I put Swords & Wizardry aside, thinking the OGL-free update was a fun game. I had moved beyond this and started exploring other old-school games. It was a mistake to shelve this game.
Shadowdark is cool, and it is a tight, almost board game-like version of 5E that many thousands of players love. Old School Essentials is the pinnacle of small-book B/X and an expensive set of books to get your hands on. There are many OSR games these days, and they all repeat each other endlessly, with minor changes here and there.
I wrote an article looking for a "treasure system" for Dungeon Crawl Classics since the book explicitly states, "Take a treasure system from another game." So, I went on a quest looking for the ideal "treasure system book" to use with DCC. My best-of-the-best were OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry.
OSRIC was very good, and the magic-item charts in that game are some of the best ever written. OSRIC is the "better AD&D" these days since the AD&D reprint books on DTRPG are so full of errors they are laughable. Don't use your original copies of AD&D; play OSRIC and save those as collector's items. OSRIC and DCC work very well together, the only issue being OSRIC and descending AC conversions to DCC for the monsters.
I found that 90% of Swords & Wizardry can be used as an expansion book for DCC. The monsters import right in, as-is. The single-save number of monsters works better than the 3.5E style saves of DCC, especially for monsters then who cares about 3 saves for a creature? The treasure system and horde generation work perfectly with the game. All the generation charts work perfectly. The only things you don't use are classes and spells.
Swords & Wizardry and DCC are so tight they are almost like sister games.
Do you want classic zero-edition monsters and treasures in DCC? Get this book. S&W is the best "stuff book" ever written for DCC. It has all the missing monsters and treasures.
Once you see S&W in that light, the next step is to consider playing it standalone. The single-save mechanic is a genius-level simplification of the pedantic B/X save system, and if you need to modify it for a single monster, like bats having a +4 to all "reflex" saves, then you just make that ruling and move on. They are bats. If the save is used for a dodge, then bats are good at dodging, and I give the bats a +4. I am done. The game gives me the power to make a ruling.
Swords & Wizardry released an options book this year that fills in all the "missing classes" in newer games. They did an amazing job of "backporting" these classes to zero-edition. You get bards (druids) and troubadours (illusionists) here, so you get both flavors of the class. You get barbarians, warlocks, demon-hunters, illusionists, necromancers, and much more. The barbarian is more of a Conan class and amazingly fun. If you felt S&W was missing the "fun parts" of the newer games, this is your book.
This is the missing expansion. Swords & Wizardry needs this to be on par with modern OSR games. You get all the fun classes of 5E with none of the power gaming, bloat, or overdesign. This is the OSR game most like 5E in terms of classes, but it keeps power levels under control.
Thank you.
They also massively expanded the monsters in a "Foes" book, another fantastic hardcover with over 300 new monsters for the game. Swords & Wizardry is a massive game now, in a three-volume set. It is still a compact game, very streamlined, with excellent presentation and a tight format that packs a lot into its space. The art is consistently outstanding.
Unlike OSE, this game has plenty of demons, and the whole concept of good versus evil is baked into the design. Adding chaos-aligned warlocks and necromancers in the options book adds the evil classes to the game. The options here exceed both Shadowdark and OSE, and the classes feel great. Also, only fighters (and only fighters; not paladins, rangers, barbarians, or any others) get the STR bonus to attack and damage in S&W (to melee and ranged attacks), which is another genius design decision.
The tamping down of die roll modifiers speeds gameplay makes AC numbers meaningful and controls hit-point inflation. Any game that seriously gives all classes the same STR to hit and damage bonuses needs to rethink its design. You also get the lower-than-1-HD multi-attack ability here. You play a fighter because you want to be a lord of war and combat. Other fighter classes get all sorts of special abilities to compensate for the lack of bonuses, so it is fair to everyone. These zero-edition fighters rock, man. They feel like Death Metal should play when your turn comes up.
This is the one change I wish OSE had made, as the OSE fighters feel plain and uninteresting in comparison. All the classes have these fun abilities baked in, and they are far more detailed and versatile than OSE classes. OSE feels too simple compared to S&W, and in other ways, S&W is more streamlined than OSE. The single-save is a genius mechanic.
Compared to Castles & Crusades, S&W is the more straightforward system. I know this is heresy! I love C&C! But Swords & Wizardry does more in fewer pages and leaves much more up to you. This is the best pre-AD&D system, roleplaying at its finest in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It still has the AD&D feeling, though, without all the charts and bloat.
Swords & Wizardry is the game AD&D should have been. I know, more heresy! S&W sticks close to the B/X framework, eliminates all the fiddly bits, and makes every class awesome with signature abilities and party roles. The game is tight and streamlined. It has an ascending AC system, and the math is easy. Modifiers and hit points are under control. The new, OGL-free version is a clean, tight, effortless design with zero baggage.
This is the perfect game to graduate to after Shadowdark when you want a streamlined zero-edition game with many options and that classic pre-AD&D feeling with all the AD&D-isms you love about that game. It is the best reinterpretation of the zero-edition rules, is endlessly expandible, and has those streamlining features we love about Shadowdark. Encumbrance is simplified. Thieves are the only class to get the +4 backstab bonus from behind (other classes get a +2). You get a lot of re-sorting of the benefits newer games tend to "give everybody," and they get parsed out to classes to make those classes unique and meaningful in play and to a party.
As a "stuff book" for DCC, this is the one to go with since the monsters are trivial ports. This gives you a solid treasure system, treasure horde generation, encounter tables, gear lists, and all sorts of missing pieces DCC does not come with. Even the expansions are highly usable. If you have DCC, pick up S&W and thank me later, and you will have all the classic AD&D creatures at your fingertips and a treasure system that works amazingly well with DCC.
Your DCC characters can finally thrash that cloud giant fortress with the white dragon, and get appropriate treasure for each monster there. Finally!
But the two new volumes in the game are game-changers. These take the game from an "oh, this is a cool game" to a must-play standalone system. Swords & Wizardry Revised is my new go-to OSR system, and it has eclipsed many of the standard bearers I have grown used to. Give each class here another look, and compare them to OSE and Shadowdark; you will see a lot of "extra fun" built into each class, with plenty of the best "problem-solving tools" provided.
This game is up there with DCC in terms of fun and design. Where DCC is the gonzo, wild, often very swingy, and hilarious epic experience, S&W is the serious, focused, clean, tightly-tuned, and streamlined design that delivers classic dungeon crawling with minimal fuss and chart references.
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