Bundle of Holding - Chivalry and Rising Sun (Chivalry & Sorcery)

I remember back in 2009 or 2010, I finally found a copy of Chivalry & Sorcery 1st Edition on eBay. I had heard so much about C&S in my early days of gaming that it was something I had had my eye on for a while. Sadly, the font size made it nigh unreadable to my aging eyes.

Chivalry & Sorcery is currently available at Bundle of Holding. It offers the latest version of Chivalry & Sorcery (2020) as well as Land of the Rising Sun (2021). 14.95 gets you the C&S Collection, and just short of 26 bucks adds in the Rising Sun Collection. 

Adventurer! This new Chivalry and Rising Sun Bundle presents the Chivalry and Sorcery tabletop roleplaying game of medieval fantasy adventure from Brittannia Game Designs, along with the new 2021 version of its Land of the Rising Sun campaign setting. Among the oldest FRPGs still published, Chivalry and Sorcery depicts an authentic feudal Europe with nobles, knights, Christian priests, and medieval doctrines. The game focuses not on dungeon crawls but on the feudal system, court intrigue, tournaments and jousts, and a comprehensive catalogue of ordinary life. Want to foil an assassination plot at a royal wedding – clear a pack of bandits from Creag Hill in Somerset – or find a missing priest and recover his tithes from a haunted keep? Chivalry and Sorcery helps you tell all these stories with authority and conviction. And Land of the Rising Sun, newly expanded by Lee Gold (designer of the 1980 First Edition), brings the same historical focus to Japan's Feudal period (850-1500 CE), updated to the C&S Fifth Edition rules.

[Note: This offer's version of Land of the Rising Sun is Lee Gold's 2021 campaign supplement for Chivalry and Sorcery, not her vintage 1980 standalone game (based on C&S 1E) from Fantasy Games Unlimited. And the "Fifth Edition" of Chivalry and Sorcery refers to the fifth version (2020) of the original 1977 game, not D&D Fifth Edition.]

For just US$14.95 you get all nine titles in our Chivalry Collection (retail value $78.50) as DRM-free ebooks, including the complete Chivalry and Sorcery Fifth Edition corebook (along with the C&S Basic Rules and the Character Generator Excel spreadsheet); Goblins, Orcs, & Trolls; theEuropean Folklore Bestiary; three recent C&S adventures – Curse of the Casket, Facets of Fire, and The Welsh Connection; the sourcebook Castles of Britain; and the GM Screen.

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $25.72, you'll level up and also get our entire Rising Sun Collection with four more C&S supplements worth an additional $55, including the 2021 Land of the Rising Sun campaign setting and its Rising Sun Folklore Bestiary, Map Pack, and Adventure Book.

 

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Games From the Basement - Chivalry & Sorcery 3rd Edition

I literally had no ideas that I owned Chivalry & Sorcery 3rd Edition.  Some of the games I rediscover I go "oh yeah, I remember this.  I read the first dozen pages then put it down" or some such.  I have no such memories of C&S.

Heck, even the binding looks like the book was never opened.

This is really irking me, as it seems like it mysteriously appeared on it's own on a shelf, and I know there's no way that could have happened.  I am glad that I didn't pick up a copy off of Ebay last year, as I'd now have 2 copies of a game I never read.

Heck, I opened up and tried to read C&S 2e after grabbing that on Ebay.  Not saying I got far, but I did get farther than I ever attempted with 3e ;)

Glancing through it now, I can see it is an extremely crunchy system.  Lots of charts, lots of text, lots of numbered sections.  There was a time when I might have been able to absorb the information in this rulebook and potentially run a game.  That time in my life has been lost to me.

Might I be able to play in a game of C&S?  Sure, so long as C&S was second nature to the GM, but that goes for any system.  A knowledgable GM makes up for any deficiencies in his players.

Another Snapple Real Fact

Apparently the earlier Snapple Real-Facts are retired but can still be found online. I particularly like real fact #1.

A Goldfish's attention span is 3 seconds.

Think about that for a second... actually, make that 3 seconds. Boom, it's gone. On to the next thing.

So, if we made out next OSR styled landshark based on the Goldfish, you'd have a terror that is easily distracted (and would be a real pretty gold-orange color but I digress). Land-Goldie if you will. And if you over feed it, it dies. Throw some more peasants in it's way. Wait, that's a Chivalry & Sorcery move. Yes, I am trying really hard to wade thru the 2nd edition, but I seem to have the attention fan of a goldfish.

Mini Review - Where Heroes Fear To Tread (Chivalry & Sorcery)

Where Heroes Fear To Tread is not a new release, but it is new to RPGNow.  Its a short (and free) scenario for Chivalry & Sorcery Light, but as the game stats are all relegated to the back of the module, it can be treated as systemless and therefore usable with just about any system.

Were the GM to use this adventure in his own setting, he might have to make a few changes in the background of the adventure, as the default is (of course) flavored by Chivalry & Sorcery.  Peasants aren't D&D peasants - they are dirt poor.

It's a basic delivery mission / ransoming of some NPCs, but the tweaks and surprises keep it fresh.  My main issue is that a main scene has very little for the PCs to do, but that might be more a C&S issue then anything else.  It's easy enough to change.

Did I mention its free?

From the blurb:


A short adventure set in Marakush, usable with C&S from 3rd edition onwards.


Are to Players brave enough to rescue a group of Pilgrims kidnapped by a band of Orcs, now hiding within the dark confines of Darken Forest.


Beware the Dragons.

Taking a Look at Chivalry & Sorcery

I never had a copy of Chivalry & Sorcery.  I had heard about it when I picked up roleplaying back in the early 80's, but no one in my group owned a copy.  Heck, no one in my group had seen a copy outside of a game store.  I do remember the ads in Dragon Magazine.  The ads seemed to me to infer the game was damn complicated.  The ads were probably right.

So, here we are, nearly 30 years later, and I am the proud owner of a previously owned copy of Chivalry & Sorcery.  It's a beat up copy, that appears to be well used, but I question how well read it actually was.  It seems that a previous owner underlined and otherwise marked up the first 10 1/2 pages and then just stopped.  Which I can understand, as this looks like a textbook, and the font is damn tiny.

Unlike Tunnels & Trolls,  this is not a line I'll be looking to complete, but I did need to actually see what all the fuss was about.

I'm not sure if I'll ever read thru this whole thing myself, but if I do, it will be in very small chunks ;)