Swords-Wizardry-Complete-revised

For the Referee
Introduction
As the Referee of a game of Swords & Wizardry, you do not have a
character; instead, you are the player who is in charge of the game. You
create the adventure, you run the monsters, and you are the one who
decides the results of all the decisions made by the players for their
characters. You don’t get to tell the players what the characters do – that
is their part of the game – but you referee the results according to the
rules, and you interpret what the rules mean. Compared to most other
fantasy roleplaying games, the Swords & Wizardry rules require a lot
of interpretation because – by design – they do not try to cover every
single possibility for what the players will do. It takes a little bit of
practice to referee a game smoothly, but once you get the hang of it,
you will find that you can run a fast-paced game without getting caught
up in every little detail.
The three most important things to know about running a game of
Swords & Wizardry are these:
The rules are just guidelines
There is not a rule for everything.
When in doubt, make a ruling.
If you are a beginner Referee, and have never played a roleplaying
game before, it is a good idea to stick to “the rules” for a few gaming
sessions, just to learn how the game works. We have provided enough
of these basic rules to get you started without having to make too many
difficult decisions. But once you are comfortable with the basic idea of a
roleplaying game you can start thinking about the optional rules, about
creating house rules, and about adapting the rules. There is a whole
world of fantasy out there waiting for you.
This part of the book gives you the basic resources for the two main
tasks of the Referee: creating the adventure, and running the adventure.
Creating the adventure is done ahead of time; it is the job of dreaming
up an adventurous place or situation, creating a map, and deciding what
dangerous things lurk there, just waiting for a party of adventurers to
stumble across them. Running the adventure is what happens when your
friends are assembled around the gaming table with dice and character
sheets: it is your job to describe the starting point and then to keep the
game moving once the adventuring begins. As you and your players
get more familiar with the game, and their characters start to go up in
level, you may want to start creating some details about the world that
surrounds these adventures – which is called your campaign world. The
following part of the book contains basic advice about all these aspects
of being a Referee.
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