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Swords & Wizardry Spell Spreadsheets and More

Some time ago, I posted a S&W Spell Database in a spreadsheet shared through Google Drive. I've finished my work on them, so here they are. One spreadsheet for Clerics, one for Magic Users, and one spreadsheet that has all spells Both Arcane and Divine.

Here is some explanation to what the different worksheets mean.

The Cleric spreadsheet has many worksheets, the first one is named Total List.

This is a list of all the Cleric and Druid spells, with descriptions. Spells that have tables in the description were translated as best as possible, but some of the tables had to be left out. This worksheet is a straightforward list ready for folks to analyze, adjust, and add. It also serves as a database to do a mail merge into a Word document.

When I add spells to a particular campaign world, I make them common in a specific area of the world. Adding a column to denote a specific area of the world, I can not only make a list of spells available, but generate a list of potential scrolls that might be found as treasure in a specific geographic area of the world.

If you have Priests of Different Mythoi, you can add a column for the various deities/pantheons and have a ready resource for player handouts. The possibilities are endless.

The next three worksheets break out the spells by the three types of spellcasters in the S&W Complete rules. For Clerics and Druids, there is an extra column for Spheres. Spheres group spells together by a common theme. If a spell has more than one Sphere in the column, it belong to each sphere listed in that cell. For example, the Cleric spell Animate Object, is in the Summoning and Creation Spheres.

For Magic-Users, the worksheet adds a School column. This shows the 2e school or schools that the spell belongs to. Yes, it's on the Cleric Spreadsheet.

For all three of these tabs, I used the compendium of Wizard and Priests spells downloaded from dragonsfoot. When I cross-referenced the spells, I made no assumptions on where they belong. In other words, I didn't assume that a spell with the word Animal in the title would be in the Animal sphere. This was all done strictly by the compendium. This doesn't mean that I made no errors, just that I wanted these lists to be as close to a Swords & Wizardry to 2e cross-reference as I could. I did make one change here from standard S&W - if a spell is both a Cleric and Druid spell, it is listed as the lower of the two levels.

The next tab on the Clerics spreadsheet is labelled Spheres. If a spell is in more than one Sphere, it is listed twice, once for each Sphere. For example, the Animate Object spells is listed once as belonging in the Summoning Sphere and listed on a separate entry as belonging to the Creation Sphere. This worksheet allows for easy creation of spell lists by Sphere.

Until you reach the Statistics worksheet, the next set of tabs are the lists of spells by Sphere; each Sphere has its own worksheet. They are listed by order by level and there are some simple statistics on number of spells, average level of spells, and the standard deviation of spell levels for that Sphere. The Statistics worksheet shows the statistics of all the Spheres in one place.

I also included some work on assigning each Sphere a point value. If this looks like Players & Options from 2.5e, I'm not going there. This is intended to be preliminary work on creating Priests of Different Mythoi, but only the referee uses this system for worldbuilding. If you can use this work to build something, let me know. I'll flesh this stuff out in future posts.

The last worksheet, of course, is the OGL.

The Magic-User Spreadsheet is setup much the same way, except that Schools are used instead of Spheres. The Complete Spreadsheet has both the Cleric and Magic-User spreadsheets inside it.

Why do all this?

Primarily to provide tools to other gamers. Selfishly, it is because I like to create custom classes. To that end, I plan on adapting the system Keith Davies invented to Swords & Wizardry. From there, it will fit in with a class building system that I hope to finish one day.

Polyhedral Pantheons and Future Projects

Keith Davies has been working on a semi-random system of generating new gods and pantheons for a number of years. It began with using the faces and "corners" of a d20 to create entire pantheons.

Recently, he has been posting on G+ about using d12s and d10s. I have especially enjoyed the d10 method and I have been wanting to give it a try.

Somewhat related to this, I have been working on classifying Swords & Wizardry Cleric and Druid spells according to 2e spheres. (This also led to classifying the Wizard spells according to 2e schools.) The goal is to create a system for generating Priests of Different Mythoi that work with S&W.

Yes, it would be much easier to use 3e, 3.5e, and Pathfinder domains and schools to retrofit a bunch of spells, but the spheres and schools of 2e are just quirky enough to feel better to me. At the very least I want to make something as close to S&W Complete Rules as possible before I go after more modern stuff.

So while Keith is working with Pathfinder domains, I am working with something closer to OSR feel. Nothing against Pathfinder, one of my neighbors runs a weekly game. I even wrote a small bit of Pathfinder stuff many years ago at NevermetPress (with a lot of help with number crunching). In fact, the next few posts are going to use domains in the 3.5/Pathfinder SRD.

You're not against new games. You play in a Dungeon World group. You've done some post-Gygax D&D. You still hold a torch for S&W. We get it. You can stop being an apologist for what you play? Where is all this going?

Keith posted today about using other dice as models for generating pantheons. So I thought about how the d4 and d6 could be used with this model. I also thought about to adapt his system to create really interesting Priests of Different Mythoi in S&W. The system not only generates interesting deities and pantheons, it also generates interesting Clerics with different abilities.

I'm going to use SRD/Pathfinder domains to create pantheons from his system as examples. He asked me to post the d4 creation I am working on. I also plan to post about larger examples. After I finish my works with S&W spells and the 2e spheres, I plan to generate more examples with those.

Keith's Polyhedral Pantheon system is not necessarily game specific. It works in Pathfinder or any OSR game. You just need some categories of spells. I imagine it will work well in 5e (and I'll certainly try to make it work.) Heck, you can collect a list of 20 to 30 trappings and make an interesting set of spells for Savage Worlds.

Anyway, future posts will be:

  • a d4 example of Keith's Polyhedral Pantheon system.
  • expansion of the d4 pantheon with serious Pathfinder-based worldbuilding.
  • another d4 pantheon to provide tension (not a big bad) in the region
  • a complete set of S&W spell databases (with descriptions) grouped by 2e sphere (Cleric/Druid spells) and school (Wizard spells).
  • some examples of Priests of Different Mythoi using Keith's system
  • other examples of a modified system

That's a lot, but it will be fun.

For those that may wonder, I haven't forgotten about publishing the mecha rules for S&W in January. I'm also happy to say that the Sum Bach o Hud project is back in development. No set date for this huge project, but I am sufficiently inspired to get it done.

Sum Bach o Hud

For 2014, I've embarked on a new project for Swords & Wizardry. This won't be for money and it will be OGL. Sum Bach o Hud is a rough translation of the English phrase "a little bit of magic". This project will explore many different magic systems for use in Swords & Wizardry, but should work fine in any other OSR-inspired system.

Here is the progress so far:

I plan to explore a whole lot of different magic systems ranging from spell point systems to free-form to anything in-between. One of the systems I am proud of is called the Emphases System. It is just a couple +1 or +2 bonus here and there, but when applied to the various systems, the results are interesting.

In the end, I hope to assemble some modular pieces to allow folks to make their own interesting magic systems. I also plan on demonstrating this later on in the year.

I've read some historical stuff like Beholder magazine and the Complete Warlock as well as looked at other systems like Ars Magica, D6, and Fudge. I've even got Role-Aids Arch Magic book around here somewhere (anyone need a 15th level spell?) Anything is fair game. Suggestions are always welcome.

 

 

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