I'm going to be using Swords & Wizardry to run the Nightwick Campaign whenever I get some players.
I need a way to explain what the hell that is in a flyer or forum post looking for players. It's not exactly OSD&D, but it is.
Any ideas on how to communicate this?
This is actually an excellent question I wonder about myself. Most mainstream gamers have never heard of S&W or Labyrinth Lord, in my experience. Therefore, my gut feeling would be to just call it Old School, Classic, or Original D&D in the ad, but use the S&W rules at the table. I've seen a few people do this at gaming cons with good success. If you are posting a full-sized flyer you could put a little footnote "Using the freely available Swords and Wizardry retro-clone rules." or something.
ReplyDeleteIf you actually run across a player that knows or cares about the difference between OD&D and S&W you should consider yourself a lucky man! That player would probably be sympathetic as to why you advertised the game as Original D&D.
Yeah, I would go with just advertising it as "old-school" or "original recipe", or "classic" or "70s style awesome" D&D. You could mention S&W as a footnote or not even mention it on the flyer. Anyone who would be disappointed by S&W is already 90%+ on the same page as you, and it should be easy to accomodate or ameliorate any issues they have with S&W.
ReplyDeleteJust advertise it as "Classic" Dungeons & Dragons. Six months ago a choice of logo was almost all you needed, but, ironically as of this fall the once recognizably "old school" red box logo now advertises 4th Edition too, and the OD&D logo does not look measurably different. Use an image that conveys the tone you are trying to convey (Off the top of my head I would say just use the cover of the first Black Sabbath album and you're halfway there) and a one sentence description at the bottom "Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying in a world of classic adventure and horror, using the equally classic 1970's-1980's rules." Leave and email address for questions. You will have conveyed all you need to know for anyone who's already a fan, and if someone new to the whole thing is intereated, all the better - and the particularities of which white box is involved are moot.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the best way is to just call it something like Original D&D or Classic D&D.
ReplyDeleteAlso, use art that captures the feel that you are going for.
Since I've been conscious that I'm likely to address a question like this myself in the near future, I spent a little while fooling around with photoshop for practice, cooking up these. No text, but this is what I thought of when I asked my question "what tells prospective players to expect the Old School."
ReplyDeleteColor/Web: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4154/5061683532_7dbe940c97_b.jpg
BW/Xerox:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4111/5061069751_766dd0d395_b.jpg
Classic Dungeons and Dragons using the Swords & Wizardry rules.
ReplyDeleteFrankly I don't see the point of advertising the S&W ruleset. Those who know it will be pleased to hear "classic D&D anyway;" those who don't will just be confused.
ReplyDelete@ Cole
ReplyDeleteThose are really cool. Would you mind if I did a blog post showing them off?
No, not at all. If you like them maybe I could clean up the design a little - it's a little sloppy how the columns and corner elements don't match up, but as you can imagine it was a a casual exercise :) It's all clip art besides the Oz there.
ReplyDelete