I really dig Swords & Wizardry Complete.  When next I run a 'classic' D&D-style campaign, I'll be using S&W Complete.

Quote from: estar;500864...
Swords & Wizardry Complete, has material from all three OD&D supplement added (rangers, illusionists, spells, items, etc).

Minor nitpick: S&W Complete does not have illusionists.  (Or bards, if anyone cares.)  Everything else is there (even monks).

Quote from: The Good Assyrian;500887... if you want to see the true toolkit nature of the game in action I would recommend taking a look at the simplicity of White Box and then these houserules to see what can be done with it.

Aw shucks, thanks! I actually used S&W Core in coming up with those house rules, although I tried to ensure that most of them could be used with S&W White Box as well.

Some of those house rules have been integrated by Newt Newport into Crypts & Things, which is a 'swords & sorcery' variant of S&W being published by d101 Games.  It should be available very soon...

Quote from: Windjammer;500984Still, if you ever feel like taking a second look at D&D 3.5 (not saying that you should, just saying if), I'd recommend googling the PDF of that book or buying a used copy for little money. The point of 3.5, as much as of 4E, is to see beyond the apparent complexity of the game, and see how easy a game it really is at root. The only 'complexity' in it is quantitative proliferation. Yes, there are obviously a lot of subsystems in either game (esp. 3.5., 4E got rid of most of them), but both games are simple at root, and only require the DM to really know more than 5% of the rules. I wish the 3.5 core books had communicated that as strongly to me as the Dummies book did.

Thanks for that tip!  I honestly don't know if I will try 3.5 again, but I appreciate the help!


-TGA

Quote from: LordVreeg;500989PLUS ONE On the house rule...

Agreed!  That is an interesting twist on weapon damage.


-TGA

Quote from: Akrasia;501040Aw shucks, thanks! I actually used S&W Core in coming up with those house rules, although I tried to ensure that most of them could be used with S&W White Box as well.

Some of those house rules have been integrated by Newt Newport into Crypts & Things, which is a 'swords & sorcery' variant of S&W being published by d101 Games.  It should be available very soon...

Not a problem!  I love what you did with the rules and think you deserve some public kudos.  Oh, and I am looking forward to checking out Crypts & Things.


-TGA

Quote from: The Good Assyrian;501169Agreed!  That is an interesting twist on weapon damage.


-TGA

My secondary game rules are a bronze age set....not surprised we agree...though I go far afield from RAW.

Quote from: The Good Assyrian;499849I also had an interesting time absorbing the very proscribed nature of the rules and how characters and powers work.  In many ways I think that 4e does a very good job of portraying very specific things.  For example, I played an Envoker character.  I found that it fit my idea and fit the campaign idea very well.  The character was essentially a librarian channeling the divine power of a god of knowledge.  It worked and was kinda cool in an epic way.  But I found myself in character creation having to mold my concept of the character around the rules rather than the other way round.  And I didn't see much room to use 4e for gritty low fantasy or swords & sorcery without a lot of stripping down.  It seems to be optimized for epic-style play even at low levels.  My character was channeling a god for fucks sake, so even at first level it seemed pretty epic.  This is not bad out of hand if that is the feel you are looking for, but it does mean that I don't think 4e is very flexible.

That seems odd to me. There are many ways to play your character concept in 4e, and regarding swords&sorcery, 4e was the first time I felt like I could play D&D and play Conan.

I also never considered playing OD&D until I read Philotomy's site. The result was that OD&D and 4e are the only versions of the game that I like.

Quote from: Halloween Jack;501527That seems odd to me. There are many ways to play your character concept in 4e, and regarding swords&sorcery, 4e was the first time I felt like I could play D&D and play Conan.

I wish that I could pin it down to something more than "feel", but there it is.  4e just doesn't "feel" right to me for anything other than high fantasy, epic style play.  The sameness of the powers, the epic nature of power wielded by even low level characters, and the cookie cutter combat options just aren't my thing.

I am glad that you got something out of 4e for Sword & Sorcery, but I would have a harder time with it I suspect.  What was your experience like?  How did 4e capture the S&S feel for you?

Quote from: Halloween Jack;501527I also never considered playing OD&D until I read Philotomy's site. The result was that OD&D and 4e are the only versions of the game that I like.

My two faves are OD&D and Basic, but to each his own!  I have enjoyed playing in this 4e campaign, though.


-TGA

I greatly enjoy both OD&D/S&W and 4e. They have very little in common, except the ability for me to GM easily with little or no concern for rules.

I've done S&S with 4e and its fun, but my players prefer 4e for uber-high fantasy which is does very nicely. The key for S&S play was that we enjoy the tactical combat and when playing all martial characters, the tactics become even more important without the benefit of magic.

I was actually disappointed with S&W Complete, but when I go minimalist, I like to go bare bones which is why I love OD&D and S&W: White Box where I am in charge of creating everything beyond the core.

I'm coming back to this thread because

1. ... I just found a short, to-the-point post by a 4E DM that comes back to a thing raised by the OP and in his later posts:

http://rpg.brouhaha.us/2010/03/28/customizing-4e-old-school/

This post of his is also insightful:

http://rpg.brouhaha.us/2010/03/19/gaming-with-kids-moving-from-1e-to-4e-for-toee/

2. The Good Assyran was interested in hands-on experience with my houserules, and I wanted to share some. After another 5 weeks of gaming with my houserules, I can report that they continue to work exceedingly well for us. Cutting hp in half for both PCs and monsters, and having monsters add bonus damage equal to their level speeds up the fights enormously (party has just hit level 12). The limited regeneration rules for extended rest (1d6 hp per level, 1d6+Con modifier in healing surges) is a nice extra, but doesn't do that much if the PCs are wise as to resting places.

Lethality goes up exponentially if the party has more than 3 fights a day, and is guaranteed if they have 6 fights in two days, with only one extended rest inbetween.

Even without that, in the last 4 sessions we had three PC deaths. They are now at a level where they can cast Raise Dead as long as they have the 500 gp per Raise in ritual ingredients. As with my 3E games, I use a "scavening" house rule, so the PCs can farm ritual ingredients from monsters with Nature, Dungeoneering, and Arcana checks (skill result translates into how much they can farm). While this diminishes the campaign lethality - it creates more ingredients for performing Raise Dead - it also means the party is way more liberal with using rituals in general, for travelling, divination, and reconnaissance, and will handle a lot of situations by shifting the cirumstances in their favour. E.g. they wanted to surprise attack two NPCs in a hotel room and cast Silence and Ward to seal off the room (and avoid others coming into the room to the NPCs' aid) and to stifle the killing noise from within.

What you gotta be aware of is this - a lower level party without paragon level monetary means or without the Raise Dead ritual is really regularly facing PC death. If that's what you want, that's what my rules give you.

Even at paragon, the players regularly talk about 'so what are we gonna do when our current PCs die [for good]'. It's a shift, and I like it.

Quote from: Windjammer;515583I'm coming back to this thread because

Thanks, Windjammer!  You must be a mind reader because I have actually been meaning to give an update on my 4e experience in this thread for a few days now.

So we wrapped up the campaign last week due to changing schedules of several of us involved.  It went for more than 7 months and we got about halfway to 5th level.  The final fight was against a (weakened) Aboleth and although it was a near-run thing we got the drop on it and had some good luck and good teamwork, so only one PC was ever in real danger of going down (that was Tysiph taking pretty much every blow the Aboleth dished out).

Over all, I am pretty convinced that 4e is not the play experience that I am looking for, although I would consider playing it again with this group of players.  The last fight was a total grind with so many modifiers and effects that it made my head spin at times (remember that +2 damage effect for the next one to hit!).  Oh, and I can now talk about my view of magical items in 4e now that we have some...I was pretty underwhelmed.  They didn't feel special at all to me.

Saying that, my experience playing 4e has been a useful one for fine-tuning my own style of game.  For example, I am currently prepping a Tekumel dungeon crawl campaign (tomb robbers!) for which I will probably use house ruled Swords & Wizardry.  Useful things I have picked out from my 4e experience that will make their appearance in my house rules:

1. Ascending AC and Base Hit Bonus - One thing I liked about 4e combat was the roll was simple - D20 + bonus = does it match or exceed the target number.  I have been using traditional descending AC in my S&W games until now, but this makes things so much easier.  I have also tweaked the BHB a little to make the math easier.  Fighting Men will get deadlier at higher levels, but they probably need it!

2. Minions - I like minions and have been using mook rules for a long, long time in other games.  My S&W game will have them.  Slight rules mod on Fighting Men - they will get their ability to whack targets equal to level for minions. Anything less than 1 HD will be a minion.

3. Skill Assists - Although skill challenges will not likely make an appearance (unless I figure out a way to make them cool), I liked the concept of other characters assisting in skill checks.  It makes for more group teamwork.  I am using the Saving Throw as skill roll house rule, along with background professions.  My idea is that a character can assist another in making a roll by rolling better than a target number of 10, which will give a +2 to the other character's roll (max +4).  I also am going to allow a character to "assist himself", ie take some time to prepare, gather tools, plan and focus, but it takes a full 10 minutes and can only be done once.

Quote from: Windjammer;5155831. ... I just found a short, to-the-point post by a 4E DM that comes back to a thing raised by the OP and in his later posts:

http://rpg.brouhaha.us/2010/03/28/customizing-4e-old-school/

This post of his is also insightful:

http://rpg.brouhaha.us/2010/03/19/gaming-with-kids-moving-from-1e-to-4e-for-toee/

Interesting stuff.  I have never seen the Inherent Bonus System, but that alone is worth the price of admission.  I don't that it would have the same implications for my gaming preferences as the author's.  I would eliminate all the crappy magic items doled out to keep parity and just give out a very small number of powerful ones. I wasn't impressed with 4e magic items, so limiting them to the epic ones might help make them feel more important.

Quote from: Windjammer;5155832. The Good Assyran was interested in hands-on experience with my houserules, and I wanted to share some. After another 5 weeks of gaming with my houserules, I can report that they continue to work exceedingly well for us. Cutting hp in half for both PCs and monsters, and having monsters add bonus damage equal to their level speeds up the fights enormously (party has just hit level 12). The limited regeneration rules for extended rest (1d6 hp per level, 1d6+Con modifier in healing surges) is a nice extra, but doesn't do that much if the PCs are wise as to resting places.

Sounds cool!  That would probably go a long way to solve some of the issues that I found with 4e personally.

-TGA

Quote from: The Good Assyrian;515686Thanks, Windjammer!  You must be a mind reader because I have actually been meaning to give an update on my 4e experience in this thread for a few days now.

Nice coincidence! Thoroughly enjoyed reading your update as well.

Quote from: The Good Assyrian;515686Interesting stuff.  I have never seen the Inherent Bonus System, but that alone is worth the price of admission.

I re-read and skip-read the DMG 2 lately and find it quite lack-lustre. What you want is but two lines in the book. All PCs get +1 to attack and damage rolls at levels 2, 7, 12, 22, 27, and +1 to AC/Fort/Refl/Will at levels 4, 9, 14, 19, 24, 29. These bonuses stack (so by level 9 you got +2 to attack and +2 to defenses e.g.).
The only other thing I get regular use out of DMG 2 are the trap construction rules. But these are reprinted from a web freebie.