YouTube: “Play how you want” is a D&D Meta-Meta Game

This is a great video about 5E and how many say, "You can change the rules," but you really can't—not in "mainstream 5E." Changing the rules to create more challenges often puts the referee at odds with players who prefer a narrative-driven, death-free superhero experience.

• You are limiting my choices.
• You will have to take out more spells than that.
• What about this power? Class? Magic item? Etc.?

And it never stops. You don't end up "fighting the players," but you are really "fighting Wizards of the Coast." At this point, it is better just to play a new game. The video also points out how the referee feels empowered to "make the game more fun" rather than "feeling guilty for trying to fix a game to match a theme or play style."

The group talks about starting Shadowdark, which is a great choice for a 5E-like game where choices matter. The "little game" of picking a lock or choosing to take a considerable risk could be life or death. Shadowdark is an excellent throwback and gateway game to the old-school world.

You can make Shadowdark less deadly and more adventurous! However, with 5E, it isn't really possible to roll back the game's power level and safety.

While I don't play too much of the game at this time, this is still a game I am keeping and opening for inspiration. A great video today, please drop by, watch and like, and subscribe to the creator.

Off the Shelf: Dungeon Crawl Classics

This is a game I never have time for; it keeps getting put in a storage box or on a secondary shelf, and I keep returning to it. This is its fourth time coming back, and it still is an excellent game with a rock-solid old-school design philosophy.

Let people have fun.

This means everyone, from the referee to the players. Even third-party publishers. The referee is not some "remote control" you press a button on, and the adventure streams from an Internet service. Rule Zero is the game; everything can be overridden. If something "breaks the game" - great! The game is already broken in so many ways that everything works out. Your characters can still die in horrific and hilarious ways, and they probably will, no matter how invincible you think your character has become.

There are no "builds" or "winning strategies" for characters. 

You have one job: survive.

And get rich or die trying.

If you don't like something, change it! If a player rolls a mutation or disadvantage and can think of a better one, that would be more fun? Use it! If you get a table result that doesn't make sense? Don't reroll it; make something up on the spot that works (or creates a bigger disaster) that works just as well!

Like the original Paranoia game used to say, it is all paid for; don't worry about destroying the scenery, killing the NPCs, changing the game, giving characters hilarious conditions, destroying a village, making up gear and powers, giving players special boons and items, inventing monsters, or making things up to have more fun.

If a super-science laser rifle that does 5d8 at level one drops into the fighter's hands, go with it! A fumble may make that thing explode hilariously, or they may have it to the end of their career, and it becomes their Excalibur.

If it ruins the game? Fine. Don't use it next game.

It is not in an "official" book, so you are not required to use it.

You should do it if you want to apply a permanent +d3 or +d5 roll bonus to a character for some condition, skill, or whatever! Or a negative modifier. Permanent or short term. Or the die flips between negative and positive, depending on the situation.

Want to reward a character with an ability score point for doing something extraordinary? Do so. There are two critical rules in this game:

• Break the rules.
• Have fun.
• Make a third rule since we can break the rules.

Does a character charm or befriend a powerful monster? Fine. It won't ruin the game. A suitably motivated referee will find a way to make this new "pet" into a hilarious burden, rock-and-roll flying mount, or whatever would be epic, cool, and fun.

You are the referee, and you are allowed to have fun, too. However, unlike in other games, you are not the "play the movie" button on the remote control.

Many people have trouble with this much freedom and "need a book to tell them" what to do. Once you learn this, it is harder to return to anything else, especially 5E. I still like 5E; the crazy and random nature of this game keeps me coming back.

Oh, and bad rolls are just as excellent as good rolls. Don't cheat the system! You will have more fun surviving against all odds.

You don't need giant bestiaries or books full of magic items. One book does it all. Every adventure is unique, with new monsters, dangers, and situations to explore. You buy an adventure and are guaranteed to see something you have never seen.

The game is more old-school than many OSR games since it has a philosophy and design that directly emphasizes the old-school experience. Everything revolves around the feeling of how it used to be, not the "actual" way it was. Many games start putting all sorts of strange things on pedestals when those things are unimportant to the old-school experience. They mirror the old games to look, feel, and flaws.

But they do nothing to help you get into old-school playing. They don't give you what they promise since there is no reinforcement or help with "how your mind should approach this game?" The only other two games that do this are Shadowdark and Dragonslayer, and these "old school simulators" are in a class of their own.

An old-school game without proper "training" in how to play the game and get in the mindset will be played as an inferior version of 5E. Stay calm, but this is true. Most players who got into 5E recently will have no clue what is happening, how they should explore, or even how to survive a dungeon in an old-school game. I know how to play, but what about other potential members of the community and people who pick up the game? Training and how-to-play guides help grow the community and create a stable and loyal player base.

But DCC is back, off my storage shelf, and into my most-played space.

Level Up A5E Thoughts

As I was about to embark on a Tales of the Valiant game, having meticulously crafted my characters, a sudden realization dawned on me.

All of 5E is seamlessly replaced by some other version of 5E.

It does not matter what you play.

...as long as it does not come from Wizards. Oh yeah, that OGL hurt runs deep. But the OGL hurt needed to happen because the old-school community was getting lazy. Now, they innovate and change the game to make it their own. I am glad it happened, but we won't forget.

But honestly, it does not matter what version of "Open 5E" you play. Tales of the Valiant, Level Up Advanced 5E, 5B, Low Fantasy Gaming, Shadowdark, or whatever your flavor of the game is. 5E has become "fast food" roleplaying, the same quick, everywhere, easily pickable, and many varieties of "every food" on every corner.

So play the 5E you like, and you don't feel guilty about supporting.

For me, right now, that is Level Up A5E.

My ToV Monster Vault and A5E Monstrous Menagerie work with ToV. I can play apples with apples and oranges with oranges. Or apples with oranges. If I want to play ToV and keep things simple, it's almost like a B/X game like Old School Essentials. If I want to play a game with near-infinite options, pillars of play support, and the best of old-school and 4E, I have Level Up.

Any way I play, I win.

I was reading a review of ToV, and someone said, "It was nothing to leave Level Up for." I agree with that, for now. ToV will go in its own direction, and it will probably take a few years to "get good." I will support them in their releases since I have nothing to lose, and they are all compatible. ToV needs character options badly, and their online tools must improve. The GM's Guide is yet to be released. But I have faith that ToV will improve rapidly.

ToV is still Open 5E, so it plays with most Open 5E games.

And both Level Up and ToV are compatible with your favorite 3rd party books. ToV is a more straightforward conversion, while Level Up needs a little game knowledge to do these, so they work well with the pillars of play supported in A5E (supply system, expertise dice, martial options, etc.).

But Level Up has years of great content, player options that blow my mind, and more classes than most 5E games. It has old-school rules that support the pillars of play. Death means something. Resting takes work. Some of the best ideas in 4E (commander style class, exploration challenges) are here. Level Up A5E is a time capsule of the "best of old-school 5E" from 2014, brought into 2024.

This is how old-school AD&D and 3E players played the game and what they wanted to see in 5E before Wizards took it into social-media la-la land with influencers, power gamers, identity gaming, and live play theatrics. D&D has declined under Wizards, and the 2024 art looks like "corporate office-scene clip art and AI." The fact that their design goal was to maintain compatibility with 10 years of broken first-party books doomed the game.

All my 5E adventures work together seamlessly. The AC, to-hit, damage, actions, and other systems are mostly the same. You can even play mixed classes between the games. It is funny since I found Level Up by thinking the monster book was a generic 5E monster manual, and I got it for Low Fantasy Gaming. I discovered it was its own game and thought I had wasted my money.

Well, I didn't.

I gave this game a chance, and yes, there are a few typos here and there, but the quality is high, and the support is excellent. I learned the game and saw a lot of what I liked. The community input for the development of this game was terrific. It does not need an SRD or OGL since the game has been rewritten entirely and has no reliance on any Wizards content.

And it does have an open license.

This was one of my first Open 5E books and meant freedom. We are lucky to have two complete implementations of 5E these days, and both are excellent. One is just starting, and the other is a mature, developed system. ToV is "nothing to walk away from Level Up for," but give it time. I can see playing ToV if you are heavily invested in Kobold Press books and Level Up for EN World ones.

But play either. If you can, support both. This is a guilt-free choice.

But pick the one that speaks to you.

Mail Room: Voidrunner's Codex

I got the PDFs for the Voidrunner's Codex Kickstarter, and this is a fascinating game.

While the art may be average and depict a generic sci-fi universe, it's important to note that this doesn't detract from the game's potential. In fact, it leaves room for your imagination to fill in the blanks.

This is a "not Starfinder" game, sort of a 5E in space using the Level Up A5E engine powering the game. 5E and sci-fi are typically mediocre together. There were a few games that tried and one that kept going.

Ultramodern 5 is a heavily modified version of 5E that does its own thing. It is the most popular sci-fi 5E version right now. This game has a lot, almost too much, and covers scope and technology of almost Space Opera size. UM5 does a good job rebuilding 5E for modern and sci-fi characters, covering mechs and other gear and technology.

In look and feel, this game resembles the Mobius comics in the old Heavy Metal magazine. That is not bad, but this game has a LOT to sort through. It may overwhelm some with hundreds of pages of stuff and options.

Esper Genesis is the other. Although this game has fallen by the wayside, its Mass Effect art and presentation still make it one of my favorites regarding look and feel. EG5E does an excellent job presenting a unified theme, universe, and setting.

Starfinder feels too focused on characters. The ship combat and exploration here could be better, and the game focuses too much on adventure paths. There isn't a "starship economy" at all, and while it does an excellent job at character options and has fantastic art, everything else feels secondary. The game has "leveled weapons" to account for damage scaling. This is also not 5E, but it deserves mention as "d20 sci-fi." A new edition is coming soon, but I am no longer on the Pathfinder 2 train (for time reasons, not because I dislike the game).

Voidrunner does the best in starships, with its book devoted to starship construction, combat, and exploration. They have identified an enormous opening in 5E sci-fi gaming and jumped within with massive support for the "starship game." It makes sense since Level Up beats the pants off of both D&D and Tales of the Valiant in terms of exploration, and their sci-fi game leaning hard in this area is a clear win for the EN World team.

If you like the exploration pillar of play, forget D&D and Tales of the Valiant. Buy the Level Up books, and don't look back. 

EN World knows what it is doing and what audience it is appealing to. They are "hungry," which shows in their books and games.

The exploration here is better than Traveller, and it is much more science fantasy and "wow" with exploration encounters for starships, space monsters, and other threats on that scale. It destroys settings like Spelljammer because there are ship combat rules and many things you can do with your ships. Spelljammer deserved better than it got.

LUA5E-VR is the group's best 'generic' sci-fi game and far outshines the others regarding starships and having fun with them. It stays close to the original LU-A5E engine, so you can pull in classes, monsters, spells, backgrounds, and other items from the core Level Up rules. The fantastic selection of heritages, cultures, and backgrounds in A5E opens up a lot of interesting characters you can mix and match.

LUA5E-VR also feels more straightforward and malleable than the other bunch. Since it presents a generic universe, you can easily play Star Wars, Star Frontiers, Star Trek, or any other sci-fi setting in a 5E context. The other 5E sci-fi games are their own thing, and they can't be split from their settings as easily.

Also, LUA5E-VR does not do "leveled weapons" like in Starfinder. To increase damage output as your character goes up levels, it relies more on the 5E methods of extra attacks, bonus damage dice to attacks and other 5E conventions. That laser pistol stays the same anywhere in the galaxy, and there isn't a level 20 laser pistol out there in a high-tech treasure chest that does 20d4 damage. A weapon is a weapon, and how well the character uses it determines damage output.

The physical books ship in February of next year, and this is one I am looking forward to.

It Is Not Enough

The Tales of the Valiant 5E books stand out with their unique features, making them a great version of 5E. They are a labor of love, establishing a non-Wizards of the Coast baseline that I find more appealing.

But...

While some areas could be improved, such as the character art, which is a bit cartoony and plastic-looking, the monster art is stunning. The rules are solid, and the game is rebalanced around the Kobold Press CR levels. The monster book is an excellent Monster Manual replacement, with the monsters being suitably nasty. I'm pleased with the Tales of the Valiant 5E books.

Most people are either sold on 2024 D&D or left for other games. The biggest "D&D killer" in this generation of 5E clones is Wizards of the Coast since they killed their own game. It is still big enough to wobble for another 5 to 10 years, but the excitement is fading quickly.

But both ToV and 2024 D&D are nothing to leave Level Up A5E for. The designers over at EN World got lambasted for "changing too much" about 5E with Level Up—and it turns out they were right. They added old-school mechanics, made death a threat again, and included the best parts of 4E. They took a wrench and screwdriver to all the math and tightened it up. They made martial classes and rangers worth playing. There are fun changes like rare and unique spells.

They focused like a laser on making their classes support the three pillars of play:

• Dungeon Crawling
• Exploration
• Social

EN World rewrote the entire game, so it did not need the SRD or OGL.

The combat and balance of the game feel tight and have that original, great "dry" feeling of early 5E. This isn't the slippery balance of later editions, post-Tasha's, where you can get and give inspiration on anything and blow out to-hit rolls because "Missing isn't fun!" The combat in Level Up feels like classic B/X, that live or die, one die roll, classic dice on paper dry feeling I love about old-school gaming.

And there are nods to the old-school here, too, like needing to track supplies and needing rangers to get you to the dungeon safely. Exploration is fully supported, with unique terrain encounters and types that force you to make survival rolls. Even the dungeons are enhanced by giving the environment a special place in the turn order to handle traps, machines, environmental effects, and other hazards. Old-school fans helped playtest and design this game.

ToV recreates 5E.

Level Up rebuilds 5E.

People thought they were stupid or crazy. They roasted the game for breaking compatibility with 5E in areas. People wanted this to be a "5E expansion" instead of a standalone. You changed too much! This is Boutique 5E! Why play this when we have D&D?

In the end, EN World was right.

They delivered their own game free of license issues and kept supporting it through years of community neglect. They kept shipping products and believing in what they did. They kept the game compatible with 5E adventures but did their own thing on classes and rules.

A few of their decisions were strange, like their steampunk world Zeitgeist, which did not resonate with me. However, their after-release support is solid, and the Gate Pass Gazetteers are outstanding. The fan-released content is also excellent. The number of character options and classes this game has is jaw-dropping.

Subclass and option support from 3rd party products is its only weakness, but only in the area of these options not supporting some of the custom rules in the game. For example, a supply system in A5E tracks things like rations and water. If a 3rd party subclass allows you to replenish supply like the ranger does in A5E, then you will need to tweak it to include these rules.

It is not impossible to use third-party subclass and character options, but it does require a higher level of rules knowledge and familiarity with the differences. You will need to tweak them in a few critical cases. Overall, it is for the better.

I still like ToV a lot. It is an excellent game as a clean-room 5E. The support from Kobold Press is outstanding. The design and care put into the game are top-notch. I am still supporting them as my second-best 5E implementation. It is a great "low-level emulator" that replaces Wizards 5E perfectly. ToV and Level Up work well together, so you can support both without wasting money.

We are blessed to have two incredible games to choose from.

And Tales of the Valiant may get a lot better! I am in early to see where things go. We will likely get more in the future, plus there may be old-school options in the GM's Guide that elevate this to the level of A5E. You can't go wrong by having both games.

But Level Up is still my 5E, the one I come home to. It runs my campaigns, such as my classic 4E-era Nerrath game. It is, in many ways, a different game that caters to old-school and 5E players equally, and it is a much grittier, deadly, and balanced game. Death means something. Exploration is not easy. The social play has support in character options. Martial characters are fun and have resource tracking. The resting game is fixed. Pop-up healing is fixed. Supplies are meaningful. The little stupid problems 5E has had for years have been fixed. The exploits are mainly addressed.

To me and my campaigns, Level Up Advanced 5E is the winner.

Level Up: Gateway

https://www.levelup5e.com/news/announcing-level-up-gateway

This is exciting news, Level Up Advanced 5E is getting a character creator. See the announcement above. This is big news since creating A5E characters is a chore, especially since there are nearly double the things to note and write down compared to a game like Tales of the Valiant. It takes me 30 minutes to go through the process, and the official "form fill" character sheet is a bit too tight for all you need to record.

"Character sheets" are a massive weakness in gaming; every game has a different one, and none of them import into VTTs without serious software development time. I swear the industry needs to develop a "common character sheet format." like a PDF-style form (or accepted file format), and standardize that on all platforms.

Even Tales of the Valiant's work with Hero Lab feels very beta. At this time, exporting to PDF and printing aren't even supported. I want Kobold Press' other books added to the system. A better option for many games is still the highly moddable classic desktop app.

I wish Level Up well and would love to join in the beta. I know these projects are huge and take a lot of time and development work, so I know how huge this is and how it could go wrong. Still, I am hopeful and will be using this tool since the game needs it desperately.

Tales of the Valiant: Roll Your Own

One of the best parts about Tales of the Valiant is they went for a more straightforward character design process, with fewer things to write down in each step. I designed the same character in Level Up Advanced 5E and came out with twice the special powers, notes, and different abilities on my sheet than a comparable ToV sheet.

Level Up Advanced 5E is a game that truly embodies the 'more is more' philosophy. A level one character can easily have 12-15 special ability notes, compared to ToV's six. This abundance of abilities adds a profound depth to the game and makes character creation more time-consuming, which is a testament to the game's complexity.

When I am in the mood for it, it is excellent.

When I am not, it is not great.

Character sheets in Level Up must be done by hand since no program does them. It first took me 90 minutes to make a character, and I have gotten this down to 30 lately. Getting everything set up and recorded is still a long time, but the details are worth the effort.

ToV has Hero Lab, which makes the basic rules well, but the system can't be expanded for custom entries, so if you want to create a custom lineage or heritage, you are out of luck. However, I am hopeful that the ToV version of Hero Lab will improve and add the spells from Deep Magic and the Monster Vault creatures and the ability to add custom entries for items, spells, heritages, and lineages. I eagerly anticipate the inclusion of the Midgard and Southlands heritages and lineages!

The other Kobold Press 5E books should be available for ToV, but they are not. Since ToV is 5E compatible, we should have the option to use any 5E books we have for Hero Lab in this system, primarily since Midgard and Southlands are supported on the desktop version and are nowhere to be found in the online part.

I like Hero Lab for ToV; it is so limited that it is hard to recommend without seeing more new things to buy and support for custom entries. Even the "notes" section for characters is not present in this writing, despite this text box being in other games. Since the game is 5E compatible, the online version needs a custom content manager and a way to add our favorite things.

So, at this point, roll your character sheets and do them by hand. This way, you can pull in as much 3rd party content and subclasses as possible. Using online character creators is convenient, but it is anti-competitive. It can lock out almost every 3rd party who makes books for the game, and it especially hurts small independent publishers.

If a game is so complicated that you need computers, consider playing another game. This is especially true if that character creation system is locked behind a paywall and "everyone can't come inside." My answer is to do them by hand and play games where it is not too much of a hassle.

Level Up pushes the boundaries of my tolerance for complexity, but then again, that is the game. It is the Aftermath! of 5E and details everything.

Tales of the Valiant is streamlined and simplified, and it feels more like a B/X version of 5E. The game is more accessible for new players, which D&D can't claim (especially with 10 years of backward compatibility being critical parts of many character builds).

ToV is also a one-book implementation of 5E (for characters). It is a fresh start. While you can pull in your favorite 3rd part books, you don't need to, but the door is open.

That...I like.