Frog God Games, the reborn Necromancer Games publisher sans Clark Peterson, has now made available Hardcover, Softcover and PDF copies of its complete Swords & Wizardry Rules for purchase (in partnership with Mythmere Games, the original publisher of the game).

Products are available for purchase here:
http://www.talesofthefroggod.com/index.php/products/swords-and-wizardry-complete-rulebook

Quoting the product description:

   This book expands the Swords and Wizardry Core Rules (http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/) to cover all of the early phase supplements from the 1970's. It creates a 1-volume resource allowing the players and game masters alike to create and run adventures and campaigns that will last for an entire lifetime. The game is supported by a vast array of adventures, and other resources that are produced by Frog God Games.

This is the game you played 20 years ago. It's true to the original style and philosophy that made the game great. No "Spot Checks" here. Simple, flexible rules that allow players and game masters alike to roll play and roleplay.  This stand-alone tome provides all the rules you need to play the game. Its easily transferable as a rules set for other retro-clone games as well as those old dusty modules you still have in the attic.

In 1974, Gary Gygax (1938-2008) and Dave Arneson (1947-2009) wrote the world's first fantasy role-playing game, a simple and very flexible set of rules that launched an entirely new genre of gaming. In the year 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc. (holder of the "Dungeons & Dragons" trademark) released the "Open Game License," which allows third parties, like us, to use various intellectual properties historically associated with the Dungeons & Dragons game – although not the actual trademarked name itself, and with specific terms and restrictions.

This book is an unofficial, "re-stated" version of the original Gygax & Arneson rules (0e), created using the Open Game License. This original game consisted of a boxed set of three booklets: Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. Four supplements were also written by Gary Gygax, Rob Kuntz and others between 1975 and 1977, containing options for expanding the game with new rules. Collectively, all those booklets are often referred to as "0e," standing for "zero edition," and we mention the "Original Game" from time to time in this book, as a reference point. Swords & Wizardry re-describes selected rules from all seven of the Original Game booklets, taking some and leaving some. In general, Swords & Wizardry adopts class, monster, and spell rules from all the supplements, but sticks to the simpler combat mechanics from the boxed set and the first supplement only. Tim Kask, the first editor of the Dragon Magazine(TM), the first employee of TSR, Inc., and the editor of Supplements 2-4 for Original Dungeons & Dragons (TM), has more to say about that in the Foreword.

The Swords & Wizardry rules are extremely short, compared to the multi-paged rule-libraries required to play most modern role-playing games. Yet this game contains within itself all the seeds and soul of mythic fantasy, the building blocks of vast complexity, the kindling of wonder. "Edition Zero" is so powerful because it's encapsulated in a small formula, like a genie kept imprisoned in the small compass of an unremarkable lamp. Take this framework, and then imagine the hell out of it!

Copies of the harcover book have sold out in a single day. There are still a few softcover print versions of the game available, as well as the PDF version of the game, of course.

Some early reviews are available for your perusal.

Foxroe's early review:
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=46707

Beyond the Black Gate blog early review:
http://beyondtheblackgate.blogspot.com/2010/12/swords-wizardry-complete-now-available.html

Relevant bits from the former:

Quote from: FoxroeIncluded are:
- The core classes (plus assassin, thief, druid, monk, and paladin)
- The core races (plus the half-elf)
- The original Law/Neutrality/Chaos alignment system
- Alternative weapon variable damage (but not broken down by target size) and variable hit dice from the supplements
- What looks to be all of the spells and monsters from the LBB's + supplements (or at least those legally allowed by the WotC license)
- While the game sticks to the single saving throw target of core/WB, an alternate original table is provided for those who prefer the granularity of save types
- The 1 minute combat round (and 10 minute turns)
- Designing dungeons (with sample maps) and rules for dungeon exploration and wilderness adventure
- Mass/siege combat
- Aerial and Naval combat
- Building strongholds
- Hirelings

Extra stuff included (not in the original edition of D&D):
- A nice forward by Tim Kask
- An interesting take on the Ranger class
- Expanded penalties/bonuses for ability scores (but not overboard IMO)
- An extra dexterity-based parry ability for Fighters for swash-buckling types
- Rules for dual-classing and multi-classing
- Monster Challenge Levels and Treasure are handled as in Core/WB
- Rules for two-handed and dual wielding weapons
- Plenty of optional suggestions for house-rules
- A swanky character sheet!

What's not there (thankfully in most cases):
- Additional percentile for strength scores of 18
- Psionics
- Weapon versus armor adjustments
- Artifacts
- Underwater adventuring
- Diseases
- Hit locations during combat
- still no thrown dagger on the ranged weapon charts

For me the decision is going to end up falling on the quantity and quality of :

Quote- Designing dungeons (with sample maps) and rules for dungeon exploration and wilderness adventure

In terms of new and practically usable content. As far as a D&D rules reference, it's hard for me to justify replacing the Basic and Expert single rulebooks as a convenient basis for the game. If this gets a strong mass market presence, though, great; otherwise the 'cloning' itself is sort of superfluous.

Quote from: Benoist;425419The Swords & Wizardry rules are extremely short, compared to the multi-paged rule-libraries required to play most modern role-playing games. Yet this game contains within itself all the seeds and soul of mythic fantasy, the building blocks of vast complexity, the kindling of wonder. “Edition Zero” is so powerful because it’s encapsulated in a small formula, like a genie kept imprisoned in the small compass of an unremarkable lamp. Take this framework, and then imagine the hell out of it!

.

Emphasis mine.
I wish they would lay the fuck off this kind of ad copy, really I do. It is tiresome. The game is either good or bad on its own merits. there is no need to compare it to other hypothetical games in the ad; I mean, compared to SW WB,  "complete" is a gigantic, bloated monster of a book.

Quote from: Aos;425424Emphasis mine.
I wish they would lay the fuck off this kind of ad copy, really I do.

I agree. This actually rapes the pertinence of the product. It takes away more by somehow putting it in a reactionary category of RPGs than it adds in its enticement as a role playing game to judge on its own merits.

This sort of thing is perfectly fine to argue in some discussion or another. It is more damaging than it is productive to its actual, official advertisement. You could make the exact same point without making any kind of imaginary comparisons.

It's not a new ad copy concept.   "Whole Game in One Book"  was the ad copy of T&T and RuneQuest back in the 70s/80s.  

And this new S&W sounds just like OSRIC and abandons the concepts of S&W core / WB of getting back to the core basics.  Maybe that's a good idea since most Old Schoolers are AD&Ders and not OD&Ders or B/Xers.

Hence my use of the word "tiresome."

EDIT: Furthermore, doesn't it seem a bit questionable to mention a brand owned by WoTC, in ad for a game derived from IP that WoTC made legally open to everyone, and then passive-aggressively take a shot at the way WoTC currently does business? Thanks for the delicious lunch, hope you don't mind if I kick you in the balls on the way out. Classy.

Well, I purchased the softcover in the end, and I have downloaded the PDF, so if you guys want to ask me some questions, you can go ahead.

What is the art like?

First, the cover is a beauty:



Next, if you've seen the art included in Necromancer Games products, including for instance Tomb of Abysthor, Crucible of Freya or Rappan Athuk, this is pretty similar/familiar, starting with what looks like the same bunch of artists*. That is, you have some art that is really good and relevant, and sometimes art that makes me go "meh." It's all black and white inside, and it follows the traditional Necromancer Games style of layout, which I find rather clear, not busy for the eye but quite compact (there's a lot of stuff within these 135 pages, that's for sure). So bottom line the quality of the art varies, but is generally decent to good, with a few extreme cases of awesome or kinda crappy, to me.

There are MANY boxes for advice on house rules and variants ("Now, maybe you want that variant combat sequence #2, or maybe that other combat sequence variant #3, depending on your style") which is very cool.

Cole was asking about the advice. It's covered in the Referee section, with Introduction, Designing an Adventure, Dungeon Adventures, Wilderness Adventures, Special Combat rules (Mass siege aerial ship combat), Monsters, Treasure. Now, the adventure, dungeon and wilderness design parts cover about ... 15 pages of the book. The dungeon design section is loaded with specific examples and maps. It seems to be really good, to-the-point advice. The Wilderness section seems a lot shorter and generic. Not as good. Does not include how to make your wilderness maps/hex crawling, which I find really strange, compared to the loaded dungeon section.

Now I haven't read the thing in detail, so these are first impressions.

* Credited Interior Artists: Rowena Aitken, Andrew Bates, Mark Smylie, Brian LeBlanc, Beth Trott, Tyler Walpole, Rico Thomaso, Jeremy McHugh, Eric Lofgren, Cara Mitten, Talon Dunning, Leif Jones, Steve Ellis, Stephan Poag, Chris Moreno.

Holy shit, Aos is making sense.

Quote from: Benoist;425420

Quote from: FoxroeIncluded are:
- The core classes (plus assassin, thief, druid, monk, and paladin)
- The core races (plus the half-elf)
- The original Law/Neutrality/Chaos alignment system
- Alternative weapon variable damage (but not broken down by target size) and variable hit dice from the supplements
- What looks to be all of the spells and monsters from the LBB's + supplements (or at least those legally allowed by the WotC license)
- While the game sticks to the single saving throw target of core/WB, an alternate original table is provided for those who prefer the granularity of save types
- The 1 minute combat round (and 10 minute turns)
- Designing dungeons (with sample maps) and rules for dungeon exploration and wilderness adventure
- Mass/siege combat
- Aerial and Naval combat
- Building strongholds
- Hirelings

Call Frog God and ask for a comission, Benoist; you've just sold them a copy.

Group's yearning for some good ol' D&D and this looks like just the thing.

Just one question. The bestiary and spell lists, are they the same as S&W Core Rules?

Quote from: The Butcher;425476Just one question. The bestiary and spell lists, are they the same as S&W Core Rules?

Maybe bigger in both cases. It is my understanding that both monsters and spells from the whole OD&D run that could be replicated via the OGL into this game were. You got everything from rats and jellies to giant slugs, sea serpents, skeletons, banshees, rakshasa, purple worms, ogre mages, naga, medusa, werethings, giant leeches, hydra, harpies, golems, giants, ghosts, giant fish, elementals, etc etc.

Quote from: Spinachcat;425434And this new S&W sounds just like OSRIC and abandons the concepts of S&W core / WB of getting back to the core basics.  Maybe that's a good idea since most Old Schoolers are AD&Ders and not OD&Ders or B/Xers.

That's not surprising, since this basically emulates the whole of the OD&D run through the S&W OGL medium.

So as I see it, now you've got basically three main approaches to the pre-AD&D First edition Legacy:

The OD&D emulation path, which starts with Swords & Wizardry White Box (the original boxed set emulation), the Swords & Wizardry Core Rules (original boxed plus key elements of the Greyhawk supplement, like polyhedral dice weapon damage, mostly) up to the Swords & Wizardry Complete Rules here (the whole OD&D run when the game started to 'become', in effect, AD&D before its publication).

The B/X emulation path, with Labyrinth Lord emulating B/X, Moldvay-Cook D&D, and the Original Edition Companion, which basically rebuilds OD&D from Moldvay-Cook, and the Advanced Edition Companion, which emulates AD&D from B/X.

The straight AD&D emulation, with OSRIC as the closest AD&D First Edition emulation of the three.

Each have fine differences to the same core D&D experience, enough that the specialists and aficionados will each find their currently published game, and yet not enough of a difference that modules for one would be completely useless for the other. Of course you've got other clones, what-ifs games like Spellcraft & Swordplay, middle ground OGL games like Castles & Crusades and so on and so forth as well.

Quote from: Aos;425435Thanks for the delicious lunch, hope you don't mind if I kick you in the balls on the way out.

Odd how grogtards worship Gygax who pissed and moaned about houserules and other publishers, but WotC is the Evil Empire when there wouldn't be an OSR without WotC fucking up their own company with the OGL.