Demarcation Needed

[damned]

my 2 cents.. If it has ThAC0, then it can be discussed here. C&C in general should be left in its own forum, especially when spamming the readers by trying to get others to play it instead of (insert ThAC0 game here) I don't mind discussion where material is taken from other systems and applied to my ThAC0 games, but I don't want the "hey if you like D&D then you would really love (fill in old school themed game that isn't ThAC0 based at all)

i dont get the big deal in THAC0 or ascending AC... its exactly the same numbers and system except one seems to follow on from other rules better than the other... im not saying which one i think follows on better <weg> but either way there is little difference...

as to recruiting for C&C games... im also running one of those... but im all full up just now...

and to follow on that line of thinking - honest, im *not* trying to hijack this thread - i bought FG so i could play some old school D&D because despite all the games on my bookshelf, it was all i had experience at. i grabbed C&C because i was told it was a good old school ruleset and had plenty of bells and whistles. and they were right on both fronts. it IS old school gaming and heavily influenced by Gygax and lots of fun and easy to use and the ruleset works pretty darn well too.

any ways... i hope i havent knocked too many apples off the cart... i like old school gaming and i think C&C fits the bill... just saying ive got absolutely nothing against any other version i just think that with the limited amount of time ppl have to put into these things programming a whole new ruleset for a limited audience is possibly not the best use of ppls resources - but thats just one opinion...

honestly - im not meaning to be a troll! i hope its not coming across like that...

[S Ferguson]

Nope, you're not coming across as a troll (unless you're currently sitting under a bridge). This is the entire purpose of this thread. To determine a common ground for forum users. If you have any C&C information that's compatible with, or a house rule that can be applied to, D&D or AD&D, then post it in the forum, however straight C&C material or comments belong in it's own "Gygax" forum (with 892 posts so far which at least beats Call of Cthulhu - I'm a CoC fan as well as a C&C fan, so I feel I can make the odd comparison).

[opusaug]

At the risk of sounding like I'm contradicting myself, the "recruiting poster" comment was an attempt to validate the impression of some, not to denigrate the work of others. I think it's perfectly reasonable for a post in this forum to compare and contrast games so we can learn what is and isn't "Classic", and a little bit of cheerleading during the discussion isn't going to kill anyone. I agree there's no need for a mea culpa here, Doc.

As for THAC0, my experience past 2e is limited, so I'm still a little unclear what supposed benefit came from doing whatever came after. Is the 3.5/4e armor class system anything like what they do in C&C? I've read through the starter PDF for that (still waiting for my copy of the PH) and while I admit it's a "cleaner" system, I wouldn't say it's "better" - I've got enough math skills that I can count both down and up equally well.

[S Ferguson]

At the risk of sounding like I'm contradicting myself, the "recruiting poster" comment was an attempt to validate the impression of some, not to denigrate the work of others. I think it's perfectly reasonable for a post in this forum to compare and contrast games so we can learn what is and isn't "Classic", and a little bit of cheerleading during the discussion isn't going to kill anyone. I agree there's no need for a mea culpa here, Doc.

As for THAC0, my experience past 2e is limited, so I'm still a little unclear what supposed benefit came from doing whatever came after. Is the 3.5/4e armor class system anything like what they do in C&C? I've read through the starter PDF for that (still waiting for my copy of the PH) and while I admit it's a "cleaner" system, I wouldn't say it's "better" - I've got enough math skills that I can count both down and up equally well.

Good. 'Cause you'll also need them to resolve rolls on the Siege engine resolution system, which is a fair bit out of the woods for AD&D.

[dr_venture]

opusaug - thanks, dude. C&C is what it is - praps not the system for you, no worries. It a non-issue, because as long as you have a game you enjoy, that's all that matters. Keep your eye on the C&C supplements, though, as you may get some mileage out of them for your game of choice.

As for my background and why C&C appeals to me, it has a lot to do with the fact that I more or less skipped 2e through the various 3es. THAC0, the few times I used it, was awkward - obviously simple math is simple math, but the way it was conceptualized was such an awkward thing to me that it left a poor impression, and I had little desire to return to it. At the time I just played Rolemaster, then got out of gaming for quite a while.

More recently, since finding FG, I played a bit of 4e and actually enjoyed it as its own game, but at some point I realized that I'd rather just play the original 1e, if for no other reason than because of my familiarity with it. Since that wasn't an option in FG at the time, I wound up trying C&C and stumbled into the perfect game for my tastes.

My personal irritation with AD&D 1e was the lack of real mechanic for dealing with skills, unusual situations like fighters climbing walls, etc. Since C&C has the SIEGE Engine for quickly resolving those issues, it resolved my biggest game mechanic problem. It's very forgiving of customization and a good system to use my old house rules with, so again, another bonus for me. Also, as I've gotten older, it's just too hard to keep track of all the little specific rules that I know some really love about 1e - again, C&C smooths all that out and provides a non-complicated rules system that's easy for me to run, so for me C&C has been a perfect fit.

Obviously those are all my personal reasons for preferring this very similar game-flavor to classic D&D - for me it is definitely better for those and other reasons, but there's absolutely no reason for you to have the same reaction as I.

Game on!

[damned]

i remember my first game of d&d back in about 1981... i rolled a 16 for dex and was so bummed i got a negative modifier for my ac from my great roll... that is why i think THAC0 makes less sense - because pretty much all other modifiers were good if they were positive and bad if they were negative. as to simple math. yep. there is NO difference between ascending and descending ac's except of course the direction.
ultimately - i dont really care about rulesets. i like the style of game that early d&d and other retro rulesets provide for. as to the mechanics - i just want it to be easy for me as dm to make a determination and easy for the players to follow and to agree to my determinations... sometimes players will argue a ruling or point out something i missed - sometimes i concede....

[S Ferguson]

i remember my first game of d&d back in about 1981... i rolled a 16 for dex and was so bummed i got a negative modifier for my ac from my great roll... that is why i think THAC0 makes less sense - because pretty much all other modifiers were good if they were positive and bad if they were negative. as to simple math. yep. there is NO difference between ascending and descending ac's except of course the direction.
ultimately - i dont really care about rulesets. i like the style of game that early d&d and other retro rulesets provide for. as to the mechanics - i just want it to be easy for me as dm to make a determination and easy for the players to follow and to agree to my determinations... sometimes players will argue a ruling or point out something i missed - sometimes i concede....

Yeah, I find simple mechanics of the more modern games as a old grognard then roleplayer, a bit of a sigh of relief although I still can flip sides and go with THAC0 if the need strikes me, I too skipped 2e AD&D, mainly because, at the time, I was content with 1e AD&D. Mabye somebody with 2e experience could delineate the differences between 2e and (the more familiar to me) 1e and 3e rules.

Cheers,
SF

[Griogre]

As I remember, the primary difference between AD&D and AD&D 2nd was skills were no longer an optional rule, and Clerics/Druids spell levels topped out at 9th instead of 7th level.

[opusaug]

As I remember, the primary difference between AD&D and AD&D 2nd was skills were no longer an optional rule, and Clerics/Druids spell levels topped out at 9th instead of 7th level.

There was a lot more to it than that. 2e was an attempt to be more structured and feel less like a patched together collection of house rules. It organized the classes into four groups - warrior, wizard, priest, and rogue, and all the classes placed into one of the groups and used the same experience table. All classes top out at 20th level for humans, and racial maxes were raised.

Wizards used spells collected from the separate magic-user and illusionist lists in 1e, and broken up into "schools". The mage was a generalist and could pick spells from any school, and "specialist wizards" - like the illusionist - could only use some of the schools.

Priests were reorganized in a similar way, with the cleric being the generalist class, and the druid being "an example" of a "priest of a specific mythos".

Paladins and rangers could only cast priest spells from certain spheres, which made them play more like cleric and druid hybrids respectively. Rangers had additional changes that made them less warrior and more huntsman. Bards were no longer an optional dual-class construct and became a regular class that was kind of a thief hybrid with mage spells and special powers.

Psionics, half-orcs, monks, assassins from the PH, and cavaliers, barbarians, and acrobats from UA were all thrown out.

It's funny, but when it came out I was a big supporter of 2e, and thought the changes were awesome. Now that I look back on it, the hyper-organization just appealed to my OCD personality. All the structure didn't really make the game any easier to play, and it's much more "mechanical" - a lot of the charm from the original cobbled-together rules was lost.

I still think 2e has it's place - I can only think of the original boxed set of Forgotten Realms in terms of 2e, for instance - but it's unique.

[dr_venture]

opusaug: great detailed look - I appreciate it, as I couldn't remember any of that stuff until you mentioned it, and I kept thinking, "Oh yeah" for each of the points

I think I initially liked it for the same reasons, too. But as time went by and I poured over the volumes of altered rules, I kept finding things that had been changed or eliminated that I used to like (no monks? I *love* monks!). So I'd have to start house ruling... and at some point I just realized that I was buying more books than I could really afford and learning heaps of new rules for a system that was going to be just as house-ruled as the last system... the one I already knew how to play and which was looking less and less inferior... just organized differently with different emphasis in places.

That lead to a long distraction with the idea that "I just need to find the game that 'gets it ALL right'"... a search that was ultimately endless, and kinda pointless. I finally realized that for me, all systems have high points and low points, but none are perfect, and I shouldn't expect them to be. My problem was that I was focusing too much on the game system, and not enough on what I was doing with the game. Once I figured that out, the system became a lot less critical, and classic D&D came back to front (or in my case C&C as a close approximation).