Swords & Wizardry Legion

Source: Frog God Games

If you haven't been into roleplaying games for a while, you just want some free stuff, or you love the Old School Renaissance, then you should look into Swords & Wizardry Light. It is given out for free by the Swords and Wizardry Legion. It is a folder containing all the rules and character cards and a really awesome hex map. You can tell BadMichael that TheCrazyGM sent you.

There is also a private Facebook group for the members if you want to go to that awful social media nightmare.

What exactly is the Legion? Well, it's an attempt to create an appreciation society for Swords & Wizardry Light, a stripped-down-to-the-basics version of Matt Finch's retroclone, Swords & Wizardry. Created by Erik Tenkar and Zach Glazar, the system is only four pages long, uses only two dice (d6 and d20), and is the perfect blueprint for convention games, introducing newbies to RPGS in general or Swords & Wizardry in particular, or as a gateway to kids wanting a beginning RPG they can jump into without having to learn a lot of rules.

That's not to say that veteran gamers won't get a lot of fun out of SWL...they will, especially those used to old school systems where it's about the game itself and not the rules. By stripping S&W down to the basics, the rules fade into the background and the actual game play....solving puzzles, investigating ruins and dungeons, battling monsters, inter-party squabbling.....becomes the important thing. As it's set up, SWL covers the levels of 1st-3rd, after which the players can either jump to Swords & Wizardry Complete, or continue with Light (Erik Tenkar and James Michael Spahn have some ideas in that direction, expanding the light rules to 7th level). I envision the system as more of a "Holmes Basic", the blue-book rules of the late 70's that many old school gamers like myself picked up and played before moving on and delving into the mysteries of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. But as you will see, SWL can be much more. We are going to spotlight products that deal with SWL (many of them presented by Erik and James), but the main goal of The Legion is to have you guys running games using the rules system, exchanging rules changes, additions, and supplements, and finding out which conventions or areas have Swords & Wizardry Light games going on to join. We are also going to send out periodic goodies like adventures and more (like the expanded monster list I've been working on, Tome of Horrors Light), which you'll get if you are signed up as a Legionnaire. The support from Frog God Games will not be "Light"....there is much more to come, by the good people at FGG, and gamers themselves. Enjoy! YOU CAN JOIN THE LEGION....EMAIL: mikebadolato AT ntrpgconDOTcom, include your mailing address!

~Michael Badolato

If anyone is interested in chatting with me about RPGs in general please do.

~Michael Garcia a.k.a. TheCrazyGM