S&W vs. OSE: Character Options

Swords & Wizardry and Old School Essentials are two excellent games. They are nearly the same game, but S&W is a zero-edition game, offering a more authentic experience of the original 1974 game and a proto-AD&D game with some of the same features, albeit with far less complexity. Old School Essentials is reminiscent of the early 1980s D&D game, stripped down, simplified, and incredibly simple to run.

S&W has the core race options, but it does not encompass all of OSE's variety and character options. OSE is very 5E-like, especially in the Advanced version and Carcass Crawler zines, and you can have race-as-class Dragonborn and Tieflings running about. These are B/X-style designs, but the variety of character types is there. With S&W, you get the basic human, elf, and dwarf options, and a limited expansion in the options book, but the game does not go crazy in presenting every fantasy race under the sun.

If you want the variety of races that 5E has, and that modern-style world where you have a lot of options, go with Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy, and pick up the Carcass Crawler zines. This will provide you with the baseline options you are accustomed to, the standard mix that originated in D&D 4E, specifically in the Nerrath campaign setting.

I would use OSE to run a Nerrath game these days, and that says a lot about this game. This would be my first choice since it preserves a high level of character power compared to D&D 4E, where a magic user's fireball spell can vaporize almost every creature in the blast radius below 4 hit dice. This does not happen in any version of the game that Wizards made.

You do not have the "shooty cantrips" in this game that 4E had, but to counter that, I would be much more generous on supplying magic wands, rods, and staves to the party, in crafting, finding, and being able to trade or buy for them. If you want "shooty casters," then give them the tools to do that. Don't go crazy, and remember that finding other magic items the party can't use makes them tradable items, so a caster could trade an expended wand for a full one, with an extra item to pay for the charged-up wand. All it takes is you as a referee to toss an additional item or two in there for the trade, and even rare gems and valuable items work for this sort of bartering.

As an alternative, create things in the adventure that can recharge wands, staves, and rods when they are touched to them, such as ley lines, magic crystals, or divine fountains. Draining a magical power source like this will temporarily discharge it, and it will replenish over time. 5E will go out of its way to tell you these things are not possible, and that you must recharge magic items in a specific way by the rules. In old-school gaming, how you want things to work is how they work.

Many problems in 5E were created for the game so the designers could solve them. We had this all figured out back in the day. Don't be stingy on treasure, and give characters reasons to use gold. It is a simple fix, and casters do not need free, infinite-shot laser pistols in their fingers, as it makes magic too ordinary and commonplace. Also, since hit points are not scaled, magic missiles hit way harder in OSE than in 5E, and the spell gets lethal at higher levels.

Swords & Wizardry offers a set of options closer to the original game, including humans, dwarves, elves, half-elves, and halflings. The book of options only offers two more: gnomes and stygian. You do not get Drow, Tiefling, Dragonborn, or any of the other modern race choices. You could port them in from OSE, if you want, using the standalone race options, but we are comparing games here.

The only other central point is that S&W classes are more in-depth in terms of gaining new abilities as they level, whereas OSE classes tend to be flatter and more straightforward. This is the AD&D versus D&D split again, where the basic D&D type classes always were cleaner designs, and AD&D went into a deeper design for each.

If you are interested in having a variety of race and class options, OSE will be the best game for you. OSE is the best choice for those wanting a more modern set of options in a classic game wrapper.

If you want fewer race and class options, and each choice to have more to it, then S&W will be the game that makes you the happiest. S&W is the perfect "AD&D-lite" style of play, cutting closest to the source material while giving you deeper class options and abilities.

Personally? I would use Swords & Wizardry for Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms games. Either this or the equally excellent Adventures Dark & Deep game, but S&W will be the easier choice since it is closer to a rules-light game. If I am pulling out ADAD, I am committing to a year-long campaign or more. S&W will be better for faster play, lighter characters, and newer players.

Bother are great games that look at classic gaming through different lenses, yet provide nearly identical gameplay experiences.

Adventures Dark and Deep

Adventures Dark and Deep (ADAD) is an excellent game. If you want an authentic AD&D-like experience, but with a few more character options, this is the way to go. The presentation is fantastic, the new stuff is excellent, and it feels like a strange, alternate-universe version of AD&D 1st Edition, but taken into the future.

It is like the Satanic Panic never happened.

AD&D 2nd Edition and its censorship never happened.

The game never evolved into support material for the 1990s fantasy novels and their insufferable collection of GMNPCs and author Mary Sues.

We stayed with everything that made the original modules great, kept the dark and deadly nature of the game, and celebrated the baseball-stat-like character sheet you needed to understand to run a character. It is complicated, but every secondary value has a use. Things are not overly streamlined into a universal game mechanic. We did not unify the core rules or bring in expert designers to ruin everything.

First edition feels like a well-lived-in house where everything is the way you want it. And then Wizards comes in and hires a Feng Shui expert for their versions of the game to mess up your entire way of life, the whole house is different and too streamlined, and now you can't find anything. You are perpetually unhappy, having your "it just works best this way" routine disrupted.

I can play an authentic Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms campaign in these rules and still have the game feel deadly and serious. This is before everyone became Marvel Superheroes in today's games, and a 10th-level wizard that took months to get there could fail a death save and system shock roll, and it was game over. Roll up a new character.

The first edition had built-in GMNPC and Mary Sue protection just due to the natural character kill rate.

And the game is very "survival oriented" since the wilderness is a hugely dangerous place, you need to spend gold to hire retainers, and that gold needs to go into a stronghold to hold the rest of the gold you will be getting your hands on. There are no banks or lines of credit here. Grab 100,000 gold from a dragon's hoard, and good luck keeping that in an inn room back at town.

And yes, you are doing a lot of bookkeeping and referencing charts and strange modifiers to specific actions, so write those down! A character should have a bit of arcane "rules crunch" to them to help them feel authentic.

All this thinking can be applied to the OSRIC game, too, which is a worthy first-edition option as well. It is the same game as ADAD, except with fewer options and fewer rule expansions.

Want a still authentic-feeling but easier version of this game? Then play Swords & Wizardry. You keep the deadly and old-school feeling while losing the complex character sheets and table references. You get ascending AC. The game is smaller and much faster. This is a mix of first- and zero-edition gaming, such as the missing 0.5E we never saw.

Want a more modern version of the first edition, like the 2.5E that was never created? Play Castles & Crusades, and enjoy a more modern unified core system. C&C is the best modern implementation of the old-school game, and it feels like the first edition while modernizing the mechanics. C&C is also highly hackable, and you can play anything from deadly first edition play to 5E-style superheroes.

ADAD replaces Dungeon Crawl Classics for me, since instead of a game that emulates the old-school experience, this is the old-school experience. Yes, you are missing the Appendix N-inspired rules zaniness, but this is the real thing. DCC is an excellent "tribute band" to the original works, but for those of us who were there, having the original rules again, and the experience they deliver, can not be replaced or emulated.

I still like and play DCC, it has a charm of its own. This is a game that has survived being put in storage many times, and each time I missed it and retrieved it. It is impossible to quit this game, as it captures the elements of fun, absurdity, and dark humor that many OSR games often overlook. Where games like Shadowdark tend to be overly deadly and grim, and even Daggerheart can be high drama, what game appreciates fun and humor?

The original Forgotten Realms was a first-edition world. The world was not like the video game, with science fiction starships flying all over, and too many fantastical NPCs wandering about like some MMO hub city full of 101 silly Unreal Engine player models out of Fortnite. There was no "adventurer class" of people. This was an everyday fantasy world, primarily human, low magic, and fearful of the gods. Towns were suspicious of outsiders. People worked and toiled hard to make a living in this dangerous world, and kingdoms raised armies to protect their people from the monsters. Magic was mainly strange and unknown, along with most of the lands outside cities, which were full of lost empires, ruins, and mysteries from ancient times. Evil gods and demons slowly corrupted the land and took souls, laughing as civilizations fell to their wickedness.

Forgetting water and rations could kill you as easily as wandering out of the town gate and getting hit by a goblin arrow. You could get lost in the wilderness and die. A random wilderness encounter could be far too deadly for you to fight, and you will be avoiding or running away - if you can. If you can't get away, you will die. Dungeons are nasty places full of deadly wandering monsters, traps, and tricks designed to keep you down there forever so the dungeon can finish you off. The corpses of "previous adventuring parties" will be found everywhere, and some of them will have been raised into undead protectors of these tombs and crypts.

The first edition captures that feeling.

Every other edition fails.

Swords & Wizardry

Swords & Wizardry is becoming one of my favorite gonzo old-school games. It hits many correct notes, and it is careful about doling out ability score modifiers to everyone. Only fighters get the STR damage and to-hit bonuses! The DEX bonus also stacks with the STR bonus for fighters and missile weapon to-hits, making fighters highly desirable and valuable as both melee and ranged weapon damage dealers.

S&W is also a small game that borders on rules-light compared to many other games. Still, it delivers a complete experience with many classic elements. The game is comparable to an AD&D-type experience, but with far fewer rules and much more room to modify and adapt it to your liking.

Bards, barbarians, warlocks, necromancers, and many other classes exist in the Swords & Wizardry Book of Options, putting the more modern character classes into the game. This book elevates the experience to a higher level and puts the entire system on par with the options found in 5E and other games.

As a "quick system" for fantasy, S&W is becoming my number one option. This pushed Dungeon Crawl Classics out of my top spot just because S&W has a few books that do everything, plus more, than DCC does in a massive tome. I get more monsters, a larger selection of magic items, more classes, more spells, and more of everything that matters to me in fewer pages. S&W does not have all the random charts, corruption system, or other DCC "features," but if I want those, I can use my imagination and open the game up to ability score checks for stunting during combat and spellcasting.

And "stunting," skill, or ability score checks are easy in S&W. They are just a saving throw. Or you can do a roll equal to or under on a d20 to the ability score.

Castles & Crusades is the only game competing with S&W for the top spot, with Old School Essentials a substantial third. DCC has fallen off my radar substantially because the system is heavier than it needs to be for my liking. I still like the system, but not enough to make it my go-to game for fantasy.

Adventures Dark and Deep is also up there as my number-one first edition retro-clone. This is not a rules-light game, but it does amazing, incredible things while staying true to the original and best role-playing game ever written.