Chivalry & Sorcery

• 1. Introduction

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  Chivalry & Sorcery arrived in 1977 with a very specific argument: that Dungeons & Dragons was not realistic enough. Its creators, Edward E. Simbalist and Wilf K. Backhaus, had played D&D and found it wanting. Their frustration with its lack of historical and mechanical grounding drove them to design something new. What they built would become one of the earliest competitors to the dominant game of its era, and one of the most debated role-playing games in the hobby's history.

  The game they designed began under a different name, Chevalier. Simbalist and Backhaus planned to present it to Gary Gygax at Gen Con in 1977. They changed their minds once they arrived and met Scott Bizar, who wrote out a letter of intent on the spot. That meeting redirected the game's path entirely. After further revisions stripped out the last traces of D&D influence, including a table of Saving-throws modeled closely on D&D's own, the game was renamed Chivalry & Sorcery and published by Fantasy Games Unlimited.

  For the next four decades, through five editions and two different publishing houses, the game would attract devoted fans and baffled critics in roughly equal measure. The central question was always the same: was Chivalry & Sorcery a masterwork of detail, or simply too complicated to play?

• 2. A Game Shaped by Medieval France

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  According to RPG historian Michael Tresca, Chivalry & Sorcery embraced a realistic approach to medieval France in the 12th century, complete with feudalism and the Catholic Church. That commitment went deeper than flavor. The game was, according to Tresca, one of the first to place the setting at utmost importance over the mechanics of the game itself. It was also, he noted, one of the first games to use the term "game master."

  The first edition built this medieval world in concrete detail. Knights came with rules for tournaments, courtly love, fiefs, and political influence. A hierarchical priesthood could perform miracles. The social structure of medieval Europe was not backdrop but architecture. Players inhabited a world shaped by rank, obligation, and faith.

  The first edition also drew from J.R.R. Tolkien's work, incorporating elements from The Lord of the Rings including hobbits and balrogs. Those references were removed in later editions for trademark reasons. What remained, and what defined the game's identity, was its dedication to the medieval setting and the enormous ruleset built to model it.

• 3. The Complexity Problem

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  In the inaugural issue of Ares Magazine, dated March 1980, Greg Costikyan scored Chivalry & Sorcery a 6 out of 9. He called it "the best full-scale complicated FRP game published to date" while also noting that its lack of world-design rules and poor organization were sorely felt. That word, complicated, would follow the game through every edition and every review.

  Eric Goldberg, writing in Ares Magazine's September 1980 issue, praised the well-researched information on the medieval period, particularly its treatment of heraldry. But his conclusion was blunt. He described the experience of actual play as moving "as awkwardly as an octopus on dry land." He called the production values primitive, noting that the text consisted of reduced reproductions of typewritten pages and that the illustrations were fair to mediocre. Despite conceding that no role-playing system had since matched the quantity and quality of its technical design, he did not recommend the game.

  Game designer Jon Freeman, writing in his 1980 book The Complete Book of Wargames, found the complexity so severe that he questioned whether the game could be played at all. He described the fantasy material as included almost as an afterthought, and called the magic systems wildly unsuited to normal adventuring despite being interesting and well researched. His overall evaluation was stark: "Poor as a game; Excellent as a source."

  Rick Swan, writing in his 1990 book The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games, rated it 2.5 out of 4. He pointed out that the rules themselves warned players to think twice before choosing mages as characters. He quoted that warning as apt, describing the magic system as involving "a mind-numbing collection of tables, formulas, and rules that could serve as a grad school text in wizardry." Swan's conclusion echoed Freeman's: those with insatiable appetites for detail might love it, while less dedicated players would find it more useful as a source of ideas.

• 4. Cult Influence Without Widespread Play

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  Jon Tindel, reviewing the game in the October 1981 edition of The Space Gamer, pushed back against the consensus that C&S was unplayable. He knew people who played it and enjoyed it deeply. His argument was simple: the game rewarded those willing to put in the time. "It all comes down to one question: are you willing to spend the time to learn the complicated rules?" he wrote. "If you are, by all means buy C&S; your reward will be many hours of joy."

  James Maliszewski, writing a retrospective review in Black Gate, offered a more nuanced picture of the game's actual reach. He was fond of Chivalry & Sorcery but honest about how it circulated. He did not know anyone who actually played the game itself. What spread, he wrote, were the ideas that Simbalist and Backhaus advanced through it. Those ideas held a lot of power in the circles where he moved.

  Stu Horvath, in his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, located the game's achievement precisely. "There is a beauty in complex rules," he wrote, "and Chivalry & Sorcery's vividly imply a world in a way that few other RPGs, then or now, manage." He acknowledged that this very detail bogged down play, but he recognized what it had encouraged: a new kind of focus on roleplaying itself. Paul Mason, reviewing the second edition in the British magazine Imagine, predicted that the game would not shake its popular image as a cult game on the fringes of the hobby mainstream.

• 5. Editions and Revivals

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  The second edition arrived in 1983, packaged in a cardboard box containing three booklets of rules. Fantasy Games Unlimited made no fundamental mechanical changes, but the revisions aimed to clarify and simplify various points. The medieval setting gained sharper structure, divided into three distinct periods: Early Feudal, High Chivalric Feudal, and Late Chivalric Feudal. Each period came with distinct technology. Heavy plate armor and two-handed swords, for instance, only became available in the Late Feudal period, covering the 14th-15th centuries.

  Ken Rolston, writing in the April 1984 edition of Dragon, assessed the second edition plainly. The game had been revised to broaden its appeal, but the audience remained limited because of the bulk and detail involved. Rolston described it as "committed to comprehensiveness, at the expense of comprehensibility" and concluded that its virtues were fully realized only in the hands of a superior gamer who was serious, sophisticated, dedicated, and familiar with medieval history.

  The third edition, published by an American house called Highlander Designs and co-authored by G.W. Thompson alongside Simbalist and Backhaus, moved in a different direction. It stripped out nearly all of the medieval French historical and cultural background that had defined the first two editions. Andrew Rilstone, reviewing it in Arcane magazine, scored it 5 out of 10 and observed that the game mistakenly believed a marginally streamlined version of a system thought over-complex in 1978 qualified as truly revolutionary. Highlander Designs eventually went bankrupt and was acquired by Britannia Game Designs Ltd., a British company directed by Steve Turner. That company released the fourth edition, called "The Rebirth," in 2000. Britannia later ran a Kickstarter campaign for a fifth edition, which concluded successfully on the 31st of July 2019. The game shipped in February 2020.

• 6. Recognition and Legacy

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  In 1979, Chivalry & Sorcery won the H.G. Wells award for All Time Best Ancient Medieval Rules. That recognition captured something genuine. Whatever its playability problems, the game had built a medieval world with a depth and specificity that reviewers across decades consistently acknowledged, even when they could not recommend it.

  Reid Hoffman, writing in Issue 36 of Different Worlds, drew the line cleanly. Players wanting quick and easy play should avoid C&S entirely. Players looking for material to enliven a fantasy-feudal campaign with culture and breadth of information would find it quite good. That division, between the game as a tool for play and the game as a resource for thought, defined how Chivalry & Sorcery lived in the hobby. Ron Pehr, reviewing it in Fantasy Gamer magazine alongside Bushido, called both games near-ultimate fantasy roleplaying experiences and highly recommended them for any serious gamer. The specific reach of that audience, serious, sophisticated, and dedicated to historical depth, was exactly the community the game had set out to serve from its first edition onward.