Another Kickstarter reward came in just before the deadline to participate in the upcoming 2025 Character Creation Challenge. The Reforged Castles and Crusades books. While “reforged” doesn’t appear on the title, it was used on the Kickstarter page. The rewards included a physical copy of the Castle and Crusades Players Handbook (photo above) and PDFs of the Monsters and Treasure, the Castle Keepers Guide, a Castle Keepers Screen and some character sheets.
The physical copy of the Players Handbook has the same cover as the 8th and 9th printings. The quickest way you can discover which printing it you have is by looking at the stock numbers on the book spine (see photo above). The last one or two digits should match the printing information on the credits page. In a way, I wish that Troll Lord Games had given us a different cover with this Kickstarter. A tenth printing and the removal of all OGL material is a major milestone for the book and it would have been a nice way to mark the change. The RPG rules are still the same (more on that below) and I understand that the cover is a tribute to the 1st edition AD&D Players Handbook, but I think this might have been a missed opportunity.
This 10th printing is a hardbound book with 288 pages (this includes additional art and the character sheets) and is published by Troll Lord Games. It has an ISBN number of 978-1-952379-70-3 and a 2024 copyright. It was written by Davis Chenault and Mac Golden with Stephen Chenault, Mark Sandy, Todd Gray, Jason Vey and James M. Ward. The cover art was done by Jason Walton and the interior color art was provided by Peter Bradley, Zoe DeVos, Joel Chaim Holtzman, Michelle Smallwood, Meliora Henning and Vladimiro Rikowski. There are eight chapters and an index (thank you). These chapters include: The RPG, Classes, Races, Character, Magic, Spells, Siege Engine (a GMs section) and a Spell Chart. A good point on the physical version, they printed little color tabs flush with the pages for quick searches.
I owned a physical copy of the 7th printing so I took some comparison photos. The 7th printing has a copyright of 2017, so yes there is a big jump between the two publications. I noticed that there is a lot more detail in the 10th printing, but the basic nuts and bolts of the game are the same. I compared the points needed to go up between levels on a few classes, and they were the same. Yes there was some text alteration with the OGL removal (such as the Rogue’s ability to Sneak Attack has been renamed to Back Attack), but it appears to be the same game. Much like the removal of the OGL for Basic Fantasy 3rd Edition to 4th Edition.
So now that I have the Kickstarter reward in hand (and on PDF), how do I feel? Well, I’m very happy that I backed this project. At the time of the campaign I had been invited to an online C&C game, which unfortunately fell through. The Siege Engine mechanics for resolving skill checks sounds like something that I would like to try. I even offered to run a game for some of the 5e players who I’ve GMed for in the past. The rewards came pretty quick and I could see the quality in the work. Also I did get a little bit of a high from the “new book smell” as I was flipping through it. Now if I could just get into a game. While running a one-shot at SaltCON is very likely, I really want to see how this game runs over the course of a campaign.
Do you have any questions about Castles and Crusades Reforged? Have you backed any Kickstarters lately? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.