[net.games.frp] Why I GM C&S

knight (06/22/82)

At various earlier moments I have considered asking/posting about
other FRP games than AD&D, but I have always been scared off.  Why?
Because I happen to be an avowed C&S enthusiast, and I have been
*literally* yelled at, more than once, by AD&D types who felt that I
was threatening AD&D's status as reigning king among FRP games.
(Excuse the sarcasm, but paranoia runs deep, y'know?)  This is not to
say I am unfamiliar with AD&D and its predecessor; I have a complete
set of Strategic Reviews (ring any bells?) from my early FRP days,
before C&S came out.  Point being, I am coaxing myself out of my
closet here to give a brief description of why I gamesmaster C&S.
Basically, de gustibus non est disputandum...

My personal dissatisfaction with D&D stemmed initially from my
fascination with the middle ages.  Vanilla D&D had precious little
mechanism for simulating anything other than dungeon adventures; i.e.,
if you wanted to have a "complete" world that would let you simulate
anything approaching real, "normal" life.  While AD&D adds many bells
& whistles, I still find it rather inadequate for my *role-playing*
purposes, mainly because you have to hack the rules, in the sense of
adding things, if you want to do such.  But this bug is now apparently
a feature; E. Gary Gygax is "allowing" me to pick and choose the
aspects I want.  Shoot, I'm going to do that with *any* game, since no
designer knows what *I* want an FRP game to do; hence, I want a system
that's as complete as possible before I hack.

So for my purposes of wanting to simulate a reasonably authentic
medieval society, with fantasy thrown in, C&S does a much more
complete job than other systems I've found.  I can derive as much
enjoyment in role-playing by being, say, a goldsmith and working at
purchasing my own home as I can by full-time adventuring, and I can do
that with C&S without having to write my own rules of societal
interaction.

C&S also answered two of my dissatisfactions regarding mages.  I was
always disturbed by the fact that magick-users really did not have to
use magick much to further their talents (at least initially); I had
played in campaigns where first level magick-users got raised
additional levels without casting any spells, just by bodily killing
various dungeon crawlies.  How does striking a kobold with a staff and
killing it allow me to practice the magickal arts any better?  C&S
awards experience points to magick-users *for using magick.*  This is
a general reflection of the notion that different classes get
experienced for doing different things, a distinction that tends to
get blurred in most systems where experience is awarded for what you
kill, period.

My other mage dissatisfaction concerned creation of magickal items;
most systems provide no system for how to do it, or, almost worse,
tell you to just spend such & such amount of gold.  What am I spending
that much gold on?  It always struck me as an artificial stipulation to
prevent magick from proliferating.  C&S does this by making magick a
difficult thing to practice -- and I mean practice.  The successful C&S
mage must spend *time* enchanting objects, learning spells, embedding
them in the enchanted items, and so on.  This, of course, is not what
most people are looking for, so there is a "fast magick" system for
those who want nothing more from their magick than a quicker, more
spectacular method of killing dungeon nasties.  The full C&S magick
system, however, remains true to the medieval concept of magick as a
philosophical art (but a discussion of Paracelsus would be decidedly out
of place here).

C&S combat is not of the "stand toe-to-toe and roll the dice until
somebody's cut up enough to die" variety, but rather stresses the
effect of *mass* in individual combat.  The single most important
concept to grasp in C&S combat is the "bash," by which you can force
your opponent back against a wall or even knock him off his feet,
thereby gaining an advantage against even larger opponents.  This
makes impact weapons genuinely dangerous by taking into account their
greater ability to do such things, and allows even smaller opponents
to gain a decided advantage in a melee, rather than just a couple
extra hit points of damage, by rushing an opponent and bowling him or
her over.  The system is, unfortunately, rather complex and not
extremely quick to grap or use, but you get what you pay for.

There are, of course, many other more nit-picky reasons for my
preference for C&S, but I won't drag this on much longer.  Before I
close, though, let me hasten to add that I am *not* blindly condemning
AD&D, folks.  I have played in some excellent AD&D campaigns, but
those campaigns' merit were more due to dedicated GMs putting in a lot
of extra time to expand the rules than any inherent niceties of AD&D.
I still play AD&D, but mainly when I want to hack and slash; I just
happen to prefer to reserve my serious role-playing for C&S.  So
please spare me the flames -- I've heard them before, okay?  I do,
however, welcome any serious discussion (emphasis on the "discuss"
part) of the relative flaws and merits of various systems; I by no
means consider C&S "perfect;" there are several things I would do
differently if I had designed it.  Hope that the above was more
informative and entertaining than tedious.

					Steve Knight
					ihnss!ihps3!stolaf!knight
					harpo!stolaf!knight

toddv (06/25/82)

C&S? Cats and Stats? Cars and Stars? Crud and Skrud?
                                     Todd Vierheller

otto (06/27/82)

I know what AD&D stands for, but what does C&S stand for?

George Otto
Bell Labs, Indian Hill
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