Chivalry & Sorcery (1977) was one of Fantasy Games Unlimited’s staple games. I’ve covered it previously — it was originally a D&D-like that aimed for more realistic simulation of the medieval world. It has a reputation for a sort of ridiculous level of complexity that isn’t entirely unearned; I certainly wouldn’t want to run it. But I do think the logic behind its systems is mostly sound, even if the philosophy doesn’t do it for me.

This, of course, is a big part of what makes Saurians (1979) so hilariously delightful. The core experience of C&S is so centered on recreating a plausible medieval world that a sourcebook devoted to “Dinosaurs & Intelligent Saurian Races” stands as a real outlier in the line. But this is intentional on the part of the authors, who were annoyed at C&S being dismissed as a “historical” game. Their larger argument here is that real playing of roles requires detailed worlds to draw from, and that those worlds should also inform the mechanics of play. They aren’t wrong, really!

The book is 170 pages of monospaced type (thankfully not shrunk, as with the main C&S rulebook). Illustrations only show up in the beginning, scratchy sketchy things, some of which are direct lifts of Charles Knight paintings. They quickly give way to page after page of tables that I am mostly unable to parse. There are dinosaurs, of course, as well as prehistoric mammals, and an elaborately detailed race of dinosaur people called the Hss’Taathi, whose society is portrayed with as much detail and nuance as the medieval-style kingdom Arden (1979), published the same year. There are also crocodile people called Kulun’Ssaatha, who get less robust treatment. And the authors propose that the world of Saurians can interact with, say, the world of Arden, through dimensional gateways (caused by space/time weakness in the wake of supernovas). I believe this amounts to the first serious published presentation of the multiverse concept in RPGs, which is pretty neat.

Correct me if I’m wrong! D&D presents the idea of a multiverse in the Players Handbook, and I am pretty sure there is some mention of similar in early Arduin books, but I can’t think of an actual instance of two separate worlds being connected that is earlier than this. The closest I got is X2: Castle Amber in 1981?