The Air is Out of the 5E Market

I hear reports of DM's Guild creators' monthly revenue dropping to 1/10th of last year's monthly revenue. Part of this is due to the release of the revised 5.5E edition, which led people to buy that instead of add-ons for what they already had. Additionally, buyers are reading the new books. They are either not interested in add-on content or are concerned about compatibility, which is causing them to hold off on add-on purchases.

Reports of D&D 5.5E not flying off the shelves to the level of a Daggerheart are also concerning. Daggerheart is selling like hotcakes, with physical books and cards sold out, and it is being well-received across the hobby. Daggerheart is the narrative heir to the D&D throne, and the best place for D&D's current crowd of 'story gamers' to migrate to.

People are still waiting for a 5E Kickstarter to reach $1 million, which some say has not happened in a while.

Even the Tales of the Valiant Player's Guide 2 is a slow build towards the stretch goals. I love this game; this is my final version of 5E, and the level of support and compatibility is excellent. Going forward, ToV is my 5E, and I am done with Wizards. 

The air is out of the entire 5E market. The market is still huge, but it is slowly dying. 5.5E was the "mid-cycle console refresh" that never lived up to the first console's initial launch, since people already "have that" and won't move unless something new is brought to the table. Those who feel "left out" by the mid-cycle refresh walk away and try new things, opting to skip the investment in a marginally better experience and deciding to wait for an authentic "next gen" experience.

Daggerheart is the Nintendo handheld that comes along and takes the steam out of the mid-cycle launch.

This has likely sealed D&D 2024's fate as a minor release and pushed up the release date of D&D 6E. A company that is close to Wizards can't "print a fantasy game with cards" and perform better than D&D. The logical outcome of this is, "D&D needs a new version, with cards, today!" I give 2024 D&D three short years before it is replaced by the new, "card-based" D&D 6, which will be as well-received as D&D 4 was, since that was card-based too. I doubt their current team knows how to build a game like that, as there seems to be a severe skill shortage within D&D's design team.

And you see this "experience game" design all across the hobby these days, role-playing games being shipped as boxed sets with tons of components (thanks, tariffs), and a "toyification" of the entire hobby.

Shadowdark has the rules simplicity that D&D needs, and this game has also taken a good amount of air out of the 5E market. It also plays like a board game, almost like a D&D version of Monopoly, with tight, phased movement on the map, every turn. I can hand someone a character sheet, and they can learn the game in a few minutes. It doesn't require a high school education to understand Shadowdark, and that is a good thing since your target market gets much younger.

D&D 2024's 200-buck buy-in, with over a thousand pages of reading, puts the game in the collector's market. It is a luxury item, a book of art that also serves as a game. Both Shadowdark and Daggerheart stay in the sixty-dollar range for the complete game, and Daggerheart even comes with cards.

Shadowdark is like that console with the great JRPGs that hardcore players play on to get their fix, and ignore that mid-cycle refresh since it offers nothing new. In Shadowdark's case, the fix is almost a horror-game level of tension and tactical immersion.

With top designers of D&D jumping ship and heading to competitors, this feels like the Pathfinder 1e era all over again.

Off the Shelf: Numenera

In Numenera, characters explore the ruins of the past and discover wonders to help build a better future. - Numenera Destiny, page 4.

As I'm pulling out my Cypher books, I will bring Numenera out of storage and onto a shelf for a while. This is an extraordinary, speculative, almost "lost Earth" sort of setting, a billion years in the future, where the world (and universe) has suffered multiple civilizational collapses.

This is one of the best science fantasy settings out there, not necessarily a Dying Earth dystopia (but it can be), but more of a strange, nanotech, super-science, living world, nightmare, bio-goo, AI-infused, mutational, psionic, oddly technological, energy-manipulated, genetically engineered, dimensionally travelling, broken networked, lost stellar, future world filled with who-knows-what and what-the-heck-is-that everything and strange we-have-no-clues.

The setting can be post-apocalyptic, quasi-medieval, weird horror, or a hopeful new world. Or all of them at once. It's similar to Gamma World, but not exactly. Gamma World is more D&D in technological dungeons with gotcha technology that can kill you for no reason, plus robots and mutants. Additionally, the setting assumes you are rebuilding society, rather than accumulating personal power.

There is an open question: we are in the Ninth World, the previous destroyed eight times over, so what is the point? Considering this world may never be destroyed again, that is the hopeful outcome you will be a part of. If not, you have a hundred million years to figure that out.

Numenera is more of a massive setting with any flavor you want. Start small, initially, with just a town and some ruins, and gauge your interests and those of your players. Figure out the ruins, the local bad guys, some locals, maybe some points of interest, a few places down the road or coast, and the stories you want to tell. Start with more minor, personal conflicts, and then gradually grow your scope.

Give the players a few memorable and worthy places and NPCs! You could create a town and place a holographic cabaret at its center, making it a popular spot for both travelers and locals. This place has been here since the city's inception, and no one knows how or why it works; it simply seems to function continuously. After you get player interest, draw them in with a few mysteries and unexplained messages that the holographs begin to give the players, sending them on quests around the area. Perhaps it will stop one day, and the characters will need to fix it or replace the power source. Let them make it their own. If they love the place, send them on quests to repair, upgrade, or improve it.

In these post-apocalyptic settings and games, there is often "no reason to care" about a harsh world with no hope. Numenera gives you plenty of tools and reasons "out of thin air" to get players to care and hook them in. Use them. Combine fantasy and unexplained technology. Give them a mental cry for help. Have monsters form out of goo. Let them discover an android trying to paint a painting with no brushes, paint, or canvas, and not realizing there is nothing there to work with. What happens when the characters give the android something to paint with? Can they talk to it? Will it respond if it finishes a real painting?

This is a better game than Gamma World, as it offers an extraordinary experience. It fills that "mutants and mayhem" itch, while presenting a system of rules where anything can be created by the referee, since the underlying Cypher System is capable of inventing almost any challenge or monster out of thin air. We don't need "product identity" since we can create it ourselves.

Gamma World tends to be either "primitive villagers in a high-tech nightmare dungeon" or "a medieval world with mutants and plant people visiting the ruins." There typically isn't a "bigger picture," and the game trends towards the D&D "increase my personal power over all else." Gamma World is also very loot-oriented. Once you get that 6d6 laser rifle and a stock of power cells, a set of good power armor, and a few energy grenades, you are set to start fighting warbots.

This is also the point at which many campaigns typically end. Back in the day, we were kids, and we did not have many more stories than "get loot, get power." Numenera is a longer-term campaign, more focused on narrative, worldbuilding, exploration, and story than treasure and personal power. These days, I am far more interested in story than mechanics.

That personal power thing is also D&D's Achilles' Heel, especially the newer versions of the game. If you are not interested in that "character build," then you are likely not interested in 5E at all.

If your imagination fails you, the game features three amazing bestiaries, plus a few dozen additional creatures in the core book. There is no lack of interesting, strange, "we have never seen that before" foes in this game. And you could reskin and mod all these, too, or pull monsters in from the Cypher System or the Strange games (and those two bestiaries). Five monster books? Go to town.

Numenera is a fantastic game, with one of the best science fantasy settings ever devised for creating your own stories, ruins, monsters, peoples, and places. It goes beyond your typical "mutants and mayhem" style of dungeon-first ruin crawls, and it world builds and gives you a vast space to create stories within. The game can be too imaginative for some, and I wish more people would play and appreciate this one.

What brought this game back to my mind was Daggerheart and the "you create your own world" starting point. Where that game falls short is that you are still in a fantasy system, and your concepts, magic, spells, and powers are all "sort of D&D-ish." You don't get to play with lasers, robots, technology, teleporters, bio-monsters, power first weapons, or any cool science fiction devices and technology. You don't have hover bikes, submersibles, high-tech wetsuits, jet-skis, hover-boots, concealment cloaks, space ships, hover platforms, mutants, cyborgs, androids, or AI computers with nano-bots.

You are still stuck in that D&D fantasy world.

Numenera gives you all that and more.

Off the Shelf: Cypher System

https://www.montecookgames.com/store/product/cypher-system-rules-primer/

This never got taken off the shelf, but it sat there for a while while I sorted through my games and started reducing the number I keep out. Monte Cook helped develop the modern version of the "d20 system," and this is his answer and ultimate version of the concept:

• Everything boils down to a d20 test.
• Players rely on pool resources.
• Difficulty can be bid down based on resources, skills, and pool expenditures.
• There is a meta-currency of XP exchanged between players and the referee to advance the narrative.
• Resting is tightly controlled to prevent exploitation.
• The referee (GM) is a narrative-focused participant only and does not roll the dice.

The entire system is as if people who have been playing these d20 games their whole lives decided to throw most everything out and boil down the interactions to the most basic and engaging parts. Everything was on the table, and most of it got thrown out, while keeping the best and most interesting parts of character design.

What is my character archetype?

What makes a character different and special?

What does my character do?

A Cypher System character is described in one sentence, "He is a tough soldier who works for a living," and all of the character's statistics and scores are created from that description. It is the most elegant and intuitive character creation system in roleplaying today, and it even beats out the card system of Daggerheart. You don't even need cards, just a few words, and then everything flows from there.

With fantasy kin, you do need to add another descriptive tag in there. "He is a tough elven soldier who works for a living." Or, replace "tough" with "elven;" the system works either way as long as you are consistent. Elven, dwarven, and so on will add a few special abilities and modifications. This is really the only system hack you need to do, if you want.

Daggerheart uses the typical D&D "rules framework" scaffolding, and it still has many crunchy combat and interaction rules. Daggerheart is a rules-medium game, and if you care more about narrative than system crunch, you will be happier with Cypher System than Daggerheart.

And Cypher System's narrative tools are a generation beyond the "shared story structure" of Daggerheart. Where Daggerheart relies on players becoming "temporary referees" in describing the narrative, such as when a player opens a chest and the referee asks, "What do you find in it?" The player can pull a magic sword out if they want, with no cost or price to pay; they just say so, and it happens.

In Cypher System, the referee is in charge of "what is in the chest," but the player is always free to pay 1 XP and trigger a "Player Intrusion" and find that magic sword, and the GM has the final say. The GM is free to give the players 2 XP (1 to the player, and the player decides who the other goes to) and trigger a "GM Intrusion" that complicates the narrative, such as the chest being a mimic or a trap being triggered. Or perhaps the magic sword has a curse that the players must go on a quest to break.

With the Cypher System, there is a currency linked to the narrative, based on an experience point (XP) economy. You pay XP to push things in your favor, or get XP for taking a setback. A critical failure (a d20 roll of 1) triggers an automatic GM Intrusion, with no XP awarded.

Daggerheart is considerably softer than Cypher System on narrative control. There is no narrative currency other than fate and hope points. There are no prices to pay to give yourself "free stuff." The game relies too heavily on goodwill, trust, and people not exploiting narrative powers. Once the referee begins amassing "fear tokens," then tension ramps up as the player's resources are reduced, but resting is far softer in this game.

In Daggerheart, resting generates fear, which seems strange. They limit resting like Cypher System, and you can only do a few things each rest, and must decide what you do. In the Cypher System, you rest, recover pool points, and time passes. The GM does not receive "fear points" or gain resources when players rest; they do not need it. Time is always the enemy; that is a given in both games, but Cypher System handles resting far more elegantly with far more narrative consequences.

Come to think of it, the referee has no tracked resources in the Cypher System. You don't need dice or special trackers. Those are for the players to play with. You focus on the story and the world. Daggerheart caps referee fear at 12, which feels like a lot, and I can see a situation where a GM piles up so much fear it becomes hard to use without piling on the players and having the monsters hog the spotlight.

In the Cypher System, I don't need a bag of "fear tokens" to beat my players over the head with to raise tension. Their characters are constantly spending resources, draining their pools, and burning rests. If you don't allow the players a chance to rest in the Cypher System, or they burn all their narrative resting options, and the ones they have left will consume too much time, then you begin to squeeze your players and raise tension. 

I had a situation where I had a character trapped in the badlands with only a 10-hour rest left, and there was no place to stop and rest without forcing an encounter. They were low on everything, barely hanging on, and had to spend an XP to trigger a Player Intrusion to find a relatively safe spot to stop in. I allowed it, and they recovered some, but not all of their pools, and limped back home the next day, even getting into another combat encounter.

Long rests aren't a "solve every problem" panacea like it is in Daggerheart or D&D.

Cypher System is much better defined in terms of the "cost" of changing the narrative, and the tension is ramped up considerably as your pool resources start depleting. Resting replenishes them, but once you start using those up, you begin to ramp up tension.

Cypher System also solo-plays exceptionally well. Your character exists as your playing piece, and you interact with a story, which you never have to context switch to a pretend referee and roll the dice as. If a GM Intrusion makes sense, it happens, or use an oracle die to see if one happens. You can always pay an XP to opt out.

Rolls of 17 through 20 trigger extra special positive effects for players. Also, only the players roll the dice, and monsters don't "make attacks." A player rolls to make an attack, and the player makes a roll to defend. Enemies never roll the dice.

• 1: GM Intrusion
• 17: +1 Damage Bonus
• 18: +2 Damage Bonus
• 19: +3 Damage Bonus or a Minor Effect
• 20: +4 Damage Bonus or a Major Effect. If points were spent on the roll, they are not expended.

The dicing system and results of the Cypher System are an all-time genius system. Every roll is a surprise. Even a difficulty 1 task can be failed, and it is worth knocking that down to zero to avoid a roll at all. Avoiding rolling at all is a great strategy.

The GM never rolls the dice in the Cypher System and does not even need to do so. Only the players need dice. I played Cypher extensively, and I purposely never had dice on my side of the GM screen. If I needed a 1d100 roll, I asked a player to make one for me. I did not always tell them what it was for, just to give me one. The GM only focuses on storytelling and adjudicating the results of actions, NPCs, and the environment.

Also, the meta-currency of hope and fear in Daggerheart is constantly generated whenever the dice are rolled, and each player tracks a hope total, along with hit points, armor, and stress pools. The referee needs to track a "fear pool." In Cypher System, each character has three ability score pools, XP, recovery rolls, a damage track, and XP is the master meta currency. The meta-currencies are far easier to track in the Cypher System; there are fewer of them, and they are not always constantly changing with every roll.

Which game you prefer will depend on what you like and your expectations.

If you like the D&D rules crunch and trust each other well enough that sharing narrative control will not lead to exploiting the situation, then Daggerheart will be your game. For every D&D rule that Daggerheart throws out, it brings in a new one that is just as fiddly and crunchy to replace it. While it is more narrative-focused than D&D, it is still as filled with "d20 style rules" as the game it seeks to replace. Also, the narrative tools the game gives you are soft, with no "back and forth" between players and the referee.

Daggerheart is still a unique and fun game! Don't get me wrong, I love to see innovation in the hobby. The card-based characters are "Cypher System Lite" and do a good job of getting people playing quickly. The rules have enough crunch to please 5E players. It balances the "D&D style" with the "live play style" nicely. The game is crunchy, with plenty of character optimization, combinations, and fun.

We can't put this game on top of the narrative gaming mountain, though. We have the best narrative tabletop game of all time already, designed by one of the legendary designers in the industry.

If you want a multi-genre game where the crunch is thrown out the window, and every tool in the game serves the narrative, and there is a cost to creating an advantage, then Cypher System will be a better game for you. The game can play any genre, in any world, and has far better tools for building worlds and establishing the parameters of your creations. The Cypher System encompasses a wide range of genres, from science fiction to fantasy, including horror, comedy, romance, action, realism, and any flavor you can imagine.

The character building is far more expressive and in-depth than Daggerheart. Where Daggerheart relies on cards (and selling you more), Cypher System will just give you a new book filled with dozens of new archetype selections, and you will be shocked at what you can build out of them. Even the base book of Cypher System contains infinitely more combinations of character pieces than Daggerheart, with add-on books containing hundreds more that are tailored to each genre.

If narrative is king and you don't want crunch, Cypher System is the clear winner.

Off the Shelf: The Strange

This game, I never expected to pull from storage, but the Tales of the Valiant universe model of the Labyrinth is eerily similar to the infinite, connected worlds concept they present here. The Strange is a strange game, where you can play someone from Earth, an alien, or someone in a fictional universe who "wakes up" and realizes their whole life has been this strange simulation, and things are not really as they seem. You can visit or be any character from any game, movie, TV show, book, or any other product of imagination.

The game is truly "out there" in terms of its scope and the odd, between-the-cracks, strange universe of aliens that inhabit these realms and the forces present in the setting.

The Labyrinth is like that in structure, minus the aliens and between parts - this is just the connected spaces and pathways. But the concept of strange, interconnected, vastly different, and sometimes worlds from fiction are the same. Sometimes these are entire game worlds from other games, such as a D&D world or Pathfinder's Golarion. They will all follow the "home system" of Tales of the Valiant (or 5E), but the concept of interconnected settings through a strange and shifting system of pathways is the same.

Even the fact that worlds can be dreamed into existence is the same, though with the Strange, there is usually a world age involved where they get larger over time (or not). In the Labyrinth, worlds can be destroyed, appear, disappear at will, or stay around forever. They can be of any size. They can just contain a favorite adventure. The inhabitants of these places typically don't know they are in some sort of interconnected world.

Where the Strange comes in is that they have a fantastic system for designing interconnected worlds, worlds from fiction, and other worlds that follow all sorts of different rules. In some worlds, magic may not work normally, or at all. Some worlds have mad science. Some worlds have psionics. Some worlds exist with strange physics, or a set of rules that do not let modern devices work at all. 

Recursions (this is what they call worlds) can have special traits, or even grant foci (special powers) to everyone inside the world, such as a world that grants superpowers. You could have a world where reality gives everyone magic spells and powers.

If you get deep into the Labyrinth and its worlds, picking up a copy of The Strange as a companion book to use for creating worlds is a great idea.

The Strange uses the Cypher System as its resolution engine, and everything is abstracted and given one number as its "power level" - like you may say a monster is Power 5 (but it defends on a 6 and attacks on a 4), and the system figures the rest out. So the system can model longswords and laser rifles just as easily as it does orcs and walking sci-fi battle walkers. In 5E, you will need to create monsters with the ToV system, and then approximate strange weapons and technological items.

The Cypher System is truly an elegant and cool system that can do anything, but with a heavy layer of abstraction. 5E is 5E, very specific and with special case rules everywhere, and you're buying books to fill those gaps. In Cypher System, you can just wing everything and have it work out fine. A heavy laser cannon is a heavy weapon that knocks 2 points of defense off its target if it does not have a "heavy armor" trait. I made all that up, but it works just fine in the game.

The Cypher System is one of those "desert island games" that can entertain you endlessly.

In the Strange, you may step into a world or reality, and it alters your powers and appearance to match what the world is. Your party could be dressed as fantasy heroes in a Medieval world in one reality, step into another, and then become gangsters, private eyes, and gun molls in the 1920s. Your wizard's magic would be converted into powers that match reality, such as those of a mad scientist (if the world supports that).

I wish this game sold better and was more well-known; it is quite the mind-altering trip to play and very fun if your game master is deeply into pop culture.

But using The Strange as an assistant to create worlds and create ideas for the Labyrinth is a great idea. It gets you thinking about what special rules and laws of physics each world has, outside of the standard ToV and 5E rules, and a world based on a science fiction epic or sitcom will have different physics and rules, where some things can and cannot happen in those worlds.

Now, the concepts of creating "world attributes, traits, and foci" in Tales of the Valiant are outside the system, as the game's "reality model" is "everyone acts like a 5E character and the 5E rules are the rules of everywhere in the Labyrinth." If you are a level 14 rogue, you will be one in any world in the Labyrinth, and nothing will touch your powers that much. The base ToV rules will be the same everywhere, unless GM Fiat takes over.

In The Strange, these worlds can change you, introduce special rules, limit magic, give you powers, alter your powers into new forms, or mess with physics. Mitch Buchanan can meet Michael Knight. You can stumble into Alice in Wonderland, and things work in strange ways there. You can visit a world filled with robot life only on a dying world, and everyone in the party becomes robots that are seen to live in that world. You can stumble into GTA 5. You could be playing heroes in the Forgotten Realms. You could find yourself in Conan, Tarzan, or John Carter's Mars. You can care about the interconnected places and plots, or not.

These are cool concepts, worth exploring.

Again, we can do so much more when we abandon the "Wizards' IP" and not limit ourselves to their ideas being superior to yours. Gothic horror is a vast world, encompassing multiple places and being much more diverse, not just Ravenloft.

Break your mind free of the D&D dungeon, and there is so much more out there to do, and games that let you express your imagination much more vividly.

Licenses?

Over the next few days, expect to hear a lot about licensing regarding both Wizards of the Coast and Darrington Press, specifically regarding Daggerheart. People have read the terms, and some have some valid concerns. Wizards have a "Terms of Service" that is located on another site, which is very similar.

Daggerheart is hot right now, and there will be a lot of discussion on this as YouTube creators farm content. But there may be something here, in both cases. Keep an open mind, and while Daggerheart may be a fantastic game, it may not be so great for content creators.

We don't know much more until we get some analysis on this, so take things with a grain of salt and use your head. A lot of this will be clickbait. Some nuggets will be the truth. People will jump in to defend. Others will go on the attack for their own reasons, using this as proof the entire game sucks.

Use your head. Let your morals and sense of right guide you. You can thoroughly enjoy the game, but also ask them to improve and point out some parts that aren't right.

But be fair and try not to get swept up into "side-isms."

This is why I chose Black Flag Roleplaying and Tales of the Valiant. They don't claim any creation of yours or the community is theirs. They created a framework and a license that allow them, as well as third-party creators, to keep their business open and free from entanglements with Wall Street companies. No one can threaten them again, or those who publish under that license. In five to ten years, who will own some of these games? What will the next CEO be like? I'm not going to bet on that, given the track record of the last few years, which we've experienced (and are still experiencing, in some cases).

I support Open 5E, and I can safely ignore every clickbait and outrage video that appears in my recommended list. I am immunized. But I feel for those in the community who are still in that trap.

I supported the OGL creators in the community.

I watched the community, one by one, drop the OGL and walk away. Some still can't walk away. I feel for them, having to stick to the OGL and live in fear.

I support Black Flag and the Open 5E effort. This is our best opportunity to keep 5E free for future generations and those who still enjoy the game today. This also puts food on the table for so many small and indie creators. If a publisher supports their creative community and invites them to the table, then they have my support.

While Pathfinder is not for me, I support Paizo, too, since they were in the same boat and walked away. They made their own license. They deserve support and respect.

If you want a better hobby, start by making informed choices. Informed is the key word here, because there is not always the best information out there.

Daggerheart: Sold Out on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

As I predicted, Daggerheart is now sold out most everywhere, and the eBay market is the last place you can pick up a copy. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are both sold out. I am happy for them, the hobby needed a huge hit this year, on the level of a Shadowdark.

You can still obtain this via PDF on DriveThruRPG, but you won't receive the physical cards. Still, if you really need it, this is a way to go:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/508832/daggerheart-corebook

There aren't many alternatives to this game if you are looking for a more story-oriented game with cards, trinkets, and other tangible assets. One of the closest alternatives I can think of is Savage Worlds. This fantastic game offers an excellent experience for players seeking a pulp-action game with a more narrative-focused approach. This is a solid suggestion for the genre, and many would be happy with this game as an alternative.

Another, even more narrative-focused game, is Cypher System. This one takes more effort to wrap your head around. Still, it does a fantastic job of abstracting everything, making every ability score, the XP system, and the trade between the referee and players a pool of resources that drives the narrative forward. Like Savage Worlds, this is a generic game, and it can handle any genre.

If you want to get away from D&D but want to stay with 5E? Tales of the Valiant is your best bet, mainly due to the high level of support from the publisher, which enables this game to be in the store and on crowdfunding. This isn't a narrative game any more than D&D is. Still, it comes from a solid, ethical company that has the resources to support the game at a higher level than even Wizards, in terms of frequency of core book and adventure releases. Oh, and they let you own your PDFs, too.

Another strong alternative is Dragonbane. If you are into trying new fantasy games, this is a great one. It uses a card system for initiative and treasure, and it has some of the best fantasy art in the hobby. This one is the high-fantasy style of action-combat you are used to, but with a roll-under d20 system, and plenty of iconic character types. This is an easier game than 5E, and is also a great choice for solo players.

Still, there is no replacing Daggerheart for the true fans of Critical Role. For others, we have some great alternatives if you want to take a break from D&D and play a more story-oriented game.

Mail Room: Labyrinth Worldbook PDF

The Labyrinth Worldbook PDF from the Kickstarter dropped today, and wow, there is a lot in this book. We get even more lineages, backgrounds, and heritages. We get a complete "connected worlds" campaign setting. This isn't a "Great Wheel" or planar setting; it provides guidelines on how to achieve all that without needing the game-breaking outer planes scaffolding.

We finally get the Dragonborn as a lineage!

They have suggestions for a few worlds you can visit, but if you want to use this as glue to stick together Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, and Mystara - go right ahead! This is all 5E compatible, too, so you get all sorts of stuff if you are playing D&D 2014 or 2024. Or you can play using Tales of the Valiant, which is what I do, since it is the better-designed set of rules.

And get in on the Kickstarter projects early! You receive the PDFs early, before they are released to the store. There's one for Player's Guide 2 happening now, check the sidebar!

This is an entertaining and imaginative way to "stick together" diverse settings and worlds without needing a planar structure, Spelljammer starships, and all sorts of planar interference, and all these gods running around. If you don't want a world accessible, simply cut it off and say the pathways are broken.

If you have a special campaign world that you'd like to enjoy, such as Arcanis, go right ahead! Create a pathway and an exit point somewhere interesting, and let the party loose. Any third-party world is free to visit using this model, making it a fantastic way to utilize indie campaign settings without committing to a complete game. Arcanis works with either 5E or ToV, driving the action, so play with whatever you choose.

The focus here is on worlds, not planes. I like this better since planes imply there are infinite parallel universes, each with billions of stars, trillions of worlds, and...

Let's just focus on individual worlds, please. I don't care what sort of universe model is out there, sticking them all together, I just want to focus on a cool world, and that is all. They may be all in the same universe, or they may not. Maybe they are all in one time, or spread across all of history. They may be in strange, fragmented realities. Who knows? The structure is the least of what we want to focus on, as it is placed here on a wheel and there on a prime material map.

No, let's just focus on interconnected worlds and adventure.

How they are hung up and placed on imaginary models does not matter.

How we get to them does.

And what we do there is the most important thing.