Pinball Crawl Classics

https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/891f2362-d05c-43a2-857f-417bb038207d/landing

Okay, this restores my faith in DCC and Goodman Games. A series of licensed pinball-machine-inspired adventures for DCC and MCC. What a cool idea, and this fits the game and brand better than a series of converted 5E adventures.

For a moment, I felt DCC had no direction and was a little lost compared to BX, BXA, and 1E. Now we are back in nostalgia-land again, but on some very amazing and fresh ground that has never been done before.

Thank you.

This is the sort of creativity, inspiration, and fun the hobby needs.

High Traffic: Mutant Epoch?

Of all the articles that get a lot of hits here, one that keeps making me wonder why is my Mutant Epoch coverage. I did not know this game was that popular, and I covered it because it has been around forever. I liked the completely random world and character creation. If any game throws you for a loop out of the gate, destroying any notion of "my 20-page character background and history," then this game is it.

You have no idea what you are getting when you leave character creation. You could be a dung farming servant of a mutant lord with a spear and a rock, or a terminator cyborg from the far future with a fusion rifle. Or a mutated cucumber plant. Or a human-like superhero, like from the X-Men. Or an Android. Or a cleaning robot. Or a mutant freak like the Toxic Avenger. Or a holographic AI.

You do not know.

And you probably won't live long, but who cares?

Let's make another character and see who we get.

The game isn't Fallout, Gamma World, Aftermath, Terminator, TNMT, Borderlands, Wastelands, Tank Girl, or Mad Max; it is all of that. This is a post-apocalyptic mega game, wrapping up every genre trope in a world big enough to hold them all, like D&D did with fantasy, ME does it with everything after the bombs fall.

Best of all, ME does it convincingly, and in a better way than even Rifts does (minus the MDC). Where Rifts uses magic to explain it all, this uses a blender attached to someone's arm to mix things all up and does not really care about the why. You only need to worry about everything trying to kill you, take your food and water, and rob you blind. Like Aftermath, trust is a currency you cannot put a value on, and it will be how you survive the ruins.

This isn't like modern fantasy, which assumes a socialist central fantasy government pushes egalitarian equality and opportunity. Everyone hates each other here; people fight over resources constantly, and marauders come along and kill the survivors and take what's left. You battle to build trust with a mutated head on a snake tail and a Commodore 64 on a wheeled tripod, with a text-to-speech module that sounds like it is coming out of a tin can. This game teaches you to respect others who are different from you, and since everyone else is as flawed and imperfect as you are, it comes down to who you are inside that matters.

The biggest choice you have in this game is who you are as a character after the tables spit out something random. Your choices will define you, not your race, class, or background. If that dung farmer rises up to be a Thundarr-like wasteland Conan and finds an artifact energy sword, so be it. You made something of that character and accomplished what 99% of players would roll their eyes at and beg the referee to allow them to roll a new "more perfect" character.

And you most likely got there since you built trust with others.

The starter set is fantastic; it is most of what you need to start playing, and it only misses an equipment list. Not that you need it on this first adventure, you will be finding and scavenging most of what you need in the ruins. And this book is under $20 on Amazon.

The game is a steal and well worth supporting. I never put this one in storage; it continues to sit alongside my SDC Palladium games on workout room shelves.

This is still a classic game I still love, and it retains a very loyal and hungry audience. Thank you for all the hits, and more coverage is coming soon!

Inversion

There exists a mythical audience for every product, with infinite size, longevity, depth, and mass-market appeal.

If only we could find it.

The trend of desperation marketing is hitting the tabletop hobby hard, and you can see this in inversion marketing in almost every game. The producers of the games start putting "the audience they want to see playing it" into the game's art and marketing, trying to seed the alternate universe and get it started with a little push.

There is nothing wrong with finding new audiences.

It is just that when you do this, you are screaming that your game is dying and that the numbers are not where you want them to be.

If things were working out, there would not be such a drastic change. This is Wall Street we are talking about here, and those who pretend to be like them in the smaller shops. You can hear the mom-and-pop game producers thinking, "Let's do what the market leaders are doing; that must be the way!" So the inversion marketing becomes a fad, failing games desperately searching for a new audience, which, in reality, is as common as finding a herd of unicorns. Nine times out of ten, all inversion marketing does is alienate the existing audience who liked horses.

And we are now in the "firing phase" where all those plans have failed. You see this across big tech now, and the tabletop hobby is typically 1-2 years behind that, where mass amounts of workers and creatives who promised Amazon, Microsoft, and other huge companies new audiences never found them. Billions of dollars were wasted chasing rainbows, and entire IPs and creative properties were destroyed due to audience rejection.

Those workers inevitably end up in the tabletop gaming space and try to sell those ideas here as the secret sauce to get paying unicorns in the door.

This isn't an anti-woke diatribe; it is just the people selling woke as an audience magnet oversold it way, way too hard, promised the moon, but delivered a pebble on the beach. I feel sorry for them. Wall Street will do as Wall Street does: fire everyone, forget they existed, hire a new batch of bright-eyed "rock-star" workers to ruin the dreams and healths of, and tell us to "forget all of that unicorn chasing just happened."

This is wish fulfillment by the product development team with no plan, money, or support to back it up. You can't just "wish for a new audience" by changing the art in the books; it requires ground-game level stuff like supporting reading programs, getting D&D starter fiction into schools through Scholastic, and supporting K-5 reading programs. If the next generation can't read, good luck selling your game to them.

We will get a few years of the old stuff still releasing before the new stuff, and the new workers will begin delivering, so there will be a 2-year glut of pipeline products to work through.

We will see the new direction here in a few years, and maybe the entire industry will "go back to basics," leading to an AD&D First Edition re-release, this time with nostalgia marketing, no new-age character options, chainmail bikinis, evil orcs, racial ability score modifiers, and traditional art and themes. "We always loved what this was!" will be the line from Wall Street.

They will sell you out for a dollar.

It should be well-known at this point.

Don't be delusional.

And we will get more retreads, like Dragonlance again being sold to us as something "new and exciting" when the last relaunch just a few years ago flopped so hard that hundred-dollar board games based on the setting ended up in dollar stores. Sorry, D&D, you will always be beholden to and ridden around by video-game and entertainment companies, and those BG3 characters will be on the front of so many books they will begin to look like cereal mascots. Hollywood is interested in Dragonlance (again), and this will be our next BG3, if the deals go through (most of which fail).

You live in a hit-driven space in media and entertainment.

This is not a nice place. Mostly, you fail, and only the 1% make enough money to survive.

Even if you do have a hit, unless you sell out hard and begin the follow-up on day one, you will ride that hit into the ground, and people will get as sick of it as they did hair metal in the 1990s. BG4 should have been released by now, and that is such a massive failure that heads should roll. Again, this is Wall Street we are talking about, the place in New York that resembles a crazy world where nothing makes sense except for the color green and the smell of money.

Even if BG4 made half as much as BG3, a half-billion dollars is still better than zero.

It would still be seen as a massive failure, since the #1 rule on Wall Street is, "You are only a success as long as you top the last thing." So, BG3 killed D&D, in a way, by setting expectations so high that it killed the entire IP, and no one could ever follow it up. Hasbro should have "sold Wizards up the financial pipe" at that point, given the billion-dollar hit, and flipped it for cash to a large investment group. Instead, they held on, and hubris killed the valuation. The iron is no longer hot. The moment is over.

D&D YouTube likes to point to the next D&D book and say, "D&D is back!" or "D&D is doomed!" Other culture YouTubers like to point to the art and content and scream about it as the reason it's failing.

It is not like that. Blind men and an elephant.

We are in a deeper, structural, cyclical problem with the entire hobby.

The problem is rooted in the cyclical nature of the entertainment market and the money it generates.

How I get through it is by going back to the classic games and remembering the good times, as any new investments in anything 5E or "new games" will just end up in drama, heartbreak, and disappointment. Even 3.5E is a fantasy heartbreaker at this point, since it is a dead game and unsupported. I hear about a new revision of GURPS, and I hope for the best, but I know the revision will be used as a wedge, as people will attack it for changing things too much. I hope it does well, but I do have a horrible feeling it will further divide the hobby. It is a great idea at a terrible time.

Why would I invite drama in the door when all I want is fun?

GURPS is still fun. First Edition, BX, and BXA are still amazing throwback games.

Many new games and games released in the last 10 years are failing me right now. I struggle to see a future for many of them, and their compatibility issues are rampant. Even inside 5E, compatibility with many 3rd-party books is terrible. I love Shadowdark, but I can get the same thing in any BX, BXA, or 1E game, with better cross-compatibility for third-party and community adventures.

I don't see the value in spending money on games.

More money spent does not equal more fun.

Old School Essentials: The Times are a Changin'

Old School Essentials is being updated for 2026. We are no longer getting the Basic Fantasy set, and they are consolidating around an OGL-free, rewritten Advanced Fantasy set.

https://necroticgnome.com/blogs/news/old-school-essentials-2026-and-beyond

https://necroticgnome.com/blogs/news/ose-2026-update-revealed-get-your-questions-answered-halloween-deals

Some are unhappy that the core B/X version of the game is going out of print, while others say that if they want a solid, well-supported, math-fixed B/X-style game, they will just play Basic Fantasy and be done with the boutique OSR B/X market.

And OSE leaving the OGL was only a matter of time. This is another shoe to drop among B/X publishers that has been a long time coming. I am happy for them, and their publishing license is finally being cleaned up, with the OGL control excised, like the demon it was. Oh, and we are finally getting a demon and infernal guide for OSE next year, too. Nice! This was a long time coming, and I have been asking for one since OSE was a soft-cover game.

We are still including an appendix in the new books to simulate the core B/X game style, so "classic fantasy" is not disappearing entirely. It is just that there is no B/X standalone game in print right now, except for PoD Labyrinth Lord, and who could have predicted that the core cooks of LL would outlast OSE's classic fantasy books?

I also bet you someone is trying to write "the new, most faithful, B/X" right now, and we will see the Kickstarter soon.

For "advanced" games, there is a question of "why play a hybrid B/X/A" style of game (basic, expert, and advanced)? We have three amazing OGL-free options if you want to "go advanced" right now:

• OSRIC 3
• Adventures Dark & Deep
• Swords & Wizardry

Of these, ADAD and S&W are my absolute favorites, and S&W really knocks it out of the park as a tight, focused, yet comprehensive set of rules that does everything OSE does —and in many ways, better. S&W has always had the best saving throws in gaming, and it removes a lot of the modifiers from most of the classes, leading to a dry, flat, and better balance and differentiation of the classes. Where the OSE fighter feels bland without a ton of mods, the S&W fighter is the best in zero-edition gaming, right out of the box.

Did I just coin the B/X/A term? This is the best way we can describe faithful B/X-style games alongside hybrid BXA games that mix in first edition mechanics, monsters, and concepts. Also note that the First Edition (1E) is a different beast entirely from BXA, with higher hit dice, more ability score tables, concepts like weapon speeds, segment timing, and all the classic Gygax-isms.

If you want "AD&D lite," then you are in the BXA market.

If you want "full AD&D," then you will enjoy a 1E game with all its complexity.

I also like how only fighters (not rangers, paladins, or any other class) get the STR damage and hit bonus in S&W, which makes fighters very attractive and gives them role protection. Paladins and rangers also have extraordinary abilities, so they are not unwanted or unworthy! It is just that if all you want is high damage and consistent, solid blows, play a fighter.

Many B/X and first edition games are too loosey-goosey with the ability score modifiers, and that only leads to stat-flation, AC-flation, and min-maxing. Are you an S&W thief? The only reason you need a high STR is to force open doors and carry a ton of loot; it will not help your chance to hit or damage. For that, you backstab.

I love this clarity.

The classes feel different.

OSRIC 3 is a TBD game still in production and could change the entire advanced landscape next year.

I hope OSE cleans up the rules, adds options, and focuses on gameplay and fun, rather than being a strict reference work. If people need to mod your game to add fun, that is a core design issue (and a feature, let's be honest).

As an "advanced" style game, OSE is good but not among the best. If I want the "whole hog" advanced experience, I will play OSRIC. If I wish to have "everything and the fixins," I will play ADAD. If I want "first edition lite" (which OSE falls in), then S&W is the superior choice. OSE and S&W directly compete, and S&W hits all the notes for me:

• Fighters are awesome.
• Expansion books for classes and monsters.
• Dry, flat math with modifiers under control.
• Single save number!
• Preserves the OG magic resistance mechanic for monsters.
• First edition monster stat blocks with d8 hit dice.
• Demons and devils.
• Lower, B/X hit dice (d8 for fighters, d6 clerics, and d4 magic user and thief).
• Near-perfect OSE compatibility, including OSE player race options ported into S&W.

If I want the best BX, I will play Basic Fantasy.

If I want the best BXA? Swords & Wizardry.

The best 1E? A toss-up between ADAD and OSRIC.

ACKS is the best "mega BX" game that does domain play right.

OSE is in a strange place right now as a pure BXA game going forward, but it needs to have a compelling reason to play, and possibly the best mods being sorted through and added to the base game. Some of the expansion races in Advanced feel niche, and better options exist in the OSE Zines.

Ideally, OSE should be three books, folding in the official options from the Carcass Crawler Zines:

• OSE Core
• OSE Referee
• OSE Player Expansion 1

This is the moment when OSE can break out and be its own game, still faithful to the original but now free to focus on a solid, fun design rather than remaining so true to the source material.

I am supporting the new OSE, but we shall see how this goes.

The B/X Core

If I could go back in time and rebuild my library the right way, it would be around B/X-based books and games. I would never have touched 5E books. The B/X-based games do anything and everything, and they are mostly compatible with each other.

Old School Essentials is the glue that holds it all together— the universal base game that covers all the classics —and in the zines, all the expanded races and classes can be found. If all else fails me, I can play this and still have fun with any of the books in my collection.

The question isn't, "What game will replace 5E?" The answer is a few games, but using compatible numbers and systems. All these games can create a highly compelling framework, with plenty of options and a far easier set of rules that play like the classic game.

White Star covers the other end of the gaming genres —science fiction —and it is trivial to pull in White Box-based games into my collection. This is an iconic science fiction game, and it works with every other B/X-based and White Box game I own. This is sort of that freewheeling "Guardians style" science fiction that Starfinder did so well.

From here, the ...Without Number games are an easy addition to my collection, and give me excellent generators for any world that I can imagine. These are also games in their own right, covering fantasy, post-apocalyptic, science fiction, and cyberpunk genres. Stars Without Number can be more serious science fiction, so now I have a 'hard science' tabletop game to play if I want to. This game can also replace Traveller and give me a similar experience, without the Imperium.

The fantastic 'Cities Without Number' game is an excellent cyberpunk game. Still, it also covers modern-day gear and adventures, so it could be easily modded into a super-spy, vice squad, or modern military tabletop game if I wanted. I now have two fantasy games to play and two science fiction games in my collection, and I do not have to worry about conversion or parts of my library becoming unusable.

Ashes Without Number is the newest game and covers post-apocalyptic gaming. This can do anything from a zombie survival game to Gamma World, so everything is covered here.

Do I need monsters? I can pull them from any of these games. All of it works together well.

All of these are compatible with each other. So they all work together and build together. Why am I wasting money on games that don't work together again? Why do I need to wait for 5E games when they're only designed to play one genre?

Also, I can switch between any of the Without Number games, White Star, and OSE if I want to play something slightly different without having to re-learn a new system.

Toss Dark Places & Demogorgons (OSE Edition) in there for 80s kids on bikes running around and trying to solve mysteries. Want World War II? There is a White Box game for that. Want Gangsters? B/X Gangbusters has you covered.

Do I want downtime, skills, feats, and all sorts of other character customizations? The excellent On Downtime and Demesnes add-on book for any B/X game will give you plenty of options to add to any of these games. This book is a game-changer, and it adds so many 5E-like optional customizations to B/X characters that your games will become completely different.

Do I want to go big and play a full king-and-conqueror game with all the toys? I have ACKS, and this is a giant game that maintains B/X compatibility. If I want fast-and-loose fantasy, I can pick up OSE or Worlds Without Number. If I want a huge, massive, serious game of empire building, ACKS will fit me well. I would like to include Tieflings and Dragonborn in my ACKS game. Just port them in from the OSE Zines and give them an ACKS class. It works. I can drop in a spaceman from White Star or Stars Without Number into my campaign, and it works. They can shoot their blaster at ACKS monsters, and all the numbers work together seamlessly. Attack bonus, d20, versus AC, and roll damage.

We are done here! Stop messing around with over-complicated combat rules and get to the story, please! This is the massive problem with 5E: it treats combat as the story, and everything is built around violence and death being the answer for everything. It stems from the original Magic: The Gathering philosophy that the "card battle" is the game. In D&D, the "tabletop combat" is the game, and all serve that one blood-soaked master (that takes forever to play one fight).

Only Shadowdark solved the 5E combat taking forever problem, and it did that by being more like these games. Shadowdark is like DCC, a transition game off of 5E, leading me back to the original games, where I will find the most fun.

Want something more First Edition? Adventures Dark and Deep has you covered, along with OSRIC. This is still all compatible with my B/X games. Zero edition is covered with Swords & Wizardry. All of it works together. So far, this is five fantasy games, two science fiction games, a 1980s game, a post-apoc game, a gangster game, a WW2 game, and a cyberpunk game.

I don't need eight shelves of 5E books anymore when I have one with games that do it all, and they all work together efficiently.

Off the Shelf: ACKS

I moved my premium ACKS books to my most-played shelf, alongside Adventures Dark & Deep, OSE, and 3.5E. This has replaced 5E, and in a way, I don't really care about "losing 5E's builds" or characters. I really don't care that much for a system that forces me to visit online sites to create characters for my games. My data and my character sheets are mine, not yours.

It is more "cloud service BS" that all my creative work with characters, histories, backgrounds, adventures, campaigns, and images will eventually get fed into AI. I have a choice, and I say no, I am sorry, I do not consent, and thank you for nothing. If 5E needs to die, it is because of the game's cloud service requirements. It sounds terrible, but I hope all of the 5E live service sites fail, since it will save the hobby.

Sorry, I don't need websites and live services to play these role-playing games. All of this profit motive will kill the hobby and turn it into a scammer and corporate-buzzword-filled mobile game nightmare. Buy credits and special currencies now to advance to the next level! Remember to buy a few more special character boosts! Get those Forgotten Realms Dragon Coins now!

Let D&D die if this is what D&D is going to become.

I will play other games and walk away from the mess. In a way, it feels like walking away from Windows and using Linux. I own my game, my data, my characters, and my imagination again. I am not being forced to buy subscription services. I have freedom. The politics and people guilting you into playing this game or that are gone, just because the "platform buy-in" fandoms are no more. Sunk costs create platform activism, which in turn creates toxicity.

The people running the game also feel your sunk costs into the platform will force you to defend anything they put into the game or marketing material, no matter how inane, nonsensical, or silly. Putting wheelchairs in the game has nothing to do with representation; it has everything to do with forcing you to bend the knee to their control. You have to defend it; it is in the book. This sets you up nicely for the next step, which will affect your wallet, and you will be forced to defend that, too.

I can't ethically defend Wizards any more than I can ethically defend Microsoft.

And if a Linux distro "sells out," I keep my data and migrate to a more ethical distribution. I have choices in this world. With D&D and Windows, I don't. Even your characters are locked down and tied to a website. You don't own them or the campaigns you put in these tools, and read the fine print before your data gets fed into an AI model.

With Linux, I own my computer and my data. I choose to opt in to tracking and online ads. Nobody is going to scan my personal files and report the contents back to advertisers.

With PDFs and character sheets I run by hand, I own my games. I don't need to pay anyone to play it. I don't need live services to play with my friends.

ACKS is a good game. This is an alternate-universe D&D where the entire world exists in a cinematic reality. This is not the silly D&D multiverse with the 1001 silly food-coloring-hued marshmallow shapes representing fantasy races that are all the same anyway; ACKS is a human-based game and reality (with dwarves and elves), but with diversity properly represented through cultures and skin tones.

ACKS gets diversity right.

ACKS feels serious, with a weight and drama that the game brings to the table. This is still your bog-standard B/X-style task and combat resolution system, so there is not much mechanically new here. This is still class, levels, AC, hit points, Vancian magic, weapon damages, combat, and X+ throws. Many systems, such as encumbrance, are simplified. We have fantastic multiple race-as-class options that add to the lore and culture.

And ACKS works efficiently with anything B/X, so all my OSE books work perfectly. Even classes and characters from other systems can port in and play alongside ACKS characters. Monsters are compatible. Adventures work as-written, and all the monster stats work fine.

But more than compatibility, ACKS is high drama. This is a sort of "fall of the Roman Empire" type of game, but with a fictional empire and a fantastical setting. The sky is the limit in this game. I can conquer land, raise armies, and become a king. I can have heirs and have the next generation go out to be their own adventurers.

The game sets out to deliver on the original D&D promise of the dominion endgame. It provides a complete kingdom simulator, like the tabletop game, but as a fantasy version of Twilight Imperium. There has never been a fantasy game this ambitious and full of fun, and while many OSR games stop when you leave the dungeon, this goes all the way.

The original 5E designers betrayed the spirit of the game by writing henchmen and dominion rules out of the game, and set us up for the terrible mobile-phone-game place we are in today. Many like to tout that as an achievement, but there are plenty of downsides to 5E that we are now stuck with.

ACKS delivers.

It may take three massive tomes to do so, but the game delivers on its promises.

This feels like the Sparticus series, gritty and dirty, realistic and brutal. I caught an episode of this on Netflix, and went out and bought the physical media since this one (and the Rome series) are keepers. This is not your cosplay, no helmets, Tiefling and Dragonborn, floofy American anime adventure series, like most D&D culture is these days. This is gritty, dirty, violent, and honest.

And I like the classic three races of humanity, dwarves, and elves. This is the perfect mix: not so many that no one can relate to each other, or so few that everyone at the table is talking in an animal voice. We throw out all the silly marshmallow shapes that don't mean anything anyway and let people roleplay cultures that feel more grounded and real. One newer game has "punk rock time travellers" as a race option. Unless that is from some anime I haven't seen yet, I have no clue what that is even doing in fantasy, nor can I relate to it in any meaningful way outside of Cyberpunk.

This strange cosplay culture around D&D, where it is more about Victorian dress up with plastic swords, face paint, and Tiefling horns, has gotten stale and tired. The entire modern-day look and feel of D&D is a parody of the hobby, where the Steampunk cosplayers ended up, and it shows in the game's art, which tries to sell it as a lifestyle.

I'm wearing plate mail! Look at this metal shoulder pad! It is as bad as the chain-mail bikini, minus the beauty of the human figure in an artistic sense, replaced by Hot Topic fantasy clothing. I like the classic Boris Vallejo art. The new D&D art sucks and looks like face-forward, unable to draw in perspective or from behind, AI-seeded work stitched together and painted over in Photoshop.

But, ACKS is a nice game. Yes, there is some AI art in here, too, and you can't really get away from it these days. But the tone and style are far better than the D&D alternative that frankly looks like every other game these days. At least ACKS sticks to a "Fallen Rome meets Conan" sort of style of gritty fantasy art, and it is a good thing.

And the ACKS world model is simple. The Fallen Rome part sets you up to be the hero. The ancient world, being a land of evil magic, serpentmen, demons, and twisted Conan-like cults, is what the world will fall into again.

Unless you act. The call to be a hero is there.

As I sunset 5E as the 2014-2024 game, I know it had a good run. But what it is today is not how it started, and the game has been going downhill since Tasha's. The rampant powergaming and overpowered builds, the bleh classes, and the new OP ones, it's all just an MMO these days, when MMOs give me more enjoyment and fun. I would rather play World of Warcraft than 5E, even without the "ability to tell stories together," since that is not 5E's focus anymore. WoW does the power build and gaming fun better.

For solo play, I want more than 5E, and I like story, setting, and a promise of something beyond powergaming with zero exploration, social, or dominion gaming. ACKS gives me the full package and delivers on the promise.

ACKS is a modern classic.

The Post-D&D Era, Part 2

The times I played 5E, I had fun until level six, and then I got bored. There was never much to keep me past that, and characters got so complex and invincible that the game felt too easy. I even upped the challenge level, and there was always an answer for most encounters, and the too-generous resting mechanics, and lack of a survival game, meant no hard choices were made. Exploration and social were all "make it up as you go," and the inspiration mechanic became a game of how hard you could abuse the system.

The game was expensive, too; all the books you had to buy and keep up on were a huge drain. I have had players take one look at a reasonably well-filled-out character designer on Roll20 and quit before the group got started. They did not want to play this. It made me sorry I did not start them with Shadowdark; at least I would have had a game instead of the nightmare that 5E is for new players.

And the Open 5E clones never lasted as long. They are better, by far, but every time I tried to restart my 5E hobby, each one failed in its own way, and I felt my interest in the whole system dragging down my interest in tabletop gaming.

GURPS became my holdout game.

These days, I see employees at Wizards running the ship and desperately trying to be popular online. It does not feel like anyone in the company is delivering the adventures and books I like to play and read. Nothing touches the classic adventures, and remixing them with AI will not replace talent.

All of D&D feels like it has lost its credibility. The game feels like a hobby in search of an audience.

I liked the character builds, but if I am building Wizards-style D&D characters, 3.5E is the better choice. If you absolutely need D&D on the cover, play 3.5E or Rules Cyclopedia.

And we are seeing a string of bleh releases and services from Wizards closing down, and the entire edition feels like it is being closed out in its final few years of support. The features they developed for 2024 D&D never caught on, and now people are sticking with 2014 D&D since none of the new stuff appeals to them, and many are finding other hobbies.

And none of these new games, other than Shadowdark and Dragonbane, will likely be around or supported that well in a few years. Only a select few will endure, and anything released recently will have a tougher time than those that were released during peak OGL anger.

We are likely 3 years away from D&D 6E at this point. It will be another "Hail Mary" release and a plea for the old-school players to return. Again.

At this point, do premium, error-free, faux-leather, premium paper editions of the AD&D first and second edition books, and put them on a release schedule. You will clear a few million per Kickstarter if you do it right and keep divisive politics out of it. Celebrate the old-school. Hire Goodman Games again if you need to, and have them run it all. Open up the licensing for those versions, too, while you are at it.

They have so many versions of the same game, they don't need another.

I still have 5E and may still play, like many others, since I am used to it and I have the books. Right now, I feel sad at the end of this edition, and watching it being so mismanaged and trying to stay relevant is troubling. Even the D&D YouTubers have this "deck of the Titanic" sort of feeling to them, as if they're trying to keep people interested and hopes afloat. I can't watch many of them anymore, and that sort of desperate plea to keep watching, and them repeating, "Things are not so bad."

When we know how bad they are.

And I feel like I am going through the stages of grief with 5E right now.

Past anger.

Past bargaining.

And on to acceptance.

Sigil is No More

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/2086-closing-the-chapter-on-sigil-and-thanking-the

The 3d VTT made by Wizards is being shut down (in a year). This was massively expensive, but not as much as the "buying a studio thing" they stumbled into.

This is likely the death knell of this edition of the game. 2024 D&D was built for this, and even the new systems put into the game (bastions, removing RP abilities) were designed to support it. Now, we have an edition of the game that promotes abandoned features and a more VTT-focused experience that may play better on 3rd-party VTs but lacks interesting exploration and roleplay features that many want.

Past this, I don't see how they move forward without designing an entirely new edition of the game. This one supports dead digital features.

D&D Has Lost Credibility and thus, Legitimacy

This is my gut problem with D&D today. The game feels like it has lost all credibility and, thus, its legitimacy. Say what you want to about the individual parts of the system, the too-long combats, the wonky character build, the lack of death mechanics, and a whole host of complaints.

If the game has zero credibility as a dungeon-adventure game, it's nothing to me.

This goes for 2014, 2024, ToV, and A5E. They are all flavors of the same problem. Some fix the issue better than the others, but they are still the same genre that feels derivative to me.

I keep returning to previous editions to find that credibility. 3.5E has more than 5E, but as long as we are going backwards, I will go straight to the source and play First Edition, eliminate all wonky, derivative, non-canon ideas from the game, and find the truest implementation right at the source.

If you go backwards to find credibility, go all the way.

And here is another thing about D&D: all the art looks like every other game. What is it with this generation of artists? I can't tell the difference between D&D 2024, Nimble, Draw Steel, Daggerheart, or any of these other games anymore. All the art is this "AI modern" looking slop, that looks like those happy-faced, party-loyal, rah-rah Great Leader political posters you find in dystopian regimes. Those cheerful faces hide pain and a deep sense of "please like me" and "please don't go away" insecurity.

At least Dungeon Crawl Classics art is wonderfully strange and off the wall. Part of the reason I keep supporting them is the classic art.

D&D, and the 5E clones, losing all credibility is the root of my problems with the game. Beyond the minor complaints, this big one can't be solved easily.

Is Combat Supposed to be Fun?

One of the features of Wizards' D&D is "fun, tactical combat." This has been the way since D&D 3.0 and every version since. Every one of these "D&D clones" we have these days advertises the same thing: fun, tactical combat.

And in every one of these games, including the "boiled down" 5E clones, combat still takes the same amount of time to complete. Combat in any "fun tactical combat" version of the game will take forever. Too much is gamified. Too many things that should not matter in the chaos of battle suddenly matter. Things that give you a false sense of "combat mastery" have no real parallel in real life. Tactics in the game would be stupid and silly if used in a real fight.

None of these "gamified combat rules" is anything close to reality.

Show me bardic inspiration or a bonus action in real life. They are fake, made-up, almost amateur-hour game designer "fantasy words" meant to make you feel smart that you know what they mean and the paragraphs of rules around them. When they are nothing close to reality, and they only exist in a strange "physics model" programmed into a pen-and-paper game.

We are riding "but this is a fantasy" horse way, way too far off the cliff, and venturing into pure absurdity.

In contrast, OSE, Shadowdark, and ADAD? Combat is not supposed to be gamified and fun. Thus, combat is blazingly fast. We have time in the session for roleplay and exploration, and figuring out how to survive, what we can carry, and the hirelings we want to bring along.

Without all these gamist combat rules —many of which are pure garbage —we can play the game and focus on the story.

People say, "When I play Shadowdark, I have more time for story, roleplaying, my character, and looking at the environment."

Of course, you are not wasting hours of every game session on fake gamified combat.

Sim games, like GURPS, are a different thing entirely, since the yardstick is reality, and we can benchmark the rules by how close they come to it. Yes, they have just as many rules as a gamified system, but their purpose is different, and they can be judged against real-world events.

Gamified systems that create a 500-page rulebook like the Tower of Babel?

I have my questions about them, and I am not afraid to call them out for being overdesigned and unnecessarily heavy.

The DCC Malaise

I sense a certain malaise in the OSR community regarding Dungeon Crawl Classics. I still like the game, and it is an excellent, emergent gameplay old-school alternative. Many old-school YouTubers have put the game aside or reduced their collections to a book or two. The game is now mainstream and thus uncool.

So the merry-go-round spins of "what is popular" in the OSR. This never really stops, and I remember the days when Labyrinth Lord was cool. I still remember loving LL when someone told me OSE was so much better. They were right, and I moved on, by LL still serves as my DCC +1 game that I use to fill in treasure tables and other things the game needs.

DCC is a 5E offramp, just like Shadowdark, but it appeals to a different crowd. It was the third-most popular fantasy game at last GenCon, so the crew there has done a fantastic job. DCC today does feel mainstream, and Goodman is letting the game rest a little, as it is a mature system, and they are focusing on 5E and profits (and likely, player conversion).

A considerable part of the OSR is moving back to first edition, be it OSRIC, Swords & Wizardry (0e), Adventures Dark & Deep, or the original books. Myself? I have the original books, but I never use the PoDs, since the PoD reprints have errors. But the move is on, and more products are being released for dual 5E and First Edition versions. The good part about the First Edition is that it ensures compatibility all the way up from 0e (S&W and White Box), B/X (OSE), 1e (ADAD and OSRIC), 2.5E (C&C), and even DCC - mainly if you include dual descending and ascending AC values.

I would rather support games with communities and open licenses.

That is where I feel things are at: the OSR people have moved on a bit from DCC, as the novelty for them is wearing off. Many took a detour into Shadowdark (which still many support as a 5E alternative), and a sizable number returned to the First Edition.

For me, Adventures Dark and Deep or OSRIC are my First Edition standards. OSRIC 3 should be arriving here in a few months, and that is exciting.

I still have DCC on my display shelves, just for the high level of imagination and creativity. I still play and support this; there is nothing else like it. But, I get the feeling many are moving on. Because fantasy gaming is in a massive glut right now, and the moment feels like we are heading for a crash. If you look at all these games:

• D&D 2014
• D&D 2024
• Tales of the Valiant
• Level Up: A5E
• Pathfinder 2
• Shadowdark
• Daggerheart
• Draw Steel
• Nimble
• Cosmere
• Dragonbane
• ...and many more

And more are on the way, undoubtedly. I am probably missing a few, and none of the OSR games are on this list. There is no way the market can support them all. Something has got to give; if not, the entire fantasy gaming market will crash and burn. This is an Atari 2600 level of glut and oversaturation in fantasy gaming. There is no way the market can support all these games.

For many, returning to the first edition immunizes them from the coming storm, and I get why. There are too many choices out there, and most, if not all, will see hard times coming.

The first edition is a solid fall-back point. We will see where we go from here.

Another Best: Adventures Dark & Deep

If I ever get tired of D&D 3.5E, Adventures Dark and Deep will be my jam. It is a rejection of character creation software, ultimately, and if Hero Lab ever stops working, either the company no longer supports it or allows registrations, the updates go offline, or the entire package becomes unusable and unsupported. I am getting my money out of it while I still can, but D&D 3.5E's life is tied to a commercial software platform, just like 5E is tied to a few websites holding characters.

This has always been the massive flaw in Wizards D&D: the constant support needed sucks the life out of the game. From 3.5E to 4E to 5E, each required software, websites, or character builders. Wizards' D&D is digital dependency D&D.

They make the game too complicated to play; thus, software is constantly needed. Then, they lock the needed content behind non-open releases, and you are bait-and-switched with must-have, unlicensed, non-SRD expansion content into buying something to do all this work and manage the options for you.

If you can't run a character sheet by hand, the game sucks. And I know, but GURPS! I love GURPS, but I have had so many issues with the software over the years, including terrible anti-virus programs complaining constantly about the app when there is nothing there. If an app isn't open-source and the data is free to use, I can't rely on it being around another 5 to 10 years.

It does make me want to give up entirely on character creation apps.

And there is another bad part about these websites and apps: if you have the wrong opinions about anything, they can ban you from using them, and thus, prohibit you from playing the game. We don't live in an innocent age anymore, where everyone is welcome in every game. Just one social media post can invalidate a few thousand dollars in books and hobbies, and keep you out of the community, game, and conventions forever. This has already happened many times, and these VTT and character creation sites only invite this sort of gatekeeping. Refuse to play games that give others that power over you, even if you agree with the current opinion de jour; the winds will change, and you will be locked out someday.

My game is mine, and my speech is mine.

Why do I play games that give others power over me?

As a matter of principle, I refuse.

We never needed these apps in the 1980s, and we played games like Rolemaster, Space Opera, Palladium, Car Wars, GURPS 3rd, and Aftermath. In fact, there is an argument that if a game needs an electronic character sheet, then it is not a pen-and-paper role-playing game; it is a video game.

If I ever give up a game, it will be because I can't support the software dependency anymore, and I see the game as inferior because of that requirement. Games that I can play without computers will be superior. ADAD is the game I will fall back to, thus making it my main game. This is sort of the theory of "Just play now what you end up with later."

Beyond this, it is an OSR standby, like OSE, DCC, or S&W. I can have fun with these, and they are mostly cross-compatible. I worry about Dungeon Crawl Classics, as the system's support feels waning in favor of Goodman Games supporting 5E. I get it, the company needs to make money. I still have a massive DCC library, so I am not worried, but I want DCC to keep going strong since the game is so creative, imaginative, and strange.

To be honest, Goodman Games should just make a version of DCC 5E that uses their dice and aligns their products, making the adventures compatible with either system. You are just a few years back on the Kobold Press timeline, thinking you can support commercial 5E, and then 6E will come along in a few years and torpedo your product development, back catalog, and revenue pipeline. Short-term versus long-term thinking here, and I would love to see what they come up with.

Adventures Dark & Deep is on the same level as OSE, an S-Tier game. The game is so complete and packed with so much first edition gaming that nothing comes close. This is the best first edition game out there, featuring an open license. It does everything just as I remembered, with a few key improvements. This system finally realizes the dream of how weapon speed and initiative were supposed to work, but back in the day, we ignored it. This "does the thing," and it brings me back to that first-edition simulation feeling where you may want a lighter, faster weapon that does less damage just to be able to strike earlier.

And the character sheets are open and trivial to run by hand. The characters are simple, but the combination of the skill system and the referee's ability to "add anything to a character" without worrying about "paying for it with feats" is just so refreshing and frees up my imagination. If a character grows wings due to something happening in the game, guess what? They have wings. Write it on the character sheet and record the flying speed, oh, and make a note of encumbrance when you are too overloaded to fly. This is the first edition, you know.

And the game has deep old-school sensibilities. If a character has demon blood, they aren't a cosplay character with blue skin and horns; they are likely of evil alignment and up to no good, with the blood of Satan running through their veins. That classic, almost Bible-inspired gameplay and world model is here in full force. Evil and wickedness come from Hell.

We bought our first D&D boxed set from a Christian bookstore, back when 1970s hippies ran these places and everything was cool, man.

You can't take the Christian influence out of D&D; if you do, the game gets boring, as if its heart is ripped out. The demons and devils are the "end boss" of the game, the reason there is so much evil, why the dragons kill mercilessly, and why the wicked humanoid tribes worship them in dark rituals. This is the reason why evil pillages, conquers, and despoils good kingdoms and untouched lands. Monsters are the corrupted blood of God's creations.

This is why the Satanic Panic happened: AD&D cut too close to being a biblical role-playing game, and organized religion found an easy target. Original AD&D gamified a religious text's world model, but since those stories are the origin of our myths, that makes sense and feels natural to us as humans. You can take the religion out of the game, but you will never take the religion out of the human playing it.

No monster is humanized. Nothing wicked is painted in a good light. And will never be. For many, this is why we play. And we refuse to play anything which can be retconned, the beholders and owlbears made good, mind flayers and devils turned into player races, and the game turns to slop and mush.

I understand where the whole move towards D&D 3.5E is coming from. It is a good, tight, easy-to-play, and modern game. There is no considerable difference in feeling between it and 5E, beyond a couple of mechanical differences and combat being slightly more crunchy. But I like the crunchy combat with the tactical options; this makes table-based play fun again. Both games are broken at high levels. D&D 3.5E is more hardcore than 5E by a considerable margin. And D&D 3.5E was designed for the tabletop and figure-based play; this is a tactical game.

But the first edition is the best game ever written; even 3.5E pales in comparison to its majesty. The first edition is like the Bible of roleplaying, the source document, the origin of all that we have today. Yes, ADAD is a descendant of the first edition, a refinement and improvement, but also a more open document that is worth supporting over the originals. It is either this or OSRIC, and this gives me much more, so this catches my interest more than a pure reference guide. Mind you, OSRIC is the purest form of the first edition, and every bit as significant as OSE. We are also getting an OSRIC 3 pretty soon here once the Kickstarter fulfills.

Both OSRIC and ADAD have far better licenses and community models than the original game. If given a choice, I will support the open games before I support something the community can't publish for.

The first edition will be a forever game.

Mail Room: Draw Steel

I got my Draw Steel hardcovers today. This looks interesting, but wow, it is a lot of rules. I expected this to be a little lighter, but there is a lot packed on each page to digest. For a game with such a simple mechanic, I expected the system to be less dense.

The art is good quality, but a bit too modern-fantasy for my tastes, and it has way too many smiling or smirking people in situations where they should be fearing for their lives. I want that seriousness to the art! Happy people killing things either looks flippant or psychotic, and neither is good.

The races are all over the place and odd. It is good to see them try to break the standard mold, but some of their choices feel like strange ones better suited for a science-fiction game.

This game competes with Nimble 5e, and Nimble is far easier to grasp and play. I could get a group of people new to the system to try Nimble, just like I could Shadowdark. Draw Steel is on a Pathfinder 2 level of commitment and buy-in, and desperately needs a starter set.

Thank you for the evil-looking eye-tyrant like floating eyeball monster on the cover of the monster book. Wow, that became topical overnight, serving as a warning about making monsters too cute or humanizing them. Keep the monsters as monsters; otherwise, those in charge are poor shepherds of the game, and we will have no classic monsters left to fight. I don't get what this whole saccharine cuteness overload is with D&D these days; it sucks, and most old-school players barf at the sight of the infantile cartoonification of D&D. Looking at D&D art these days feels like watching Muppet Babies or the Care Bears cartoon. At least Draw Steel keeps things relatively consistent and follows a solid theme.

A good-looking game, and this and Daggerheart are taking people away from 5E, along with the usual suspects: DCC, OSE, First Edition, Shadowdark, and a few other hot games out there.

D&D 3.5E: Hail to the King

I am not signing up for an "online 5E character creation tool" ever again. D&D 5E has proved to be a trail of tears and a source of subscription service scams. The rules never needed to be this complicated, and every time I put faith in a version of 5E, here comes the website to "make it all easy."

5E is painful because the entire system is designed to force you into an online support model, free or not, creating dependency. Digital book sales. For-sale character options. Digital goods. I love A5E, but if I had to choose between this and D&D 3.5E, the OG game of the 2000s would win. D&D 5E is so hard to support. 2024 D&D, ToV, or A5E - they all need a company's website to help them be playable.

D&D 3.5E is from an era before "software as a service" was a thing, and it is mostly immune to the concept. Since the game is still complex enough to warrant using a software tool, we have a good option for this.

I have D&D 3.5E, and it says D&D on the cover, so I can say, "I am playing D&D." The art doesn't suck, and the fantasy races are toned down and not so silly. The books are cool and edgy. They are frozen in time, so I don't need to worry about someone coming along and messing up a setting, adventure, class, or rules. The game is all about tactical combat, so I don't need a special "fantasy tactical combat RPG." I don't need a storytelling game because that is what you do with this.

The DMG in this version is one of the best they ever wrote. And it does not have the "Pathfinder" feeling. I loved Pathfinder 1e, but the game was too focused on Golarion for me, and it stopped being neutral regarding the setting. Pathfinder 1e got too focused on "it's stuff," and the game felt more like Golarion: the RPG. Straight, on-the-metal, clean 3.5E does the job.

Is the system broken? Well, 5E is, too. So that is a silly question. At least characters can die in this edition. The complexity and time taken for a turn are the same, as 5E at high level is marginally better than 3.5E. It is not that much of a difference with a skilled group that knows what they are doing.

If I want a digital character sheet, I have Hero Lab. One purchase and done: no subscription fees, local storage, the ability to create custom data, and I have it all. And this gives me all the "complicated character builds" I will ever want or need. It is fun to "mix and match pieces" and "play with the stuff" in these tools, and there is that nerdy side of me that still likes this part of the hobby. If I still want to have the "Wizards D&D experience" without the monthly subscription fees, I have Hero Lab and 3.5E.

If Hero Lab ever goes away, I will be back in first edition and enjoying that. I will have had my fun with 3.5E and then roll back to something I can create character sheets for by hand. Part of me wonders why I would even spend time with 3.5E, given I have one of the best first-edition games ever written on my shelf, and that may be the case.

This is the rub with 3.5E versus a game like ADAD. In 3.5E, I need to jump through hoops and build a character, choosing from the ways the designers intended them to be. There are a lot more "working parts" to a character, and you fit them together to make a character build. In the first edition, you just level up and record changes. Any random things that happen or are added to your character (outside of the skill system in ADAD) are just added to your character sheet, and you "just play." There is no feat system here, nor are there illegal choices that result in an invalid build.

First edition says, "Who cares about all that stuff?"

And I get it. Do we need all this stuff in D&D 3.5E? Not really. You need to ask yourself how much of it is essential and whether any of it adds to the story you want to tell. I like navigating the character builder in Hero Lab and making choices. It frustrates me when I have to create hacks to the system to add a "claw attack" to a character, figure out how to do it within the interface, and then not have it come out perfectly. Does it need a feat? How do I add claws as a weapon? Do I need to add a new database entry for this in a custom file? Please stop fighting me, user interface! In ADAD, guess what? Write it on the character sheet. You are done.

The strengths and weaknesses of D&D 3.5E lie in the character design framework. If you love it, you love it. If it fights you, limits your ideas, and you struggle with it, play something else and walk away. Different types of games will be better in other systems. Wizards D&D has always been more like a video game in that regard, where you don't have many great choices, and if you try to work outside the ones they give you, you start running into huge problems.

Still, of all of the versions of Wizards D&D we have, D&D 3.5E is the best of the bunch.

Outside of that, Adventures Dark and Deep is the perfect first edition retroclone, with plenty of new material and quality of life improvements.

Retrospective: Level Up: Advanced 5E, Part 2

Level Up A5E is part of the reason Tales of the Valiant did not launch as strongly as it should have. Many of the "Alt 5E" players were already on Level Up, and when ToV did not introduce many new features, people stayed with this system. I don't blame them, and I was one. I had everything I wanted here: the nods to the old school, the challenge, the improvements, the support for the pillars of play, and the better martial classes without resorting to silly "tricks" with weapon properties.

Many felt, "We have A5E, why do we need ToV?"

ToV and D&D 2024 got specialized weapon fighting wrong. Putting "special tricks" on the melee weapons is lame and increases complexity for everyone. Making these moves, fighting styles that martial classes get, and tracking a stamina resource, is far more the "5E way" of doing things. A5E does fighting styles right. Martial classes are fun in A5E, offering options and a new tracked resource. The martial characters and half-martial characters in this game are fantastic fun to play.

A lot of what made D&D 4E special is in this game, and you see the influences. There is a "battle commander" type class, and the 4E races are represented well. You can use this to play a 4E-style Nerrath campaign and have everything you need right there. The system is the best of the 2014 5E and 2008 4E systems, with an influence from the OSR.

Fatigue has real meaning, and pop-up healing can doom your character permanently. Rangers are needed, and aren't just "ranged light fighters" like they are in 2024 D&D. You need rangers to survive the wilderness. Oh, and they finally fixed Goodberry.

Many of the stupid problems in D&D were addressed four years ago, and they fixed them all in a complete rewrite of the system and the SRD, just to remove the OGL. A5E is like D&D with a sanity upgrade and quality of life features.

Oh, and the safety tools presented in the book? They actually went out and got permission to use them. Whether you like safety tools or not, thank you for asking for permission and mentioning that you did in the book, along with who created them. I don't use them, but doing the homework and giving community attribution for elements like this means something.

Your heritage (race) gains an advancement at the 10th level. Your culture (where you grew up) matters. Your background (job) can advance through adventures. The destiny system elevates the inspiration system to the next level, enabling you to achieve long-term goals and reap benefits from pursuing what drives you. D&D's inspiration system seems lame and too "toggle switch" compared to this.

Everything in this game has a deeper layer of depth and detail, which is incredibly satisfying.

With so many walking away from D&D and 5E, and the rest of the D&D crowd handing Wizards the fantasy monopoly and creating the next litigious "video game company" out of them, it will kill the hobby. We already saw Wizards try their hand at a form of "software patents" with the OGL revision, where other VTT platforms "could not do spell animations" and similar nonsense. More of that is coming, and while it will make the D&D YouTube content creators happy, they will get more outrage clicks; the rest of the tabletop hobby will be flushed down the toilet.

I refuse to hand one company a monopoly on gaming, "just because it is easier to play there." I know where this all ends up, and I can't do that and have a clear conscience.

A5E falls into a "Niche 5E" market, and with 5E in general slowly becoming "the D&D Beyond game," it makes me kind of sad to see honest innovation marginalized. Even ToV is like "hold your nose D&D," a sort of facsimile edition that is "hot swappable" for 2024 D&D, but with few core differences, mainly in the areas of class design and subclass power progression. ToV is the better game, but A5E went much, much farther to address core structural problems in 5E, such as the lack of meaning in social and exploration, and the dullness and weakness of martial characters.

Death means something in A5E.

Death means nothing in ToV, D&D 2014, and 2024.

A5E is the 5E that the hardcore players would be playing if they hadn't all jumped ship to the OSR and Shadowdark. There is a level of maturity here, the silly cosplay elements are not in my face, and there is a grittiness and realism to the rules that tell you "this is still a dungeon crawling game."

It is not playing baristas, rescuing corgis, ripping off Harry Potter, visiting planar socialist utopias, or breaking into a goblin birthday party to murder them all like in the new Keep on the Borderlands. The tone of anything D&D these days is like a narcissistic cosplay murder hobo simulator.

And honestly, all those diverse and special citizens of the Keep? If this were original D&D, they would be killed and looted, too. I hate this trend of "art code" characters as "default good." It's more inclusive to have every character potentially be a hero or a villain and let them play the roles they want.

A5E is the only version of 5E that I miss. The design sensitivities were close to how I saw 5E when it came out, and it makes nods to the old-school gamers. While ToV is new and exciting, it doesn't feel that much different from either 2014 or 2024 D&D.

A5E hit differently.

It is a strange game from an alternate universe where 5E is still cool.

A universe I wish I were in.