SHARP SWORDS & SINISTER SPELLS
(This comment is for this gameline, and I suggest buying both the Core Book and the Addendum)
This is the best little game I've played for a while. It's got that OSR flavour to the mechanics, yet it's more streamlined and logical than most OSR games. Very much influenced by more recent games, I would sum it up by saying OD&D + D&D 5E +FATE, then trim it all down to bare basics. It's not D&D, yet it sure feels like how we wanted OD&D to run.
I'm a rpg GM who often runs more serious systems, but in recent years have had a bit of fun with D&D 5E and OSR games due to the simplicity of them.
In many ways this little unassuming game stands heads and shoulders above all of those.
The whole vibe is very old school pulpy Sword & Sorcery, very much early OD&D before the High Fantasy sanitisation that came after the God Mod hysteria of the mid 1980s. Closer to Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG than anything else, although not quite a much as meatgrinder, and the rules just play very smoothly, none of that DCC intentional clunkiness.
This game is perfect for a classic fantasy old school dungeon crawl, very simple, feels like D&D 5E went back to the late 70s & early 80s and said 'Let's do it this way!"
Love the great black and white artwork, really evocative of games like OD&D, Tunnels & Trolls, Fighting Fantasy, Dragon Warriors, etc with a touch of Vance, Moorcock, Howard, and Carter thrown in. The whole vibe is great.
So much info has been thrown into these two books, it's amazingly good value.
My only gripe is that I would love to see both books complied (the Core rulebook and the Addendum) in one little digest size hardcover volume.
These rules are slim and I recommend buying both the core book (approx 50pages) and the Addendum (approx 100 pages). If this was one hardcover volume, then the product would get 5+ stars from me (if such a thing existed). Really, this is that good.
Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells is favourite new game, and out of a huge collection I would go so far to say that this is probably one of my best purchases so far. I paid only a few dollars for the pdfs, and went back and book the books.
Highly recommended!
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