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Castles & Crusades Player's Handbook 6th Printing
This book contains everything needed to create heroic characters and enter a world of fantastic adventure. A world where brave adventurers battle ancient dragons, descend into dungeons in search of treasure and glory, and rescue mystic artifacts from the clutches of evil wizards.
Easy-to-learn, fast and fun to play, Castles & Crusades is the game for those who enjoy tales of high adventure and epic fantasy.
Castles & Crusades' easy-to-learn attribute-based rules system allows players to choose among 13 archetypal character classes and 7 races to create their characters. Spells, equipment, fast-paced combat rules, and all the essential information needed for the players of Castles & Crusades is in this book.
Gather some friends, grab some dice, and unleash your imagination - You're entering the grand adventure that is Castles & Crusades!
You are limited only by your imagination.
Easy-to-learn, fast and fun to play, Castles & Crusades is the game for those who enjoy tales of high adventure and epic fantasy.
Castles & Crusades' easy-to-learn attribute-based rules system allows players to choose among 13 archetypal character classes and 7 races to create their characters. Spells, equipment, fast-paced combat rules, and all the essential information needed for the players of Castles & Crusades is in this book.
Gather some friends, grab some dice, and unleash your imagination - You're entering the grand adventure that is Castles & Crusades!
You are limited only by your imagination.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published September 25, 2004
1 person is currently reading
26 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 29, 2018
Yeah, I am filling out my 2018 books read list with rpgs and graphic novels. What can I say, I've been slacking on the novel-reading front. Anyway, I submit that RPGs are a valid form of literature, often constructing entire imaginary settings, characters, and plots for the benefit of the reader/player.
But let me try to review this in a way that might hold some interest for the non-gamer.
So, Castles & Crusades. To understand the appeal of this game, you have to some history with Dungeons and Dragons.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is now (as of 2018) on its 5th edition, probably the best-selling edition of all times. Besides the five editions of AD&D, there was also Basic D&D, "Expert" D&D, the "original" D&D, and that's just all the "official" Dungeons and Dragons releases.
There have been many, many, many oh so very very many homebrewed, hacked, and offshoot D&D-like games published, and you might reasonably wonder why? If you want to play dungeon crawlers hacking and slashing their way through orcs and dragons in search of loot (or, in a more high-minded campaign that actually involves things like role playing, adventurers on an epic quest to save the kingdom or whatever, i.e., more like the plot of an epic fantasy novel), why not just pick AD&D? It's the most popular, it's the most well-supported, you can buy books by the ton and practically everyone has heard of it, whereas if you say "Hey, let's play this weird off-brand AD&D-like game that's not quite AD&D" people are going to say "Why not AD&D?"
The answer is kind of like "Why fifteen brands of cola on the grocery store shelf?" There is a niche for everyone and if you sell something that's not Coke or Pepsi, you are never going to have Coke or Pepsi-like sales, but you will attract a handful of people who like your flavor better.
But that's not entirely the story. There is also the fact that gamers are a particular sort, and different rules systems support a particular sort of game. AD&D 5E, for example, is probably the slickest and most "balanced" edition ever. I've actually played a few games (after having not played real AD&D since the First edition!) and it's a nice system that makes even first level characters fairly potent.
And this "power creep" in various editions is a feature to some and a bug to others. A 1st level character in AD&D 5E is significantly more powerful (and more likely to survive their first adventure) than a 1st level character in AD&D 1E. Magic Users get more spells to start out with, Fighters get more Hit Points and more attacks, and Thieves are not completely useless until they get to 5th or 6th level, like they kind of were in AD&D 1E.
Castles & Crusades is basically a homebrew hack of AD&D 1E, with the distinction that it was one of the first such published hacks and that Troll Lord Games actually had the cooperation of E. Gary Gygax, Mister D&D himself (who after leaving TSR was involved in many attempts to capture lightning again, most of them much less successful than D&D).
Because of unfortunate licensing reasons, when Gygax died, TLG was unable to use any of the material they developed in collaboration with him, and for that and maybe some publishing delays, C&C never quite caught on as much as it might have, and became an "also ran" in the crowded field of AD&D clones, though it's still a fairly popular and well-supported one.
So, what does C&C do for you, specifically in this book, which is just the Players Handbook? (Like AD&D, to really make use of the complete system and have enough material for a rich campaign, you need, at a minimum, a Players Handbook, a DM's Guide - "Castle Keeper" as the DM is called in C&C - and a Monster Manual.)
C&C takes some of the old school sensibilities of 1st Edition AD&D which many players (including myself) like - your beginning characters are a bit fragile and not very powerful. You can mow down a gang of goblins, but don't go taking on vampires or dragons. However, what C&C provides that the original AD&D didn't was a rule system to allow characters to do things that are not strictly described as a class ability. In old school D&D, if you wanted your fighter to try to pick a pocket or a magic user to try to intimidate a merchant, the GM would shrug and either arbitrarily pick a die for you to roll, or just say you could do it or you couldn't. Which is fine for a certain mode of gaming, but sometimes you like guidelines that give you an idea of what's within the realm of likelihood and what isn't.
C&C uses what TLG calls the "Siege (tm) Engine," but basically it just means everyone gets to pick a couple of characteristics that are "primary" for them. Any time you try to do something, the Castle Keeper decides what characteristic applies (e.g., Intelligence for recognizing a lost language, Wisdom for spotting an ambush, etc.) and roll a d20 with various attribute and level and difficulty modifiers. It's a decent quick & dirty system, though it's not the most elegant, nor necessarily the most balanced. But it works. Some players and GMs might prefer old-old school where the GM just makes an arbitrary ruling and his word is law, while other players like newer systems where there are detailed rules for everything and character skills and abilities are open-ended. C&C is a bit of a hybrid of classic AD&D with a little bit of a skill system grafted on.
Overall, I like it (disclaimer: I've only run one very short adventure with it) though I am not yet sure if it's my go-to old school dungeon crawl system. I know I'm not a fan of 5E, despite its many virtues, because in newer games you always have That Guy who spends hours tinkering with his character "build" to optimize bonuses and abilities. (I admit, sometimes I am That Guy.) An older game like C&C gives you just enough customization to make your character good at what you want to be good at, but without letting you try to min-max the heck out of it. So it serves its purpose of providing old school flavor but a little bit of modern game design.
As for the writing... well, I cannot say the C&C Players Handbook is the best such handbook I've ever read. The influence of Gary Gygax (who was infamously verbose and florid to the point of pretentiousness) shows. The organization is a bit lacking. (Combat bonuses are described up front with the character class descriptions, but you don't get to the rules for combat and how those bonuses apply until the Castle Keeper's section at the end of the book.) There are many mentions of "typical" monsters and treasures, like goblins, orcs, dragons, etc., but of course you have to buy another book to actually get their stats. There is no beginning adventure in this book. In other words, you could probably hack together a first game from the Players Handbook alone, but if you actually want to play C&C, you will need more books.
All of that said, it's a nice piece of classic game design for the old D&Der in all of us, and the artwork is passable (and certainly exceeds the standards of 1E AD&D books).
But let me try to review this in a way that might hold some interest for the non-gamer.
So, Castles & Crusades. To understand the appeal of this game, you have to some history with Dungeons and Dragons.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is now (as of 2018) on its 5th edition, probably the best-selling edition of all times. Besides the five editions of AD&D, there was also Basic D&D, "Expert" D&D, the "original" D&D, and that's just all the "official" Dungeons and Dragons releases.
There have been many, many, many oh so very very many homebrewed, hacked, and offshoot D&D-like games published, and you might reasonably wonder why? If you want to play dungeon crawlers hacking and slashing their way through orcs and dragons in search of loot (or, in a more high-minded campaign that actually involves things like role playing, adventurers on an epic quest to save the kingdom or whatever, i.e., more like the plot of an epic fantasy novel), why not just pick AD&D? It's the most popular, it's the most well-supported, you can buy books by the ton and practically everyone has heard of it, whereas if you say "Hey, let's play this weird off-brand AD&D-like game that's not quite AD&D" people are going to say "Why not AD&D?"
The answer is kind of like "Why fifteen brands of cola on the grocery store shelf?" There is a niche for everyone and if you sell something that's not Coke or Pepsi, you are never going to have Coke or Pepsi-like sales, but you will attract a handful of people who like your flavor better.
But that's not entirely the story. There is also the fact that gamers are a particular sort, and different rules systems support a particular sort of game. AD&D 5E, for example, is probably the slickest and most "balanced" edition ever. I've actually played a few games (after having not played real AD&D since the First edition!) and it's a nice system that makes even first level characters fairly potent.
And this "power creep" in various editions is a feature to some and a bug to others. A 1st level character in AD&D 5E is significantly more powerful (and more likely to survive their first adventure) than a 1st level character in AD&D 1E. Magic Users get more spells to start out with, Fighters get more Hit Points and more attacks, and Thieves are not completely useless until they get to 5th or 6th level, like they kind of were in AD&D 1E.
Castles & Crusades is basically a homebrew hack of AD&D 1E, with the distinction that it was one of the first such published hacks and that Troll Lord Games actually had the cooperation of E. Gary Gygax, Mister D&D himself (who after leaving TSR was involved in many attempts to capture lightning again, most of them much less successful than D&D).
Because of unfortunate licensing reasons, when Gygax died, TLG was unable to use any of the material they developed in collaboration with him, and for that and maybe some publishing delays, C&C never quite caught on as much as it might have, and became an "also ran" in the crowded field of AD&D clones, though it's still a fairly popular and well-supported one.
So, what does C&C do for you, specifically in this book, which is just the Players Handbook? (Like AD&D, to really make use of the complete system and have enough material for a rich campaign, you need, at a minimum, a Players Handbook, a DM's Guide - "Castle Keeper" as the DM is called in C&C - and a Monster Manual.)
C&C takes some of the old school sensibilities of 1st Edition AD&D which many players (including myself) like - your beginning characters are a bit fragile and not very powerful. You can mow down a gang of goblins, but don't go taking on vampires or dragons. However, what C&C provides that the original AD&D didn't was a rule system to allow characters to do things that are not strictly described as a class ability. In old school D&D, if you wanted your fighter to try to pick a pocket or a magic user to try to intimidate a merchant, the GM would shrug and either arbitrarily pick a die for you to roll, or just say you could do it or you couldn't. Which is fine for a certain mode of gaming, but sometimes you like guidelines that give you an idea of what's within the realm of likelihood and what isn't.
C&C uses what TLG calls the "Siege (tm) Engine," but basically it just means everyone gets to pick a couple of characteristics that are "primary" for them. Any time you try to do something, the Castle Keeper decides what characteristic applies (e.g., Intelligence for recognizing a lost language, Wisdom for spotting an ambush, etc.) and roll a d20 with various attribute and level and difficulty modifiers. It's a decent quick & dirty system, though it's not the most elegant, nor necessarily the most balanced. But it works. Some players and GMs might prefer old-old school where the GM just makes an arbitrary ruling and his word is law, while other players like newer systems where there are detailed rules for everything and character skills and abilities are open-ended. C&C is a bit of a hybrid of classic AD&D with a little bit of a skill system grafted on.
Overall, I like it (disclaimer: I've only run one very short adventure with it) though I am not yet sure if it's my go-to old school dungeon crawl system. I know I'm not a fan of 5E, despite its many virtues, because in newer games you always have That Guy who spends hours tinkering with his character "build" to optimize bonuses and abilities. (I admit, sometimes I am That Guy.) An older game like C&C gives you just enough customization to make your character good at what you want to be good at, but without letting you try to min-max the heck out of it. So it serves its purpose of providing old school flavor but a little bit of modern game design.
As for the writing... well, I cannot say the C&C Players Handbook is the best such handbook I've ever read. The influence of Gary Gygax (who was infamously verbose and florid to the point of pretentiousness) shows. The organization is a bit lacking. (Combat bonuses are described up front with the character class descriptions, but you don't get to the rules for combat and how those bonuses apply until the Castle Keeper's section at the end of the book.) There are many mentions of "typical" monsters and treasures, like goblins, orcs, dragons, etc., but of course you have to buy another book to actually get their stats. There is no beginning adventure in this book. In other words, you could probably hack together a first game from the Players Handbook alone, but if you actually want to play C&C, you will need more books.
All of that said, it's a nice piece of classic game design for the old D&Der in all of us, and the artwork is passable (and certainly exceeds the standards of 1E AD&D books).
December 31, 2021
Purchased the first printing of this book in 2004, and 17 years later the revisions keep getting better. It helps that this is my preferred way to play old school dungeons & dragons style games. This version also has a classic cover homage to the original AD&D.
Probably plenty of other sites will list what is updates; my favorite parts are the extended character classes (to level 24), the gorgeous color art and the aforementioned cover. The game system and rules are basically unchanged - and that's a good thing.
Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition was released at about the same time Castles & Crusades was released in a boxed set. While 3.5 improved on 3rd edition (and D20), there was a significant demand at that time for "old school" rules, a return to the 1st edition Advanced D&D. This game (and this book) scratched that itch in the perfect way for me.
First and foremost, the game was very compatible with 1st edition - a system I'd invested in since the early 1980s. This allowed me to reuse adventures and ideas my friends and I had come up with, and many of TSR's classic adventures as well. Dungeon magazine, third party adventures like Judges Guild and Role Aids were all simple to drop into this system.
Where TSR missed out, this game improved. Wizards of the Coast introduced a simpler system for rolling and calculating, all addition. This is head and shoulders over the subtraction and chart lookups required for AD&D. Castles and Crusades used these mechanics from 3rd edition (and D20) to make the game simpler to play and teach.
C&C was also ahead of the curve. D&D 3rd edition used a simpler save system, which wasn't necessarily better. The SIEGE engine of Castles & Crusades combined the original AD&D saving throws with stat checks - and Wizards of the Coast would use this mechanic in 5th edition D&D.
Enough about the system - back to the book. In the original AD&D, much of the material was missing - either in the Dungeon Master's Guide in the form of look-up charts and references, or published later in Dragon Magazine or supplemental books like Unearthed Arcana. The C&C Players Handbook contains nearly everything needed to play - in fact, this game's version of the DMG came out much later. The rules, the game mechanics, and play tips are all here. The first few printings had some complaints and errata, but these are all corrected by this 8th printing.
Perhaps the best section of the book is "The Castle Keeper and the Game". This tips section could easily have been published in external form (see Sly Flourish and others). It describes working with the players, having fun with the game, and the reasons behind the SIEGE engine. This isn't "secret, DM-only" information - it is valuable to all players, but it is especially valuable to those who step up to adjudicate the game for their friends.
This book, and this book alone, is more than enough to play Castles & Crusades. For the Castle Keeper, the book Monsters and Treasure will provide information on both the players opponents and the rewards every character dreams about. Troll Lord has published several excellent adventures for this game system, and any of the classic AD&D challenges will also fit the bill. Highly recommended!
Probably plenty of other sites will list what is updates; my favorite parts are the extended character classes (to level 24), the gorgeous color art and the aforementioned cover. The game system and rules are basically unchanged - and that's a good thing.
Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition was released at about the same time Castles & Crusades was released in a boxed set. While 3.5 improved on 3rd edition (and D20), there was a significant demand at that time for "old school" rules, a return to the 1st edition Advanced D&D. This game (and this book) scratched that itch in the perfect way for me.
First and foremost, the game was very compatible with 1st edition - a system I'd invested in since the early 1980s. This allowed me to reuse adventures and ideas my friends and I had come up with, and many of TSR's classic adventures as well. Dungeon magazine, third party adventures like Judges Guild and Role Aids were all simple to drop into this system.
Where TSR missed out, this game improved. Wizards of the Coast introduced a simpler system for rolling and calculating, all addition. This is head and shoulders over the subtraction and chart lookups required for AD&D. Castles and Crusades used these mechanics from 3rd edition (and D20) to make the game simpler to play and teach.
C&C was also ahead of the curve. D&D 3rd edition used a simpler save system, which wasn't necessarily better. The SIEGE engine of Castles & Crusades combined the original AD&D saving throws with stat checks - and Wizards of the Coast would use this mechanic in 5th edition D&D.
Enough about the system - back to the book. In the original AD&D, much of the material was missing - either in the Dungeon Master's Guide in the form of look-up charts and references, or published later in Dragon Magazine or supplemental books like Unearthed Arcana. The C&C Players Handbook contains nearly everything needed to play - in fact, this game's version of the DMG came out much later. The rules, the game mechanics, and play tips are all here. The first few printings had some complaints and errata, but these are all corrected by this 8th printing.
Perhaps the best section of the book is "The Castle Keeper and the Game". This tips section could easily have been published in external form (see Sly Flourish and others). It describes working with the players, having fun with the game, and the reasons behind the SIEGE engine. This isn't "secret, DM-only" information - it is valuable to all players, but it is especially valuable to those who step up to adjudicate the game for their friends.
This book, and this book alone, is more than enough to play Castles & Crusades. For the Castle Keeper, the book Monsters and Treasure will provide information on both the players opponents and the rewards every character dreams about. Troll Lord has published several excellent adventures for this game system, and any of the classic AD&D challenges will also fit the bill. Highly recommended!
September 2, 2019
I have yet to play this, but it seems like a great offshoot of D&D 3e.
October 28, 2019
Awesome. I'm definitely going to use it as one of my OSR go-to games.
September 15, 2023
Feels like a mix of 3e and AD&D. Seems fun! Some of the prose evokes Gygax at his least clear though
January 10, 2022
I want to like Castles and Crusades. It's an attempt at a game with modern mechanics and an old school feel. However, it feels a bit too old school in a lot of ways, and while the modernization of mechanics is serviceable and has a few clever ideas, it's a bit too bogged down in old school sensibilities for me to really want to play it. Plus, this book is rather poorly edited and terribly disorganized, with the combat rules occurring in the GM's section, to give just one egregious example. Overall, I don't think this is the worst RPG ever, and I can understand how people enjoy it, but I certainly don't think I'm likely to use this anytime soon, if ever.
September 25, 2014
If you have fond memories of 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, then this book should resonate with you. It has the feel of that old school style of gaming but cleaned up and more coherent than the books from back in the day. In this game, it really is simpler to play a fighter than it is to play a wizard. Like an old school game, this book isn't really a complete game. The, "castle keeper," will need the Castle Keepers Guide and the Monsters and Treasure book, like the Dungeon Masters Guide and Monster Manual back in the day. The streamlined game play along with the old school feel makes this an interesting set of game mechanics for the fantasy role player.
March 24, 2025
If Advanced Dungeons and Dragons had continued to evolve with TSR instead of going to Wizards of the Coast, this is the kind of game AD&D 3E may have looked like. Fast, streamlined rules and highly compatible with any D&D materials at least up to 3E (I haven't checked the compatibility with 4th or 5th), this game has rightly been called the Rosetta Stone of D&D.
The criticisms it usually gets are probably justified, too. It has a pretty bad encumbrance system and this game is pretty notorious for its not great editing.
All-in-all though, this game is great for anyone wanting to capture the spirit of AD&D but without all of the clunky, archaic, and obscure rules.
The criticisms it usually gets are probably justified, too. It has a pretty bad encumbrance system and this game is pretty notorious for its not great editing.
All-in-all though, this game is great for anyone wanting to capture the spirit of AD&D but without all of the clunky, archaic, and obscure rules.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews