The Worst Version of Yourself

There is a saying out there that the modern Internet makes you the worst version of yourself. I hear stories of YouTube creators who get pigeonholed into clickbait and outrage videos, and they are fundamentally unhappy because the Algorithm forces them to talk about the same thing day after day, or they lose the Algorithm's blessing and fall off people’s recommendations.

Creative content? Positive? Useful? Thoughtful?

Forget it. The Algorithm demands outrage, hate, narcissism, and the worst versions of ourselves to survive.

This is happening in gaming, too.

I am totally divorced from 5.5E just from the vibe of those books. They have zero to do with heroism. Look at the art in the 2024 Player’s Handbook: characters are rendered bright and flamboyant, often smiling or posing, with reviewers describing the overall effect as superhero-like or almost Fortnite-bright. The grit, dirt, fear, and hardship that used to sit on the page are largely gone. Adventurers look untouched by the world they are supposed to be risking themselves in. That is not wonder or discovery; it is a catalog of cool, self-reinforcing portraits.

The rules push in the same direction. The rules moved ability scores off species (formerly races) and onto backgrounds, so any species can optimize any class without friction. Species lost the cultural and mechanical packages that once gave them weight. Critics have called the result “humans with decorations.” The character sheet process removed traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws. The system declares identity up front and reinforces it, rather than earning it through sacrifice or discovery. Heroic Inspiration (the renamed Inspiration) lets you reroll any die after you see the result, and some class features hand it out on a schedule. Outcomes feel predetermined because the design goal was fewer decisions, smoother progression, and more consistent player power so characters can show off their abilities.

History, culture, and heritage—once huge selling points of a setting or game—are gone or made optional. The Player’s Handbook reframes orcs as nomadic explorers with family depictions rather than the classic threat; the new Monster Manual no longer gives them dedicated entries. Instead, the game intends for orcs, drow, and other humanoids to use generic NPC stat blocks. The Monster Manual condenses lore entries into shorter, more utilitarian blocks. Monsters become less interesting and more interchangeable stat blocks, leaving their uniqueness up to the DM to invent. The game is primarily designed to make its designers look good and to sell you the idea that if you aren’t playing D&D, you won’t look good either. Even the love of the game and hobby feels missing, and the entire presentation feels like a fast-food restaurant at a turnpike rest area. If you put “the worst of the hobby” into a set of rulebooks, they would be D&D 5.5E, as the game reflects the worst parts of ourselves: the self-centered reinforcement, the refusal of real stakes, the erasure of inherited texture, and the constant demand that you perform the current approved version of yourself.

I am buying another shelf-top Christmas tree this year and keeping it lit and on all the way until Christmas. Why? It is what my family did. What does this have to do with the previous part of this article? It is a statement of “I am who I am,” as Popeye used to say. This is me. This reflects my values. This breaks the Matrix. Every day, when I walk by and look at it, it tells me there used to be a better time in my life, and in gaming, too.

And I reject games that appeal to my worst nature. I can be better than this.

Why am I clicking on YouTube to inject anger into myself today, or learn how the latest optimization and rules expansion “totally breaks the game”? Why am I letting people I don’t know tell me I am running the game “all wrong” and that I'll fail unless I listen to them? YouTube is becoming a classic cesspool of toxic negativity designed to break down your self-confidence and personal experience. The Algorithm demands compliance and consumption.

I am done with it.

The games I have out? The ones with real memories behind them. Why would I hold my nose and play D&D 5.5E when I have things here my brother and I loved and played every week? It is a false replacement for what I can actually hold and touch. I have Palladium, Champions, GURPS, OSRIC, and a dozen other great games that still work and aren’t infected by marketing, Internet-ism, or corporatism.

Like my Christmas tree, those games are part of me.

And they reflect me saying “not anymore.”

I won’t be the worst version of myself anymore.

Off the Shelf: Nimble 5e and the Goodman Games 5E Books

As the rest of the 5E books head into the garage, these are the ones staying out.

I have been clearing shelves. The official 2014 and 2024 material is already boxed or going out; the third-party piles that never quite justified the space are next. What is left of “5E” on the wall has to earn its space by being the thing I will actually open when I want to run one of the adventures I already own. Nimble is the system. The Goodman Games 5E books are the adventures.

Nimble is a full game that still speaks 5E. Modules, monster books, and the adventures I already paid for still work. The core is short enough that I can read it again without budgeting an evening. Character options live in one Heroes book instead of a dozen. When I sit down, I don't manage a stack of class engines or hunt for the latest subclass PDF. I open the box, pick up the books, and start. Three actions instead of the action/bonus/reaction patchwork. You roll damage; a 1 misses, and a max hits. Armor reduces incoming damage instead of setting an Armor Class you have to beat. Four attributes, a mana pool, and classes that fit on two pages. None of it is revolutionary on its own. Together, they mean combat doesn't spend most of its minutes on the same roll-and-miss loop I had already decided wasn't worth the library.

Weaknesses? The "soft and roleplay" spells aren't present, but you can always pull them in as scrolls or rituals. Again, for those of us used to 4E, this isn't a problem, since that game minimized the "game-breaking" spells like reading minds, scrying, and detecting lies. If characters are supposed to be combat-focused, let them be combat-focused. These plot-breaking spells have always been an issue in D&D, and I am not sad to see them go.

Detect lies by using your wits and intuition. Charm someone by smooth-talking them. Spy on someone by sending the sneaky rogue. You have the roleplay skills to pull this off; make it an ability score roll, and stop looking for a spell to play the game for you. Sometimes I get tired of the "built-in BS" of D&D, and these spells are one of them, along with the institutionalized "anti-DM" use they introduce into the game.

A game that just focuses on adventure and combat? We have to figure out the problems ourselves? Roleplay still matters? Sign me up.

The Goodman Games books do the other half of the job. Fifth Edition Fantasy, the Original Adventures Reincarnated editions, and the Compendium of Dungeon Crawls volumes—these are the dungeon crawls and classic-style adventures that don't require me to manage a character-option wall before I can start. They work with the 5E rules I still know, and they work with Nimble. When I want to run something, I pull one of these, and the rest of the edition stays in storage.

I have said before that if the lore changes in 5.5E pushed me out, Nimble was one place I could go. That still holds. The practical version is simpler: when I want to run one of the 5E adventures I already have, I keep these books out. The rest of the edition is too much game for the nights I actually get. Too many books, too much time spent on builds and options that never reach the table, too much attention split away from the two games I already like more.

Nimble 5e feels like D&D 4E to me, a game my brother and I loved. We picked it up during a rough stretch and used the tactical fights as an escape: miniatures on the table, positions that mattered, and turns that felt like solving a puzzle together rather than waiting for the next miss. The three-action economy, the way armor reduces damage instead of setting an abstract target, and the emphasis on choices that actually change what happens in a round bring back some of that same tabletop-first energy, without the later-level HP slogs or the library that came with it. It isn't 4E, and it doesn't need to be, but the nights we spent moving figures and thinking about the fight still sit under the surface when I open the box.

It is not exactly 4E, but tactical and fast. It works with my 5E adventures. They won't go to waste. That is a win in my books, especially if the price is the tiny space one box takes up on a shelf. A small game commits far fewer sins than one that takes up an entire shelf.

That keep-test is winning right now. Small enough in practice that it doesn't compete with DCC or Palladium for limited table time, compatible enough that the adventures don't need rewriting or abandoning, and fast enough that 30 minutes of play doesn't require 90 minutes of setup. The rest of 5E can go into the garage. Nimble and the Goodman Games books stay out so I can still play the material I already own.

It is a choice not to let a few beloved books and adventures go to waste.

Small game, easy choice.

Video: How I Finally Left D&D - RPG Philosophy

An excellent video today on mindsets and how we see games. How we get stuck in a frame of mind and can't seem to escape a game or an assumption of what the hobby "is" to us.

Please watch all the way through, subscribe, and like! Positive content like this elevates the hobby, and it helps us grow as gamers.

This is really good stuff; check it out.

GURPS and Champions

Both games sit on the shelves right now, and both earned their spot. They come from the same stretch of years when many of us were done waiting for the next AD&D book to give us what we wanted. Point-buy, disadvantages, 3d6, tools instead of menus. GURPS and Champions (and the wider Hero System) still feel like they were built by people who expected you to finish the design work yourself.

They do not do the same job.

These were created in a special era of DIY roleplaying. Times were different back then, before the Internet and cell phones; days passed slower, and as kids, we could spend an afternoon poring over tables of numbers, adding columns, and using the scientific calculators our moms got us for school to play games with.

They were fun days, and I miss them.

GURPS is the better character builder. The skill list, the advantages and disadvantages, the way a person coheres around what they can actually do and what costs them something—that is still the strongest character system I have. You can dig in for an hour and walk away with a specific person. The setting books remain some of the best overviews out there. When I want gritty, low-fantasy, modern, historical, or just a solid simulation that doesn't break under its own weight, I pick up this game. It has never let me down. Two books still do most of what I need. The rest of GURPS is optional depth, not a requirement.

Champions is the better power builder. It focuses on effects, frameworks, and what makes a special being special. Skills exist, but they are secondary. The system assumes the interesting part of the character is the powers and the limitations that shape them. When the point of the game is high-magic, comic-book energy, or designing abilities that do exactly what you want (down to the area of effect or the trigger), this is the cleaner tool. It handles high fantasy and supers better than GURPS, and it stays coherent at those power levels. GURPS Supers holds up, but Champions was built for that job from the start.

If D&D 4 and 5E are all about powers, then Champions and Hero System can replace them directly. A game that is light on skills, all about powers, and depends on encounter math? That describes every version of D&D ever made, and Hero System was doing that before TSR went bankrupt.

If you see a hero as a person who also happens to have abilities, GURPS tends to win. If you see a hero as someone defined by what their powers do and how those powers interact with the world, Champions tends to win. Both assumptions are valid. Both systems reward the time you put into learning them. Both let you stop waiting for the next crowdfunded book to hand you a half-thought through subclass.

I still reach for GURPS when I want the character work to carry the night, or when the setting books already did half the research, or when I want something that feels reliable across almost any genre. I reach for Champions when the powers are the point of the exercise, and I want the freedom to build them without fighting the system. Low-powered, skill-heavy, interpersonal games still feel more natural in GURPS. High-powered, effects-heavy games still feel more natural in Champions. That is not a flaw in either design. That is why both still have a place.

They share the same era and a lot of the same DNA. Neither one asks you to accept that the designers already decided what a fighter or a mage is allowed to be. Both assume you will do the work. Both have the crunch reputation that comes with that assumption. And both, once you know them, make a lot of modern option-bloat feel unnecessary.

GURPS stays the game I can lose myself in for character design and solid play. Champions stays the specialist for when the special abilities are the center of the table. I enjoy them for different reasons. There is room for both.

Superhero Games

Modern gaming assumes everyone is a superhero, so there is no real reason to play a dedicated superhero game unless you are playing with licensed characters. But I am tired of the licensed IP heroes; they are too overused. We have seen them too many times, and there are zero stories left to tell with them.

Sorry, they're overused and have told every story in the X-Men and Avengers. The Justice League is a worn-out retread tire. Batman is Batman. Spider-Man will forever be a new hero. I don't even want to tell those stories in a roleplaying game. What is the point?

We should be reading about Spider-Man's grandkids' adventures these days, not Peter Parker's 50th reboot. Batman should be dead and buried, and an inspiration for Gotham's newest crime fighters. Same with the villains, and please stop with the cringy "Harley in every group" nonsense. Get rid of her, too.

Seriously, let these humans grow old and die. Replace them. Give me new heroes. Give me new stories. Give me new groups. And not self-inserts or lame characters, more about social media identity and ideology instead of heroism. I want heroes. Those who sacrifice. Those who give toward greater goods. Not self-centered heroes who sit on a couch, order takeout, and talk about their relationships.

I want villains, too. Despicable bad guys who hate society, and not reflections of people the writers don't like on social media. I want real, classic, heinous villains with powers who reflect humanity's seven deadly sins. Give me something biblical, literary, and important.

I have tried many superhero games, and they all failed me. Some only play with licensed characters, and they never change. Others are too lightweight and simplistic. Others are too complicated and simulation-heavy. Nothing touches Champions and Hero System.

Nothing.

Once I learn the system, I can do anything I can imagine. Also, while GURPS would work, Hero System is more focused on powers than skills. Hero System has too few skills, and while I first saw that as a weakness, I now see it as the game's focus and strength. If a game is laser-focused on powers, let it do that, and let's not have a skill list 300 entries long. I don't want a game focused on skills if it is focused on powers and designs.

Yes, the game is dense and requires mastery on both the player and game master side. But these are power tools for superhero roleplaying. Once you get basic competency and learn how the system works, you can do almost anything you can imagine.

The real benefit is that you can replace D&D 5E entirely and create unique, stylistic, power-based fantasy heroes who can do anything you can imagine. Nobody puts you on a level track; you aren't limited to designer-created subclasses, and you can develop any power you want based on your "power source."

If the game is only about powers, give me a game that lets me build anything I can imagine and set me free. This is a basic user versus power-user thing, and how sometimes it is better to start as the power user and save yourself the pain of buying books you later realize are limiting and just taking advantage of your wallet.

Yes, this is different and "not D&D," but who cares? If my necromancer has a death-ray laser finger and a "skull shield" that floats around him, you can't do that in D&D 5E. Maybe I want him to fly on "ghost boots." Go intangible and walk through walls. Summon a laughing skull as a floating attack minion.

Yes, that sounds like a supervillain. But he is unique; there will only be one, and no other necromancer in the world will follow that build. A high-level 5E character will be the same type of character, but stamped out by a prebuilt template. 

My character will be mine.

Someone else will have their own idea of what a necromancer is, and that character will be theirs. A "she-necromancer" may summon an army of skeletons and throw exploding skulls. She has a ghost form and a fear laugh. She is cool, too. Not a subclass build, and you don't need to buy a new book for her to have any of that - just my imagination.

Uniqueness is why you suffer through learning the Hero System.

Why do people go crazy for personal individuality, yet strictly adhere to character conformity?

Laziness over individuality, I guess.

What makes this game even better is the plethora of unique characters in the universe. They are all based on superheroic archetypes, but each is unique, fun, and not what I am tired of. I could kill them all off and start again. I can ignore them all and start with new ones. I am not obligated to have Superman and Captain America running around in my universe. There are no retcons. Characters can die and retire. Villains can be killed or locked away. New characters can appear, heroes and villains. Heroes can fall into infamy and become villains. Villains can redeem themselves and join the forces of good. Others can exist between them, and who knows which side they are on, probably only in it for themselves.

If I ever include IP characters in my game, they will all be just as vulnerable, just as expendable, falling to villainy, or passing the torch.

OSRIC 3: Rediscovering the Game

I was doing a few battles between a level one, level two, and level three party against 1-3 HD creatures, and wow, is this a good game. Taking damage means something! There are no easy rests, so every choice is hard. If I take damage, do I spend a healing spell I may need later for comfort? Or do I save and push forward a bit banged up, but still within my comfort zone to keep going?

Institutionalized resting is one of the worst rule additions we have ever seen in the game's history.

D&D 3 started pushing the video-game mentality hard into the game, with players treating every adventure as a CRPG, where they feel they could "go back to town" every 15 minutes to refresh resources for the next encounter. Adventure writers never pushed the idea that "you get one chance" in the adventure, or that the monsters get reinforcements, ambush the party on the way back, flee, or kill the captives they were trying to rescue.

The game's acceptance of risk-averse behavior destroyed D&D's heart and soul.

So they introduced institutionalized resting into the rules, using hit dice as a resting resource to encourage parties to "stay in the dungeon" and "avoid going back to town." What was already a terrible assumption- that D&D is a tabletop video game- started killing the game. D&D got more and more like a video game, with infinite-use MMO spells that made casters "shooty" and made all the classes feel like MMO counterparts. Rogues became "DPS classes" and "everyone got healing."

Going back to OSRIC, I see the original game again. Your fighter is down to 16 HP from 20, and you are accepting the risk of going into the next room with a wounded frontline fighter. Your magic user has two of three spells left. Your cleric still has healing. Your thief took 2 HP of damage and is down to 10 HP. Your archer is down 5 arrows from 20. Of the 700 coins your party can carry, you have 150sp, which doesn't really pay the bills.

You look at those resources and decide you can push further. In some cases, like a rescue, you must push further, or the townspeople will be sacrificed to the frog god. You have a time limit. The road here is dangerous, with encounters along the way. You don't want the froglings to reinforce the entrance and trap you in the halls on the second foray. You have surprise and initiative, and coming back tomorrow means the fights get harder against a prepared enemy with traps, allies, outside patrols, and poisoned weapons.

While they're surprised, keep pushing the attack.

You look at your party's state again and wonder if you'll get out of here alive.

The elimination, simplification, and abstraction of resource management removed all of the tension and challenge from the game. You no longer need to be a "smart poker player" at the table to judge odds; D&D 5E flat-out tells you the party should "win all encounters." There are no losers. There is no risk. There is no danger. There is no tension. Gold means nothing.

There is no reason to play the game.

It is all self-centered "story gaming" and fake reasons to engage with the narrative. The world doesn't care and doesn't matter; it is a backdrop for your interpersonal drama. Like players on an "RP server" in an MMO who never challenge themselves or play the game, the world just sits there as a backdrop for their stories. That is fine, and they have the right, but it gets boring and pointless once nobody plays anymore. D&D 5E has institutionalized the story-game mentality, and all those monsters and treasures really don't matter. Your powers don't matter.

The rules say "everyone wins" and "you should be able to safely have X encounters in a day."

Build optimization is not D&D.

The truth is, I can roleplay only using a ham sandwich. I don't need a 16-page printed 5E character sheet to roleplay and tell stories. All those special powers and action economy choices slow the game down and distract from the core gameplay loop. When we sat down to play, we made no build decisions or turn optimizations within an action economy, and all decisions stayed in the game, live, as we played. Press forward or retreat? What is the cost? Can we go a little longer? Do we take this fight? How do I spend these limited resources?

And my OSRIC classes"do more" than a comparable 5E version. If I pick a ranger in OSRIC, I am the same ranger I am in 5E, but the game is easier to play. If "something comes up that a ranger should know how to do," like setting a trap or building a shelter, I ask my referee, and my referee lets me do it. That does not need to be a subclass ability, a feat, or written into the rules. Today's games tell you if it is not in the book, you can't do it. In OSRIC, you are what you are. In 5E, you are what the rules allow you to be.

In 1E, we used our brains and this thing called imagination, and we worked it out.

The party weighs risk versus reward.

No MMO mechanics institutionalize bad behavior.

Character sheets are simple, and the classes are iconic.

The game feels real again.

My 1990s Games

I am going through a strange phase where all my best 1990s games are making it onto my premier display shelves. Two exceptions are Traveller (more 1980s) and Dungeon Crawl Classics (2010s), but all the rest are solid 1990s games, around the time of the late 1980s and early 1990s:

• Palladium
• Rifts
• Champions
• Hero System
• AD&D
• GURPS
• Traveller

Two notable differences: AD&D is OSRIC, not the 1990s AD&D 2nd Edition. Vampire: The Masquerade is not represented. I have VtM, but I don't have room for it. Some of the editions are newer, such as Hero System/Champions and GURPS. Traveller for the 1990s should be MegaTraveller, which I have, but the base game and Cepheus fill the need nicely. Open and community licenses always win in this house.

Cyberpunk should be on these shelves too, and I will look for it. That is one that is in my garage now, but it belongs with them. Classic Shadowrun belongs here too, but I am a little cool on the 6th Edition. Maybe 4th will work.

Palladium and Rifts are on my shelves, and they bring me more happiness there than the 5E books they replaced. All I want are good times and great memories, and 5E feels hollow and lifeless to me. Some Open 5E editions are great, but I haven't really played with any of them, and I'd choose a game I played with friends in the 1980s and 1990s over today's crowdfunded, too-many-books versions.

Palladium is a system I can count on. Rifts is still awesome, and it is the game "your mom gets you if she is really cool." Not my words; one of my friends said that. And she was a really cool mom.

I will play a game with great memories over a modern game I feel nothing for.

As the 1980s fade into history, the real nostalgia upon us will be for this era, and I feel it. The 90s were a decade of change that saw TSR go bankrupt and D&D's future come into doubt. Comics ruled the era. Magic: The Gathering killed tabletop RPGs. But some of the best, highly tuned, post-Golden Age games were made during this time, and they delivered on the fantasy just as well. Champions/Hero System remains one of the best superhero games ever written and one of the best generic systems outside of GURPS.

If D&D 5.5E is Windows 11 Home Edition, Hero System is a Linux distribution for power users that still gets the job done. Hero System is one of those games that, once you learn it, you have zero reason to open a 5E book again, unless your group won't play anything else.

Hero System is the best game ever designed for special powered beings. I don't care what genre you play; if it relies on special powers, you should play Hero System and be happy here. Once you know how to DIY a power, you will never accept game designer handouts that are poorly thought through and never balanced. I have been burned too many times by 5E books, and even some official ones, to keep seeing them as competent game designers.

The biggest difference between Hero System and GURPS is that Hero System focuses more on powers than skills, while GURPS does the opposite. GURPS has the best setting books. Champions focuses on whiz-bang comic book powers and is the best system for them. GURPS does gritty, low-fantasy games best, whereas Hero System does high-magic, high-fantasy games best, and that feels more like 5E to me.

Hero System beats 5E for me since I can design anything I want and stop waiting for crowdfunding books to fill the next gap. Do I want a Pokemon to show up? I can design the Pokemon, and the book has all the powers somewhere. This is the easiest system for an "anything goes" campaign, and one of the best-balanced "powers" games ever written.

The "complete" books for this Hero System are simplified, easy-to-grasp starter sets that are the best entry point into the hobby. They have one for fantasy and another for superheroes. Champions Complete or Fantasy Hero Complete: start there and never look back. These are one-book games that will get you started.

Even Western Hero if you want a more grounded game without special powers. This is a Hero 6th Edition game, so it uses the newest rules, and since you are not as focused on powers, it is a good way to introduce yourself to the system. If all you are doing is fist fights and shooting guns, you will get a good introduction to combat and skill use without powers coming into play.

OSRIC carries my AD&D game, and I have For Gold & Glory, the 2E clone, and it deserves a spot. They're the same game, just presented differently, and FG&G even omits demons and devils, as 2E did. FG&G drops the assassin and adds the bard, though 1E bards exist in other community add-ons. For me? OSRIC is it, the greatest game ever written and the community version of it. I need nothing else.

I still like FG&G a lot. The game is beautiful and worthy.

GURPS always has a spot, too. We loved GURPS in the 1990s, and our love of Car Wars lasted into 2000. Our Car Wars campaign lasted 20 years. GURPS is one of those games I can pick up and never be let down by it or have it break. When I want something solid, reliable, and the best character-creation tool in the hobby, I reach for GURPS.

With GURPS, I don't need 5E. I have the tools to do it myself. While Hero System is similar, both systems are great and do what they focus on very well. GURPS is the better character builder; Hero System is the better power builder - though GURPS Supers is no slouch. If you see heroes as reflections of a character, you will gravitate towards GURPS. If you see heroes as someone defined by powers, Hero System will appeal to you more.

I have Edge Studios Star Wars on my shelves, but Star Wars is dying, and I may swap those shelves for something that speaks to me more. Sorry, Star Wars, we loved you, but you did this to yourself. You lost your way and made yourself irrelevant. It is a sad end for a great brand, and I feel D&D is following the same path. I'd rather play my older games and keep the good memories than be subjected to negativity and strife over the game's future direction. I don't care about the future direction for some of these games anymore; I have the versions I love right here.

Another missing 1990s game is Rolemaster. I have this in an upstairs closet, and once I make room, it can escape onto my shelves. While I love RMFRP, I would support the new version to keep the company around. It is still a worthy, solid 1990s-style game that delivers.

I am probably missing a few here, but these were our 1990s games. These deliver for me. These have memories. Some have fallen off, but most still feel good to me.

While I love the 1980s, the 1990s were the second-best decade for tabletop gaming. Even the second-best stands a mile above gaming today, as long as some of my 1980s stalwarts hang around on the shelves.