Castles & Crusades Rules Reference Sheets / Game Master Screen Inserts

"Spell Books" by Tsabo6

[updated 2/27/2026: portrait format now included in addition to the landscape format: DriveThruRPG]

Castles & Crusades is the perfect mid-point between enough rules and rules-light.  Still, my players and I sometimes need help to know what's what. To reduce time looking up rules at the table, I created these reference sheets. I also use them as GM screen inserts. 

Enjoy! 

Dungeoneering Dad's Castles & Crusades Reference Sheets: link 

Remember, you can get a free copy of the Players Handbook right here: link 

Great Free VTT Tokens from Dead Hawk Publishing

[Update 2/24/2026: These tokens are inspired by art by Frankie Breakbone (You See This blog and his Patreon). Old School Jelly, the fellow behind the tokens, confirmed in the comments below.]

Folks,

Just a quick and dirty post (just like your mom likes it) today.

Deak Hawk Publishing (DriveThruRPG link; Patreon link) has posted some great free VTT tokens.  These definitely have the OSR / Shadowdark vibe that I love. 

Old School Token Pack - Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur

From the DTRPG posting:

This digital token pack contains everything you need to run Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur, the dungeon found in The Arcane Library’s Shadowdark RPG Quickstart Set. Inside you will find tokens for 19 unique characters, including eight pre-generated player characters.

Each token is hand-drawn in a striking OSR black-and-white style, is 400 x 400 pixels in size, has dark and light background variants, and is available in both PNG and WebP formats. Better yet, they're 100% free!

You can find similar excellent tokens at the You See This blog and Patreon (see that post here: Free Old School D&D Virtual Tabletop (VTT) Tokens).

You See This / Frankie Breakbone

Dead Hawk Publishing / Old School Jelly

Compact Castles & Crusades Compact Character Cards by the Dungeoneering Dad

[Updated 2/17/2026]

Link to the sheets: Castles & Crusades Character Record Cards by the Dungeoneering Dad

I worked up some small character cards for Castles & Crusades.   

I use these as Castle Keeper (aka DM / GM / judge) "cheat" sheets of the PCs, but they would also work well for NPCs.  They'd also be suitable for a player that loves something more simple than a standard character sheet.

I made two versions: one that uses the new "Reforged" term of "Disposition" term, and one that uses the OGL "Alignment" term.

Front

Back

Free Old School D&D Virtual Tabletop (VTT) Tokens

I've recently come across a few great VTT resources to share.  Note - I did not make ANY of these.  I'm just sharing the wealth.

The You See This Blog has excellent stuff.  I grabbed all of these today: Tokens

He also has a Patreon: Patreon.com/youseethis 

Related note, check out his Instagram account for some great OSR-style art.  I really like his "revamps" on the original AD&D art.

 

I also found these great ones from Reddit.  These are based on AD&D 1e, AD&D 2e, and BECMI art. I uploaded here for your gaming pleasure.

• Dungeoneering Dad VTT Resources

 

 

A Free Google Sites Template for Your Campaign

A few years back I used a site called Epic Words for my first Castles & Crusades campaign. It was a free service (with paid levels) that let you organize your
campaign with wikis, maps, share resources, set up forums, track XP, etc. It was great. Sadly, it no longer exists.  

Today, there are a ton of options out there: World Anvil, Obsidian, Legend Keeper, Notion, Kanka, and more.  These sites are simply too much for me. They do more than I want. So I played around and found Google Sites and re-created my own version of Epic Words.

My Campaign Site Template

Here is a preview of the published template: click me. 

• It should be pretty easy to customize as you see fit. 
• I used public domain art that can be replaced with whatever you like.  
• You can also see screenshots of my own site below.
• See below for directions on how to copy and use the template (it's not hard).

DM fuel.

How to Copy and Use My Template

Step 1: Pour yourself a glass of Tin Cup Whiskey.

Step 2: Drink said whiskey in parallel to the steps below.

Step 3. Create a new Google Drive folder to store your site files.

Step 4: Go to my Google Docs shared folder: Double D's Google Drive

Step 5: Right-click on the template file and "Make a copy" of it.

List view.

You might see thumbnails, depending on your settings.

Step 6. That will place a copy of the template file... 

• "Copy of DungeoneeringDadsCampaignTemplate" 

...at the top level of your Drive. Copy/move that file into your new Drive folder.

Step 7. In order to get the supporting Google Drive structure, head back to my Google Drive, right-click on the ZIP file and download it. (This will give you the subfolders you need, so ignore everything else in the folder.)

Step 8: Unzip the downloaded ZIP file, which will give you the folders and sheets.

Step 9: Upload the entire extracted folders into your Drive folder.

Step. 9: In your Drive folder, click on the template file and edit away! 

Edit away!

It's probably a good idea to familiarize yourself with Google Sites. Here is one of the many tutorials on YouTube: Google Sites Tutorial for Complete Beginners 2024

The Party Rooster and XP Tracker pages point to Google Sheets, and I included copies of those. Adjust them as needed for your game.

Some nice features of Google Sites:

• You can connect it to Google Drive (in a lot of ways, it's basically a "front end" to Google Drive).
• You can lock down permissions to restrict access to files to just your players.
• You can customize it as you see fit.
• Easy to work with and tweak and overall nerd out with.

There is one thing I could not easily replicate: a forum. I tried a few different things and settled on embedding a Padlet board (also a free option). If I did it right, those boards are embedded in the template above. If not, you can see how to embedd them here: How to Embed a Padlet Wall  My group uses these boards for XP Awards and Party Chatter.

If someone else knows a good way to embed a forum, please share!

Screenshots of my Castles & Crusades Site

Exhilarating homepage!

XP ... for glory!

Our "heroes."

The party forum (i.e., dick jokes).

Rewards for both exceptional and exceptionally stupid play.

A page to gather the feel and vibe of the campaign.

Gaming stuff.

The rules of the house!

You are here.

My Dungeon Master Tool Kit Part 6 - Portable RPG Storage Carrier!

Well, here we are - the final post in my Dungeon Master Kit series! (Other posts: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.)  This will one will focus on how I cart around my materials. Obviously, there is the good ol' backpack, but, again, I'm a Grade A Nerd and need MORE.  

There are lot of cool deluxe bags these days, but they're are pricey. "Cases"  in point (get it?): example 1, example 2, example 3, and example 4.

Since I couldn't find a bag my speed and in my price range, I went with something else: the Quik Cart.  Sure, it's a "seen on Shark Tank" product, but it is handy. Plenty of room for my loot.

Here it is in action. As you can see, I can fit a good big of materials. 

I bought both the Regular and the Sport model, and kept the Sport one. The other one was too big. Here's a comparison, with a voiceover by my lovely wife.