HOMEMADE S&W BOX

i found myself in michael's the other day.  i had gotten an idea for making a dice tray.  after some inspiration from dave bezio via an old rpg.net thread i went hunting for some wooden bowls/trays and some adhesive felt.  during my search through the aisles of michael's i came upon some of those "faux book boxes".  basically, a box in the shape of an old hardcover.

well, i made the dice trays. when i was done i painted the "book box" black (there were birds on the cover) and...well, this happened:

the front - i love the cover to CORE

my white box books fit perfectly inside. the front cover has a reference sheet for NPC reactions, attack bonuses by level, my house rules for races and the armor picture from CORE

the back - i turned this DCC pic into a S&W one. why not, right?

 cool, huh? oh, and these are the dice trays:

i made these for our store - i hate when people roll dice on top of cards or through minis. yes, that is a VHS copy of STAR WARS on my floor.

WHITE BOX CAMPAIGN KICK OFF (with an assist from BTW)

so, i started to run my WHITE BOX campaign yesterday. sadly, there was no adventuring - but we did get a heck of a lot accomplished. as i touched on in my last post, we've started running S&W in our store for our PATHFINDER leaning customers. we used the BEYOND THE WALL chargen system (just the flavor - most mechanics were thrown out with these exceptions: the "player to your right gains +1", weapon specialization acts as a +1 hit/damage with the specified weapon and you gain your special item) and it was a huge hit with everyone. so much so that people wanted to buy the S&W COMPLETE book just to get the chargen tables (which i had to explain to them weren't in there)! 

so, we used the BTW system again for my campaign and AGAIN it was a huge hit.  the four characters generated:

• Cornelius - halfling fighter (used the outrider playbook)
• Armond - human thief (used the untested thief playbook)
• Gideon - halfling thief (used the halfling vagabond playbook)
• Garrock - dwarf fighter (used the dwarf adventurer playbook)

they were all happily scribbling notes on their (awesome looking) WB character sheets (*AHEM*) and coming up with ways that they knew each other - including one character who's already at odds with another. this was discussed while the one player was in the bathroom - so he's not even aware of it.

the standout hook that the BTW tables generated: one of the characters (gideon) discovered a moving dragon skeleton UNDER the town - the entrance was discovered under the basement of a burned down house...so he's now using that secret place as a hideout to start a thieves guild. 

next weekend we'll start playing. i kind of feel bad, since the adventure i have planned will almost immediately take them out of the town they've made. it's not a dungeon crawl though, so they *should* make it back alive.

i scanned our notes from the session since i know more than a few people are interested in how the BEYOND THE WALL system plays out.

out town is called OXLEY...you can see a quick map of it and some of the key NPCs on the images below.

SWORDS & WIZARDRY WHITE BOX CHARACTER SHEET

i mentioned in my previous post that my friends and i have recently purchased one of our favorite local gaming stores. we took control in may - and we're still open - so i guess that means we're doing something right.

it's been interesting talking to all of our customers about games and all other things related to this hobby of ours...but the one thing that has taken us by surprise is the general attitude of gamers towards the current rules-heavy games. as you can imagine, the most heavily played rpg in the store is PATHFINDER - but here's the kicker - many, many of the players are tired of it. most of them play it because it's the only fantasy rpg they've ever played  - counting of course, 3.X.  we've overheard the players complaining about the rules, the constant focus on combat and all that - so we decided to take a gamble and start running all the rules-lite games that we like.

guess what? SUCCESS. they love it. and they BUY IT. the runaway hit has been SWORDS AND WIZARDRY COMPLETE. we've sold through 3 orders from frog god and just placed another one due to the demand. crazy, right? it's funny watching these players (who are all used to min-maxing and "building" characters) be told to roll 3d6 in order...and when they get a 17 or 18 they're like "what do you mean it's just a +1 bonus?". but they're having fun and most of them see these easier games as a breath of fresh air.
 
speaking of SWORDS AND WIZARDRY - as much as i like COMPLETE...i'd like to profess my love for the BRAVE HALFLING version of WHITE BOX. it's just awesome and simple and allows me to do whatever i want.

is there still love out there for WHITE BOX? i hope so - i just made a character sheet for it. it's in the same "style" of my previous effort for S&W COMPLETE...but this one can be printed on both sides, cut, and placed in your WHITE BOX.  check it out...

download it here.

EDIT: the pdf was printing weird and when i tried printing on both sides it cut into the character sheet. i fixed the pdf and it should cut cleaner now.  sorry about that.

EDIT: i noticed that i messed up the modifiers for XP bonuses. there is no general INT bonus - there's a general CHA bonus. the sheet is now correct. boom.