SBRPG: 1.53c Source Files Located

Twenty years ago my brother George and I put out a role-playing game. This was the original SBRPG, and what this site was originally supposed to support. As the years went by, out publisher went out of business, and the game suffered more returns than sales, so we sort of gave up on it. I am guessing a small fiction publisher was not the right place to sell a game like this, so I can see why the return rate was so high.

The few that played it enjoyed it, and it endured in the hands of a very few over the years. For some, this was the last game they kept out of their collection until the 530-page softcover fell apart. For most, playing "the game the size of a phone book" was a thrilling prospect back in the days of D&D 3.5. We published this in 2005, a year after GURPS 4 was released, and about two years after the D&D 3.5E revision came out.

So the game became a footnote here and an urban legend. No PDFs ever existed of this game outside of myself and the publisher for printing. This was never made available via a PDF store, as there were none back then to sell it on. This has always been a print book, long out of print.

And SBRPG has mostly stayed quiet and abandoned for 20 years. This site has continued on as my general role-playing blog, but for the most part, the book, the rules updates, the bonus web content, and the plans for the future books have been something of an urban legend. I only had the original version 1.5 of the PDF, with none of the later fixes, or the reader feedback that we got via our old forums. 

Until today.

I found a DVD with the source files for the final 1.53c version, the PDF, the rules updates, the cover, and all the bonus content we ever made for the game today. These are old Aldus Page Maker files, but the PDF imports into Adobe InDesign just fine, with a few missing fonts I would need to find or replace. These are mostly fonts we kept around since the Corel Draw 3 CD-ROM days.

The rules updates are critical, since those came from players and actual play. The latest 1.53c version has a lot of fixes than the original proof-copy 1.5 PDF that I had. This is everything. The whole game as it existed at the end of support and the publisher going out of business.

Wow.

What a strange find.

I have no idea what I will do with all of this. 

Trojan Horse Games

I am finishing up my summer project to replace my gaming shelves with better, "display stand" style shelves with fewer games on them, and face-out books, special editions, inspiration art and classic comic collections, and other gaming kitsch. When I am done, I will have seven of these shelves in my gaming space, with only the best games on them.

If my gaming shelves are packed storage shelves, I rarely play the games on them. They are too junky, packed full of stuff, and disorganized for me to ever think of pulling a book off.

If my shelves have "air" and things are not packed so tightly, I use book ends and magazine organizers, I will pull books off those shelves regularly since every shelf looks like a display stand in a boutique gaming store. I will mix models, comics, framed art, art books, signs, figurines, a plastic skull mask I got for Halloween. and other inspirational things on the shelves to scream "play me" when I walk by.

My new shelves look amazing, and someone told me they actually look like I love and care about my hobby, that I am proud of it, and it does not look like a hoarder's collection of junk anymore. My shelves are a reflection of the game, how I see the game, and myself. My games now reflect my style, and how my hobby reflects that.

Oh, that that is a very important point I want you to remember.

This is my hobby.

It is not Wizards' hobby, a VTT provider, any 5E publisher, or any of these other companies. While I love what these companies create, the hobby should reflect my interests and tastes. I am not changing what I like because some game writer wants to exert societal pressure though a book that has no resale value, and the mass of paper and ink will likely go to Goodwill or the recycle bin someday, if the staff and social media people start on a tirade.

This is my hobby, and it reflects me.

And I am done with preachy garbage that tells me how to act and live my life, and art that is less interested in paying homage to the hobby, and more at pushing someone's agenda - on any side, mind you. Writers who put that stuff in books need to straighten their own lives out first, and stay out of mine. Sorry, how you treat each other and act in a civilized society should have been taught to you in school, please don't take up half of my game book explaining what a failed educational system did not provide, it is not the game's problem to solve.

When a game starts laying out "rules for real life" it has instantly crossed a red line. This is what the Bible is for. Stay out of religion, game designers.

These are the games I will play going forward. The other games will be put in storage and sold. And yes, this does affect my blogs. I see two that may get put into storage and shelved. I recently brought back my double-zero dungeon blog for 1d100 gaming (BRP, Rolemaster, Runequest, Cthulhu, etc.), and I created a 2d6 Space blog for all my amazing Cepheus and Traveller games.

And I have some games currently on my shelves that take away from the better ones. These are my Trojan Horse games, and I am beginning to see them for what they are. They are still great games and I love them, but they are distractions and take away time from the games that I enjoy more. this is not a reflection of the game's quality or them being a bad game, it is just I have better in my collection and prefer to play those, instead of something that "kinda sorta could be" and does not provide a strong experience aligned with my interests.

I have Cypher System on my older shelves, and GURPS on a display shelf. GURPS is the better generic game, and having Cypher out on my most-played shelves takes away time and attention from a game I really love. GURPS is the better game for me, doing everything Cypher System does, but better. Cypher System, for my interests, is a Trojan Horse that distracts me and takes away time and attention from GURPS, a game I get more "fun per moment" out of.

Tales of the Valiant is the best Open 5E system out there, but I have three display shelves devoted to Dungeon Crawl Classics. DCC represents fantasy far better for me than any other fantasy game, and especially 5E, which people call "superheroic fantasy" but that is a lie. I have superhero games that are far better balanced and fun to play than anything 5E, and they do fantasy as well. The only reason superheroes exist in 5E is the system is so broken it is impossible to kill characters, and the challenge rating system is so broken it never works. If I want real superheroic fantasy, I will play a superhero game in a fantasy setting and have the real thing.

DCC's charts and tables provide true emergent play. My concepts of fantasy are in that area where "magic is an arcane and unpredictable force beyond our understanding." This cuts to my core beliefs, where magic is forbidden knowledge and faith is the armor of the soul. This is more real to me. Why am I playing no-consequence magic again? Is this a video-game where I can spam the magic bolt button again and again, get bored, and quit? If there is no cost to magic, the entire fantasy game is boring.

ToV will likely be on my hall shelves and not in storage, but off my primary display shelves. I still like the game and plan to play, but it is not my primary fantasy game. Cypher System goes there, too, but reduced down to its core book and genre support. 

My new shelves will have Traveller and my 2d6 games. My d100 games will have a home there. Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, BRP, and my other games will find a home there. If they don't compete with GURPS and DCC, they can join the display shelves.

Now, GURPS could replace them all, but DCC has its charts, Traveller and Runequest brings tons of support for their settings, and really the games GURPS would compete with are BRP and some of the Open d100 games. I will see how it goes, but I feel this is a good balance.

AI Killed the Hobby

I look at these massive new RPG books, huge tomes filled with art and page after page of text, and my mind shuts down.

I am overwhelmed.

It is all too much.

Somebody, please, set me free from shelves full of overwritten, page-after-page, books filled with meaningless art, filler text, and endless rambling about nothing of much importance. We are in an obese age of gaming, where nobody cares about usability, and everyone damns the torpedoes to ship a 500-page "statement" book. The RPG to end all RPGs. A monster phone book of a game.

Likely filled with AI-generated "filler" text. You know that "help me write" sort of "press the button and fill out the next few sentences and make me sound smart" AI text.

They all suck.

The more you say, the less it all means.

Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy. I get the feeling more work was put into this small book than an entire 1,000-page, three book collection game. It takes nothing to write filler. The hardest part of writing is deciding "what do we cut?"

What do we leave out so this is the "best of the best?"

Every page in this book is designed to be amazing. That must have been a lot of hard work paring this down, and in the end, it is worth far more to me than a 500-page slog of a game.

With D&D 2024, when I look at those books, I could take a box cutter and cut out 70% of the chapters and have a better game. Even the decision to include as many sub-classes as they did bloats the game and lessens usability. Huge spreads of art make for a good coffee-table book, but try using that thing in play. With OSE, this little book can travel and be used as a table reference without any problem.

It is the same feeling I get when watching a nearly 3-hour long movie and wishing they would have cut an hour of runtime to just deliver the best parts while I am sitting in the theater and having to hit the bathrooms. 

Shadowdark was designed with the same ideas, that 2-page spreads should convey only the best options. The more you add to Shadowdark, the worse it gets. The game is already severely bloated with classes and too many options. The more I get rid of for that game, the better it gets.

Designers who fill their books with bloat and fluff I will give up on. The books are worthless. 

I want designers who care to give me the very best on every page. 

With care, and consideration.

Something AI is impossible at doing.

Using judgment. 

Crafting the Perfect 5E Replacement, Part 13

Today, we have a great video from a solo player using the BECMI system, as outlined in the Rules Cyclopedia, to play the Gunderholfen mega-dungeon. Please watch this all the way through, like, and subscribe! I am always up for great solo content, and also videos discussing the struggles and challenges of solo play.

One interesting point he makes is how cumbersome using the Rules Cyclopedia is, as compared to Old School Essentials. He now carries the OSE Classic Fantasy rules book with him, as it is a small, concise book that is far easier to reference.

I get the same feeling about "large" OSR systems, such as Adventures Dark & Deep, Dragonslayer, ACKS II, and a few others. That somehow, they are too big to have fun with. They are harder to play because they are so huge. While I love having "so much," this also starts moving into an area where the game becomes "too big to play."

I know, you are a GURPS player, what are you talking about?

I expect GURPS to be huge, but nothing outside of GURPS Lite is really what you need to know for 90% of the game. GURPS is a small game filled with infinite options, most of which can be ignored. There are vast parts of ACKS II and ADAD that I can't skip over and feel like I am playing the game as intended.

The reasons I play GURPS are that it offers three things B/X does not: point-based design, inner character motivation, and gritty realism. You do not even need a narrative game if you have GURPS; all the narrative you will ever need in a session will be designed into your character, and you will have the rules ready to go.

With B/X, the Classic Fantasy rules tome is all you need. Advanced Fantasy just exists for options, but that Classic book is just about the best book in role-playing right now. The bloat of 5E, and this applies to every version of the game, including Open 5E, kills the game for me. There is no way to simplify the game to something manageable, and it requires flipping through hundreds of pages of rules to play.

Shadowdark is your best option for 5E, and that is not compatible with all the 5E junk I have in books. The whole system feels like a waste. Even then, why do I need Shadowdark if I am playing solo? I want the dominion and hireling rules of OSE, along with the broader variety of options, without the glut of filler content.

OSE is the best way to experience this thing we call "D&D." You can keep buying new editions of D&D 5E and 6E for the next 10 or 20 years, but you won't surpass this. You can keep hopping on the next OSR bandwagon, these gimmick-filled narrative games, or another game trying to reinvent D&D 4E - but you will never find a better game than this.

Meta Currencies

Okay, game designers, you are going to burn us all out on meta-currencies if that is all your games are about. Draw Steel is the next meta-currency game, closely following Daggerheart, and it too, has a special currency for each player, and the referee.

What is it with all these new-age RPGs and meta-currencies?

Daggerheart? I have it.

Draw Steel? Backed the Kickstarter.

I spent my money, I can talk about these. 

Okay, here is my game and my meta-currencies, and I will purposefully name them something terrible to say at the table. Players get heroic panache and referees need to spend verisimilitude. Of course, when we are playing, everyone will call them "hero-pan and verm" and nobody will know what the heck we are talking about. Somebody will call the player resource HP and people will get confused why some characters can spend their hit points to make a cleave attack.

Again, designers are trying to control the language of the game. You see this when they replaced race. They are forcing you to think one, special way. You will adopt the buzzwords and special code words to be a part of the group. Say the right things, and you aren't a threat to the group. I hate it when designers take cult indoctrination and codify it as role-playing game rules. Plain, simple language never hurt anyone. 

I remember the days when a referee's meta-currency was "each enemy took a turn."

Okay, I had enough already, I am abbreviating meta-currency to MC from now on. I am already sick of typing it.

And these designers will explain why we need MC with the line, "This is why the dragon can't use their breath weapon every turn." Uh, we had that problem solved until D&D 4E broke it with recharge mechanics. Seriously, this problem has been solved by the original white box version of D&D, and better designers already came up with a fix for this in 1974.

It is like these new-age game designers are wannabe AAA video-game designers and they are in the wrong business. The "game within the game" is not all that interesting, is another system to balance, and it will inevitably break at high levels.

I am here to play a role-playing game, not shove tokens around tracking another shared resource in a game with already a few hundred pages of rules. This is like one of those county fair foods you can only eat two bites of, think is the greatest thing ever, before you realize you can't eat the two foot-long piece of fried bread covered in cinnamon sugar because you will get sick.

The MC mechanics will be great the first four fights.

The next four fights, we will be short-handing them and trying to speed up play so we can get through the adventure.

The last four fights and we will be assuming it all away into the normal turn mechanics and trying to make it go away so we can play something more like D&D.

The next four fights and we will be hating them and wondering why we need to slow down play so much. 

Then the group goes back to D&D. We don't want to, really, so we play Tales of the Valiant instead because we have a conscious and higher standards. Butter, meet margarine.

The groups that stick with it and get to high levels will wonder if anybody tested any of this.

Version two is coming out to fix all this, we promise!

Oh, and the next version of D&D is coming out to fix all that, too! Maybe they will jump on the MC bandwagon!

And I like Savage Worlds, and that is a heavy MC game. Part of the reason I stopped playing Savage Worlds is I felt the game had "too many toys" required for play. It was fun, but laying out tokens for bennies, decks of cards, spinners, and all sort of other "fidget toys" left me feeling like the game went out of its way to put "table junk" in the game when what I wanted was a streamlined, simple, character-sheet-focused system.

I still love Savage Worlds, but it is one of those games that I play in smaller bites with fewer characters. To me, Savage Worlds is a good solo-player game, but I would never run a four-person party by myself, as the amount of tracked resources would quickly become overwhelming.

And while the MC in Savage Worlds was more player-sided, the MC in these new games are intended as a referee narrative control tool. Has the DM crisis gotten so bad people forgot how to run a game? Does it now have to "be a game" to "run a game?"

Pathfinder 2 is also an elegant solution to the MC problem. It makes its MC the action economy, with three actions total, and you spend them with your turn options. Again, there is a one-to-one relationship that is easily understood. Three actions. How do you spend them? This choice is the same for every character on every turn, and everyone easily knows what the MC "is."

I give Pathfinder 2E a lot of heat, but this is a better game than either Daggerheart or Draw Steel. I would play this before I would play either of those two. This game works and is balanced out to level 20, and it still works at that high level. This is a solid design that gives you more character options than those two games, and it scales all the way up to the highest levels without breaking.

While Pathfinder 2E leans heavily on the tag system, it is an easier system that is more logical and streamlined than these newer games. The MC is the action economy, and people can rapidly grasp that. Monsters recharge special abilities on critical hits or other special situations. No "invisible external MC economies" are needed.

Refereeing PF 2E is easy. Where it falls short for me is solo play, but this plays excellent with a group that can manage the complexity. The more people you have, and the greater the rules knowledge, the better it gets.

Shadowdark proved you can focus on the group dynamics with a simple external tool, a timer, and get a wealth of tension, interaction, and play just through one external factor. Shadowdark needs no MC to make the game highly compelling, since the designer understands social group dynamics and how those external factors put pressure on players as a group to perform optimally.

These new games have no timer, and they go out of their way to invent all sorts of MC to raise tension, and it almost feels artificial, too nerdy, over-thought, and unneeded. These games will take even more time to play, and the turns will be longer since everyone will be optimizing their MC spending. 

I get the feeling with this current crop of MC games there is nothing to see here.

Crafting the Perfect 5E Replacement, Part 12

Old School Essentials is very close to being the perfect game. What I love about it is there is so much packed into something so little. There are worlds and even universes packed away in this tiny book. Even the two Advanced tomes are more wonder packed into two tiny books.

All you ever need is here.

And there are other games built off of this engine, science fiction, cyberpunk, post apocalyptic, other fantasy games, all just as easy, open, and immersive. You don't need to learn much else, nothing  much needs to be changed, it is all here, working together in harmony, perfect in its simplicity and expansive in its depth and reach.

The lie 5E sells you is that "complexity is choice." When it is not. Complexity limits choices. I have far fewer options in 5E than OSE. An OSE character sheet grows and expands as the character adventures, and picks up all sorts of interesting things along the way. I have books that change the classes, or add training options, so anything is possible.

Much more than 5E. With 5E, every option you need to pay money for, sometimes two or three times before you can use it on a character sheet. And you need to keep paying someone to give you those choices and store that character. That is not freedom. That is being a slave to a game that abuses your generosity and suckers you into getting others "in on the scheme."

And they use the mechanics of social networks and peer pressure against you to get you to buy.

Every time you play one of these newer games, you are the sucker. 

Also, the concept for "paying for everything" makes no sense on an old school character sheet. If my warrior gains an ability to "speak with animals" he does not need to pay for that with a feat, by losing another ability, pay with skill points, take a disadvantage elsewhere, sacrifice ability score points, or balance it in any way. Just add it to the character sheet as "something that happened" and move on with the adventure. Nobody needs to "consult the rule book" to see if that is fair, allowed, breaks the game, or upsets the game designers in Seattle. 

And the people "bought in" will do or say anything to "keep people in the game" to "justify the dropped cost" into all those "digital goods." When, in fact, all that money they spent on a silly game is gone, or will be gone when that website or service shuts down in a few years when the world moves on. It happened to D&D 4E, it will happen to D&D 5E.

They aren't telling you 5E is any good. They are afraid the money they spent has been wasted. 

The only way you need to "pay for everything" in an old-school game is with that pile of gold the party has, and it is all imaginary money. Buy training, strongholds, hirelings, magic items, mounts, armies, and exotic pets.

The only money you spend in an old school game is imaginary.

The money you spend in a modern game is real.

The Coming Walled Garden

I get the feeling nothing in Open5E or the OSR matters. The mainstream D&D market is large enough to sustain itself, fire 90% of its customers, and make more money they were making off the 10% of the whales left in the market. What will replace them are the younger generation and a mobile gaming strategy, as they transition into that model.

Nobody in the new market will even know about alternatives, the OSR, or games outside of the coming D&D-only reality.

They have a few problems with this, a declining birth rate, a literacy rate dropping faster than a stone, and the attention span of kids these days is one minute or less. In ten years, no kid will want to read a thousand pages of D&D. I give them a better chance of selling the brand than ever hitting their target, because their mind is playing the wrong game. D&D 5E was written as an "I'm sorry for D&D 4E" by a team of D&D grognards and experts. The game went ten years of duct-taping and patching, and it was designed to compete with Pathfinder 1e and those holding onto the 3.5E-era rules.

It did that job well.

Today? 5E is the wrong game for the wrong job. It is ten years out of date, a SUV in an age of electric cars. It lumbers along because it still works, and it is easier not to sell the thing and trade up for a better, faster, more economical model. It is like owning an SUV large enough to tow a boat and hold a family, but being single and not owning a boat.

5E is too big for its own good. It is overwritten. There are too many choices on a turn. It plays horribly slow. The CR system is still broken. There are still massive exploits. Some classes are still horrible. Others are worse, and so overpowered they break the game. There is no way to fix any of this unless you adopt the MMO-model and live update and patch the rules, and force updates to all character sheets. It will be World of Warcraft, with respecs and talent point refunds.

People have latched onto this system as a panacea, do-everything, universal system.

Part of me feels the more people try to "fix 5E" the more popular D&D will get. It is engagement, discussion, and only serves to keep people in the cave rather than exploring other games where you may actually find enjoyment.

I am not saying happiness, satisfaction, the right game, inclusion, seeing yourself in something, or any of the other buzzwords. Games should only provide enjoyment. This is all they are. Making them into something more is damaging to your mental health.

Games are hobbies.

And hobbies should come with perspective.

But we are seeing a mental lock-in with these newer games, they not only define how we have fun, but they define our identities. 

And the walled garden will define everything in the game, every possibility, and every option players will ever see. Part of me feels Open 5E is doomed to fail, and to just walk away for the games I like better. A fraction of the current D&D players will decide the direction of the hobby, the whales, and those who buy in. Nothing any third-party publisher does will change this.

I can't shake this feeling. 

Crafting the Perfect 5E Replacement, Part 11

I had a moment there where I wavered and considered using Dungeon Crawl Classics for my 5E replacement. DCC is one of my beloved games, and my Pathfinder 1e and D&D 3.5E replacement, but it still does not match the elegant perfection and simplicity of Old School Essentials.

Old School Essentials is the perfect role-playing game. People will come along with their simplified 5E, 5E fixers, two-die story systems, tactical combat games, and all sorts of other avant-garde nouveau-riche RPG systems of the week, but none will ever compare to the original.

Anything based on 5E is based on a flawed system, and thus built of sand and flawed itself.

The massive problem with DCC and Shadowdark are the casting mechanics, allowing wizards casting rolls and multiple casts of the same spell destroys the fundamental "miracle-like nature" of magic and turns it into a commodity. At this point, you are a video game, and not a role-playing game. DCC is the best of that bunch with its emergent mechanics.

This may sound un-fun and extremely hardcore, but as a caster, I want a my spells to be single shot miracles; and never repeat-use, do-them-every turn, magic attacks the rest of the party takes for granted. The infinite-use cantrip and the "spell slot" system in D&D 5E are profane and blasphemy to the nature of D&D and the myths they supposedly represent. Even the DCC and Shadowdark casting systems are supposedly better alternatives, but built upon lies, and thus they do not represent the truth.

This is all "tech-bro video-game BS" sticking its Axe Body-wash smelling self into our hobby.

Yes, who cases about a 1d6+1 magic missile that is one-use? But given how few hit points every living thing has in a B/X world, it is death to any commoner. This spell at 6th level this increases to three missiles, and five at 11th, that is the AR-15 of the wizard world. At 11th level 5d6+5 damage (23hp on average) removes half of a red dragon's 45 hit points, and all but kills a 27hp white dragon in a single cast of a first level spell. Next turn, cast the other one you have memorized, or read it off a scroll you made.

5E would never allow this. Most of these newer story games would never allow this. 

No attack roll, no saving throw. No 2d10 or 2d12 roll to mess up. No causing corruption and losing the  spell on a bad roll. No hope and fear. There is no gamification to this, it is a miracle out of myth. Expend a first level spell slot and kill a dragon. In OSE and most B/X games, magic missile is an "instant death" spell when cast at higher levels.

A magic user is not a "wizard" but a being who is almost a god in power.

Still very weak in body, but that is the trade off. 

Fighters are no slouches, either. I am over here with my girdle of giant strength and gauntlets of ogre power doing double damage with my weapons, +3 to-hit and damage for STR, and +2 for my magic weapon. With a long-sword that is 2d8+5 damage per hit, and another +1 if we are using the weapon specialization rules, for an average of 16 points damage per hit. A bugbear has 14hp, so you are killing a 3 HD monster each turn, and you alone could take a white dragon down in two hits, or a red dragon in four.

The martial and caster power difference in old D&D was a myth, and it only really became an issue (and got progressively worse) once Wizards took over the game and started scaling hit points.

This isn't opinion.

This is math. 

And it is not because dragons are weak. They can kill a 10th level character in a single blow. Death is real in this game since the Advanced rules limit the number of resurrections, decrease CON each time, and put a percentage chance it fails and the character is happier in the afterlife. That character has had enough of this would and would rather be in Valhalla with all of their ancestors, awaiting another chance at life and 3d6 down the line.

Death saves, pop-up healing, and all this gamification around death is garbage video-game mechanics where you die and come right back, just like an MMO. Even the new "pop-fad" game mechanics like "go out like a hero" and "I take a emo scar" narrative death rules of the newer games are more ego pandering to players, and will only foster comfort and boredom.

No death? It's not D&D.

Do I want more character customization and options? There are plenty of mods to OSE, such as the rules from Into the Wild and On Downtime and Demesnes. These two books put 5E and its sub-classes to shame, and give me more options to tweak and customize my characters so they feel both thematically and mechanically unique.

And ODaD allows me to pay gold for feats and training, so those "level based progressions charts" can go back to the lands of centrally planned economies and gaming and stay there. If I have the gold, and blow it all on myself for the ability to shoot into melee, then that is capitalism, baby. If I fall in a pit trap it all goes to waste, but at least my OSE characters have a reason to get and spend gold.

And we are not given "state housing" like bastions either, and then getting hounded for micro-transactions from a VTT. If I want to pimp my crib and buy 66 towers for my castle, and a grand library for each day of the week, and a 10,000 man army, I can do it here.

Game designers, you are not telling me when I can "take a feat" on some "level chart." Sorry, I am going out there, beating the hell out of Dungenar the Dragon, taking his gold, selling his hide for shoes and suitcases, and blowing that treasure horde on me and my friends for college tuition, lavish housing, and partying.

The lack of a big-money treasure game is also a flaw of DCC and most all of these other modern games, including Daggerheart, Draw Steel, Shadowdark, D&D 5E, Pathfinder, and many others. Shadowdark is closer to Warhammer in that you will live poor and die poor, and you have nothing to do with a few thousand gold anyways.. They are often self-centered games that play to the "hero's ego" and ignore the wider context of living in a world.

If gold means nothing, it is not D&D.

If magic fells like a video-game, it is not D&D.

Don't be fooled by lies and games pandering to your ego.

They are not worth it.

You will get bored, drop it, and be on to the next one in a year.

The West Marches Cracker Barrel

In any case, they were going to lose this one, and all sides lose here. Critical Role's decision not to use Daggerheart for Campaign Four creates a huge mess.

Those who bought into Daggerheart are now wondering why.

Those who don't like D&D are now less interested in the show.

Those who are suspicious of everything in the hobby have had various conspiracy theories "proven right."

Those who like D&D, but not Critical Role, wish they had used the system and taken the dramatic play crowd with them.

I remain optimistic about Daggerheart and envision a promising future with the system. I might have been interested in Campaign Four had they used it, to see how the game plays from the perspective of the people who created it, to fit that play style. I never really got into the show, but I had some interest in it; however, that interest is now gone.

I have zero interest in seeing people play D&D 2024.

Seeing the term "West Marches" being thrown around like a new buzzword by people who have no idea what it means is nauseating. It means as much to these people as a "North Trails" or "South Wilds" campaign style, which I just made up, but hey, open your eyes a little wider and lean towards the camera when you say it to feign excitement and hype your game on OSR buzzwords rather than deliver a fun show. That reliance on meaningless appropriated buzzword hype is a huge warning sign to me.

Why bring up Cracker Barrel? I never ate there, and it was far too high in fat, calories, and sodium to ever fit into my diet or be good for my heart. It was likely great comfort food, but I never feel comfortable a few hours after I eat it, so I don't dine there. People enjoyed it, so it was good for them. The company changing its logo and store atmosphere was like McDonald's changing its sign; who cares?

Yes, oh no, we are "losing something," but that opens the door for thousands of local places to fill that market. I would trust a local place with that atmosphere if the food and service were good. Why do I care that a chain brand is changing? I will find a local spot and visit the small business that caters to the nostalgia, old-time, and Americana crowd.

And you know, once Cracker Barrel goes Chili's, the small, local, mom-and-pop restaurants are coming by the thousands. They will likely be better, more honest, and more authentic, too. The chain restaurants are all part of the Wall Street uni-brand. It is nice to see them take the mask off and see the sterile, corporate face that they really are, and be honest with their customers. They may get healthy options.

But marching out "West Marches" feels like something that both Critical Role and D&D 2024 are not. Part of D&D's problem is that it tries to do everything, but it doesn't excel in any particular area.

How can you even do a "West Marches" game in D&D 2024 with the current resting mechanics? It is a sandbox and time-focused play style, and these epic-length sandbox games require downtime to heal and recover, or spend a few months in training. Some players will "sit out" and be assumed to be healing, training, managing a stronghold, or engaging in other sideline activities. In D&D 5E, everybody fully heals and recovers all resources in one day of downtime. There is no need to train. Given a high enough level, travel time is zero.

Time means nothing in D&D 5E. It is a pen-and-paper MMO. Everyone heal, repair gear, and let's raid the boss lair again.

Then again, "West Marches" is so nebulous that it is three blind men and an elephant. Just wait, every D&D YouTube channel will have a different definition for this, and will "fix your campaign problems once and for all!" As an OSR player, I think of "sandboxes, resting, and downtime" when 5E players are sitting there, thinking, "it is scheduling sessions and running multiple groups." Beware of nebulously defined buzzwords. Is the dress blue or gold? Does it matter?

Saying "we are West Marches" is like they put up the old Cracker Barrel sign and say, "Look, it is us! We are this now!"

When it isn't who they are.

There are strengths and compelling reasons to play Daggerheart and watch Critical Role, rather than leaning on an OSR buzzword. The storytelling stuff in Daggerheart is strong enough.

Oh, they are playing D&D 2024? Now I see why they need to create buzz.

Crafting the Perfect 5E Replacement, Part 10

You will do well with Old School Essentials or Dungeon Crawl Classics.

If you are staying in 5E, do Shadowdark. 

And Wizards is trying to sell D&D to older markets outside the hobby, and they have no clue. The people who do crochet likely do not have the time to sort through a thousand pages of rules for a game, nor grasp the action economy of 5E. The character builds alone are hard, or near impossible, to do by hand. Older gamers outside the hobby, such as those who buy crochet books, are honestly better off with Shadowdark or OSE.

I could never recommend D&D 2024 to older people outside the hobby. I tried to put together a group, but the complexity of needing software, signing up for D&D Beyond, and dealing with the prices of the books killed my D&D group before it even started. My system veterans were hesitant to upgrade to 2024 and stick with 2014. They bailed, too.

I should have stuck with Shadowdark, which would have given me a chance to be in a group.

The older gamers who can understand D&D 2024? They already know D&D, and many have been turned off by the OGL. Many have abandoned 5E entirely. The Open 5E clones are fading and will only gain traction once 5E is surpassed by D&D 7. One could stay in the Open 5E clones, and that is a valid place if you still like 5E. To me, the system and interest is fading, and I like other games better. I only have so much room on my shelves.

GURPS, Traveller, OSE, DCC, and Call of Cthulhu are my top five games. 

Daggerheart has carved out a niche, but its interest is waning somewhat, and it is not the next Critical Role campaign's system, which is a massive missed opportunity (especially with those new hires and hype). Draw Steel is a new, more tactical game, but I don't see it taking over. Daggerheart will be a niche game only for the fans. They lost the chance to ride the wave when they announced campaign four.

History is filled with lost opportunities and companies that could have been king. Being a second player or a niche product only means fading into obscurity in the mass market. My feeling is the new hires were made since the next edition of D&D will be licensed out to Darrington Press, and they will pay for the rights to print "an edition" much like rights holders do these days.

I don't see any of the new games of 2025 making a huge impact. Changing the rules does not fix your game, or make it fun again. The hobby is a social one.

DCC is OSR compatible, and I like this game since the staff is nice and works hard. They put out some of the most imaginative stuff in the hobby these days. Some say there are too many tables in here and the game is "too much" for an OSR-style of rules, but to me, every table is just a suggestion and it is all meant to be changed and interpreted by the referee as inspiration, not written in stone.

I like DCC over 3.5E, since it is far easier, even with all the tables and the silly dice. I was a big fan of 3.5E and Pathfinder 1e, but DCC is my game for that now. It shares the saving throw system and that over-the-top feeling of 3.5E without all the bloat and crunch.

That said, DCC is less ideal for larger games where I may want to run a dozen characters solo. At most, I would run four in DCC by myself, since there is a complexity level to each that needs to be managed. If I run a dozen characters it will be for OSE since I will not lose my mind. there is a point to every game where "too much is too much" and you start to regret all the bells and whistles the system brings to the table. DCC is one of those "high character detail" games, where there is a lot going on, and quite a few choices a character needs to make during a turn with their resources and options. 

OSE will always be my go-to for classic play. This is infinitely expandable, and stays out of opinion and advocacy. It does not push itself as a silly "vibe" to adopt, it is what it is - just the rules. And what you do and create with them is your thing. There are plenty of mods and alternate rules for OSE and it blows my mind. All the adventures work together. you do not worry about compatibility or conversion, the OSR is a standard to write for, not a feeling or way of playing. Anyone who tells you you can play 5E "an OSR way" does not understand the OSR.

So, while I like DCC, OSE is my campaign game. The reasons and rules have not changed. All the best stuff that I have is for OSE, and it is 100% directly compatible without needing the DCC charts or extra stuff. Random charts for emergent play are nice, but they do not make a game.

For my 5E replacement, OSE is still it.

My 3.5E and Pathfinder 1e replacement? Yeah, that is still DCC. Mind you, DCC has flaws and weaknesses, but it is still fun.

OSE and that B/X style of rules are the perfect game. 

D&D Advice

There are days I feel D&D must be the worst game ever written since people won't stop telling me how to play it.

I will toss in a sarcasm flag here, but it is true. 

I get why YouTube cracked down on D&D creators, it got to be too much. Endless videos pandering to this lowest-common-denominator of referee advice, class builds, adventure prep, how to make the game more fun, class tier lists, and it goes on and on.

Most of the advice isn't even good, it is just opinion.

And it is presented with such a know-it-all tone and attitude that it drives me crazy. The deep voice and calm presentation, overly serious, self-professed experts with very little knowledge in what they are talking about. The grift is high with D&D YouTube, and the self-sustaining and self-important attitude is galling.

And that sparks further discussion as other creators support or disagree with the opinion, and false knowledge becomes accepted truth, and it all is just this toxic echo chamber that feeds upon itself, creates its own audience, and sustains itself as the entire pile slips into the outrage-for-clicks trap.

YouTube probably has this "outrage thumbnail" algorithm that tells them to kill off a community when the only thing driving interest are outrage and scandal videos. That few years of "Wizards Did What?" content was likely the nail in the coffin. The same is likely happening to Warhammer.

If all that is driving a community is outrage, it is likely a community that the platform does not want.

But, stepping back, and even just considering referee and player advice...no game ever needed this much help. Yes, I get it, this is a popular game, and there is an art to playing it, but it can't be this hard. But other games, like Call of Cthulhu, the second-most popular game in the world, has nowhere near this level of player and referee advice.

And Call of Cthulhu defaults to a historical setting! One would think we would be seeing videos on language, history, style, how to dress, what the world was like, technology, running evil cults, how to fight different monsters, the countries of the world, Elder God tier lists, investigation tactics, how to not go insane, and all sorts of other helpful advice.

And admittedly, Call of Cthulhu is about equal in terms of complexity and far harder in challenge.

And there is very little coverage of the game, given the relative size differences. 

I do see Shadowdark coverage, but it is not as endless pandering to seemingly helpless players and referees. Shadowdark does not need that much help, and the coverage is more about having fun and talking about the adventures. A simple, minimalist, very concise set of rules does not need much in the way of helping people understand how it plays.

A game like D&D, with over a thousand pages to consume, needs so much help it boggles my mind. Is there an inverse relationship happening here? The larger the game, the more help people need? Does a game get so big it generates its own cottage self-help industry?

In general, I am done with D&D and D&D YouTube, I unsubscribe from channels as they pop up. I never watch the advice or adventure prep videos. I would learn more by just preparing an adventure myself. I don't need community experts (or their games), and it all just becomes a tangle of worthless information, talking to hear somebody talk.

Listening because we feel alone and confused.

There are times when you need to stop listening, and solve the problem with your own two hands. 

Crafting the Perfect 5E Replacement, Part 9

I had this article written to justify Old School essentials over Dungeon Crawl Classics, but then Goodman Games turned out to be incredibly nice during a recent shipment, and I gave it a little more thought.

Why would I still use OSE? Well, for one, OSE is a smaller, more compact, more expandable, and simpler game. If I want a game I can expand however I want, it will be OSE. I am already expanding it some by considering the Downtime rules and the Into the Wild alternate classes, and that is a solid mod of the game. So, yes, I am modding the game to start.

OSE has a good collection of 4E-like races to use, but to be honest, OSE supports "race-plus-class" so I could just as easily port in the OSE race templates into DCC, and use those to modify some of the existing classes to create Dragonborn warriors, Tiefling thieves, and Drow clerics. It is not that hard.

OSE also supports classic content easier, and it drops into any OSR or classic setting seamlessly. DCC sometimes wants to do "its own thing" and be weird and strange, and that is cool. If I am running a classic setting such as the Lost Lands setting from Necromancer Games, my first picks would be OSE or Swords & Wizardry. Those feel "at home" here. I have not tried running classic settings, in a serious manner, using DCC, and that may be interesting.

There are times I feel a too-fantastic "base world" of DCC takes away from some of the amazing and unexpected moments the game offers. If everything is strange and fantastic, then nothing is. There are times you just want to live in "strange world" and be a fish out of water, and that is more like the Dying Earth and Purple Planet settings, which again, Goodman Games does the best job at giving us worlds that we have never seen before and blow our minds.

Then again, I also get tired of the same-old, same-old. Why am I playing in another faux-European setting again? I could argue there is no real difference between Mystara, Greyhawk, and the Forgotten Realms since they are essentially the same place with different names and maps. especially these days with the current crop of writers for Wizards who write level-select adventure compilations. You say Waterdeep, I say Specularum, and someone else says Greyhawk City.

None of them are Middle Earth.

It is hard to care about these legacy settings without real support, and new adventures being written for them and delivered regularly. They are classic rock, great, but a nostalgia trap, and no one can sing it anymore without screwing it up.

This is one huge problem with nostalgia marketing, we will never see anything truly amazing, new, fresh, and mind-blowing from Wizards ever again. It will all be the reheated leftovers of Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, and they did horrible jobs at recycling Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Dragonlance. All we will get from Wizards is recycled, vaguely European, Ren-Fair settings with the thees and thous, Irish, British, and Scottish accents everywhere, and those stereotypical Russian Tieflings. Yes, Greyhawk is a classic setting and I loved it, but notice the past-tense there. I still love it, but I have DM-ed that place when it was first released, and I am ready for something new.

The last new thing TSR did was Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Star Frontiers. Eberron from Wizards was more of a remix than a new idea entirely, and it relied too much on the Wayne Reynolds art (which became Pathfinder's iconic imagery) to ever have its own identity. Outside of Magic the Gathering, Wizards never really did anything new or original, risk-taking and mind-blowing with D&D.

Baldur's Gate 3 is seriously at risk of being overused and overexposed, if it is not there already. 

Then again, Wizards isn't loved by much of the community anymore, and even if they were to do something new and original, it would likely not be received too well. A nostalgia play is the "scent of death" for a declining company, and you even see that in all the inane D&D cartoon callbacks. They are also pretty much well ignoring the authors of their classic settings and novels, and this is a huge loss to the lore and worlds once we lose them to time. Their current talent pool is not up to the task of supporting the settings they have.

If you want new ideas, buy a set of Zocchi dice and pick up the DCC core rule-book and one of the settings. You won't get "new stuff" from Wizards anymore.

With DCC, I don't really need to mod the game all that much, the game has a solid core engine and plenty of random table support. I would still like to use the Downtime book, along with an additional OSR resource (my Labyrinth Lord book is my add-on game to DCC for treasure tables, but OSE is also perfectly capable of being that), and I have it all covered.

On Downtime and Demesnes would work well with DCC. DCC has "skills" and ODaD has training costs, though "skills" in DCC would not be the +3 of this set of rules, but be the normal d20 roll of DCC (unskilled is the d10). I would rule expert is a d24 while master is a d30, sticking with the DCC dice chain instead of flat modifiers. We have the dice, so use them! Talents, raising statistics, crafting, and weapon mastery training work as they do in the ODaD book.

Also, with OSE, there is an element of "going back into the cave" and retreating into the too-familiar and nostalgic. There is a reason OSE's covers are so wild and out there, and I suspect even they are trying to fight that perception of being "a rules reference for an old game" and trying to keep the concepts fresh and away from the too-familiar.

DCC is already a "perfect" 5E replacement. Nothing more needs to be done and said. The system, at its core, is a simple 3.5E-style game, no different than OSE. I could use either and be happy. OSE would be lighter-weight and faster. DCC would have random table support for emergent play.

When two games are equal, it comes down to preference.

And, of course, the company you prefer to support. 

Crafting the Perfect 5E Replacement, Part 8

Why not Shadowdark? Why use Old School Essentials instead of Shadowdark to replace 5E?

I love Shadowdark, it is an S-Tier game for me. There is no better Dungeon-style board game that simulates a dungeon crawl session, in a group, with a timer, than this. This is amazing when played live, with a group, and this is where the game's strength lies. It took the best parts of 5E, and tossed out all the over-designed hubris and a decade of garbage rules tossed into the game. It pays respect to the original game and creators. It captures the feeling of old-school gaming, specifically the fear of the unknown.

Another game that captures the feeling of old-school gaming is Dungeon Crawl Classics, and that is the number-three fantasy game in the world right now by the GenCon standard. And that growth happened organically, and again, with 5E players migrating to that game as a beloved classic. I expect a glut to happen here shortly. 

Shadowdark is getting seriously bloated in the market and on crowdfunding, and this is due to the sheer mass of 5E players migrating to this game as the floodgates open and people flee D&D for greener pastures. The license is open and free. Creators can build here without worry. That is a good thing and a bad thing. I am overloaded with Shadowdark books now. Books repeat each other's classes, and some go far too deep into class design that it looks like a full D&D level of complexity and design flex.

But I do not want the Shadowdark model.

• Torch timers.
• The narrow power range. 
• Random Progression.
• Rolling with advantage or disadvantage.
• The way-too-high 5E ability score modifiers. 
• Spell checks and repeated casting.
• Playing-piece focused play. Ideal for cons and tabletop play.
• Flat character power. 
• Dungeon gaming.
• Closed characters where progression must be rolled for. 

And I do want the B/X model.

• Predictable class progression.
• High-level (10-14) play.  
• Gold-based XP.
• Flat modifiers. 
• Classic, lower ability score modifiers.
• Vancian magic.
• Character and world focused play. Ideal for campaign play.
• Higher character power. 
• Dungeon, exploration, and dominion play with hirelings and followers.
• Open progression where character sheets are added on to. 

Old School Essentials is not as "gamey" as Shadowdark, and it feels more like a classic role-playing game wit ha wider, more world-based focus. Having dominion building and followers is key for B/X, and the high-level game is where the game takes a dramatic turn and the stakes are raised. This is the "second game" that Shadowdark misses since it focuses so much on tabletop dungeon crawling on a map.

Even OSE Classic Fantasy has a dominion game! Every class has rules to attract followers, and the game has four pages of construction and dominion rules. There comes a point where you start to change the world, and OSE gets this. If you want this explored even deeper, play ACKS II. The essential questions "why are we doing all this" is answered in OSE, where in Shadowdark, it is left open. This lack of focus on dominion play is a holdover from 5E, where they give you a bastion for free and make it invincible.

In OSE, you need to clear hexes, hire people, pay for construction, and attract settlers. All this comes from the pile of gold you amassed when crawling around in dungeons. There is an endgame built into OSE where it is lacking in Shadowdark, and this is due to the game's history and focus.

OSE has a much larger focus than Shadowdark. The game also has all the classic pieces that make it feel more natural to me. The modifiers are not wildly overpowered. The progression of the character sheet is more open and not so dependent on the rules or dice rolls telling you what you should have.

If you are more into longer-term campaign play and not so tightly focused on the character's powers, then you will be happier in Old School Essentials than you will be in Shadowdark. The games are very close in initial scope and feeling, but are vastly different in terms of scale and impact. OSE will scale to a hex-based campaign world far better than SD, since this is what it was built to do.

If all you want is that dungeon-based 5E goal-based play with an old-school vibe, then you will be happy with Shadowdark. While everyone is jumping on the SD bandwagon, the game is not designed to be a solution for every 5E and fantasy-gaming problem, and frankly, there are games like OSE that focus on a wider scope that will be a better place for some players.

OSE was designed to play the small and big games very well.

This is why I chose it over the obvious. 

AD&D 2nd Edition vs. For Gold & Glory

There is a good portion of the community moving to AD&D 2nd Edition as their old-school game. This is a solid choice, but for many reasons I would still base my games and creative work around For Gold & Glory rather than the AD&D 2nd Edition reprints.

The best reason is the open license. If you create material or adventures for FG&G, you can share and sell them. You are not allowed to do this for the AD&D 2nd Edition game. Just in supporting a community of creators and players, it is always better to form ranks with the open gaming movement. Do you have an adventure or campaign you have written? Have  you created new character options, spells, or monsters? You can sell and share it here!

The PDF of For Gold & Glory is free, and there is a nice all-in-one hardcover option. A free PDF will help me immeasurably at getting new players into the game. There is nothing to buy! Let's play. I can also just give the PDF out for free, the license says I can just share this with my friends and pass it along.

REDISTRIBUTING For Gold & Glory™
This entire, unmodified book can be redistributed either as a free pdf or as an at-cost print on demand. If you offer a print option, you are forbidden from making any profit from the sale. - For Gold & Glory, page 367.

Few games let you do that. I want to hand this out to a friend to get them started? The license allows redistribution, as long as it is for free.

Yes, the AD&D 2e PDFs are 9.99 each, and you can get soft covers. Who knows how long these will be around, and the monster books are the best buys for the few monsters outside FG&G's generous selection. For the money, ability to share, and value, FG&G beats the reprints, hands-down.

The only thing the reprints have at the product-identity monsters and spells. Get the 2nd Edition Monster Manual if you want them. But again, the art, while nice to have, is all that comic-book style. Also note that demons and devils have been erased from this edition due to the Satanic Panic. You need to buy a few more books to have these, and they are the silly renamed versions.

You can always pull them in from any AD&D 1e or first-edition source, too, and this is where the excellent Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary is highly useful. ADAD is an S-Tier game, but it is huge and has a lot of add-on content. I can see wanting to stick with a 2nd Edition subset of stuff to keep the game and world simple. This is going to be a go-to resource book, though.

 

The art in the FG&G book is far better than the reprints. I love the choices of classical art, and FG&G seems like a much more mature, serious, and impactful game than the often comical and garishly colored AD&D 2nd Edition books, and some of the pieces in the TSR books are so bad they hurt my eyes to look at. Some of the pieces in AD&D 2nd you can clearly see the artist went out of their way to avoid drawing faces. Some of the pieces are classic reprints, but they are very hit and miss. Compare that with the piece above, by a true classical artist, and FG&G stands shoulders above the amateur-looking TSR books.

The layout and clarity of the rules is also far better in FG&G. The fonts are better, the use of color is better, and the book is cleanly presented and easy to reference. It is a beautiful book, without any of the silly, kids-cartoon races of modern D&D, which I feel distract from the story and game.

The FG&G art is awesome in every way, evocative of a realistic medieval world, and it is not pushing talking houseplants or puppet PCs in my face. I am seriously starting to dislike the "goofball" new fantasy backgrounds, which are childish and lack seriousness. This is a game without Tieflings, as having the blood of Satan in you instantly turns you chaotic evil and makes you a monster. Dragonborn would be of the blood of dragons, and the allies of those serpent beasts - not player characters. It feels like a classic all-or-nothing here, without the constant cosplay and pretend-ism, and that is a welcome change.

You could have them in your game, but if you are playing second edition, you never really did. For nostalgia's sake, leave the special backgrounds to the Wizard's editions.

The AD&D 2nd Edition books are way overdone, too fancy for their own good, with strange font choices, giant curly title fonts that are hard to read, too much color on the page, and distracting, red and black, double-bordered tables with too light of a font typeset. Some of the longer paragraphs are unreadable due to the sans-serif nearly hairline-thin fonts.

I love the serious tone of FG&G, and it does not feel like a lightweight game. Your characters are these actual wizards, knights, rogues, and witches of old. The game looks and feels like a classical bible, and in every ways sets a more serious and grounded tone than modern games, which tend to be goofy and more like Cartoon Network than a tale feeling based upon a realistic world.

I love that wizard. He is so cool. That would be my character. He has a stars and moons robe with zodiac symbols all over it, and a suspicious look in his eye like, "Get away from me!" He should, he only has a d4 hit die.

Where AD&D 2nd Edition has that goofy cartoon style, FG&G feels grounded and realistic, and it has the clearly superior license. The second edition is what many remember fondly, and it is nice to have an OSR game in this space, especially one so generous.

FG&G is the better game, one that gives me a serious feeling and weighty presence to it. It is much like ACKS II in this respect, and that mature and grounded tone brings my games to another level.

Even though the rules are mostly the same, presentation matters a great deal here.