S&W and Other Oldschool Resurrections

[Deleted]

I began playing RPGs at the tender age of five with the Expert Set of Original D&D. It has been a while since I have played any of the oldschool games (though I still read them for pleasure from time to time). I am getting ready to start dungeon mastering a game of Swords and Wizardry and I was wondering about the degree of direct compatibility between S&W, OD&D, OSRIC, Basic Fantasy Role Playing and Labyrinth Lord. From my perusal it seems there is a lot of ease of conversion, as all are pretty rules-lite and similar. But to what degree can I just pull supplements and adventures from one to the other, and are there any quick-guides to converting the 'important' differences? I know S&W has some rules about converting between it and OSRIC, and I guess that's the sort of thing I am asking about. Mainly OD&D and S&W, since I have tons of OD&D modules I want to run my players through, but also the other Old-School Clones, as many of them have appealing resource materials.

- Thanks, Ricky

[tacojohn4547]

Mar 18, 2010 10:28:39 GMT -6 @rjmooreii said:

I began playing RPGs at the tender age of five with the Expert Set of Original D&D. It has been a while since I have played any of the oldschool games (though I still read them for pleasure from time to time). I am getting ready to start dungeon mastering a game of Swords and Wizardry and I was wondering about the degree of direct compatibility between S&W, OD&D, OSRIC, Basic Fantasy Role Playing and Labyrinth Lord. From my perusal it seems there is a lot of ease of conversion, as all are pretty rules-lite and similar. But to what degree can I just pull supplements and adventures from one to the other, and are there any quick-guides to converting the 'important' differences? I know S&W has some rules about converting between it and OSRIC, and I guess that's the sort of thing I am asking about. Mainly OD&D and S&W, since I have tons of OD&D modules I want to run my players through, but also the other Old-School Clones, as many of them have appealing resource materials.

- Thanks, Ricky

The rules systems you mention, [Basic &]Expert Set D&D, OD&D, OSRIC, Basic FRPG, Labyrinth Lord (and I would argue even 1st Edition AD&D) are all more or less compatible with one another with a few minor tweaks or modifications.

You should be able to use most published adventures that were written specifically for any of those systems with any of the other systems on that list, and merely substitute the monster or NPC stats from the system you want to use for the ones presented in the adventure.

There isn't, to my knowledge, a conversion guide that crosses those rules systems because of the high degree of compatibility across those systems. There hasn't been a need for a formal guide to conversion because there isn't any meaningful conversion necessary. These systems all use virtually the same language, in virtually the same way, so anything presented for one of them should be immediately recognizable by anyone that 'knows the language', so to speak.

One thing to remember about the pre-2E editions is that there is a gradual, but nonetheless real, increase in the power curve as you go from OD&D and S&W >>> to Basic/Expert D&D and Labyrinth Lord >>> to 1st Edition AD&D and OSRIC. Variable hit dice by classes for hit points and variable damage dice for weapons are one example of this creeping power curve.

The older rules systems (and their modern clones) are a lot more elastic than those of the later editions, such that they're more able to take the adding and deletiing of game elements (new/fewer classes, new/fewer races, more spells, etc.) without having the game itself come apart.

[Finarvyn]

I agree. The clones were designed to be highly compatible with the originals, so you should be able to use an old module with minimal effort. In general, when I run a module I don't bother to do much to it at all.

For example, when I ran the AD&D G-series modules I know that there is a glitch in AC values somewhere in the middle (OD&D goes 9-2 and AD&D goes 10-2 so something can't quite match in between) but I didn't worry about it and simply let the AC values stand as printed. For HD I rolled d6's for my OD&D game instead of the d8's intended for AD&D. Damage dice I mostly let stand as is. Basically, those differences have little effect on play.

[Deleted]

Mar 21, 2010 14:06:45 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

I agree. The clones were designed to be highly compatible with the originals, so you should be able to use an old module with minimal effort. In general, when I run a module I don't bother to do much to it at all.

For example, when I ran the AD&D G-series modules I know that there is a glitch in AC values somewhere in the middle (OD&D goes 9-2 and AD&D goes 10-2 so something can't quite match in between) but I didn't worry about it and simply let the AC values stand as printed. For HD I rolled d6's for my OD&D game instead of the d8's intended for AD&D. Damage dice I mostly let stand as is. Basically, those differences have little effect on play.

I ran the 1983 'Your First Adventure' with S&W, and it worked great - other than ignoring the rail-road text, I adjusted nothing in either the module or the rule set and everything seemed perfect. This was actually the first module I ever played, so it was pretty cool to introduce my players to S&W Core Rules with it.




ADMIN EDIT: Fixed the link