Continuing to work through my stack of favorites from a couple years ago I have come to Shadow, Sword & Spell (SS&S) is written by Richard Iorio II, Looking through this 190 page digest sized book I am immediately reminded of why I placed it among my favorites. SS&S bills itself as "a humanistic, pulp fantasy game" with roots in the swords & sorcery genre of the 1930s to 1960s. The authors listed as "inspiration" include some of my favorites, Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith as well as others. Tone and feeling, horror and discovery, secrets and mystery are described as what SS&S is about. These are all elements which I try to bring to my personal game as referee.
The tome pictured above is the Basic SS&S rulebook and in the tradition of B/X there is also an Expert rulebook in blue. Basic includes everything needed to play the game and Expert just adds more. The system mechanics of SS&S is Rogue Games' Twelve Degree engine (also used in other Rogue Games designs such as Colonial Gothic). The Twelve Degree system is a universal mechanic that involves rolling 2d12 equal to or under a Target Number (TN) to succeed. This is called a Test. There are three types of tests depending on whether your roll is opposed or against an ability or skill. Degree refers to how much difference there is between the roll and the TN, allowing one to refer to Degrees of Success or Failure. Characters are created with Hooks, which are story devices which can earn the player boons in the form of Action Points which in turn can be spent for free re-rolls, bonuses to TN and other advantages.
Chargen in SS&S is on the quick and easy side. Attributes, including sanity, are assigned values from a point pool. There are no classes, everyone is an "adventurer", but background does help define the character, such as being a user of magic. Hooks and skills round out the PC. Magic in SS&S is consistent with the sword & sorcery tradition therefore it is uncommon and practitioners pay a price. Each spell cast costs the caster vitality (health or hit points). Alchemy is offered as an alternative to spell magic, but even there one gets the impression the practitioner is delving into knowledge "man was not meant to know".
The last third of the Basic book is devoted to referee advice, setting and sample adventure. It is here that Mr. Iorio really catches my attention because he espouses the kind of game I strive for at my table. Gritty, challenging, focused on humans leading a hardscrabble, working stiff existence, the world of SS&S is as much about individual survival as it is robbing tombs, exploring lost cities and helping dispossessed rulers reclaim their crowns. While fabulous treasures await, it is assumed the successful adventurer will quickly squander (gambling, drinking and whoring away) any fortune gained. The publishing company is called Rogue Games and SS&S is all about rogues.
Mr. Iorio's Golden Vine Region is one of my favorite settings ever. It is part R.E. Howard, part renaissance Italy, and hits the sweet spot (in my opinion) with just the right amount of information to inspire the imagination and furnish lots of hooks and opportunities for sandbox play. Like in any good sword & sorcery setting, the Golden Vine Region bad guys are mostly humans and the author gives pages and pages of statted-out baddies of the human persuasion. There are a few "monster" type creatures here as well, just to add the occasional horror element (horror must be infrequent or it's not horror) and an introductory adventure that may suggest the mood in which the author games his setting. Though I didn't directly import the Golden Vine Region into my own Dreadmoor, I admit to borrowing heavily from what I found here.
While there are similarities to B/X, SS&S is its own game. It takes some of the traditional elements of the hobby and reinterprets them through a fairly narrow lens giving a system that has a lot of "personality" of its own. SS&S seems to know what it wants to be and I think does it quite well. The Twelve Degree system took a bit of thinking on my part to wrap my mind around, but I think now that I get it, it would produce a vary fast-paced, exciting combat where taking chances could pay off or result in injury to the PC.
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