Single Saves & Sorcery

Diving into the new edition of Swords & Wizardry Revised

I backed Swords & Wizardry complete revised edition on Kickstarter.

“For thirty-five years, I have been telling roleplaying gamers to ignore rules that they do not like. The essence of RPGing is in the story, not the accomplishment of arbitrary goals and benchmarks. We all take part in creating the story; the GM writes an outline, tots up a list of “plot elements,” and then sets the players loose to fill in the details. This has never changed.”

So begins Tim Kask's foreword (written in 2010) to Mythmere's latest edition of Swords & Wizardry, AKA the “other" retroclone. While long an admirer of the superior OD&D over the much more frequently retrocloned B/X, it is always S&W's contemporaries I've been drawn to - Delving Deeper, Iron Falcon, a little Full Metal Plate Mail - over S&W itself. I personally have never been a fan of S&W. Not for any reason other than pure ideology; I just don't like single saves.

The choice of opening this newly revised edition with repeated refrains of “everyone plays their own version of dungeon games” and “discard any rules you don't find you need or particularly enjoy" is a Bold one in the current ideological climate of independent tabletop role-playing games, where Forge-brained ideologues take to social media to brand deviants from the rigors of authorial intent as heretics, Visigoths and perverts. Bold is good. An unfortunate byproduct of retroclone culture is books filled with rules that don't say anything, and an even more unfortunate rejection of that in nu-OSR anticlone culture is to include nothing but editorializing in lieu of actual useable material.

Blessedly, S&W does neither of those. Without overtly editorializing in a manner that informs the reader what they should think or feel, the conversational tone of the rules text presents familiar information in a familiar manner - “Most likely, you already know basically how this game works” is about as perfect as one could hope for from a ‘what is a role-playing game' section. I would have ended it there, personally, but I can't blame Finch for not quite going that far.

Nor can I (entirely) blame him for including the other class/subclasses from Greyhawk, Temple of the Frog, and other OD&D supplements. I do not believe 'thief' to be a legitimate dungeon-crawling class and even less so 'assassin', nor do I see a meaningful distinction between 'paladin' and 'cleric' or 'ranger' and 'fighting-man', but I am also willing to acknowledge in this specific case I am a horrible crank and should not be taken seriously. These sins aside, however, the character creation section is very approachable, includes experience tracking far beyond even what Greyhawk expanded to, drops some of the needless alignment requirements for some of the classes, and has the courage to retain what is, in my opinion, one of the more important elements of 'old-school' character creation: 3d6 down the line stat generation, with no swaps or re-rolls.

“This is not a game of armored superheroes! The great wizards and knights of the world do not begin as superior specimens of human perfection; they are flawed like anyone else. What truly makes heroes of legend, in the end, is not what they were born with; it is what they achieve, in a risky life full of adventure, peril, and courage — and sometimes lots of trickery and guile, too.”

The approachability of S&W’s mechanisms text stumbles when reaching the dual/multi-classing rules. This is ultimately unsurprising, as OD&D’s dual/multi-classing rules are similarly labyrinthine and written in a profoundly unapproachable manner, however here is a case where S&W defaults to cleave to the Sacred Text instead of changing things for the better and is worse off because of it. We all know how badly-written and laid out OD&D is. I would be more accepting if S&W took more of a Position in its choice to retain this anachronism, however the helpful editor’s note breakout boxes explaining the design choices made take an almost apologetic tone here. Contrast that with the tone and language of the breakout box on why fighting-men retain OD&D’s strength bonuses to to-hit and damage rolls unlike paladins and rangers - an objectively Good Decision - and you come off with the impression that not even Finch particularly enjoys OD&D’s multi-classing rules but has kept them in anyways.

Other conscious choices are made to diverge from OD&D orthodoxy that, while I can respect as A Statement, are somewhat baffling to me. Such as how the equipment tables are priced; S&W’s 1 gold = 10 silver = 100 copper is of course a much quicker and easier conversion compared to OD&D’s 1 gold = 10 silver = 50 copper, and S&W has decided to entirely ditch the rarely-used electrum piece and the further confusion it represents (an electrum piece either being twice or half the value of gold), but if the end result is to list prices as a fraction of a gold piece, why bother using silver or copper at all?

Likewise, I find the concession to ascending AC similarly puzzling. Descending AC and the much-maligned THACO systems are nowhere near as complicated as those raised on 3.5 (and up) would have you believe, and while S&W inevitably uses the far superior decending AC as default it wastes nearly a third of a page on explanations and comparisons of the two. Again, the conciliatory tone of the text paints the decision to leave in ascending AC as one Finch doesn’t necessarily want to do but feels like he has to. It’s your book, Matt! Keep and exclude what you want!

Which leads directly into my biggest and most unreasonable complaint with S&W of any edition, not least of all this particular one: single saves. I don’t have a Good reason to oppose a single saving throw system. I can at least acknowledge that there may be a benefit. It does not particularly affect my ability to run modules specifically written for S&W. But I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missourah.

That being said, most of the important elements that differentiate OD&D from B/X and other editions remains. Specifically the initiative order of battle, which is outlined much more succinctly than OD&D ever did (OD&D in fact does not have written rules for actual combat; instead it has a combat matrix and refers readers to read Gygax’ wargame, Chainmail). I vastly prefer the wargame-alike phased combat method of declaring spells and missile fire before melee combat is resolved; I think others who, like me, initially bounced off D&D-alikes due to encounters with “roll, miss, end turn”-style GMing would probably enjoy it more than they’d like to admit.

Like Shadowdark (also released & reviewed recently) S&W is constantly peppering the reader with alternate rules suggestions. I’m not against this trend, particularly for OSR retroclones where I find it particularly appropriate: after all, as is mentioned in the frontpages, D&D-alikes (and I would argue all TTRPGs, much to the consternation of the “system matters” brigade) each player and each group’s interpretation of the text is invariably different; a series of compromises made to facilitate play at the table to best suit those at that table. TTRPGs are as much an oral tradition as a text-based medium, and much like Monopoly or Uno, the particulars of the rules adhered to typically depend on who and how they are taught. To that regard, I don’t see alternate rules methods as particularly different than house rules for Free Parking, aside from being written down instead of being passed down by an older sibling.

There is a rather lengthy example of play presented. I have a lot of thoughts on example plays I’d like to organize later, but in this case I actually don’t terribly mind S&W’s version. All example plays are contrivances, but in this case it leans more into contrivance to teach the rules, such as combat and exploration. My main issue, and one that I do not have an immediate answer to, is that an OSR playstyle and design ethos are typically invested in rolling dice as a ‘failure state’ and that creative problem-solving should be employed to elide actual die rolling when possible. I think an OSR example play should go to more lengths to highlight that - after all, what is an example play if not an onboarding mechanism for play? Play culture is at the least as important as system mastery - I’d argue it is substantially more important - and yet examples are always on how to roll dice and rarely if ever on when to roll dice and when not to.

In that same vein, I question the use of “Challenge Levels” as guidelines for what would be appropriate at each dungeon level. This is doubly so confusing when the text itself states:

“Players are never guaranteed that every encounter is “beatable” at a particular level, though. Survival depends on knowing when to run and when to get tricky. Assuming that every encounter is designed to “fit” the party’s combat capabilities is a sure way to die.”

I understand the desire to try and systemize that which OD&D has left out, and while I am not giving Gygax any credit in making deliberate choices as to what he included and excluded in the text of the original game this is the sort of decision made by Finch that just makes me ask “who is this for?” Speaking on OSR play culture, another oft-referenced “pillar” is the idea that fights are not “fair” and that encounter balance is something to be avoided. And while CL isn’t exactly CR and is more about sheer number of encounters rather than difficulty or beatability, it nonetheless feels like another concession to 5e play culture. And, look. I know “luring” 5e players into whatever we’re calling the OSR now seems tempting from an audience and marketing perspective, and certainly some occasional players jump ship, but it seems ludicrous to me to pitch a diet-5e to prospective players.

Other favoured elements from OD&D - strongholds, aerial combat, spell research, etc. - are presented mostly intact, and the spell list, monsters, treasure generation and magic items lists are perfectly functional, even quite good. I have dozens of OSR books on the shelf directly beside me and while I have little interest in using their rules entirely as written I do find a good treasure hoard generator and monster list to be eminently useable in almost any situation. S&W’s treasure tables aren’t quite as good as the retroclone gold standard - that would be S.J. Grodzicki’s truly excellent Low Fantasy Gaming - but they’re good enough.

“Good enough” more or less sums up S&W, and though that may sound derogatory I actually finish my readthrough feeling fairly positive and unconflicted about it. “Good enough” is more or less exactly what I want out of a retroclone. I want things I can cut out and put into my GM folio to use as needed - monster lists, spells, strongholds, new treasure hoard generators, magical miscellanea. I want things I can reference when appropriate and a book that I don’t need to open except when I need those references. Retroclones are about putting on a better tire, not re-inventing the wheel, and while I’ll never use S&W as written (single saves, heresy) there is enough in this book that I’ll probably borrow from and not feel like my time was wasted in the reading.