The Key to The Heart (friday nights)

[ssfsx17]

I'm gonna try running a campaign again. Hopefully, there won't be any major campaign-stopping holidays in between now and October.

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"They say that the age of heroism and adventure is over. They say that there are no longer gallant warriors or great sorcerors, only large mercenary companies who enforce the will of the wealthy. Chivalry is even less than the unaccomplished ideal it was, for exploitation is the norm. You, however, may be in a position to change all of that..."

No books required! Both new and old are welcome!

The game will be run primarily through Gametable 1.2, which can be found at http://gametable.galactanet.com/

Castles & Crusades is a fast-paced and lightweight variant of D&D that is based around allowing the players and the Castle Keeper to play the exact game they want without having to spend too much time removing things that they disagree with. It is still, at its core, all about diving into dungeons, fighting against dragons and walking away with treasure, but it allows you to do those with as much or as little complexity as you like.

A player chooses two or three of his character's attributes to be marked as "prime." All attribute checks for primes are easier to succeed in. You can have a half-orc fighter with intelligence prime who can easily decipher cryptic glyphs, or a gnomish wizard with strength prime who is eager to wrestle. Primes are the defining feature of C&C's "SIEGE" system and they make me wonder why I hadn't thought of them earlier.

There are no skill ratings. Instead, certain classes may simply allow the character to add his experience level as a bonus to rolls for certain types of checks. The players and the Castle Keeper may agree that certain characters should have extra skills according to their background, or that certain classes should have skills that seem reasonable. For example, a character is trying to read a rune written in old elvish. The character's background is that he grew up in a village full of tribal elves who still spoke old elvish. The CK decides to allow the character to roll as if old elvish was a class skill, since it is a part of his background and they previously agreed that the character was reasonable.

There are no feats. Instead, it is up to the players to be creative and try to work outside the rules in order to provide uniqueness to their characters' fighting styles. The Castle Keeper simply rewards the creativity of the players and decides what kind of roll should be made. For example, a level 1 wizard may try to do a whirlwind attack, so the CK calls for a dexterity check so that the wizard does not fall flat on his face. Then, the CK may decide that the damage will be evenly divided among the enemies since it is not reasonable for the wizard to be able to put full power into a whirlwind attack.

If you are interested, e-mail me at ssfsx17@yahoo.com and put "[CASTLES AND CRUSADES]" in the subject line. You can also IM me through Skype, AIM and Yahoo, and I am "ssfsx17" on all of them. Or, you can send me a private message on this forum.

Sessions will be every Friday night starting at 1900 PST / 2100 CST / 2200 EST / 0300 GMT and will last for roughly three hours. The first session is planned for April 18.

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This campaign will start at level 1.

Stats are 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13 before racial modifiers, assigned in any order you choose. Alternatively, you may choose to roll your stats with five dice per stat, taking the highest three dice. These stats may look high but your choices of primes are much more significant in the long run.

First-level characters begin with the maximum possible hit points and gold. The starting gold of multi-classed characters is based on the class with the highest possible starting gold.

A character may give up one prime in order to have two half-primes. However, half-primes do not satisfy any class's prime attribute requirements.

Only keep track of encumbrance for things that are equipped or ready for battle - i.e., weapons, armor, potions, holy symbols, etc. Everything else is dropped in a safe place when combat starts and cannot be used during combat. Light sources somehow still function when they're left on the ground and don't get tipped over. If you want everything that your character owns to be available during combat then you would basically follow the encumbrance rules normally.

Being lightly encumbered has no negative effects. Basically, encumbrance does not matter until your character's total EV reaches over 2x ER. Since I only track encumbrance for combat-ready stuff, it is unlikely that you will actually encounter the limit.

More house rules are available on request.

[ssfsx17]

First session postponed to the middle of May due to the fact that this is a tough time slot for most people to make.

[ssfsx17]

Further postponed to June 27, but the time slot is not gonna change, unfortunately. This is what I get for living on the west coast.

[ssfsx17]

Good news: amazingly, I've gotten enough players for the timeslot to actually have a running campaign.

[ssfsx17]

Player slots are nearly completely filled. I think all I'll need is a veteran to act as spiritual guide for all the newbies.

[ssfsx17]

Very good news: the game will now be run on OpenRPG.

[ssfsx17]

We've got a Google wiki now, courtesy of one of our players: http://sites.google.com/site/cckeytotheheart/