Sometimes referred to as Supplement V, Swords & Spells was released in 1976 as the last of the digest sized game books for use with D&D. Swords & Spells is part of my original White Box kit, although I have never actually used it in a game. Written by Gary Gygax, this LBB is 45 pages in length. Swords & Spells hasn't gotten much love from the hobby in general and is often omitted altogether in a discussion of OD&D. Swords & Spells is a set of rules for conducting wargame battles for the White Box campaign using miniature figures. In the White Box there is a suggestion to use Chainmail for this purpose, but Chainmail actually predates the White Box which contains monsters and spells not in Chainmail. Swords & Spells brings the wargame battle rules up-to-date with the White Box and its supplements. I have played out a few battles using Chainmail, but as I mentioned have not done so using the Swords & Spells rules. I see Swords & Spells as an extension of the miniature wargaming roots of the White Box. Before Mr. Gygax and Mr. Arneson wrote the White Box game, they wrote wargames for historical battles using minature figures. Their interest in fantasy literature most like led them to combine two loves, wargaming and fantasy as first appears in the Fantasy Supplement at the back of Chainmail. The idea in Chainmail and continued with Swords & Spells is that units of fantastic creatures and beings, led by mighty fighting men, magic users and clerics, could fight out their battles on the gaming table. Swords & Spells, I assume, allows for a more direct way to use the PCs in those tabletop battles that were probably quite common in many White Box campaigns. In the campaigns I have been involved with, dungeon crawling and wilderness survival have been the focus rather than the struggle of nations and armies. Again we see an example of how the White Box encourages each to make it their own game by using what rules they want and inventing whatever is needed beyond the printed rules.
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