Happy Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day! Although I haven’t played much of it, S&W strikes me as a great system—clearly written, it retains the spark of the Original rules while smoothing out some of the more incomprehensible quirks. Best of all, it’s eminently hackable; indeed, the S&W creators go farther than almost anyone in enabling you to hack your own system onto S&W.

Today, 137 other bloggers are all blogging about their love of the system. The S&W creators are also running a nice 25% off sale in appreciation; use the code SWApprDay at checkout.

I didn’t know how much value I could add as a system-critic. But I still wanted to pay the system the pretty compliment I think it deserves, so I’ve written a module for it! I’ve never written a S&W module before, and found it a pleasingly simple process: S&W is not fussy about the details of armor class asignment or XP values, allowing me to focus on writing.

The module is dubbed IDA0: Plague-Stricken Halls. In it, a lawful goblin fortress has been overrun by a strange plague, leaving its wonderful magical riches free for the taking. Among these are a Font of Ever-Burning Oil, and a Ring of Forbidden Fruit which turns your own skeleton against you! The module also includes new monsters, a nifty map, and of course a fully-keyed dungeon.

It’s written for my own house setting, Terra Pericolosa, which is set on medieval earth. As such, the goblins were mostly Catholics, and I’ve sprinkled Biblical allusions throughout the text. If there’s interest, I might do a follow-up post on Terra Pericolosa. For your own games, it could easily be adapted and dropped into any hexcrawl.

The entire interior contents are licensed CC BY 3.0, meaning you can reuse them in your own work easily. Everything except the cover, and the lovely cover image by Alex Langenstein, are free for the taking. So use them!

Downloads

IDA0: Plague-Stricken Halls (full-color)

IDA0: Plague Stricken Halls (greyscale)

Source Files in Markdown, Word, and .SVG