Platonic Solid

I've got a game brewing and I think that I'm going to use Swords & Wizardry Complete as the base but sprinkle in some spice. The most potent being Mentzer Weapon Mastery. It looks like the first thing to do would be to re-scope Weapon Mastery from 36 character levels to 20. Other than that, it looks straight forward. Heck, in a way, S&W Complete's Fighter sort of provides a hook to WM's enumerated abilities through the parry maneuver. I also think that a character sheet update is in order.

Wow. While I didn't originally have the book back in my fist go-round with D&D, I did have the series of boxed sets, I'm reminded of why we had the approach to the game that we did. Compressing the expansiveness of basic into your head all at once is quite a task. Even though I found some of the sections a slog, underneath things like where we're told about the correctness of having a certain amount of magic items by so-and-so level and what-not, there lies a really small and malleable core -  Red Box!

By the time that the D&D Rules Cyclopedia hit the streets in 1991, I was drifting away from the hobby and completely missed its release. Besides, late in my first gaming epoch, I was playing very little D&D and was mostly focusing on other "more advanced" games. Being curious, a few years ago, I bought the Rules Cyclopedia PDF when it was first put online by Wizards. It had a technical glitch that prevented it from rendering correctly in my PDF viewer. That, unfortunately, likely colored my perception of the book itself. After giving it a few quick flip-throughs, I just wasn't impressed by what I saw. What was all the hubbub about, bub? Fast-forward a few years. I've churned through as many different retro-clones as I could get my hands on; settling on Swords & Wizardry. It's a fantastic game. Beyond the nostalgia, I've come to really appreciate D&D. Spurred on by (re) discovering AD&D 1st edition through the reprints, I couldn't ...

The other day I picked up the Advanced Fighting Fantasy Heroes Companion . The new types of magic, spells, talents, and so on are top notch but, it's the company rules, domain management, and mass battles that really grab my attention. With these bits, Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2 can easily hang with D&D when it comes to comprehensiveness in one fantasy game package. You really get the sense that long campaigns are possible with AFF. In short, it is absolutely excellent and packed full of value. I'm not sure when we'll get a chance to play since my core rulebook is still in storage since the fire but, I'm itching to play. I've got a hunch that I can wing it from the reference charts. Until then, I'm using the companion's Wilderness Map Generator for our upcoming Rules Cylopedia game.