Rules Limit Options

The Castles & Crusades CK Guide has this passage on page 329, which is critical to understanding the game, but also a concept in game design that makes the game different from the rules-heavy 5E and Pathfinder 2 games. This is also a fundamental concept in game design.

Castles & Crusades is a game designed around the SIEGE Engine, in which the participants propel the events forward, not by pre-defined skills, but by what they are willing to attempt. Conan does not hesitate to leap from the tower’s height because he is Conan, a warrior, a hero able to do what he knows he can achieve through his Crom-given attributes, his strength, dexterity, and wisdom. These attributes guide him on his leap, and he does not wait until he perfects a leaping and or falling skill. He leaps, trusting to the gods and his own powers to land safely. He doesn’t wait until he has a leaping skill. He leaps.

Roll the die.

Skill-based systems tend to restrict a player’s reactions. They define what their characters are willing to attempt. Players don’t allow their characters to leap unless they possess a leaping skill or at least a landing one. They swing with a great cleave attack not because they have gripped their double-bladed battle axe with two hands and attempt to use all their force and power, but rather if they have a feat that allows them to carry out this motion. These skills should enhance role-playing, but because they are generally built around what the character can and cannot do, they tend to drive the mechanics of the game. The more mechanics a game possesses, the more limits are placed upon imaginative role-play. These limits restrict the SIEGE Engine, but worse they restrict the free form and easy play that Castles & Crusades thrives upon. 

Skills should be additions to role-playing the character, not expansions of the archetype.

In C&C, if dexterity is a primary score, you are assumed to have all the "skills" associated with a high-ability character in that area. Want to grab onto a ledge or climb a wall? Your target number is 12, and you assume all the "skills" come with that primary ability score choice.

No skills are needed.

Then again, this is how builds in many other games typically work; if you have a high ability score, you buy the skills in that area. You focus on DEX feats if your DEX is high. People naturally stack skills and abilities in 5E and almost every other game that allows skill purchases.

So there are no skills. In fact, this design concept extends through the rules and applies to ability score checks, saves, skill-bonus feats, and every other power-creep dongle system many games rely on (often to sell you new books). In 5E and Pathfinder 2, you can't do 90% of the game. The rules lay out the 10% you can do.

C&C is the opposite; the rules cover 90% of the game you can do, but the other 10% is the classes, spells, and options you did not select. Those narrowly focused "can't do" areas constitute class identity. The rules state that if this is in another class's wheelhouse, you do not add your level to the roll. Are you a cleric and trying to pick a lock? The CK will decide to disallow or allow the roll if there are tools and a slight chance, but you will not add your level to the roll.

This is what makes C&C so fun to mod. I do not have to account for 90% of the game when making a change or addition; it follows the same framework as the rest of the rules and sits in its own place while the rest still works as expected.

My C&C Gamma World hack uses this concept and makes the mod "plugin" seamlessly to the main rules. I had to account for the higher starting hit points in Gamma World and fix a longstanding weakness in melee and ranged damage, but once I did that, everything else worked fine. Gamma World becomes a "stuff book and setting guide" while C&C provides the rules and classes. But the wonderful part is you can play Gamma World with classes and progression, and you have an option with Amazing Adventures for even more "vault survivor" classes.

In a 5E port of Gamma World, you would need to rewrite all of the classes, feats, subclasses, skills, and many other things to even approach a playable game. The effort would not be worth it, and the complexity of the port would be so high it would be easier to play the original or write an entirely new game. The 5E core rules are acceptable. Writing a game to the complexity level of a full D&D implementation is the problem - at least, what people expect.

But that 5E mentality supports the consumerist RPG model. They create a complex system you need to keep "buying into," and content creators will be "constantly fed" to make you a "prospect." But smaller games aren't attractive! Considering how much money and time you save with rules-light - or single book - games and the modding capacity, they fit my lifestyle and budget more than games you need to constantly consume.

Yes, YouTube and theory-crafting are excellent, but 10 years later, when thousands of pages need to be tossed out for a new version and thousands of more dollars sunk into an edition, you will regret buying in so deeply. Level Up A5E protects against that for my 5E books, but I am not buying in further to most 3rd party 5E books soon since I have so many.

C&C fits my needs and budget for everything OSR, and makes it more manageable since it throws out the saving throw tables.

You could hack Old School Essentials and Gamma World similarly, but questions about technology skills would arise. C&C has two optional skill systems, a roleplaying skill system and a profession-style skill system - which cover skills nicely. If you wanted one character to be a "mechanic," just make the skill and add it to the character sheet - done.

But the core concept of "add level to rolls except when it steps on another class" makes it easy to modify C&C into a Gamma World game engine. Most of the fantasy tropes and class identities port right in. The few special "tech knowledge" cases can be modded via professional skills. I don't need to write many conversion notes or write an entirely new game and cover subclasses and progression charts for dozens of new classes.

Pathfinder 1e: The 15-Point Default

There is a thought in the Pathfinder 1e community that the way to combat power creep at higher levels is to use the 15-point character point limit when designing characters. Honestly, I got so used to the 25-point limit and having epic characters I forgot the joy of having characters with a few flaws and a couple ability score bonuses in the negative range.

Honestly, they feel a lot more fun to play. I am challenged and trying to think of ways around those limitations. When you have +1 modifiers in almost everything, you don't need to think that much since you are pretty good at most everything.

And this makes items that provide temporary or permanent ability score bonuses worth getting your hands on later. A manual of bodily health that gives you a permanent +2 to CON means a lot more when your CON is 8 than it is 16. At a score of 16, I care a lot less about that book. And you get points as you level, plus hey, there are always GM fiat awards to abilities.

If you want characters to end up as 25-point epic heroes, take that 10-point difference between 15 and 25 and award an extra ability score improvement point at every even level. There! You feel like you are gaining something by not using the 25-point starting level, and it gives you more cool things to spend when you level. Remember that these are not "free ability score points" but point-buy "improvement points," so you will need to use the difference between the current score and the next level on the chart on page 16, so going from a 13 to a 14 costs 2 of these "improvement" points.

If you like only the math and tracking the points, just award an ability score point every two levels (instead of four), and you will make up the (on average) five points from the difference. Houserule away!

So you don't really have to worry about low starting scores anyways.

And the epic characters will be the level 20 ones and progress slowly.

Savage Pathfinder, Module Conversion

So one thing I wanted to do with the Savage Pathfinder system is play in the original Golarion setting, the official game world, but borrow classic AD&D modules and put them in the world. If I have the old modules, I am using them, so my world will be a strange mix of original edition content plus adventure paths.

I suspect this is what many people did when Wizards dumped 3.5 for D&D 4+; they kept playing their 3.5 worlds and adventures with the newer Pathfinder 1e rules and did not skip a beat. I also suspect many D&D 3.5 game worlds, including Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, got converted over, and the campaigns continued.

Plus, there is a lot of room in this world for fun places like the GDQ series, the B-series, the S-series, and the A-series modules. Put the Isle of Dread in the ocean somewhere; it would work.

Now, excellent idea, but is it practical?

Converting is Worldbuilding

I would grab my World Builder and Game Master's Guide for this one since this is a beneficial resource when converting anything into the game.

I would be careful with scripted adventures and use their content as guidelines. The Slave Lords modules in the A-series are good examples. Would I convert every room description, ensure every area and monster were accounted for, do a 1-to-1 map conversion, and ensure my adventure followed the exact same encounter and key matrixes as the originals?

We did this thing before with other games, such as D&D to Aftermath, a gigantic task that is rarely worth all that effort. After a while, things break down and begin to not make sense. The entire game turns into this hours-long slog where you realize if you had converted everything over loosely and not worried about the details, you would have never spent days of work prepping a module conversion that came out horrible anyways.

Often, there is just way too much to deal with. The encounters are too big, made for a game that simplifies combat and heavily relies on sleep, fireball, and other area spells to clear rooms.

Very Real Tournament

The Slave Lords A-series are interesting to study because one thing they did was convert these from simpler tournament modules to fully stocked dungeons and adventures to "add more value" to them. You will find the first two adventures expanded from simple and straightforward tournament maps to massive dungeons with many encounters and expanded content.

I dare say the more straightforward tournament maps look better for Savage Worlds Pathfinder to play since they capture the essence and narrative of the adventure, keep the number of encounters down, and avoid confusion and needless bloat. In the first module's tournament version, A1, you get all the classic encounters, the best areas, and the essential experience of the module without too much sidetracking or artificially lengthening things in that typical AD&D way using quantity over quality.

On a downside, due to tournament play, the modules are often a single track of encounters with no bypassing. Some caution is advised, but as a roadmap of the best the module offers, start with the condensed tournament content first.

They Are Not Perfect!

A reminder, the old modules are not perfect. They have a lot of flaws. If you look at the differences between the A1 tournament and vs. A1 expanded, you will see a vast "mapping challenge" in the expanded version. Many groups don't even "map" these days the way they used to. The number of rooms and encounters in all modules is significantly expanded, leading to many long combats and grinds. There are rooms to soak area-of-effect spells and resources. Places to burn divination spells. Lots of save-or-die parts. Plenty of slow hallway crawls with 10-foot poles in the lead. 

Some of this stuff is great for a B/X game, but a Savage Worlds game is different.

There is also this "video game" mentality. They will respond if an operation, like a slave-trading group, is hit. They won't casually sit in the dungeon waiting for the characters to return after they rest up and recharge spells. They may clear out and move elsewhere. They may follow the characters to town with some of the forces they have left and hit the party back before they rest. We were kids when we played these modules and cleared rooms like stand-alone videogame encounters to "solve." We allowed infinite resting in the town, even if the last room was the boss battle and the entire dungeon around them cleared. 

We were really dumb, but hey, we were kids.

From a  pulp-storytelling point of view, having the organization active in the nearby cities and a good amount of fights and encounters outside this dungeon makes a lot of sense. You could go all Indiana Jones and have a vehicle chase with a slaver caravan for a good time. Do not let the modules and maps constrain you. These are more story seeds than monsters and mazes.

And as far as I am concerned, that "respond to multiple incursions and make it harder" applies to all modules, even the Tomb of Horrors. What if, on the second foray in, things changed? That is true horror and makes venturing in there repeatedly a perilous proposition. If the groups and boss monsters had the magic and creativity to build these places and call them home, then they would have the same interest in defending them and self-preservation, especially once they know what they are facing. And if the dungeon is high-level enough, the boss must have a few wish or limited-wish scrolls lying about.

That 15-minute adventuring day should come with a considerable cost, with failure being just the most apparent price.

Railroad Crossing

One word of warning the tournament modules are very railroaded, so I would use them as guides only, and if the players found a way to bypass them, or there was a way to in the expanded version, I would let them. The entire goal here is to figure out what the essential encounters are in the adventure, what ones are needed to tell the story and build the Savage Pathfinder experience around those.

Like the World Builder's Guide says, less is more.

I would use this "pick the top 9-12 encounters" in every module conversion, even Tomb of Horrors. There are those signature moments you are trying to simulate and those memorable encounters you want to experience again, so why throw in the fluff? If the designers wanted to fluff out a fort with 6 extra rooms of hobgoblins, why put them in if there are already one or two great fights with them here? Let those signature moments tell the story of the adventure, and get rid of the extra filler.

Also, do not be afraid to "change the module" dramatically. If my group has been through the Tomb of Horrors so many times, they can recite the room descriptions and point to every trap and secret door like they were reciting lines from their favorite movies; well, it is time to change things up. Rooms will be shuffled, secret doors moved, new traps and puzzles laid down, and new deadly save-or-die horror moments added everywhere. The essence of the module is supposed to be a horror movie where the party needs to pay attention and figure things out, so make it your own and have fun.

And if you can't think of good traps, head on over to the Goodman Games store and pick up this:

Your players will not love you if you mix up Tomb of Horrors with some of these classics, I guarantee it. Even some of the ideas in this book can be combined with the traps in Tomb of Horrors to make the assumed solutions quite deadly. But allow clever play to figure things out. If someone tosses sand across the pit trap and discovers the wall of force, magical push trap, pane of invisible steel, or the illusion of a hallway over there, let them be smart. The sand won't set off the spring-loaded plate that shoves them into the spiked ceiling on the other side.

Take the solution they know works, and make it kill the characters.

And the suffering doesn't need to end with death; if a character "dies" in this dungeon, they wake up remarkably healed in a particular deeper part without their gear. With more traps that will kill them this time, or if they can figure out how - escape. Just trip that revelation to the "supposedly dead" party after the last one falls or flees and keep the fun going.

A big part of the module conversions is to simplify things to fit the pulp-action style of Savage Worlds. You can use that to add fun and your own ideas, so go ahead and make these adventures your own.

Pathfinder as Skyrim

This to me sums up my feelings about Pathfinder and its current state nicely. Having modded Skyrim with over 230 mods, creating merge patches, bash patches, leveled lists, and all sort of other techo-wizardry, I have my custom version of Skyrim running well with all sorts of lovable insanity happening on the roads and wilds of this maniac world, with unpredictable chaos happening around every bend and strange dungeons in places one would never expect. There is also the enemy of survival against the bitter cold, where a lack of preparation against the elements can kill you just as easily as a unique and named draugr in a crypt somewhere.

It is also a finely tuned custom game, with over a year and eighteen versions tested and improved upon, there are mods we like and those we don't, some that are heavy and others that are not, and lots of tweaks and settings to get it working just the way we like things. Modding Skyrim is a hobby for us, much like one would take up model railroading, and the results are satisfying and tragically chaotic and wonderful as we get hours of enjoyment out of that game.

I should say yes, we are looking forward to Fallout 4 and the mods there. We have a similarly modded version of Fallout 3 we have yet to explore, so we have plenty to play with and we are patient. I do look forward to the modding community of Fallout 4 and eagerly await the wonderful pieces they put together there for us to assemble and use in our mod collections.

Pathfinder is the same way for us. Heavily modified with books like 1001 Spells, Deep Magic, and other class compendiums (supported by the wonderful Hero Builder program) it is a big-tent game with options we would never, ever get to explore in a thousand lifetimes, but they are all there for us to enjoy and wander through. Books like Rise of the Drow, third party mega-dungeons, and others make our world a unique place, not exactly how Paizo ships it, but recognizable enough on the surface, much like Skyrim's cold and bitter lands when modded and tweaked with new dungeons and environs. Five monster bestiaries, plus many third party ones make our world a dangerous and unique place filled with the unexpected and unknown. It is as heavily tweaked and customized as our Skyrim version, the modding of the pen-and-paper world and its rules systems every bit as carefully crafted as our electronic world.

D&D 5, at this point, feels a bit like Diablo 3 to us. A fun game, but up until this point it is pretty much the same experience as everybody else's world, minus the stories and unique choices every group makes. The starting point is the same, and while yes you can customize, there simply isn't the fun options that out Pathfinder game has been crafted with over the years. Also, like Diablo 3, D&D 5 is a game that you can easily jump into, so there is that 'instant fun' factor that comes into play. Skyrim, like Pathfinder, can be a complicated beast prone to bugs and finicky problems, but once you get it running great, nothing else comes close in options or the random, chaotic world filled with enemies that pull powers and deadly attacks and combos from books players never had the idea they were coming from. Of course, with D&D 5 it is early, and they just released the game's core under the OGL, so time will tell what we have to play with in the future.

With Pathfinder, if it is published somewhere and included in our 'mod mix' it is fair game, so it takes a special player (and referee) to survive and excel in this environment. With this amount of mixed up madness, you can bet there are exploits, but part of the fun is finding the cheese and house-ruling a fix, just as we would come up with a way to make two conflicting Skyrim mods find a way to work together without breaking things. We are mature enough to know if something is really broken that it needs to be fixed or outright ignored, usually the former, but sometimes the latter and we will revisit it in a later version of the game by removing books or option we don't like, just like a pesky Skyrim mod that never seems to play well with others (randomized and increased world spawns and incredibly long load times in Skyrim).

With us, it is not the question of 'which game is better' for us, it is a question of modding and which game is the better hobby for us. Right now, Pathfinder is our modding game of choice. D&D 5 is a good pick-up-and-play game, but then again, so are many of the retro-clones as well, such as Basic Fantasy or Labyrinth Lord. It is about choice for us, really, and part of the hobby of this game is modding and tweaking, which we enjoy just as well as playing.