So, C&C is a D&D variant that more closely resembles 2nd edition than 3rd, though it makes definite improvements on the former and even beat 4th edition to the punch on at least one technique.  The system is apparently easily houseruled as well and can use rules from nearly any edition of D&D with only a little tweaking.  We started playing this weekend with Mark as the Castle Keeper (GM).  J's character, the cleric of Kord, was assigned to investigating cultist activity near Fandor's Keep (on the borderlands), and with a little coersion, he convinced his companions (Gregor Pictooth the rogue (Me); Raven the noble Fighter (M); the Wizard (N)) to accompany him.

Getting there, Raven seduces a prominent corporal, Pictooth makes a dangerous deal with an assassin, the Wizard makes a deal for some new spells with a creepy old guy in a shack, and the Cleric goes about actually pursuing our mission.  My deal with the assassin (Gerrik) probably puts me at odds with the party's goal (and mine, really), but he's a scary guy.  Not knowing where to start, we decide to follow the lead on some Lizardmen living in some nearby ruins.  Unfortunately, they're likely to be tough, so we decide to hire some hirelings (as opposed to employing employlings).  Unfortunately, we're under the impression that we don't have enough money, so we go kill some giant spiders to help pay for it.  Luckily, it wasn't quite an ambush (thanks to Pictooth attentively taking point) but it's a disaster.  Thankfully, the giant spiders are rolling only marginally less crappily than the PCs.  People get seriously beat up, the Cleric and the Fighter almost get taken out, and Pictooth seriously considers hopping back on his horse so that there will be somebody to inform the next of kin, but then the Cleric starts whipping out the critical hits!  BAM!  He takes down one spider!  Then he rushes to the aid of the Fighter, dropping a couple of heals on those that needed them on the way.  Another crit softens the second spider up quite a bit, and then the Wizard sneaks in a crit of her own, taking the spider out!  (Or did the Wizard crit first with the Cleric finishing him off with his own crit?  Either way, day saved.)  We clean up the place and find a young lady and her dead companion in the webs.  Bringing them back to the fort, we find that the girl is the daughter of the local prefect, and is thus important.  We find out that the girl was dating her companion, and that her father didn't care for him.  That makes it all the more odd when the prefect (the girl's father) spends a small fortune to have the young man raised from the dead.  What's that all about?

Eventually we hire some hirelings, but then it's getting late so we call it a night.  This was mostly "setup", Mark says, and there should be more action later.  I thought it was fun, though, regardless.

It looks like we're going to implement some kind of "action point" or other "dramatic editing" tool to give the PCs a little more oomph when the chips are down.  This is especially important since the DM is playing very "old school", and rolls his dice in the open and has no qualms about killing a character that gets in over his head.  He also has sort of "imported" the experience reward checklists from Palladium games to use in addition to standard awards.  I like this as it is a total carrot for playing a certain way.  Currently that way is "generic heroic problem solver", but he could always add more specific items to encourage the flavor of game he wants.

While I'm sure Mark has some semblance of a "plot" (as in, the situation at hand), this is by no means a "story game" and is more of a "game game" with a story added for flavor.  To paraphrase Mark, "The story is just an excuse for the characters to be awesome."

So far, I'm looking forward to the next game, though I'll be unable to attend next weeks game. :(

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"If you fudge dice rolls, your system is failing you!" -Sons of Kryos

I'm glad you enjoyed it. We will miss you next week but have fun at your engagement.

Mark

Oops ! I hit post before I was done.

Anyway, the idea I have for an action point sustem is a modification of Unisystem's Drama Points. I'm working out the kinks but that's probably what I'm going for. Hopefully, it will serve to make the characters a bit more durable as well as encouraging more stunty actions. While I don't think tnat stunty is an actual word, I like the PC's to be heroic.

Mark

Hail to the King Baby!

What can I say it would be an awesome idea if only my dice were not cursed! Remind me to buy some non-cursable dice....

The write up about the adventure was really well done. Keep up the great work. Oh, if anyone is interested they can check out all of the King's handy work at http://www.geocities.com/mysteria51cnc.

Enjoy,

-M51

I wasn't there for the second session, but you can read Mysteria's notes on it HERE.

Third session didn't get very far.  We mostly just prepped for the excursion into the ruins where the lizard-men were said to be, and then went.  We did get another visit from Gerrik the assassin.  As usual, he wants stuff from us that is generally in conflict with our own interests individulally or as a group.  Still, it's a chance for extra money and there were no promises on our part.

We trekked through the swamp for three days, with a bear catching us sleeping on the second day.  The fight was over pretty quickly, though one of our hired henchlings got mauled.  We eventually came across a depression in the swamp with the remains of three ruined towers in it.  The towers are probably significant historically, but we didn't bother to ask anybody.  Due to a miscommunication, our fightress stumbled out into the clearing and all of these lizard-men came lizarding after us.  We weren't worried at first, but then more spawned from the deeper water.  We weren't really worried then, but the wizard that Gerrik had mentioned showed up out of nowhere and began laying down the sleep spells and acid arrows.  We were in over our heads.  Gregor managed to sneak into the ruin behind the wizard and completely fail to backstab him, earning himself a face full of point-blank magic missiles and a near-death experience, but that's about it.  M's fighter and her hireling made a good showing for themselves, taking out quite a few lizard-men, while Laurence (my henchling) napped through the whole encounter.  Sure, it was a magically induced nap, and against his will, but it doesn't look good on a henchling's resume, I imagine.  The unexpected appearance of a mad (and mad) wizard did give the henchlings second thoughts, loyalty-wise, but so far they haven't expressed anything to us.

Eventually, the wizard took off to find something more entertaining to kill.  We finished off the remaining lizard-men (that didn't flee) and decided to go find someplace in the swamp to hide and rest before trying again.

I felt that the system kind of let me down by allowing me to sneak up on the bad-guy and just totally whiff without any resources of recourse, but we're working on that.  I managed to level this time, which wasn't all that excting in it's own right, but the house-ruled feat choice made up for it.  Over all, we're going to have to learn to think more tactically.  There are various tricks and assumptions that good tactical gamers know (or at least Mark knows) that we need to clue in on and start taking advantage of.  I'm not really used to that myself, but it's different so it should prove to be an interesting challenge.

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"If you fudge dice rolls, your system is failing you!" -Sons of Kryos

Theres more at the site than just the 2nd adventure write up. Theres are the previous campaign write ups, characters, playing materials, and even some links. If anyone wants there character posted please send them to me and I will post it.

C&C has a ton of tactical aspects just like D&D, wrapped up in a simple die rolling system. As a group we need to figure out some basic tactics instead of just killing/attacking the first thing that appears. Unfortunately we are an extremly small group, but we need to focus our attacks and provide a buffer for the spell casters to effectively cast their limited amount of spells. Enemy spell caster are extremely dangerous and need to be eliminated immediately or prevented from casting their spells. I recommend things like flamable oil or anything else that can disrupt an area effect. Poison works well also. Anything that is based on either Str, Dex, or Con (they are usually a spellcaster's non-prime attributes). The other thing to work out is gouping attcks on more powerful attackers (two/three or maybe even four on one).

One other simple tactic don't get split up. We need to keep the cleric centralized and keep healing magic split up amongst the party members who will be in conflict.

I remember a conversation with Mark earlier, we need to pick his brain to get better tactic ideas and implement them.

Well, I hope that helps.

I haven't been keeping up a proper log.  I'll have to come back in here and touch things up.  Here's a fun Burning Wheel conversion of my character, though.

Name: Gregor Pictooth

Concept/Bio: Grubby Thief

Lifepaths: City Born, Runner, Pickpocket, Criminal

Age : 24

Stats: Wi: B3, Pe: B4, Po: B4, Fo: B4, Ag: B5, Sp: B5, Speed Mult.: x3.5
(Adequate intelligence, good perception, strength and fortitude, excellent agility and speed)

Attributes: Ref: B4, Ste: B5, Hes: 5, Hea: B3, MW: B10, Circles: B1, Resources: B0
(Four combat actions per round, excellent resistance to fear/pain/surprise, average health, average wound threshold, few contacts, dirt stinking poor)

PTGS: Su: B3  Li: B5  Mi: B7  Se: B8  Tr: B9  Mo: B10
(Superficial, Light, Middle, Severe, Traumatic and Mortal wound tolerances)

Beliefs:

  Money is happiness.

  The Prefect doesn't deserve his riches, but I do.

  Gerrik is gonna fucking die!!

Instincts:

  Stab first, ask questions later.

  When confronted, say something snarky.

  Keep a cut for myself.

Traits: Plain Face, Cynical, Alert, Atravieso, Daring

Skills: Dungeon-Wise B2, Inconspicuous B4, Intimidation B3, Knives B4, Lockpick B2, Stealthy B2, Streetwise B4, Trapper B2
(B2=Poor, B3= Adequate, B4=Good)

Affiliations:

Reputations: Criminal 1D

Relationships: Gerrik (Minor, hateful/rival)

Gear: Shoes, Clothes, Lockpicks, Leather Armor, Short Sword & Daggers, Crossbow

Property:

Spells:

Weapons: Short Sword & Daggers, Crossbow

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"If you fudge dice rolls, your system is failing you!" -Sons of Kryos

Ok, so I kind of suck at this.  I'd just thought that I'd do a little update from Gregor's point of view.  Basically, Gerrik poisoned Gregor as a form of "insurance", to make sure Gregor upheld his end of the bargain.  Well, that was a bad idea, because Gregor decided that he'd rather just kill Gerrik, even if it was the last thing he did.  During a brief break from the adventuring, Gregor was cured of the poison by a creepy "living vampire" guy (not that Gregor wouldn't have just killed Gerrik anyway and taken his chances) and then met up with Gerrik later.  Gregor promptly tried to kill him to death then and there.  There was a brief fight, some sorry-ass rolls on my part, and Gerrik ended the "fight" (such as it was) with cheesy assassin's poison.

He let Gregor live (because he still needed his treasure and assumed that Gregor was still poisoned), but having made his enimity known, somebody slipped Gregor directions to Gerrik's hideout.

Soon, Gerrik's going to have a midnight visitor... and he's bringing friends.

Ah, and here's a link to more details, because like I said, I kind of suck at this.

http://www.geocities.com/mysteria51cnc/m51cnc_campaign.htm

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"If you fudge dice rolls, your system is failing you!" -Sons of Kryos