White Box Cyclopedia

I finally had a chance to sit down and take a closer look at James Spahn's White Box Cyclopedia.  I haven't done a thorough read through yet but I did do a serious perusal.  And as I thought, what I saw made me excited.

The White Box Cyclopedia is the Swords & Wizardry White Box rules with all of the extra trimmings. 

The PDF comes in at around 290 pages.  And it has a lot!  It has the entirety of the White Box rules plus many extras and options to choose from. 

It covers the four usual races.  Here called heritages.  It also has 10 optional heritages, such as gnome, half-orc and shadow elf.  It also includes five heritage-as-class options.

The WBC offers the original three classes:  cleric, fighter and magic-user as well as 18 optional classes.  Some of the optional heritages and classes were developed by Mr. Spahn years ago.  It's nice to have them consolidated in one place though.

Much of the rest of the book is taken up with the usual.  Combat rules, equipment, travel, magic, treasure, etc.  It does include seafaring and naval combat as well. This is all to be expected.  What I really like, in addition to the extra heritages and classes, is all of the other additions.

For example, there is a section on reputation, knighthood and chivalry.  According to these rules, any character can become a knight.  Of course, some have a greater chance than others but everyone has some chance.  If you are brave and heroic, you might be able to do it.  There are guidelines on how to achieve knighthood, reputation, being knighted, maintaining your standing.  And it's all an add-on system you can layer on if you want.

The combat section contains options, some that I have seen elsewhere as house rules, to add variety to combat.  Including one of my favorites, Splintered Shields.  You can add none, some or all to tune combat to your taste.

There is a section that discusses setting up campaigns. It also briefly describes four different campaign settings and how to tune the rules and options to make WBC work optimally for the settings. This includes which classes and heritages would work best, how to tune magic for the setting and other modifications and options that might help.  The settings are called City of Thieves, Fairy Land, Gothic Horror and a sword & sorcery setting, Riddle of Steel.

I think the campaign section sums up best what I like about WBC.  WBC has the basic game but it is also a toolbox.  A toolbox that allows you to take the solid foundation of S&W WB and turn it into exactly the game you want it to be.  I know many good GMs can do this themselves but there are others, like me, who can use help when doing so.  With this toolbox, I am much more confident I can tune basic White Box to run any of the settings I have running around in my mind.