Chivalry & Sorcery

I was introduced to roleplaying by my father when I was about eight or nine years old. My brother and I used to watch dad and one of his friends play 1st edition Chivalry & Sorcery (C&S). We both loved it and became enthralled by role-playing. Then Sean got a group of his friends together from Secondary School, and dad ran a C&S game for us.

​

C&S was quite a game to get introduced to roleplaying through. The process of character creation was, and remains in its latest incarnation, a much more complex process than just about any other RPG system I know. A process that I believe has kept the game on the margins of the wider role-playing community since the games launch in the late 1970's, but a process that also remains one of its greatest charms. But as with any roleplaying game, once the character is built, if you have a pragmatic GM, who is fully conversant with the rules of the game, then it is as easy to play as any other RPG, and to my mind, given C&S is based in reality as much as, or more than all other roleplaying games, it is much more enjoyable to play.

​

Because C&S has such a lengthy and complex character creation process, and me being a wizz in Excel, when the 3rd edition was released (which increased the complexity of the character creation process), I knew I needed to speed up this process. A whole session devoted to character creation is a good thing, but if that stretched to more than one, then there is a problem.

​

So, with the help of an existing Excel sheet (originally designed by Henk Bomhof and distributed by the LOCS website) which I found online a long time ago now, I set about expanding it, and I like to think improving it. My Excel sheet for 4th Edition C&S now covers all the C&S books and companions that influences character creation, and includes the facility for the GM to spec out their own races and classes to mix in with the existing ones, or to exclude existing ones, so the sheet can be adapted to any world and any campaign.

​