An RPG Folder Full of Fire

Continuing this series in which I sort out my "new" RPG PDF folder. This has been a fun journey because I'm forced to read at least SOME of what I'm sorting. I'm pretty bad for downloading a thing and never looking at it again.

Fuck the King of Space is Nick L. S. Whelan's players' guide to their funky space game. I am not sure if it's still ongoing. The document is a wild mix of classic sci-fantasy art and Nick's own cobbled-together rules that are based in D&D. Right of the bat we're off to a good start because you choose a "boon" for your character during chargen. For example, you might get +2 to hit, a random spell, or some skills. I'm a huge fan of this move and I'm including it in all my game designs. For example, when I created my level 3 pregens years ago for convention and public play, all of them had little perks and things that are not part of the core B/X rules. Because as much love as I have for B/X, it does not generate interesting characters right out of the gate. Everything interesting has to happen in play. Which is fine... it's very OSR. But you can do better than that.

(Nick also has this wicked POSER Manifesto on the site.)

The Revelation of Mulmo by Daniel J. Bishop is a level 4 adventure for DCC RPG. I haven't read it but it seems to be an adventure location related to mean-spirited asshole elves in which there is a kind of resurrection pool. It's a proper dungeon crawl, from the looks of it. Daniel generally does fine work so I'm gonna go ahead and say this is probably keen.

Victorious by Mike Stewart is a sort of Victorian age superhero steampunky RPG based on the SIEGE Engine as seen in Castles & Crusades. I have written about C&C before and I still think it is a killer game and is clearly the spiritual successor to AD&D. In fact, as an aside, if I ever get around to running Al Qadim I might just use C&C instead of AD&D 2e. But that's got nothing to do with Victorious. 

I have been a fan of Mike's since I first heard Save or Die and I've made my fanboy love for Mike, Liz, and the gang public for years. Listen to the back catalog of Save or Die and Save For Half and you'll encounter my emails and junk here and there. Knowing Mike's penchant for old school play and his dislike for crunchy skills systems I can only assume this game is a bit lite in that area. But who knows? I haven't actually read the damn thing. It looks pretty slick. A bit too shiny for my taste, to be honest, but it's fine. Troll Lords puts together some good looking books and this is no exception.

Castles & Crusades

I had heard of Castles & Crusades for years and ignored it. I didn't really love the title and the fact that it was based on the OGL and had 3.5e based mechanics was a turn off for me as I was returning to my gaming roots and discovering this wonderful thing called the OSR and Labyrinth Lord.

When I was at GaryCon this year I played in a game of C&C at the behest of my travelling pals. It was late and the DM (well, Castle Keeper...) was tired. The table wasn't terribly focused or respectful. So the game suffered.

But I could see immediately that I liked the game. I took a gander at the book (6th printing) and quite liked it. Then, as chance would have it, I encountered a copy of the Players Handbook, 6th printing, at our local Book & CD Hut for $14. Bam! Bought.

And I'm so glad I did. This book is awesome. It's succinct, tightly written, focused on exactly what it needs to focused on, useful, clearly laid out, and beautifully illustrated (Peter Bradley rocks).

Someone had told me earlier that the game is a nice marriage between old and new. It is a sort of modern-age AD&D. I agree completely. If I was going to create a game like AD&D using the 3.5 OGL I would like it to turn out like C&C.

Here are some highlights I love about the game:

♦ 3.5 did away with the classic saving throws and reduced them down to three saves. C&C takes them back to a list - actually six categories instead of the classic five. But they are each linked to an attribute. So, for example, if you save vs. dragon breath you are using Dexterity as a base. A save vs. spells is based on Intelligence, and so on. It is a nice way to avoid the clunky old tables (which I personally love, BTW) and make attribute scores more important while still having the shadow of the old table present right on your character sheet (look...there's "petrification"!).

♦ All the basic classes are represented. There are in fact 13 of them. And each makes sense and is based on one ability score, which is called "Prime". Likewise all the classic races are there, including the gnome. Good job.

♦ Classes are structured like the classic game. Instead of the single table for XP you have different XP requirements for each class. I love that. I am well versed in that language and I love to invent classes. It feels like I could easily slip into C&C and create or convert classes without having to learn a new RPG language. I appreciate the simplicity of the single-table method (DCC uses that too) but I do not like the way it forces all classes to be "balanced" against each other. I prefer to have the freedom to create weaker or more powerful classes and balance them by means of XP required per level.

♦ All skill rolls are attribute checks. Good. No more clunky percentile rolls mixed with d6 rolls. I love the flavor of those old mechanics but frankly using a d20 attribute roll is much smoother and easier. In C&C you have an elegant Primary vs. Secondary system by which difficulties are determined. It is intuitive and fast in play. Nicely done.

I'm sure there are things I don't like about this game. I just haven't encountered them yet. I hope to play or run the game sooner than later!