G'day
Original C&S was unplayable. In fact, it wasn't really possible to generate a character. C&S II was supposedly better. C&S III was really quite good. But it does have problems, including gaping holes in the skills list.
C&S differs from D&D in being much more definitely set in fantasy mediaeval Europe, with a version of the European social class system built right in to the character generation system. One problem with this is that it makes C&S less useful than in might be for non-European settings. Another problem is that the social rank system includes baronets (which is an anachronism) and does not include the children of priests. In fact, the Church got rather overlooked.
The latest C&S I have seen is playtest materials for the 'Ranaissance' edition of 3rd edition, which had fixed some problems, but ignored others, and introduced some new things that were not to my taste. I made some suggestions at playtest stage, but I don't know whether they were taken up.
C&S 3rd edition was/is a decent, playable, and inexpensive game, but it suffered from poor rules organisation and an almost-fatal lack of an index. My copy has dozens of little post-it note falgs marking important rules and tables.
There was a brief section in the C&S 3rd edition Gamemaster's Sourcebook that tabulated about thirty different sizes of feudal holding and the things that might go with them, eg. castles. This meshed witht eh social background table in the character generation section, which determined the size of holding that a PC's family might have. There wasn't much to this, not even as much as in the Bushido fiefs rules, and I found it pretty disappointing.
However: at about the time I lost touch with it C&S had fallen into the hands of a group of keen historians and mediaevalists. If they can write workable rules it might have improved a lot. I don't know, because I haven't seen any of the new material on the shelves, because my local hobby store has a pretty narrow range of stock.
Regards,
Agback
