OSR Commentary - Castles & Crusade Dreams of Dungeons & Editions - Ghosts of Saltmarsh

The Castles & Crusades rpg series of products  has been a very interesting play & campaign ride over the last year or so. Its been one of those learning curbs combining the older classic era TSR adventures with the 3.0 or 3.5 D&D books that I own. This has caused all kinds of rancor among the OSR crowd. The big secret I assume is the fact that many of the 3.5 books work perfectly fine with C&C with a bit of tweaking. My favorite genre is Sword & Sorcery & not necessarily the grimdark type.


More of the gonzo Super Science & Sorcery variety so to this end I've combined C&C with Dungeon Crawl Classics. So I've ported over the DCC magic system into C&C to get the type of a game that my players have been looking for.

The other day I wrote about Kelik The Cruel & his patron demi god Venger. The fact is that the down & gritty feel of the DCC game emulates the sort of vibe I'm going for. These are beings that are playing the with the lives of adventurers across the planes. The fact is that this has awakened in me the ire I felt over the edition wars of the late 90's & 00's. The frankly stupid notion that you can only use X or Y rpg game system to really have the 'true OSR' feel & experience. The fact is that I've been using the combined books of  Castles & Crusades The Codex Celtarum  by Brian Young but for the last couple of months I've been using it to great effect with Rpg Pundit's Dark Albion.  Sigh, yes I know that these two authors political stands are completely opposite but this does not & will not have one iota of affecting my play or players.
Not only has using these books  been tremendously effective in bringing to life a complete campaign setting but its been highly influential in how I think about the OSR in general.



Not only does this approach solve many of my budget problems but it brings home the fact that DYI Dungeons & Dragons is the best Dungeons & Dragons. I've been using many resources from fifth edition as well & not giving two figs what others think. There are some incredible resources with in the OGL & I'm getting very tired of being completely hamstrung by innate attitudes of others when it comes to the table top rpg hobby. Especially when I see many OSR players & DM's showing off their latest purchases of these.



Only to be followed up with a score of one of Fifth edition's latest Dungeons & Dragons title Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Which could easily be ported back over into the OSR's Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea as a huge multi part Saltmarsh campaign from U1 all way through with AS&SH's own adventure The Mystery At Port Greely.


By combining these seemingly unrelated adventures the DM gets an epic 'Deep One' campaign that could take years to complete & could show the players the true scale of a massive legendary campaign of sanity shattering monstrousness.  Editions & books should not hold back the creative spark hence why DYI Dungeons & Dragons is the best Dungeons & Dragons. Keep em rolling.