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The inaugural Free RPG Day was held on Saturday June 23rd in the USA and Saturday 21st July in the UK. Its aim was to bring gamers and potential customers into their local games store by making available a number of free mini supplements kindly provided by the publishers. Each is intended to introduce and showcase a particular RPG or range of supplements, either already available or forthcoming. The purpose here is to review as many of the following as possible in a series of mini-reviews, taking into consideration how well each stands on its own, how good each serves as an introduction or prequel to another fuller product, how well it stands up as Free RPG Day product, and just how good it is in general.
I have access to the following items, for which I would like to thank Roj at Wayland's Forge:
- GamesMastery Module D0: Hollow's Last Hope
- DCC #51.5: The Sinister Secret of Whiterock
- Wicked Fantasy Module #0: Temple of Blood
- Tunnels & Trolls Quick-Start Rules
- Mutants & Masterminds Beginner's Guide: Quick-Start
- Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game Quick Start Rules
- Dungeonbattle Brooklyn for Xcrawl
- Changeling: the Lost -- Free Rules and Adventure
- Little Boy Lost for In Dark Alleys
- Call of Cthulhu Quickstart Rules
- The Pig, the Witch and her Lover -- Free Adventure for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
- Flashpak for Cyberpunk 3.0*
- The Rifter #38*
- Return to the Tomb of the Five Corners*
- GURPS Lite Fourth Edition*
- Scion: the Hero*
* To be fair although I have a copy of The Rifter which was given away on the day, both time and personal prejudice will probably prevent me from giving a fair review. I declined a copy of the Flashpak for Cyberpunk 3.0 as I did not think that I could do a fair review of it following the extremely unfavourable review I had to give Cyberpunk 3.0 elsewhere. Similarly, Return to the Tomb of the Five Corners, GURPS Lite Fourth Edition, and Scion: the Hero have been covered elsewhere in detail, though all do a decent job of introducing their respective games.
The Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game Quick Start Rules is Troll Lord Games’ for Free RPG Day 2007. It aims to do two things. First to provide an introduction to the Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game and second to support the Quick Start Rules with an adventure for Castle Zagyg, the setting developed by Gary Gygax based on his Castle Greyhawk dungeon. Unfortunately, it only manages to achieve the first in a clumsy fashion and misses the second by several barn doors.
For the uninitiated, the Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game with its SIEGE engine mechanics is a further development of both the Dungeons & Dragons milieu and its associated rules and mechanics. At its simplest, it melds elements taken from the various editions of Dungeons & Dragons, from Basic Dungeons & Dragons to Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 via Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and even Gamma World Fourth Edition. It has all of the classes of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, the simplicity of Basic Dungeons & Dragons, the slick core die mechanic of the d20 System, and the logical armour class rearrangement of Gamma World, Fourth Edition. What it does not have is a skills system, the SIEGE engine instead employing an attribute led system to determine whether its characters are successful when carrying out a class related ability.
There are of course, reviews aplenty of Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game, but suffice it to say that in play, Castles & Crusades feels like a lighter, more “Basic” version of Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition. True, it is not as light or as sophisticated as say, True20 Adventure Role Playing, but it really does offer an easier method of playing in roleplaying’s original mode of play.
Yet the Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game suffered from a problem despite its simplicity -- one of presentation. The writing in the core book was too dense, such that it made getting at the game’s core concepts an awkward hurdle to overcome. Obviously it was a hurdle that many have overcome, including myself, and I have since run several enjoyable sessions of the game. The point is that the Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game Quick Start Rules suffer from exactly the same problem -- they are overwritten. Too much information is given where it is not needed and not enough where it is. For example, do you really need five paragraphs spent explaining what a Fighter does, when the explanation for each of the spells included is a mere sentence long?
In his introduction, the game’s designer, Stephen Chenault talks about the Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game being a rules light, adaptable game and how an abundance of rules impedes play. Which is fine, but none of this is readily apparent in the Quick Start Rules.
So what do you get in the Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game Quick Start Rules? Simply rules enough to take your characters from 1st to 4th level, with only four classes being detailed -- Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard; and just three races -- Dwarves, Elves, and Humans. These elements, together with the explanation of the SIEGE engine attribute led system, of how combat and magic plays, plus an equipment list, is all enough to get a game going.
To actually get the game going, the Game Quick Start Rules includes Jeffrey P. Talanian’s “CASTLE ZAGYG: The Workhouse of Yggsburgh Town.” It describes an institution -- briefly touched upon in Castle Zagyg Vol. 1: Yggsburgh by Gary Gygax -- in just under three pages, including a map. Along with a description of the workhouse, its inmates and wardens, the adventure includes a new monster (for Castles & Crusades), the Spriggan, and a hook to get the players involved. This hook can be summed up as, “The characters have fallen on hard times and find themselves undertaking backbreaking work in the workhouse, but the Warden of Debtors believes them capable of greater things.” One (long-ish, I grant you) sentence, then… Yet the author takes three paragraphs to say this, and then! Then he leaves everything for a potential Castle Keeper or GM to do.
What this means is that “CASTLE ZAGYG: The Workhouse of Yggsburgh Town” cannot in any way, shape, or form be described as an adventure. Well okay, this might be successfully described as an adventure in 1977 (though I doubt it), but this is 2007 and Troll Lord Games know better. Much better. It knows better because it already publishes proper adventures for the game, some of them actually quite good. For example, A1: Assault on Blacktooth Ridge is Castles & Crusades’ excellent equivalent of B2: Keep on the Borderlands.
The inclusion of just a location and an adventure hook compounds the fundamental problem with Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game Quick Start Rules.
There is nothing quick about them.
The potential player has too much to read through to learn how to play the game and the Castle Keeper has to put a whole lot of unnecessary effort to create either an adventure from the material given or an adventure of his own. If the Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game Quick Start Rules are aimed at existing roleplayers, then they are at least better equipped to penetrate the verbose writing and understand the game hidden behind the verbiage. The new, prospective player is going to find this giveaway a daunting prospect, not helped by the pedestrian layout.
There is a great deal to like about the Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game itself, but what it really boils down to is a more simple means of playing in a classic mode. Unfortunately, the Castles & Crusades Fantasy Role Playing Game Quick Start Rules hide this very nature and disappoint for this very reason.
Highs: Includes everything mechanically necessary to play.
Lows: Overwritten and fails to follow through with a proper adventure.
Overall: Makes the learning of a relatively simple game too much of a hard slog. Oh what a difference an editor would have made…
For Free RPG Day: With no introduction to Dungeons & Dragons available on the day, Troll Lord Games misses a golden opportunity.
