Chivalry & Sorcery has been around in form or another for over two decades now. Originally created by a pair of Canadian gamers, the game was first published by FGU in 1977. The third edition was brought out in the late nineties by a second US publisher, Highlander, before it was bought by British company, Brittannia Games Designs Ltd. Their fourth edition, like the third, has been substantially retooled and streamlined down from the highly detailed, if cumbersome rules and mechanics of the original. Players and referees alike can now get a taster of the fourth edition rules with
Chivalry & Sorcery Essence, a four-page 221k download available from the
Brittannia Games Designs Ltd. website.
The setting for Chivalry & Sorcery is a version of medieval Europe, but with the addition of magic, and assorted races and beasts. These include not just the mundane deer or dog, but also the traditional fantasy RPG favourites: Elves, Dwarves and Orcs. An example of each creature is provided in Chivalry & Sorcery Essence’s short bestiary, but some races are available to take as player characters in the full version of Chivalry & Sorcery. The game can be best described as one that is class and vocation based, rather than the genre’s tried and tested class and level description -- as typified by WotC’s d20 System.
The setting’s society is very stratified, and unfairly so… Players select a social class from the five available -- serf, freemen, townsmen, guildsmen and noble; and then a vocation -- warrior, forester, bandit, thief, friar, mage, physician and mountebank (confidence trickster). Each of these provides additions to a character’s attributes, particular skill levels, skill points to spend, money and possessions. Thus a serf receives 2 to their strength and agility, 1 to piety, 1 brawl skill, 2 craft (farming) skill, 1 to another craft and possesses a simple weapon, two days food and the clothes they are wearing. A townsman would receive only 1 agility, 1 knife, 1 with two craft skills, nine skill points to spend, four silver pennies, a knife, their clothes and a set of craft tools. There is a rough if not an exact balance across the range of class and vocation options available. Initial skill levels rarely exceed a score of 2.
The game’s nine attributes -- the traditional strength, constitution, agility, intelligence, wisdom together with discipline, appearance, bardic voice and piety, are rolled for on the simple formula: [(d20÷ 2) 5]. Three more points can be distributed as the player desires, but attributes average ten throughout. Two secondary attributes -- Body Points and Fatigue are derived from strength and constitution, one representing general body fabric, the other stamina.
The game system is actually d20 based, with checks requiring a roll equal to, or less than an attribute or attribute plus skill level if a skill check. An exact roll equal to the score is an exceptional success -- much as in the Arthurian Pendragon RPG -- but low dice rolls can achieve critical rolls also. Skill checks are also modified by difficulty factors, but these often make rolls too difficult. For example, a Forester needs to make a skill roll against his Survival (Woods & Forests) skill. The GM decides that this is a common sense skill and tells the player to roll against his wisdom attribute of ten, which with his skill of 2 gives him a skill chance of twelve. An average difficulty would reduce this by three to nine, challenging by five, demanding by seven, difficult by nine and so on!
Combat in Chivalry & Sorcery Essence is a deadly, but common sense affair. Weapon size determines how many attacks a character has each round -- heavier weapons have fewer attacks, but a high agility score can increase this number also. Defenders can sacrifice future attacks to prevent themselves from getting hurt, but damage can be quite high, with bonuses being added to reflect the attacker’s skill roll and strength to the base damage of the weapon. It should be noted that some weapons -- battleaxe, halberd, mace, war fail and some swords, have their ownership restricted to just nobles and their troops.
Magic falls into two camps, prayer and proper magic. Of course Prayer is not magic, rather a Friar character calling upon his deity to invoke a miracle, such as the simple mass or bless up to removing curses, exorcising spirits and blocking the infidel. The more types of prayer that a friar attempts in a day, the more difficult the prayer skill rolls needed to invoke them become as the day goes on. On the other hand, mages power their spell casting abilities through their fatigue score, with their actual skill in magic reducing this cost to their fatigue. Also a mage must pay for spells from skill points -- though there is no indication of how many spells he can start with. The short list of spells given get no more offensively natured then the charm spell or the create fire spell, which can be cast at others!
Chivalry & Sorcery Essence is a basic but decent set of rules that reflects the gritty nature of the game’s setting. What is does lack is a scenario or two, which given that it is only a 221k download, could have been added with little difficulty or little increase in the document’s size. A decent referee could easily come up with some of their own, though. For referees looking to get a taster of the Chivalry & Sorcery game system, then Chivalry & Sorcery Essence is the perfect place to start. After that, there is Chivalry & Sorcery Light or even the full game.
Finally, I’d like to apologise to authors -- Colin Speirs, David Blewittn and Steve Turner, for the delay in writing this review. Particularly to Colin who had to keep reminding me until now.
Sorry Colin.
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