A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells – Addendum

Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells – Addendum by Diogo Nogueira is a role playing game supplement published by Old Skull Publishing. This is a compilation of optional rules for Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.

This is a 90 page PDF that is available from RPGNow as a Pay What You Want Supplement. It is also available as a softcover print on demand book, again as a Pay What You Want but with a minimum price of $3.07 to cover materials at the time of writing, or as both PDF and book, once again as Pay What You Want. The PDF is the version reviewed.

The single page Introduction briefly explains what this supplement contains, mostly tools and generators for Referees and players.

Expanded Vocations, like the core book, doesn’t have vocations listed, but explains how expanding a vocation’s description can tell more about a character. There are also rules on multi-archetype characters (essentially multi-classed), a simple way of creating nonhuman characters using the previous rules in this section and on the handling of knowledge and languages. Rather than a detailed system for the last, a characters is assumed to have any suited to their archetype and vocation, with an attribute test if there’s any doubt.

Zero Level Characters briefly covers how to start a game with zero level characters – and why players should create 3 or 4 of them at a time.

Learning New Abilities has some rules on how characters could learn new abilities. These new abilities should not be gained on level up either, but should require effort to achieve. Some sample new abilities are listed, with their benefits and suggested quests to gain them.

Blood is a new rule for handling characters’ health.

Sanity and Madness has optional rules for affecting characters who see things man was not meant to know.

Treasure Points and Resource Dice are a new way of handling treasure. Resource Dice are handled using the core Usage Die mechanic; instead of having a certain amount of money, characters have to roll against a resource die to buy an item, and this die can increase or decrease like all Usage Dice. Treasure Points are used instead of money to calculate how much treasure is worth, and these points can be exchanged to expand the Resource Die. There is also a list, inspired by classic sword & sorcery, of how characters can lose money.

Quick Equipment has some suggestions for starting equipment for archetypes.

Drunken Luck is luck modifiers for drunken characters.

Adventuring Companion is an option for two characters to be classed as adventuring companions, with both benefits and penalties, should the companion be harmed.

Journeys and Travels has rules on random encounters when travelling and a table of such.

Lost Tomes has 20 new spells and a table of strange effects that can occur from reading ancient spellbooks. This section also has the power of true names, the more powerful spells of true sorcery, effects of arcane corruption from using sorcery and rare ingredients for spells that can be used to augment their power, with some examples.

Drugs and Other Preparations has the effects of such and a number of different ones described.

Monster Generator has a host of different tables for creating monsters of all types, although without any game stats. The Referee is intended to interpret the results into actual stats. The exception to this is the d100 table of monster powers.

Mobs has rules by which many low HD creatures are combined into what is effectively one higher HD creature, a mob, making lower level monsters much more dangerous to high level characters.

Rumours has rules on generating rumours, using the players’ input as well as the Referee’s.

Forgotten Artefacts is a collection of tables that can be used to generate magic items. Magic items in this system are nowhere near as common as they are in others, and are much more dangerous.

Random Life Events is a d100 table of random events that could happen to characters.

What Has Changed Since We Left is a d20 table of events that could happen in communities.

Adventure Title Generator is another collection of tables, these for creating pulp-style adventure titles.

Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells – Addendum in Review

The PDF is bookmarked but only the major sections are linked, not the minor ones. Even though there may not be as many sub sections in this supplement, it would have been useful to have them linked. The Table of Contents is more thorough, covering the sub sections as well. Navigation isn’t bad, but it could have been better.

The text maintains a two column format and appeared to be free of errors. Various sections have short paragraphs of prose introducing them. There are various black and white illustrations, up to full page in size. Although all stock, the styles are generally complementary in nature. Presentation is good.

H.P. Lovecraft is mentioned as being one of the inspirations for the system, but this Addendum has a much greater Lovecraftian feel to it than the core book. The Addendum is a collection of various different rules, rather than being a coherent whole (in some ways this resembles the original Unearthed Arcana). By its very nature, this supplement does feel like a bit of an assortment; this is something that could not really be helped due to the nature of its constituent elements. Even though there are a host of new rules and the Addendum is much larger than the core rulebook, many of these rules can actually streamline the game even more, if a Referee decides to use them, eliminating some of the bookkeeping by substituting other methods.

Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells – Addendum is a useful, and often interesting, collection of new rules and tools for Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells and it can be found by clicking here.