There is light at the end of the tunnel, and we'll be through it sooner than you think, of that there is little doubt. In the meantime, we must all do our part and stay out of the public sphere. To help you through this, for a limited time you can download the Castles & Crusades Players Handbook for free. It's everything you need to run and play a game of Castles & Crusades. Also, enjoy A Houseless God and Other Tales, four short stories of Eurich Gunshoff and Ava, a ranger of some renown.

https://www.trolllord.com/tlgstore/

Thanks, Troll Lord Games!

So what's so awesome about C&C?  Old-school grognard here, familiar with AD&D1E and 3.5E.

What he said.

All skills/saving throws/ability rolls work on a simple check. roll d20+bonus+level if it's higher then the difficulty you succeed (difficult is challenge level + either a 18 or 12) If attribute invloved is primary use 12 as the base otherwise the base is 18.
You get 1 primary from your class and if human two more of choice. Otherwise you only get 1 of choice.

Example 4th level fighter decides to try and life a portcullis. GM/CK says its a challenge 5.  Fighter rolls a D20+4 (for level)+(STR bonus) vs 17 (If STR is prim which it is for all fighters) or 23 (if not prim).

Lvls/exp growth is AD&D style. Characters are not gods. The game can be run with just the PHB (less then 200 pages) and any AD&D/OD&D/OSR monster book you have with effectively no conversion (so cheap entry into the game).

What he said.

It's OD&D+ supps/AD&D through the lens of a modern (for the time) D20 system. The spirit of the game hearkens back to the minimal rolling, fast, loose,and minimum amount of rule necessary.  It was OSR/Retro before the OSR.

It was also designed to be on the fly compatible with the TSR editions of the game, in particular all the adventure products available since D&D's inception. It is also very easy to convert much of the 3.0 material from WOTC proper and the D20 market (3.5 less so, due to it's added reams upon reams of changes large and small). Stat blocks for creatures are similar to old B/X D&D products.

It is lighter than any WOTC version of the game- and it's lighter than AD&D/OD&D + supplements because the systems are tighter and easier to teach (everything runs off simple ability checks). It is also highly hackable/moldable- I've added all kinds of things from other games like 13th Ages Backgrounds, and Monster "Specials" and they plug right in. I've beefed up the Fighter class with some 4E-isms.

C&C gives a  bit more AD&D options with it's class/race choices and spells, but it plays more like B/X.

The Trolls also put out a bunch of good adventure material.Some people are put off the by the attempts of the Trolls to write the books in "High Gygaxian" (and frankly the Trolls just don't quite cut the mustard at it) , so the books could probably be a lot less page count than they are. That said, I have come to enjoy their style/attempt vs. reading so many rulebooks that come off as a school textbook and either put me to sleep, or turn me off a game.

My only problem with them is that I can't figure out why they use a d10 for hit dice. I think a 6 would be better.

My guess:

Probably because of the way the 1E Bard acquired it's Hit Points. 1E was always the go-to. So a 1E Bard would have had at least 5 levels and up to 8 levels worth of D10 Hit dice before switching over to a Thief and continuing on.

The C&C bard is absolutely a warrior poet. Definitely the most fun of the C&C classes I played, although C&C does allow for a great human thief which AD&D did not.

I think he referred to the C&C conversion of Conan d20. Not the same as Jason Vey's OD&D/Chainmail hybrid Age of Conan. The C&C conversion was a very in-depth reimagining of the Conan d20 rulebook (and some stuff from other sourcebooks) and was posted on the TLG boards many years ago. But last I checked it was gone.

Very nice though that Jason has released a third supplement for AoC. Im reading it right now. Thanks.

I'm pretty certain that we're talking about ThrorII's conversion. I saw that the user Rigon is hosting v2 of the document here, the name of the file is "C&C Conan Rules v2[1].pdf".

Thanks for everyone for sparking my interest in C&C, btw!

My only pet peeve- Not really a fan of Peter Bradley's cheesecake art, or his interpretations of classic D&D creatures like Gnomes, Goblins, Kobolds, etc.   I do admire his trying to do things differently, but not digging his execution.

The only art of his I actually like is the cheesecake stuff.  He draws strippers really well.  Everything else, not so much.  And the last time I tried to run C&C, the group made fun of the art.  

They should do a kickstarter for a version with all new art.  They could get the artists that did Hackmaster 4.  I'd also love one done in a manga style. That would be great.