First, the Kickstarter is here. I'm kind of excited about this. While I rather like Old-School Essentials, I admit to having had the most overall fun with Swords & Wizardry Complete. I'm not a minimalist OSR guy, so the S&W Complete edition is important for me to capture the state of gaming as I experienced it at the start in 1981. It's not perfect (my core experience was pure AD&D 1E), but it gets close. OSRIC is nice, but its a very utilitarian experience.....S&W Complete has a style that is evocative of the times and which I find quite inspiring.* The fact that it works well with 0E D&D, 1E AD&D and B/X content all at once is a big plus, too.
Anyway, with the new S&W Complete KS going I poked around a bit and noticed something: the new edition is a return to form through Mythmere games, Matt Finch's original publishing label, and it looks like S&W is back in his hands. When you go to Frog God Games it appears that S&W has been de-emphasized (I had to search a bit) and they also mention OSE now. I have no idea why this change happened....and no time recently to probe the depths of the internet to see if anyone knows, so if you happen to know why feel free to post here and let me know. Maybe Matt just wanted to have control over a new edition.
Either way, I did some comparing of Shadowdark RPG to Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised and decided I have enough 5E variants to last me a lifetime, but I'd love that nice print leatherette cover design and a revised S&W Complete for the shelf, or maybe even a future campaign. Time to break out my old S&W Complete Otus cover edition again and think about what I could do with it.
OSE is still a great take on OSR gaming, and I admit it does some things much better in terms of rule organization and how it mixes classic B/X with Advanced content....but I look forward to seeing what a revised S&W looks like, and also enjoying the distinctly visceral, always engaging, and inspiring feel of S&W can once more bring to the table.
*It's also the only OSR retroclone (barring Castles & Crusades, if you consider it as such) that I have done any self-publishing for.
"I heard before that FGG's 5th edition publications outsold all their other publications combined, so under them S&W was basically just a figurehead for credibility. I don't think FGG will look much different if they nixed their S&W line, either they just drop retroclone support or they move over to OSE."
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https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=88674
That does make sense. Ultimately, if you publish for retroclones/OSR its because you are a hobbyist with a love for the game, but if you are a publisher who wants to make lots of money then that product had better have 5E on it.
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