Weapons, Wits, and Wizardry: An Adventurer's Guide

With the understanding that, to produce a game with as much breadth as Weapons, Wits, and Wizardry attempts to do, even when standing on the shoulders of giants - this represents a massive endeavor: one which, if attempted in whole at once, would require years of development and play-test. So - in the interest of progressing, I'm taking a queue from the progenitors - the originals: focus, first, on pushing a product out; then expand, representing larger swaths of the game, second. That in mind, here presented, Weapons, Wits, & Wizardry: An Adventurer's Guide.

Weapons, Wits, & Wizardry:
An Adventurer's Guide

What's In These Rules?

These rules are a booklet - a subset of the larger game - focused on the first part of the Old School experience: the dungeon. Procedures, practices, and charts that support the orchestration of - in whole: player and referee alike - the dungeoneering experience.

The first four levels of the character races (or six, for Elves), the first six tiers of dungeoneering proficiencies and arcane magic (plus the first four tiers for patron - read divine - magic), are included in this booklet. The first three levels of spells - plus a few bigger ones - are included. Exploration and trap procedures, combat procedures - including chase and pursuit rules - are included in this booklet. Equipment, weapons, and armor are included.

Limitations being key to keeping the scope small enough to be achievable, the above should constitute a "Basic Set" - to use the vernacular - an introductory, initial part of the game: in and of itself, well worth playing and catering to the Old School spirit.

What Sets This Booklet Apart? 

This booklet contains everything from the PDFs linked in the previous post - limited to low-level, dungeon-delving characters. In addition, it makes some changes and expansions to support the complete experience while maintaining a streamlined, smooth flow at the table.

To change and improve what was: Converts combat to use the Duel: adding player choice; and modifies hit values to help differentiate weapons, armor, and shields. Imports the Ringmail rules referenced into the main book and imports the relevant sections of the Referee's Enchiridion into a referee's section in the back of the book, reducing the need for multiple PDFs to be open or multiple print-outs to be held at the table. Updated wizardry to run on Entropy - an escalating spell-point style system mathematically equivalent with OSR systems: allowing either Ringmail style spontaneous spell-casting while also supporting traditional Vancian spell casting.

To expand on it: Adds Patron and Pact magic - allowing the creation of Clerics (dealing with benevolent powers beyond) or Warlocks (dealing with the malign). Adds a list of Miracles - spells for Patron and Pact spell-casters. Introduces language families: improving the effectiveness and incidence of negotiation and non-combat solutions in dungeon. Adds Chase and Pursuit mechanics - firm ones - to make retreat move viable, even for parties in armor. Updates alignment - introducing a three-way pull, between the drive of nature, the impetus of civilization, and the influence of change, decay, and rebirth.

But, the most exciting difference about this book - apart from not having internal links in the PDF yet and needing me to insert recalculated treasure tables - it is beta ready. 

From here, I would feel comfortable, with this book, attempting to run a dungeon crawl. Is it ready for prime time? Probably not - I anticipate there will be things I miss (there are missing things I'm adding now, as I am prepping this post, which I hope to have updated in the linked copy by the time the post publishes) and I anticipate there will be things I will want to change, based on those play experiences. However the excitement derives not from completion - but tangible progress towards it.

Are you updating the old PDFs? Yes - albeit slowly. I have pollinated back some of the changes to the existing WW&W and Referee's Enchiridion PDFs, but I have not pollinated back all of them: and I don't know if - as of when this post is scheduled to go live - I will have had time to load my local PDFs back into drive so as to update the links. I will try - but if you see a discrepancy, keep an eye out: because the changes are coming.

What Comes Next?

An Adventurer's Guide handles the first part of the OSR experience: dungeon delves. From here, in addition to play-test, a second book will necessarily follow to cover the next part of an OSR player character's life style: forming a war-band and exploring the wilderness. Following that, a tertiary book to cover domain level play. By breaking up the game into tiers of experience - adventurer to warlord, warlord to sovereign - it both focuses design,

How is "getting involved" going? There exist some play-test groups who downloaded the rules and are integrating bits and pieces of the design into their home games. When I became aware of that happening - that became the highlight of my week. It was (and is) the coolest thing ever to see a community of people out there both interested in the direction I was taking and also to see the product, even unfinished, drawing attention from people outside my home table!

In terms of my own progress, I have not yet set up a server to run the game, myself: but this too, is coming: and you, the reader, will be among the first to know about it. Bear in mind - my wife and I are expecting - in addition to a set of 2-year-old twins. That, coupled with working a real job and moving forward on a couple other OSR/RPG projects (e.g. the podcast), means that it's a challenge to find time - especially in 3-4 hour blocks - in order to run (or even play!). Thus, progress on that end may be slower - but again: I'm jonesin', been jonesin' for a while, so it will - in time - come to pass.

In the meantime - delve on, readers! And let me know what you think!

Public domain art retrieved from OldBookIllustrations.com and adapted for thematic use. Attributions in alt text.