Smoldering Wizard's Old-School Gaming Forums

I'm going to repost these reports on my blog, but I'll always post them here first - partly because it's easier than wrestling with Wordpress, and partly because I expect more interest round these parts in the nuts and bolts of running a MERP-based adventure with S&W. Talking of which, I'd just like...

I'm converting stats for creatures from the MERP modules, with guidance from various online Tolkien resources and the appendices in The Lord of the Rings . I don't have any kind of scientific formula for my conversions; I just do what feels right. My conception of hill-trolls (which may or may not b...

Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying them! It was great to play again after such a long hiatus. I made a couple of mistakes because I'm much more used to B/X D&D than S&W Core. Probably my most egregious error was forgetting, in the excitement and complexity of the running battle, that bows in S&W can b...

When I run WB games and someone needs a quick character, I send them to the generator. I like that generator a lot. It's fast and fun. However, on the rare occasions I get to play a character, I like to roll those 3d6 in order. I suspect most of my players feel the same. (Although I think they'd be...

Yreorraent creeps to the chimney-hole and looks down it, trying to keep the smoke from getting in his eyes and lungs. It's filled with smoke, of course, and it seems to twist and turn - after all, trolls wouldn't risk sunlight shining into their nice dark hole - so he can't see anything down there. ...

Last night my friends and I convened for our first gaming session in six months. I served something I've been cooking up for a while: an adventure set in Middle-earth, based on material in one of the old MERP modules from Iron Crown Enterprises, remixed and tweaked for use with Swords & Wizardry Cor...

A recent thread in the Hobby Shop Dungeon facebook group contained a discussion of randomness in chargen. Essentially the OP contrasted point buy systems with dice rolling for attributes and asked, "If you like rolling stats randomly, how would you feel about other aspects of your character - race, ...

Another thought. The spell description explicitly states: "It can affect a number of creatures based on their hit dice." In WhiteBox, an 8th-level magic-user has 4+1 hit dice. Does that mean, if he wins initiative, a 1st-level magic-user can send an 8th-level magic-user to sleep, no saving throw all...

Excellent point. And the multiplicity of methods reinforces the general S&W philosophy: There's no "right" rule. Use your judgement. Tweak things. Pick the option you and your players like best, or invent a new one of your own!

That table in WhiteBox can be rendered much more sensible if the middle row is altered to "2 to 3" (instead of "1+ to 2"). That's what I would do, except that Sleep is one of those cases where I prefer the Moldvay Basic method: 2d8 Hit Dice of creatures are affected, lowest HD first, but only one og...