Table Talk: Where DnD Lost Itself, Castles and Crusades Picks Up.

DeathStalker V rambles on about Castles and Crusades being the ultimate edition of Dungeons and Dragons.
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[@Zhought3391]

I’ve gone back to C&C time and time again. It’s a great company, and given what’s been going on recently with D&D, I’m happy to have an awesome company to support, with a great game. The PHB and M&T are free, and their community and customer interaction rocks.

[@convicsik]

Mitch Hedberg talking about RPG’s, you earned an instant sub !

[@Lloyger5]

spot on

[@memnoc8669]

just picked up castles and crusades for the group

[@Shamustodd1]

Rules Lawyer was already a label by 84 in our neck of the woods.

[@JackMcCarthyWriter]

Same for me. I think the 3e years might have popularized the term, but we used that term back in the 80s, too.

[@protonneutron9046]

Yes, "D&D" the game not the I.P. was lost when 3rd Edition was launched. C&C is the 3rd Edition D&D one should be playing

[@artvandelay8830]

I just rewatched this video. I wanted to add two things: (1) Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast and TSR, and merged them, giving them the most popular name; (2) Aihrde is Erde (Arda), Earth in German. By the way, I never thought about 3rd edition being inspired by Rolemaster, but, after thinking about it, it's so clear.

[@bigulf6712]

pretty much bang on - C&C captures the best of D&D without falling into the traps the modern version of D&D runs into (i.e. a game run by video game developers)

[@RandomEncounterShow]

I agree, I think it was a push to capture the video gamer crowd especially 4th edition. Probably why I see alot of players playing their games like board games with rpg elements thrown in for flavoring.

[@Tysto]

I stopped playing in ‘95 with 2e, & when i look now at 3.5, i find lots of things to love (streamlining, consistency, etc.). BUT, every stinking rule is 240 words long & has two exceptions & one exception to the exceptions. It's relentlessly overwritten.

[@MurfBX]

Now you are into Castles and Crusades? Dude are you just going to get into EVERY Great RPG? Congrats on GREAT Taste! I await your Dungeon Crawl Classics, Old School Essentials and Swords and Wizardry videos coming out in the future!

[@freddaniel5099]

Stumbled upon this vid today. I enjoyed the history lesson! (Man, I think that you'd make a good teacher.) I'll be checking out more of your videos. Cheers!

[@RandomEncounterShow]

Thanks and glad to have you! Truth be told I do my best to keep it light hearted as possible, on the other side of life being a teacher is a hat I have worn.

[@artvandelay8830]

I haven't ever tried out this system or solo gaming. I just discovered it watching your simple-oracle show. I was aware of it, thru Rob (Artichoke Dip), but it was your simple oracle that made me want to play solo. I'm going to use a full biclass group using C&C, including a Fighter/Ranger. Don't try at home, kids! xD Looking forwards to more amazing content! And to further Random Encounters with the Danger Cat!!!

[@mykediemart]

Im with you on C&C its a great system that feels like real D&D.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

It is the way!

[@ericaj9822]

While I say that my favorite edition of D&D is 5e, my favorite RPG - hands down - is Castles & Crusades. It's an easy game to teach and to run, and it's simply a blast to play. Aihrde (word of God is that it's pronounced like "aired") was originally called "Erde", which is the German word for "Earth", so the name-change was for that reason. The world of Dragon's Crucible (hella awesome name, I agree) is Inzae. The other settings are the Town of Kalas, the Haunted Highlands and the Hallowed Oracle (the last two, I think, are out of print). Back in the day, there was also Yggsburgh, created by none other than E. Gary Gygax, but that's not only out of print, but unavailable for sale (Gygax's estate put the kibosh on that, sadly). I'm totally looking forward to your upcoming C&C deep dive, sir!

[@stillmattwest]

Castles and Crusades is an interesting system. It is a lot more crunchy than OSE or Basic Fantasy and not as flavorful as Dungeon Crawl Classics. It’s basically what AD&D 3rd Edition should have been. I’ve got a bunch of C&C stuff but I don’t know if I’ll ever play it. I’d probably end up with the pure nostalgia of Labyrinth Lord or the simplicity of Basic Fantasy or the wild fun of DCC.

[@stillmattwest]

Replying to my own comment. I went back and re-read my C&C stuff and I think I am going to try it. It's got a great AD&D feel with a tighter rule set. Aihrde is a dense and deep setting, kind of Greyhawk-liie. Sign me up.

[@BlackBeltGaming]

Hello from Japan! Loved the old D&D talk!!

[@RandomEncounterShow]

Konnichiwa, glad you stopped by!

[@liambrennan7410]

Che from Roleplay Rescue sold me on picking C&C back in 2020 and nearly three years later I'm still running the campaign I started for four of my friends A solid set of rules, easy to learn & play with & customisable as heck. It's almost impossible to break it in play and my absolute go to fantasy game 🤘😆🤘

[@RandomEncounterShow]

Awesome!

[@Paul1970]

Brother you are 100% on point here. Listening to your thoughts and words was like hearing my own views. Completely agree with you about D&D and the virtues of C&C. Just subscribed to your channel and I look forward to being a part of this community.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

Make sure to jump in the FB group!

[@Paul1970]

@@RandomEncounterShow Done! :)

[@davidgreen7392]

DV, like your take on much. Definitely worth listening to, as it may insite me to action ;)

[@philistineau]

Look forward to further Castles and Crusades content!

[@RandomEncounterShow]

More coming soon enough, including a multi-part deep delve!

[@philistineau]

@@RandomEncounterShow I took a look after watching your video. Seems solid. I’ve always used ability roles - makes dumping charisma way more impactful. I’m curious how balanced the classes are. Ranger for example has a lot of level 1 stuff. I have no problem with wizards being powerful, as I like to balance martial classes with equipment. I really like palladium’s 4D6 and 5D6 for giants etc where you don’t use 18/100 but rather head into the 20s. Gnomes were 1D6 strength from memory. :D

[@TurboWulfe]

I like the Palladium system, its fantasy system is pretty much anything you want. 3.5 was also Coolio, but I like math, lol. I'm seriously looking into Castles and Crusades but I need a group. Great vid take care and have a safe and Happy New Year 😎🤘🍻

[@RandomEncounterShow]

One reason I really love C&C is the fact it plays so well solo as well! They have an active discord scene and facebook group where you will probably find a game pretty quick!

[@Motavian]

Castles and Crusades with the 1e weapon tables is the finest way to play the game.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

Yeah I always liked the adjusted damage based on size of opponent!

[@Motavian]

@@RandomEncounterShow For me it's the space required & reach of a weapon in determining how close a party can fight in 3 foot ranks in a 10 foot wide corridor, or how a forest might make swinging weapons that require 6 feet to wield effectively might make a player draw their dagger. Damage die is only one variable when determining what you should use in a melee.

[@michaelholland6533]

That was excellent

[@ravenwulfgar]

I'm just catching this video but I pointed out to everyone that D&D's biggest problem is editions and the constant edition wars. D&D is polarizing even among fans and it's not D&D that I can't stand, it's the cultures surrounding it. C&C doesn't have that problem as they've gone editionless, opting for printing and slight revisions instead, making the books that you and I own now compatible with others past and present. Plus, the ones that are fighting over "the way Gary played" would do well by swapping to it as Troll Lord Games is the last company for which Gygax produced material for before his untimely passing, calling C&C a successor to D&D. The simple mechanics leave a lot of those arguments at the door. C&C has become my go-to as well and I have a ton of clones that I do love but this one is how I bring people who've never played before into the game.

[@GenuineMattyC]

I started in the hobby with 4E and then 5e before discovering the OSR and then tons of other systems. I could never go back to 5e. I just bought the C&C PDFs today.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

Awesome, welcome to the club 😎

[@FMD-FullMetalDragon]

Rolemaster is an rpg I totally missed out on with. I never would have picked up the connection between RM and the d20 system in D&D 3e. Looking forward to your future Rolemaster videos.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

We will definitely be seeing alot of it in the future. We have so much to cover and so little time! I don't like to do the 5 minute videos so when we cover it, it will be big time!

[@patrickbarnes9874]

Where D&D lost itself is where is where the entire culture lost itself - by incorporating politics into everything. All of American entertainment culture has taken a severely bad hit in the last few years - it doesn't matter whether it is novels, comic books, movies, television, music, games, whatever. The people behind culture production in America lost their minds when Donald Trump got elected and decided they needed to use EVERYTHING to fight against the right wing, so now all of entertainment takes a back seat to being educated in the "proper" values of inclusion and diversity, meaning that actual quality storytelling has become nonexistent, just as it was when culture did the same thing in the other direction decades ago and everying needed to promote overly simplistic stories of anti-Soviet American patriotism.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

Political motivations have intruded upon everything. Troll Lord Games have been excellent in keeping any ideology other than creative fantasy out of their game books.

[@stevecrompton9910]

And D&D is gonna get worse! They just announced that they are developing ways to "monitize" live play, by adding micro payments for weapons, armor and spells! Get ready to start playing D&D by the minute or via subscription!

[@flyndutchmn]

"Do you guys not have phones?!"

[@Zhought3391]

Even just since you wrote this Steve, WotC has shown their true colors. I have zero interest in supporting their vision of what they want for D&D. Castles & Crusades/TLG or one of the other great other companies out there can have my money instead.

[@nickmanzo8459]

Damn, it’s too bad you can’t just play D&D with paper, pencils, and dice… That’d just be silly!

[@invictuscenturion8468]

Hahaha noway, f the wizards of thay i mean the coast

[@c-bass9367]

So this channel needs to lean more into its Cajun roots. I'm here and subbed basically because of the content and the Cajun accent.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

So what do I need to do, break out a pot of crawfish and complain about the weather?!

[@MurfBX]

I send to you this gift for Christmas, go listen to Wind Rose-Diggy Diggy Hole! Last night we were playing Everquest mmorpg and someone started playing it on discord and we all ended up stopping playing the game and burst out into a group song singing it.

[@philipvanover35]

I’m curious to hear your opinion on the Basic Fantasy RPG. It seems like a popular retro clone…

[@RandomEncounterShow]

Basic is a decent game, especially for the price! To me it was 3rd edition stripped down to mimic basic DnD, I prefer to use the old school mechanics myself.

[@philipvanover35]

@@RandomEncounterShow thank you for responding. I’d have to look into it more to understand what The differences are between third edition and basic DnD.

[@hueysimon2726]

You should take a look at "The Black Hack" or some of it's offshoots. Dungeon Questing, Dark Sagas or Questmaster.

[@stu1043]

Do the spines for the latest printings of C&C hardcovers line up nice and even?

[@RandomEncounterShow]

Everything I have purchased has been fine!

[@Mind_of_MATT]

Yay! I'm ready for this C&C deep dive. Maybe this will motivate me to actually play it. I'm still feeling my way around, finding out what I like & don't like. How do you play C&C? Do you create a full party or do you use Scarlet Heroes/Black Streams solo mod & play a single character? I think it may be a bit too heavy for me to play with a full party.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

I am a one character kind of player mostly, and I haven't forgotten we gotta game at some point!

[@Mind_of_MATT]

@@RandomEncounterShow Yeah, one character appeals to me and it's a little easier to envision & manage. I come from a video game background & really want to mainly focus on & play my character. Maybe Sword & Sorcery fits better for this & I like S&S. Cool, just hit me up whenever you get a chance & are ready. I also just got Amazing Adventures in. I snatched it up when it on sale (I think it still is on sale). Very cool book from what I've read so far. It came with a tear in the cover (I've had the worst luck) but Trolllord sent me another one immediately when I emailed them. I also grabbed the Manual of Monsters but haven't looked at it yet.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

@@Mind_of_MATT Its in the deck, I think Cybercowboy is gonna join us for some C&C. If he has Amazing Adventures as well I might run you guys through some h.p. lovecraftian style madness.

[@Mind_of_MATT]

@@RandomEncounterShow I'm up for anything. I've read a lot & looked at many tools but I need to play! C&C or AA, either or both sounds good. Just bear with me, I'm sure my imagination muscles need to be stretched.

[@rodchanas461]

To be fair TSR went bankrupt as much (or more) because they went overboard into fiction publishing.

[@Nobleshield]

Really good video. I'm looking at getting back into RPGs but I want to avoid D&D 5eif possible. Pathfinder is an option but I'm researching a lot of the "OSR" style games, especially Swords & Wizardry, but I realize that in most cases I like the simplified rules but hate the lethality (which even in the Classic and 1e days I didn't like). I keep hearing about Castles & Crusades, and it seems almost like a 1.5 or 2.5 D&D, almost like if 3.x was an evolution of AD&D not a new game.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

C&C I don't consider OSR, definitely modern mechanics and game play, just on the original template of how it is approached.

[@GenuineMattyC]

Art definitely matters! I've been reading through The Black Hack 2e and really enjoying it, except for the art. It doesn't have the right tone to me.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

I have a saying abour art, you can pay for good art up front or pay for bad art in the end!

[@KBNeos]

40:40 I'm a player that started at 5th edition 6 years ago and I've played many systems since then and I still think 5th Edition is superior to 3rd or 4th edition. Its the older editions and the OSR that intrigue me nowadays. I'm wondering if I should start running Castles and Crusades or Swords and Wizardry?

[@RandomEncounterShow]

Castles and Crusades all the way if it comes down between the two, though C&C I don't consider to actually be OSR. Deep Delve incoming on everything about C&C asap!

[@Lyonid8s]

No I'd agree D&D is probably responsible for the birth of the RPG community. Even greater games like Runequest/BRP wouldn't exist without it.

[@hueysimon2726]

I hated 3rd edition and then 3 years later they revised it to 3.5 so you had to buy all new books again. I liked 4e better than 3.5 just because it was more like an mmo. But that got old fast. 5e didn't last long at my house. I refuse to play it now, and most people I know play that, so I don't play anymore.

[@jacobc8019]

Why

[@hueysimon2726]

@@jacobc8019 Why what? Which part?

[@destroso]

You think 4th edition is the greatest dungeon crawler ever made? 40:15

[@RandomEncounterShow]

Yeah, thus I said it?

[@destroso]

@@RandomEncounterShow you were talking about all the editions in line so I wasn’t sure if you were referring to 4e or another one, also it seemed a bit odd from your train of thought of it being video game related, I was just confirming I understood you. Anyway, why do you think it’s the best dungeon crawler?

[@RandomEncounterShow]

@@destroso Because essentially that's how it was written, specifically with use for miniatures and grided tiles, with almost every aspect of the game centered upon combat and combat powers. A focus was given to min/maxing and character creation prioritized premapping your character's level progression before they even hit the table, thus very much in the style of the then popular MMORPGs. Of course the same argument could be given that the first few iterations of D&D/AD&D were primarily dungeon crawlers as well, and I tend to agree.

[@destroso]

@@RandomEncounterShow I see, in the same way that world of Warcraft was a dungeon crawler with raids. That’s why I was confused because you praised how rules light and lethal and exciting pre second edition D&D was and then you called 4e the best though it is more rules heavy. I agree D&D in essence originated as a dungeon crawler but can be so much more if you let it. Thank you for taking the time to explain that.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

@@destroso well I don't consider 4E the best of DnD far from it. For me 1E AD&D was DnD in it's best form. I don't even consider 4E to be the best dungeon crawler (that title belongs to 1995's Warhammer Quest). I do consider 4E to be the greatest dungeon crawler because of the scope and amount of material that was produced, but that's with a grain of salt since it was never intended to be a dungeon crawler 🤣.

[@dungeondumbo]

Well….a lot to digest there. My thoughts for what they are worth…So…B/X is great but class/race bugs some folks. 1st Edition is awesome but a tangled mess. 2nd Edition is also very good but lacks a bit of the lovely spaghetti magic sauce the tangled mess had. 3rd Edition did my head in with it’s bloat (especially Pathfinder) and I didn’t much like it. 4th Edition was a lot of fun for a bit if you just accepted what it was good at…but grew stale quickly. 5th Edition is okay, not great…just okay and every character class is overpowered and can do way too much too soon. One D&D sounds like the opposite of what I want in an rpg…I don’t want a digital tabletop game, no thanks. I want pencils, paper and people. Swords & Wizardry is a fine version of D&D and I’d happily play it. I played a mountain of Rolemaster back in the day…about 10 years solid of it, once a week. We had some truly epic games with that. Against the Darkmaster did a pretty good job of doing a new edition, with nice presentation and good art…something I hesitate to say about the preview I saw of Rolemaster Unified. The cover is so-so bit the interior art is poor. I actually question if some of it is AI created. The new edition might be pure gold but I’m not dropping money on it when it looks that bad and I have so many other good games to choose instead these days. Castles & Crusades frustrates me. I love it. But…I have niggles that really niggle me. Typos that get carried over from printing to printing…the one that always bugs me….club doing 1d6+1 damage. Way too powerful and in the early copy I used to have was written up as 1d6-1 and in the Arm & Armor supplement different yet again if I recall correctly. The Siege Engine is good for the most part…but I read somebody question why a character with a terribly low attribute score..say a 3/4 who makes that a Prime should be better than somebody with say a 17/18 in the same attribute. It’s a bit weird unless I have forgotten something. Also…I bought the recent limited edition white box with booklets….it’s unplayable! Loads of mistakes in there…check out the monster stats. Loads of important information was missing if I recall. I felt robbed. Fine as a curiosity item but it was meant to be a complete game set. As to the published material…some is good and some bad….I had a few modules and I remember one with like a pyramid that was so badly described in relation to the map that I gave up trying to figure it out. The Goodman Games DCC conversions were excellent fun though. Overall despite my issues…it’s a terrific game, I agree. Willy Muffin’s channel is ace btw. Have a great day Mr. Deathstalker V….love the videos 😎👍

[@RandomEncounterShow]

As to the Seige Engine it balances out with prime vs non prime via the modifiers that low attributes or high attributes lend to the check. I always play bringing over the old concept that at character creation the prime needed for the class must have a roll of 13+. The typos are definitely there, sometimes quite hilarious but I have never ran into anything I couldn't easily fix for the game play.

[@RandomEncounterShow]

The white box I bought must be a fixed version? As to the missing stuff that was done on purpose as they were using the C&C rules to mimic the original white box rules 😝

[@dungeondumbo]

@@RandomEncounterShow hi Deathstalker V (does your missus call you that? Lol 🥳) …good idea on the 13+ requirement. Simple fix, I like it. Castles & Crusades is an excellent game. It’s got just the right amount of rules for a good old school style game. I’ve been running the 3rd Edition of Hyperborea recently…that’s also superb (like a cleaned up AD&D but with more gonzo added).

[@dungeondumbo]

@@RandomEncounterShow good answer on the White Box haha! 😜 The real head in hands moment for me was the Dragon entries in the monster booklet. I just re-downloaded the pdf from the TLG site to remind me…It only has one dragon’s stats (red) listed but lengthy descriptions given for all types. Breath weapon does 1d8 damage. That’s it. Please breath on me, please! I didn’t get much further with it and sold the box. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@RandomEncounterShow]

@@dungeondumbo Yeah, that dragon needs to go see the dentist 🤣.