Caverns and Creatures - A Simple Old-School RPG

[AnthonyRoberson]

The BAD RPG and Ron Edward's posts about T&T got me thinking about designing my own simple old-school rpg.  Here is a link to what I have bashed together so far: http://www.geocities.com/celtict.geo/candc.html.  Any feedback would be much appreciated.  If you actually get to (God forbid) playtest the rules - so much the better!

Anthony Roberson

[Phillip]

'Old School' indeed.
But I like it anyway.
Suggestions:
- Let Wizards roll maybe 2d6 for POW and take the higher roll before adding INT bonus.  You don't really want Rogues running around with a higher POW than Wizards.
- Don't like multiplying / dividing characteristics for racial bonuses.  Just adding or subtracting a number is better.
- Elves love beauty and magic, but Elves don't get a POW bonus.  Why not?
- Handle STR / DEX mins the same way as combat adds (maybe -1 for each point below).  You could also reverse this (+1 for each point above).
- Using more dice and dividing the dice up and not the total up may be better (much less math).  Of course, combat adds would have to be dice unless they added to the final total.  
- You may want to think about making the mechanics for combat and saves closer to the same.  Of course, the 'old-school' games didn't do that, so maybe you shouldn't either...

[Simon W]

I never had or played Tunnels & Trolls in the early days, although I played lots of that other game beginning with a D.....

I have recently picked up a copy of T&T and planned to use it in the near future. However, some aspects I am just itching to tinker with despite my self-imposed ideal not to change it at all.

I can immediately see your games inspiration from the T&T books. However, what you have done is very close to the sort of changes I would have made. I am now facing a dilemna - to go with C&C, stick with T&T or do my own variant of the two. Oh what to do?

Good work, by the way on initial look through. One or two of the tables are wonky, so you might want to have a look at that.

Simon
It's a dog's life
http://www.geocities.com/dogs_life2003/

[AnthonyRoberson]

'Old School' indeed.
But I like it anyway.
Suggestions:
- Let Wizards roll maybe 2d6 for POW and take the higher roll before adding INT bonus.  You don't really want Rogues running around with a higher POW than Wizards....

Indeed.  I initially had Wizards rolling 2d6 for POW and Rogues rolling 1d6, but thought that might be too powerful.  Your method strikes a good compromise.

- Don't like multiplying / dividing characteristics for racial bonuses.  Just adding or subtracting a number is better.

I did it this way because T&T does.  Switching to the +/- method is better in a lot of ways.  That may be a good switch.

- Elves love beauty and magic, but Elves don't get a POW bonus.  Why not?

Uggh.  They should.  Not sure how I missed this.

- Handle STR / DEX mins the same way as combat adds (maybe -1 for each point below).  You could also reverse this (+1 for each point above).
- Using more dice and dividing the dice up and not the total up may be better (much less math).  Of course, combat adds would have to be dice unless they added to the final total.  

This is an interesting idea.  I don't want to give bonuses for high attributes though.  These are already added in the form of combat adds.  Not sure I understand what you mean about using more dice and dividing them up.  Can you explain?

- You may want to think about making the mechanics for combat and saves closer to the same.  Of course, the 'old-school' games didn't do that, so maybe you shouldn't either...

The one-dice roll combat mechanic from T&T is part of the reason I did C&C in the first place.  Two different mechanics is a little annoying, but it does keep the 'old school' feel indeed.

[AnthonyRoberson]

...Good work, by the way on initial look through. One or two of the tables are wonky, so you might want to have a look at that...

Thanks for the positive comments.  Word did some wonky things to my tables when I saved as html, I will get those fixed in the next revision.

Anthony

[Phillip]

Simply put, what I mean is that maybe you could divide the dice up to allocate among attack/defense or multiple opponents before the roll instead of dividing up the total after the roll.  This would probably necessitate the use of more dice since it is harder to allocate a small handful of dice in a meaningful way.  Of course, as I said, combat adds would also have to be dice instead of a + number unless they were added to the final total(s) of the allocated dice as before.