Home Is Where?

Where Do You Go When There’s Nowhere Left.

This is where some of you live right now, whether you know it or not. The polarization became so intense that you had people that didn’t like rules doing whatever they wanted, telling you your home was always “problematic” and becoming unreasonable in their demands.

Hey, you were good to them though, even when people said you shouldn’t be. They did try to warn you, to be fair.

Over time, things that you appreciated as tradition began to see more and more adherents, hard-liners. The people who didn’t like rules started creating problems. Over time, there was a full-on war happening. The people you tolerated when you probably shouldn’t and the people who told you you shouldn’t tolerate them too much began to carpet bomb everything.

All you wanted to do was live where you lived. It was a good city and there was very little if anything wrong with it. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, no city ever would be but it was a great place to live, work and had decent governance. At one point, you could work, go to school, head to the park where one of your neighbors set up a community garden and they weren’t shy about sharing those chives they grew. Now, the community garden was raided to the point that it’s no more. You’re practically barricading yourself into your home and life in this city is a daily struggle. You look at your home and think “I can’t leave, there are memories here!” and then you look around. It won’t be long before one of the bomb craters you see is your home and you can’t even drink the water because the government is poisoning it. Every time you meet a local, they’re screaming at you to “pick a side!” and when you refuse, you’re the enemy.

With that, you decide it’s not safe. The infrastructure and support is shot. City Council says they’re about to enact an entirely new set of laws that will fix everything but you know the truth, it won’t. The factioning will simply get worse and you’ll be caught in the middle…or will you?

You run for your life and there’s this city, not to far away. It’s clean, neat, people are polite. They see you step out of your car that’s been vandalized nine ways to sundown and ask where you came from. When you tell them, they start pointing people out. You recognize them. Some of them were your friends and neighbors. Some of them tried to warn you but couldn’t seem to get through. They step in, they vouch for you and they tell the others, yeah, you’re good people.

They take you to dinner where they give you the rundown. This town is great and the laws…they’re few and simple. Best of all, you can stay here as long as you need until you get on your feet but they really think you’re gonna love this place as much as they do and they’re so glad to see that you’ve arrived and they welcome you. Soon, the rest of the town starts to meet you, they hear your story or have heard it secondhand and when you mention your old town, they shake their heads in sadness. They pity you but as much as they pity you, they really do wonders for your morale. They’re helpful and there are so many resources that will cost you nothing.

The infrastructure is great and it’s solid and even though it bears a different name and you’re in unfamiliar territory, there’s so much that’s familiar to you that you can’t help but feel at home.

That’s when you get word that there are three other towns…all with the same rules, few and simple and they’re just as welcoming.

You can’t believe your luck. Why did you stay in the burned out town for so long, clinging to a hope that simply wasn’t there? Even you can’t answer that question but you’re glad you’re here.

These aren’t towns, people. This is a contrast between two games; Dungeons & Dragons and Castles & Crusades.

At present, D&D is being ripped apart by two ever-increasingly polarized factions while WoTC and Hasbro continue to subject it to death by 1,000 cuts. Just recently, Joe Manganiello announced that the Dragonlance TV Show that would have brought the books to the small screen was now over and done. Sadly, with how poorly the adventure Dragonlance: Shadow of The Dragon Queen and Warriors of Krynn, the companion boardgame performed, it’s really no wonder. WoTC also did a shit job of promoting it properly. Not surprising, it came in right before the OGL Debacle. Keys From The Golden Vault was also released without any promotion. I didn’t even know it existed until Bob, The World Builder featured it on his channel and then I heard fuck all about it except that it was a series of adventures that culminates into a heist. How original…and underwhelming.

The 50th Anniversary, January of this year, did you notice it? Yeah, I did but you’d think the company that owns it would have made a bigger deal out of it. They didn’t make any deal out of it. It came, it went. I came, I saw, I wanna go home.

I have seen this before. WoTC bought it in 1997 and waited for three years to release anything for it. I was kinda lucky in that I had some boxed sets, The Monstrous Manual and the Player Handbook all from AD&D 2nd Edition but I also stopped being so interested in it and was playing Vampire: The Masquerade instead and trying to get friends to also play Wraith: The Oblivion…which they wouldn’t.

D&D at the time was considered “that game that nerdy kids played” with the implication that all the cool nerds were playing Vampire and they weren’t far off the mark. Vampire dealt with more mature themes and it had more of an appeal to the average 20-something.

Now, it’s like showing up to my 50th birthday party only to find out I’m dead in a corner with someone having stuck a baseball cap on my head, sunglasses on my face and a cigarette in my mouth when I quit smoking 12 years ago…and no one else but you showed up. There was just zero respect shown and the upcoming 50th anniversary book is going to contain the original three little brown books and commentary from people going “Oh My God! How did Anyone Play This?!”

50 years. Zero respect. Hell of a way to go.

The problem with D&D, the only problem with D&D is editions.

You might think I’m shitting on D&D a lot lately and I’m not. Not really. It’s just sadness that now I’ll have to vet the absolute daylights out of my table to keep the warring factions away from it.

There have always been Edition Wars.

Original D&D fans …some of them haven’t moved from that digest-sized White Box and who can blame them?

Basic D&D, Cook/Moldvay Basic & Expert, AD&D 1st Edition, Mentzer BECMI, AD&D 2nd Edition, you’ll hear arguments from plenty of fans as to why their preferred version is “real” D&D.

Then there’s 3rd Edition, 3.5, the much-maligned 4th and finally, 5th, the one that sits on bookstore shelves today.

It was one thing to have a preferred edition but, over time, it seems like there were people just buying the books to put on their shelves, never bother reading them and making wild claims that simply aren’t supported. Others have gotten their nose so far into the books that they’re practically becoming rules lawyers. Not just rules lawyers, we’ve had those but those that simply aren’t flexible in any way. The absolute worst part is that there are people who’s heads will explode if you even try to reasonably explain why you’ve implemented a rule as it was written (because it works for your table) and then explain why another rule has been modified or thrown out altogether (because that’s what works for your table.)

To either faction, the philosophy of “Your Table, Your Rules, Always In All Ways” doesn’t come with a hell of a lot of maturity in the matter.

It’s built a group with two extreme sets of expectations you’re going to have an absolute bitch of a time managing. This is why I say D&D is dead to me. There will be too much vetting. I never wanted to have to do that. I don’t mind rules lawyering. I don’t even mind Rule Zero but the game needs to move and, if I’m running the game, one rule is immutable, my call is final and that will be all.

If you have the PDFs, reprints or originals, then I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. I still, to this day, love the works of Gygax, Arnesone, Holmes, Moldvay, Cook, Mentzer and the artwork that came with their writings and offerings. They stirred my imagination, they piqued my curiosity and took games beyond the bog-standard board game. I’m not shitting on their work and I never shall. All of them should have been honored on the 50th Anniversary and instead, they weren’t.

If you don’t have those, I would suggest anything from this graphic. Have a look and don’t give your money to a company that hates you.

Castles & Crusades, on the other hand, has a simple rule set, The SIEGE Engine. There aren’t Editions of this game, only printings. That means if you’re holding onto the first ever print run of the books, you can still bring them to my table and play them without a problem. C&C was named for the Castle & Crusade Society, a group of medieval wargamers that existed before Dungeons & Dragons came into existence. Also, all the books are printed here in the States and both active and former military are given a full fifty percent discount off of any and everything.

Gary Gygax’s final works were also done on this particular game. Troll Lord Games has been granted permission to reprint, finish and re-release all of Gygax’s final works by the Gygax Estate.

Listen, there’s something else I should cover here. SIEGE Engine is simple, replacing skill and proficiency checks with attribute checks. Each character will have a primary and secondary attribute. For any action outside of combat that you want to do, you roll on those two attributes and if your roll plus bonuses equal or exceed the challenge base, you succeed. If not, you fail. Really easy stuff. No problem.

The best part is that system is universal. Amazing Adventures, a game by TLG that centers around Pulp Novel style adventuring uses the same system. Victorious, a game set in Victorian times where you can meet Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson, etc, same system. Starship Warden, same system. Basically, anything Troll Lord Games releases will use this rule system and it takes very little time to learn, implement and get your game up and running. If you’re like me and you love the low-to-zero prep kinda stuff, it’s even easier and, best of all, it’s fun! Have fun at your tables again without rules lawyers acting like they’re Saul Goodman on a shitload of Adderall and the MCDM fans that won’t accept that death is on the line for your character, yeah it’s deadly too. There’s nothing to nitpick or fight over and the Castle Keeper’s word is final here. They also have a seven-page guide that you can use to take all of those 5th Edition Supplements, campaign settings and adventures and breathe new life into them. You’re not losing anything. You don’t have to abandon your current campaign. You can simplify it though and still use it. See how much more quickly and smoothly it runs, sometime.

Wizards of The Coast purchased all of the TSR properties and failed to do their due diligence in maintaining the copyrights to things like Gamma World, Star Frontiers and many other games TSR released. They could have done the same thing, one rule system, many games. Instead, Troll Lord Games went and did that and did it with their own properties.

Even if WoTC and Hasbro folds and D&D doesn’t do well this year and I predict it won’t after their continued bad behavior, I’m certain that Castles & Crusades will still be around. Best part, all that you ever need to play the game is available for free. If you’re anything like me, though…yeah, get a look at your future

With Castles & Crusades, I felt like I’d found the home I’d been looking for after losing the D&D stuff I lost in my move to the northeast from the south.

I’m not looking to make people fill out forms or do lengthy Voight-Kampf Examinations to play a game with them. I just want to play games. I want to play in history, in folklore and really take it all in. And then I want to play some weirdball games too…