Wraparound

For me, 6th Edition D&D is First Edition AD&D.

The plot is lost, there have been too many changes, orcs are not orcs, the most-poplar half-elf and half-orc races have been thrown into the memory hole, the game has lost touch with modern haircuts and clothing, and I refuse to touch corporate D&D, or the 5.5E. The game feels like it tries to sell us ideas that were popular four years ago. The game has lost touch, and all the changes Wizards made from 3.0 to 5.5 have led us here.

Wizards D&D, for me, ended at 5th Edition, and was forked and picked up on by the Open 5E alternatives, like Tales of the Valiant and Level Up Advanced 5E. Those are my 5E books, now, and the writing was on the wall since the OGL. Wizards was not a good steward of the IP, they broke the trust of the community when they tried to take back the OGL, and everyone knew what was coming next.

There was this silent promise by Wizards to be a good member of the community. Keeping the OGL and SRD out there, untouched, so the community could thrive was a part of that. This trust is now broken.

Besides, D&D 3.5E is the best version of "Wizards D&D," crafted by the Magic the Gathering original team, and perfected to its broken and messy state. If you want Wizard's D&D, stick with the original and ignore the last 20 years of mess, tabletop MMOs, and memory-holing.

5E was the "pandemic RPG" and the system ended when Wizards "changed the terms of the deal" on the community. These days, play Open 5E if you can and have a clear conscious.

Just, please, avoid the rampant hoarding, collecting, and other plagues that befall 5E at the moment. If you own more than a few books your game is at serious risk of never being played and only "had" to collect. At that point, you are better off parting with it.

So where do I go from here?

I have been exploring AD&D first edition, and rediscovering OSRIC and Adventures Dark & Deep. Going back to first edition feels like a refreshing reset, no matter how complex or pedantic these games can be, these were the first, the 8-bit retro experience, and the way I remembered playing dungeon games.

There is something wonderful about first edition.

I feel like I do when I play an 8-bit game, all of today's slickness is stripped away, and I am left with pure gameplay. I am not leaning on action types, power-dip multi-classing or subclass abilities - there are none. I don't have a complex character sheet that needs a computer to create, I have a simple sheet done by hand. It feels like a classic NES or Sega Genesis gamepad in my hands, with a D-pad and a few buttons, and nothing else fancy.

The DM asks me, "What do you do?"

I am not staring at my character sheet, looking for an answer.

The answer lies inside my head, my imagination, and the situation I am presented with. The answer to "what do you do" is not filtered through Wizard's rules, and that "thought filtering" has been the design goal from D&D 3.0 on. The answer to "what do you do" with the first edition is inside my head.

D&D 5E was only as popular as it was because they rolled that "mind control through rules" back some from 4E (where actions were 'what power card am I using?'), and players' minds were free to decide for themselves. But book by book, that control came back bit by bit. With 5.5E, they have locked it all down again. You can't build a "hammer guy" without jumping through their hoops, picking a few required selections, and even then, the hammer fights you by pushing enemies away. "Best builds" and "action economy" became the "measure of good play."

In my day, the "good play" was in a player's head.

The first edition has that unlimited, unchecked, the answer is not in the book pure thought-to-action goodness that created the hobby. If your actions are controlled by a labyrinth of rules in a book, you are not role-playing. Game designers use thought control on you; you are "discovering" what they already know, plan, and mean for you to do.

You can't be a hero unless you first run your thoughts through a few layers of Wizard's rules.

With the first edition, what is between you and heroic action is minimal. You don't need to run your action plan through several book chapters of rules. You don't need to account for bonus actions or free actions. You are not considering weapon masteries. You are not chaining together actions to combo up the best attack. You don't need to make your heroism fit through Wizards' rules approval process.

Understand what we have dealt with for the last 25 years of West Coast game design, and your mind will be clear.

People have gotten confused and defended 3.5E versus 4E versus 5E versus 5.5E, and nobody sees that they are all the same design style but in a few different flavors. Some people cannot even imagine taking an action on a turn without running it "through the rules first." This is why game turns take 30 minutes for some people, and deciding what to do feels like signing and initialing 200 pages of forms to buy a car or a house.

The first edition does not have any of those concepts. The game never even had a rule for ability checks, though some now do since they were commonplace back then. What do you do? You come up with an idea. You do it. The referee says what happens. The amount of rulebook interaction with that sequence is minimal to none, and it is kept that way for a reason.

I was already moving in this direction, going back a few D&D editions, to 3.5, to 2nd, and finally, back home in AD&D first edition, and the modern retro-clones of this game. In my opinion, the classic Adventures Dark & Deep system is the best.

D&D is a loop from the first edition to the fifth. The true sixth edition is the first one, and I have wrapped around and returned to what I love.

For me, 6th Edition D&D is First Edition AD&D....

ADAD vs. OSRIC

OSRIC vs. ADAD?

What is the difference?

Game-engine-wise, there is not that much of a difference. There may be a few things around armor vs. weapon types, initiative, classes, spells, numbers, and other fiddly bits - but the core game engines are the same. 

There is a minor difference in the combat engine being more streamlined in ADAD vs. OSRIC, and I prefer ADAD's streamlined combat which integrates weapon speed much better. The fact weapon speed it directly tired into initiative means the system Gygax wanted us to have (with speed factor) has been implemented in a way that does not seem like a penalty, and it is easy to manage and use. I would use ADAD's combat system with OSRIC, most likely.

The modules work the same, monsters work the same, spells work the same, and they are 99% compatible. Either OSRIC or ADAD is a solid choice.

The significant differences are in options, and the most considerable differences are in the new skill system and the classes available. To begin, OSRIC's class list is as follows:

• Assassin
• Cleric
• Druid
• Fighter
• Illusionist
• Magic User
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Thief

ADAD has all of those, plus:

• Bard
• Jester
• Skald
• Cavalier
• Blackguard
• Vates
• Mystic
• Barbarian
• Savant
• Acrobat
• Mountebank

The ADAD Darker Path expansions add:

• Witch
• Necromancer
• Demonolater

What sells me on ADAD over OSRIC is having a first-edition bard and barbarian class, plus many more to explore and play with. If you don't need those, keep your life simple and play OSRIC. If you have 5E players wanting more class options and choices, then ADAD is the better game.

ADAD is the "more stuff" game, reflecting the first edition at the end of its lifecycle when it was expanded and fully matured. OSRIC was the game when it started, with just the first three books.

Me? I will go for the "more stuff" since I played AD&D back in the day, and I have campaigns that will use those new classes. The only thing missing is new race selections and more modern designs, but I can create these with Grok 3 and beta them myself.

ADAD typically expands every area it explores, from spells, equipment, strongholds, and weapons—it is all more and expanded. Is "more" better? You need to answer that for yourself.

For those wanting an easier and more streamlined game, playing OSRIC will be the better choice since the options and choices are just the classic selections. Both are on my shelves. ADAD is the apparent "more stuff" game, so it keeps me busy exploring new options. OSRIC will always be my "Old School Essentials" version of the first edition.

ADAD has a skill system where you "pay XP" to get non-combat profession-like skills for your character. This is a more in-depth roleplaying style character improvement than OSRIC. Again, this falls into the "more stuff" theme of the game, and if you don't want that extra system, stick to OSRIC.

There is an OSRIC argument for "keeping it simple" and only focusing on the original first-edition content. From this point, you could expand the game and keep your core experience as streamlined and narrowly focused as possible.

Myself?

Both games are on my shelf, alongside my first-edition books. They all support each other.

ADAD does things the best, for me.

ADAD: A Strange Excitement in the Air

I don't know what it is about Adventures Dark & Deep that has me pumped up; I haven't been this excited about a game in a long while. On the surface, it is a first-edition retro-clone, only a bit crunchier and in-depth.

There isn't that much to buy for it either. I have all the books, and the print versions are coming here.

What is it about this game? I swear it has an "it factor," that psychic feeling I get about a game before it gets big. Granted, the Kickstarter for this wasn't astronomical, but the game has the pedigree and a designer knowledgeable in the game and subject.

I can't wait to play this.

If I look back, AD&D was always a game I liked. And yes, GURPS did replace it. That story of Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, and the world's lore. My problem is that 5E feels like "false lore" in my experience, the "video game version" of a world I once knew. All the powers saved and the effects of magic spells are done on 6-second turns, and in AD&D, some of these durations were minutes. If you were hit by a charm or hold person spell, that was it - this was not being "thrown off" the next turn.

5E is even more of a video game than 4E was, and the entire game is built around the "six-second combat clock." This turn-by-turn game is not classic D&D or AD&D but pen-and-paper video gaming.

With ADAD, I am finally looking back into these worlds as I knew them back in the day. Sure, I could always play them with Old School Essentials or even Castles & Crusades, but those are a few steps removed from what I remember.

ADAD, being based on a first-edition framework, hits differently. It has an authenticity to it, and I felt I was missing. It feels low-magic when, by all accounts, it shouldn't.

And this isn't the second edition, where the power-gaming splat books flowed like wine, and all the GMNPCs were unkillable. In our first-edition game, Elminster felt vulnerable and weak and needed care and caution when approaching a problem. He was over 500 years old and a 26th-level magic-user by the rules and the original campaign book. By the rules, he will have 50-60 hp. He needs to use cloth armor; even with all that magic, he is still fragile.

We never saw him as a problem since the AD&D rules put a cap on his power. He could still lose initiative and get hit with an arrow of slaying. He is so old that his system shock and resurrection chances will be low. Many evil factions want him. His physical scores are not that high, so he is slow, weak, and frail.

Even if "he was touched by the gods," he should have been "called back home" long ago because he sets a negative precedent for the game world. Because Elminster exists, N+1 unkillable GMNPCs exist. This all started in AD&D 2nd Edition when the power gaming crept in.

How do you fix the GMNPC problem in the Forgotten Realms?

How about playing by the rules in the book?

And not "touching characters by the gods" to the point they become superheroes? Everything has a cost, and life only lasts so long - even by the rules in AD&D, which put a cap of 120 years on humans.

If you have unkillable GMNPCs, you are probably not playing by the rules in the book, making some ridiculous decisions as a referee, and not increasing the cost of benefits granted to characters. Like a credit card, those referee-granted boons have a price, and the bill comes due someday. For him to be over five times his age, where he would generally be "called home by the gods to serve as the Celestial Librarian," he has to have some severe limits on his actions and significant limitations to his magic.

Characters who become living gods get called home.

The world is for mortals.

And if push came to shove, I would have ruled that for our Realms campaign for all PCs who got above the 20th level. You are summoned to the "Hall of Heroes" or the "Lair of Infamy," you do planar adventures all day, but you aren't allowed to wreck a world made for mortals. Even Dragon Lance's setting said that if you got above a certain level, you were removed from the mortal world and sent elsewhere.

I don't care how many books the character sells; encouraging this isn't good for the game. But, again, when we followed AD&D rules for this world, we never had a problem with these NPCs. Follow the rules for magic by the book, and you realize "casting a wish spell while in combat" will not happen. In AD&D 2nd Edition, we saw the problem.

And it feels like they took the GMNPC syndrome of unkillable, overpowered, and insufferable characters and built 5E to be that game. If you are playing a game with unkillable GM NPCS, you are either not playing by the rules, fudging your rolls, or playing 5E.

If you have unkillable PCs or NPCs in your game or have been playing for years and no character has died, you are not playing the game by the rules.

Or you are playing 5E.

I swear, this is why some kids could not handle the game in the 1980s. They got too invested, and it is just like getting too invested in Monopoly and flipping the board if you see yourself losing. Now, all of 5E caters to the "flip the board" crowd, and they encourage investing yourself in the game to a point where it causes health issues.

This is why cheating the game, fudging rolls, or breaking the rules isn't good. It ends up destroying your world. Your world has a finite amount of legitimacy and authenticity. Letting characters like Elminster turn into GMNPCs and unkillable problem-solvers and the hero who steps in and says, "Let us handle this," like the Avengers, makes you look like a terrible referee and destroys your world.

The first edition feels like this is the other path. The other way to go. A game where superheroes don't rule the multiverse. A game where normal people rise to be heroes, grow old, build strongholds, retire, and begin the next generation of heroes again. A game where even the powerful feel vulnerable.

Gods are gods, and mortals are mortals.

In a first-edition world, everyone dies from a short, heroic life or old age in their stronghold as they pass the kingdom. The rules help tell the story of the world, not just one character.

The focus on "me and my power" in 5E is the fundamental flaw of the game.

ADAD feels like I could return to our original version of the Realms and explore that world again without all the drama and power-gaming. The same goes for Greyhawk or any other classic setting. Could I do this with OSRIC or even the original first-edition rules?

I could.

I was already moving in this direction with OSRIC. This is still a highly legitimate first-edition game, especially for those who do not want changes to the core system. OSRIC is the first edition's Old School Essentials. ADAD expands upon the game as part "what if" and part "what could be?"

ADAD just accelerated where I was headed.

Dice: Roll 4 Initiative: Diffusion Volcanic Blast

What a nice set of dice.

https://role4initiative.com/products/diffusion-volcanic-blast-fc

These are the Roll for Initiative 15-die sets, and they come with:

• 3d4 (Arch'd4)
• 4d6
• 2d8
• 2d10
• 1d00
• 1d12
• 2d20

The dice are also 20% larger than regular polyhedral dice, so they are high-visibility and roll well. I like that they come with multiples, like the 4d6 needed to do the 4d6 and drop the lowest character creation method.

We get 2d8, 2d10, and 2d20.

The only die we have is the d12, but I rarely need more than one.

Of interest are the Arch'd4 dice, which are shaped like little doors or tombstones but with opposing rounding on each side, so they can only land on four faces with the number on top. I loathe regular d4 dice, and these are a fun addition to my collection that will make playing rogues with daggers fun again. I can pick these up without shoving them against something, using the stickiness of my skin, or getting a fingernail under a corner. We get three of these dice, so we can roll a 3d4 roll easily.

The d20s are also numbered, so adjacent five-face groups add up to 52 or 53, the Balnce'd20 design. This ensures a more even distribution of results (as they say). I am very superstitious about my d20 dice and if they are rolling right, so any reason to blame them for being strangely off from the biased-high results I expect is reasonable. I swear, we are at the point where people will say they are broken if we ever have unbiased dice. Roll them well, shake them in your hand, or use a dice tower. Never "pick up and throw."

The contrast and readability are very high, with the lettering being very high-contrast but not overly bold.

The dice are more expensive than average sets because they come with so many and are of a larger size. This is really "all the dice you need," though that statement is a lie to myself.

Old School Essentials in 2025

When I was on the Labyrinth Lord bandwagon, Old School Essentials was the hot newcomer, replacing everything as the hobby's old-school standard bearer.

I even have my original books!

These days, it feels like Shadowdark took all of OSE's steam. Any significant outflow from D&D will create its own market due to the size of the D&D market and the smaller sizes of every other game. Shadowdark, with a few percent of D&D players moving over, will steamroll any other OSR game.

OSE is still out there; it is just that Shadowdark came in with a small percentage of 5E players and blew out everyone's numbers. OSE players are sticking with OSE, but there is a flood of Shadowdark players in the OSR market.

Shadowdark is in the top spot, and there is a good reason for this. With very little explanation, you can play this with any 5E player; everyone knows what is happening and how to play. I have seen this happen. I will play this with others with zero-prep, and they can join in without a book, needing to read rules or taking time to understand differences and significant sections of books.

Some with OSE Kickstarters say things are slow. Things will slow down this far into the game version, and attention will be elsewhere. Shadowdark may have taken some of OSE's steam, but I see Shadowdark more as a 5E alternative than an OSE alternative.

Still, Shadowdark has a hefty amount of "play design" baked into the system, like the torch timers and other aspects of the rules that focus the experience. The game was designed to be played one way and exceedingly well with the "fun baked in." The game is closer to a board game than a roleplaying game, and that is its charm.

OSE is more of a rules reference to a B/X style of game. The "design" was done long ago, and the source game matters. If you enjoy the play of B/X, you will enjoy OSE.

Shadowdark is 5E to me. The only other game in the "5E Lite" space is Tales of Argosa. This is another game to watch in 2025, and it is amazingly crafted and full of charts. The entire book is a campaign generation system, and it borrows many great ideas from other games, along with coming up with a few great new ideas of its own.

As players move away from 2024 D&D, Tales of the Valiant will immediately surge into relevance again because a large player base is moving over.

I suspect ToV will have a significant upswing this year as an alternative to the controversial and divisive 2024 D&D. I have ToV in my garage, with the rest of 5E. I am not in the mood for the system or needing computerized character sheets that don't support all the options I want.

Still, ToV is a worthy, supported system, and if you want to leave Wizards, it is worth your time.

I miss OSE. This is still the standard bearer in the world of B/X, though many equally great games compete for that spot. OSE tends to be "dry" in some places because it is first a reference guide. The fighter class is very dry unless a few optional rules are used; even then, other games give us fighter classes that can do a lot more and have bonuses above and beyond what B/X allows.

The OSRIC fighter gets multiple attacks against lower hit-die monsters, high-level multi-attacks, weapon specialization, and even double specialization. Where B/X does fighters plain and a bit flat, OSRIC has a Gygaxian design baked in from years of play experience and feedback.

B/X can be overly simplified at times, where it becomes either too easy or too deadly. A more detailed system like GURPS or Adventures Dark and Deep will give me the detail and granularity I want to model a situation with more realism. Sure, you are facing 8 goblins with short bows with your AC 4 and 6 hit-point fighter character in plate mail. They have a 17+ to hit, right? In ADAD, short bows are -4 to hit against plate mail. This is the difference between a character's death and not having one.

Even 5E's advantage/disadvantage rule is far too simple and a "hammer for every problem" to simulate this situation and possibly make for a very cool, character-defining, memorable moment in the game.

Swords & Wizardry is a good example. With the expansion books, S&W can completely replace 5E for many groups while delivering a solid AD&D-like experience. S&W replaces Castles and Crusades for me, despite how much I love C&C. The fighters in S&W are also fun, with them getting the damage and hit bonuses from STR, and the other classes do not.

OSE is currently drowning in a sea of fantastic options. I don't see it being "replaced" as the "gold standard" version of B/X. The game still has many of the best "race as class" options in gaming. The books are compact, dense, highly-referenceable, and easy-to-use gems of gaming goodness. OSE is also highly deadly and harsh, with multiple PC deaths per session in low-level games.

OSE also beats Shadowdark in many areas. The game is more expansive and covers more ground regarding overland encounters, hirelings, strongholds, and the classic B/X experience. You have a lot more race, class, and spell options. You are not dealing with torch timers or darkness rules.

You lack healing at low levels, especially with clerics not having a first-level spell. Also, characters die at zero hit points; there are no rules for unconscious characters. Again, OSE was written as a reference guide for B/X-style gaming, so it tends to be harsher, and even OSRIC and ADAD are a lot softer on player death, allowing bleeding out to -10 hit points. Swords & Wizardry and Labyrinth Lord are as harsh as OSE, with death at zero.

Shadowdark is also very "board game-like," with the initiative roll and movement happening in real-time and never entering a narrative mode if played by the rules. OSE is the better choice if you want a looser theater-of-the-mind play style.

It feels strange to say this, but if you want a less lethal game, especially versus OSE, LL, or S&W, play OSRIC or any other AD&D variant (like ADAD).

OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord have healing at low levels (clerics get a level one spell at level one). OSRIC /ADAD gives bonus spells for high wisdom for clerics. A WIS 14 and higher will give a cleric three first-level spells, which could be all healing spells. Clerics in AD&D games are potent allies and beat the armored greaves off of their OSE, LL, and S&W counterparts. Magic Users do not get the bonus spells since they will reap the benefits they earned if they survive to a high level.

I swear, the cleric bonus spells of the first edition are there for a reason, and every version of D&D past 2nd and every version of B/X just don't understand why. The first edition rules gave clerics those extra slots for healing boosts, which in turn increases party longevity, which in turn increases fun at the table.

OSE is still a solid choice for a more straightforward game with a quick reference. You could always mod in the -10 hp rule from OSRIC and have the best of both worlds.

Would I play OSE instead of Shadowdark? Yes, OSE has more options, especially if I am playing solo. Online? No, since I can find far more 5E players willing to try Shadowdark and interested in the game. OSRIC gets so many things right that it is tough to consider games from the B/X genealogy when I have a first-edition game and a wealth of expansions to play.

I hate comparing OSE to OSRIC, but that game "the game is based on" matters. If you enjoy B/X more, OSE is your game. First edition games have rules, complexity, and depth.

Gygax made critical changes and needed rule fixes for the first edition (for fun, depth, and balance) that B/X games ignore. As a "base for other games," B/X works well since designers will put their own spin on the rules. As a stand-alone game, the as-written B/X rules need house ruling or an extra layer of interpretation.

Also of note is the fantastic Adventures Dark and Deep, which takes the first edition in a new and unique direction. I am devouring and enjoying this new version quite a bit, and it builds on my love of OSRIC and the first edition. ADAD is becoming one of the games I am most excited about this year.

OSE still is on my most-played shelves, will never be put in the garage, and remains a fixture of my inspirations today. OSRIC remains more my "flavor" of a d20-based game, but it doesn't take anything away from the streamlined simplicity of OSE. Shadowdark remains more of a 5E-based board game and a 5E replacement for me, while OSE remains superior for exploration and campaign play.

ADAD: Expansion Races

Expansion races for first-edition games are a little tricky to find. For one reason, the game's focus was never on the spectacular races, such as people playing as merpeople or dragon-kin, and the base races were great.

The "fantastical" races introduced in D&D 3.5E and D&D 4 were Wizards trying to compete with World of Warcraft, and we saw a plethora of human-like races added to the game. We also saw the planar nepo-babies of the Tieflings, and Aasimar added to the game, and these soon became default choices for many, making humans, elves, dwarves, and others "boring choices."

One Pathfinder 1e book even had a "race designer," which I thought was imaginative, but it fell flat since the world is a history and collection of races, and coming out of left field with a race of half-alligator half-turkey people with diva wings drove me insane.

One exception is the AD&D 2E book, The Complete Book of Humanoids. It is not too hard to back-port this to a game like ADAD, and it does include level limits for each race. You get about 20 here, and it is a good value if you want a monstrous PC in an earlier edition of the rules. Rules for monsters as PCs were very thin in the first and second editions.

Something tells me to keep the default race selections as-is and force people to have fun within a more constrained and average starting set of options. Still, I wonder about some of the modern assumptions that make Tieflings and Aasimars "default human" like they were more cosplay options than something akin to a "roleplaying condition" and "story element" for the character.

And I see Tieflings and "children of gods and humans" much differently. These conditions can happen to anyone; a dwarf can be a child of the gods, and a halfling can be twisted with infernal blood. We don't need "races" for these, which are mostly cosplayer human artwork, and these special situations should belong more in the character's story and background and never be codified into game rules with rules that apply the same to all.

Did your character have infernal blood in their family? You can go through life and have nothing happen because of it. If you encounter a source of infernal power, you may grow horns you need to live with for the rest of your life, complete with the reactions people will have to you (good, bad, or they run in fear). Same with claws, wings, demon traits, hooves, special attacks, and any other power a referee can add to your character sheet.

The same goes for god powers. Hercules was a normal human with high strength. If appropriate, the referee can add "special powers" and allow "god-like feats" at any time in the adventure. If one becomes a permanent addition to your character sheet, like the daughter of a love goddess getting a 1/day charm person power, guess what? Or if Hercules gains his godly 18/00 STR as a godly boon for holding back a collapsing dam above a village? That is what happens.

It will depend on the story if and how they manifest.

The referee will "call it and add it" to the character sheet.

Trust your referee more than you do the West Coast game designers. I don't need several pages of rules or dedicated character options on a computer-generated character sheet for this. I don't need to "buy rules" to have these character options.

How do you play "monsters" then? You take them from the bestiary, start them with those statistics, and then tack character levels on them. My succubus bard? She begins at 6 HD, 1d6 extra hp for her class, the powers listed in the book, and gets one level of bard to start her music career. She is now a 7-HD creature, but who cares? Let her play taverns, steal souls, and level up as usual. The human paladins representing the PRMC will be by after a few shows.

And oh, do I love the human-only paladins of ADAD. They are almost bad-guy "good-guys" with their righteous order, purging the land of slightly questionable evil and slight corruption. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Have a character turning slowly into a maralith? Well, that had 7-HD, so the complete transformation isn't happening until level seven, but we do have a list of powers in the monster to give to that character throughout the campaign in the monster entry. I see about ten special abilities, a snake tail, multiple arms, some defenses and weaknesses, and many other powers that can be handed out as the transformation manifests. One night, you have nightmares, and now you have a snake tail instead of legs.

Is someone turning into a vampire or lycanthrope? Same story. Dole out powers, and unforeseen things happen. The last night was a full moon, and villagers are dead, and you have no memory of anything that happened. This is how we did it in the old days! No game designers or Backerkit projects are needed! We don't need books filled with AI art or text, either.

Imagine a world like that.

I don't need a unique book of rules, a Kickstarter, paying a few hundred dollars for the collector's edition, or even the base game to support this. I don't need to wait years to be let down because no online character creators support these options. I have an imagination, you know. If I am a player, I can work this out with the referee, propose it, and have it play out.

Yes, 5E players, you don't need to buy books to have cool things happen!

Also, if someone really wanted to play a gnoll in a game, we just flip to the entry in the bestiary, give them those powers, start them with 2d8-HD, and tack on a class level. All monsters will have a set of classes, maximum levels they can reach, and multiclass options, but guess what? Work those out with your referee. If you want a gnoll ranger thief, set the ranger to a max level of 6 (centaurs can be ranger 8, so I say a little under that potential) and add an unlimited cap thief class there. We are done! They are a 3rd level character at first level, so consider that.

And yes, this article starts as a "where to get them" thought exercise and ends as a DIY article. You can't find many great sources of 1e expansion races these days, and most require you to do them yourself. You could buy a 5E book, like the ToA race guide, as an inspiration, but your creations for the first edition will be much more integrated into the multi-class system of first-edition than the "generic races" of 5E will have you believe. Books like this aren't "one-stop shops" since you will still need to do some design work to make them work correctly in a 1e framework.

This book has a "transformer" race of car people that would rate a first-edition monster at least 10 to 20 HD, yet the 5E "all must be the same" lens makes them first-level, 1-HD creatures. This "it is all the same-ism" mental plague infects most 5E products and removes you from reality.

Ask yourself, what monster is this race most like? Then, go from that starting point. You don't need to artificially weaken something to make it like everything else. Have faith in your game design skills.

Doing them ourselves is how we did it in the past before the Internet taught us how to do it.

We sat in our bedrooms, opened our books, and did what we thought was "cool" and "fun" for our game. What we created was "right," and the game was ours.

ADAD: It Morphs Into My Game

I wrote down house rules from our past AD&D games this morning, and it hit me.

Any first-edition game you play will become "your game" after a while.

Granted, this is also likely true for any B/X game; we did house rule those back in the day, but this is very true for any first-edition RPG since they are so fiddly and have lots of little parts to set and tweak. OSRIC, AD&D, and ADAD all qualify, and you have tons of little settings in here, from hit points, racial level limits, allowed races and classes, and so many other things to tweak to your liking. B/X did not have that much to tweak, so we more-or-less played it as-is.

As I write down house rules, any first-edition game becomes mine increasingly.

And I remember the game we had, and it was highly tweaked and tuned to our liking. This wasn't your usual "mix of B/X and AD&D" but a vastly expanded game with pages of house rules, tweaks, classes, monsters, spells, adjustments, weapons, powers, and so much more.

With Wizards of the Coast, the design mentality is "you all will play the game our way." Sure, there has been a lot of homebrewing in every modern version of D&D since 3.0, but the game's mentality is set to a default of "only what is in the official books is legal play."

Even the new edition focuses more on "mechanics and rules" than "you and the act of playing a role-playing game." This is a huge loss for the game. People don't play because of mechanics; if they do, they will play Pathfinder 2. Crunchy, mechanical editions drive players away.

The design of D&D has become heavy, with intricate subclasses defining character power, and those subclasses "level up" and get increasingly complicated. The longer I play 5E, the more books I collect, and the more complex the game is. It gets to such a point of obese overreach that the game is impossible without referencing a dozen books from the company and third parties.

With every 5E book, Kickstarter, or crowd-funded book I buy, my 5E game becomes less mine and more theirs. This is the fundamental difference between today's games and the ones we played.

5E is a game where you will never own your game. There is no investment or attachment.

Could I house rule 5E? I have.

Will I? No, there is too much to buy. I own too much stuff.

I never needed to house rule 5E. I bought a version of the game that worked for me. The framework of 5E puts you in a dependency relationship with the company that makes the game. You don't need to house rule; you have enough stuff! Look at all this stuff! I have more books than three lifetimes of stuff!

When I have eight shelves of 5E books, why house rule?

Here comes another Kickstarter for another 5E book; I do not need to be creative or imaginative. I need to be a good consumer and pay for the next thing. The new edition does not include monster design rules; they tell you to buy theirs.

I have one book for OSRIC, AD&D, or ADAD. The first edition is more of a simple framework, and the game has room for my ideas. I am not overwhelmed by 5E's rules, subclasses, multi-class exploits, relationships, and all sorts of action economy or cross-class issues.

But the first edition is designed to house-rule. I started a page here with my thoughts, preferences, and optional rules. I will improve, tweak, and test them as I play so they will get better. This set of house rules will grow and be my investment into my game - making it mine. If things are broken, I will fix them. If things are blah, I will drop them. If things work great, they will be kept. It is just like getting into the hobby of modding games like Skyrim; it makes the game yours.

The characters are simple.

The classes are simple.

The races are simple.

The rules are simple compared to 5E. If I want the easiest, I will go with OSRIC. If I want some of the modern classes, I will go with ADAD. I have both books, and they are nearly identical regarding the engine.

The game is built to mod.

The game will become yours, given time.