Crafting the Perfect 5E Replacement, Part 16

The more I try to make Open 5E and D&D work for me, the more I find myself saying, "Why bother?"

We had the best edition of the game since its inception. We have plenty of first-edition games out there, too. OSRIC and Adventures Dark and Deep are both excellent. Zero Edition games like Swords & Wizardry are amazing. White-box games are plentiful, and many are printed at cost with free PDFs. Old School Essentials is the king of the B/X market. Even Dungeon Crawl Classics and Castles & Crusades are incredible games, full of fun and potential.

Why do I play 5E? The two significant things that the game brings to the table are subclass abilities and infinite-use attack cantrips. In the end, it doesn't matter since your damage is halved from B/X and first edition games, and your character power goes down the higher level you go. Who cares about fancy baubles you get every level if character power is not preserved?

I would rather have that d8+2 longsword work out until 20th level than have a few dozen subclass abilities and all these tricks to keep my damage contribution high, and monster hit points that scale to piles of hundreds. If I get weaker as I level, none of it matters.

The math is all wrong in 5E.

Pick up Nimble 5e and check the math, along with the average damage per level needed. And then look at the boss monsters with a few hundred hit points. My First Edition fighter scales much better with the old-school linear math.

But the First Edition has the crunch. This game will require you to consider the supplies you can carry and their limitations. You need to prepare for a dungeon session with hardcore prepper levels of detail. This feels like going on a camping trip and realizing that you forgot to take matches or something to start a fire with. Games like Shadowdark and others minimize the "prep," but that level of detail is a part of the game. What you can carry, where you carry it, and how you get it out during an emergency is a part of your "character build."

That gear? Those are character abilities, and the more you carry, the slower you move.

And there will be things you take and leave behind, just so you can haul a few more gold coins out. We no longer need the pole, spikes, and rope; leave them behind so we can get out of here alive.

Too many people see gear as "unfun" and "boring paperwork." Gear is a part of your character build, along with the weight you can haul.

Adventures Dark & Deep is a fantastic version of the First Edition game. There is so much in here that I would never really need much else. I told Grok to generate a few hundred fantasy races for me for every game, world, movie, and fantasy setting I would ever need. They are so simple that it all works. Toss a few level limits on them, and we are good to go. Grok can even make classes for you, and all those prompts are on my ADAD House Rules page.

When I am done worrying about character power and abilities, the world and story become more important. I want to strip away all the noise around fantasy gaming and focus on what is essential. We get so distracted by "builds" and "character power" that we lose sight of the story we are trying to tell.

Plus, if I want a character build game, I have the ultimate one with GURPS over there on the shelf.

The SBRPG Restoration Project, Part 5

What was SBRPG an alternative to?

To examine the landscape, you will need to go back to 2005. While GURPS 4 was still a new system back then, we were not directly trying to create a replacement for that. What was on our minds was D&D 3.5E, and SBRPG is a direct replacement for that system.

D&D never changes; the designers always "string you along" with new options and classes, and this is true of any version of D&D they have ever released. You are blowing paycheck after paycheck on new books, more options, and better choices. The more you buy, the worse it gets, and the more unhappy you become.

Eventually, they create a new edition as a soft reset when the sales drag, and sell it all to you again. I have seen seven versions of the Ranger over three editions of Wizards' D&D from 3.0 to 5.5E, with three of them being in 5E.

In the 3.5E days, we knew there had to be universal formulas for things like character development and design, race, and power design, so we set out to create those. You did not need to recognize that endlessly buying books to have a system, such as a system with. You do not need endless "thesaurus classes", the bard, troubador, skald, minstrel, entertainer, and so on. Why?

Is a barbarian a fighter who harnesses rage power and employs a specific fighting style? Tack that on there, adjust your XP per level, and get playing. We don't need a dozen pages of fluff text and class powers for what is essentially a fighter.

You world may not even have "fighters" and you may do something else, like a duelist or pirate. Those aren't rogues. Why do we need to make those subclasses of the thief class? D&D 3.5E, to maintain their "sell you stuff" monetization strategy, constantly forces square pegs into round holes all the time.

Levels define skills. D&D 3.5E and Pathfinder 1e never got that. Why have levels if your skills are not tied to them? Why do I need to spend points on "class skills?" If the stealth skill is a rogue class feature, then what value should a level 6 thief's stealth be rated at? Hello? McFly!

Round peg, yes, round hole.

Level 6, that's right!

It was an abysmal decision for D&D 3.0 and 3.5E to make. How many books did they print with that assumption? And Paizo carried this on to Pathfinder 1e? From D&D 3.0 being released in 2000 to the end of Pathfinder 1 in 2019, we had 20 years of this nonsense.

We liked the idea of classes defining roles and skills, but we didn't like having to constantly buy books, and that pile getting higher and higher. So we wrote a system with class design, and then power design went along with that, since that is typically another thing they hold out on to keep selling you books.

We spent 20 years buying books as well.

GURPS and Champions have power design, but they do not have classes. We liked classes since the original version of SBRPG was designed to play freeform, allowing players to have a "level 5 fighter" with a few ability scores and assume the rest from there. You can play SBRPG that way and have it work fine. You can't play GURPS or Champions by just thinking a level for anything.

SBRPG is so simple that you could play it at lunch with 3d6 and a piece of paper. Even a "level 5 power" inflicts a level 5 hazard, and most spells are easily figured out (1d6L, 2d6C, or 3d6S) per level. Sacrifice a few levels for increased range or additional hazard levels or effects. Simplified, level-based power design is a new system I want to add to the revision.

We had a version of SBRPG that used a d20. We preferred 3d6, and it was a truly universal game where you could find these dice anywhere in the world and play the system easily. Once you get a d20 involved, you need more dice for damage, and things get messy. We put 3d6 on the cover, and that is all you need.

The SBRPG Restoration Project, Part 4

Once I get into "writing games," I don't really want to stop. SBRPG comes first. Then, I can work on other projects. I will avoid the 5E market if I write for different games; if my heart is not in it, why write for that market? I know, "that is what sells," but if my heart is not there, I am not doing it just for the money.

George and I wrote many games. We did this as a hobby. Many of them are stashed in folders and just sitting there.

Looking back, SBRPG was an incredible game. There is nothing else like it, even to this day. It reminds me of classic Traveller in a way, but with 3d6 and a much more flexible resolution system, where hazards (also known as saves) are tied into the core mechanic. It utilizes levels for characters, hazards, and a few other elements, and then transitions to a full-point-buy and design system. Most of the game involves a level plus ability score modifier versus a difficulty, roll, and go mechanic.

There is this unwritten rule in the game where all you have is a pack of five Yahtzee dice, and the whole world is open to you. We designed the game to be played with 3d6 only and used multipliers for higher rolls. Most of the game can be played "in your head," which is nice. Without powers, the game moves at a high rate of speed, and we designed it to be played live at the table.

When we used this system, we never rolled for initiative or did turn structure. Whoever said something next got to do something, and the referee was the final decider of "who goes next." Everyone just shouted what they did, the referee pointed at them, and the player rolled for it. The referee then handled a few monsters and then pointed back at the players, who shouted something else. Everything happened live; we never rolled for initiative, and the referee is smart enough to figure out fairness and pacing.

It was like a demolition derby meets a boxing match, where things happened in real time. It was a thrilling experience, and I refereed those games fairly. Everyone was happy, and no one felt left out. The game is all about energy and momentum. We only put an initiative system in the game because that is what we felt every game needed. In reality, we never did. This "no initiative rule" will likely be included in the remaster.

It is one of the best "theater of the mind" systems ever written.

Thoughts: The Forgotten Realms, Part 3

If I were to revisit the classic Forgotten Realms as the players who first adventured in this world, I could play this in a few games. D&D 5E is not one of them, nor are the original AD&D 1st or 2nd Edition PoD reprints. D&D 5E doesn't do the setting any favors, at least not in our interpretation of it —a gritty, dark, realistic, low-magic, massive setting where the majority of the world was monster-infested wildlands. The original (TSR) map scale was much larger, making the setting the size of half of the world instead of a Europe-sized mini-setting (D&D 3E and Wizards).

Why not the PoD reprints? Honestly, we have better books these days, with easier and more accessible content for new players, faster reference, easier table reference, and better organization.

Since most of this setting took off in Second Edition, and if you are focused on playing the Second Edition adventures, the obvious choice would be For Gold and Glory, an excellent retro-clone of this edition. Some down on this game due to its use of classical public domain art, but I think the selection here is fantastic, and the game has some of the best fantasy art ever created in history by the original masters. The art here is evocative and gets me in the proper mindset to play a gritty, dark, realistic, and low-magic game.

Sorry, public domain detractors, the art is fantastic. This is precisely as I would picture the Forgotten Realms with a grim, deadly, and realistic tone. What other type of art would I want than something actually painted in a world close to what the world actually is?

The downsides? It does not include the entire monster and magic list from AD&D 2E. If you care about it, consider buying the PoD PDFs for 2E and using them as a reference. This book is far better organized and easier to use at the table than the official 2E books, which drone on and on with pages of pontificating, have terrible layout, and some horrendous art choices. I can be "in and out" of FG&G for a rule or table in a few seconds, whereas in the 2E books, I could flip through hundreds of pages and search endlessly.

I can't imagine new players and those 2nd Edition softcovers.

Some of the conceptual and fantastical pieces make me see the evil and darkness in the realms entirely differently. The above is horrific, and the art raises the stakes in the fight between good and evil.

Oh, and the FG&G PDF is free. This is zero-cost for new players. For the official books, the prices are as follows: three PDFs for $10, three softcovers for about $30 each; while FG&G's hardcover is for $65, and a softcover book is for $30.

Another benefit to FG&G is that the rules feel more focused on the classic races and classes. This is particularly notable since Faerun was based on AD&D, which didn't have the cartoonish options we have today. The only real oddity to the Faerun setting is the 101 different types of elves, but they all can just be "elf," and the subtype is a flavor choice, just like humans.

The setting feels more realistic and grounded without the D&D 4E races, with humans as the predominant species, which is how we first encountered it. Tolkien was a significant influence on this setting, and returning it to the classic game's races feels right. Oh, and the above is from the FG&G rulebook; just because the book uses classic art, it doesn't mean it isn't diverse. Seriously, the use of classic art elevates this game, and it would do the same to the Faerun setting.

FG&G is a game where death happens at zero hit points, but you could houserule in the "death's door" rules that allow you to go as low as -10 hp. I like the hardcore rules, and this is also what a few other old-school games do. Again, the art in this book rules. If I had a Forgotten Realms like this, I would still be playing in it.

Another missing piece in FG&G is statistics for demons and devils, just like in AD&D 2E, these were removed from the game due to pressure from the Satanic Panic, and later "snuck in the back door" via an Outer Planes Appendix to the Monsterous Compendium. The above book works fine with the game, so you are covered. FG&G does not include these, either. It is an extra purchase, but it is worth noting. For me, not having them means the gods got extra careful in allowing them access to the world, and it forced us to focus on other bad guys.

FG&G is a solid choice and allows you to play the classic 2nd Edition adventures without issues. I could say the same honestly about a First Edition game, but if we are focusing on the heyday period of the Realms and the novels, then FG&G would be my go-to game.

The SBRPG Restoration Project, Part 3

Why did we abandon SBRPG? The first posts in this blog should offer a clue. We went hardcore D&D 4E. It was a tough time in our lives; our careers were getting off the ground, and we had to rebuild our lives. D&D 4E gave us regular releases to buy, consume, and wait for the next one while we ran our campaign.

It felt good to "check out" and just play another game. We ran SBRPG as our home system from 2005 to 2015, and it served us well during that time. The system was super fast and very theater-of-the-mind friendly. As a referee, I could throw down a bunch of leveled enemies, assume a few ability score modifiers, pick a few designed powers from the list, give them a fighting style, and go.

Many games ran fantasy well, but SBRPG ran everything well. The challenge scaled since enemies scaled in power, you could have a "high-level area" where the monsters were more potent than what you got in a typical bestiary. Even if that jackrabbit has one hit/level, a level 10 jackrabbit is going to have a level 10 ability to dodge predators and escape hunters, along with a pretty high ability score modifier to boost that  RFX roll, along with the AP to pull off some pretty cool stunts.

And that jackrabbit could dodge rifle bullets or arrows effectively.

The entire monster and enemy system was so cool, and it had a lot of classic NES and SNES JRPG feeling to it. There were "high-level areas" in the world with "high-level threats." Even enemies above or below your power level could still be a threat. This was one of the few games where we could play a "Final Fantasy" pen-and-paper game and have the high-level foes totally outclass level-one newbies.

Of course, that rabbit was high level! All the low-level ones in the area died off.

D&D does that, too, right? Well, in D&D, all the monsters are fixed in their challenge level. In SBRPG, everything can be scaled. Level 1 rabbits could be normal, while level 8 rabbits could be "lava rabbits" with immunities to several hazard levels of fire, flame breath, and jumping at you like a rocket launcher to explode on impact. The enemies in this game, how we played it, were terrific.

And since we had class design, you never really knew what to expect with NPCs. This new NPC? A necro-paladin. Yeah. That works. The only one in the world. Whole class and power design, baby. That is the necro-paladin, who raises enemies from the dead to be a walking holy army and then sends their souls to Heaven after the crusade is finished.

We had one customer who played post-apocalyptic werewolves and vampires, with full magic and guns. That must have been a hell of a game. The best thing we did was open up the game's core to the world, allowing everyone to create whatever they could imagine. This was not d20! You were not being forced to buy books for classes, and you were not being put over a barrel by game companies.

You've just created the class you could only dream of. Holy Gunner? Sure, give them a heavy machine gun and holy powers to enchant their ammo, along with heavy armor use. Give them a force shield to activate, so they can fire past it. Done. A simple class to design. Merge that with a few cleric powers, let them bless the group's ammunition, and you are good.

One die roll could handle every to-hit for their turn.

We are done. Next?

Thoughts: The Forgotten Realms, Part 2

 Today?

The Forgotten Realms feels like "tourist Europe" with little danger, settled bucolic hamlets everywhere, and a sense of Ren Faire peace and happiness across the land. Everyone and everything has magic. Fantasy races of every shape live together in harmony, and even the orcs, goblins, and gnolls have settled into civilized lands, misunderstood "good folk." The spawn of dragons, the Dragonborn, are seen as noble helpers of civilization. I remember when dragons were feared. Even the misunderstood spawn of the Devil, the Tieflings, wander around with puzzling Russian accents, and have no taint of Hell in their blood, and are this generation's Drizzt emo-PC character choice.

The "D&D reality" is essentially a corporate "Disney reality," which is messy and dated. It is a strange "Disney Princesses" version of fantasy, its own genre, honestly, and it infects every game it touches. Even D&D clones like Tales of the Valiant, Level Up, Daggerheart, Draw Steel, and Nimble 5E can't escape that D&D zeitgeist. If you enjoy it, great! But, don't let it become your only idea of what fantasy can be, nor that other genres or ideas are "lesser" in any way.

Too many fantasy races lead to terrible world design and storytelling. It isn't fantasy anymore; it is a meaningless spectacle with no apparent meaning or direction. More and more are seeing this as a problem, and this isn't some metaphor for the current-day anything; it is just muddled confusion and the sloppy buffet-like world design where "more of everything is better."

I call out kitchen sink fantasy for this reason.

Your ideas should come first.

You shouldn't be forced to accept every class, race, option, power, monster, spell, and idea from "that other game" into "your game." Clear, focused, limited world designs are superior. Even if the world just has Dragonborn and Tieflings, and no other races, that is a superior world design than these modern ones, where the designers are afraid to remove choices.

Shadowdark does a lot with just the basic six races. That is an excellent example of a focused game. Books that keep adding races to Shadowdark don't do much for me, as they confuse the game with too much choice. I see them as net negatives to the core system.

While it is nice to "have options" and "all the work done for you," that should never come before your ideas. John Carter of Mars is a fun, imaginative, unique, and compelling setting that has nothing to do with kitchen sink fantasy. This is another IP that Disney ruined, and the best we have today of something similar is Goodman Games' Purple Planet series. Good fantasies and compelling stories can be found outside the kitchen sink fantasy genre.

I love the Dungeon Crawl Classics rule, "only one monster of each kind exists." This is the way. The ogre is one monster; come up with another brute if your campaign needs another. Commoditized, fantasy factory, stamped out clones of monsters, leading to stagnation and boredom.

The classics that inspired D&D are precious, special, and the products of vivid imaginations. We will never have new ideas if we only recycle old ones and continually regurgitate 6th-generation clones of original ideas in our games. The classics were, in fact, recycling of biblical stories, but we have not had a level of pop-culture recycling so hard, so systematic that the genre develops a culture of its own.

I call it out to put your imagination first, and avoid the corporate colonization of the idea of "what fantasy is" from being co-opted by these ideas. Once you accept the D&D reality, it's akin to a religion, and you might as well give up playing every other game and log into D&D Beyond to consume digital goods that align with that worldview. You will be happier there, rather than trying to "fight the system" aimlessly in clone games.

Strong, compelling, good-versus-evil, character-driven fantasy is not dead.

Sadly, for me, having been there from the start, the Forgotten Realms is to me. Greyhawk is, despite the efforts of historians and those who write for the game these days. I love both settings, but I can't unsee what we had, and the repackaging of these settings as something that D&D 5.5E speaks to.

If I ever revisit this setting, it will be in GURPS as a deadly, gritty, low-magic setting, like the one we first played. The ones on the first two covers of the boxed set.

The "serious D&D" setting.

The one that was supposed to showcase the original AD&D game, and was a reset from the Monty Haul and power-gaming Greyhawk games we had grown tired of, and one that 5E has turned back into. A world where characters mattered, kinship and family were who you were, and life was short and violent.

Easy raise dead or resurrection? You had to roll resurrection survival each time, as there was a hard limit on the number of times, and finding a cleric high enough to cast it was nearly impossible (a 9th-level cleric and a 17+ WIS required). You had to make death saving throws to survive being polymorphed and returning to your original form. Oh, and there were only two named clerics described in the gray books that were high enough level to cast this spell: one was the leader of an evil cult, and the other one was dead.

If you wanted it, you had to be able to DIY your own resurrects, and then retire that character as a pocket cleric and hope they weren't assassinated. Evil factions would target clerics who possess such power, so you never advertised you had it. What? My character is targeted by evil because they have a spell? Yes, you helped the good guy side. That level of power made you a target of cults, demons, and evil gods. That never happens in 5E, since power is a guarantee and so widespread that everyone feels like they have it.

There should never be a "resurrection in every temple" in the world. The idea is stupid, lame, and comes from trash video games, not fantasy.

Even the NPCs in my world were careful, and they didn't "ride in to save the day" like they did in many campaigns that I have heard about. Elminster was not immortal, and probably had only a handful of resurrections remaining. He was thoughtful, careful, and conservative in his use of power. If there was another way, he would take it or send someone else if he could. He knew he was a target, too.

Characters used to be part of the world instead of feeling like they logged into an MMO.

Stories used to matter here.

Factions were deadly serious.

Evil existed.

The world used to matter.

Your character used to matter.

No NPC was immortal or more important than the characters.

Magic used to be special.

The SBRPG Restoration Project, Part 2

Work begins...

Not an easy box to type, believe me. But a new beginning.

Those are my InDesign layout guides there to keep me honest and to prove work has begun. I can copy and paste from the 1.53c PDF, and that is how I am doing the work, page by page. The tables will be an absolute nightmare to rebuild, and we have a few of them in here.

It is way too early to think about licenses; the original had none and was closed-source. Post-OGL, we are in a better world, and I have a few to choose from. The best model is the one used by Kevin Crawford, who wrote the book, sold and copyrighted it, and then made the game's SRD public domain, free to use for humanity's benefit. I will think about that, but no promises. This is one of those instances where I need to consider what George would have wanted.

SBRPG was created in response to the original OGL, and we felt that the entire license was flawed and an attempt to exploit content. It turns out we were right, they tried to "steal" 20 years of OGL content and invalidate the license of every competing game and fantasy system, or force everyone to pay. We had a few words to say about the OGL in early drafts, but those were cut. We were right.

Remember, there were not that many "open systems" back in 2005 when we wrote this, and this is a unique, open, clean-room game with no prior art. SBRPG is an exceptional outlier in the gaming industry.

Looking at the PDF, I can cut this up as follows:

• Book One
• Characters, Race & Class Design, Skills & Special Moves, Powers and Power Design
• Book Two
• Tasks, Movement, Travel, Hazard, Combat, Damage, Vehicle Rules, NPCs, Game Worlds, The Referee, Referee Bonus Web Content
• Book Three
• Equipment, Vehicles,  Player Bonus Web Content

Each of these will be approximately 200 pages, which will divide the book nicely. Will it be terribly user-friendly? I have no idea. Notably, Book One will focus on characters, Book Two is the core rules, and Book Three contains all the extra content in the game. It seems user-friendly; the players can pass books one and three around, and the referee has book two. The BWC will be shifted around to the book it needs to go into.

Equipment could move into Book One, and the second book remains more rules- and referee-focused. Two books are an easier sell than three.

The game's target number is likely changing to 11, out of the One Roll BWC. I have a few ideas on streamlining the entire system. This will work for both combat and non-combat rolls. The math will be drastically reduced, and the system will be blazingly fast to play.

The ability scores are changing to: Strength, Brainpower, Reflex, Personality, and Grit (SBRPG). Grit is the new Endurance. AA is being replaced by Action Points, based on Reflex. Oh yes, this is cheesy, but creating a character sheet will be as easy as writing down the name of the game you are playing. Be thankful I am not changing the secondaries to ROCKS. Yes, this will change the entire text of the book.

A result of 10 will be a special result. Failures, rolls below 10, will also change.

It sounds like a new edition, but given the ideas we were working on in the BWC books, these improvements need to be folded into the core rules. One Roll and Character Traits will likely move into Core, and those BWCs will be depreciated. The Character Traits BWC is awesome. I just read that today, and it is still way ahead of its time.

I may rewrite everything and streamline the entire system to focus on the core rules, and then ship separate books for fantasy, modern, and science fiction.

I need to get deeper into this and see how it goes.

Thoughts: The Forgotten Realms, Part 1

The Forgotten Realms has had a long and messy life, and it did not deserve most of what happened to it over various revisions and editions of its parent game. We started off as an AD&D (first edition) setting, and instead of maintaining its artistic and literary integrity, it became a "vehicle to sell D&D" and "a platform to showcase changes in the rules" as improvements and upgrades.

To be honest, the entire Forgotten Realms should have been sold to another company and managed appropriately as an IP, and not as a "D&D hamburger wrapper."

We got the first "Time of Trials" from AD&D First to Second Edition, where they tried to explain the panic of "losing the assassin class" as the "god of assassins dying" and "thousands losing their character class" with NPCs literally weeping in the street like they were some player in an MMO who had their class nerfed.

D&D 3.0 was based on Greyhawk, and FR returned in 3.5E with numerous changes. By D&D 4E, they destroyed the world and "collapsed the entire Underdark." They also added Tieflings and Dragonborn to the Realms, as if they had always been there. The Forgotten Realms died in D&D 4E, and it has never really come back for people who knew the original. D&D 5E never did the setting justice, and they were hoping a video game and an entire edition would smooth over the mistakes they made in this setting.

There are people today who think the Forgotten Realms is limited to Baldur's Gate 3 and Spelljammer, and they know nothing else. It is an unfortunate thing to see. I'm not even a fan of Baldur's Gate 3 characters on the new book's cover; it feels like the next generation of unkillable GM NPCs has been born to torture players, and this setting has long been a haven for them. And they had no follow-up to that game, so it feels dead to me. I wish they had at least made an expansion.

As a literary setting for fiction, the Forgotten Realms has a lot to offer. This is why playing it in GURPS works so well. With GURPS, I can run this "low magic" setting like we did when we started playing it back in AD&D. This was supposed to be the "serious and realistic" version of AD&D, while Greyhawk was more for power gamers.

These days, I wouldn't play something like that with others, as nobody would understand what I was talking about or what I was trying to accomplish. The Forgotten Realms has always been science-fiction high-fantasy, right?

It was a great setting back in the day, as I remember it.

I loved the whole vibe here, of character-driven stories, low magic, cults of the gods scheming, the humanoids of the unsettled lands constantly raiding, armies being raised to settle lands and conduct crusades against the wildlands and bastions of evil far away from civilization, and that whole fight between good and evil gods that makes for great fiction.\

These days, the setting has been rebooted, the map scale has been changed (and dramatically shrunken in size), and it's been recycled so many times that it feels like the worst tropes of fantasy instead of aspiring to be the best. The setting no longer serves the grand sweeps of epic fantasy; instead, it is engineered to cater to the "me and my fantasy" crowd, glazing your fantasy identity as the best thing ever. It is also far too tied in with video games, constantly shrinking in size to be more of a tiny MMO map than the world it was.

I miss the old, continent-sized, massive world setting.

The setting offers more than enough room to DIY the rest of the world, and I could create an entire campaign setting of my own, 200 miles away from Waterdeep.

The SBRPG Restoration Project, Part 1

Oh, yes, let's get back to this.

Right now? I am completing InDesign tutorials and refining my desktop publishing skills. I finished all the layout and design work 20 years ago using Aldus Pagemaker, so I have the necessary layout skills. I also did the majority of the writing, proofreading (which I take full responsibility for), and art (which, admittedly, got me a job). That cover was created in 3D (in 2005) and is my work.

George was primarily responsible for designing the rules and final approval, making him the rules guru of the game. He also developed the Power Design System and most of the Fighting Styles. Nothing went into the tabletop game without George's approval, and we had a lot of long nights fighting over rules and making compromises.

As the "writer guy" on the project, I can faithfully restore the game without needing too much input from George, but he is missed and will live on in the spirit of the game.

I am torn between restoring the game as it was and revamping the 500-page behemoth of a phonebook-sized RPG and making it playable. Currently, there is a lot of "why" in the "how," which leads to a massive, heavy, and far less usable tome. But, that said, if I go that route, that is a complete rewrite.

But there is a charm to the rambling nature of the original, as close as we can get to a Gygaxian rant on gaming in a book the size of a phonebook. And the cover looks like KFC the RPG, which is a thing of beauty.

An option would be to split the entire book into three volumes of approximately 200 pages, allowing for the inclusion of all bonus web content. Keep the majority of the 1.53c game as it was, but grammar-check the entire thing, rebuild the layouts, and make the minor fixes we made due to player feedback. This is the best compromise to keep the books reasonably sized, longer-lasting in the age of POD, and more usable at a table. If I go this route, the chapter order will likely change. This will also allow me to write future volumes and expand the game, becoming something more like Palladium does with their books, which add random new elements to the game in new books.

That said, a 2.0 version would involve a drastic reorganization, with a core book focusing on the base game, and the later volumes serving as the design systems. Once I delve deeper into this project, this is how it may unfold. My dream version of this game is a B/X-complexity-level core system in the first book that can be played as-is, and then it expands with design systems in later books.

Some significant omissions need to be addressed, such as how monsters and creatures are designed and "level up" with the characters, which was implied in the base game (and how we played it), but not presented in the book. In this game, "everything is a character" and levels up. That is a level one bear, and that is a level twenty bear, with Fighting Style: Feral, that can kill a roomful of ninjas.

And it is a 3d6, roll-high class and level system. It is a unique game, and one we wanted to have in case we had a chance to make a computer RPG out of it. It started as a CRPG system and evolved into a pen-and-paper game, so it feels natural for it to return to that form.

I'm not aware of any other game that did things like we did, nor let you design as much as we did, even the character classes. We never had "multiclassing" since, if you created your character class, you made your class concept first and never needed that rules hack. It was very JRPG-like in the sense that if you were a hybrid class, you could design it to start and never need to switch to different classes.

I am also considering changing the names of the ability scores to:

• Strength
• Brains
• Reflex
• Personality
• Grit

If you look at the first letter of each, you will know the reason why. It is cheeky, but at least you can create your character sheet quickly and know what game it is for. That would require a massive amount of rewriting, but if these ability scores persist into a 2.0 version of the game, this is a change that needs to be made early.

Back to the tutorials.

Mail Room: Adventures Dark & Deep Lite

Is there a new trend for slimming down games? If so, I am on board with this concept all the way. Adventures Dark & Deep is my favorite First Edition reimagination, but the sheer size of a pair of 500-page books might intimidate most new players. A need for a Lite version of the rules, covering core classes and races, and playable up to level eight, was thus created. This book is a lean 174 pages, and gives you the best-of-the-best in terms of characters, monsters, spells, and magic items.

This book is all you need for most campaigns. Most games rarely go into high levels, and the cut material can be found in the other volumes. For "table play" during the first few months, this is the only book you need. Also, having the fluff and variant classes cut does not lose much of anything. The skill system has been cut, but that is more of a mid-to-late game feature in the core rules and is an optional subsystem. The book also needs an index, but I can't complain too hard about that.

This book would appeal to Shadowdark players, which is where I feel it fills an important niche. A complete first-edition experience in under 200 pages? A tight game that is compatible with 90% of the classic first edition adventures? You mean I could go and play any of the classic adventures with a set of rules that gives me the most authentic experience? Granted, you could always buy the AD&D PoD books and do that, but having a game presented in a modern, clean, concise, easily-understood layout that is easily grasped and referenced is a huge plus these days.

I love Gygaxian prose, but there is an argument for lowering the reading level needed to understand and play the game to a more accessible level, and ADAD Lite does that very nicely.

Page-count-wise, this book is a thing of beauty. The entire characters and equipment section only takes 30 pages! Combat is about 12 pages. The spells are 34 pages. The last 100 pages contain GM information, including treasures, monsters, creating dungeons, and how to run the game. Compared to the corebooks, this version of the game is extremely tight and focused, and reminds me of classic OSR games such as Labyrinth Lord or Swords & Wizardry.

The tight control of page count (174 pages) gives us a game that is half the length of the Shadowdark rules (344 pages), but gives us a whole First Edition experience in a comparable level range. The original AD&D PoD books, combined, are 486 pages and can be daunting for newcomers due to their size and reading level. Granted, the Shadowdark experience is much different, and more of a Dungeon-style board game, but for beginners to First Edition gaming, this is an excellent place to get started.

This book is a winner, making it an excellent resource to start a game that eventually transitions into a full ADAD game, and 90% of what you need to start a new campaign. This book is all you need for low-level ADAD play, and the ideal campaign starter book. ADAD Lite is one of the best of 2025 and an excellent gateway book for players looking to go back to the hobby's roots with the 1977-1979 original First Edition releases.

Crafting the Perfect 5E Replacement, Part 15

I don't have the time for 5E anymore. The pages-long character sheets are a complete waste of time, and printing them out would be a massive waste of paper. If I "get on board" with 5E, Pathfinder 2, or any of these other games where the character sheet resembles a small novel, I end up not playing.

I can't support them anymore.

I like them; the rules were well put together, and there are interesting combinations - but it is way, way, way too much. I am a fan of Tales of the Valiant because I value my principles and don't want to support Wizards and their walled garden. However, I struggle to justify supporting the 5E ecosystem, given the monthly fees and digital books required for character designers. My collection of 5E books on Roll20 is a nightmare of options to sort through, and it really gives me nothing more than other, easier games.

It is all too much.

I can't do this anymore.

GURPS does not require monthly fees or double-buying physical and then digital books for VTT support. It is just as complex a game, but the game is far easier to support and manage. Supporting 5E requires you to go all-in on the platform, meaning you can't play anything else.

If I want to "play adventures" with the "5E math," frankly, Nimble 5e is the better choice. This all works, the game is small, it stays out of the way, the character sheets are easy, and the game plays much faster than a complete 5E set of rules, where a variety of "action types" become "distraction types" during play and take a 2-minute turn and stretch out a player's decision making to 30 minutes or longer as players flip through character sheets and books. Nimble is 5E compatible and provides conversion notes for all 5E adventures, monsters, and content.

That is, if I need the 5E math.

And that 5E math is inferior to B/X math, where characters keep power far longer, the hit points do not get out of control, and the damages scale much better. In 5E, you consistently do half the damage you do in B/X, relative to monster hit points. A fighter's 1d8 +1 magic longsword will "keep its power" all the way to 20th level and beyond, and still be able to do good damage to adult red dragons. In 5E, a 1d8+1 logsword is a joke compared to anything past 8th level. And B/X maintains character power without multiple attacks, action surge, or all the tricks you need to do with a fighter to preserve your damage curve in 5E.

Nimble 5e is the best implementation of 5E math.

It is just that 5E math sucks.

B/X math is linear and predictable.

GURPS? Mythras? Traveller? Free League games? Linear math.

5E math is on a scaled formula that increases each level like a video game. This is why it is impossible to balance anything in the game. They take away predictable linear damage progression, and now they have to give you CR systems and other balancing tools for their artificially scaled numbers.

Old School Essentials gives me the rock-solid, tested, and sane B/X math. With the Carcass Crawler Zines, I get all the best options of 4E and 5E, including Tieflings and Dragonborn, along with fighting styles for martial characters. With the On Downtimes and Demesnes book, I have access to additional training options. Most of the character options in 5E are included in this set of core books, and adding a few more key options to this library can provide even greater variety than 5E, such as the Into the Wild Omnibus revised character classes, which are very nice.

Do not let the simplicity of B/X fool you; you run an "open character sheet," and anything can be added to a character. The preservation of character power at high levels is there. The game doesn't scale to ridiculous numbers and takes hours to finish a combat.

I still love Dungeon Crawl Classics, but it is taking a back seat to OSE right now. OSE has far better customization, whereas DCC is a heavier game with an extensive and bloated library. I am dealing with library bloat on the DCC (and Shadowdark) side of my gaming shelves, and I need to fix that for the games to be playable again. OSE is tight and contained, similar to Nimble 5e.

But I can create a character sheet on a post-it note or journal page for OSE and play. I don't need to write down much. Everything is straightforward and simple. I have the time and energy to play this, but not 5E.

Off the Shelf: Index Card RPG

Index Card RPG is still such a good game. It is up there with Shadowdark, EZD6, Old School Essentials, and my other "small book games" as one of the perfect "travel RPGs," and this one just does anything.

This is like a miniature version of Cypher System mixed with Savage Worlds without the narrative mechanics. Still, it leans heavily into a few 8-bit video game design theories to create a fantastic game. We are still in d20-land, but effort totals up against hearts, and we focus on "beating rooms" of varied challenges with our characters.

Progression is milestone-based, and gear plays a huge role in character power. This game changes the way you look at OSR games and simplifies the nature of challenges and encounters to an abstract method of resolution, without losing granular detail. The game will also make you a professional encounter designer, and your thoughts on encounter structure will become more fluid and dynamic.

This is a great "toolbox game" that can handle most any setting you throw at it, using the sample settings provided in the book. It is a d20 system without any of the d20 baggage.

It is not a highly detailed game. If you are looking for realistic and gritty combat, this isn't the game for you. If you want deep 5E progression trees (and tons of paid support), this is not the game for you. If you're interested in narrative mechanics, this game might be for you, but it feels more like an 8-bit adventure video game condensed into a digest-sized book.

It feels a lot like the old Legend of Zelda, Neutopia, Metal Gear, Metroid, Castlevania, or other adventure RPG games on the NES or Turbografix-16, but in a pen-and-paper game form. This game features a unique blend of fantasy, space, superhero, western, and other genres, all in a retro, d20, clear-the-board, gather-upgrades, Metroidvania style, built for fun and 8-bit charm.

This sits alongside Old School Essentials on my shelf, and this is a serious Shadowdark competitor as a "pick up and play" fun-first game.

GURPS is Still One of the Best

GURPS is still my number one game. My second-most popular blog, Another GURPS Blog, is well-regarded in the GURPS community, which I am very proud of. I created the site to track my top GURPS resources and serve as a search tool for GURPS YouTube videos, just for my own reference and idea-bouncing-around. It has evolved into a comfortable and functional community site. I am also active on the GURPS Discord as one of the blogger contributors, which is another thing I am proud of.

GURPS is bigger than 5E for me, the OSR, or any other part of the hobby. GURPS is a hobby that allows me to endlessly design characters and powers, have tight rules for ultra-realistic tactical combats, and cover any genre I can imagine with one set of consistent rules.

D&D 5E is not a designer game; D&D is a consumer game, forcing you to endlessly buy and consume more and more. GURPS is a hobby I can lose myself in, much like miniature painting, where I spend hours perfecting a character, monster, or power. I then get to use those designs "on the tabletop" and "see how they work."

GURPS also has the advantage of being stronger for narrative roleplay than dedicated games such as Daggerheart or Cypher System. The mental and physical advantages and disadvantages can be easily modeled in a realistic character, as seen in a movie script, with precise directions and character studies for the actor. Unlike other games that rely on "hope and hate dice" for narrative action or intrusion mechanics to drive the plot, GURPS lets characters drive the narrative.

Is my thief light-fingered and can't resist pilfering that diamond necklace? Well, make a self-control roll, and let's see what happens. As a player, this can put my character in a bad situation, or a morally questionable one if my thief gets away with the snatch, but I will need to live with the consequences.

That is just how the game rolls.

Now that I have the necklace, what should I do with it? Does guilt force me to find a way to return it? Can I find a fence to get rid of it? Is it a problem if the guards search me just because I'm carrying it? How do I explain my way out of that? Do I sneak back into the wealthy manor to place it behind a makeup table and let them think they just lost it? Will selling it bring us the money we need for weapons, magic training, and armor? What should I tell other players about where I got the money? If the paladin with the honesty trait is in the party, what will they do if they find out? Would the bard who loves helping the downtrodden want us to give the money to those less fortunate? Would the paladin even go along with that? Would the halfling in our party wish to steal the necklace from my thief and use it to buy expensive food?

That one failed self-control roll is going to have a butterfly effect through the narrative, which means I don't need "narrative dice" or "intrusion mechanics" at all. Having those extra systems is too much, and since the character's motivations are pivotal to the narrative anyway, we do not need them.

That one self-control roll, whether it fails or passes, can spawn a million actions, reactions, plots, and adventures.

In GURPS, a character's "personality profile" is the spindle, the center of the vinyl record, around which everything else, including the narrative, spins and rotates.

Games that remove the narrative from being character-centric try to foist external story mechanics, some game designers' "great idea," onto what should be a character-focused narrative system. They get very abstract and "Euro-gamey" with narrative point pools, tokens, dice, special cards, announced intrusion events, scene-based meta-conditions, and all sorts of external flash, outside interference, and cruft.

Every external narrative system in today's games is "designer hubris" and intruding on your ability to tell stories together. You don't need any of it. They are trying to sell you a solution to a problem you don't have. Storytelling is built into your DNA. Use it.

GURPS is very simple. It avoids getting in the way of the story and the character's personality factors that drive the narrative. The narrative in GURPS is "what just happened," not "the abstract meta-story game mechanics control system."

Now, when I play, I am careful not to "load up" a character with too many of these self-control roll disadvantages, since having more than three is sort of a pain. Two is typically good, and I only really call for one roll per session, per disadvantage, per character. You don't want to make these too powerful and all-controlling, and the times you roll should mean something. When you roll a self-control roll, it should make a significant difference, and if it fails, the failure should have the chance to create meaningful fallout in the narrative.

A greedy character doesn't need to roll a self-control roll when finding a chest of gold, but demanding a larger share for "obviously taking on more danger during the adventure" would be a good character moment for them.

All these make solo play very easy in GURPS. I have all the tools right here to figure out how my character reacts to a situation. In Old School Essentials? Well, my thief can pick locks, climb walls, and avoid fights. What does the game provide to help me determine motivation? Nothing, but this is the OSR, and it is BYO-motivation, which is as it should be, but for solo play, GURPS gives me so much more and makes running a party of diversely motivated characters trivially easy.

Oh, and if you play GURPS using just the GURPS Lite rules, it is as easy as B/X D&D. For the most part, 95% of the rules you will ever need, along with character design concepts, are right here. Don't fret the 5% unless you are a miniatures wargamer and a realism freak. However, the game can go there and provide immersion and realism, if you want to go that deep. But you don't have to.

If I only have time to play one game, it will be GURPS.

SBRPG Remastered

Looking back, if I were to remaster and re-release SBRPG, I would keep the majority of the game as-is. There is an argument to "update everything" and make everything perfect, but there is also a desire to preserve the original as much as possible.

Except for the horrendous art.

And, the entire thing needs to be grammatically checked, with more precise language. The tools today are significantly better than the spell-checkers and grammar books we had back in 2005. The original was created with the old Aldus Pagemaker software, and today, Libre Office is the only software that can open those files, but it is not a perfect conversion. My best bet is to rebuild the entire book in Adobe InDesign, copying the text from the PDF, and then going chapter by chapter.

There is a Rules Update that I would incorporate to update the core mechanics based on the feedback from players. There are core fixes in here I want as well. The nine Bonus Web Content books would also be folded into the core system, along with the unfinished tenth book. There are a few areas I want to clarify, especially creatures and monster design, which need a dedicated chapter.

Now, the game is also 532 pages long! We had people buy this just because they wanted to play "an RPG the size of a phone book," and we delivered, long before Kickstarter was a thing, and the industry standardized on 500+ page books. Today? The 500-page book is being phased out, with core games either transitioning to A5 size or being condensed to 150 to 200 pages.

An A5 SBRPG Mini would be a fun project. The original design of SBRPG was as a Car Wars-sized pocket-box game. It grew to a phone book-sized manifesto of gaming. A condensed version could be A5-sized, but the whole game is more comfortable in a full-sized book.

Would I split this into a Player's Book and a GM book? Frankly, at 500+ pages, the game is already three or four books in size, and one 500-page book starts running into the limitations of print-on-demand technology. One huge book is far less playable, but it is also not ideal to flip through a library when you want to play the game. Also, a 200-page POD book will last longer since there is not as much wear and tear on the glue and spine.

I could split this into five books: Player's Guide, World Creation, Book of Powers, Book of Rules, and Book of Stuff. This is a non-standard split, too, since the core game rules would be apart from the class, race, and character creation information. The Book of Rules would cover skill rolls, combat, movement, tasks, and other essential information that needs to be a quick reference guide for the entire table to use.

The Book of Stuff would gather all the gear, vehicle, weapon, and starship information. Again, it makes sense to put the gear-related items in one book, and this also includes starting packages for gear on the first pages, to make starting play easier. The magic item and treasure bonus web content would go in here, and this is where the enchanted and power treasures would live.

I'd like to explore the concept of "magic items in modern and sci-fi settings," but with a twist: these items would be unique, powerful, and high-tech, offering bonuses without the magic feel, which can break immersion. A noted gunslinger's 0.45 Peacemaker could begin to get its own bonuses to-hit and damage as it "levels up," and the weapon itself takes on a legendary status as it is used and grows in power. Items may have levels, too, but they are far more simplified, have a smaller range, and are easier to use than characters.

Power design? Not all games use it. Put it in its own book.

World creation is also a huge deal, so it gets its own book.

There is no Referee's guide! We have shared ownership of game worlds, so we don't really need one. I could write a dedicated book for this, but that would require the most new material. I would avoid today's trite "this is how you behave in a social situation" sort of Psychology for Dummies guide that many RPGs write. We're familiar with a lot of that material, and it's also covered in other books. There are already great books on the subject, and this information changes every five years as people come up with new theories and different things become touchy subjects. A real referee's guide would focus on keeping players engaged with the world and rules, how to run enemies and create adventures, and the "ground game" stuff that referees need to drive engagement.

What else would I add? A seventh book, the Best Bestiary, because that is a massive weakness in the original system, and I am an idiot who loves to write books. Great games are defined by their monster books, and actually designing that level 14 rattlesnake that can entangle and mind control people would be a hilarious example of the insanity that happened in our games.

Also, the rules for how to design and "level up" monsters need to be written. This concept is almost identical to class design, but it requires formalization, including how creature statistics increase with the creation of a "level 5 goblin" in your game. In practice, you should be able to just say "level 5 goblin" and use that in a game, and be able to assume everything from powers, stats, gear, and skills from that one level number.

SBRPG was a lot like "reverse GURPS and D&D 3.5E meets a JRPG," which was one of the strengths of its design. You could just throw down a "level 14 wolf" and play. The thing may have a sonic howl attack that could level a two-story house, but that's just what you'd expect from a JRPG. Also, rolling ten attacks on one 3d6 dice roll and being able to hit five targets with that same roll is so darn cool. We had some mechanics that were far ahead of their time, even today.

It also never used the OGL, since we hated that thing back in 2005. There is no reason an open system can't use the licenses found in software, and Linux has been doing this for ages. Linux is free and open, but Ubuntu is a copyrighted trade name that defines a specific version of the Linux system with a set of defined features for that distribution.

This sounds like a complete rewrite, but it is and isn't. George's words need to be preserved and kept intact; he is half of this game. How things work can't change. The quirks and silly stuff need to stay in there. It will ship "broken" in many ways, and honestly, that is what a future version 3.0 will address.  Many will prefer this 2.0 version, too, but it needs to be as close to 1.0 as possible to be that.

But a part of me loves silly, broken, crazy games.

And it needs to be made available again for people to read and enjoy.

Except for the horrendous art.

Off the Shelf: Mythras Classic Fantasy

There is a move away from D&D and d20. I even feel this. I'll explore various d20 games, including 5E, OSE, an AD&D clone, Shadowdark, OSRIC, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Pathfinder, and Swords & Wizardry, all of which share the same problem.

All of d20 is the same game.

d20 games rely on a sterile combat system: d20 versus AC and hit point damage.

To give it any feeling, you need to embellish the heck out of it. At a point, I lost interest and wanted the d20 vs. d20 monotonous rolling to end, and the "hit point battle" to be over with. Rest up, heal to maximum, and get on with the subsequent encounter, please.

In 5E, it gets worse. To "fix the problem," they turn each class and subclass into an ivory tower —a hyper-complicated, specialized, and unique white elephant that requires learning an entire rules subsystem that exists in no other class. It drives me up a wall, like the designers think they can "write games inside of classes" to shadow-puppet and pretend the game has depth.

Some of these class designs are more complicated than the entire game of Shadowdark.

Yet, the base combat rules for everyone else are just as plain, tasteless, and boring as they always are. Everyone else gets to whittle around with basic attacks.

MS Paint FTW. -Hak

And in almost every classic adventure module, they will throw a few dozen monsters in a room, and I just don't care. The age of slogging through the slop fights of a party of eight versus two dozen monsters makes my eyes water, and I just want to walk away. Yes, d20 is easy and abstract. But it is boring.

A one-on-one fight with GURPS, Rolemaster, HARP, or Mythras is far more engaging and enjoyable. Give me a system where I genuinely care about my actions and the impact on my character. Give me a system where combat is deadly, and I have to think hard about whether I want to go that route.

Oh, and some of these other games have minion rules, so you don't need to track everything (GURPS, B417; Mythras, p111). Large cinematic fights are possible. Minions are a popular house rule for D&D 5E, but this is a holdover from D&D 4E, which was designed for those rules, and some of the class designs were built to be "minion mops."

And don't make the system so hard that it takes hours or a computer to figure out a character sheet. A computer sucks the life out of "pen and paper" games, when they should be on "pen and paper." I love GURPS, but I only use the character creation software. Any version of 5E has transitioned into a subscription and digital sales model, making it too expensive to play. I don't want pen-and-paper gaming to be "only for the rich" like most of entertainment is these days. Don't laugh, live sports of any kind are getting to be very expensive.

GURPS has the advantage of two very usable and supported computer systems: a paid-for system and a donor-supported system.

Mythras is a fantastic mix between a d100 system and B/X D&D, and we don't need any software.

Mythras Classic Fantasy strikes a balance between the d100 Mythras rules and simulating a classic fantasy experience with them. The technology level between the Bronze-age Mythras game and this isn't as wide as you think; plate armor and crossbows exist in each, and you get more tinkered "repeating crossbows" and other gadget-based gear in Classic Fantasy than you do Mythras.

The difference lies in the "classes" which act like a GURPS template out of Dungeon Fantasy, and the magic systems, which are closer to a B/X game. The power level in Classic Fantasy is higher, but at low levels, it is comparable to core Mythras.

Like GURPS's Dungeon Fantasy, Classic Fantasy "simulates" classes in the d100 system, where base Mythras is more "like GURPS" in that you get skills, and you do whatever you want. Classic Fantasy also simulates divine and arcane magic. A part of me finds Mythras' five magic systems fascinating, and I could build far more character types around them. A "thief" in basic Mythras could learn Mysticism and have monk-like powers to run up walls and deflect projectiles. That is cool.

In Classic Fantasy, you would need a monk to do all that cool stuff, whereas we can have a "magic thief" in Mythras. Oh, and in GURPS, too, we can do that there easily, just find powers that do that and spend the points. In Classic Fantasy, your thief would need to "learn" the Mysticism skill in-game and take that path of magic. This is possible after you start the game and are willing to make some adjustments later.

Mythras and Classic Fantasy are very compatible, and you could mix character types and magic systems. The magic in Classic Fantasy scales to a higher power level, but I need to test that.

My MS Paint Art. Not AI. -Hak

Another interesting fact about Mythras is that every "combat special move" is open to all characters, and none of them are locked behind a class. You are living in a world where the only way to defend yourself is to stick a blade in someone else, stick arrows in their body and make them bleed, or crush their skull with a club. It is reasonable to assume that most people in this world who fight can trip someone, attack a piece of armor, attempt a disarm, bash, bypass armor, force a bleed, or impale a target.

This stuffy, "only my class can shield bash" sort of "King's Rules of Warfare" that D&D and most d20 games assume is sterile, boring, and unrealistic. Please, the only thing you are allowed to do on a turn is reduce the goblin's hit points and end your turn, no more, no less. Please refrain from attempting to "break the system" or being unrealistic by attacking the goblin's head. What are you, some sort of barbarian? We have rules, here, good sir!

D&D was made for kids, and it shows. There is only so long I can eat food and entertainment made for the youth before I want something more sophisticated and mature. Even today, the brutality of D&D is hidden behind "the hit points," and the game turns a blind eye to what is really going on. You "touch someone" with a "metal stick" and they "fall down."

In the real world, fighting with blades and bludgeons is a very messy and serious business to be involved with. The "happy idiots" in the D&D 2024 art do not do the genre any justice, instead making the game seem sterile and boring.

More MS Paint Art. No AI needed. -Hak

Yes, I know, let people stunt in d20 games, and then be as descriptive as you want. But stunting is a house rule, and other games have better rules for this. I can target an unarmored location in GURPS, and get a combat special in Mythras that lets me do the same thing. My cleric is bringing my mace straight down on the goblin's unarmored head. Just like all the other characters in the art of D&D books, who never wear a helmet and think a dyed Supercuts hairstyle or a pair of cosplay Tiefling horns will protect them from a brain injury.

I am done with D&D's style over substance.

And games that give me the experience I want are out there, and do all this work for me.

The whole "flashy era" of D&D from 2014 to 2024 was garish, cartoonish, and unrealistic. This was the worst era of modern D&D by far, and it introduced the walled gardens, cringe lifestyle marketing, and paywalls. D&D 3.5E was the best version of D&D that Wizards ever put out, hands down, but it was horribly broken when compared to AD&D.

And even the OSR has inherited many of these problems, if not with the flashyness, but the boring, stale, d20 combat rules that are just number games disguised as roleplaying rules.

There comes a point where I look so hard to replace 5E, that I end up replacing all of d20 as the solution. GURPS is one answer, and Myrthras is the other.