Swords & Wizardry White Box is all the rage these days. It's simply an excellent set of OSR rules one can easily (well, maybe "easily" is a matter of perspective) twist, turn, grind up and mash into something totally different and yet strangely comfortable and familiar.
What do I mean? White Box begat White Star and White Lies and now - Skyscrapers & Sorcery. Alright, they left out the "White" part in the title, but I'll forgive them that.
So, what is Skyscrapers & Sorcery?
What if the world ended and no one really noticed?
What if almost everyone just picked themselves up the next day, dusted themselves off and went back to their routines as if nothing major had happened?
That is what happened here. Sometime in the late part of the 19th century, something exploded in several places around the world at the same time.
Scientists say they think it was a number of comets or some other sort of space body hitting the planet. Some people claim that we were being attacked by Martians. Some folks just didn’t really notice. The explosions caused lots of death and destruction and affected every continent in the world.
Strange things live in the shadows of the world. Other worlds seem to have intruded upon ours and you are one of the few who decided to take notice and take action. Folks have names for people like you, the most polite of which is Adventurer. There is something that makes you want to notice the world and what goes on outside the daily humdrum lives of everyone else, and you have an itch to explore the dark corners and possibly even right some wrongs.
It’s been several decades since the Event and you have decided that it is time to scratch the itch of Adventure. Welcome to Skyscrapers & Sorcery, may your adventures be many and fruitful and may your lives be valiant and your death be bravely faced.The character classes are familiar yet different from the White Box you know and love (but casters are still there.) I suspect from my quick skim, this might work work well as a heroic Cthulhu campaign ruleset. I'll know more when I finish reading. My problem with the various White Boxed derived rulesets is that I tend to assume I know all of the basic rules, and I'm occasionally tossed a curve. Something else to load onto my table for downtime reading at work.
An Old School, White Box compatible game system.
BTW, I know of yet another White Box derived ruleset in the works. I have an early version on my tablet. It's a good year to be a White Box fan ;)
