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Old 02-18-2024, 08:22 PM   #1
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Shadow of the Weird Wizard pdf

You may have heard of this when it was announced. The pitch was for "like Shadow of the Demon Lord only not so dark". Since Shadow of the Demon Lord is really quite dark this sounded like room for growth and the pdf was cheap and myself and several other members of my regular group signed up.

I have the just released pdf now and have been working my way through it. When I turned on my computer this evening I already had an e-mail announcing the 1.2 pdf so I'm going to skip over typos.

So how do you make a character? First you choose your Ancestry and the only choice in this section of the book is "Human".

Then you either chose or randomly roll a Profession and I'd recommend choice but I'm going to see how bad random rolling can get. I am using a nearly new set of purple polyhedrals with few association s (such as _other_ dark fantasy rpgs of which there are a monotenous plentitude). Apparently on D20s and D6s are needed.

The D20 gives me a "6" which puts me in the "Entertainer" category. followed up with a "19" making my character's pre-adventuring Profession "Thespian". This grants mw what ever skills the GM (Sage in this system) want to give me and a bok with scripts for several plays. Not quite what I had in mind and other rolls could have given me a weapon or suit of armor or another language which is why I recommend "choice".
The next step is "Equipment" (but not the Equipment section) which gives me a dagger and what amount to the "Adventurers Backpack seen in other systems and a set of Bonus Equipment which is some sort sort armor and weapon. I choose leather armor, sword and shield and feel like this sis some progress.

The next step is Distinctive Featiures and again the text says "choose or roll" and some of them are so yucky I can't really imagine why you'd roll but I'll see what rolling gets me.

My D6 gives me 4 rolls on a random selection of tables. 1st roll is 'gaunt to the point of appearing skeletal". which is followed by "abundant ear and nose hair", habits of rocking back and forth when sitting and shifting my weight from foot to foot while standing (yes, that was rolls 3 and 4 which I combined in one sentence). Things could be worse. I'm not missing any body parts.

I can actually work with this (though I'm not sure I see the point). My character spent his early adolescence in a pseudo-Shakespearian theater troop. This ended when he grew all that hair and he was kicked out of the troop and now he's wandering the world (and not eating very well) looking for another livelihood. The movement disorders I have to put down to neurodivergence.

There are random Personality and Religious traits tables but I'm randomed out for a while and need to go on choose=ing a Path.

That's either a Fighter, Mage, Priest or Rogue. There are no random tables. it's choice only and i'm going with Fighter because I feel like my character has soem aggression to work out.

We're back to choice or random roll again but rolling gives you all of your stats as a set. My roll gives me ST 13 Agility 10, Intellect 10 and Will 10 (10 is average human). No, I don't know why my guy is so strong in spite of his gauntness.

Humans seem to have an option to raise to stats by 1 pt and i would choose St and Agility.

You then add in your Fighter Level 1 traits which are a "Natural Defense Score" of 10 which is your AC if not armored. Mages get an 8, Priests a 9 and Rogues an 11. The leather I go back under Equipment gives me a 12 and the shield a +2.

That's the end of Character creation and natural stopping place. I've looked through the Rules chapter and the "real" Equipment chapter but stopped reading at eh Magic section. There are a lot of "schools" of Magic.

Ask questions if you feel like it or wait til I've read farther. So far it might be a _little_ less dark than Demon Lord.
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Old 02-19-2024, 08:53 PM   #2
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Shadow of the Weird Wizard pdf

I have now finished my initial skim having read the Magic chapter and the Expert and Master Paths chapters.

There are somewhere around 2 dozen Traditions of Magic going from Aeromancy to War. I believe that Priests and Mages can both choose from these though some are more suitable to one or the other. You can definitely have more than one tradition and most of the random rolls started spellcasters with two. There about two dozen spells per Tradition broken down into Novice, Expert and Master levels.

Expert and Master Paths can be thought of as "prestige" classes with you gettng an Expert path at 3rd level and a Master Path one at seventh. These along with your Novice path determine what advances you gain at each level. There is no provision for advancement beyond ten and tenth level looks pretty apocalyptic anyway.

There is no "beastiary" "gazetteer" or listing of prominent npcs.

It's hard to tell without those if the game is really not as "dark" as Demon Lord.

I did discover that the table of contents is a big section of hyperlinks and if you touch a chapter or section listing it will take you there. Kewl!
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Old 03-01-2024, 12:18 PM   #3
Saint
 
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Default Re: Shadow of the Weird Wizard pdf

Shadow of the Demon Lord is the first class-based system I've liked in twenty years, and it's mainly for the branching aspect of the paths while you're leveling up.
Mechanically, it's simple but sensible.
Stylistically, a game is as dark as you and the group want it to be. Some discussion beforehand would probably be good to map out "too far."
I too have have a new digital copy of Weird Wizard. It's the same, but different and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Like you said, maybe some of the supporting material will help move me into the WW camp.
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Old 03-01-2024, 08:36 PM   #4
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Shadow of the Weird Wizard pdf

Quote:
Originally Posted by Saint View Post
S
Stylistically, a game is as dark as you and the group want it to be. Some discussion beforehand would probably be good to map out "too far."
p.
If only we had chosen "No TPK by mushroom monsters" before our Demon lord game started.

There was a lot of dark stuff in our Demon Lord games with crazed cultists and horribly abused victims. Weird Wizard doesn't really seem like it's going to be "kill the dragon and take his stuff" which is about where I want to be but it might not be as monotonously "Save the World! (whether you want to or not)" as we started to get stuck with in 3.x Adventure Paths.
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