player's Guide 2 PDF drops to backers. It is like the 5E universe is trying to send me a message and pull me back into the fold. The timing is far too strange. I was just mentally getting prepared to bring C&C back to my shelves, and this drops?

It is silly to think this was intentional, but it just highlights my terrible timing in life.

I was thinking about C&C. I have a few shelves of BX, OSE, S&W, and OSRIC books, and I was looking to organize them. The reforged copies of C&C were always out, sitting on a spare storage shelf and waiting to go with the other books in my closet storage crates. I had C&C in those crates to give other games room to breathe, since C&C is a game that will end play for every other game around it. C&C is just that good.

Why did I pull C&C out?

I have an issue with games being so in-depth and complicated, and requiring character designers for complex characters, that I never play them. The choice comes down to: do I think about playing a game, or actually play one? Even Shadowdark requires a map, player markers, and a torch timer. GURPS needs a hex map and a detailed character build. 5E needs a VTT and web-based character sheets.

C&C needs a character sheet the size of an index card.

All the rest is theater of the mind.

If I am not playing any of these, if I choose a game where all I need is a few 4x6" cards and some dice, and I sit at a card table with a book or two at my side, then I can play. There is no book reference, no looking up charts, and no complicated collections of action types and abilities.

C&C is easier than Shadowdark, OSE, and many other rules-light games.

Yet it provides a complete 1E-like experience.

Castles & Crusades is a game that throws out every chart in the OSR. We begin with the ability score charts, one for each, with columns of esoteric modifiers and adjustments for bending bars and lifting gates, number of followers, system shock, maximum languages, hit die modifiers, and all the pedantic OSR ability score modifiers columns every game loves to include. C&C needs none of those charts.

The huge list of saving throws in OSR games, one for two types of magical implement, and all the other very specific categories? We need one chart per class, and leveled all the way up. Every time we add a class, we add a new saving throw chart. All of those are gone in C&C, replaced by a straightforward ability check system using the SIEGE Engine.

The huge thief ability chart? Gone. The bard ability charts? Gone. At most, each class gets a level chart that tells us a few key pieces of information, and when different class abilities are granted. Otherwise, ability scores do the rest of the work. I can see why this was the last game Gary Gygax was involved in; it reduced the D&D concept into an easier, more accessible form.

You play from your character sheet with near-zero book reference.

Your ability scores matter.

5E is similar to C&C, since 5E borrowed the "one chart per class" concept of the game, and did the entire "leveled class abilities" thing. Where 5E stumbles is in its subclass design, which muddies the class's identity and fails to let strong multiclassing handle that level of customization. In contrast, C&C's classes were designed to be multiclass, not in a "pick a new class every level" sort of way, but rather you will always be a "fighter/wizard" at the game's start, building your XP chart, and slowly gaining the abilities of both classes. There are no "one-level dips" in C&C to steal a few class abilities to break another class with; essentially, the game design of 5E relies on exploits.

C&C has classic multiclassing as intended. It is a far better system than 5E's chaotic, idiotic level-dipping mess. I can be a "class and a half" illusionist-bard in C&C, and it means something. I chose that to start, and I will be that all the way.

In many ways, C&C is not an OSR game, but an entirely new one. It may share the math, combat, ability score, and other numbers of the OSR and remains compatible with the adventures there, but the rest of the game is brand-new and so different that what it throws out defines the game. Just the best parts, the character classes, spells, magic items, and monsters, are kept, and all the reference charts are thrown out. 5E would do well to copy C&C more and start throwing out huge sections of the rules, starting with the multitude of action types.

Many parts of 5E serve no good purpose other than to slow down gameplay and require constant rules reference, serving the game designer's hubris and need to force players into a book rather than into a live, immersive world and real-time decision loop. This is one of the flaws of Dungeon Crawl Classics; the game needs the core book's charts as training wheels to create an authentic old-school experience.

I love DCC, and the charts are the only way to communicate to today's players "what it all was about" back in the day. But for those of us who were there, we don't need the charts and find them limiting on our imaginations, which go far beyond what can be printed in these books.

5E is a different type of game. It is designed for competitive play and those who need rules to manage the insecurity of playing with complete strangers. Honestly, Pathfinder 2 does a better job providing rules frameworks for social play, and 5E is sort of a middling game that tries to be everything to everyone.

5E requires you to flip through the book for every action attempted, forcing you to check action types, see if different things combo, and taking you out of the game world and putting you in the rules world on almost every turn of play. Your mind is 10% in the dungeon and 90% living in a book outside the game. You could make the argument that 5E is not a role-playing game, but a 1970s wargame with roleplay elements. 5E is closer to Advanced Squad Leader than it is to Dungeons & Dragons.

In C&C? My character sheet is in front of me. A list of class abilities and spells is there for me to consider. I have my equipment and weapons. My ability scores are ready to use. That's it. I am "on the metal" with my decision tree. I do not need to open the book or check action types to figure out my next turn or plan of attack. The game doesn't have "infinite cantrips," so spells are rare and powerful.

What I have on my character sheet is it. No rulebook is going to save me or define my actions on a turn.

What I see is what I have.

Otherwise, I am immersed in the world and must pay attention.

If my druid casts entangling vegetation on a group of goblins, I may just rule as a C&C referee (Castle Keeper) that the encounter ends if the druid flees, and just "give them that." Single-use spells should be ruled more powerful and narratively impactful. That spell is once per day; give the incantation its due.

Spells in C&C and old-school games are magic.

In 5E? I need to sit there and make rolls to escape every turn, follow the rules to the letter, and play this out to "maximum rules coverage." I could make that old-school ruling in 5E, but by the letter of the rules, the game defaults to rules-based simulation more than to storytelling. Spells you can get back on a short rest, or fire off on every turn? Really, they don't mean as much anymore and have far less impact on the narrative.

Spells in 5E are powers.

Note the subtle difference there, as it means a lot.

The legacy of Wizards of the Coast and the influence of Magic: The Gathering on the D&D's design is clear. The experience is less a role-playing game and more one that relies heavily on rules and tournament-style play. Modern D&D is rules over immersion.

C&C is a game that tells you, get your nose out of the book, stop endlessly trying to cheat the game's rules, stay engaged, stay immersed in the world, and keep making in-character choices. Shadowdark is very similar, and this is why that game does so well. Players stay engaged and in character. Nobody is stuck in a book, finding a rule or chart. The referee and players can use their imaginations to create "the old school flavor and immersion." If something old-school and strange happens, it will be because of someone's imagination, the referee saying "that's cool, allowed," and not a random chart result.

The more a game expects you to stick your nose in a book, the less fun it is.

But some players will say, "But I like the extra rules!" To which I will say, "I don't care." C&C is rules-light, but it has enough rules to cover everything that it doesn't feel like a traditional rules-light game. Every rule, skill roll, saving throw, class ability, and situation is covered by the game's fallback system, the SIEGE Engine. It all comes back to your ability scores, making them matter again.

With the Player's Guide 2 drop, the book is sort of worthless to me until I have this on the Shard Tabletop, "so I can start using it." This is the world you get stuck in with 5E. A book isn't "real" unless you own a digital copy somewhere to use on a paid character designer. And you are forced to buy it twice. It is nice to read ahead and plan a few builds, but the book's arrival in PDF form is a non-event beyond reading material. I am so dependent on Shard that until I can "pay for it again there," the book is meaningless.

With 5E, it is always, "Did you pay for it twice?" No? Well, then, you can't use it.

We are so used to the rip-off that we can't see it anymore.

I like 5E, but the forced computerized character sheets are terrible. The 5E business model is exploitative and sucks, and it approaches insurance company levels of terrible. ToV is the best 5E clone out there, but still, there are moments when I wonder why I even bother. It is a good game, but the hobby is in a sad state. Still, I will likely buy this again on Shard, since I support them.

With C&C? No character designer needed. I can go back to my OGL books, pull in classes there, and use them, or combine them in multiclass builds. All my old books are perfectly usable, even with Reforged. People without Reforged can play in the same game; it is just a handful of name changes, and all the old books are 100% compatible. Reforged did a better job "cleaning the game" than Pathfinder 2 did with the Remaster, where parts of the world felt like they were lobotomized and entire races removed from the world.

Having the ToV Player's Guide 2 PDF is nice, but I really don't "have" it until I pay again somewhere. It is another "book of rules" which will slow down the game. The options are great, but the design is still inferior to a game designed to play "reference-free." Where 5E is the Blackberry with the physical keyboard and clunky design, C&C is still the iPhone with a minimalist design but high ease of use.

With C&C, all I need to do is own a book to use it.

Playing vs. Not Playing

The battle these days is between playing and not playing.

I will be a huge fan of a complicated game, such as 5E, Rolemaster, Palladium, GURPS, or any of the other, pore over and worship the books on my gaming shelf shrines, and never play the games. GURPS, I still manage to play among them all, but some are clearly shelf-worship.

So in walks Castles & Crusades. I put this game in a closet for a reason. It will kill the playtime of other games, most notably 5E, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, and OSE. I like to read and cover those games, but C&C will just subsume and absorb all the playtime and attention that would have gone to them, and take it for itself. C&C is that good a game.

But I can play this. It only takes a 4x6" index card for a character sheet. A short list of spells and equipment, and I am good to go. I don't open the book when I play. There are no charts to reference, so special rules to look up; everything is handled nicely by the SIEGE Engine, and the game plays very smoothly while remaining expressive and maintaining detail and crunch.

The game plays any adventure, and is mostly math-compatible with any OSR, BX, 1E, 2E, or White Box game's adventures. For 3E and later adventures? Simply use C&C monsters and keep the adventure structure. For traps and challenges, use SIEGE Engine and best-guess damages, and the rest of the dangers. It isn't hard.

C&C has the same "pick up and play" factor as OSE or Shadowdark. Grab a character sheet and go. It is so easy to start, pick up, play, and put away again. Getting started again is near-zero effort. It is easy. Picking games that I can maintain and play is the difference between playing and not.

In contrast, logging into a character sheet program, fiddling with the build, printing out pages of character information, making sure all the points and choices are legal, sorting through options, programming in options that don't exist in the book, and doing that for each character in the group is so much work that it kills games for me. I have to stop and ask myself, "What am I doing?"

I will never be able to manage this for more than three characters. It will kill my game. At this point, I am better off developing my own game than wasting my time with someone's character sheet program, online or not. I will get as much done, even if I never finish programming a game.

And the game is highly hackable and moddable, even more than OSE. The structure of the game can be changed, the awards, the ability score modifiers, magic, spell points versus Vancian, the SIEGE Engine itself - everything can be modded. The CK Guide is a hacker's guide to the entire game, giving us the freedom to tweak and modify the game's engine to play exactly how we want.

Don't like the huge difference between Primary (12) and Secondary (18) target numbers? Introduce the approved option to create three levels for Primary (12), Secondary (15), and Tertiary (18) levels and smooth out the curve, while still keeping balance, but enhancing choice. It is slightly more in-depth, but it fixes a few "all or nothing" problems some feel the game has at lower levels.

Want to fix the game even more? Use the optional rules for secondary skills and feat-like advantages to further customize your character. Want a cleric with wilderness survival? Choose a survival skill as a skill, and all checks with that will be at a Primary level, modified by ability score and level, as usual.

Want a system of advantages and disadvantages? Use the game's existing "advantage" system for feat-like picks, and create penalizing "disadvantages" to buy off equally powerful "advantages," and you are done.

You can create a demonic corruption system with this, with a "must be evil" disadvantage (with self-control rolls based on WIS saves), balancing off a "demonic wings" advantage that grants flight. Pace these pairs out as corruption increases, and you are done with this system. In extreme cases, force them to dual-class with a caster and give them evil spells as "rewards." You can even dual-class later on, and if they are behind, force them to catch up before levelling begins as normal again. Just figure the current XP total versus the old, subtract the difference, and force them to level up the deficient caster class until it catches up.

A few small hacks save us hours of designing characters in other games, pages of printouts, custom code hacking into program data files (if it is even possible), and endless wrangling of points and build options. The time and energy saved by a hackable game like C&C mean more playtime and an easier return to the game.

And C&C does Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Mystara, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, Birthright, and all the classic settings equally well. There is no need to convert; all the classes and spells fit perfectly, and the monsters are there and fully ready to go. Just make a story and go. The red dragon attacks with the Orc mercenaries. You find a +2 warhammer and a fireball scroll. I have it all. All the boxes are checked. I am not converting a thing.

I am just picking up my character sheets and getting ready to play.

Part of the beauty of Castles & Crusades is forgetting all these other games exist. It sounds like a bad thing, but it isn't. You don't need any of them, their overly complicated systems, the endless crunch, the strict rules, the pedantic charts and tables, and the fragile structured builds. The differing interpretations of BX, White Box, 1E, and 2E are gone. The language of fantasy is standardized on one system. Nothing else is needed to play a fantasy game.

Just this game.

Off the Shelf: Castles & Crusades (Reforged)

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.

Backerkit: Castles & Crusades Adventurer's Backpack (Reforged)

 

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/troll-lord-games/abp

A busy day today! The Castles & Crusades Adventurer's Backpack (Reforged) launched today, and if you are into C&C, this is a worthy purchase.

C&C is always this game that waits in the wings for me, and it is the best modern version of fantasy gaming, the lost "2.5E" we never saw. Every time I get this out on my shelves, it kills 5E in my playtime.