Troll Lords

Castles & Crusades RPG

I have been revisiting one of the first systems to come into being and thereby helping to usher in what has become the old school renaissance - Troll Lord Games' Castles & Crusades excellent FRP game. Castles & Crusades appeared at a Gencon I attended around 2005 or so. At that time, as I recall, Troll Lord Games was a new company and Castles & Crusades was a basic game in a small white box containing three journal size booklets and some dice. 

Within a year, I believe Troll Lord Games published the C&C players handbook and with it gave us a game that in many ways resembles the Advanced game of the late 1970s, but one which also introduces modern game mechanics of its own. A monster and treasures book followed soon after the players handbook and together these two slim hardcover volumes (each are still around 200 pages in the recent printings) comprise a complete game system. The title Castles & Crusades is an homage to the Castles & Crusades Society which Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson and many others once belonged to.

At a later Gencon, I picked up a slipcover edition of the C&C books along with Castle Zagyg - Gary Gygax was working with Troll Lord Games and the Castle was his. The Troll Lords had formed a relationship with Gary Gygax nearly from the start of their company and they continued to work with Mr. Gygax up until the time of his death in 2008. The Castle Zagyg project, which was promised to run into several as then unpublished volumes, was unfortunately cut short by Gary's death. 

As most everyone in the hobby today knows, the Old School Renaissance, or OSR as it is frequently referred to, has taken off and has become very popular (arguably influencing 5e decisions at WizBros). With the number of excellent OSR system offerings available, many which cleave much closer to the original game's mechanics than C&C, my interests have shifted to those games (one after another) and I have collected quite a few of them over the past decade - and have often written about them on this blog and I have even played a few of them. (grin!)

Thanks to a friend who regularly referees this system, Castles & Crusades is a game I have played regularly for some years. The recent hiatus on face-to-face gaming has kept our group away from the table for a while now, but we recently resumed play on a remote basis using Discord. Some things in my gaming hobby experience change, some stay pretty consistent.