Troll Lord Games

I've thought about it, and I don't think I could ever return to a fantasy game that didn't have the SIEGE engine (AD&D, d20, etc.). It'd feel waaay to inflexible for me.

Go figure, it's not nostalgia for me afterall...
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Society Member
http://www.cncsociety.org/

I went with the SIEGE Engine, although it sort relates to the "rules light" bit of option 3. Basically, I like that C&C has a very simple way of resolving just about everything.

Although I love "old school" feel, the simplicity of C&C is what appeals to me.
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Lord Frost

Baron of the Pitt
Castles & Crusades Society
The Dungeoneering Dad

Couple different reasons, one of which is that is adaptable enough for me to play it however I please, making it very crunchy, or leaving it all out and just rolling a d20 now and then... but, there is more: Steve lets me write stuff and then it gets published. So, there is that ego stroking.
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Serl's Corner

You forgot "All of the Above" in your answer que.
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The obvious will always trip you up FAR more than the obscure.

Baron Grignak Hammerhand of the Pacifica Provinces-

High Warden of the Castles & Crusades Society

This was a tough poll to answer. I picked SIEGE engine because it was the elegant simplicity of this mechanic that sold me on the game to begin with. But I also love the ease with which the game can be customized. I love tinkering with systems to fit them into specific campaign milieu. I tried doing this with 3rd edition but it was a lot of work and much like pulling a loose thread on a sweater - the whole thing starts to fall apart.

Another aspect of the system that I may love best of all is the minimal amount of time needed to prepare for sessions. I love that I can create an NPC in about 30 seconds with a two-line long stat block, instead of devoting an entire afternoon with half a dozen different rule books to making an NPC with a two-page long stat block.

I put other because there wasn't an "all the above" selection!
Still waiting on my ego stroke!!
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Eulaliaaa!!! Give those rapscallions blood and vinegar, wot?!

Be sure to check out Jim's artwork for sale:
http://jimhollowayart.com/id5.html

I picked "old school feel" since what I like best about C&C is that it plays very similarly to how we played 1E back in the 80s. C&C strips away all of the clutter we ignored back then. Personally, I'm torn on the SIEGE engine. I like the way primes and the SIEGE engine help balance out demi-human advantages without resorting to level limits (which I despise). On the other hand, sometimes as a CK I would much rather just pick a percentage change of success off the top of my head and tell the player to roll a d100 rather than do the SIEGE calculations (which admittedly aren't exactly terribly complicated).

oh i'm a fan because it has the "old school feel" AND is rules lite. I love that i can play a classic fantasy RPing game and yet i don't have to be ready to deal with 30 supplements worth of add on rules, spells, feats, and so on.

Old school feel with in print rule books.

If it wasn't for the SIEGE engine, I would have just gone back to the Rules Cyclopedia instead.

I also had to vote other since I'm also in the 'all of the above' category.

The game appeals to me for it's 'old school feel' which took on a few modern adaptations. The game is rules lite allowing me to tinker and adapt other things to it. Lastly, the Siege engine helps put everything in a neat little package.

M
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"You face Death itself in the form of... 1d4 Tarrasques!"

Partner to Brave Halfling Publishing
http://www.arcanacreations.com

For me it's a toss up between SIEGE and RULES LITE. I choose RULES LITE simply because I think it also includes SIEGE. If you had SIEGE along with 100s of pages of more rules, I simply wouldn't want to play the game.

Also for me, it's a way to continue to play D20 material that I love, such as Eberron, but in a much simplified manner.

It's not a perfect system, nor is it complete, but it's a basis form which I build my own game along with the konwledge I get from discussing with others such as yourselves and just simply poking around the various topics on these boards. There may be a bunch of grognards on line here, with an old school mentality, but this game isn't just for us old foogies. If only them young guns could see that!
I just realized I'll be 40 in less than a year....

For me it was the old school feel updated to work with lessons learned from the past three decades. I don't use the siege rules in my game at all so they are a non-factor.

I view and play C&C as if it were a updated 1st/2nd ed AD&D. I imported skills from 3rd and ran with it.
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Jynx wrote:
I just realized I'll be 40 in less than a year....

Think of it this way -- it's never to soon to plan a party!
M
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"You face Death itself in the form of... 1d4 Tarrasques!"

Partner to Brave Halfling Publishing
http://www.arcanacreations.com

I like the rules light aspect of the game. That is what initially attracted me to C&C after five grueling years of 3.x D&D. I was fed up as a GM and completely burnt out. C&C revitalized my inner gaming geek.

EDIT: I still like D&D 3e and would continue to play it if it was what the group wanted, but C&C remains the better fit for our group.

I view C&C as the "Ultimate Edition", what the game branded D&D should have become. I also DM Rules Cyclopedia D&D, and will be starting an AD&D campaign at my FLGS at some point in the near future. Both campaigns are set in the back history of my C&C campaign world. I find that I write new things (monsters, spells, etc.) up for C&C first. It's then easy to translate them into either Classic D&D or AD&D terms, if I want to. I personally prefer to CK C&C best of all, however. The SIEGE ENGINE neatly solves the problem of the inherent clunkiness of the past editions of D&D, while still being modular and allowing for house rules (unlike the modern versions of D&D). I also like that there's no element of "rules mastery" in C&C, as I think that kind of nonsense just gets in the way of the fun of vicarious exploration of a fantasy world.

Classify this where ever you want to, but it's the minimum of prep time I need to start up an adventure. No feats, advantages, disads or a chunk of books to reference.

Last week, I read a 3.5 adventure and made a few notes in the margin for monster switchouts or tweaks in about two hours.

Thank goodness because my party had completely circumvented the dungeon in a very cool way.

All of the above.

It comes with Duct Tape.

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John "Sir Seskis" Wright

Ilshara: Lands of Exile:
http://johnwright281.tripod.com/

High Squire of the C&C Society
www.cncsociety.org

I went with SIEGE, simply because it feeds into my other reason, which is option 3.
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

moriarty777 wrote:
Think of it this way -- it's never to soon to plan a party!
M

"Its never to early to start beefing up your obituary." -the most interesting man in the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tols2yYj ... re=related
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I went with "Old-school feel" for many of the reasons I have read here. What sold me on the game was GG's association with it. The fact that he went to that system when he could've gone anyplace spoke volumes to me. I wasn't disappointed either. C&C has brought the player's imagination back to the game. The more familiar I've gotten with the game, the more I'm convinced that it's this aspect of it that got GG on board. I'm sure Steve would argue that point, and I'd love to hear what he has to say on it, but that is the impression I get.

All of the above, plus C&C just does everything I need in a fantasy RPG. A simple, easy to use and easy to modify mechanic and even though its rules are not exactly the same as the original games, C&C not only feels like them in every way, it feels better.

-O
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> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

Put me in the camp of being a CnC fan in spite of its old school pitch. Not that I'm above using that angle when I pimp the game at FGLS. LOL!

If anything, the "old school" sales pitch in CnC's early days is what turned me off from even looking at the game for years.

That's right. I'm not here because of the warm fuzzies from past DnD games.

If anything, my past experiences with DnD were much more like the complaints I hear about 3.x. Too many rules for too little return, more hack and slash, less story. I guess many DMs ran the old school modules as frameworks for fun stories, but every DM I played under, ran them RAW while my fellow players turned each dungeon into a forensics slog.

Now, as a time-starved GM, there's plenty that I like with CnC:

Vancian magic: Simple, predictable. Better yet, my players like it

Lots of stuff boils down to CL bonuses/penalties and adding a PC levels

Monster stats are about at bare bones as you can get outside of Tunnels and Trolls. 

The ease of using d20 AND old school materials. That's one huge library, brother.

On the other hand, as a player there was a lot -- a lot -- about the old school DnD experience that I didn't like:

Vancian magic: Too many things to list on this one, mostly stemming that if I want to play a wizard, I want to control magic, not be confined by it. If a NPC can make floating castles, I'd better be able to sooner or later.

Demi-human level limits, multi-classing and dual classing: A classic example of added rules to balance other rules to balance rules before that.

Charts, charts and more charts.
For any game world that wasn't straight up vanilla fantasy, half of a TSR book was taken up by rules on how to shoe horn the concept into the game.

Leveling: Call me to join when everyone is beyond 5th level or so. I'm playing in a RPG to escape real life and do heroic things. I can cover the "early years" of character development in a good back story.

Old school product layout and art design doesn't match my taste for what I see when I envision fantasy (a purely subjective thing, of course.)

I've been gaming for decades, but it's only been a few less decades that I've actually played a DnD style game. Give me points for trying to give the game a go on occasion, but I quote from a player back in '97:
Player: "Hey, you know your games would be better if you didn't waste time on that stuff where my long-lost brother's in town and there's the chick who wants to fall in love with me."

Me: "That's called role-playing."

Player: "What?!? Not it isn't. Role-playing is where you had that cool trap on the floor that looked like a chess board and we had to figure out how to cross it safely."

Me: "No, that's puzzle-solving."

Player: *Snorts* "Whatever, it's role-playing."

Yeah. The Diablo PC game came out and I lost that group.

Whatever you think of 3.x, it brought me back to the fold. It wasn't because I loved d20, it was alright, but getting players for any other game is a chore.

When time got to be tight, I need to find a simpler system to reduce my prep time. After browsing CnC at the store, I finally sussed out that maybe CnC, had what I need, buried in there amongst all that old school love.

anglefish wrote:
Put me in the camp of being a CnC fan in spite of its old school pitch. Not that I'm above using that angle when I pimp the game at FGLS. LOL!

If anything, the "old school" sales pitch in CnC's early days is what turned me off from even looking at the game for years.

That's right. I'm not here because of the warm fuzzies from past DnD games.

If anything, my past experiences with DnD were much more like the complaints I hear about 3.x. Too many rules for too little return, more hack and slash, less story. I guess many DMs ran the old school modules as frameworks for fun stories, but every DM I played under, ran them RAW while my fellow players turned each dungeon into a forensics slog.

Now, as a time-starved GM, there's plenty that I like with CnC:

Vancian magic: Simple, predictable. Better yet, my players like it

Lots of stuff boils down to CL bonuses/penalties and adding a PC levels

Monster stats are about at bare bones as you can get outside of Tunnels and Trolls. 

The ease of using d20 AND old school materials. That's one huge library, brother.

On the other hand, as a player there was a lot -- a lot -- about the old school DnD experience that I didn't like:

Vancian magic: Too many things to list on this one, mostly stemming that if I want to play a wizard, I want to control magic, not be confined by it. If a NPC can make floating castles, I'd better be able to sooner or later.

Demi-human level limits, multi-classing and dual classing: A classic example of added rules to balance other rules to balance rules before that.

Charts, charts and more charts.
For any game world that wasn't straight up vanilla fantasy, half of a TSR book was taken up by rules on how to shoe horn the concept into the game.

Leveling: Call me to join when everyone is beyond 5th level or so. I'm playing in a RPG to escape real life and do heroic things. I can cover the "early years" of character development in a good back story.

Old school product layout and art design doesn't match my taste for what I see when I envision fantasy (a purely subjective thing, of course.)

When time got to be tight, I need to find a simpler system to reduce my prep time. After browsing CnC at the store, I finally sussed out that maybe CnC, had what I need, buried in there amongst all that old school love.

Well, what do you know, someone else pretty much summed up my feelings too. I'll throw in the seige engine as a masterful way to reduce the number of charts needed to be consulted, but still delivering a quick satisfying method to resolve most issues.
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Sir Dachda McKinty,

Margrave and Knight of Portlandia
Castles & Crusades Society

I picked "other" since I like all the above reasons.
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Lord Aladar

Warden of the Welk Wood

Baron of the Castles & Crusades Society

The Poster formerly known as Alwyn

Senior Gamer - Member of the Senior RPG Tour

"NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT - At least not in Yu Gi Oh"
http://www.cncsociety.org/

It comes with Duct Tape.

Is it just me, or does duct tape come up in every Troll Lord discussion?
As for the poll, I'd have to say "all of the above". I do like simpler systems, hence my love of C&C and Savage Worlds. Nuff said.

That was a tough one. I'm actually glad there isn't an "all of the above" choice - it's too easy sometimes with that all-encompassing selection.
That said, I went with the fact that it's easy to modify. I've been able to playtest whole sus-systems in C&C in a modular fashion. Putting something in (or taking it out) is such a breeze.
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LD's C&C creations - the witch, a half-ogre, skill and 0-level rules

Troll Lord wrote:
Lord D: you understand where I"m coming from.

Oh....and why is there no:

"Rubbing the books on my nipples" option?

*bang*bang*

Ah. There we go. Hitting my head on the desk twice got rid of that mental image.

*shudder*