A Survival Game versus the Forces of Hell

I described first-edition AD&D to my players as "a survival game versus the forces of Hell," they instantly got the vibe. This is the old-school school, almost like the original Diablo I game, where your best hope is to survive long enough to give the next heroes a chance to push back the forces of Hell, which keep corrupting and overrunning the land.

Tribes of monsters are almost certainly demon and devil worshippers, out for blood, pillaging and tearing down any place of good or civilization, sacrificing villages, and just out to destroy everything as a tribute to evil. Trigger warning: These are not good, happy, cute, or misunderstood monsters. Even the dragons are some of the worst, taking advantage of the chaos, burning down cities, and leaning into the wars to fill their treasure hordes.

I had a few paragraphs about 5E here. I am phasing that commentary out because high-level play is boring, broken, and slow. The 5E boat has left the dock. The only real "Wizards D&D" is 3.5E. The only real D&D is AD&D first edition.

The best "tabletop dungeon tactical game" is Pathfinder 2 Remastered.

I can't play the game in my mind with anything else except the first edition, and even then, OSRIC is my reference of choice, the best-written technical manual on a perfect game. The original books are for inspiration only. Gary's words can't be erased or replaced; this game and the worlds it built kindled almost every game, video game, movie, and book that came after it.

To tear the man down is blasphemy.

Everyone has flaws, but we celebrate greatness and accomplishments. Wizards, you have lost your way. I hope you can return to the fold. Even Hollywood is moving on from the 2010s, and the whole era looks more like disco every day. Otherwise, we must carry on.

We do that by devoting ourselves to that original ideal.

I love the rawness of the first edition. You are not supposed to survive. You aren't given "nap times" or "free cantrips" to carry you through to the subsequent encounter. Death is possible. To even think of the game as encounters, like some pen-and-paper ARPG, means you need help understanding the game. I tell my players that playing the first edition requires spatial thinking, causal analysis, critical thinking, math skills, resource management, bravery, tenacity, and the will to survive and do the impossible.

A dungeon is a problem space you need to solve. It can be a dynamic, changing environment, with time working against you. You can use parts of the environment to your advantage, just like battle space planning in the military. It is part fluid, part static, and those parts can interact. It all starts out as an unknown. Solutions to that problem are built into the game, but they must be told to you.

Even how to run the game is also a mastery, a wizardry, and a science.

After this one, every version of the game took a step away from perfection.

The game isn't a game; it is a riddle you need to solve by looking inside yourself. Once you understand how to "win," you will be set for life; very little in life can stand in your way.

We circle back to the premise, "a survival game versus the forces of Hell." In a way, this may sound like your life, and it should. The impossible task is in front of you, and every day seems like stemming the tide, trying to lose less and survive the day, and getting pushed back to a safe place you realize isn't so safe the next day, so you are on the move again. Watching suffering and despair. Watching what was once good get razed and burned to the ground.

What good are you? You have one spell, and you are done for the day? Your skills could be better. You can't fight. You die easy. You don't get "quest XP for good deeds." You need to kill and steal every experience point, cash it in, and get better with every outing.

Before long, you are Merlin or picking up Excalibur.

The tide turns.

The bastions of evil fall. They thought they were safe there. They were wrong.

You will find the end of this story. It is out there, waiting to be discovered. In some ways, the journey is essential, too. And there will be losses along the way. Only some people who start this tale will be there at the end. There may be new heroes along the way who pick up the swords of the fallen.

There may be a total party kill.

The legend of that moment may inspire new heroes to try to do what the others failed to do.

You will all get to play that story, too.

It is your choice.

OSRIC & D&D 3.5E

If you want to play the best version of D&D, I recommend the first-edition AD&D. I use the OSRIC index as a guide and to simplify the rules, much like the OSE books do. If there is something outside these books, the original three books can fill in the missing spots, but I do not miss them.

Also, the first edition is the best-balanced version of the rules. You are not getting all the bells and whistles of the Wizards' implementations, but you do not need them. This is the game Gary Gygax designed, poured his heart into, and perfected. OSRIC has all the patches, clarifications, and fixes. A few parts were eliminated (bards, psionics, monks), but these were for the better.

Also, with OSRIC, I get to play the OSRIC+ game incorporating the BRW Games books. The old ADAD game was terrific, and it is nice that we still have the "added parts" in these books to enjoy and expand our game. You can find the bard in this book; it is a better version.

I don't recommend AD&D 2nd Edition. This is TSR forcing Gary out and bending the knee to the Satanic Panic. It feels like a censored game without the epic battle between gods and demons. It is much more slick and polished, but I feel it loses its heart and soul. If you love this, great, but it feels like so much is lost here. Even though they brought the renamed demons back later, the game embraces escapism rather than feeling like a test of a player's humanity and morals.

I like OSRIC and the BRW books the best. AD&D 2nd is up there (and a worthy choice), but it can never top the original experience of the late seventies to late eighties. The original rules have a raw, primal, gritty feeling, and Gary's writing makes the experience magical, almost spiritual.

OSRIC for the rules.

Original AD&D books for inspirational reading.

Gary's words will inspire you to play something greater than yourself.

The best version of "Wizards D&D" is D&D 3.5E, without Pathfinder 1e's improvements. Staying true keeps Hero Lab compatibility, and it keeps prestige classes as the focus of the game. This version has massive problems; there are broken builds all over the place, cheese tactics, and a considerable margin between optimized and unoptimized characters. Minions can ruin the game. Casters rapidly outpace martial classes. Skill modifiers can become outrageous.

But this is the best of the West Coast designs. Granted, Wizards can never design a game that works past level ten, but having Monte Cook and other legendary designers doing the game design here more than makes up for the MtG-inspired mess that Wizards brings into the fold.

I am not considering Pathfinder 1e since it is a tonal shift away from the D&D design ethos. Pathfinder 1e is more of a game built for adventure paths, and it has a strong Golarion focus and feeling. With D&D 3.5E, campaign sourcebooks, and prestige classes are built for these worlds. If you are playing in Eberron or the Forgotten Realms, play the game supported by the sourcebooks. D&D 3.5E skills feel more "dungeon-focused" than Pathfinder 1e's generic skill list.

D&D 3.5E beats 5E, hands down. The builds are better, the rules are old-school, and the prestige classes give us things to work toward. It is more complicated, but not by much, considering the slog D&D 5E's high-level combat has devolved into, with all the multiple action types, double-casts, resting rules, and general interconnected mess of relationships and rules interrupts.

D&D 3.5E feels more straightforward to play than 5E. So what do we lose, "advantage and disadvantage?" Are we back to modifiers? So? No significant loss, and the A/D system feels so overused these days that it gets tiring. The A/D system is also a hammer for all problems when it is too blunt, a tool that lacks nuance and ways to finesse and modify a roll.

Both of these games are my "peak D&D."

Grimdark Pathfinder 2: Rules

I want a darker, more horror-infused game full of suspicion and hard times.

Pathfinder 2E defaults to a lighthearted world mood, sort of an "everyone gets along" neutral-positive setting where no controversial subjects exist, everyone gets along, there is universal acceptance for every point of view, and controversy and conflict - in the setting - are written out of the rules. This broadens the game's age range, so eliminating many of these topics extends the game's range and longevity.

I get it; the game is a neutral base, blank sheets of paper that make no assumptions about your world. The Remaster books are much better setting-neutral rulebooks with the OGL stripped out and binned. If you don't like the presentation of a particular Remaster monster, reskin and rename it. Designing new monsters is easy, so we are back in D&D 4E, where groups were expected to develop their own monsters and build encounters that way.

And I am done with 5E; the more dungeon-focused games of 3.5E and the better experience of Pathfinder 2E are where my tactical dungeon gaming is these days. If it isn't that, then the first-edition rules speak to me the most. Also, I have tried setting-neutral 5E, and once you start mixing in 3rd-party content, things start to break down since every book attempts to rewrite the core rules to make setting-specific ideas work with the rules. Setting-neutral 5E seems to gravitate back towards "Wizards reality," and I can't get that feeling out of the game.

I am coming to see the OGL and SRD as chains, not expressions of my imagination.

Ideas and concepts that come from outside the tabletop gaming community are superior. Too often, we endlessly recycle the same dog food of "things in old games" and convert it to new rules, never ask questions, and endlessly repeat the past. When I saw the work the Paizo team did in the Monster Core Remaster book by "doing their own thing" with the monsters they supposedly "lost," I was shocked.

Then new stuff is ten times better since the team actively put their imagination into rebuilding these and, in many cases, went back to the original lore and made something more faithful to the myths and legends than a 50-year-old SRD hand-me-down.

If we enshrine the past too much, it becomes a tomb of dreams and ideas that we end up living inside.

This is the "rot" that lives within the hobby. Gygax and his team pulled ideas from "outside roleplaying" to make the first edition D&D game. The entire "Appendix N" thing comes into the discussion here. When those ideas first went in, they were new—fresh from outside sources.

Every edition of D&D past AD&D was a rewrite that included the previous edition without adding too much new. As we enter the "nostalgia era" of D&D, where they endlessly recycle a cartoon and mass-market strategy that nearly bankrupted the company in the 1980s, we get more of the same. The same 50-year-old ideas are recycled, and nothing fresh is pulled in. The game becomes a buffet of artificial and recycled foods. Nothing fresh. Nothing new. Nostalgia is recycled and repackaged. The 50-year-old mutant ideas, once the "original source derived," are seen as more authentic to the myth than the original myths themselves.

You can reprocess food so much that it turns into poison.

I am trying to fund this mythical Pathfinder 2 Grimdark game, but I must reflect deeply on my inspirations and sources. Once upon a time, I saw other horror games as inspirations. Now, I know those are false sources. They are a few times removed from the original sources of horror, fear, suspicion, and the darkness inside the human spirit.

These games also need to be stripped of their whitewashing and happy-game narrative style. As for the guardrails and safety tools, I don't need them, and they will get in the way.

This is why I like the first edition and OSRIC; they are one level removed from the original inspirations, and Appendix N is in there, so I can go back to those works and "find them for myself." Every future edition tried to hide these and present these "nostalgia pass-downs" as the original IP. Appendix N is the Rosetta Stone, so I can look those things up and find what they mean to me.

I love Dungeon Crawl Classics, but that, again, is Appendix N written through someone else's eyes when it is always better to return to the source and find meaning for yourself. My ideas, pulled from an original source and translated into any game of my choice, are always superior to a game trying to translate them for me. Or worse, going back to the SRD, which has ideas passed through hundreds of designers and now an unrecognizable blob of numbers and text that maybe has "the flavor" of the original idea but no soul and nothing else.

But Grimdark Pathfinder 2 is more than Appendix N. That is just an example and a warning to not rely on sources inside the hobby too much, to lean on nostalgia, and to ignore the truth you can only find in reading an original source and creating new ideas through that synthesis.

The goal of today's entertainment companies is to strip your imagination away, deeply plant the seeds of nostalgia, turn the past into golden calf idols, and instill a culture of dependency on them as the primary source for your imagination. D&D 5.5, with its booze-like nostalgia-infused imagery, pours those feelings down your throat and shamelessly recycles your memories into reprocessed factory food.

Parts of the OSR are just as tied to nostalgia, so this isn't just a Wall Street thing. It is a more profound idea that we don't question or submit to without thinking. Yes, I love my nostalgia, too, but I understand how it can turn into a diet of the past and never think about the future—or even the things inside myself.

Seeing OGL-free games breaks the chains in my mind.

New myths and legends exist.

You can pull in ideas from original sources, run them through your mind a few times, and create something more meaningful to your truths and feelings than this endless stream of nostalgic drool.

OSRIC Hack

Use OSRIC for this game.

You start off in a loincloth in a ten-by-ten cell.

The cell door is locked.

You have whatever your level one class gives you.

You figure out how you escape.

Start this game solo or with a group of four level-one characters per player.

Outside the door is a random dungeon. Use your Oracle dice to determine if you find anything needed or helpful in each room, especially light sources, usable armor pieces, weapons, food, water, and other supplies needed to live. Every hall, passage, door, room, and chamber are randomly generated.

Number of monsters encountered? Be realistic; it will usually be one to the party size, rolled randomly.

Remember, wandering monsters are one in six every three turns.

Resting? Your cell is safe, given that the door is still intact and nobody suspects anything. Something comes by every day to drop off gruel. Play it by ear. Or there is no resting.

Roll the dungeon randomly using the charts in OSRIC, or better yet, use the Book of Lost Tables since this creates dungeons too, and can do random hex-crawls and settlements, which we will need later.

Also of use is the Book of Lost Lore, and Table 147 is the monster reaction table - so every encounter may not be a fight. Perhaps some of those creatures are locked down here with you. They may help you escape. They could also pretend to be your friend and turn on you at any moment or when it doesn't look good. This book also has tables for random gear, sundries, armor pieces, weapons, and other items.

Stairs have a 50-50 chance of being an exit.

Once you leave, go to the Book of Lost Tables and begin your hex crawl. Hopefully, you will find a settlement. Roll a random alignment, race, and size using the tables in the Lost Tables book. Use "roll under" d20 ability score rolls to make survival rolls, and don't forget the skill system in Book of Lost Lore, but those will cost you XP. This book also has survival skills and hunting rules.

Give every character a skill pick as a background or former profession if this part is too lethal, or be generous with achievement XP when significant milestones are hit; escaping the dungeon should be a substantial reward if you go this route. Building a shelter, finding food and water, and other "firsts" should be rewarded. Perhaps give XP for each hex explored and uncovered. 100 XP every day they survive.

If your character dies, start again. In the same dungeon somewhere, perhaps in a new one.

Ignore OSRIC's training and level-up rules; in this school of survival and hard knocks, you level up on the spot or use the cost as a debt later when civilization is found, needed to fill in gaps and brush up on training before any further progression can happen.

Hopefully, you will haul enough loot to civilization to rent or buy a house and establish a home base. You may find friendly NPCs or hire retainers. Once you have a home, the game opens up, and you may have to return and fight for it as you explore the world. Let the Oracle dice decide.

Then, you can build your kingdoms and legends from there.

Grimdark Pathfinder 2

I like games and campaigns that have grit, a feeling of darkness, despair, and a sense of life being hard. Modern games lean into the cute so much that it is hard to convince people the world isn't some happy, colorful place filled with anime monsters that look like Pookie dolls from carnivals. Even the Lost Omens books fight you at this, as they are filled with happy, colorful, overly clean, and hopeful art that looks like vendor stalls at a Burning Man festival.

No, thank you. Please reduce the saturation of these colors to 10% in Photoshop and add a few grunge layers. You are the rule books and have no right to be happy or tell me to be the same. Adventurers will find poverty when they head into a town; most everyone is broke, there is nothing good for sale, and all those smiling pictures of happy people in the rulebook are lies.

The imagery of the books gives me the feeling everyone is wealthy, able to afford the best clothes dyed in the richest hues, with an abundance of food on the table, and a fat, lazy, prosperous society of 'have it all.'

In a way, it feels overly Disney.

Non-threatening, safe, too comforting, happy, and colorful, and there is little need to go adventuring outside these rich, opulent, no-problems, have-it-all places of civilization.

This society is ripe for the pickings. It is fat, lazy, and too rich to care about defending itself. This is a world ready for a hard fall down the civilizational ladder.

Evil, and the concept of evil, exists. Every society can be torn down. Just read the news. Peace and happiness are not "natural states" in nature. Land that is not defended is taken and ruled by savagery.

Wealthy, unprotected civilizations are seen as piles of wealth to plunder by the barbarian hordes. These days, they ride in on pickup trucks and take over their peaceful neighbors.

Tens of thousands of years of history don't lie. Nor does the world outside our window.

I get it; people play this game to escape the real world. Still, too happy a game world gets to be an opiate, a false place, and it feels fake and unreal. There is no compelling story, fight, or struggle, and nothing to work toward.

The Highhelm book is endemic in its use of pictures of happy, smiling dwarves, complete with a fourth-wall-breaking selfie on the cover. When I think of dwarves, I want a grittier, more challenging life. The cover tells me very little, and some of the fantastic interior pictures in this book would have made better covers. I would not mind this picture inside the book as the book between the cover and the pages, but when I think of a cover of a book, I reach for when I think of dwarves; this isn't the cover I would go for.

I get what they were going for on the cover of this book; it is a comparison between what you thought dwarves 'were' versus what they 'are' in this setting. You may have thought dwarves were giant dour stone heads carved into mountains, but look again! They are just like you. I get it thematically; this is the message you wanted to send, and the book delivers that message. The cover isn't misleading the book's content. But it doesn't speak to me.

But there don't seem to be many "great enemies" of this civilization. Why do they need to be in fortresses? Why do they need to mine? I am still reading the book, but from the art, these dwarves don't seem to be locked in an eternal battle with anything for survival - at least from the art.

I want drama and a call to action.

I don't want comfort imagery.

I don't want to see 'happy for no good reason.'

I know the enemies they face are up to me. Sometimes, I miss the old Orcus-worshipping orcs from AD&D and throwing a few hundred thousand of those at the mountain fortresses of the dwarves where no stone goes unsoaked in the blood of the fallen.

There are moments when I feel I can't tell those stories in Pathfinder 2 because the art tells everyone, "NO."

That is a problem.

Many of the Lost Omens books have an overly happy tone. The options inside them are great, and many interior pictures shine. It is just too darn delightful and colorful, page after page. I feel the designers aren't taking their world seriously; they care more about presenting non-threatening environments than a world filled with evil trying to destroy all that is good.

And you can define 'good' however you want, traditional or progressive! My problem isn't the definition of what is good; it presents a credible threat against it and calls us to action.

The remaster books do a better job of splitting Golarion from the game, as the player book no longer has an implied setting. The rules are more "setting neutral" now.

When you fight a game more than it serves as a tool of expression, there is a problem. This is when you reach for another game that enforces the tone you are looking for. I can get this tone quickly in games with a more neutral base, such as GURPS or OSRIC.

OSRIC is the community implementation of the greatest RPG ever written. When all else fails you, first edition will be there.

I like games like GURPS, which are more for world builders and assume nothing about the default world. Modern games focus more on delivering fantasy sandboxes instead of core rules, and D&D 5E (2014) does a better job presenting a neutral base world than Pathfinder. This is likely because the company never wants to release a setting book again and expects players to keep reusing  3.5E books for setting guides.

My two best tactical figure combat games are Pathfinder 2 and GURPS. The first is because it is the best mainstream option (and a tremendous 5E replacement), and the second is a legendary game that gives me complete control.

But Pathfinder 2 can be played as a darker, more gritty game. I own the books. I can do what I want with them. If I wish to create a grimdark world, I say it is a grimdark world, and we go from there. Nothing in the core books precludes that, and the Lost Omens "sample world" in the GM Core book can be ignored. Most of the content in Lost Omens can also be ignored or picked and sorted through as potential character options. For the most part, just stick to the core rulebooks.

I understand what they are trying to do with the art, making the fantasy genre more relatable to the social media crowd. But this is following, not leading.

You will never pander enough to anyone to make yourself "cool."

You must always be the "next big thing" by presenting something people want to see themselves in. And this doesn't happen by making what you have familiar. You must break through, present a world nobody has seen before, and show them the way.

Make the audience "want to be you."

Never make yourself look "more like the ordinary."

OSRIC and the Soul of First Edition

I liked the lower ability score modifiers of Swords & Wizardry, and OSRIC is more of the same. Most characters won't have modifiers to to-hot or damage, AC, or many other freebies that many modern games, and a fair proportion of OSR games, freely hand out. I also enjoy level limits and high ability score requirements for classes.

In Swords & Wizardry, there are no ability score requirements for being a paladin; alignment must be lawful, though a STR 13 or higher gives you an XP bonus. Anyone can be a paladin, just like in 5E. I love S&W; it is another A-Tier game with the softness and accessibility that many modern games have. I get why the game has to sell and deliver on player fantasy, but this puts it more in the mainstream genre than an OSRIC.

In OSRIC, you must have minimum ability scores: STR 12, DEX 6, CON 9, INT 9, WIS 13, and CHR 17 to be a paladin. You must be lawful good. With a 3d6 generation method, that charisma requirement will mean 11% of characters will qualify for this at a minimum since that 17 is a 1.85% chance to roll, assuming you can place scores where you want. Rolled straight, this drops to less than 1.85% of characters.

AD&D 2nd Edition was similar: STR 12, CON 9, WIS 13, and CHR 17.

Swords & Wizardry is a great game; it is easier on requirements and accessible while still delivering the old-school feeling. Something feels missing, though.

By the time we get D&D 3.5E from Wizards, a paladin is just a WIS requirement of 11 to cast spells and 14 to get the highest spells. Anyone can be a paladin. Wizards D&D ceases to be D&D at this point. It may have all the same pieces, but the soul is missing.

How does letting everyone be everything make a game lose its soul?

So, can only one percent of characters created be paladins? Yes. If you manage to roll one, it will be memorable, a highlight of your experience with that campaign. Being a paladin in OSRIC automatically means more than being one in S&W or 5E. You pulled a golden ticket. You get to play one; even if that wasn't your original idea, you now have that choice.

As a result, there are very few paladins in the world. If people see one, they may be in awe of this rare person walking among them. You are guaranteed to attract attention, good or bad.

In OSRIC, the answer to the question, "Shouldn't everyone be entitled to play the character they want?" is no.

You will never understand old-school gaming if you don't understand why that fact exists.

You will also be blissfully unaware of what modern gaming has become.

This isn't gatekeeping, exclusionary, or for any other negative social reason. It used to be only the top 1% of applicants get into a prestigious university, and this sets you up for life - given you use what you have been given and make good choices. Old school games simulate this too; it is a part of life for your average Midwestern kid, growing up, and knowing most of them will never make it to the pinnacle of the prestige classes or get into the best schools.

But there are other ways to make it, given what you have, hard work, determination, and smarts.

You accept inequality exists.

The measure of your success in life is finding the other way around.

This isn't a game about letting everyone be anything they want. This is a game about dealing with the hand you are dealt. The former is childish escapism, while the latter is life.

You may never be a level 24 paladin, but you can be a level 24 fighter or thief. You can impact the world just as much, or even more, without being born into privilege or raw talent. That paladin who rolled well may get there, too. Or they may fail along the way, sacrifice themselves for the greater good, and become a legend.

Having a guaranteed 18, no score lower than a 14, any class you want, any race you imagine, free player housing safe spaces the referee can't touch, and being given success on a platter with zero fear of death and failure is a game I don't want to play. It is a game that teaches you nothing about adversity and the difficulty of life.

And also, if you are paying attention, this is another huge difference between old-school and modern gaming.

Old-school gaming wasn't escapist entertainment.

It was preparation and training for how to live a meaningful life, get ahead, and survive hardships, given whatever you started out with.

This is also why religion used to hate D&D; it replaced them as values and morals teachers. D&D, in the old days, when it was hardcore old-school, was a religion. Demons and devils tempted your soul. Lucifer was there. Orcus's minions ravaged the land. The succubus was there. Greed, stealing from the innocent, and being evil were options. You couldn't be a half-demon "Tiefling" with Satan's blood in your veins, a vampire who feasts on blood, and say you are just "misunderstood."

You were asked, "What would you do?" and you had to answer in front of people you knew.

When D&D went "escapist," religion quieted down pretty quickly.

Tabletop Dungeon Gaming

My "truth" in gaming is the same as when my brother and I played D&D 4E. The search for that "perfect" dungeon tabletop game. We loved D&D 4E's tactical dungeon chess gameplay. The game blew up at the 10th level, just like anything else Wizards makes. The monsters were bags of hit points, and once the characters locked in on turn-denial mechanics, they were helpless as the players beat them down.

My art, not AI

One combat we had lasted more than sixty turns, most of them spent knocking a "plant creature" boss monster over, beating on him, and repeating the next turn. Sometimes, they wouldn't knock the beast over, and a few attacks landed, but it wasn't often. We watched the game break in real-time before our eyes, and the "illusion" was over. We quit 4E soon after.

The game failed us.

We saw 5E coming a mile away, and this was D&D 4E's Essentials line as the driving design theory of "back to basics" - but it wasn't back to basics. 5E abandoned the tabletop play we loved for story gaming. When Tasha's came out, the game changed again with silly, tacked-on mechanics, and we lost interest. I gave 5E two or three chances in the last few years and even Open 5E, but it is still all the same game.

This is soft, theater of the mind, multiple action type, interrupt-based gameplay. D&D 5E sucks for DMs. You play this solo, and your player side is having fun, while your DM side dreads the next session and just wants the campaign to end, so the pain stops.

And Pathfinder 2E killed the Open 5E clones 5 years ago, and the OGL fiasco nailed the coffin shut. Pathfinder 2E is exclusively map-based, and I gave this another look after returning to D&D 3.5E to cleanse my palette of "modern gaming" and rediscover a game built for the tabletop first. Pathfinder 2E works; it was tested, the exploits are very rare, and the game works from level one to twenty.

It delivers on the promise.

I prefer D&D 3.5E to any version of D&D that came after it. This is still "true D&D" built for that tabletop ideal. The book has battle maps and examples of movement and cover, and the manual sometimes resembles a wargame ruleset. This is good, "true to D&D" gaming. If you are not "proving your build on the table," you are just "theory gaming" and playing a story game.

D&D 3.5E has the last, best, first-party content produced for all the classic TSR settings; Greyhawk, the Realms, Dragonlance, and Eberron are all there. You have world-specific character options. You have real gazetteers. You have on-the-table miniatures rules. This is the last "real" edition of D&D.

Oh, and it is also broken past level 10.

When D&D 4E came out, they leaned into the tabletop rules and wargaming part, which we enjoyed. But they changed the game too much. The math could have been better. Something needed to be done right, and the game became endless stacked +1 to +6 magic-item charts, with a few of the thousands of options being any good from that sea of garbage choices.

Pathfinder 1e put a bandage on the bleeding and kept D&D 3.5E alive for the next 10 years. My brother did not like this game, but I embraced it. This was "true D&D" to me since it kept the embrace of tabletop play alive and all the adventures shipped with battle mats. You were still expected to play "on the table" and "prove your build."

Pathfinder 1e suffered from the broken nature of D&D's high-level play. The game became complicated and slow past level ten. It wasn't worth playing at the high levels.

I still liked D&D 3.5E, if not for its different focus, which was more on tabletop play and less on adventure paths. D&D 3.5E still felt like the "random dungeon game" with skills made for dungeon exploration. The outside world was a little less critical, and that was cool. The wealth of world-specific material was also a reason to love D&D 3.5E.

Pathfinder 1e was less broken past level 10, but there were still so many exploits and cheese builds. They inherited a flawed system and did the best they could, and this is still one of my S-Tier games.

I like Pathfinder 1e for Golarion and 3.5E-era gaming. I still like D&D 3.5E for the TSR worlds. They are the same game, but they have different goals and feelings.

GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy are in here, too; this is a fun, realism-based, hex-grid tabletop combat game. You can still get that "tabletop tactical gaming" hit from this game, too, so it remains on my most-played shelves. It is not a "level game" but simulates a level 3 to 9 run versus relatively reality-based monsters in that range. You get a lot of great character designs and tactical crunch, but there are still exploits.

OSRIC will last; this is and isn't in the tabletop tactical gaming genre. It isn't as profoundly detailed and tactical, nor are the character builds affecting the map too much. A wider variety of options needs to be added. But it is another S-Tier game, possibly the best of all time. This is a far better choice if you are content playing "theater of the mind" with 5E. This beats any rules-light dungeon game and gives you enough detail and depth to satisfy.

So, with the Humble Bundle of PDFs, I am reading the Pathfinder 2E Remaster. I bounced off this game hard the first time I tried to learn it, and the original 2E book having so much in it did not help. There was no way I was learning twelve classes, not with a few of them being conceptually complex, like an alchemist. There was way too much information in the first book, and it was too big, there was too much in it; the information seemed like a wall to climb and I needed help to get over the learning curve.

My original Beginner Box had a terribly biased D20 that would not roll above a 6. I would go 7-8 rolls in a row, averaging 5. I know that is a silly reason to quit learning a game, but I put that mountain of information to sort through after dealing with this horrible die, and it seemed like it was not worth the effort. I know, I have plenty of d20s. But, at the time, Open 5E was hitting its stride and attempting a take-off, which never happened. I needed to see the hype and promise of Open 5E. When I saw Open 5E failing to gain traction, the Pathfinder 2E remaster was announced, so I held off for a year to let the game settle and the errata to sort out.

The goal is to return to the tabletop, figures, and tactical play. Story gaming is something that I play solo, and it feels meaningless to me. Putting a map down, a bunch of monsters, and playing each side to their best? That means something. There is a winner and a loser, and how I build characters affects the result.

Playing on a map with figures feels real.

Pathfinder 2E, with the remastered books, is getting another look.