High Programmer > Alan De Smet > Games > Role-Playing Games > Swords & Wizardry > Swords & Wizardry Rules

Swords & Wizardry Rules

You can download 2010 Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox rules from Mythmere games. You can download a very nice looking PDF, but it's not real useful for copying and pasting from. They also provide an RTF version. While much better for copying and pasting from, it lacks proper style information. So if you wanted to quickly reformat large portions you were out of luck. Furthermore the formatting in the RTF file was inconsistent.

I've taken that RTF file, converted it to ODT, cleaned it up, and added proper style information. It should work well in LibreOffice, OpenOffice.org, and other word processors inplementing the ODT format. I also provide a DOC version for users of Microsoft Word and less capable word processors. Microsoft Word 2007 with Service Pack 2 may be able to handle the ODT version.

Extended notes on my work follow, copied from version one of the document. The notes in the document are the most up to date.

Layout and Editing Notes

In July 2011 I set out to re-style the freely available RTF found at http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/?page_id=6. The free RTF is nicely formatted, but lacks the style formatting that simplifies creating custom formatting. I wanted a good base for creating things like a GM's screen as well as a custom version of the rules. The entire document is now styled, making global layout changes trivial. Blank lines used for spacing have been removed as they hamper doing layout with styles. To create the best possible flow, I have added a small number of section headings where previously they did not exist. This allows the automated creation of a useful table of contents. I also gave all of the tables a caption, allowing automated generation of a list of tables. I made a small number of editing corrections, fixing a few typos, merging accidentally broken paragraphs, changing "--" to proper em-dashes, and using proper minus signs where appropriate. Finally, a small number of magical item descriptions were broken apart or merged as appropriate. For example, Dust of Appearance or Disappearance is now two entries, while the various Bracers of Defense were merged into one. Beyond that, the text should appear as written by Marv Breig and should be identical to the Third Print Edition of November 25, 2010.

As I have created no new content, I make no new claim of copyright. I request that you leave my little credit in the credits near the top, but you're free to do with this document what you will under the licensing Matthew J. Finch has originally made it available under.

My work was done in OpenOffice.org Writer. The ODT file will work best in LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org/) (recommended) and OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/). Other software capable of reading ODT files should handle it reasonably well. The DOC file is an exported copy; it should work well, but notably the Character Styles will likely be gone. Below are notes on the various styles to aid in reformatting.

-- Alan De Smet, http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/swords-and-wizardry/

Styles: Paragraph

Generally speaking, if there are styles "X body" and "X body first", they are the same. The "first" variant is used for the first paragraph after a heading. You might use this, for example, to indent the first line of the "body" paragraphs, but not the "body first" paragraphs.

Styles: Character

If you're not using OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice, there is a good chance you don't have access to the character styles, but the formatting described below should be intact.

Contact webmaster