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Post by The Wanderer on Jul 13, 2016 21:31:46 GMT -6
I'm a little unclear about how Swords & Wizardry Whitebox came about. But I read a post from Marv about how some things were chosen by comittee and he would have done things differently.
So my question to Finarvyn is now that S&W Whitebox was basically left to fans to do what they want with it, why not make the changes you wanted to do with the rules, give it a new name and put it out there? Your own "director's cut"
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Post by Finarvyn on Jul 14, 2016 17:56:19 GMT -6
Nice questions. The way I remember it, Matt Finch was working on S&W Complete and was looking for someone to author a LBB version of the game. Because of my involvement with OD&D and these boards, several folks suggested to Matt that I be chosen and he asked me to do it. He sent me a (then) current version of his Complete rules and gave me freedom to trim and add in as desired, but several old-timers served as a "steering committee" to offer their input on the direction that the rules might go. Remember that this was really early in the OSR movement and other than OSRIC there were few rules systems to model and no one was really certain about legal issues. As such, we knew that some things had to be different from OD&D to make S&W its own game, but we weren't quite sure exactly how close it could be. There were a few sticky points, such as the decision to stick with the single saving throw mechanic as "S&W Identity" instead of OD&D's multi-faceted saving throw system and the intent to keep as much compatible with Complete as possible instead of making a totally different rules set. Other issues were debated, such as spell names (such as Heal I and Heal II instead of Cure Light and Cure Serious). In my own campaign I prefer the "core four" classes (FM, MU, Cleric, Thief) but others felt that the thief ought to be omitted because it's not in the original three core booklets, and in many ways I wish I had stuck the thief in there anyway. In many cases I tried to insert a "toolbox" approach and offer a couple of options instead of one single way to play the game, since that's kind of my philosophy on how I run OD&D anyway. Part of the problem was that I would create something in a Word doc, and then another person would do layout so that if I wanted to edit my rules set there was a lot of duplication of work and meant that none of us were ever certain which was the current version of anything. Anyway, it's kind of neat to note that in the process of creation of WB and Complete there was a certain degree of overlap in design as Matt and I corresponded back and forth. Clearly Matt's Complete rules served as the main inspiration for my rules and many of my ideas bounced back to find a place in his Complete set. When the rules seemed done I bought some cover art (a great Pete Mullen piece), layout got done, and the game got published through Lulu, I think. Then Brave Halfling took over and made the WB an actual boxed set, which is awesome, and its popularity really took off. Somewhere along the line Brave Halfling decided they wanted their own house rules set instead of being tied to someone else's product, which led to the creation of Delving Deeper and that's roughly when S&W:WB and I parted ways. (I was not a part of the development of Delving Deeper since it was a totally different game. There are probably some threads on this floating around these boards, if you are interested in how Delving Deeper was designed.) The reasons why I left the WB project are not things to discuss here, but Matt's main focus has always been on Complete and once I left the other committee members never seemed to regain the momentum that the project had when it had just one guy in the lead. I have thought about putting out my own "how I do it" version of the WB rules but basically I think it would be best if I stayed away from the product line. It's a great game and I'm really proud to have had a part in its creation (and will be happy to answer questions about the rules), but I've moved on to other game systems at the moment. Besides, there are quite a few great OD&D-style games out there (S&W, Delving Deeper, DunFalcon, and so on) and I'm not sure if I want to compete with them. Anyway, long answer to a couple of great questions.  |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2016 20:03:51 GMT -6
I have heard of a city of DunFalcon, but not a rules system named that. How about a little more info please.
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18 Spears
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Post by 18 Spears on Jul 14, 2016 21:55:15 GMT -6
I have heard of a city of DunFalcon, but not a rules system named that. How about a little more info please. guessin he means iron falcon not dunfalcon ironfalconrpg.com/ |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2016 8:23:54 GMT -6
I have heard of a city of DunFalcon, but not a rules system named that. How about a little more info please. guessin he means iron falcon not dunfalcon ironfalconrpg.com/Ah!! I was wondering how I missed it, but iron falcon I know about. |
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Post by Finarvyn on Jul 15, 2016 11:15:08 GMT -6
I have heard of a city of DunFalcon, but not a rules system named that. How about a little more info please. guessin he means iron falcon not dunfalcon ironfalconrpg.com/I believe you are correct, sir. I was thinking of the LBB+Greyhawk rules, and I guess they are called Iron Falcon. Brain cramp.  |
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Post by Scott Anderson on Jul 24, 2016 10:58:00 GMT -6
Marv, will you make any more games?
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Post by machfront on Jul 25, 2016 3:24:03 GMT -6
I wish I had stuck the thief in there anyway. Ever since at around about '09 I've wished you'd have shoved your own WB thief in there. So, I've ever been curious... were to to write/include an S&W:WB-specific thief how you would have designed/handled it? There are a number of "WB-appropriate" thieves that have been presented over the years, so I'm still curious all these years later still as to how yours may/would have been. Could you 'give' us one, or at least an insight into such? |
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Post by Finarvyn on Jul 25, 2016 5:44:51 GMT -6
Marv, will you make any more games? Not sure, really. I tinker with things regularly and start to write up game systems but it's a lot of work for little return and my attention wanders. For example, no two of my OD&D campaigns are quite the same rules as one another (much of my inspiration for the "toolbox" approach in WB) but I doubt that any one of them is solid enough to represent its own game. I guess I could try to compile a list of what I've tried, but I doubt that I've kept notes on most of them. (There are mentions for many of them in threads here, I suspect.) I wish I had stuck the thief in there anyway. Ever since at around about '09 I've wished you'd have shoved your own WB thief in there. So, I've ever been curious... were to to write/include an S&W:WB-specific thief how you would have designed/handled it? There are a number of "WB-appropriate" thieves that have been presented over the years, so I'm still curious all these years later still as to how yours may/would have been. Could you 'give' us one, or at least an insight into such? The thief that I use most often resembles the Greyhawk thief but with d20 tables instead of percentile. What I did was to take the charts, convert them into d20's, then create a "thief action" stat that rises with level and with various modifiers depending on which type of action you are attempting. (Picking pockets, detecting traps, etc.) Not sure if it's really innovative, but I like the organization of the rules. |
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Post by Scott Anderson on Jul 25, 2016 6:12:33 GMT -6
Writing an OSR thief class is like the senior thesis of this hobby. It's like the first thing people do when they're demonstrating their scholarship. I think that's why there are so many good ones, but no perfect one: they're all partial solutions.
The several OSR and retroclone games suffer (benefit?) from the same foibles. They're all partial solutions.
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