A Role Playing Games Blog
Swords & Wizardry
Crypts and Things
5March 23, 2011
When it comes to the Old-School Renaissance I have some mixed feelings. On the one hand I enjoy the simple old-school charm of games like Swords & Wizardry or X-Plorers, but on the other hand I am unhappy with the lack of innovation and creativity in this part of our hobby. Games like the aforementioned X-Plorers, Stars without Number, and Lamentations of the Flame Princess are the laudable exceptions here.
But recently I read about another new old-school game which seems to take things in a different direction. Crypts & Things, will be a swords & sorcery game based on a heavily modified version of the Swords & Wizardry rules.
There is no spoon … eh … OSR
1August 27, 2010
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to prove that there’s no renewed interest in older editions of D&D and other games, but I want to share my thoughts on the perception of that phenomenon.
Recently there was some more discussion about the OSR on Twitter and on various blogs. The whole drama was started when someone discovered a quite unfortunate blurb on the Frog God Games site.
I don’t want to repeat what the whole hubbub’s about, you’ll easily find out when using Google or checking your favorite old-school blogs. But again people started to muse about the state the “OSR” is in, as if it were a single entity – which it isn’t. There are a lot of people interested in old-school gaming (whatever this may be for each of these persons) and some of them think of themselves as members of the Old-School Revivial (or Revolution) movement. But there’s no single organization uniting all these gamers. Basically everyone fends for himself.
There probably still is TARGA, which tried to be an umbrella organization for all things old-school, but it’s definitely not speaking for all old-school advocates, not even the majority. And they had a fair amount of drama on their own turf as well. Go figure…
When fans of D&D 4th Edition praise their own community for its unity they forget that a) that there is no single “OSR” community and b) the old-school movement is about a lot of different D&D editions and even other games as well, not just one. It’s much easier to be a united group if you can decide on just one game to venerate. 
My advice is to remember that when you deal with something old-school you’re not facing a tight-knit community but a bunch of individuals who merely like older editions of D&D. It’s not an OSR scandal or something, it’s just the opinion of individuals.
Now let’s move on, there’s nothing more to see here.
Free Stuff Friday: Swords & Wizardry
0June 25, 2010
It’s Friday and it’s time to give you some more free stuff!
This weeks Free Stuff is: Swords & Wizardry
Want to see what all this Role Playing Game stuff is all about and don’t want to spend a dime to do it? Then your in luck pal because there is a pretty good game based on some of the origin Dungeons & Dragons called Swords & Wizardry. Download it free! Play it for free! Then thank the makers over at Mythmere Games for providing you with a free game and entertainment!
On the Mythmere games website they wrote this stuff up: The Swords & Wizardry project builds and supports free-form roleplaying games. That is to say, games where “light” rules create a framework instead of trying to cover every detail, every rule, and every situation. The Swords & Wizardry game “clones” the original rules of the fantasy roleplaying game that started it all back in 1974, when it was published by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. We also support two games we didn’t write: OSRIC and Goblinoid Games’ Labyrinth Lord. OSRIC is a clone of the game’s 1978 “First Edition,” and Labyrinth Lord is a clone of the game’s 1981 “Basic” Edition. All these game rules are rewritten and reorganized to be easier to learn and play.
So please check out the site and start downloading your copy of Swords & Wizardry.
Best & Worst of Gaming 2009 [Part 3]
1January 5, 2010
If you haven’t already, you should have a look at Part 1 and Part 2 of my Best & Worst of Gaming 2009 series.
Best Adventure
The best adventure of 2009 was not one, but many! If you have followed my blog you may have read about Michael Shorten’s and Philippe-Antoine Ménard’s One Page Dungeon Contest. They looked for the best one-page dungeons and on July 31st they released the One Page Dungeon Codex 2009 which contained all winners and the runner-ups, but also several blog articles about the history of the One Page Dungeon Template and how to use it. Definitely my pick for best adventure in 2009! And the fact, that my contest entry was one of the runner-ups had nothing to do with that decision… honestly!
Best Free Product
For me the best free product of 2008 was Christian Kennig’s Dungeonslayers game, because of the rules-light system and it’s great community support. For the German edition of the game you can not only download the free core rules, but also four rules supplements (which add optional rules, new equipment and new spells to the game) and over twelve one page dungeons. Aside from that there are several accessories like printable floor plans, various sheets, monster cards, a GM screen and many more free goodies. If you are looking for a great free fantasy game which is not an OD&D clone, you should have a look at Dungeonslayers.
Best Production Values
The production values of roleplaying games have improved tremendously over the years but the product line that impressed me most recently was Alpha Omega by Mind Storm Labs. The original core book had been printed back in December 2007, but the creature book called “The Encountered Vol. 1” has just been released last year, so I think the Alpha Omega game line is still eligible for this category. Like the core book, the Alpha Omega creature book is a hardcover book with horizontal format, full-color glossy paper and gorgeous artwork. If you have the chance to leaf through a copy of one of the Alpha Omega books at a FLGS, you should do so.
Close seconds in this category were the recently released Rogue Trader RPG and Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG (but haven’t we praised Paizo often enough already?).
Best Trend
The best trend of 2009 was probably the renewed interest in old-school gaming. I am sure this trend started even earlier, but last year it became much more noticeable if you ask me. Swords & Wizardry won an Silver ENnie, Grey Area Games released the awesome pseudo retro-clone X-Plorers and even Green Ronin’s latest game, the Dragon Age RPG, is very much reminiscent of old-school games and even comes in a boxed set to boot.
This concludes Part 3 of the series. I will cover the remaining categories in the fourth and final post, so stay tuned!
Swords & Wizardry Reference Sheets now available at RPGNow
0September 23, 2009
I am one of the people who got infected by the “old-school” bug by Michael Shorten’s Swords & Wizardry Quick Start. Today his latest product, the 29-paged “Swords & Wizardry Reference Sheets” PDF is available at RPGNow. The sheets are meant for use with S&W Core Rules 3rd Printing and set you back $1.99.
The sheets are formatted for digest printing on US letter paper (but you can easily print them on DIN A4 paper, too) and Michael even gives us step-by-step instructions how to print the booklet on the first page.
The “Swords & Wizardry Reference Sheets” contain handy tables, extensive equipment lists and even complete monster stats. A veteran S&W game master can probably run the game with these sheets alone without ever having to look into the rulebook.
I wholeheartedly recommend any S&W game master to get a copy of Michael’s work!
House rules for Swords & Wizardry
2September 10, 2009
One reasons why I picked up S&W was that it’s very easy to modify. In most modern games, making a small change on one end can lead to catastrophic results. Not so with a rules-light game like S&W. Houseruling an old-school game is not only fun but also part of the “old-school” way.
While looking for some inspirations on how to run my S&W solo game with my girlfriend, I stumbled upon the Akratic Wizard blog by fellow RPG Bloggers Network member Akrasia and his house-rules. He has created a lot of minor house rules and even two full classes! If you are looking into changing some aspects of your S&W game, why not check out his stuff first?
I have to admit I am amazed how much creativity you can find in the old-school movement. I always thought things were more rigid back in the day. Oh boy, I was so wrong!
What’s on the horizon?
0September 9, 2009
Today I want to give you an update on what’s brewing at Stargazer’s World right now. Just today I finished the first draft of a rather long post (1771 words so far) that will go live as a guest post on Philippe Ménard’s blog in a few days. We decided that the topic would make a great post for his blog and perhaps it helps to convince some of his readers to check out my blog too. Actually I am a bit excited since it’s the first guest post I have written for another blog. And ChattyDM is one of the people who helped me a lot since I joined the RPG Bloggers Network last year. His posts and good advice over Twitter or IM always helped me to get over the deepest of slumps.
In the meantime I am reading several RPG books I purchased recently. Alas some of my offline activities are getting into the way. It doesn’t help that I am now actually an elected local politician. I have been in politics for over ten years but it’s the first time I got a parliamentary seat in our town parliament! Yay!
But back to the RPG books I mentioned. I still have to read Eclipse Phase, the new game from Catalyst Game Labs. I got the PDF as soon as it was on RPGNow and printed it out. Alas I haven’t had that much time to read it, yet, probably because I then picked up a copy of Fantasy Craft soon thereafter . Fantasy Craft is a pretty cool d20 fantasy game that was created by the guys behind Spy Craft. If you want to read more about this cool game, you should check out "Life and Times of a Philipine Gamer". But rest assured that I will write reviews of both games when I have finished reading them.
I also got both the hardcover version of Vampire: The Dark Ages and Hunter: The Reckoning from a German blogger’s "Garage Sale" for just a few Euros, so expect some first looks of those games, too. Both books are probably out of print and at least Hunter has a successor called Hunter: The Vigil that sounds pretty interesting. And even if you don’t want to run games using the old World of Darkness rules, you still can use both books as inspiration for campaigns using the new WoD line for example. Hunter (the old or the new version) also sounds like the perfect world for the horror solo game I wanted to run for some time now…
I also started working on a translation of my Dungeonslayers supplement "Fireworks" to English. The booklet contains not only rules for firearms, cannons and explosives for Dungeonslayers but also introduces a completely new class. I don’t know when the translation will be done (this usually takes a lot longer than you think) but expect some previews as soon as I have something to show off.
I am also working on a secret layout project that is way past the initial deadline. Hmm, perhaps I should make this project top priority then…
Aside from all that I also would like to work on a Swords & Wizardry campaign based on the later titles of the Ultima series. But since I am already having too many unfinished projects I will probably put this on the back burner for now.
Phew! This post got much longer than I expected. But you now should have a pretty good overview about my current plans for this blog, so stay tuned. And if you have any comments, questions or advice please let me know! Any comment is highly appreciated!
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