5E is in Storage (Again)

Here we go again. I gave 5E three chances, and I am putting my books in storage again. Why? The game takes too much effort, the characters are stacks of special abilities, the character sheets are huge, and it takes too long to create a character.

For me, the character sheets kill this game. I can have a character with more depth and detail in a 2-page GURPS character sheet than a 5 to 6-page 5E sheet, with unique abilities described in paragraphs printed on the character sheet. This has always been a problem with any Wizards-designed or derivative game; I remember Pathfinder 1e character sheets that started at 12 pages from Hero Lab. Some reached 24 pages of printed paper for one character (with spells), almost book-length.

These games start simple and add ability after ability. The "choice every level" designs attract power gamers and focus too much on ARPG character builds. I like games where choices are made every few levels or not at all (skill system games); the focus is more on role-playing and the world. Also, by forcing "choices at every level," many choices become meaningless and are balanced out by the designers, so many of these choices become false.

They are meaningless make-work and take the game's focus off the story. If I am playing an ARPG, I will do that in a video game.

The best part about Tales of the Valiant is its open license, extensive supporting library, and Midgard's campaign world. I look forward to seeing what they do in the future, but the game needs time to cook. There needs to be more subclass and character options. I still have the pocket books out on my shelves, and I hope this game does well.

I had the most fun with Level Up Advanced 5E. This is the best version of 5E, and it has an old-school feeling. This game gives you double the unique abilities of Tales of the Valiant, but both games share the same fundamental flaw: "taped-on abilities." I am writing down note after note of unique this and particular that and looking up the rules for each.

After four characters, I am sick of it.

5E characters are stuck full of notes of how they have a special action that can break a rule that, or in this specific situation, they get a bonus. You are writing down paragraphs of game rules on your freaking character sheet. GURPS? Ability scores and skills. The rules are in the rules. 5E relies on the West Coast design of forcing players to keep a virtual "card deck" on their character sheets of all the extraordinary things they can pull. At least in D&D 4E, these abilities were actual cards that could be easily tracked and flipped over when used. Instead of keeping it accessible like D&D 4E did, 5E hides the design and puts all the work on the players.

Level Up is still the best version of 5E. ToV is very compatible, and a drop-in replacement for D&D, but LU A5E was rebuilt from the ground up for fun. Still, the characters end up vast and complicated, but if you are going to go all out, go all out and sticky note the heck out of those character sheets.

But if I am playing A5E for the old-school feel, why not just go back to Swords & Wizardry or OSRIC? I don't need the 5E framework for old-school, and in many ways, it gets in the way and has to be patched heavily to support that style of play. This means more rules are needed for an already rules-heavy system. I pulled out OSRIC and was won over instantly; this is gaming how I remembered it. This is the original "Lake Geneva" design, sensible, rules-based, that Midwest sensibility, and it doesn't play like a mobile game from a tech-company wannabe.

Old School Essentials is impressive. This is still a gold-standard game. And we have others on the way, including ACKS II, Shadow of the Weird Wizard, the Castles & Crusades remaster, and many others.

GURPS lets all characters do all "special attack" combat actions and some skills will default to a value. You get penalized heavily for trying, and you fail. You have high combat skills and a better chance of success, and your character looks like a complete ninja master. GURPS characters are more accessible than 5E, and the complexity stays flat. It is more complicated than 5E at the start but does not ramp up in complexity like 5E does when you get all the interrupts and particular action types involved.

5E characters feel like B/X characters, with many sticky notes attached to the character sheet for special abilities. It is a West Coast "sticky note" design, and it comes from Magic: The Gathering, where a card will change the game's rules or affect another card with an override of this or that. It puts too much focus on rules overriding other game rules, and the system gets too complicated and breaks down after a while. And now weapons have tacked-on rules, and it goes on and on...

5E pretends it is B/X at level one. Then, by the time you get to level 5, you are a frog in a boiling pot of water and never realize how much complexity snuck up on you, and you have not even started taping those sticky notes on for even more special rules for the levels you have coming. GURPS? Basic Roleplaying? Traveller? B/X, zero-edition, first-edition, and BECMI? And almost every other game typically starts at "complexity X" and, for high-level play, stays at "complexity X."

I don't have time for 5E's overly complex character and rules. If I put time into a heavy game, it will be GURPS, and I will get much more out of it. With GURPS, every choice in the design system is valid. With 5E, whatever the designers give you, the next level is valid.

Look only as far as Shadowdark, a 5E game that avoids the sticky-note designs, and any special rules to classes are done at the class level, not buried in subclass options. You will never get an ability that gives you a "bonus action" or hugely change the rules. Characters can be written on index cards; that is all the paper you need. Shadowdark is the "real 5E" since it plays more like original D&D than D&D does these days. This game is not going into storage, and it is sort of my "final game" in the 5E lineage. It will take more work to make a better 5E game than this.

With a few house rules, I can get the "look and feel" of 5E and the power level into Castles & Crusades. A 5E-style feat, every even level, plus 5E-style races, easily take this into the high-fantasy super-heroic fantasy realm. C&C is what did in 5E this time, just like Runequest did in Pathfinder 1e. The game requires near-zero book reference to play, and all the silly charts you need to reference during play are gone. One 4x6" index card character sheet is all you need to play.

Other than that? OGL-free fantasy gaming and a few other gems are my go-to games. Swords & Wizardry went OGL free, Castles & Crusades is moving free of the OGL, ACKS II is already there, and many other games are tossing the West Coast license overboard. A few big names remain, such as Dungeon Crawl Classics, but I suspect they will follow soon behind. The upsides of tossing out the license are too significant, and it is a happy thing to see the transformation of the OSR into a dynamic and creative place that will never be "compared to D&D" ever again.

No, none of my OSR games have the flexibility of GURPS, and 5E beats OSR games in choices as you level. But 5E is too heavy for far too limited options, and GURPS wins this war. The OSR games win in simplicity and compatibility with each other, and some of them, such as Dungeon Crawl Classics, have a fantastic "fun factor" when you play them that outstrips 5E. DCC is still very 3.5E in its heart, and I would love to see them ditch Fort/Ref/Will saves, go back to a clean zero-edition design, and toss the accursed OGL and SRD into Mount Doom where they belong.

Oh, and Wizards, please release earlier rules into the Creative Commons. I give you a lot of flak, but holding onto those old rules holds you back. If you want D&D Beyond to be what you want it to be, a massive social media and gaming platform, then you have no use for the older rules, and clinging onto them holds back your business agility.

Indie 5E is a fantastic place if you are playing 5E. D&D, as it is, holds more promise in D&D Beyond than it does as a tabletop game. The books and older editions hold them back. Even Apple makes some ports, keyboard keys, and longtime "PC standards" obsolete and depreciates them. It forces their internal units to innovate and lead.

However, 5.5E is not the best version of D&D, which hopefully comes next, but I doubt whether the company can transform itself. The 2024 version is a stop-gap patch, and 5E as a game is too much work to play for the time I have. The 2014 to 2024 rules of 5E are the old, legacy USB-A ports, and they need to be eliminated from the design of D&D. The previous games, zero-edition through D&D 4, should be handed over to the community, like the old LPT serial printer ports. The problem with Wizards is that they brought in Microsoft employees, not Apple employees.

As for 5E?

I have too many other games that give me more fun and less work.

5E, with its complexity and structure, is the Blackberry keyboard of smartphones. Everyone says a phone (or fantasy gaming) needs it, but when it is gone, everyone agrees it was for the better.

Kickstarter: Ashes Without Number

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sinenomineinc/ashes-without-number/description

We finally see the Kickstarter for the next Kevin Crawford game, Ashes Without Number. This is a post-apocalyptic game like Gamma World, Mad Max, zombie apocalypse, near future, far future, and any "as long as it is destroyed" future you want. The game will have tables galore, so it is worth the money for generation systems.

This is compatible with all the other games, so the juggernaut of the ...Without Number games continues. This is an instant backing for me, and the link is in the sidebar.

Mail Room: Shadow of the Weird Wizard

The hardcovers from the Shadow of the Weird Wizard game Kickstarter came on Halloween, which is a strange twist. This is the "not-horror" version of the Shadow of the Demon Lord game, sort of the same system and adapted for generic fantasy games, with a slightly "strange" twist, like a Dungeon Crawl Classics sort of feeling with mysterious magic and a world in danger and needing heroes.

Part of me feels Demon Lord is the more compelling game since the horror genre is woefully thin and underserved in gaming, while the generic fantasy genre is oversaturated to the point of "why bother?" Call of Cthulhu, Alien, and a few others are the big names right now, with Demon Lord nicely covering fantasy horror and delivering on the source material with some disturbing content. Demon Lord is the most "R Rated" of the bunch, and while it appeals to a niche horror audience, it does that very well.

The question arises, do I need another generic fantasy game? Whenever I put 5E in storage, I get this explosion of options that "do fantasy better." Castles & Crusades, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, Dungeon Fantasy, and Dungeon Crawl Classics are my amazing games that do the genre well. One of those is a GURPS game! C&C does a 5E-feeling game exceptionally well, with 90% less work. OSRIC is the best first-edition game out there. S&W is zero-edition awesomeness. DCC is emergent play through tables of chaos.

5E tries to do all of the above genres, but it does them terribly. I have "evil campaign" 5E books, but they are still overpowered 5E with a cheap Halloween mask on. I have unpredictable magic systems for 5E, but they rarely go far enough to be fun. I have books that mod 5E to be old-school, but they are patches to games that emulate the originals and do it far better.

Demon Lord survives because few games do horror and darkness as well as this game. The game does not need a fear mechanic since the players are the ones who feel it.

I like that the only dice used (in both games) are a d20 and a few d6 dice, which feel like white box gaming. Also, the game does not use "DC" - all tasks are attacks that roll against a monster's defense or challenge rolls against a straight target number of 10. Ability score modifiers are 10 minus the ability and added to the roll. Attacks against an attribute use the attribute as the target number. Attributes can be attacked to produce stunts.

The rules are dirt simple. They are more accessible than 5E by far and much more expressive and dynamic once stunts are used. You don't need D&D's weapon masteries and extra rules for weapon properties and what they do; you just stunt and roll against a creature's attribute. Who needs all those extra rules and unique weapon properties? Who cares? If I want to trip someone with a longsword, let me try, and throw a bane on the roll if the weapon wasn't "made for it" if that is the ruling at the table.

In the 2024 edition, D&D adopted the "more rules for everything" policy, which is a mistake. 5E, in general, follows this policy, too. An expressive rules system does a lot of the work for you, and all you need to do is pick up a copy of Savage Worlds to know this.

Expressive game systems beat ones that rely on rules for everything every time. The more a game allows you to freeform and try things, the more fun you will have.

Demon Lord starts you as a "level zero" character with an ancestry, profession, and wealth level, which can all be determined randomly. You pick a novice path (character class) when you complete your first adventure. So, a "funnel" game is going on here, and the characters are quick and straightforward to create. SotWW has this option, too, in the Sage's rulebook.

From the SotWW rulebook, page 8:

Shadow of the Weird Wizard is based on Shadow of the Demon Lord but sheds much of the bleakness and foulness of that game. Here, you play heroes who struggle to help those in need against sickness, despair, and corruption. You can make the campaign more gruesome if you wish, but the intent of this setting is for you and your friends to do good deeds and feel great about doing them.

Interesting. If you want, you can play this like the sister game, and the door is open for using it for horror. The characters are tougher and more heroic, so the deadliness likely isn't there for that fear factor.

Weird Wizard needs a niche, but my generic fantasy space is crowded. But that stunting mechanic and how simple the rules are grab my interest. The combinable classes and unlocking new ones as you level is a brilliant piece of game design. It feels like the classic game Final Fantasy Tactics, where you could have heroes who combined the classes' abilities as they leveled. You could have unique heroes with synergistic abilities.

The base game only has a human ancestry; all others are in a PDF supplement. This is an exciting choice and makes the game feel like Runequest. I like this choice since it allows groups to customize their worlds without including everything. This also keeps the core rulebook streamlined.

Survivability from Demon Lord has improved dramatically. The fonts are smaller, which could be better, but it is still readable. Also, the combat system has been tweaked to be more dynamic and tactical. In some ways, it feels like a 2.0 SotDL revision.

SotWW is a generic fantasy game for those who want a more traditional experience without all the gore and darkness of SotDL. It is a viable 5E alterative for high fantasy, and in many ways, offers greater customization and flexibility for characters than a shelf full of 5E books.

Lost Games: Adventures Dark & Deep

https://www.brwgames.com/news/

This is a game I am rooting for.

I covered Adventures Dark & Deep, and I was lucky enough to have the hardcovers and PDFs before it was pulled due to the OGL mess. According to the last news, the games are being updated to remove the OGL, though it appears to be slow going. BRW Games does have a PDF and Drive-Thru store where several non-ADAD OSR books and adventures are sold, and they are all excellent works, researched and written in a first-edition style.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/3728/BRW-Games

Please support this publisher and show some love for this alternate first-edition game. Nobody should have to pull their dream off the market because of Wizards and the OGL.

The game is an "OSRIC plus" version of a first-edition game system, with many innovations and exciting additions. You get many base races, including dark elves, bards, jesters as character classes, and many other "what if" innovations in a first-edition set of rules. There is a system for "purchasing" skills by spending earned XP, which is just a fascinating and exciting take on the subject.

The game revels in its charts more than OSRIC, giving me a throwback feeling. This game loves its reference and complexity, and it reminds me a little of Rolemaster with all that game's charts. It is the ultimate "first edition goes overboard on everything" game style. What other game can you have a half-human/half-drow bard-assassin?

The game is a first-edition game with "too many mods," and I love it.

My books are in the garage, and I must go on an "adventure" to find them and dig them out. I have the PDFs, which I will cherish forever since this game is no longer in print or sold. Besides OSRIC, this is one of the other massive first-edition retro-clones, and I want to see it unchained from the OGL and finally free.

Mail Room: Amazing Adventures (3rd Printing)

I have always been a fan of the Amazing Adventures system. This SIEGE Engine, Castles & Crusades style game covers genres from black powder to science fiction. Like C&C, it is level-based and a d20 system and uses the same "roll over AC" combat system and the SIEGE Engine for skills and saves.

The newest edition has been cleaned and revised, and the OGL has been removed. Thank you! No one can threaten the games we love, and creators get to do "new stuff" other than what is expected under the OGL and SRD. The death of the OGL is a fantastic birth of new games, indie projects, and fresh ideas - and it is long overdue.

The game is written in a pulp style and defaults to a Call of Cthulhu meets Indiana Jones setting, with a bit of the classic Gangbusters game thrown in for good measure. The classes are more "action movie archetypes," while they have pulp-style names, they can be anything you want them to be. The investigator class can be anything from a federal agent, police detective, hardboiled PI, space cop, and intelligence analyst to a newspaper reporter.

The class describes a role in a story, not a job title.

This game is in the same genre as Savage Worlds, Call of Cthulhu/Basic Roleplaying (BRP), and other pulp-action games. For C&C players, you are not changing rules systems, and you can stay in a d20 system that works well for modern adventures. Combat is deadly at low levels, and at higher levels, you get that "the last blow is fatal" thing going on when hit points drop below zero.

Why play this over Savage Worlds? This is simple, meshes well with B/X fantasy and C&C, and is a fast system. You do not need to learn as many rules concepts as you do with Savage Worlds, and it uses the familiar d20 game structure. I taught Savage Worlds to someone, and the first session was always to stop and start, explain something new, and get playing again. Savage World also uses a lot of "toys," like poker chips, cards, and other items during play, and Amazing Adventures is a more familiar d20 system. AA is much more straightforward and uncomplicated to "sell" to players who have only played D&D or B/X-style games.

Why play this over Call of Cthulhu? Well, for one, CoC has the mystique, lore, and monsters. I recommend Adventures Dark and Deep's "Swords of Cthulhu" book, which gives you a bestiary and information on magic and cults. This is an excellent book that is easily convertible to both C&C and AA. It even has d20 rules for Cthulhu cultists (and for playing them, if your players are suitably insane). Seeing how the cultists and magic of "the other side" makes for some fascinating reading and opens your mind to how the different cults would use these dark magics on characters. This take on the Cthulhu mythos is well-written and researched and would make for a fantastic combination with AA. It also gives you an entirely different view of the mythos and evil contained within.

I would play a game like this in a heartbeat.

What I love about the Amazing Adventures system is how simple the rules are. Of the 306-page book, the game's rules are about 26 pages at the end of the book, with everything being the familiar d20-style rules, roll AC or higher to-hit; ability scores control all other saves, ability checks, and skill rolls; and damage comes off hit points. Anyone who played 5E or B/X knows this game already. Characters are roll ability scores, pick a class, write down 3-4 abilities, set hit points, and describe your gear, armor, and weapons.

Unlike most games, you just say what your characters start with, usually within reason. Armor is a "pulp style" based on your outfit and accessories, and while the system could be gamed for maximum AC, use your judgment and only allow what is reasonable given the situation. You can also use a more realistic armor system, and your DEX bonus works with either (up to the AC cap). Don't worry about it; make costumes fit the social situation, and don't abuse the system.

The game also has a 144-page referee's book, the Chronicle Keeper's Guide, which offers suggestions on how to run the game, modding information, new rules, and rules the referee will use often. A new OGL-free "monsters" book will be available for the game, and the older OGL monsters book is currently a free PDF download and works just fine with the game.

https://trolllord.com/product/amazing-adventures-manual-of-monsters-oop-free-pdf/

The CK Guide also has corruption rules, and the Player's Handbook has sanity rules, so you are all set if you want to play eldritch horror-style games. Sanity loss in this game is fierce, especially when reaching zero, almost like dying in B/X. Luckily, recovering is fast, and you typically begin adventures with your total sanity score. Also, you gain more sanity points as you level, so the buffer between you and complete madness improves. Corruption is based on total lifetime sanity loss, which accumulates and is irreversible (but honestly, it takes a lot of sanity damage to accumulate).

Amazing Adventures is, pardon the pun, an "amazing" game. I have not seen a game like this, and it feels like a simple, B/X-style, fresh take on the d20 Modern genre. I was surprised to get this in the mail. I have given up on this one a little and never thought I would have that much interest. I was wrong.

If you play B/X, OSR games, or C&C and want modern adventures or a fresh take on a d20 Cthulhu game (with the book mentioned), this is the game to get. Highly recommended.

Off the Shelf: Castles & Crusades

Castles & Crusades killed 5E for me.

Again.

I am keeping the pocket Tales of the Valiant books out for now, but the extra 5E books I have are going into storage for a while. 5E is a super-heavy game, like an old version of Windows, that runs slow, takes up gigabytes of hard drive space, and has thousands of complicated parts that nobody uses. You can play with the base three books, but why? Why would you? The world's most popular roleplaying game isn't D&D anymore; it is D&D Beyond.

Level Up A5E is solid. Tales of the Valiant is good. The alternatives are solid.

But they don't hold my interest. The "subclass choices" of 5E are not meaningful customization, not by a long shot. If I want "meaningful customization," I will play GURPS and have it all. Valuable, meaningful subclass choices are spread out; you need a shelf-full of heavy books to get any "range of choice" with the system and the sunk cost of thousands of dollars.

5E's design is bloated, and it nickels and dimes you with upgrade options. You need software to sort it all out. The game was designed to force you to use a character creation site, often for a subscription and added sales. Even ToV is like that, and Level Up is getting a site, too.

If you are not using software, you should play something else.

My problem is that I have to get better. Games that are just as fun deliver the same dungeon-crawling experience for far less work. I also have games with emergent gameplay, such as Dungeon Crawl Classics or Forgotten Lands. I have OSRIC, the best version of the original 1980s game; if I want complexity, I just go straight to the source and the original. I have "straight out of 1974" Swords & Wizardry, more like a rules-light zero-edition, which is massively fun. I have the new ACKS II, which is just eye-popping amazing and delivers on realm-level play.

Finally, there is C&C, the game Gary Gygax loved and played, and the one he finished his gaming career with. This game is the be-all and end-all of my hobby. All the silly charts are gone, and it plays and feels like rules-light AD&D. The multiclassing is better than 5E by far and gives you more flexibility and options for character types. Illusionist archer? Sure, we can do that. Wizard paladin? Bard barbarian? Dual class, class and a half, or mix however you want. It is all so easy.

C&C puts 5E's character builds to shame, and no software is needed.

Castles & Crusades is a simple, relatively small game. The core rules are a single universal task resolution mechanic and roll-high AC combat. All the rules are on a few pages. All the needless tables and charts are gone. You don't need saving throw tables, attack matrixes, thief skill charts, etc. You can play off a 3x5" index card and have more than enough room. It is compatible with all the classic adventures. It does everything; knock yourself out.

I put this game in storage to give 5E another chance, but I still came back to C&C. 5E, no matter what version I played, was way too much work. If I spend 45 minutes designing one character, I am going to play GURPS instead and get much more fun out of my time investment. Playing 5E is like being on an old, slow, 3G cellular connection at one bar and trying to browse the web.

C&C sits here with a 5G unlimited plan and laughs at everyone still loading a page.

Yes, with software, 5E flies. But since I don't play with a tablet or phone, that means printing out 4-8 page character sheets, per character, per level. It is a waste. Again, 5E is designed to "play better on a VTT," so that is how you are stuck playing. It is not that 5E is a bad game; it is a lot of work doing it the way they don't want you to, and you are stuck paying for things to make it easy.

Even Shadowdark gets it. I would play that version of 5E in a heartbeat since they don't waste your time. Get in and play. Characters are easy. Roll the dice and let's play a few rooms. Shadowdark is the mobile game compared to mainstream 5E's 100 GB day-one console game patch.

C&C is the same way, but characters go to higher levels and are more customizable. You get the high and epic-level play that works. You get that Pathfinder 1e feeling, the AD&D 2nd Edition feeling, the AD&D feeling, and the B/X feeling all in one game. You get all the classic classes, magic, monsters, and powers.

They are also developing an OGL-free version. The new Amazing Adventures (3rd Edition) is the first step on this path. It is a fantastic pulp game that uses the same rules. More on this later, but if this is what the de-OGL'ed version of C&C will be like, count me in.

Fewer books, faster, easier to play, fast-to-create characters, amazing multiclassing, better combos than 5E, classic feeling, and compatibility?

Eight shelves of 5E books have gotten too fat and heavy to play with, and I still need help getting the options I want. It is also still broken at the high levels. Even a ToV-focused collection has three shelves.

C&C does it all in a handful of books.

Welcome back.

Mail Room: ACKS 2 (PDFs)

It was nice knowing you, OSE, Shadowdark, 5E, Pathfinder, and many others...

All kidding aside, I got my ACKS II PDFs today. What a fantastic set of books. To cap off the size of this thing:

• Revised Rulebook: 550 pages
• Judge's Journal: 486 pages
• Monstrous Manual: 438 pages
• Judge's Screen Inserts: 24 pages
• Compatibility Guide: 12 pages
• Character Sheet: 5 pages

There are 1,515 pages in total. If you missed out on the Kickstarter (which pulled in a respectable 300K+), you will want this game if you are into old-school gaming. The layout, art, design, and organization are all incredible.

The art looks like it was ripped out of a 1990s comic book or Conan graphic novel; there is page after page of outstanding works, and the book is not ashamed to show the beauty in the physical form, both male and female. If the 2024 D&D art turns your stomach, forget that edition ever happened and pick up this game. There is no Wall Street corporate shame or social media pandering here.

And frankly, that is a freaking breath of fresh air. Thank you. I will always support you if this is your vision of your world and game. I am an adult; I can watch an R-rated Conan movie, and if your game shows no fear, I shall be there. I spent too long in this world to have someone else tell me what I can see and say or to be forced to buy fantasy games with garbage art.

We don't have forever in this world. Why are you letting people tell you what to enjoy? Every day you let someone else define your life is one more day lost in your existence.

Oh, they are coming out with a treasure book, too? Backed. It is in the sidebar. There is a deal to get the full game plus the new book. If you want in, now is the time.

There is no more OGL in this book; it has been stabbed through the heart and tossed into the bottomless ocean where it belongs. The game is better for it, too. The OGL and the SRD have been a fake yardstick that all games have been held up against for years, and it only served to say, "Your game is inferior to D&D." Without the OGL shackles, game creators are free to express their world and their games how they want to. Creators are now free to shape their own games and worlds.

There is a new standard-bearer in the OSR, unafraid and broken free.