Why No Dwarven Bards?

At first glance, the Second Edition's limiting bards to humans and half-elves makes no sense. Why can't I play a Dwarven bard? Or how about an Elven bard? That should make sense.

But when I think about it, the abilities described in the human and half-elf bard do not make sense for Elves and Dwarves. With a Dwarven bard, I would want new powers, like ones useful in drinking games, telling bawdy jokes, throwing axes or darts, brawling skills, and weaving epic tales by the fireplace. They would not have any magic and could be a blend of thief and fighter. I call this new class a songsmith and create a new class for this tradition.

Similarly, an Elven bard may never touch arcane magic and instead pull from druidic spell lists and be a half-thief, half-druid. The answer to this problem lies not in "letting everybody be anything," but in recognizing that the classes represent long-standing traditions within those races that are part of their culture and heritage. For these bards, I would create a class called a lyricist and fold in the traditions of the Elven life, nature, and their history and lore.

The songsmith and lyricist are superior choices to the Dwarven and Elven generic bards. This also preserves the current bards as Human and Half-Elven traditions, further strengthening them as "their own thing."

The same thing goes for every race and class you would want to add to the core system. The Dark Elves may have an entirely different set of classes that only they can become. This is a problem you can't "cheaply solve" by allowing everyone to be everything. While there may be some backgrounds that are universal to Dark Elves and everyone else, such as fighters and priests, there are likely a bunch more that are better suited to their own class designs.

Dark Elven ranger? No, how about a spelunker? A spider tamer? An inquisitor? We don't have bards down here; we have fate weavers. And each one of these classes is unique, with special abilities and spell lists, and not just a renamed version of other classes.

If you stop, consider the culture, think, and come up with unique and fun designs that fit the race and roles in their society, you will always get better designs and a superior experience.

D&D 3E (and 3.5E) went a long way towards destroying the traditional notion of fantasy classes being a part of heritage and culture. They took the cheap way out of letting anyone be anything, just giving up on worldbuilding and crafting a setting through the rules, inviting in 101 fantasy character races that are just marshmallow shapes.

D&D 3.5E marked the beginning of D&D's decline. It is still the best we ever got from Wizards, but the design decisions that "opened the door" for anyone to be anything started to homogenize and gentrify the game, ruining it. The Second Edition preserves the worldbuilding inherent in the system and still retains a part of the "race as class" aspects of BX through level limits.

Wizards did this since the bard class went from one page of rules to four. All of a sudden, creating a new class for every tradition was out of the question because the game would blow up in size. So they made their bards "one size fits all" to increase class complexity. What was once a rogue subclass that shared features with rogues became a huge monolithic class that had to do everything for everyone.

In fact, the Wizards' design theory is inferior to the original second edition design. It is a fast-food bard character class that has to serve everyone and everything.

If anyone can be anything, everything will be bland and flavorless. You will have no worldbuilding. Your fantasy game will go from feeling like a unique time and place to a freeway where everyone rushes to get where they want to go. Dwarven wizard? Why not? All of a sudden, Dwarves aren't suspicious of arcane magic. Halflings can be barbarians. Drow can be paladins. Let's give up on worldbuilding, shall we?

There was an unspoken rule that races had their own class choices. The base books were the "human starting guide" by default, and you could expand from there.

Part of the original D&D mythos was its inherent worldbuilding.

D&D 3.0, and later revisions, came along and wiped all that out.

ACKS gets this and ships with so many great racial character classes that give each character race flavorful options and classes that fit within their culture. This game understands that the class and race options presented are worldbuilding, and it is one of the best at creating a coherent, logical, and strongly themed setting where your imagination can run wild.

Another game that does a fantastic job of creating a setting through its race, background, class, and skill options is Rolemaster. The game creates powerful combinations through its interlocking systems, allowing you to build great combinations or other ones that will be more of a challenge to play. There is worldbuilding here, stating that different races and backgrounds have deeper roots in various traditions and pursuits, and that these will synergize strongly with each other.

I have a soft spot for the original First Edition rules, and this lives on through Adventures Dark & Deep.

However, the Second Edition rules are those of the 1990s —the classic TSR fantasy novels and all the great paperbacks that came out during that time. This is the origin of all the modern character classes, roles, and options. We do not even have Half-Orcs as a race option in For Gold & Glory. We just have the classics, and the classics define the world we play in.

For Gold & Glory is the heir to the legacy of Second Edition AD&D.

The worldbuilding and spirit of that game live on here.

Bards: Classic vs. Modern

The bard character class has gotten worse over the years. We were first introduced to the bard as a "half caster" class in AD&D 2nd Edition, and today we know it as the excellent game, For Gold & Glory. If I am playing a bard, I will go back to the source implementation and stick with a solid Second Edition retro-clone.

The Second Edition's bard character class is not an easy class to play! The ability score requirements are high, and you can only be a human or a half-elf. The idea of dwarven bards, half-orc bards, and all sorts of other bards was never a "thing" back in Second Edition.

If you want the "modern" bard, the mix-and-match races and classes, play 3.5E and never go any further. This is still a good version of the class, but beware of the infamous "Wizards' bloat," where the 3.5E bard takes 4 pages of text-heavy rules just to describe the class, whereas FG&G does it all in just one page. The Second Edition has a BX-like simplicity to the game, even though it is a repackaged First Edition and shares all the complexity and depth.

I love you, 3.5E— you are the best version of Wizards' D&D ever made —but you are horribly, terribly overwritten and a mess of unorganized ideas and concepts. The game is barely playable without cheat sheets and lengthy FAQs. You are unplayable without a copy of the 3.5E SORD, explaining things the designers failed to lay out clearly in the rules.

Um, where is our 3.5E retro-clone?

Typically, the OSR would jump in on a project like this and knock out a few million on Kickstarter, but we have never gotten a great 3.5E retro-clone yet. Pathfinder 1e needs to be sunsetted, and the time is right to rebuild a classic game, strip out the accursed OGL, and make it open for everyone to play and create for. If you do end up writing a 3.5E retro-clone, please do not clone the word count.

In the Second Edition, bards are arcane casters. In the Third, you begin to see them as mixed arcane and divine casters, where they have healing spells. This is where the entire class starts to go off the rails. No longer do you need to play smart, figure out how to make a limited power set work for you, and lean heavily on your bard abilities. In the Third Edition, magic (and the written rules) starts to replace player skill. And you begin to think a bard can replace a cleric, which is just wrong.

A well-played Second Edition bard takes a lot of player skill to make it work; it is not an easy class. Your "party strength" will decrease, since you do not have a pure thief or mage in the party anymore. The bard will constantly need to prove themselves through creative play, a design choice I like. By the Fifth Edition, forget it, the player pandering has taken over, and the bard class is equal to or stronger than most pure caster classes, with better and more flexible powers. There is no such thing as a well-played Fifth Edition bard since the class is so easy.

Back here in Second Edition, if I had to pick one: bard, thief, or mage? That is a tough choice to make, and the bard always comes out second or third, depending on the amount of social roleplay we expect. Is this a dungeoning game? I would go for the thief. Is this a long-term campaign? Then, the mage. Only in social games does the bard begin to creep up in desirability, and then we factor in the far more desirable ranger for exploration campaigns.

And forget letting a low-skilled player pick a bard. This isn't some sort of gatekeeping; it is just that the class isn't for novice players or players unwilling to make it work. You need to be an excellent player to turn a class that has a very narrow and specific power set into an asset, and there will be moments where you will change the direction of the campaign.

Player skill matters!

But, a Second Edition bard in combat? Chainmail, no shields, and a bow, and you are not a front-line fighter. You can't shoot your bow and sing, so to grant the inspire courage bonus, you need to be performing for three rounds, and the bonus begins on the fourth. The fight could be over, and you haven't even gotten to the chorus yet. You don't get spells until the second level. But join the club, in Second Edition, everyone sort of sucks; you just suck a little less in a few social areas.

But again, this is what makes Second Edition fun. You are not over-reliant on "the designers giving you powers and abilities." You need to use your brain for once, and not your character sheet. You are a second-level bard. You know one first-level spell per day. You have a few thief skills and no backstab. You have a few specific class abilities. How do you make yourself useful?

Go to the armory and start buying weapons. Get a bow and help out as a ranged attacker. Lean heavily on your lore, counter song, and hear noise abilities. Be the person who can help identify magic items. Know your ultra-specific class abilities and use them every chance you can get. But for the most part, you will be a second-line melee fighter and primary ranged attacker.

Put your delusions of grandeur away and learn how to contribute to party damage without special, flashy, overdone player-pandering powers. In many regards, you are like a ranger or paladin, someone with a few special tricks that needs to be able to fight in melee or put out consistent ranged damage.

Everyone needs to worry about gear, encumbrance, and hand-to-hand combat. You need to be smart to make a limited set of powers work. The designers are not shoving powers at you to make the game easy and constantly distract you. If I play a bard in 5E? I can mostly ignore the equipment list. If I play a bard in 2E? Chainmail weighs 40 pounds, and I am already pushing toward becoming lightly encumbered. I may go for leather or studded leather and carry gear and treasure.

I need to make wise choices here, not just "armor up to the max" like you do in modern D&D.

In the First and Second Editions, your gear and speed of movement are a part of your "character build," and each piece of gear you can carry is like a specialized power. Do you have a rope and a grappling hook? No climbing skill rolls are needed, and even the other characters in the party can climb a rope. That rope is a "get out of jail free" card you can pull in specific situations that mostly lets you bypass needing to make skill or ability rolls.

Modern D&D (3.5E and beyond) tends to "screw the players" and assumes you need to constantly make skill and ability rolls to attempt actions with equipment. In classic D&D (1E and 2E), equipment works like a "modern game character power" and mainly does not require a skill roll. You pay the price in hauling that rope around and suffer encumbrance penalties, guess what? That rope will work wonders when you need it to. That rope is now part of your "character build," and you are free to use it in whatever creative way you want to, and I, as the referee, will be very generous when it comes to you using it.

This is a huge, huge difference between classic D&D and modern D&D.

In modern D&D, they need to use skill systems to weaken equipment, and they ignore encumbrance rules to do so. What "gives you power" is what "the designers grant you," like they were benevolent, all-controlling gods. Equipment is often used to gatekeep skill rolls, preventing you from even attempting the action without it.

In classic D&D, equipment grants special character powers and replaces the modern design theory of "designers giving you toys" like you were children needing to be entertained. You pay the price in hauling backpacks filled with junk, tracking the weight, and balancing your load and treasure-hauling capacity, and you get instant, no-roll-needed benefits. Don't have equipment? Okay, give me an ability score roll and pay the price for not having the right tools for the job.

There is such a stark, fundamental difference here; I do not know why more people do not see it.

And if you want to play bards and modern character classes, go back to Second Edition and try For Gold & Glory. I would skip 1E clones that try to remake bards, and just experience the classic design again. You may find you like the gritty, innovative, creative play style here better than you do, with game designers consistently tossing toys and powers at you to try to please you.

Second Edition rocks, and it improves on every concept and design later ruined by overgenerous game designers in 3E and beyond, while still giving you the OG modern classes and roles. This is where modern gaming originated, and it is the purest form of what we know as D&D today.

The Case for OSRIC

While Adventures Dark & Deep is voluminous and a massive game, I can see why groups would like to stick with the classic OSRIC system. While the new content and expanded monster list in ADAD are nice, they are not required, and OSRIC provides an open-source version of the classic first-edition rules with no new content. OSRIC 3 is coming soon, and that will be under a much better open license than the deeply flawed OGL.

I can get reprints of AD&D books, sure, but for who knows how long? I can't rely on a Wall Street corporation for anything these days, and while these are lovely keepsakes, they have scanning errors, and the hard copies will likely go away someday and be rented as "digital goods" only on some subscription service. Gary's words are still prophetic, but I can't hold the hobby hostage to them.

The sooner you give up on your AD&D books and support something else for gaming and content creation, the better off the hobby will be. OSRIC was built in an era when we did not have POD reprints of First Edition books, and playing the game was nearly impossible with thrift-store copies. Who knows when we will be back to those days?

And while other First Edition games have expanded content, like a great, bare-bones BX game, nothing beats a focused game that just delivers the basics. In Adventures Dark & Deep, I am supporting all this new stuff; in OSRIC, the game is mine to expand. I could create a "World of Warcraft" or "EverQuest" mod with OSRIC far more easily than with Adventures Dark & Deep, since the latter is a "more stuff" expanded mod to First Edition, and there are times when just the basics are more straightforward as a starting point.

It is far easier to create a modded game off an unmodded core system.

This is also why having a Classic Fantasy version of Old School Essentials was so important. OSE Advanced Fantasy is the same sort of "more stuff" mod to the classic BX core system. Our unmodded core systems are essential; these are like the "Linux core utilities" of the operating system. Sure, you could add all this fluff to the core rules —extra stuff, added classes and races —but the "core utilities" don't need it, and it only makes the base system harder to maintain, modify, and support.

There is wisdom in keeping the core game unmodified, available, and open to all.

This ensures future generations will have a game to modify, play, and make their own someday.

The Point of No Return

We knew this moment when D&D 4 Essentials came out.

"It's dead, Jim."

At this point, with YouTubers beginning to take notice, D&D 2024 is a failed revision. Nothing will save this version of the game now. We are approaching critical mass, with people leaving for new hobbies, video games, and other entertainment. A small fraction will stick around and switch to a new tabletop role-playing game, but many of those are already on board and bought into their alternative of choice, Pathfinder 2E, Shadowdark, and others.

And the products in the pipeline are confused. We have a starter set that feels like a cozy game —and... Dragonlance? Again? Didn't I just see that at the dollar store? With that hundred-dollar board game? Murmurs of Dark Sun? Leaning on Baldur's Gate 3 yet another time and riding a good horse until dead? I don't get the feeling the left side of Wizards knows what the right side is doing.

Even if they announce a 6E, who will trust them? They canceled their VTT, pulled the OGL thing, and messed up every classic setting with off-model rewrites and compilation adventures. I wouldn't trust them with classic 1E re-releases, since they can't fix the PDF errors and PoD issues that the community has known about for years.

The worst place you can be is a lack of interest, a lack of trust, and the appearance of a lack of care from the company.

People are even walking away from complaint articles like this. They don't care that 2024 is failing; they already know it.

So tell me something new.

Dead Levels

"If a game has dead levels, then it is a flawed design."

The number of times I hear that statement repeated on D&D YouTube is starting to sound like the annoying yapping of tiny dogs. It sounds entitled, almost spoiled, and it assumes players are only playing these games to accumulate power. I recently heard this tossed at Worlds Without Number, and it is just a really lame argument in the context of a larger game and experience.

These people have not played a BX fighter to level 14, have they?

You, Sir, get NOTHING!

The point of dead levels is to force the referee to think about alternate rewards players can get, without giving them too much, without making players feel they "already got something this level," and without holding back an external, social, or other intangible award or power. Magic items, weapons, or armor? A social rank allowing the character to request help or get special resources? Favors? Contacts? Even a supernatural ability, the referee "just gives" the character —like danger sense, an ability score modification, an innate spell, or some other special bonus — that could have a limit per day.

Dead levels are breathing room and opportunities for the referee to introduce alternate rewards.

They are not design flaws.

I swear the 5E and Pathfinder 2E generations are being indoctrinated with "rules as written" being god. You get nothing unless the book says you get it, or else you are breaking the game, upsetting the designers, embarrassing yourselves on YouTube, and ruining the experience for everyone. I have seen people like this argue against homebrew because "it ruins the game for everyone, and we are not playing by a standardized set of rules anymore."

What are they talking about? These people have not played old-school games, and I fear that if they did, they would slavishly adhere to the books and rules-as-written and still fail to understand how the game is supposed to be played.

"But I expect to get something every level!"

Games are spoiling us; we feel entitled to "get something every level," and the game slowly drifts away from being about story, character, exploration, and the world—and becomes more about the build, rules, exploits, power gaming, and what is allowed within the book. If you give characters too much power, the game breaks, and play drags to a crawl since higher levels need to scale hit points.

I don't want the book or a level chart to be the master of my destiny.

I want my choices to be.

Dead levels are a design feature, not a flaw. They let the level chart relax and deemphasize the constant need to be "fed something" at every level. Stop treating level systems as a Skinnerian approach that requires rewards at every milestone. It is a lame design, and advancement can mean something much more profound than just "what the books give you."

Many make Worlds Without Number their core fantasy system, playing only this game after game, and it is a great book. There is a trivial difference between a 1d6 skill system in BX and the 2d6 skill system in the WN games, except that we have a bell curve and can have a more meaningful skill level and modifier system. I prefer 2d6 skills, since it makes them fundamentally different than "just another d20 roll" and highlights we are doing something other than "rolling to kill." Putting the entire system "on one die" can make every roll feel the same.

The Kevin Crawford WN games are classics, easily masterpieces, and outstanding solo experiences.

One book can generate an entire world.

Video: Ignoring D&D24

"This would have been so much easier had I just started this in something like Shadowdark or another game."

A fantastic video today, please watch all the way through, like, and subscribe.

This covers so many of the problems with D&D 2024: the cozy comfy-core vibe, the silly starter-set quests, how kids play the game, the complexity and crunch, the tired culture content, and the lack of motivation and danger in the game as a whole.

D&D 2024 is Gilette 2019

I agree with all his points, and I see this in other games too. It feels like a moment when a big corporation "fires" all its customers in hopes of attracting a future audience that will adopt its product. This is the 2019 Gilette thing all over again, but the people being "fired" from D&D are those who love high-action adventure fantasy, danger, and classic dungeon crawling. You have been replaced by the identity marketing, cozy-core, comfy adventures, and Richard Scarry children's book vibe.

And the executives who fire customers will say losing half or more of their market share was "worth it" in the end. Logic does not apply here.

This has nothing to do with woke either, as a considerable part of the woke audience has been fired too if they enjoy traditional dungeon crawling. This cuts across the cultural lines, and it is not about that! While Gilette 2019 was about that, D&D 2024 is about something else entirely. But the firing customers part remains the same.

For the Starter Set to derail by having players collect sheep on fetch quests feels like the design team wants to make a comfy mobile game rather than D&D, and piled on top of that, taking a whole session to design characters, fighting D&D Beyond, and wrestling with books and character sheets to create characters who aren't ideal for dungeon crawling.

D&D no longer knows what it is.

Players no longer know what roles to take in the game.

I get why some dislike bards, monks, rangers, and other soft non-core classes. They end up being default choices, distractions, and do not support the core experience with strong roles central to the game's needs. If everyone plays bard classes, then everyone will die, and the players will walk away to other games.

And then you get to hear, "The game doesn't support my choices!"

Shadowdark is the Better Game

Meanwhile, over in Shadowdark, hand out pregen characters, "You start in a dungeon and..." Bang. You are playing. The motivation is clear. What you are doing is right in front of your face. And Shadowdark doesn't ship with a whole lot of soft classes that are more about identity than function.

Plenty of woke and traditional OSR people play Shadowdark, and they all love it. So this is not woke versus non-woke. Shadowdark proves it. This battle is cozy, comfy-core versus hardcore OSR dungeon crawling. Don't be distracted or let others shift the argument to defend their investments.

The limited choices in Shadowdark support the function of the game's core intended activities. This results in a better game. This is also likely true in the Vagabond game, since the designer understands that core motivation facilitates gameplay, and that is baked in through design. If I agree with a designer's theory of motivation and design, I am a fan of their work. Vagabond sounds like a fun game, and I urge people to check it out.

Things Will Never Get Better

You will get a group with D&D telling us to "stick it out" and "things will get better," but it will never improve. Sorry, those sunk costs are now at the bottom of the ocean and worth nothing right now, because the company abandoned you.

Almost all of you have been fired as customers, and you will realize this later, rather than sooner.

Welcome to D&D in 2025.

2024 just handed you a pink slip.

A New BX Game Coming?

Based on the rumors, we will get another game to replace the loss of Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy. I get why people like this game. At times, Advanced Fantasy can feel like "too much" with too many divergent options for races and classes, and the game becomes muddled with "too much stuff."

Did we really need the Svirfneblin, Drow, Half-Orc, and the Duergar in Advanced? I get it —Advanced sold far better due to "more stuff" — but at some point, I want a more focused core set, with the rest supported in option books. Classic Fantasy lets you do that. If they do add rules and options to OSE Advanced 2026, I hope they fold in all the options found in the Carcass Crawler Zines, which would make it a very compelling game. It is sort of a "go big or go home" theory, and I would like to see a lot of those options in the base game if it is not going to be streamlined.

Even an excellent BX game like Dragonslayer adds the Cyclopsman, a variant race not part of the core experience. A lot of games come close to the idea experience, but many diverge in places and don't provide that simple set of options. DS is still a good version of the game, just a little different.

Classic Fantasy also kept it simple, with the classic options. Only Labyrinth Lord (Classic Edition) remains as the purist BX game, with a few White Box options around, but those are all d20/d6 games. Another great option is Basic Fantasy, a game many swear by as the true heir to BX gaming's legacy.

It will still be possible to play a "Classic Game" with the 2026 OSE rules, since they include an appendix that lays it out. However, it still means cutting most of the book and sorting through it to say "yes and no" to different parts, which is a terrible experience for new users and those who just want a simple base game.

Shadowdark should have taught us to keep our core book game experience focused and straightforward. And a lot of these Shadowdark expansion books, I just want to forget now, since they clutter up the game with too many options.

Do we need another edition of BX? With all the variants of classic games out there, why do we need another game? Is this something the community tells itself we need? There are so many versions of White Box, 1E, BXA, and 0E out there. Do we have everything covered with Labyrinth Lord Classic and Basic Fantasy still in PoD? Or do we need another game because we feel we don't have a standard-bearer now? The community will step up and give us another option, and then invariably re-create what we had in OSE Advanced.

I get the feeling mixing "race plus class" with "race-based classes" in OSE was a mistake. If I want a 2026 version of OSE Advanced Fantasy, get rid of race-based classes and standardize the game on "race plus class," and streamline the game around that. Let a pure "Classic BX Game" do the race-based classes, and pare your game down to the best "race plus class" options that only work one way.

Similarly, if someone does do a new version of BX, please keep it to race-based classes only. Don't confuse things or try to make a game that copies OSE Advanced. Also, any expansion material for this new theoretical BX game should stick with only race-based classes.

I am all for letting OSE be more of the BXA, race-plus-class game, and for any new version of BX to stick to race-as-class.

A great option to OSE Advanced is Swords & Wizardry Revised. This is 98% compatible with any OSE material and offers an AD&D Lite experience with greater clarity and focus, while keeping ability score modifiers under tight control. It is a strict race-plus-class game, but it gives me the perfect blend of 0E and 1E material, plus a wealth of expansion content in add-on books.

S&W can completely replace OSE Advanced race-plus-class and port in its best options, plus it gives me more in terms of supporting the classic bestiary monsters, demons & devils, illusionists & druids, and even two types of bards in the Options book (bard and troubador). We also get necromancers and warlocks in the S&W Options book as purely evil character classes. All of these are far better than their OSE counterparts, many with dedicated spell lists.

And we get a monster expansion book for S&W, with even more monsters and plenty of 1E favorites making a return. With the core book, Options, and the monster expansion, you get a game that clearly rivals OSE Advanced, provides far more options, and does so with a straightforward, easily understood set of rules that feels superior to the limited BX.

0E predates BX, and comes before 1E, when everything got overly complicated. 0E also supports the best options and provides forward-looking 1E options. BX feels pared down and simplified compared to a full-featured 0E game like S&W, and by the time you expand BX into a BXA game, S&W will still have more and unify the classes and system far better, while still keeping the core rules in one book and far more straightforward.

Also, S&W handles fighters far better than OSE Advanced, and it does not need all the fighter mods from the Carcass Crawler books to make them viable character classes and interesting.

A cut-down BX is like Shadowdark, a simple, core, focused dungeon game.

A full 0E game like S&W is more like AD&D to me, a full-featured roleplaying game that does a better job than an expanded BXA-style game with a mix of race-plus-class and race-as-class options, and it provides me with superior options when selecting races and customizing my world.

Where 0E crosses over is into 1E territory, and it becomes the easier version of a full AD&D, Adventures Dark and Deep, or OSRIC. For those games, though, they typically use the one-size larger hit dice for classes (d10 for fighters, d8 for clerics, d6 for thieves, etc.) and things like segments and weapon speeds. As a result, combats are more protracted and play is slower than a BX, BXA, WB, or 0E game. Play 1E if you like this level of detail. Play other games if you don't want to bother with all the minutiae. S&W keeps the BX hit points and speed of play, while still feeling like AD&D.

I am looking forward to this new "pure BX" game and the revised 2026 OSE Advanced.