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Saturday, June 18th is Free RPG Day ‘11 and with it comes a slew of new and interesting little releases. They can usually be divided between tasters for new games that will be released at Gen Con this forthcoming August and support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera. In general, the tasters for the new, “hot” games are highly anticipated and on the day itself, in high demand, but come the day, it would be remiss of us to ignore the less-in-demand titles. Many of these it should be made clear, are worth your time and effort to make it to your friendly, local gaming store to get hold of a copy. One of the publishers that has long supported the event is Troll Lord Games, which with the Castles & Crusades: 2011 Quick Start Rules, once again provides another introduction to its OGL variant, Castles & Crusades.

Until the advent of the “Old School Renaissance,” the nearest that the modern incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons got to a version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. Using the OGL , Troll Lord Games stripped the game back down and rebuilt it as the Siege Engine rules, these being more simplified mechanics that hark back to Basic Dungeons & Dragons, but which retain such modern fashions as choice and a simple action/skills resolution system beyond that of just needing to hack at the next goblin.

The problem though is that Castles & Crusades: 2011 Quick Start Rules does not know what it wants to be. Does it want to be a complete guide to creating characters and playing the game? If so, it does that, guiding the reader through the character creation process, enabling players to roll up Clerics, Fighters, Rogues, and Wizards. In addition a character can be a Dwarf, an Elf, a Halfling, or a Human. Of course, the Castles & Crusades Players’ Handbook offers more options. Each of these classes and races plus their various abilities are nicely detailed, with enough information to create and support characters of up to sixth level. Also included is an equipment list, spell lists for both the Cleric and Wizard classes, plus the rules necessary for the Castle Keeper – the game’s term for the Dungeon Master – to run the game.

Which is great except that the booklet completely fails to support this aspect of the game. Instead of a scenario written for newly created, first level characters, the given adventure, “The Call Him Guff” (which is probably meant to be “They Call Him Guff”) is a short affair written for four or so fourth and fifth level characters. It begins with the adventurers on the road discovering the strung up bodies of two unfortunate peasants. Investigation reveals that a Half-Orc bandit has moved into the area and wants to take over. Of course, it is up to the adventurers to intervene and save the day. A quartet of four and fifth level characters is given to play this short, one session adventure.

The other thing that the Castles & Crusades: 2011 Quick Start Rules could be a booklet designed to get the Castle Keeper and his players into a session of Castles & Crusades, well, quickly. As written it does not do that either. There is a lot of information and numerous abilities that each player has to note down and understand for both his character’s Class and Race. Surely with a Quick Start guide this should be given to the players right out of the gate?

Ultimately, for all of the information packed into Castles & Crusades: 2011 Quick Start Rules, it does not make the best use of said information. Next year it really needs to find a better way to give the players the rules, a better way to get a game going, and a better way to support that play.