TIn June 2026 we presented two offers featuring Chivalry and Sorcery, the venerable RPG of medieval fantasy adventure from Brittannia Game Designs. The revived February 2024 Chivalry and Rising Sun Bundle once again featured the current (2020) core rulebook and its 2021 line of Land of the Rising Sun supplements. And we added an all-new companion offer of recent sourcebooks and adventures, C&S New Lands.
Among the oldest fantasy RPGs still published, C&S depicts an authentic feudal Europe with nobles, knights, Christian priests, and medieval doctrines. The game focuses not on dungeon crawls but on the feudal system, court intrigue, tournaments and jousts, and a comprehensive catalogue of ordinary life. With its Fifth Edition (2020), Chivalry and Sorcery has drawn on modern research to present the Middle Ages as they really were: diverse in cultural influences and rich with visitors from outside Europe. Priests can follow Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, or you can tailor the faith rules to any religion, whether real-world or fictional. As with previous versions, the Fifth Edition weaves its fantasy on a foundation of realism, believability, and history. Want to foil an assassination plot at a royal wedding – clear a pack of bandits from Creag Hill in Somerset – or find a missing priest and recover his tithes from a haunted keep? Chivalry and Sorcery helps you tell all these stories with authority and conviction.
[Note: The “Fifth Edition” of Chivalry and Sorcery refers to the fifth version (2020) of the original 1977 game, not D&D Fifth Edition.]
1. CHIVALRY AND RISING SUN [from Feb 2024]
For those new to Chivalry and Sorcery, this revived February 2024 Chivalry and Rising Sun Bundle provided the core rulebook, key supplements – and the high-caliber 2021 version of Land of the Rising Sun, an authentic view of the late Classical period of Japan in its middle Feudal period, circa 850-1500 CE. Choose from 30 new Vocations including samurai and otokodate (commoner warriors), yamabushi (martial priests), Buddhist and Shinto priests, gamblers, pirates, and bandits. Introduce fantasy elements or omit them, as you prefer. The Magick rules draw on the Japanese elements of Air, Earth, Fire, Metal, Water, and Wood. You can play supernatural entities like hengeyokai, bakemono, and spirits.
Land of the Rising Sun‘s designer, influential writer-editor Lee Gold, developed her interest in Asian history during a four-month sojourn in Japan in 1975. Also in that year she founded the APA (amateur press association) Alarums and Excursions, the first periodical devoted entirely to roleplaying games. The design discussions in Alarums helped popularize early D&D concepts; historian Jon Peterson credits Alarums for examples of dice notation and character sheets, for the earliest use in print of the term “THAC0”, and for one of the first Samurai character class designs, by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling.
More generally, A&E‘s rules-hacking culture helped inspire early RPG creators like Ken St. Andre, Steve Perrin, Dave Hargrave, and many more – including Ed Simbalist and Wilf Backhaus, designers of the 1977 First Edition of Chivalry and Sorcery. Gold based the original Land of the Rising Sun (Fantasy Games Unlimited, 1980) on C&S 1E.
Nurtured in the relatively egalitarian science fiction fan community in Los Angeles, Gold navigated the male-dominated RPG community with confidence, taking in stride others’ occasional awkwardness. David Hartlage mentions one notable moment in a June 2020 post on his DM David blog, “Meet the Woman Who by 1976 was the Most Important Gamer in Roleplaying After Gary“:
Her one personal encounter with Gary Gygax revealed a similar bias. Early on, Lee sent copies of A&E to TSR. After a couple of months, she received a phone call, which she recounts: “This is Gary Gygax,” said the voice, “and I’d like to speak to Lee Gold.”
“I’m Lee Gold,” I said. “I gather you got the copies of A&E I sent you.”
“You’re a woman!” he said.
“That’s right,” I said, and I told him how much we all loved playing D&D and how grateful we were to him for writing it.
“You’re a woman,” he said. “I wrote some bad things about women wargamers once.”
“You don’t need to feel embarrassed,” I said. “I haven’t read them.”
“You’re a woman,” he said.
We didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, so I told him goodbye and hung up.
After 50 years and 593 issues, Lee Gold ended Alarums and Excursions in May 2025. (There’s a successor APA, Ever & Anon.) As recently as 2021 Lee was still designing games: Brittannia Games Kickstarted her new version of Land of the Rising Sun as the first full-blown setting expansion for C&S Fifth Edition. The campaign funded a new setting sourcebook as well as a bestiary, map pack, and adventures.
Once again there were ten titles in this revived offer’s Chivalry Collection (retail value $78.50) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete Chivalry and Sorcery Fifth Edition corebook, plus the C&S Basic Rules and Character Generator; Goblins, Orcs, & Trolls; the European Folklore Bestiary; three C&S adventures – Curse of the Casket, Facets of Fire, and The Welsh Connection; Castles of Britain; and the GM Screen.
Those who paid more than this revival’s threshold (average) price also got this offer’s entire Rising Sun Collection with four more supplements worth an additional $55, including the main Land of the Rising Sun campaign setting (plus its Map Pack), the Rising Sun Folklore Bestiary, and the Adventure Book.
2. C&S NEW LANDS [all-new]
This all-new C&S New Lands companion offer added recent sourcebooks and adventures for Chivalry and Sorcery. All these supplements require the corebook in the revived Chivalry and Rising Sun offer.
These recent sourcebooks uphold the long-standing Chivalry and Sorcery reputation for realistic historical tone. Though they harbor more than a few monsters, demons, and magical treasures to keep an adventurer’s life interesting, these books aim for an authentic medieval atmosphere. The historical sourcebooks Dux Bellorum and The Celts are by Brian Young, who holds a Masters in Arthurian Studies from the University of Wales Lampeter; he studied the historical antecedents of King Arthur. And Glen Moffat’s Eorldom of Gar setting book catalogs 40 small settlements in this northern frontier kingdom with a tax-collector mentality right out of the Domesday Book:
Triness: Held by Struan of Clan Barsim, a stenix Farmer elected as Village Reeve (SFMH II), whose current Head of Clan is Serr Harlow Barsim of Caer Maks. The village, surrounded by a wooden palisade, has 21 families of whom 4 are peasant families and 18 are stenix families. The current population is 132 with 86 of adult age. There are 660 acres under tillage, with 462 acres of pasture for grazing. The village lays claim to woodlands 1 league by 1 league for grazing 100 pigs. The village has a blacksmith and a woodcrafter and a mason, 3 stockmen, 1 Forester, 1 miller (there is a watermill that falls within the dominion of the Manor), and 11 farming households. The peasant families provide 4 farming households, who owe fealty to the clan.
Assessed for tax purposes at 100 Dragons. Annual tax 25 Dragons. The village can also be called upon to provide 4 Spearmen, 1 Archer and 1 cavalrymen.
There were four titles in this offer’s Sourcebook Collection (retail value $60), including the historical settings Dux Bellorum (pre-Arthurian Britain) and The Celts; The Mhaun Isles, a location guide in the C&S fantasy setting of Marakush; and C&S Sourcebook One.
This offer’s Adventure Collection added eight more titles worth an additional $78, including the Eorldom of Gar setting book (along with its Northern Urtind – Cadan Bay map) and the complete four-part Eorldom of Gar campaign – 1. Militas to Jaileen, 2. Across the Eorldom, 3. Agents of the Dragon, and 4. Then There Were None; and the full-length adventure Hillfort of the Pagans and the scenario anthology Adventures in Urtind.
