Tenkar's Tavern: Some Ideas for The Tavern's Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day Post

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Some Ideas for The Tavern's Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day Post - Elementals and Elementalists

Art by Brett Neufeld

I'm sitting here thinking about what I'm going to add to the Swords & Wizardry Community this weekend, and while I'd like to say "Swords & Wizardry Continual Light" will be ready for download this Saturday, its not back yet from being proofread. Best laid plans and all that shit.

So, what is your bartender ever going to do?

Well, Dennis Sustare suggested ecological themed adventure for Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day intersecting with Earth Day, but I'm going to take that a bit further or at least in another direction.

I'll be introducing minor and lesser elementals to the SWL bestiary as well as a new class, plotted through level 7 - an Elementalist. We'll even include the optional advancement for when a SWCL class hits their cap of level 7. I suspect it will appear later in Torchlight and at that point I'll do a Swords & Wizardry Complete conversion through level 10.

Fear not! Swords & Wizardry Continual Light is nearly here ;)

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Why "Swords & Wizardry?"

Believe me when I say I have them all in dead tree format. I have OSRIC in full size, trade paperback and the Player's Guide. I have LL and the AEC (and somewhere OEC, but I can't find it at the moment). Obviously I have Basic Fantasy RPG. Actually, I have the whole available line in print. Way too much Castles & Crusades. We all know my love for the DCC RPG. I even have Dark Dungeons in print, the Delving Deeper boxed set, Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. BOTH editions of LotFP's Weird Fantasy and some dead tree copies of the Greyhawk Grognards Adventures Dark & Deep

I am so deep in the OSR when I come up for breath it's for the OSR's cousin, Tunnels & Trolls

So, out of all that, why Swords & Wizardry? Why, when I have been running a AD&D 1e / OSRIC campaign in Rappan Athuk am I using Swords & Wizardry and it's variant, Crypts & Things, for the second campaign? (Actually, now running a S&W Complete campaign, soon to be with multiple groups)

Because the shit works.

It's easy for lapsed gamers to pick up and feel like they haven't lost a step. I can house rule it and it doesn't break. It plays so close to the AD&D of my youth and college years (S&W Complete especially) that it continually surprises me. Just much less rules hopping than I remember. (my God but I can run it nearly without the book)

I grab and pick and steal from just about all OSR and Original resources. They seem to fit into S&W with little fuss. It may be the same with LL and the rest, but for me the ease of use fit's my expectations with S&W.

Even the single saving throw. That took me longer to adjust to, but even that seems like a natural to me now. Don't ask me why, it just does. Maybe it's the simplicity of it. At 45 52, simplicity and flexibility while remaining true to the feel of the original is an OSR hat trick for me ;)

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Thursday, April 20, 2017

Some Ideas for The Tavern's Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day Post - Elementals and Elementalists

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