Chivalry and Sorcery, 3rd Edition: Another Review
=================================================

I am not acquainted with any previous C&S material, including the
earlier editions of the rules, and therefore, I am approaching the
third edition of the game as an entirely new system, which should
stand or fall on its own merits. I originally bought the rulebook,
which was shrinkwrapped at my local gaming store, on the basis of
C&S's reputation as a detailed, realistic treatment of the medieval
world, rich in campaign detail and historical fact.

What I actually bought was two hundred pages of rules, with bits
and pieces of historical detail dropped tantalizingly here and
there. Nonetheless, this much-awaited rules revision deserves an
in-depth examination with a reasonably unprejudiced eye.

C&S 3rd edition is a fairly lightweight paperback of a mere 200 or so
pages, at the fairly reasonable price of $20. It's being published by
Highlander Designs, and is authored by the same people (Edward
Simbalist, Wilf Backhaus, and G.W. Thompson) who were involved in
the first two editions.

The book seems reasonably sturdy, and is thin enough to lie upon
without needing to weight down the pages. The layout just screams
"desktop publishing" at me. The book is pure black and white (no
greys), with almost no art. The layout is extremely cramped, with
barely any space at all between columns of text. Important rules are
boxed; important terms are boldfaced. A script font is used for
italics (it looks identical to the font used in Ars Magica 3rd
Edition's character sheets, in fact); it is, unfortunately, really
more of a decorative font than a good font for text, and while
readable, it looks awkward, and contributes to the overall failure of
this book to look like it was professionally laid out. Nonetheless,
the book is readable, though I could wish for a bigger font.

There is a detailed table of contents, and a one-page glossary. 
Unfortunately, the book is missing an index, something which I
consider an unforgivable failure in a main rulebook. Though the
table of contents makes it easy to find rules, I'd still like
to be able to look up all places where "wards" are mentioned,
for example.

The rulebook never states what the world of Chivalry & Sorcery is
like. We can deduce, after reading through the text, that C&S is
apparently concerned with presenting some historical facts about the
medieval world, but dwarves and elves, as well as a variety of
monsters, also happen to inhabit this world. I suppose one can
assume that one is dealing with a world that the Gamemaster must
create, which incorporates the traditional elements of fantasy
into a historically-based medieval background.

The rulebook begins by throwing you straight into character
generation, after a single page of standard "What is roleplaying?"
spiel.  Character generation is reasonably straightforward, with two
levels of character power (historic and heroic), and both point-based
and random-roll methods. Its major flaw is common to many RPGs being
published recently -- using terms before they're actually defined.

All characters have Attributes, which are pretty much based on the
standard AD&D classics -- Strength, Constitution, Wisdom, and so forth.
A given score in an Attribute translates to a percentage chance of making
a given Attribute Roll (AR); for example, if one were making a Strength
check, on a Strength of 10, one would have a 58% chance of making the
roll. The extraneous step is a bit puzzling to me, but one writes down
both the attribute score and the AR percentage on the character sheet,
so there's no extra chart-overhead when actually playing.

All characters also have an Aspect, determining whether there are any
Good or Evil supernatural forces acting for or against them. C&S never
defines what Good and Evil are considered to be; I suppose it's up to
the GameMaster to determine this.

A player also has to determine a Social Class (serf to royalty), a
sibling rank (legitimate? which child number?), family status (are you
in good standing with your family?), and the vocation of the
character's father; a character picks up his starting skills based on
who his father was. This is very reminiscent of Harnmaster.  The
charts are interesting simply for the range of occupations they give,
and the social classes are well-explained in brief paragraphs.

Next, characters can pick up Curses, Special Abilities, Special Talents,
Deficiencies, Defects, and Personal Fears. These operate in a manner
roughly equivalent to GURPS-style Advantages and Disadvantages. The
lists are pretty minimal, when compared with GURPS, Storyteller,
Ars Magica, and HERO, but they cover most of the common cases.

Then, physical statistics are determined, for height, weight,
build, Body Levels (the C&S term for hit points), fatigue levels,
lifting and carrying capacity, jumping, and walking/running.
This is all determined through charts, with a fanatical precision.

Finally, optionally, players may choose an astrological sign, age,
and personalizing traits (eye color, hair color, etc.).  I find
it somewhat ironic that in a system so fanatically devoted to
detail that four pages are necessary to determine exactly what
physique a character has, has age and appearance as _options_.
I suppose this is where the early-80s original design philosophy
shows, in the emphasis on what a character _can do_, not what
the character _is_, as is the case with later, more mature,
roleplaying games.

Once all that is over with, the player then picks out a Vocation.
Vocations have a roughly similar role to Rolemaster's character
classes; they determine a character's initial skills and what he can
easily get good at. Vocations come in five varieties: Warrior, Thief,
Mage, Clergy, and Adventurer ("make it up yourself"). That puts the
vocations along the classic AD&D lines, though there is some nice
historic detail provided for each of the concepts given under each
vocation. The system is flexible enough to accommodate most reasonable
character concepts, though the game's built-in bias is that characters
will be relatively unskilled 18-year-olds.

C&S's skill system is very good, if "completeness" is the measure of a
good skill system. It's reminiscent of Rolemaster, in that various
attributes are averaged to give a bonus to the actual skill, the use
of a d100-based system, and the sheer number of available skills. The
back cover of the rulebook claims that there are more than 250 skills;
the list covers two pages, and forty total pages of description. Much
of the interesting historical material is contained within the skills
section, and the skill range goes from sheep herding to mounted
combat.

C&S uses something it calls "Skillscape" to resolve skill tests.
There's the usual "roll a percentage to succeed", but the degree of
success or failue is determined by a third ten-sided die, the "Crit
Die" (tm). The introduction to the book claims that the authors feel
that Skillscape and the Crit Die add something new to gaming; I fail
to feel that it's that interesting or revolutionary, but the mechanics
of skills are straightforward and logical. My only concern on this
point is that an unskilled character and a highly skilled character
have the same chance, to succeed extraordinarily, if a success is
rolled. The unskilled character will succeed less often in general,
of course; it's not a major concern, but it's a small flaw in the
system.

After describing skills, C&S goes on to present equipment. Here,
the game receives kudos; there is a marvelous price list, covering
eight pages and just about everything one's players could ever want.
The price list alone is something which is worthwhile for anyone
playing RPGs in a historical medieval timeline; while obviously
prices are going to fluctuate by region, C&S presents a wonderful
list of what's available and is good for determining relative
prices, on the average. Here, as in the skill system, the attention
to detail serves the game well.

I have not actually used the C&S combat system, but it strikes me as
being rather complicated. Every action takes a certain number of
Action Points to complete, essentially phases that one may act during.
Larger weapons take more time to swing. Action Points (AP) have to be
conserved for parries, sudden movements, and the like. Damage is
classified as Crush, Slash, or Pierce; armor has different ratings for
each aspect, and subtracts from damage done, in a manner virtually
identical to Harnmaster. Characters have both Fatigue and Body
Levels; damage is taken first from Fatigue Levels, and Fatigue must
also be expended to take certain actions.  No penalties are inflicted
for injuries, though there are optional rules for aimed attacks and
critical hits to vital locatoins.

The combat system is light on charts, but the use of AP guarantees
that players will have to go back to the charts to find out how many
AP a given action will cost them, and planning out one's actions in
terms of AP over the course of a combat round seems like a non-trivial
exercise to me. The importance of movement in this system also makes
the use of miniatures almost essential, in my opinion. While the combat
section isn't actually all that long, there's a lot of material that's
been dense-packed into it, and there are a myriad of rules that the
GameMaster will need to memorize if combat is to run efficiently.

Charts are certainly not the best measure of a system's complexity; I
consider C&S to be a more complex system than many other systems which
are far more chart-intensive, but I have no doubt that it will produce
detailed battles. It is also important to note that the "realism" of C&S
combat is the "realism" of fantasy epic movies, not the realism of the
true medieval world.

C&S priestly "magic", called Acts of Faith, is based more upon the
idea of a priest praying to his god for a blessing, guidance, or
miracle, than it is the traditional AD&D "spell" approach. The Acts
are well-explained in this context, though effectively they're very
much like AD&D priestly spells, including seven ranks of difficulty
that are an awful lot like AD&D's seven levels of cleric spells,
and some which are blatant copies (like "Purify Food and Water").
Nonetheless, the descriptions, which include divinely-inspired
coincidences and the like, are a sufficient departure from the
mechanistic nature of priestly magic in many other RPGs, to 
warrant a commendation.

Magic, in the normal sorcerous sense, is divided into seven modes and
thirteen methods. The modes are magical practices (such as withcraft
and druidic magic); the methods are actual magical types (the four
elements, transmutation, summoning, and so forth).  Modes are very
special types of skills, with unique rules governing them; methods are
learned like standard skills. Spells must be learned before they can
be cast, in a manner similar to AD&D and Rolemaster. Casting spells
costs Fatigue Points, or, if the caster has no more Fatigue left, Body
Levels; this is very reminiscent of Ars Magica, though, unlike Ars
Magica, there are no spontaneous spells (you can't just make up
magical effects on the spot).

Also like Ars Magica, there is a detailed set of rules for crafting
magical items. Indeed, the terminology and the methodology is 
extreely similar to Ars Magica. There are lesser and greater
enchanted devices, spell foci, and potions, as well as rules for
scribing spells, just as in Ars Magica. The one really interesting
addition is spirit binding, which covers necromancers animating
the dead, and genie-in-a-bottle tricks, among other things. This
section of the book is also graced with an excellent list of 
magical materials, one which Ars Magica laboratory enthusiasts
will probably want to look at.

The spell list for mages isn't bad, though it's not really
exceptional.  The spells could really stand to have more interesting
names. There's the rather uninteresting "Heavy Rains", for example,
but there's a "Battering Ram of Aeolius" -- it's a real pity the
authors didn't take time to give similarly creative names to all of
their spells.

Spells are divied into nine "Circles", again suspiciously similar to
the nine levels of mage spells in AD&D.  The AD&D influence shines
clear throughout the spell list, in the emphasis on combat spells and
the naming of the spells (there's a 1st Circle "Hord Portal" dispelled
by a 2nd Circle "Knock" -- how much more of an obvious rip-off can
there be?). Almost forty pages are devoted to spells; I will remark,
somewhat snidely, that I wish they'd cut all the spells, said, "Look
at AD&D's spell lists", provided a conversion method, and used the
forty pages for more interesting lists and tidbits of historical
material. The magic system holds a lot of creative promise; it is a
true pity that the authors couldn't think of anything better to do
with it than to try to describe AD&D's spells in terms of new
mechanics. Thanks, guys; I remember "Hold Person", "Legend Lore",
etc. just fine from AD&D.

While granted the spell list covers most of the things that typical
fantasy gamers use in a "classic AD&D campaign" context, there are no
guidelines for making up your own spells, though perhaps this is
planned for an upcoming supplement. There's a real lack of
interesting, unusual spells in this book; while certainly the spell
list is not any worse than AD&D's (which has a serviceable enough
list), for a game that wants to style itself as authentic and
medieval, appropriate for playing historical simulations, a stunning
amount of flavor has been sucked away from the mage spells,
particularly when compared to the care taken to preserve the flavor of
priestly magic. After the care taken to describe magical modes
(essentially traditions of magic) in a historical context, the spell
list can be considered nothing less than appalling.

The last few pages of the book are devoted to an explanation of how
experience works (characters gain experience points, which can then be
applied to skills), and to a chart which lists monster statistics.
The monster chart lists most of the standard fantasy monsters (ogres,
trolls, and the like). I suppose this is so banal of a list that any
description would be pointless; in the absence of more explanation and
evidence to the contrary, and the sheer AD&D-ness of the monster list,
I think it's probably safe to assume that Highlander Designs has just
added on another item to the list of things that TSR could cite as
copyright violations. Even the Palladium Fantasy RPG, coming on the
heels of AD&D in the early 80s, wasn't nearly this blatant about its
monster rip-offs.

I read some of the other reviews of C&S 3rd edition posted in
rec.games.frp.misc, praising it as a "mature" RPG system, as well as
Rick Swan's review of the earlier two editions in his _Complete Guide
to Role-Playing Games_, which remarks upon C&S's complexity, attention
to medieval historical fact, and excellent campaign material. The sum
total of that exercise left me wondering if I was reading the same
game as everyone else, and quite sure that 3rd edition is apparently
nothing ilke 1st or 2nd edition. I keep wondering what I've missed --
I think I've just read a game which is mediocre at best, which has
sections that are appalingly and obviously stolen from AD&D, and which
has a few interesting tidbits of medieval history.

The game's strong points are its lists, its historical tidbits, and
the medieval flavor imparted to all of the character vocations. The
weak points are all the derivative systems -- derivative systems
aren't necessarily bad where the derivation improves upon the
original, but in the case of C&S, I'm inclined to the believe that the
originals are better. AD&D has a better spell list. Ars Magica has a
better treatment of magical laboratory work. Harnmaster does a better
job of C&S's type of armor/damage system. And, incidentally, how does
healing work in this system, anyway, aside from First Aid and priestly
magic? I haven't been able to find it in the book... and the lack of
an index doesn't help my quest, either.

Chivalry & Sorcery's third edition is going to go on my list of games
that I tell my friends to buy if they can somehow find 'em cheap (for
the lists and historical tidbits alone, basically), and whose lists I
will xerox and put into binders for my own use when I run other
medieval-fantasy systems.

C&S will also go on my list of games to recommend as an alternative to
AD&D, for players who are still playing classic fantasy in the AD&D
mold, but who want a more detailed and skill-based system. I don't
think this is a notably more "mature" system than AD&D; it's just more
complex and makes a greater effort to be really medieval, not just
faux-Tolkein. It's a system with some promise, worth stealing ideas
from, but, for those people seeking authentic medieval fantasy, using
a system designed for mature roleplayers, I'd strongly recommend Ars
Magica or Harnmaster.

Perhaps some supplements will help the problems inherent in this
initial rulebook. I'm still hoping the upcoming GameMaster's book will
contain the historical and campaign material which was evidently
chopped from the 3rd edition. On the other hand, I certainly wouldn't
encourage anyone to buy this rulebook for full-price.

In Summary: Not Recommended.


[Posted to USENET, 2/17/97; authored by Lydia Leong (lwl@digex.net). ]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Will Backhaus, one of the game's authors, wrote to me to point out
that C&S's first edition was published in 1977, well before
Harnmaster, Ars Magica, and most of the other games that I cited in my
review. He also claimed that the resemblances to AD&D magic were
coincidences fostered by the Tolkein derivation of both systems. I am
disinclined to accept the latter as an adequate explanation; the
coincidences are too exact for copying not to have occurred, and
whether it was AD&D that copied C&S, or vice versa, it is clear that
one of the pieces of work is not original. Which it is, I can't venture
to say.

Not having any way to get ahold of the earlier editions of Chivalry
and Sorcery, it is impossible for me to tell what of the rules existed
in the earlier editions, and what of the rules are new revisions.  I
don't think anyone will dispute the resemblances I stated, though,
regardless of who copied whom. Undoubtedly C&S, as an early RPG, was
influential in the design of many later RPGs.  The rules as they stand
in today's third edition, though, must be judged by their own present
merit against today's RPG market, not just in their historical
context, in my opinion.

As such, the subsystems of Ars Magica, Harnmaster, and various other
games that I cited in my earlier review, which were evidently clearly
heavily influenced at some point in their development by the early
editions of C&S, have, in my opinion, since outdone their predecessor.
The third edition of C&S is entering an RPG market that has seen a lot
of interesting ideas within the last decade, as well as many refinements
of old ideas, and while the revision does a reasonable job of bringing
the game into the present, the legacy of early-era RPG design still
shows through.

While I appreciate Will's polite defense of his game, I stand by my
assertion that I would not generally recommend the present edition of
Chivalry and Sorcery rules, at least without any readily available
supplements. I think that the present set of rules seem to be missing
the detailed medieval background and campaign material that, by
reputation, made C&S a noteworthy game. I expect, however, to at least
look through the Gamemaster's book when it becomes available later
this year; it is entirely possible that the core rules will become
much more sensible in the context of the additional material.

Twenty years has made some significant differences in RPG design, and
while the present edition doesn't entirely show its age (certainly not
to the extent that Harnmaster's second edition does, for example),
the update also seems to have slashed the best parts of the original.

Those later RPGs that were influenced by C&S have gone on, I think, to
become better games than C&S itself, though I do not discount the
possibility that future supplements to the core rulebook may restore
some of the material that previously made C&S noteworthy.

[Further notes, written after some email correspondence with Will
 Backhaus, 2/18/97 and 2/19/97.]