Close
Close
Advanced Search

Sorcery is a Sword Without a HiltClick to magnify
Quick Preview
/gs_flipbook/flip.php?xml=/demo_xml/350867.xml&w=500&h=354
Full‑size Preview
https://watermark.drivethrurpg.com/pdf_previews/350867-sample.pdf

Sorcery is a Sword Without a Hilt

ADD TO WISHLIST >
Suggested Price $5.00

What is this?

Sorcery is a Sword Without a Hilt is a magic system for OSRish games. It contains 40 level-less spells and dozens of magical catastrophes. The spells are flexible, with variable effects depending on how much "juice" the sorcerer gives them. 

Each spell is designed to feel like a weird, useful tool. At the same time, there are no spells that solve the essential problems of dungeon crawling.

Magic feels magical

Sorcerers use components to cast spells. These components are your eye of gnat, tongue of dog, toe of bat variety. Pulling out a pickled, rune-covered tongue and placing it into the mouth of a corpse to cast Speak with Dead inherently makes the sorcerer seem more magical and weird. Additionally, this system makes magic fit into a basic inventory management system. How many spells you have available equals how many pack slots you've dedicated to components. 

Additionally, the spell descriptions are somewhat terse. They do not have the precise legalism certain systems have. The GM has a good amount of leeway to interpret the spells as they're cast, creating a sense of manageable mystery. 

Magic is a strange Swiss-army knife

With magic, an adventuring party should be able to solve problems in a dramatically different way than without it. A thief can unlock a door and eavesdrop at the threshold. A sorcerer can cast Portable Hole onto the door and peer through it. One is subtle and one is obvious. Both have their drawbacks and advantages. 

Magic doesn't solve the essential dungeon problems

At the same time, magic can't solve all of your problems. There are no spells that solve the essential challenges of the dungeon: light, hunger, exhaustion. There are no spells that provide darkvision, conjure food and water, or provide continual light. 

What game system is this for?

This supplement is the magic chapter from the forthcoming His Majesty the Worm. However, with a little work, you can use these spells in any old-school role-playing game. A conversion guide is included at the end of the book. 

Wait, what's His Majesty the Worm?

His Majesty the Worm is a fantasy dungeon crawling game that is currently in development. It attempts to make the boring parts of dungeon crawls (mapping, resource management, food and water, light, interparty conflict) actually fun and central to game play. 

Any revenue gathered from this PWYW supplement will be funneled to paying cool artists good money for His Majesty the Worm. If this sort of thing sounds cool, please throw in a few dollars to help fund the game! 

pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif
 
 Customers Who Bought this Title also Purchased
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif
Reviews (0)
Discussions (1)
Customer avatar
Derek H March 22, 2021 5:42 pm UTC
Can we have a preview that includes a spell? And there is a typo is on page 3 of the existing preview- "see p. XX".
Narrow Results
$ to $
 Follow Your Favorites!
NotificationsSign in to get custom notifications of new products!















Product Information
Copper seller
Author(s)
Artist(s)
Rule System(s)
Pages
73
File Size:
0.73 MB
Format
Original electronic Click for more information
Scanned image
These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

For PDF download editions, each page has been run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to attempt to decipher the printed text. The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background.

For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. The text is fine for reading, but illustration work starts to run dark, pixellating and/or losing shades of grey. Moiré patterns may develop in photos. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.
pixel_trans.gif
Original electronic format
These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable. Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format. Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality.
File Last Updated:
March 18, 2021
This title was added to our catalog on March 22, 2021.
Publisher
Rise Up Comus
Publisher Average Rating