Swords & Wizardry at Paizo Con

As a matter of interest, Bill Webb attended PaizoCon over the weekend, and apparently sold quite a few Swords & Wizardry rulebooks. He didn't bring any of the Swords & Wizardry modules because of the risk of accidentally selling a S&W module to a PF buyer (the covers are virtually identical), but the rulebooks did pretty well in an environment where one wouldn't necessarily expect them to sell well.

He also ran several gaming sessions of Swords & Wizardry (32 hours, IIRC from the phone conversation), and they were all packed. It goes to show that there is considerable interest in the mainstream gaming community about the old school games. This has always been one of my goals with Swords & Wizardry, to provide the more open-ended old school game to newer gamers who started gaming in an environment where the broader-scope rules are simply the only option assumed to exist. That plan seems to be finding an audience, although it's a slow process.

Anyway, this post is probably of fairly little interest except to those of us who are interested in growing the hobby (as opposed to those who just play, which is what it's really all about). But since there are many of us who, in addition to playing, are also interested in spreading our approach to gaming, I thought it would be of some interest.

Another point -- kudos to Paizo for not being jerks, because they certainly could have boxed out any other games at their con. It is, after all, their convention. I know it's because they aren't threatened by the whole old school thing, but it was still nice of them.