The Winds of Change are Ablowin'

It has been several days since I last posted anything new on the blog. I see even though I have neglected my duties as a blogger I have still picked up a few new followers. This is a good sign, and I thank everyone for reading.

I must admit that part of my lack of new material being posted is because of system burnout. Another part is because I am knee deep in another project that I hope to reveal very soon, and it is taking up quite a bit of my time. In a way I have reached a kind of gaming crossroads so to speak. In short I have decided it is time to switch to another gaming system.

Currently I am using Castes & Crusades to run my game, and most of the materials I have presented here have been designed for C&C. The problem is the amount of work I have had to do to make the system fit my needs. All in all I feel I have done more in the way of system rebuilding than I have preparing adventures. This is where the burnout comes in. At first I had a lot of fun tweaking C&C to have a truer sword & sorcery feel. But in retrospect I think I have been trying to shoehorn the system into places it doesn't like to go.

I chose C&C initially because it is a great game, and it is a rules-lite system that captures the old school feel perfectly. It is also extremely easy to houserule, which I knew I would have to do. I knew I wanted to run a serious sword & sorcery game, and I knew if I used C&C it would take a bit of work to pull off. Another option I was looking at was using the Mongoose edition of RuneQuest, but my players voiced a desire for me to run the game with C&C, and that is the only reason I chose it in the end.

Systemwise RuneQuest would have been a better choice, as it already has a strong sword & sorcery flavor built into the system. It is deadly as hell, and the combat has a brutality that is required for the genre. Also, the Lovecraftian elements I wanted to bring in would have been ported over from Call of Cthulhu with almost no effort. As I am typing this it seems like it was a no brainer to use RuneQuest after all.

That brings me to the purpose of this post. I have decided to take a break from Castles & Crusades, and focus my attention on the D100 family of games (RuneQuest / Basic Roleplaying / Stormbringer / Call of Cthulhu) for now. I am still dedicated to the Old School Renaissance, and intend to remain so. I am also dedicated to producing Open Game License materials, and Mongoose RuneQuest allows me to do so, since it uses the same OGL Wizards of the Coast used for D20 products.

Perhaps some of the Chaosium nostalgia posts over at Grognardia helped remind me of my initial desire to use RuneQuest enhanced with bits a pieces from BRP and CoC. Perhaps it is just the right time. Either way I am sure I will keep C&C close at hand, as I will always love that game in many ways. Right now this feels like the right move. Time will tell...