Swords & Wizardry Continual Light

What is Swords & Wizardry Continual Light? It's a very condensed version of the earliest editions of The World's First Fantasy Roleplaying Game. The original Swords & Wizardry Light is free, four pages, and allows you to play the game as one of the four basic character classes from levels 1-3. SWCL raises that level cap to seven and adds some more variant classes. Add a few D20s and D6s for the Game Master and players and you have in this tiny volume everything you need for a nice, long fantasy campaign. It's based on the Swords and Wizardy core rules, so any adventure or expansion that works with standard S&W is easily used for SWCL.I totally dig this game- it's the original 1974 RPG boiled down to basics, with the benefit of 44 years of hindsight. When you need a fast pick-up game for a single evening, there's not a lot that can beat SWCL, and the best part is there's enough here to turn that one-shot into a full campaign if you wish.My sole issue is that some of the additional classes are a teeny bit front-loaded resulting in 1st Level characters with widely differing power levels. This balances out over time by the additional classes taking more adventures to level up than the standard four classes, but in a one-shot some of the extra classes are noticeably more powerful than the classic four. But then, this is 1970s rules, game balance wasn't really a thing back then!So, pick up a copy of this game. Then go out (Google is your friend) and find the PDF of the character cards and the basic Swords & Wizardry Light rules. Score some twenty-sided and six-sided dice here on Amazon. Grab friends, grab pizza, and slay some orcs. It's that simple.

The idea of the book seems awesome, I love minimalist RPG systems, but there are many points where this one blatantly lacks clarity and explanation. I'm not saying that comparing it to 5e, I am saying that comparing it to Microlite20 and other OSR products. I don't regret the purchase, I just don't see myself buying another copy until there is more clarity and the prominent typos are fixed (such as sentences ending abruptly midway through).

While this is a subcompact, stripped down role-playing game perfect for pick-up games among either out of practice or inexperienced gamers, it has some genuinely wonderful optional builds for alternative classes besides the classic four of cleric, fighter, magic-user, and thief, and material for other Old School Renaissance games is easily compatible. If you like this and wannt to move on to Swords & Wizardry Complete, that is something easily done. It doesn't hurt that the art has got that feel of Swords and Sorcery games of the seventies and eighties.

A quick simple osr game. It was exactly what I wanted.

Looking for a good system to get my son into table top RPG. Granted he isn't due until March of this year, but I want to get a campaign and simplistic system down that will hold his interest when he gets older.

Quick, easy and inexpensive.

My favorite thing about SWCL is...everything. Erik has breathed life into a "rules light" system that anyone can pick up and thoroughly enjoy. There's plenty of dice rolling a la D&D, there's plenty of room for roleplaying of the finest kind, it's an easy combat system, the magic is there, the monsters are there, the wide selection of character classes is there, it's ALL there.What isn't there is also worth mentioning. This system has no alignments, no deities, no psionics, and none of the complexities that plague complex systems.Highly recommended. It is your destiny. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

All of the various flavours of Swords & Wizardry are solid RPGs, with Continual Light being no exception. There are some good ideas here, making for a fine rules-light game. But the book's layout, formatting, and artwork leave alot to be desired. The interior of the rulebook is cramped and hard to read due to terrible layout and formatting. And the interior art is quite poor. OSR clones aren't usually known for their stunning artwork, but the choices here make the overall product much less attractive. The color cover though is very nice indeed.As a rules-light RPG, I can't help but compare this to another rules-light game, The Black Hack. The Black Hack rules are the same page count as S&W Continual Light, but TBH looks so much more professional, and is a much more overall attractive product. The Black Hack rulebook doesn't feature any interior art at all, but for a rules-light system clocking in at 20 pages, is any art really necessary? I would say no. Just my opinion. And now I'm imagining how nice the S&W Continual Light rules would look if they were presented in a way similar to The Black Hack's layout and formatting and overall style.