Secondary Skills for Swords & Wizardry and other games.
Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2023 10:19 pm
Here is an attachment containing a list of Secondary Skills and some guidelines for their use. The list presented is influenced by a system put forward by Gary Gygax in 1979, but it has been greatly expanded and there are some loose guidelines for codifying the skills for their use in play. Gary always just left the secondary skills as food for thought, leaving the rest up the players and DM to expand it out as they wished. This is the kind of skill system that Gary approved of for use in A/D&D, not the "General Skills", Non-Weapon Proficiencies", and the like that were eventually tacked onto the game.
This list has been created for use with Swords & Wizardry Complete, the full OD&D with Supplements 1-4 (plus material from Strategic Review and The Dragon), and AD&D 1e. It can be used with Swords & Wizardry Core or White Box, and OD&D without any supplemental material, but it might be a good idea to add a decent level of Tracking ability to the Trapper / Furrier and possibly also to the Woodsman secondary skills, as there is no Ranger character class in those versions of the games. It would also make sense to use a D6 or D20 when testing the skills in White Box S&W / OD&D games, rather than using a percentile system, as in White Box S&W / OD&D the Thief character class also is not present and thus no percentile skills either. This list will not sit well with the Non-Weapon Proficiency system introduced in the AD&D 1e Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, Wilderness Survival Guide, and Oriental Adventures rule books.
There is no reason why this list could not be used with B/X D&D or one of its clones such as Labyrinth Lord or Old School Essentials, though it might be a good idea to "B/X-ify" Table 1. Likewise the list could also be used for BECMI, Rules Cyclopedia D&D, and AD&D 2e, but the D&D General Skills and AD&D Non-Weapon Proficiencies will have to be ignored, and the DM may (?) want to revise Table 1 if using BECMI.
There is also a short list of optional Basic Skills that could be given to all characters as standard adventurer's abilities.
I'm not a professional games designer and I do not want or expect any royalties or payment for the use of this, as I have put it here purely for the enjoyment it may bring to people in their games. However, if it gets used commercially in some OSR kind of way a mention of my name would be nice.
Cheers,
Bill
This list has been created for use with Swords & Wizardry Complete, the full OD&D with Supplements 1-4 (plus material from Strategic Review and The Dragon), and AD&D 1e. It can be used with Swords & Wizardry Core or White Box, and OD&D without any supplemental material, but it might be a good idea to add a decent level of Tracking ability to the Trapper / Furrier and possibly also to the Woodsman secondary skills, as there is no Ranger character class in those versions of the games. It would also make sense to use a D6 or D20 when testing the skills in White Box S&W / OD&D games, rather than using a percentile system, as in White Box S&W / OD&D the Thief character class also is not present and thus no percentile skills either. This list will not sit well with the Non-Weapon Proficiency system introduced in the AD&D 1e Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, Wilderness Survival Guide, and Oriental Adventures rule books.
There is no reason why this list could not be used with B/X D&D or one of its clones such as Labyrinth Lord or Old School Essentials, though it might be a good idea to "B/X-ify" Table 1. Likewise the list could also be used for BECMI, Rules Cyclopedia D&D, and AD&D 2e, but the D&D General Skills and AD&D Non-Weapon Proficiencies will have to be ignored, and the DM may (?) want to revise Table 1 if using BECMI.
There is also a short list of optional Basic Skills that could be given to all characters as standard adventurer's abilities.
I'm not a professional games designer and I do not want or expect any royalties or payment for the use of this, as I have put it here purely for the enjoyment it may bring to people in their games. However, if it gets used commercially in some OSR kind of way a mention of my name would be nice.
Cheers,
Bill