Viking White Box Question

So, as some of you may know, I want to turn Swords & Wizardry White Box into what I've been calling my Viking Hack.  I'm taking the White Box rules and adding classes and ideas from various sources around the web, cutting things out and planning own "original" setting.  Throw in a handful of cliches, stir well, and voila!  Fun is had by all.  I'm doing this for private, not commercial, use and may post it for any of you who might be interested.  I've also considered tearing apart The Black Hack and doing the same thing.

But what if I surprise myself and actually finish the thing and it turns out to be decent?  What if I want to put it on DriveThru, even if it is just PWYW?  How does one do that?  Can someone explain to me in very simplistic terms how to do this?  Or, perhaps, point me in the direction of a website that can do the same?  What can I use from the rules set?  What can't I?  What items must be attributed?  What is OGL and Open Game Content and what does it all mean?   I know there are various games based on White Box such as White Star, The Hero's Journey (both by Spaaaaahhn!) and the upcoming WWII: Operation White Box by Pete Spahn.  (What?!?  Another Spahn!  Hurm....)  How does one go about this?

Any help would be appreciated.

I Blame James Spahn

I blame +James Spahn.  James Spahn and his nifty little game White Star.  It's all his fault.  See, I picked up White Star in March.  I read through it and really liked it.  It did science fiction in the simple way that I have grown to appreciate as I've grown older.  Yeah, it has classes and levels and such but I'm ok with that.  I like that it has ascending armor class and the base hit bonus.  That makes the game even easier.  No need to look up numbers on a chart.  Unified savings throw with bonuses under certain circumstances?  Nice.  And it is easy to play around with and to modify it.  For example, White Star has a very Star Wars vibe built right into it.  Star Wars not your thing?  That's cool.  Various supplements can steer you in a different direction.  Like Star Trek?  Pick up Five Year Mission and you are off and running with, dare I say it, years of gaming goodness.  How about pulp sci-fi based in the Solar System?  Have Death Ray, Will Travel is your supplement.

Great.  Cool game.  Flexible.  No problem.

So time passes and I decide to take a look at the game White Star is based on, Swords & Wizardry White Box rules.  I looked it over and thought it was neat how James modified the base rules and turned them into a science fiction game.  What a flexible set of rules!  Now here's where the problem starts.  You see, I have gamer ADD.  A serious case.  I was just looking at my order history for DriveThru.  I have placed 597 orders since 2008.  I kid you not.  Granted, the vast majority of the items I've acquired are freebies but I've still dropped a goodly amount of cash there.  Way too much if you ask my wife.  And that doesn't count the smaller number of games from LULU or the free ones I've grabbed from the internet.

So what's the problem?  White Box is made to be modified and tinkered with.  So now I want to modify and tinker with it.  You see, I was happy with B/X supplemented by Labyrinth Lord material.  A nice simple game that covered my D&D needs without any fuss or muss or extra complexity. I had been essentially ignoring Swords & Wizardry because I didn't need it.  B/X had me covered.  But then I started thinking about running a Viking campaign.  Well, Savage Worlds can do that easily.  But what if I wanted to use a D&D type game?  B/X could do it with a bunch of modifications.  Then I ran across a site that had already modified both Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry for Vikings.  You can find both at the Sword +1 blog in the links section to the right the page.  This and White Star made me realize just what a superb toolbox White Box is.

Now all I want to do is tear it down and rebuild it to meet my own vision and specifications.  Vikings?  I want subtle, low level magic that is out of the hands of the average PC.   Perhaps illusion based stuff.  So, in goes the npc Illusionist class.  I need to research magic in Norse culture more but I further modify things if I want to.  Demi-human PCs?  Nope.  Gone.  Elves and dwarves are things of legend and characters will be lucky to see them once or twice in their life.  Mike at Sword +1 has Berserker, Warrior and Thane classes.  I want a Skald class too.  Like a Bard but with no magic.  The music will work like a charm spell.  I'm sure I can find that somewhere or make my own.  And so on.

Now, I could take Barbarians of Lemuria and remove or tweak a few careers and change the setting.  Easy peasy.  Or I could put in a bit more work and use Savage Worlds.  No, not me.  I essentially want to make my own neo/retroclone based on White Box.  A project that if I get started I surely will not finish.  A project that will suck up what little free time I have.  A project that will probably leave me frustrated in the end.  And half way through I'll have another idea and want to work on THAT one.

So,  I blame James Spahn.  He showed me what was possible with Swords & Wizardry White Box and now my life is going to be very complicated..

So, imagine me standing on a rocky outcropping high above the land, raising my fist to the the heavens and shouting:  "SPAAAAAAAAHN!!!!"

Vikings on my Mind

Crap.  I'm doing it again.  I can never focus long enough on one campaign idea to get any meaningful work done on it.  A couple of months ago it was White Star.  I actually got a little further on my idea than I usually do.  I drafted a five page background to my own setting.  Trust me, that's a lot for me.  But we never got passed making up characters because video games distract the boys and my attention wandered as it does.  I think it's a version of gamer ADD.

Anyway, I am currently mulling two campaign ideas.  The one that is foremost in my mind is a Viking themed campaign.  But as always I have a couple of problems.  The first is the historian in me.  I don't know much about Scandinavian history and society.  Much of my knowledge is through popular media, predominantly History Channel's The Vikings.  I want to research and research and research the snot out of it.  And this is one of the ways I end up losing interest.  But to help I'm going to try and get a hold of some gaming supplements on the topic like GURPS Vikings and the 2nd Ed. AD&D guide.  Hopefully that will be enough without being too much.

This leads me to my second problem.  What system to use?  I'm looking at three:  Savage Worlds, B/X (or S&W Whitebox) or Barbarians of Lemuria.  My oldest son would prefer Savage Worlds so I'm leaning in that direction but the other two are calling to me too.

What I'm looking at is a low magic setting with fantastic, myth inspired elements.  What magic there is will not be in the hands of the pc's unless it is an artifact.  And those will be rare.  There will be seers that can foretell the future in there veiled way.  There will be npc magic users but I want it to be consistent with the sagas and myths.  And that's another thing I'll need to learn about.  Urg.  So much to learn.  Oh, and every now and again a god might meddle.

So, anyway, each system has its advantages though I'm sure all could do it well.

Savage Worlds is flexible and action oriented and has a lot of official and unofficial support.  I got a peek at the campaign material a Savage Worlds gamer created for his personal game and it really helped solidify my thoughts.  I don't think I could pull off his game off but I am definitely going to borrow from it.

B/X was what I initially thought I would use.  I love the simplicity of it and it is easy to modify.  I figured I would borrow liberally from the Viking Campaign sourcebook from the AD&D 2nd Edition.  It would be easy to find B/X or Labyrinth Lord versions of the suggested classes.  I would have to figure out a way to mellow the magic because I have a feeling it wouldn't be what I would want.  Lately, I've become fascinated with Swords & Wizardry Whitebox and it has a bunch of home-brew classes out there and is easily modifiable.  I've found a couple of fan made supplements that will be very helpful.  One of which is at Sword +1.  If you poke around the site a little you can find a Swords & Wizardry version too.  I also found some related posts at the Magician's Manse.

Last but definitely not least is Barbarians of Lemuria.  I feel it would be very simple to modify it to suit my needs by fine-tuning the career list.

I am going to start the campaign by characters returning home to the cold north after hearing of the death of their father.  One will be a member of the Varangian guard in Miklagard and the other will one of Hrolf Ganger's men in what will become Normandy.  They return home to find that there father was murdered and the rest of the family was also slaughtered or sold into slavery.  This will give us several lines of play including revenge, the quest to find their kin and, of course, there will be various and sundry monsters ravaging the countryside and perhaps a few meddling fey.

So, this was a big word dump but any thoughts or comments are appreciated.