When the wife's away, mouse plays C&C
My wife is in New York at the moment, so that frees up the computer for a little "input time" for C&C notes I've been jotting down in notebooks (we only have one computer attached to the net).

So, since Thursday, I've been happily putzing aroung doing C&C things. I put up several links to resources on the website (not new ones, just ones I hadn't put up yet - ElderEye's goldenrod character sheet, Colin Sez, link to the Keeper's Den, etc).

I closed out the poll for naming what is now officially the C&C Society Gazeteer, and turned in my submission for editing.

I've had a chance to read up on all the message boards, and now to update the blog.

I'm very excited about M&T, and I've put up a bunch of reviews. Now, unlike most people, I'm looking forward to the PHB second printing more than Castle Zagyg. Why? Because TLG is starting to see some competition from other "rules lite" games. We need to have a PHB that can stand next to a Green Ronin product on a store shelf and be the one the consumer walks off with. I don't know how many of the first-printing PHBs are still unsold, but it seems that CZ, HoMP and M&T have occupied the Trolls to the exclusion of all else.

It's time now to fix up the core rulebook - fast - so that the game's momentum can continue. So far, we've been riding on the fact that there hasn't been another choice for a good rules-lite game. Now, the PHB has to have better shelf appeal than another game, and the shelf appeal of the 1st printing isn't great. It's the best RPG written, but it doesn't reach out and grab someone who's browsing. We need the revisions, and we need the new printing with Pete's layout.

Well, it has been a while since I had anything that was worth blogging about, and now that M&T has been mailed there is suddenly more than I can cover in a single entry.

First, Monsters & Treasures is good. Very good. This is going to drive the game far for several reasons:
1) we now have an official format and official monsters that can be used in web supplements. Free web supplements are going to be a very important factor in making sure that C&C becomes a permanent fixture in the gaming world. Scadgrad and I are working to bring out the C&C Society Gazette Issue 1, which will contain a couple of mini adventures. The Troll Lords have officially given the legal go-ahead for the use of product identity and compatibility references, so the project is a full-scale go. The link to the C&C Society working group for the gazeteer is http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/CandC_Society/

2) The game has gained credibility that was a bit lacking after the grammar and layout of the PHB first printing. This book shows that TLG has a real, professional product in this game.

3) There is a lot more to talk about for fans of the game - without the M&T, rules discussions and CK advice-sharing were a bit hampered.

Now, on another front, I temporarily quit CKing for my group, but have started again. More on that, probably, in a later blog. A lot of it is discussed in a thread on ENworld.

And thirdly, Green Ronin has released True20, a lite version of d20. This game is, I think, the first potential competitor with C&C in the niche C&C occupies. It is more and more important for TLG to maintain the quality control that is evident in M&T.

All of these themes I'll expand upon, but I wanted to lay out a sort of "blanket" set of the issues as they stand now that M&T has been released.

With this new book, C&C is a potential giant, for the first time rising to its feet.

Goodman Games
I have it from an anonymous but very credible source that Goodman Games and Troll Lord signed an agreement while they were at Kublacon. Goodman Games is now going to be producing C&C modules! There is no official announcement yet, but there will be an announcement when the first adventure is ready.

Which will probably take a couple of months. Nevertheless, this is a ground-breaking event - it considerably broadens the market power of the game, and also the resources that will be available to us C&C fans.

Still Here...
This is just a little note to mention that although I haven't added anything to the blog recently, I am still here and the blog is still active.

The thing is, everything is sort of stalled on the "news" front until M&T comes out, and it's been delayed for quite a while.

Meanwhile, I've had a lot of things going on in my own real life, so I haven't been updating the blog very frequently.

One little nugget that Davis has mentioned is that there will be a line of C&C miniatures released at some point. I'll probably talk about this in detail at some point soon. Now, however, time is limited - so I will upload this entry and move along.

Waiting for Godot and other stuff
We'll start with the other stuff.
The Castles & Crusades Society is working together on a pdf to contain mini-adventures for C&C. The link is http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/CandC_Society/
If you've got a short adventure of your own design, come and visit!
For the first time around, I'm editor in chief, and Scadgrad is the Art Director. The artwork by Scadgrad, which is posted in the group, is worth the trip just for its own sake.

Waiting for Godot
As everyone knows, neither M&T nor Yggsburgh is on the shelves or in the mail yet. This is, of course, disappointing, but it's not unexpected -- see my earlier blog entries.

When I was a kid, whenever we went to one of those buffet type restaurants, I used to pile my tray high with stuff, and my mother would look at it and say, "You've got eyes bigger than your stomach." By this she meant that I was getting more food than I could eat. The Trolls are in a similar situation - they are committed to more product than the company can produce in the time frame they want to produce it in. You run into this sort of problem when you publish a hit game and you've only got a couple of people in the company to handle the situation.

I don't blame them for the delays, but it's frustrating. On the other hand, I wouldn't want a repeat of the grammatical flaws that marred the CCPHB, so I'm willing to wait. Not that while I'm waiting I think they should sleep, or anything...

Assault on Blacktooth Ridge
Now Playing: Castles & Crusades!
I got my copy of Assault on Blacktooth Ridge last Friday, but the kids were home on Easter break, which kept me pretty busy.

Yesterday, though, I posted my review of the module; the actual review sites all take a while before a review is posted, so the only place it's up is on the ENworld message boards, Here

I think it's an excellent module. We're still waiting for M&T and for Yggsburgh. It doesn't look like we're going to have March release dates for either one - it's the 29th already. Nevertheless, I think we'll see both in April.

I'm also coordinating a pdf, to try and create a web supplement for the game. I think it would be nice for TLG to have a fan-created document for download.

Thanks, Sieg!
Quick entry - I'd like to recognize Sieg for taking the lead on a couple of projects that are really directed toward advancing the game. One is already mentioned below - the project of converting existing TLG modules into C&C rules. The second is creating a pdf of some treasure tables, which I have just posted on the site as the first general resource. For space reasons (pdfs are memory-intensive), I'll probably take it down when M&T comes out, but until then, it's a great resource that fills an important niche.

Today's Musing
The kids are home on spring break this week, so my free time's not as uninterrupted as usual.

I'd like to welcome any new C&C players who might have found their way here through the Troll Lords' website. It's hard to gauge how fast the game has been growing over the last week or so, but I'm guessing that the huge initial surge of players that bought Players Handbooks just after the initial release has started to slow down.

One thing to suggest otherwise is that the Trolls have been notably absent from the TLG messageboards and from other sites such as ENworld -- Peter confirms that things are insanely busy over in the Troll Forges, and that suggests that perhaps the initial wave of buying isn't quite over yet.

(The Trolls have mentioned in the past that they're not really set up to handle many direct orders - they work through distribution channels - but the interest in the game has overloaded them with the simple but time consuming job of packing and mailing lots of books).

The other possibility is that they're swamped with the task of prepping all the product that's going out this month. I mentioned in a prior blog that I'll be astounded if it all comes out on schedule. It's just a HUGE product rollout coming together all in one month for a company the size of TLG.

It's probably a combination of both.

Over on the Dragonsfoot forum, Sieg is organizing a very cool project - converting TLG d20 modules to C&C rules. From what I understand, TLG will send text files to the converters so that the entire module can be converted to the new rules. I think this is an excellent use of fan resources, and to manage the growth of C&C, the Trolls will have to depend on fan resources to a large degree. Kudos to Sieg for a good idea and for taking charge of it.

I'd been working on other stuff up until this weekend, so I haven't had much of a chance to build up the resources on Mythmere's Wondrous Resource. Hopefully in the next few days I'll put up some new items.

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble creating or posting zip files - which really limits my ability to post anything that's memory intensive, like a pdf. Working on that...

Specialist wizards
One thing I wish we had: specialist casters in addition to the illusionist. Especially necromancers, although that would mainly be an NPC class.

I don't think that 3E handled this matter particularly well - the specialist wizards have access to a large pool of arcane spells in 3E, and they're a bit better at casting their own spells. But there's not the feeling of true specialization like you get with the C&C illusionist. C&C Illusionists have an entirely different spell-set from wizards, and that's what I'd like to see with other magical specialists.

This may be something I turn my hand to eventually, but I might wait until I see the CKG guidelines for character class generation. It isn't like there aren't tons of other C&C projects I've got in mind.

One thing I'm working on right now is a planar campaign setting I'm going to call Mythmere's Myriad Worlds (with a cool little "tm" next to it). I was working on it for a while before I ran into C&C, using d20 rules. However, something about the C&C rule-set gave me an interesting new take on planes of existence, something that I think radically removes planar adventuring from the Planescape model that has dominated all planar adventuring since it was published.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'm still eagerly awaiting the appearance of all the product that's due out this month.

I can't believe that with all the stuff in the works, the Troll Lords are going to try to produce a free pdf - it's a GREAT idea, as I've opined before in the blog, but the guys are trying to move mountains at this point. If everything that's supposed tome out this month actually does, I'll be shocked and amazed.

Little News Items Presented in an Offhand Manner
It's been a few days, and nothing has really sprung to mind for a new blog entry that I haven't already covered. We had a lot of big news all at once about the March roll-out of lots of product, and after that there hasn't been much.

Websites have been extremely active talking about C&C, which is good.

Serleran has started a blog to describe the strange eons in which C&C was conceived and developed by the Castle & Crusade Society. Serleran, for those who don't know, did the monster conversions for M&T and is one of the major contributors to the game.

The Trolls are busy packaging books and sending them out, not saying much. This doesn't surprise me, since you do revisions and read proofs after something goes to the printer - and they've got a LOT of stuff at the printer. Busy trolls, making good stuff like Santa's elves.

Special thanks to Kravell for his help in spreading the word about the game, and a hearty welcome to Treebore, who finally made his debut on the Troll Lords message boards.

I think there's kind of a hush as everyone waits for M&T to come out, although momentum is definitely building on the internet as more and more people hear about the game. Amazon has reordered, and we know from the net that several local gaming stores have contacted the Trolls directly for copies of the CCPHB.

Nobody knows where Assault on Blacktooth Ridge stands - it's at the printer and has been for a long time. The Trolls haven't had time to provide an update. We'll probably hear any time now, but I suspect we'll see it about the Ides of March.

All the news is good, even if none of it is exactly headline quality. Everyone is waiting for March...