Castles and Crusades - Thoughts or Experiences?

[Bison]

I've been looking at Castles and Crusades pretty seriously the past few days.  I'd love to play a more "old school" style game on Fantasy Grounds.  I'd love to play D&D 1ed., but there are no modules professional or player made for it.  I'm not sure why and have read a few threads on it, but anyway everyone there just points to Castles and Crusades as the fix.

I've been able to read an early edition of the players handbook.  The rules and gameplay seem to be in the 1ed. D&D mold without my beloved THAC0 tables  >:(.  And based on some youtube videos the game seems pretty amicable to easily converting various editions of D&D into the system.

Anyone actually play the game and have opinions?  I'd really like to hear about any experiences on Fantasy Grounds.

[bayonetbrant]

I have the 2nd edition of C&C and have read a lot of it, and even written a few things that were submitted for it, but never played a full campaign of it.

Everything I read, though, was pretty sweet in how it all worked together.

[Bison]

The siege engine seems like a pretty simple and easy mechanic, which I like.

I'm not sure about some of the class implementation, like the illusionist for example.  They seem to have a very situationally based spell list that could make survival an issue at low levels.  Overall though, I like the lack of feat heavy gaming.  Although to be honest, I do like Pathfinder too.  I'm a complex RPG enigma I guess. 

[Dammit Carl!]

My play time was limited (never made it past a few sessions with my gnome illusionist), but overall I liked it.

Why?

1. I like the d20 mechanics they've used - 3rd ed. made sense to me with regards to increasing AC and so on.
2. No feats and the like - the part of 3rd ed. that I really, really didn't like (too fiddly for me).
3. Its close enough to what you "know," that its not jarring with its few differences.  This also means you can use/tweak old materials with little fuss.
4. I think I liked the way they approach multiclassing, but its been so long since I've read up on the rules that I'm not totally sure about this point.

No experience at all with Fantasy Grounds, so sorry on that one.

[Double Deuce]

I know a few guys that play it on FG and they really to like it. Personally though, I have no experience so can't really comment but, without the THAC0 it just wouldn't be 'old-school' for me.

There is probably no official FG AD&D Ruleset because it would require coding from scratch  by an experienced developer who happens to be familiar with and fan of AD&D and have lots of free time with little to no ROI in return. That same person would be responsible for maintaining compatibility with any FG code changes for until number of years.

Every once in a while someone steps up and says they'll do it, like recently in Classic D&D on Fantasy Grounds but shortly afterwards, these guys disappear or the project just gets abandoned.

[Bison]

Yeah that's what I gathered from the FG forums too regarding a 1ed. D&D version. 

I did respond to your PM at the FG site too.  :)

[Double Deuce]

You know, if gameleaper knows Lua 5.1 maybe we should consider kidnapping him and forcing him to build a 1E AD&D Fantasy Grounds ruleset.     

[Bison]

Ha!  I did commit some serious cash ($10) tonight and picked up the rule set for C&C on FG.  I can really see the appeal of the game from a minimalist standpoint.  No feats or skills just ability based modifiers.  What I honestly like are the black and white tokens.  I could see spending some time on pyromancers and making some old school feeling blue and white maps.

[bayonetbrant]

without the THAC0 it just wouldn't be 'old-school' for me.

You realize THAC0 didn't come around until after ADD1e was out for a while, and after the BECMI set was well underway...?

C&C goes back to the pre-THAC0 old-school! O0