My original review of Swords & Wizardry from 2008

[jeffb]

Thanks to the Matt Finch interview thread going over at the main page, I remembered first encountering S&W way back when and doing a review for it on various forums on the intarwebz.

I was able to find it on Dragonsfoot- so here it is- a "fresh" look at S&W from the early days of the OSR

I've decided to do a "full" review of this little gem-please excuse any errors/rambling/muddled thoughts :oops:

So what is Swords & Wizardry?

Author Matt Finch has designed a retro-clone game that is focused on recreating that Zero E feel: the original fantasy role-playing game experience, with some differences- both additions to the rules as well as areas he chose not to address purposefully.

One thing that should be stressed is that S&W is the "oldest of the old school" in theme and purpose. If you are looking for complex rules that clearly address a multitude of possible results, or completely spelled-out options up the ying-yang, this is not your game. Throughout the manual this very important characteristic of 0E is reinforced time and time again: "imagine the hell out of it". The rules can be interpreted in many ways, are left vague in some areas on purpose, or in several instances, a couple of ways of doing a certain thing are discussed and the referee is free to choose or make something up to his own liking. For example, the Magic Missile spell offers two versions- as there have been two fundamental versions in the original game- one where MM is an auto hit, and one that requires an attack roll. In another instance, Matt stresses he does not want to over-explain Monster descriptions because too much detail restricts one's imagination (which is kind of funny because the latest incarnation of D&D has received tons of flak for basically doing the same exact thing). Although I like my fluff in a monster book, I have to agree-I'm the kind of person that likes to be given an idea kernel to run with.

Now don't let the "lack of rules" scare you off. S&W, unlike the work that inspired it, is well explained where needed, and well organized. In addition, Matt has added some modern mechanic options that help the game play a little easier for some groups. An option is given for ascending or descending AC in combat- So basically you can either consult an old school descending AC "to hit" chart (or use THAC0, I suppose), OR you can go modern: roll a D20 add your modifierss, and try and beat that target number. There is a basic "challenge level" system not only for grading monster toughness (something that had always been a "learned skill" in editions of the game prior to 3E), but also for creating new creatures. There is also a simple but effective treasure system (of course a lot of the classic magic items made it into the book-including cursed items)

There are some things that S&W does not cover- One fairly major omission that I was surprised I didn't catch through my initial reading was " Character Alignment". A couple of paragraphs discuss S&W's philosophy here- Alignment is basically left wide open so the individual group can determine what works best for them. S&W by its nature is not in the same vein of Tolkien-esque "high fantasy" but rather the blurry shades of grey one will find in classic Sword & Sorcery fiction (that was the key influence of the original game), so I can understand Matt's stance here. Be it known though that either alignment styles will work fine, there just isn't an official stance.

Saving throws are greatly simplified in holding with the traditional roots of the game. There's only one (and yep you guessed right: its called, a "saving throw"). The save # is based on class and level. Some S&W fans have expanded a bit on this mechanic by using it as an attribute check target number and then modifying the roll with a attribute bonus/penalty (if applicable). I realize there is a mindset these days of desiring/needing to have a score in just about everything, but this single save I think is brilliant. In a game that is already devoid of modern complexity, do we really need to worry about whether my PC would need to roll a 15 if the problem was poison, or a 16 if it was a spell? I don't.

I should mention that S&W was designed with the same mindset I see with Castles & Crusades- The authors of both games KNOW they are never going to please all of the fans because every gaming group is so different when it comes to rules: therefore both systems are extremely easy to customize and are designed with house rules in mind. In my own experience there are two different types of games; those that require a bunch of house rules so I can make the game tolerable, and those that encourage creative (i.e. fun) house-ruling . S&W definitely falls into the latter camp. It's easy to pull out pieces, tack on your own, and like C&C requires very little to no conversion when it comes to D&D material produced to and through the 1E era, and most 2E material I doubt would be a problem either. It's should be little if any problem to add in the Thief from Greyhawk, the Hit location rules from Blackmoor (though I don't know why anyone would want to) or run your S&W characters through a certain Haunted House in SaltMarsh.

While I'm one of those weird old-school players who happens to like 4th edition D&D, Swords & Wizardry has re-ignited an old smoldering ember in my gaming heart. I'm very excited to be running a game soon for my old friends with this rule-set. Although in my opinion, S&W is plenty "complete" as written, I've gone on a OE buying frenzy picking up PDFs of supplements and modules I sold some time ago as well as getting some of more affordable items in print.

Even better? Swords & Wizardry is FREE! It's available in PDF and MS-word formats at www.swordsandwizardry.com (EDIT 2021- This link now goes to Matt Finch's BLOG page) I personally prefer printed books whenever possible and hard copies (soft cover) are available from Lulu.com (print on demand) along with some other S&W goodies. I picked up the Core book (softcover) as well as the introductory module "Tomb of the Iron God" for around $16 plus shipping and that's a heck of a bargain when considering how prices have soared on the OE booklets and supplements. My personal recommendation is to grab copies of Supplements 1-3 on PDF, as well as the Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets and you'll be set for a long long time. Hell, that's how I played for the first few years, and it's nice to go home for awhile to a game that is made for the hobbyist, by hobbyists, just like OE was.

[jeffb]

Because the link in my original review is dead, I wanted to add the following link to the Smoldering Wizard's forums

S&W- all printings/versions/file types

These are all the various versions and printings of Swords & Wizardry in PDF (and DOC/RTF files for editing) These are all approved by Matt Finch, so no legal issues.

[Deleted]

What a moment in time that early OSR was, huh? I missed the whole 4e era. I was busy taking a hiatus from RPGs. But I found S&W Whitebox a few years before 5e came out.

Odd and incidental thing about D&D Editions - a while back, I think maybe a few months, 5e's core books and Starter Set quietly became the longest running officially supported D&D products on the shelves maybe in the history of the game. Finch said in his video interview that he's thought about revising his Old School Primer because in his opinion 5e is more "old school" than 3e. I think the rules-as-written maybe are, but the culture of play and player expectations are something else.

I'm glad this whole thing happened. It's the reason I'm here. I love OD&D now. I can thank Swords & Wizardry for being the gateway, more then version that Fin worked on than the "complete" version. I definitely encourage people I find out in the wild to give "the real deal" a shot, though, since you can download OD&D at Drivethru for like ten bucks now, although the "this is old and prejudiced and bad" disclaimer WOTC insists on slapping on all the legacy products currently worries me, and makes me think like we'll live to see the end of an era, and possibly OD&D will go underground again for good sometime soon...

[Finarvyn]

And I can remember the terror of working on the WB, thinking all the while that maybe somehow WotC would put a target on my back and sue me for stealing their IP. The OSR was so new back then and none of us really knew how this stuff might play out.

A lot of the decisions at the time were done to try to disguise where S&W came from so we were looking to change spell names and use the single saving throw and other things to make it different from OD&D, while still trying to preserve the spirit of OD&D. I'm old enough to remember when TSR/WotC would issue "cease and desist" letters to fan webpages for having too much content, so who knew what they might do with a clone.

[jeffb]

May 30, 2021 14:50:32 GMT -6 @ampleframework said:

I can thank Swords & Wizardry for being the gateway, more then version that Fin worked on than the "complete" version.

Just to be clear, this was not the "complete" rules from FGG  I was reviewing, but the original S&W game (which is is now called "core" 1st print). This was prior to Finarvyn  's Whitebox (which is also my fave version of S&W).


And yes, Fin- I remember the TSR Internet policy back in the day as well- what a mess.

[Deleted]

May 30, 2021 16:45:20 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

And I can remember the terror of working on the WB, thinking all the while that maybe somehow WotC would put a target on my back and sue me for stealing their IP. The OSR was so new back then and none of us really knew how this stuff might play out.

A lot of the decisions at the time were done to try to disguise where S&W came from so we were looking to change spell names and use the single saving throw and other things to make it different from OD&D, while still trying to preserve the spirit of OD&D. I'm old enough to remember when TSR/WotC would issue "cease and desist" letters to fan webpages for having too much content, so who knew what they might do with a clone.

They never actually sent you a letter? I've heard anecdotal tales from other people in the early OSR that Wizards sent them threatening e-mails blustering about violations of the OGL, but they never actually pursued any serious legal action. Of course the present narrative is they were always on board with the OSR. (Yeah, right.)

[tdenmark]

May 8, 2009 was my first blog post about Swords & Wizardry WB. I had just discovered the OSR a month earlier through S&W and was excited enough to make a blog about it, and I've been bloggging (mostly on, a little off) since then.

Thanks to Matt Finch and Finarvyn for writing such a great RPG and homage to OD&D that introduced so many of us almost-old-timers to the original.

[Merias]

Very interesting! I also love S&W's single save mechanic.

I was relatively late to the OSR blogging scene, still when I started in 2013 a lot of my first posts were about S&W. At that point I had been playing S&W White Box since it was published in 2009.

By the way - I'm still missing editable versions (doc or rtf) of the 1st and 3rd printings of the S&W Core rules for the forum post linked above, if
anyone has them let me know (I don't think Matt ever published the editable documents for Complete).

[Deleted]

May 30, 2021 17:13:44 GMT -6 jeffb said:

May 30, 2021 14:50:32 GMT -6 @ampleframework said:

I can thank Swords & Wizardry for being the gateway, more then version that Fin worked on than the "complete" version.

Just to be clear, this was not the "complete" rules from FGG  I was reviewing, but the original S&W game (which is is now called "core" 1st print). This was prior to Finarvyn  's Whitebox (which is also my fave version of S&W).


And yes, Fin- I remember the TSR Internet policy back in the day as well- what a mess.

Yeah, right. I was just saying, since most people think of "Complete" when they hear "Swords & Wizardry" these days. I do remember Core came first. 

Does anyone here use Core, by the way? It seems to be the red-headed stepchild of the product line.

[jeffb]

May 31, 2021 8:19:29 GMT -6 @ampleframework said:

May 30, 2021 17:13:44 GMT -6 jeffb said:

Just to be clear, this was not the "complete" rules from FGG  I was reviewing, but the original S&W game (which is is now called "core" 1st print). This was prior to Finarvyn  's Whitebox (which is also my fave version of S&W).


And yes, Fin- I remember the TSR Internet policy back in the day as well- what a mess.

Yeah, right. I was just saying, since most people think of "Complete" when they hear "Swords & Wizardry" these days. I do remember Core came first. 

Does anyone here use Core, by the way? It seems to be the red-headed stepchild of the product line.

I only used it in the beginning. It was a bit quirky compared to WB and the later Complete version (and very obvious in retrospect after seeing those later iterations) I moved on to WB and then Complete, and then my own mess. After the 2nd print (Black Blade, IIRC), Core started to look and feel like a bad imitation of Complete*. White Box is a better framework/D&D construction kit. Complete excels at being pretty close to the real thing it is imitating and doesn't have many gaps that a DM will need to fill. You can just crack it open and play a whole campaign and never need to reference anything else, if you don't want to. Sure you can do that with WB (and I have!), just that Complete lives up to what most people expect from a D&D game, who may have not been there during the Wild West years as tdenmark put it (and an apt description)




*That said, for my tastes I don't think any cover for any version of S&W has ever surpassed Mullen's cover* for "Core". The original WB is very good as well. Ruins & Ronin is also worth a gander. Great ruleset, and maybe my favorite Mullen cover, period. I would love to see a hardcover version of Complete with the original Mullen cover- I'd actually give FGG some of my $ again for that.

[cadriel]

To be honest, I was disappointed with Swords & Wizardry when the first printing of the Core book came out. I had really hoped it would be more of a 1:1 swap that I could stop using OD&D booklets and just run S&W. When it didn't really deliver in that realm - there were just so many small differences - I wanted a more "precise" clone.

Later I wound up running S&W Complete and I found that in practice, I liked it quite a bit. It helped that by the time of Complete a lot of rules had been added back to the rulebook, and it was easier to just start people with that book than worrying about OOP D&D editions. I was also running online at the time. I also came to like things like the unified saving throw and its simplified Greyhawk ability bonuses particularly.

The one thing I still am not happy with is the way S&W does treasure distribution. It's something I don't see discussed enough: OD&D had a fairly simple chart based entirely on the dungeon level (which puts treasure in empty rooms and has monsters without treasure). S&W has a system that creates gold based on the monster XP value. The reason I don't like this is philosophical: I think that GP-for-XP is meant to explicitly decouple monster XP from treasure. If you never have empty rooms that have treasure (perhaps guarded by traps, tricks, magical wards, etc), then the game becomes more linear in its relation of monsters to XP. Someone designing a dungeon based on a copy of Swords & Wizardry is never going to have the same "flow" as a dungeon that uses The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures or Moldvay Basic D&D (both of which I find great for stocking dungeons).

I don't think it's a bad enough flaw to say that I don't like S&W. Like I said, I like it and I think it's a fine game. I just don't recommend it for stocking your dungeon. It'd be neat to do a "Ready Ref" type book that had the original style dungeon stocking rules, analogues of some other rules that S&W didn't include (I'm thinking particularly of its rules for castles), and some charts reminiscent of the old Judges Guild Ready Ref sheets that always grace my OD&D table.

[waysoftheearth]

May 31, 2021 14:03:57 GMT -6 cadriel said:

I think that GP-for-XP is meant to explicitly decouple monster XP from treasure. If you never have empty rooms that have treasure (perhaps guarded by traps, tricks, magical wards, etc), then the game becomes more linear in its relation of monsters to XP. Someone designing a dungeon based on a copy of Swords & Wizardry is never going to have the same "flow" as a dungeon that uses The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures or Moldvay Basic D&D (both of which I find great for stocking dungeons).

Great observation! OD&D's distribution of monsters and treasure is super important. It's a fundamental design element that determines the whole risk/reward balance of the Underworld, and hence how likely/quickly players will advance in levels too. Sadly, this pivotal element seems to be largely ignored by most adventure/game designers

I think this is more-or-less what jeffb was angling to in his earlier post here. At least, that's what I read into it.

[jeffb]

May 31, 2021 18:14:39 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

May 31, 2021 14:03:57 GMT -6 cadriel said:

I think that GP-for-XP is meant to explicitly decouple monster XP from treasure. If you never have empty rooms that have treasure (perhaps guarded by traps, tricks, magical wards, etc), then the game becomes more linear in its relation of monsters to XP. Someone designing a dungeon based on a copy of Swords & Wizardry is never going to have the same "flow" as a dungeon that uses The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures or Moldvay Basic D&D (both of which I find great for stocking dungeons).

Great observation! OD&D's distribution of monsters and treasure is super important. It's a fundamental design element that determines the whole risk/reward balance of the Underworld, and hence how likely/quickly players will advance in levels too. Sadly, this pivotal element seems to be largely ignored by most adventure/game designers

I think this is more-or-less what jeffb was angling to in his earlier post here. At least, that's what I read into it.

Not specifically, but absolutely it is one of those variations where it's not even considered and/or handled very different in PF/5E than it is in OD&D/S&W.

And I'm also with cadriel that I never found S&W's "treasure system" satisfying and ignore/d it completely. Not that I'm beholden to the charts & tables and methods of OD&D proper either- Over the past 12 or 13 years I've rid myself of XP period and "handwave" levelling, no matter new or old D&D.