Castles and Crusades - The #1 Best Role-Playing Game Evar! DUO

Wellspring is an interesting word. It rolls off the tongue, though does not feel like it should. The word is as old as dirt. Roughly 1000 years ago the word “welspryng” appears in writing. It is Old English, so probably sounds better pronounced in Old English. Modern English is dull and monotonous, bereft of its older lilt or, what’s the word I am looking for, bereft of its spring. (See what I did there.) But wellspring comes to mind as I consider the second-best aspect of Castles and Crusades.

Steve, Mac, and I have been playing The Game and its many iterations since 1976. That is a long time. That’s thousands of hours of play, thousands of games, and hundreds of players. Although Stephen held to the tried-and-true game mastering I branched out into many games and dragged Stephen into many of them. Mac did the same. Stephen played a lot more games than he actually realized. We all three have never quit playing. That is our gaming spring. 

 

Our throwback Set

But that’s not a Welspryng!

But this is. My brother and I are both avid readers. Between the two of us we have fantasy, science fiction, history, fiction, physics, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, and a variety of other subjects we inject ourselves into. We both went to college and went on to get advanced degrees further broadening our inspirational base. We worked in our respective fields. When asked, we both will never shut up about anything and continually seek input and knowledge from others. All this comes to our creative processes.

We have both traveled a lot. We have been in dungeons beneath brooding castles, sat high above the clouds on mountain tops, been stranded on desert highways, broke and homeless, served in the military, run businesses, and flopped from idiotic escapade to another our whole lives. Looking carefully one can see reference to many of these in our writings (Heart of Glass!!!), setting material, political landscapes, cultures, languages, art, and, well everything. Our lives infuse our writing with real world explorations and adventures.

Does anyone remember Blondie?

But one Needs buckets to Carry Water!

All that reading, learning, curiosity, and adventures would likely have remained just that were it not for some old fellar’s fascination with gaming. This guy, a cobbler by trade, loved gaming. He and some friends put together a great little fantasy game called Dungeons and Dragons. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were their names. Those two dudes created a whopper of a game. This little game was the pail both Stephen and I needed to carry water from our welspryng. I think I am getting carried away with my metaphor. (See what I did there.) I’ll put my bucket of metaphors down to get to this point.

Dungeons and Dragons provided both of us an outlet for our fevered imaginations. This is where all that pointless knowledge and senseless escapades were poured into designing worlds and running adventures. It was our medium. And what makes this even better is that both of became friends with Gary Gygax himself. I can not describe to you this man. He could weave a tale with a handful of words and create an adventure with little more than a twinkle in his eye. His game, his modules, his language, and sitting on a porch just gabbing created a fluorescence. When creating Castles and Crusades, we did so with Gary, Yggsburgh, and Castle Zagyg in mind. It was Gary who kept that final watchful eye and invaluable critiques and who, in many ways, still does.  

And Now a New Wellspring

Which brings us too now. Well, twenty years ago anyway. Castles and Crusades had hundreds of playtesters during its development process. Their feedback was priceless and made the game better and better and better. To them we owe so much thanks its difficult for me to find the words. Since the game has come out and seen print, we have had thousands of playtesters. Those out there who play Castles and Crusades continually provide us with feedback, feedback we use to further refine the game and make it better and better and…. Now it’s the best EVAR!

 Seriously, I took a poll.