Five For Friday 17: Swords & Wizardry Five Ways

This is my wrap-up post for my week-long celebration of Swords & Wizardry. Here are five different approaches to Swords & Wizardry that I enjoy (in alphabetical order):

• Crypts & Things: A good example what can happen by thoughtfully adding a few cool tweaks AND deleting extraneous materials. A very swords & sorcery approach, with a bit of horror thrown in. The mage class, a combination of cleric and magic-user, is particularly good.
• Majestic Wilderlands: Rob Conley's (Bat in the Attic) setting has a very "played in" feel to it for good reason: It has been his setting for thirty years.
• Qalidar:  Christina Lea's pandimensional ruined city is a very cool setting for Swords & Wizardry. I am thinking this would be an interesting setting for a GURPS campaign, as well.
• Swords & Wizardry Complete Rules: This is an almost exact replica of what I was playing back in 1977--a weird mix of Holmes D&D, the four supplements, the AD&D Monster Manual, and Judges Guild's Ready Ref Sheets.
• Swords & Wizardry Core: The simplicity of it all is the key to what makes it work so well...plus the PDF is free.

Playtest Sessions Mini-Report (Swords & Wizardry Complete)

I have been part of Tim Short's playtest sessions of The Last Candle, a campaign starter created by Greg Christopher. We are using Swords & Wizardry Complete for our ruleset. We just finished our second session tonight and I thoroughly enjoyed it (Tim's notes from the first session are here; Bard also has a short report from session one here).

The best part about the two mid-week playtest sessions is that we have lured Bard into our regular Monday night group (mostly GURPS, with a bit of Blood & Treasure thrown in). For me, the best part about gaming is the people I game with. I am thrilled to add another person to that list.

Five for Friday #6: Send in the Clones

Here are my five favorite retroclones (or simulacra, if you wish) of the world's most famous tabletop fantasy RPG game:

• BLUEHOLME Prentice Rules: I started out my RPG career with the Holmes version of D&D. This is clone is well done (plus it is free).
• Blood & Treasure: A quirky combination that draws on all the pre-4e material. The end result is very streamlined and playable. It hits a sweet spot for me. If we decide to make our recent Montporte session (AD&D 1e) an ongoing dungeon campaign, I think we will be going with Blood & Treasure.
• Castles & Crusades: When I came back to gaming, at the request of then-tweener daughter, we started with D&D 3.5e and I felt like the caveman thawed out of the glacier. Totally bewildered. After doing some checking around, we ended up playing C&C and our in-house gaming group still uses it as our rule set (I quit gaming in about 1982 and was totally clueless about "editions"...my fellow gamers will tell you I still have not found a clue).
• Crypts & Things: This is such a groovy twist on Swords & Wizardry. While the rules and accompanying setting reflect a pulpy swords & sorcery inspiration, I would be tempted to swipe the mage class and magic rules and use them in an urban fantasy setting.
• Swords & Wizardry Complete: When I was fanatically gaming in the late 1970's, our version of D&D looked like this (more about the Holmes, Oe supplements, Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets mashup here).

Do  you a favorite(s) retroclone?

Five for Friday 4: Holmes and Nothing But Dungeons (My Early Gaming)

Here is a list of five of my early gaming influences. Back in the 1970s, gaming for me was all about the giant homemade dungeon. Here is why:

1. The Detroit News (one of two daily newspapers in Detroit): There was a big article in the Sunday edition of The Detroit News (probably in the Accent on Living section) that described Dungeons & Dragons. This would have been 1977. 36 years later all I really remember from the article is a description of a giant homemade dungeon where the game took place. It was the dungeon idea that captivated me.
2. Holmes Basic D&D (with the dungeon geomorphs): I’ll get to the Holmes ruleset itself in the last point. The key point I want here were the dungeon geomorphs. We took their presence as a sign that we should be making giant homemade dungeons as the setting for our game.
3. No Modules: My Holmes set did not include a module and we never bought any. We didn't have access to a store that sold modules and so no one in my group even knew about them.To this day, I do not own any of the classic D&D modules. I have not played them nor have I read them. I am a freak, I know, and my eyes glaze over in incomprehension when gamers my age talk about their favorite modules of yore.
4. Rules Mash-Up: Most of my early gaming involved a ruleset mashup of Holmes, the AD&D 1e Monster Manual, the four Original Edition supplements (Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry and Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes), and Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets (which gave us hours of fun with the Buffoon Class). The present retro-clone that comes closest to our early games is Swords & Wizardry Complete, which has a special place for me among the recent reiterations of the game.
5. Other Games: All four of us in my original gaming group had played Avalon Hill war games and Strat-O-Matic sports games. I am not sure we could have deciphered Holmes otherwise. We did not know any other gamers, so we probably would not have tried to play had we not been comfortable decoding Avalon Hill rules.

A couple of years ago, the original four guys in my gaming group reconvened (after a 28 year break) via GameTable and Skype. We started another dungeon-only campaign, using Castles & Crusades, but it fizzled after about 8 or 9 sessions. We were only able to meet online once a month and if we had to cancel, we couldn’t reschedule. Playing once a month and skipping some months altogether did not make for good gaming. I think we were also finding that going back to the dungeon (albeit a different dungeon) was not nearly as satisfying the second time around. There is only so much monster lunch money you can take until the fun wears off.

What (or who) influenced your early gaming? How has your gaming changed from that time?