OSR Problems; on finding a way to run OSR games, and settling on a system...

...and one day I looked up and realized three sections of my shelf were entirely OSR. The biggest chunk by far was for Swords & Wizardry Complete, which is of course supported by the Frog Gods with gigantic tomes of various and sundry....but there's a lot more:

Swords & Wizardry Complete
Dungeon Crawl Classics
Labyrinth Lord
For Gold & Glory
Beyond the wall and Other Tales (my new favorite darling of the moment)
Spears of the Dawn
Castles & Crusades
Iron Falcon
...other stuff I have no doubt forgotten about. Let's not even bother mentioning the actual original B/X D&D, 1E AD&D or 2E AD&D tomes.

And for each of those I have a big fat mess of modules and support, and some of the support is ephemeral and easily transits from one system to the next, such as Yoon-Suin, Deep Carbon Observatory and the D30 Sandbox Companion which are all easily utilized with any of the above titles.

I have a real desire to actually run one of these, not merely convert content over to D&D 5E like I've been doing lately. My thought is that my local gang of players might put up with a couple nights of one, but it's not going to have legs for the long haul....and I do love D&D 5E, so not interested in forcing that system into competition, anyway.

My Saturday group is pretty much dedicated to Pathfinder and I know them well enough to know that that boat must not be rocked any longer; delving into 13th Age and D&D 5E was enough for them. My Wednsesday group is more flexible, but I have some players who, when I break from established D&D, will simply vanish in a puff of smoke and I'd rather not make that happen just because I happen to want to play some OSR stuff.

My thought then is to delve into online gaming again...Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds. I ran Fantasy Grounds for my old players in Seattle a lllloooong time ago when I first moved to Albuquerque....surely it's gotten even easier to work with since those hallowed days of yore. Plus, Roll20 seems pretty cool. Maybe what I need to do is find some games to get in to as a player first, see how it works....I'm thinking Mondays and Sunday nights are good for me. Hmmmm.

But when I run...it's definitely going to be one of the above titles. Probably DCC or S&WC but For Gold & Glory is damned tempting. Labyrinth Lord would be more tempting, but to try it out only begs the question of why I don't just run the original.....and ironically, I know I will find the race-as-class element distasteful once I'm actually dealing with it. This doesn't bother me with DCC strangely, because my sense is that the Tolkienesque races have no real place in DCC anyway and can be ignored.

But then there's Beyond the Wall....have you seen this book? It's pretty amazing. I'll have to talk more about it and its supplement later.

There's other stuff, too: Perils of the Purple Planet. The Chained Coffin. The Haunted Highlands. Tranzar's Redoubt. A Red and Pleasant Land. Razor Coast.....these are all begging me to run them. And yet I'll probably ignore them all and do my own thing anyway. I always do.

Troll Lord Games tackles 5E

The Troll Lords are hitting 5E with a conversion of their classic Castles & Crusades module A0: The Rising Knight to 5th edition rules. Jason Vey is doing the conversions. A0: The Rising Knight is one of the principle introductory modules for C&C, set in the world of Airdhe.

I had to pick it up....despite owning the original.....and wanted to make  a couple comments on the conversion for those interested:

First, it's using the C&C stat block format, which is a sort of chatty "so and so has the following things" kind of format. I think this works well for the extremely simple C&C NPC statblock style, but I think it fails for D&D 5E. Even a simple as D&D 5E is, it's still got more information in a stat block that's better suited to a user-friendly format that doesn't require the GM to stop and think a bit about what he's looking at. Hopefully this will change for future adaptations.

The conversions do look pretty decent, though, and I get the idea of what they are aiming for....evoking the same feel and style of C&C's modules in 5E. Most of the stat blocks in the module are perfectly easy to use; it's just the more complex NPCs that suffer a bit (such as Gritznak) and would benefit from a cleaner presentation.

In the back is a section on converting C&C monsters to 5E, which reads a bit like an effort to convince everyone to buy more C&C modules, but I suggest holding out for Jason's conversions, as they'll make it easier than it already is. The module is also published under the OGL, so they're going that route.....it's been really interesting buying all these 3PP 5E products, since they are currently all over the place on this, with some being OGL, others being non-OGl but very careful, a few flagrantly violating WotC IP and at least one I know of which publishes modules without even copyrighting them. C&C conversions being OGL will make life easier for those 3PP playing the game safe, though.

Anyway....at $2.99 it's worth checking out.

To the End

This was really quite well done:

Backing the Castles & Crusades Mythos Kickstarter

Dammit, this is getting to be a bad habit for me...I'm backing another Kickstarter. But: the Troll Lords are very consistent and reliable in their Kickstarters, and their books for the last couple of years now have been stellar productions. Also, I bought Codex Nordica which Brian Young (the author of the three books in this KS) wrote, and it's really, really good stuff; I'll be snagging Codex Celtarum soon.

C&C Mythos is actually a KS for 3 books: Codex Germanica, Codex Slavorum and Codex Classicum. Together it sounds like you could have the full workings of an ancient mythic Europe campaign. Now, if they are contextually like Codex Nordica then you can expect a series of books laden with the flavor and mythology of each setting, and an emphasis on the academic historical elements....you could in fact use Codex Nordica for a straight up traditional historical game if you like, but its really aimed at something larger than life and more mythic; the world as traditional Vikings thought it was, rather than just what historians knew it to be.

So...Mythos. Check it out:

Co-mingling Dungeons & Dragons and Castles & Crusades

A week or so back my giant order from Troll Lord Games showed up, which included a number of books I had not previously owned: Codex Nordica, Rune Lords, Haunted Highlands, Bluffside and Town of Kalas among others.

The modules are a piece of cake to adapt to Dungeons & Dragons 5E, and the mechanical process I use for other OSR titles (namely Swords & Wizardry Complete) would work just fine here. What's interesting is that I realized that using some of the other C&C content --including classes, spells and other concepts distinct to the game-- might actually be fairly easy to borrow or adapt as well. At the core, both systems are very similar, with D&D and its bounded accuracy mechanic, whereas C&C operates with it's SIEGE mechanic, which distinguishes between good (prime) and bad (secondary) stats, that set different difficulty values accordingly. C&C uses level to boost class abilities, and D&D uses level to boost proficient abilities. C&C sets primes by class and race; D&D sets saves with proficiency by class (though some special traits may dictate from race). The similarities are thick.

Because of this, converting C&C material in to D&D looks pretty basic. For example: take the assassin class. Anytime you have a SIEGE-based mechanical use in the class, just convert it to proficiency. Anytime you have bonuses, just use the rule of thumb and convert the bonuses either directly or (if they seem too large) turn them in to advantage. When converting C&C primes, just turn them in to proficient saves for the class in D&D. You won't get a hard conversion....most class options in C&C have fewer options than 5E classes do, but they'll be more than playable. Also, extend the hit dice of the C&C class to level 20 instead of the C&C method which locks hit dice in around 9th-10th level.

You probably won't want to do this for more than quick on-the-fly NPC conversion, as virtually all of the C&C class options have D&D analogs. Some of the C&C stuff, such as Rune Lore, the Book of Familiars and the Codex Nordica setting include unique character options that might be worth considering for conversion....I'll have to look more closely at them, and think a bit on how one would do it.

You might also ask: why not use C&C as the base system and modify D&D 5E content to fit? Ironically, the answer is because 5E's core mechanic is simpler but with more features....C&C lacks a bit of the nuance that 5E has with skills, backgrounds and its general proficiency mechanic, but actually figuring out a save or check in 5E takes less effort (in fact no effort) to explain to a player, and is very consistent. Not, mind you, that C&C is that complex, as it really isn't; but the 5E system's inherent advantages due to the bounded accuracy concept make it more appealing....to me, at least.

Anyway, if you would like a list of five C&C books that are out right now which you would find are great enhancers with minimal conversion effort to your D&D 5E campaigns, check out the following:
Engineering Dungeons (a great resource for designing dungeons; may be redundant with the 5E DMG which also has great rules for such, but I think the two will compliment)
Engineering Castles (does for castles what the prior book does for dungeons, and will be more useful for this reason since the 5E DMG doesn't talk about that as much; secondarily useful for fleshing out castle projects your PCs might invest in)
The Castle Keeper's Guide to the Haunted Highlands (one of the best module series for C&C now turned into a full-blown campaign region)
Town of Kalas Adventure (very well written town setting, full of flavor and useful stuff)
Codex Nordica (classes will require work, but use my OSR creature conversion rules for the monsters, and the rest is just exceptionally interesting Norse/Scandinavian mytho-historic setting material)

Obligatory Peter Bradly cheesecake art; C&C....last bastion of the +5 chainmail bikini

Troll Lords having a 50% off Print Sale for 7 Days

Castles & Crusades, I just can't quit you. A lot of stuff has gone on with C&C since I stopped regularly collecting it, including a beautiful full-color Monsters & Treasures, Codex Nordica, Codex Celtarum, Rune Lore and a hard-cover edition of the Haunted Highlands Setting, which is the compilation of some of my favorite modules for D&D and it's offspring.

Now they are having a sale. It's very convenient, as I seem to have bought everything Frog God Games has to offer and suddenly the Troll Lords show up with a 50% off print editions sale....and it's 50% off of the total order, fer gods' sakes!!!! Even the C&C Starter Pack, which includes the newest editions of the core books, 50% off the already discounted price.*

So yeah I bought a lot of stuff there, including Town of Kalas, Bluffside, new editions of the existing C&C books, and a medley of other stuff. Wanted to get all the modules but even at the discount it started pushing up into my "excessive madman" zone so I backed off. A bit.

Madness, I tell you!!!!

*They're making room for all the C&C updated Castle Keeper's Guides coming in, the glorious color 2nd printing. I am curious if they have done any revisions to the new version....not enough to bite just yet, will wait until the print version is available for purchase.

Fuuuu....so does this mean I'm going to be ping-ponging between wanting to run D&D 5E, S&W Complete AND C&C again? This is why I tried quitting C&C in the first place!!!


This is the only hobby (well, that I know of) which manages to get me to keep buying the same stuff over and over again.