Swords & Spells

Credits

Written by Gary Gygax

Development by Dave Arneson and Rob Kuntz

Graphics and graphic design by Dave Sutherland

Editing & Layout by Tim Kask

Version

The PDF is a scan of the 6th printing from November, 1979. The PDF has bookmarks

History and Trivia

Swords & Spells is the fifth supplement for Dungeons & Dragons, though it is not called out as such, instead being described on the cover as “For use with Dungeons & Dragons.” S&S is an alternate take on miniatures battles from Chainmail.

Is it Pretty?

The cover, at least for this scanned version, is a sepia shade with artwork depicting two armies coming together centered on a scroll. The interior art is infrequent and lower quality, being a bit cartoony in style.

Zero stars in the prettiness category

Is it Professional?

The layout is good enough though there are no chapters, just various section titles. The scan quality gets blurry on pages that have diagrams. There are a couple of typos here and there. Overall, the book is fine for what it is.

½ star for professionality.

Is it Useful?

While designed for use with D&D to simulate large (ish) scale battles, Swords & Spells’ compatibility with D&D rules is a bit sketchy. And, like Chainmail, Swords & Spells assumes the reader knows things about miniatures wargaming that isn’t exactly common knowledge these days. It certainly isn’t written for beginners.

The game itself seems to involve a lot more bookkeeping and number tracking than I, personally, would enjoy during a fantasy game. The example of play at the end of the book puts the over-complicated nature of the rules on full display.

We’ll go with ½ star for usefulness.

Is it Affordable?

While not as pricey as the core original D&D game and its supplements, Swords & Spells is still $30 or more on the secondary market, making its price on drivethrurpg of $4.99 for the PDF, $8.50 for print on demand, and $10.50 for the PDF/POD bundle definitely the better deal.

One star for affordability.

Is it Fun?

As an adjunct to a D&D campaign Swords & Spells seems clunky and boring. Perhaps played on its own, separate from a campaign, it might be fun for miniature wargame enthusiasts.

While I’m not the target audience for Swords & Spells, I’ll still give it ½ star for fun factor since miniatures gamers might find it a fun distraction.

Where to find it

You can get the PDF (and print on demand) on drivethrurpg listed as Swords & Spells (0e). You can also find original print copies on ebay and similar sites.

Conclusion

As with Chainmail, Swords & Spells is mostly an historical curiosity these days, though I imagine there’s still a few folks out there that might actually play it.

Prettiness: 0, Professional: ½, Useful: ½, Affordable: 1, Fun: ½

Total: 2½ out of 5 stars.

i have ordered three POD Original D&D books. (0e) Eldritch Wizardry, Gods,Demi-Gods and Heroes and Swords and Spells. Eldritch and Gods were both regular book size books. They are both white and have the different artwork on the cover from the recent copies corcilating. Gods even has the smaller print in a larger book, leaving large, strange borders around the txt. Swords and Spells is the exact size and color as my original Swords and Spells '79 edition. It also has the original, vintage art on the cover. Lok-Tar!

The quality of the reprint is great, quite durable, and the clarity of the images, are more than I could have hoped for. I’m very pleased with the reproduction, only wish that other classic mods/classic booklets were also available in soft cover print, and not just as a PDF.

I bought the print-on-demand version to go along with my 2013 premium reprint of OD&D. I know it's not really a supplement to the OD&D game in the same way that Greyhawk or Blackmoor are, but I think it belongs alongside them all the same. The overall quality of the book is very good. There was some concern on my part before ordering because I had heard that page 36 was the "wrong way around" on the PDF, and was afraid that it might be flipped upside down or something. This is NOT the case. The page, being a map, is simply presented in a landscape view on the PDF. It is printed as it should be, in portrait orientation, in the print-on-demand version. That being said, the quality of the some of the page scans (pages 7, 29, and 36) are subpar. You can clearly tell that they have been scanned in without any attempt to clean them up because they are off-white/gray in color, and the text and artwork is quite fuzzy. They are still quite readable, however, and I don't think it's that much of a deal breaker.

I noticed that WOTC has made supplement 4 "Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes" available for print-on-demand recently. So I wonder if they are interested in going back and making the entire OD&D catalogue print-on-demand. I will note however that the print-size of supplement 4 is incorrect. The product page lists it as 8.5"x11", when it should be 5.5"x8.5" (like the Swords & Spells print copy). Hopefully they correct this if they plan on bringing the other booklets over to print-on-demand. Also, fingers crossed for Chainmail!

I got the print copy of this book and I am very happy with the quality!

A long out-of-print classic! This goes back to the beginnings of D&D, before there was an AD&D game, before there was a D20 game system! Rather than pay an outragous 'collector's price', download it here! e-Bay is great, but RPGNow! is better...

This is a relatively simple miniatures game. It was the first D&D mini's game, before BattleSystem (1st & 2nd Ed.'s), and before the new mini's game and miniatures. It's old, simplistic, but still fun. If you want to try out a D&D-type mini's game, without spending a lot of money, give this a try: value for the money, is excellent. It's very outdated for D20 fans, otherwise, I'd give it five stars, just because it was among the very first. Cheers!