Authors Ed Simbalist and Wilf Backhaus created the Chivalry & Sorcery roleplaying game (Fantasy Games Unlimited, 1977) to bring fantasy roleplaying closer to Medieval Feudalism. Dungeons and Dragons was and remains a game that is only vaguely medieval in character.
The worlds of a C&S campaign are modelled upon a real culture – that of feudalism. We believe that it is necessary to provide a coherent world if fantasy role playing is to be a coherent activity. Feudalism stands as the basis of great many legends and works of fantasy fiction. It has the signal virtue of being a known cultural pattern, easily researched by a trip to the nearest library. It also has the virtue of being a real way of life, existing for well over 1000 years in Europe. That means that the elements of life contained in feudalism all worked. They weren’t simply made up in a more or less arbitrary fashion. The feudal system was a working culture, and thus it can be used to very good effect as a model on which to base a fantasy role playing culture that will also work, often to the finest detail. (C&S 2e introduction)
C&S is crunchy, very rules-dense, particularly in its 1st edition. It doesn’t appear to me that many people played the game “Rules As Written” (RAW), instead mining the book(s) to supplement their D&D campaign.
Overview
C&S first edition was a 130-page book, typeset into a ridiculously-tiny font in a effort to keep the page count manageable and cost low.
1977 … Ed Simbalist & Wilf Backhaus … 130 pages … FGU 7701
C&S second edition (1983) released as a box set with 3 staplebound booklets and (somewhat) simplified rules.
This article is about the core rules. Chivalry & Sorcery – both 1st and 2nd editions – had a number of sourcebooks expanding the base game. See my old school RPG Reference Site for the full rundown.
The early editions are not available in PDF, but C&S is now in its 5th edition and can be found on DriveThruRPG in Print and PDF.
Chivalry & Sorcery, 1st edition
You want thorough and detailed? How about a 10-page Table of Contents?!
Interior photos
Illustrations are occasional, many pages not having any. They a mix of contemporary Robert Charrette art and copies of old historical woodcuts.
Small Font
Binding
All the glue-bound 1st edition books were plagued with poor bindings. Rare is the 1e book with a fully-intact binding.
Chivalry & Sorcery, 2nd edition
It has always been apparent that C&S was one of the masterworks in the role playing. The breadth of coverage was monumental and the detail covered virtually everything related to the subject matter. Yet, despite the almost legendary status of the original edition, problems still existed. Many readers were confused by the very completeness of the work and bogged down in the more complex areas of the mass-action miniatures rules which had no bearing on the role playing aspect of the game for them. Hence, the miniatures rules have been removed from C&S and will be placed in the C&S Sourcebook for those gamers with an interest in large scale battles. This avoids the confusion over terms that confused many role players reading such rules in the midst of the role playing rules. Though some areas of the rules have been deleted, entire new sections have been added to Chivalry & Sorcery. Ed Simbalist has now given us a detailed skill system for the game, which more accurately reflects both the genre represented and the state of the art in our hobby. The world and background are still there and most systems have been redesigned for greater ease of both play and understanding. (Publisher Scott Bizar in the Afterward to 2nd edition)
Second edition also switched to a larger, more readable font size.
Book 1: Rules for character creation, character experience, and character advancement
Book 2: Rules for the actual world and society of the feudal age
Book 3: Rules governing magick and its use by magicians of many diverse types
Character Sheet & Dice
See also:
My copy of C&S 1st Ed wound up in a three-ring binder.
That’s probably the best solution
I too remember C&S. Picked up a copy in the early days of my RPG gaming, back before High School when it was just starting to become a big thing. I was the DM back then and most of my players were into medium crunch at best. But this was like rocky road. Used it pretty much as you indicated in your article, as a resource to mine for various things, but there was no way this system in full was going to end up at our table.