Swords & Sorcerers (1978) is an expansion for Chivalry & Sorcery by Edward Simbalist. Mr. Simbalist taught English and social studies for over twenty years as well as designing a number of games. Being myself most interested in early fantasy RPGs, I find Chivalry & Sorcery to be my favorite of his games, especially the 1st edition of C&S. I usually describe C&S as an attempt to make White Box more realistic through the use of more complex mechanics, a magic system based on myth and legendary sources and an emphasis on historic setting to provide the PC a place to fit-into an imagined world socially, economically, etc. In other words, to provide a realistic immersive role-playing experience.
From the title, Chivalry & Sorcery, one might surmise that Mr. Simbalist's model for the game is medieval Europe where chivalry was legendary and sorcery suspect. This is essentially true. In fact the author states early on in C&S that his own setting is loosely based in medieval France - a France of myth and legend, but one where history would be recognized. Using history to draw upon rather than literary works of fantasy is just an alternative source of inspiration. The idea behind the role-playing or adventure game is one of exploring a world through the descriptions of a referee and the actions of fictional characters controlled by players. The setting can be virtually anything imaginable, including of course our own human history.
C&S is an RPG built upon a mostly historic medieval European setting. Swords & Sorcerers expands that world to include three new peoples, Vikings, Mongols and Celts. Each of the three has a section devoted to an historic overview of the region, people and history of the subject. As a person with a degree in history I would say the history presented here is on the "popular" side rather than strictly academic, which seems fine for a game play-aid. There has obviously been an attempt by Mr. Simbalist to convert historic facts and data into C&S game terms so as to facilitate a campaign involving Vikings. There is a lot of information here, most of it already converted for game use. Each culture description includes information on social structure, economics, and religion and gives tabular data for rolling PC/NPC social status, physical build and other details. The Nordic section contains a significant amount of information on runes and their use in the game. A set of cut-out runes are included for play. Military coverage includes weapons, tactics and specific game rules for both the C&S man-to-man rules and the large-scale miniatures rules.
Each cultural description emphasizes what seems to set it apart from the others. The Viking Longship, the Mongol horse archer and the Celtic Druid are unique cultural aspects and interesting game additions. Mongol shaman magick is distinctly different in flavor if not always in effect from medieval sorcery or Druidic magic. A "typical" warrior build for each culture would be significantly different in terms of weapon and armor choices, fighting style and morals. All would be recognizable to the historian, if not a perfect reconstruction. The magic using and religious characters are distinct and offer variations on a theme across cultural lines. The Nordic Vola uses runes to cast the future, the Celtic Guiddonot uses her witch-magic in battle and the Mongol shaman uses dance and chant magic to affect healing, hunting and weather.
The last 33 pages of this 95-page volume is devoted to the miniatures game making C&S rather unusual among the fantasy RPGs. Attention is paid to character activity in large scale battles that can be played using armies of miniature figures, and a number of tables are devoted to what may happen to one's character during a military campaign, siege or battle. The idea is one which doesn't often make an appearance in RPG rules. It is perhaps most associated with an early RPG published by Games Design Workshop (GDW) titled En Garde! in which players control an adventurer in Three Musketeers France, enlisting in a regiment, gambling, romancing, dueling and going off to war, the outcome of all, except dueling, is determined by dice roles and a dialogue amongst the players to explain the roll outcomes. Swordplay in En Garde! has a rather unique matrix mechanic as I recall (my original rules are not at hand) requiring one to plot attacks several moves ahead of time.
Swords & Sorcerers is billed as an expansion rather than a supplement, of which there are two, to the C&S system. I feel this terminology is deliberate and indicates a desire on the part of the author to suggest we are expanding the boundaries of the map with Swords & Sorcerers. Lee Gold would take C&S even further to feudal Japan with Land of the Rising Sun released in 1980. The new hobby was rapidly growing as folks quickly applied the RPG technique to more and more settings. From the beginning, it was never about just one setting. Where ever we draw inspiration for our game settings, the RPG gives us the ability to explore those settings and collectively to have fun, entertain ourselves and create new stories to amuse and astonish.
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