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Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Time to "Red Ink" White Box - Trimming the Fat to Get to S&W: Light


A while back I stumbled across a really good deal on Swords & Wizardry White Box softcovers. I ordered a half dozen with the intention of giving out copies to my old face to face gaming group at our next annual gathering. Once I got them, it was kinda obvious they weren't being sold by Matt or Mythmere Games. I wish I had paid closer attention. I wasn't going to hand out bootlegs, but throwing away gaming material felt like just compounding a bad situation. So, I put them on a shelf and there they sat. Until now.

Now that I'm working on what is tentatively titled Swords & Wizardry: Light, these books are a boon. I get to "red ink" - in metallic no less - a hard copy of White Box. It's actually a thrill to go through and trim what isn't needed.

The idea is that some of the material trimmed could be added back in a series of adventures. The same adventures that will be written to help a lapsed gamer regain his game mastering footing.

Now to rewrite the Sleep spell...


7 comments:

  1. "Diet Swords & Wizardry will be the best tasting Diet product ever, even in PDF!" --Michael Gross, author of things written in small font after quotes on the backs of books ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. This looks like a great project. However, there are a lot of pages due to the nature of the rule set. For example, the different XP tables for the classes should be reduced to a single universal table. Throw out the prime attribute XP bonus/penalty as well. It would be great if the thief class could also be included. I think the best house rule book for White Box is Jimm Johnson's Planet Eris. It includes an excellent thief using only d6s.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. xp is out, along with the charts - level 2 after 2 adventures, level 3 after 5 additional adventures, move on to a fuller S&W ruleset with 5k XP at that point

      Delete
    2. Cool, using the milestone advancement method for the beginner levels

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    3. That's a cool "short cut," Erik.
      :thumbs up:

      (I hope my silly jest above was taken as intended.)

      Delete
  3. I like this approach : remove what can be done without, or replace it with something simpler while allowing to move on to a fuller set of rules later. Do you think that Delta's "Target20" system would have a place in that approach ? I known it really simplified my games with children, and it uses descending AC ! It also works very well with the unified saving throw, and with "Searchers of the Unknown"'s mechanisms (always a good place to start when devising a "minimalist D&D".)

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    Replies
    1. as the goal is to make this compatible with the various flavors of S&W, I'm not sure how far off the reservation we can go and retain that goal.

      Delete

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