An Informal Review of Swyvers
Someone in the OSR discord recently asked for opinions on Swyvers. I have played and refereed Swyvers, both times in Blue Cheese Left to Rot, and so I typed out an overly-long ramble in response. I've been procrastinating for months on starting a blog, so what the hell, here's my first post. Below is an expanded and cleaned-up version of that ramble. The actual system itself is serviceable and sometimes even exceptional, although it has that particular Luke Gearing quirk of going against modern design trends and being a deliberately un-streamlined system. Skill checks, combat, and grappling all use completely different dice resolution methods. It tells you not to roll for conversations with NPCs but then on page 52 gives you a bribery subsystem where you… roll for conversations with NPCs. The difference is that the rolls are ref-facing instead of player-facing, I guess? Oh, and it also, again, uses a completely different dice resolution methods from skills, combat, or grappling...