Tiny Box Fantasy

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

Here are your four classes and four races; now, have fun.

There is a reason I dumped many repetitive and limited class-based systems for games like Savage Worlds and GURPS. Sometimes I would have a cool character concept and then fit it into a tiny box of someone else's idea of what a fighter or a mage is, and it would come out terrible.

I am never happy with being forced to choose between a fighter or a cleric. That one spell at the first level. Even D&D 5 feels like a superhero version of the original, with combat expected and "fun." The same limitations and tiny boxes for ideas are there; they are more mechanically complex.

And the West Coast business model has flaws (Wizards, Paizo). You start with limited options, and they sell you the next few, one book at a time. This is what fantasy has been for the last 20 years or longer. Putting together a decent character doesn't just need one book; now, you need a shelf full of thousands of pages in a library of limited and less-than-ideal options. You have more options when you combine X, Y, and Z - but you are still in those boxes.

Want a few more? Buy the next book, please. The official game designer knows better than you.

And many OSR games miss the point, and many OSR games don't even feel OSR. We combined dozens of games in a Frankenstein version of awesomeness. Today, we have specific games emulating specific game versions of things we frankly thought - back then - sucked and were horribly broken.

We modded and patched those games! We threw Arms Law on D&D. We modded in magic from other games. The real OSR back in the day was this mutant freak of a game cobbled together in custom versions from several games and plenty of homebrew. Having the same version of something we felt lacked fun in the 90s isn't my version of the OSR. You are doing emulation, at best, and nostalgic worship, at worst.

And the competing option is the West Coast model, which still relies on that slow drip of releases and power creep; they never give you a complete game, and in the end, the entire game is this bloated, shelf-busting monolith of overwritten filler.

If you buy into the West Coast model, you are the product and become an income stream.

When the game gets too big, a new edition drops. Time to buy again.

At least the older OSR releases keep games primarily to one book, but I have seen a few newer OSR games venture into that constant drip of releases, zines, and supporting content. New stuff is cool, but I am wary of that model since it can quickly become predatory. A little power creep here and there, and the original game is diminished and becomes unplayable with the newer material.

Yes, I love my OSR games, and they will last forever. But, I understand the pitfalls of the model without new ideas and addressing some of the systemic problems the classic games had - and the retro-clones sometimes enshrine. Creating things that let people play games how they were are great things, but without the understanding as these games are only starting points - you lose the spirit of the old school.

Old school isn't one way to play or one strict set of rules.

It is a hobby where 90% of the game is DIY.

And the classic games are starting points.

The typical saving throw charts are a good example; they cover a handful subset of specific hazards and don't cover everything. What is acid? Freezing? Electricity? A cave-in? Why are magic wands and magic spells different saves? Swords & Wizardry, with its "one saving throw number," is about the best classic saving throw system out there. I can use that with any hazard and modify it as I see fit.

Similarly, playing Cypher System in fantasy has opened my mind to what a character class can be. Yes, there are four basic "archetypes in that game," but they are not set in stone and can be flavored to be like anything else. I have seen a few people try to "emulate" 5E through Cypher, but a part of me says, "Why bother?"

My ideas of what fantasy classes can be far better than any port of 5E ideas. I start with a character idea and build from there. I don't need to fit my ideas in someone else's tiny box. Nor do I need those boxes ported in because I can't think of anything myself. As time passes and I design my heroes, I don't need books full of classes and power lists. I don't need to "wait for the next book" to get one or two new things.

I move towards systems that give me everything in one book and the freedom to build characters from the ground up. Savage Worlds, GURPS, and Cypher System fill that void nicely. I would love a build-a-character, classless OSR system that lets you build whatever you want, combine pieces, and craft characters outside of the "tiny box fantasy" that I gave up on in the 1990s, and now 30 years later, we are somehow enshrining this concept - saddled with iterative predatory consumerism - as a truth.

I grew out of D&D twice now. I bought the complete set of books in four versions. Or maybe one with every edition I played and realized the faults were still the same, only the next time with a new coat of paint and the same set of promises that this time, "We will get it right!"

Another 10 years, a new edition coming, nothing new or revolutionary.