Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day Post #2: Why play Swords & Wizardry?

In my first post for the Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day I covered some alternate rules you can use in your games.  You may want to take a peek if you haven't already, it's some pretty straight forward stuff on saving throws.

In any case, a lot of the bloggers today have been writing reviews of sorts of S&W.  Each discussing what is great about the game and why you should give it a shot.  I must say, though there is no need for yet another, I'm going to throw my two cents in the hat.

If the question is "Why play Swords & Wizardry?" you can imagine many different answers.  Not only because of different view points, but the fact that S&W is REALLY 3 games.  Or more, really.   More on that in a minute. So I'm going to try to answer the question for the 3 major versions:

S&W Whitebox:  The Whitebox edition of the game is supposed to reflect the original 3 little books that were OD&D.  Now, some people get a little bent out of shape because of some liberties taken with the rules.  I've actually seen someone say Delving Deeper was closer in hit point progression so they preferred that (note: this isn't completely accurate from what I've seen).  Some decry the (optional) ascending AC and single saving throw, but all that aside, even the Whitebox edition of S&W can stand on it's own feet as a great game.  Call me a fan of the optional rules.

You want rules-light?  Boom.  You got it.  Want just the fighting-man, magic-user, and cleric?  You got it.  Who needs thieves?  You only need some d6's and a d20 to play this game.  The print edition is pretty small, perfect for traveling light when you are out and about.  I've often thought about having it with my on an airplane with some graph paper.

The best thing about the Whitebox is that is is the easiest to hack and manipulate.  I've seen Balrog player classes created using Whitebox rules.  You can really create whatever you want pretty easily because there are no major rule systems to break.  You can see examples of the customization with products like Crypts & Things, Hideouts & Hoodlums, Ruins & Ronin, and so many others.  Whether it's generic fantasy, or something weirder, Whitbox can handle it.  Oh, and it's free.  The PDF anyways.

S&W Core Rules: I kind of hate to say it, but the Core rules are kind of the middle kid that doesn't get as much attention.  It's more robust than it's Whitebox brother, but this is the fellow that started S&W.  Like the Whitebox it's got the OD&D feel, with the addition of the rules and fun from the Greyhawk supplement.  That means you get your thief class if you want it, and variable damage dice for weapons, etc.  It's close enough to S&W Complete to be almost indistinguishable during real play.  The PDF is free, with the print edition being about the size (length and width) as many other RPG books.  It's pretty slim and light though.  It won't break your back on the way to a friend's house. 

Some of the writing is different between the Core Rule and Complete in some spots, as is the art.  But in the end what will make you choose this over Complete is that it lacks all the other "advanced" classes.  If you don't want druids or monks in your game, go with this.  If someone can help me with more differences between the two, I'd love to know.  I haven't done a full page to page comparison yet. ;)

S&W Complete: This is it.  This is the game I play.  It's the Core Rules plus things from the other supplements of OD&D.  The big difference as far as I can tell are the extra classes.  Assassin, Druid, Monk, Paladin, and Ranger.  You also get the Frog God Games art and fonts, which I'm a big fan of.  This game ends up playing as sort of a AD&D-lite game.  To me this is a great strength.  It balances the two worlds.  In fact, I was able to run White Plume Mountain, a famous 1E module with S&W Complete with no problem.  The game is flexible enough to cover gaming materials for Basic D&D too. 

Though Labyrinth Lord is known as another Rosetta stone of sorts for the OSR, I'd choose S&W Complete because of the support for it!  Rappan Athuk, Monstrosities, Tome of Horrors, Razor Coast, and a host of other FGG products are available for S&W Complete.  Though they could be run with other systems, S&W carries a banner for products that is hard to beat.  I say play Swords & Wizardry Complete because you have a versatile set of rules that is easy to run, easy to find great products for, easy to hack in order to include other games' mechanics (like zero-level play), and as you might be able to tell with this event going on, a huge and awesome community.  

Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day Post #1 - Alternate Rules: Ascending Saving Throws

Today is Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day!  Well, at least on the East Coast it is.  I'm still waiting here on the West coast BUT I figured I'd get my first blog post for the day posted.  I plan on making another post later today after work.  So stay tuned.

For more blogs that are involved in the event, see Erik Tenkar's Blog!

Oh, and excuse the black text on a dark background for the tables below.  Formatting isn't fun at times.

--------

Some of the fun of old school gaming is the ability to house rule things or use alternative methods of resolving player actions.  Swords & Wizardry combined this idea with a more modern idea of ascending armor class to create an alternative method for combat resolution that helps those used to more modern gaming rules.  The basic idea behind it is that whether you are using descending or ascending armor class, the goal is to roll a dice (add or subtract modifiers) and hope to meet a required threshold.  In the same way Matthew Finch created the ascending AC conversion method, I give you the ascending saving throw.

In Swords & Wizardry there is a single saving throw used by players for their characters when they are avoiding some catastrophe.  As a character levels up and gains more power and experience, the number needed to be rolled by the player when making a saving throw decreases.  In effect, the target dice roll becomes easier to reach.  When a target is made to be more difficult (or easier) it is suggested that a negative or positive modifier be applied to the roll.  An example would be 'the snake venom requires a saving throw with a -2 penalty'.  For the gamer, this means what they roll is decreased by two.

To create an ascending system, we have to create a baseline.  At first level, the player character classes have saving throw progressions as follows:   

Level	Cleric	Fighter	Magic-user	Thief
1	15	14	15	15
2	14	13	14	14
3	13	12	13	13
4	12	11	12	12
5	11	10	11	11
6	10	9	10	10
7	9	8	9	9
8	8	7	8	8
9	7	6	7	7
10	6	5	6	6
11	5	4	5	5
12	4	4	5	5
13	4	4	5	5

The baseline seems to be 15.  The exception is the Fighter with 14.  We can simulate the difficulty class of a saving throw by setting 15 to instead be a +0 bonus to saves.  With this, the Fighter's saving throw bonus is +1.  As the characters level up, their saving throw bonuses slowly increase.  They will retain their class bonus features like the Fighter's +2 bonus against poison.  With the introduction of DC's to Swords & Wizardry, it will let you standardize saving throw events.  Rather than incur a -2 penalty against a certain venom, the venom's DC would instead be 17.  This assumes a standard DC of 15 for most situations.  What we've done is keep the target threshold for the dice the same, but changed how improvements are tracked. 

The new saving throw progressions are as follows:

Level	Cleric	Fighter	Magic-user	Thief
1	+0	+1	+0	+0
2	+1	+2	+1	+1
3	+2	+3	+2	+2
4	+3	+4	+3	+3
5	+4	+5	+4	+4
6	+5	+6	+5	+5
7	+6	+7	+6	+6
8	+7	+8	+7	+7
9	+8	+9	+8	+8
10	+9	+10	+9	+9
11	+10	+11	+10	+10
12	+11	+11	+10	+10
13	+11	+11	+10	+10

 

This alternative rules variant is recommended to gamers used to modern role-playing  game systems or for those wanting a simpler way of creating saving throw challenges.  Enjoy!