Castles & Crusades Reforged is here!

And we're going to talk about it.

Christmas came early for many of us with the arrival of the overhauled version
of Castles & Crusades. I’ve had the new 10^th Printing of the Players Hand Book,
as well as the new 6^th printing of the Monsters & Treasure book. And now we’re
going to talk a little about it.

My affection for Troll Lord Games and C&C is no secret, I’ve been shilling those
books for several years because I’ve been a big believer in the company for several
years now. And side note, I do have an on/off working relationship with them, but
those greenbacks will in no way affect my opinion on these books.

So let's open with a little background. What is this Reforged business? Why was it
needed? And what did it change? The answers are quite simple, if not infuriating.
It all boils down to Wizards of the Coast dropping a huge deuce in the punch bowl in
early 2023 by attempting to reshuffle the OGL. The Open Game License. The foundation that D&D third party content, and a significant portion of the community is built upon.

The OGL was this beautiful thing that allowed third party publishers to create third
party content for the Third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Later, enterprising
individuals realized they could create new games using the OGL and the base DNA of D20. This lead to numerous retro-clones, and various takes on D&D. Years ago
Troll Lord Games was one of the first to create their own game system once they
realized that the 3.5E D20 market was about to crash.

For many years all was good, people were happy, businesses were making money,
players were enjoying 3PP content. And then WOTC decided “aw hell no, WOTC
don’t play that.” And tried to claw back the OGL with the goal of eventually
bringing everything under their control. Funny side note? Several months before
the OGL turd hit the fan, I asked Stephen Chenault if there was any chance that
WOTC could try and revoke the OGL. He thought I was mad! A mad lad!
No way in hell could such a thing happen! Don’t be silly Sparky!

Whoops? Anyway, WOTC eventually rolled over after a severe backlash from
the community. But the ol Troll Lords had already decided on a course of action
by then. “Eff it! We’ll do it OGL-Less!” They decided to remove all the OGL
content from their books, and stand on their own. That meant removing names of
creatures, spells and other items from the 3.5 SRD and replacing them with terms
that did not belong to WOTC. I’ll touch on that more later. But it was a painstaking
process, I feel sorry for the poor people who had to redo the spell descriptions in
the PHB. I’m glad I didn’t get that job. The OGL-kerfuffle derailed TLG from many
other products for quite sometime. But the books are here and we’re going to talk
about them now.

Players Handbook

The first thing I noticed about the PHB when it arrived was the weight. It felt a bit more chunky than my prior 8^th Printing copy. Page count has increased by a couple dozen pages Its certainly a book I could use against an intruding Rat or Spider should the need arise.

The new PHB features a lot of new art, especially when it comes to classes. Its a beautiful crop of pieces from a variety of top notch artists, none of that AI muck here! Oh no! TLG employs real starving artists! TLG has certainly upped its art game in the last few printings, and is kicking the ever living excrement out of certain coastal wizards. There are no elven tea parties, or orc taco jamborees here ladies and gents! This is bad ass fantasy art! Wizards fighting demons! Rogues stealing things.

And scenes of heroes doing great deeds and facing untold dangers in dangerous places. This is how TTRPG art should be. The new art is almost worth the price of admission alone. But we’re dice nerds, pretty pictures might be pretty but we buy these books to nerd out
over.

Mechanically almost nothing has changed in this printing of the PHB. Some rules and descriptions were cleaned up a bit for the sake of clarity, but mechanically its no different than the first printing from so many years ago. A big concern many people have had is, “Will I need all new books for all of my players? Is this a new edition?” And the answer is no. Its all compatible. Now there have been a few changes over the years that might cause some minor conflicts at the table, but any decent Castle Keeper should be able to adjudicate that easily.

The biggest change is in the spells department. And this is an area I want to be critical, but I also understand why they did it. As mentioned before, the removal of OGL content meant the spells had to change. Mechanically the spells stay the same, but the names and descriptions change to keep the lawyer imps away. For example, the spell Burning Hands is now Burning Flames. Mechanically it is the same as that staple first level spell. It just has a more generic name now.

Cure Light Wounds is now Heal Light Wounds. So on and so forth. Some of the names feel fairly generic, and that actually piss me off. Not at the Trolls, they had to figure out new names for this stuff that worked legally.. Its the fact that they had to do it at all that chaps my Texas hind end. The biggest issue I see with someone bringing different printing editions to the table now is the confusion over spell names. Some of the new names are easy to pick up, some are going to make CKs and players alike go “What the hell? I don’t remember that spell!” And if you’re bringing the reforged PHB into an on going game, as CK you’re going to have to decide when or if you start using the new spell names. And mechanically some of the spells do function differently, mostly as a result of clarifying the language so they make more sense. Don’t get me wrong, the spells are BETTER now than they were. Its just that the fact we had to endure a name change because of WOTC is just nonsense. But I’ll touch on that further down the line.

The other major changes to spells was the elimination of the spell stat-block. This was a hotly debated issue during development. Steve hates stat blocks, wants them to go the way of the dinosaurs but many gamers like that quick reference goodness. This was argued over for many weeks during his weekly twitch streams. But Steve was like, “Damn the statblocks! Full steam ahead on descriptive text!” Many people are still grumbling over the change. I’m still undecided, I can kind of see some of the points he was making but humans don’t like change too. I know if I’m creating spells for my game or potential 3PP material, I’ll be doing stat blocks. I’d have to run the spells as they’re now done a few times in game to get a better feeling for it. I don’t doubt they’ll work well, its just a matter of getting use to something new. BUT….. Steve offered a compromise. In the back of the PHB are tables and tables of quick reference stats for every spell in the game. So.. VICTORY!

At least one “new” spell was added. Arcane Armor. For years and years the old D&D spell Mage Armor had been absent from C&C. It was suppose to be in there, but somehow it was overlooked with each and every printing. So some stood up and said “Dangit Steve! Our Wizards are dying out there! We have toilet paper for armor! TOILET PAPER MAN! And stocks are still low after COVID! We need some sort of magical armor spell! So it became a weekly ritual to harass him about it on twitch. I took it upon myself to remind him every week, in chat, in email, with a giant
TLG spotlight signal.. And it ALMOST got left out again! And of course due to the OGL issue, it needed a new name. I quickly suggested Arcane Armor, because.. Arcane armor sounds badass… Right? Others agreed and BAM! I sort of have a spell in there. You may thank me for my service now.

Other than the spells and new art there aren’t a whole lot of differences. The rules for light sources was greatly expanded, along with a few other treasures here and there. All in all its a good product, and they should be proud of it.


But do you need it if you’re already running previous printings? Ehh.. If you can afford it, pick it up, support the company, it has some neat content that is new. But if you can’t, and are happily running prior printings? You can continue gaming without too many concerns. If you’re just now getting into C&C? The new printing is what you want for sure.


Monsters & Treasure

This book has been the one I’ve been most looking forward to, because it represents a massive reworking of the Monsters & Treasure book. Well before the OGL scandal, TLG had been planning on revamping the M&T, giving art to every monster and fixing some of the issues the prior printings had. Like fifteen bazillion gosh darn fae that took up like half the book! And that freed up a lot of room for more monsters, and more in depth descriptions.

They went full balls to the walls with art in this one. Every monster gets its own depiction, and my oh my are those depictions good. The art for the dragons especially stands out. The amount of detail in each and every one of those dragon pieces is just nuts. And as before, the art has an old school feel. The creatures range from beautiful to horrifying nightmare fuel. And the art isn’t overly prudish or explicit either. While some of the art isn’t quite as tantalizing as what you might’ve found in the AD&D Monster Manual, its a balance. Like the Dune Wraith is revealing, but tasteful. The Nymph is suggestive, but leaves plenty to the imagination. So perhaps this will both
make things a little more family friendly, without being overly prudish.

And while the art is great, what’s been done with the descriptions is mind blowing. While I know many hands touched this book, I also know that Jeremy Farkas worked his rump off on these descriptions. Many of them he rewrote from scratch, he clarified abilities and mechanics for many others, he gave us a crapton of beetles and then gave us swarm rules on top of that! He fixed many issues that people have had over the years, he truly went above and beyond the call of duty on this one. And you can clearly tell that he was a Dinosaur Kid because its obvious that a dino-nerd wrote the descriptions for them. Its fantastic. I can’t wait to drop a T-Rex on my party because.. why not?

Many OGL monsters live on in this book under new names, like Displacer Beast is now Displacer Cat, Beholders are Eyestalkers (I wanted them to be called Begazers, I lost.) and so on and so forth. If you have a favorite, its probably in here. I will say they left out many devils and demons, simply because they’ll be getting their own book sometime next year if nothing else goes wrong in the Troll Dens. The Treasure section has been greatly revamped, there are a few new items that are very interesting, and the non-OGL versions of prior magic items is an improvement in my mind. There is also a large section on regular animals in the appendix, as well as a nice big section on poisons and as I mentioned before Swarm rules. I cannot wait to Molly whomp my party with a swarm of beetles. It’s going to be some Temple of Doom level
of bugginess.

I don’t really have any complaints about the M&T, it hits all the right notes, it gives the CK a ton of new content and clarifies many things. The only issue I’ve found was during my last session, I went to look up something about Ghasts, and I could not find them in the book! Did this undead staple get left out? I shifted to my PDF copy, did a word search and found ghast as a Ghoul Sub variant. It kind of struck me as odd at first, but after reading the entry a few times I understand why. But it did short circuit my brain for about 5 minutes during the game. Lessons learned!

While I feel that the PHB isn’t quite a required buy, the M&T sure is. The vast array of improvements make this book worth every penny. And if you can’t read you can at least look at the pictures and go “oo pretty pictures! TROLL GO SMASH!” If thats the kind of thing that floats your boat.

Overall I think TLG did pretty good with this rebooting of their main product line. I did not buy a new Castle Keepers Guide, the changes there are extremely minimal. I do have the PDF and didn’t see enough changes to justify an in depth review. If you don’t have it? Get it. Its a great resource. If you have a prior printing? You can probably pass on it.

The OGL kerfuffle forced TLG and other companies to refine their products and to chart new paths in the face of legal annihilation. We got better products because of it. But its still a shame that the whole industry was forced to do this. It was senseless. I respect TLG for sticking to its guns, and saying No Gods, No Masters. They could’ve saved themselves a lot of trouble when WOTC dumped the SRDs into creative commons and just shifted to that. They would’ve probably been fine legally, and many
smaller third party publishers have done that. That would’ve preserved a lot of the long established terms and language that we’ve been using for decades. But Steve refused to chance it, and I respect him for that. Don’t ever give someone a chance to burn you again. The whole Troll Clan should be proud, they did a good job.

So those are my thoughts on these books, they’re great. TLG is a great company that prints everything in the good ol USA. They’re huge supporters of active duty military and veterans. (50% discount for current & prior service!) And they’re very accessible on social media.

So get after it! C&C is calling!


~Sparks