Mail Room: Gods of the Forbidden North (OSE)

If you can afford to pick up the hardcovers for Gods of the Forbidden North, do so. These volumes for OSE are mind-blowing, easily outdoing some of the classic BX megadungeons of yore. Where Barrowmaze is an amazing hexcrawl sandbox of its own, Gods of the Forbidden North is all that plus an expansive campaign setting, with many adventures scattered around the map.

GFN is easily large enough to "eat" every other megadungeon ever written, and has room for them all in this super setting. Though, to be honest, I don't know why you would, this place is massive enough on its own.

GFN is "an event" and not to be missed.

And this epic mega-setting easily outdoes many 5E mega-settings of the same caliber. It certainly outdoes most OSR megadungeons.

This is one of the most amazing mega-campaigns for OSE, and one of the most comprehensive and amazing since Rappan Athuk for Swords & Wizardry. Though this is more than a megadungeon, two whole volumes of this giant three-volume set are the campaign setting and the vast undercaverns.

And there is plenty of room for you to expand this setting and make it your own, placing your own dungeons and other adventures anywhere in this vast and savage land. There are cities to expand, plenty of room on the map, and your campaign can expand to be as large as you want, though there is enough in these books to last for a decade or more of regular sessions.

You have it all in just what they give you.

And the campaign ends with a megadungeon in the third book. You will never explore this all, and most will just discover the surface 10% of what these books have to offer. Still, the quality of the setting and adventures here is among the best in gaming, including 5E, and is not to be missed.

OSE is just as much of a "heavy hitter" in delivering cinematic and premiere experiences as 5E.

D&D 6E = 2E?

The latest rumors are that D&D is going back to AD&D 2E for D&D 6E.

They trained their audience to hate the game's creators, to laugh at THAC0 the clown, and to mock the old-school crowd.

D&D 5E is a death-free narrative game of "whack a mole" monster bashing, overpowered characters laughing at the feeble DM. There is no resource management or time management, and you can sleep off getting your face crushed flat by a warhammer.

The art and themes of the game are so far removed from the AD&D feeling that it has become another game entirely. The old settings are dead and abandoned, there is no fiction in these worlds worth reading, and the magic is gone.

If there is one "lost its way" franchise I can best equate D&D to, it is Disney Star Wars.

And they will never give up locking people into D&D Beyond with character sheets that are dozens of pages long and require tens of thousands of lines of JavaScript to function properly.

If they want to re-release AD&D 2E without messing it up? Great, thank you, please stop writing new editions and support the ones you have. Get out of the "new edition" business, please, and love and support the 50 years of games you have, rather than writing yet another Wizards edition of the game that will be replaced in 5-10 years.

We have had D&D 3E, 3.5E, 4E, 4E Essentials, 5E, and now 5.5E in just about 26 years. Three major and three minor versions of the game just for Wizards alone. That is re-buying the game every 4 years.

Stop making new editions and revisions. You can never get it right like they had back in the TSR days.

If they want to support, print, and preserve AD&D 2E? And open the AD&D 2E license and rules under a Creative Commons license? And begin to bring back the expansion AD&D 2E content under the same license? Maybe even reprint and support the AD&D 2E campaign settings?

Then, we are talking and making sense here.

Oh hell yes!

That would make me support Wizards of the Coast again and be a huge step in the right direction.

Nimble 5e Thoughts

Nimble is 5E, but it is small, dicey, and fast-playing. It is a quick, action-focused, and play-oriented system. The best way to describe it is Nimble is like 5E and Savage Worlds having a baby, and Nimble could be described as "the Savage Worlds of 5E."

The game started as a 5E mod, grew into a few books as a new way to play 5E, and is now becoming its own standalone game. The Monsters & More book is a watershed moment for the game, sort of where it went from being "alternate 5E playstyle" to "full 5E-based game." The monsters in this book have this amazing "D&D 4E" quality to them, where they are a mix of rules and special actions that impart a lot of flavor on each creature, and affect how they work in combat.

And this is still 5E, so you are meant to fight everything; the reaction roll does not exist, and drive interactions like it does in the OSR. That is one of the largest differences between 5E and the OSR. In 5E, it is generally assumed you will fight every encounter presented. In the OSR, 50% of all the encounters will be neutral or positive towards you (unless they are mindless oozes or undead). Roleplaying and negotiation are built into OSR gaming, and morale provides a way out of conflict. 5E does tend to assume every monster is there to fight, a combat-forward game, like this is a tabletop version of Diablo. Keeping this in mind will make you a better 5E referee, and adopting OSR reaction and morale rolls will improve your game and how you referee.

Since Nimble does away with D&D's atrocious, broken action economy and adopts a clean, industry-standard 3-action method, the speed of play increases dramatically. D&D wrote the game into a ditch by adopting all these special action types, and many of the rules now revolve around "what you can and can't do with different action types." The exploits are typically around abusing action types and descriptions to get away with cheese combos. If you keep the action economy simple and straightforward, you eliminate a few hundred pages of rules and infinite paragraphs of special "can and can't do" rules in every subclass ability and power.

D&D players are spending 10 minutes re-reading their character sheets every turn to check to see if the actions they chose this turn are allowed by the rules! Why is this in the game, again? Why are we forcing players to slow the game to a glacial pace just to see if a combo is viable? Why not just fix the rules, adopt an industry standard for actions, and get rid of all these problems and the flipping through pages of character sheets and rulebooks at every turn?

Nimble 5e fixes D&D's problems.

And it fixes them for good.

Even the resting system is fixed here, along with the constant revival and coming back from death that plagues 5E. The resurrection spell is a "secret spell" and insanely rare, and it makes death a motivating factor again. All of 5E's annoyances are addressed, and you are not getting a full rest in a dungeon closet anymore. You can't even fully rest while camping in the wilderness.

Finally, sanity comes back to D&D.

I don't mind the superheroic qualities of 5E as long as they are balanced with a realistic fear of death and balanced resting mechanics. Superheroes I can manage, superheroes with rules written in the game to prevent them from suffering any consequence, death, or needing to manage resources? I'm out; this superhero game sucks.

Even the death system is fixed, while keeping the zero hit points as a dying condition. There are no "death saves" in the game; if you gain a wound, you enter the dying condition, and someone must help you out, or you can drink a healing potion. You accumulate 6 wounds, and you are dead, and these only heal on a safe rest. Getting damaged, attacking, or casting a spell while in the dying state causes extra wounds. It is a clean, simple, elegant system that puts a real cost on zero hit points, and keeps resting and recovery important.

Healing potions are assumed to be standard equipment, so the default world is a little video game-like. Again, this contrasts with the OSR, where potions are in the realm of magic items rather than something you can buy at a shop. In a high-magic 5E world, I do not mind this as much as long as the death and wound mechanics are solid, which they are here. Go to zero hit points too many times, and the character is still dead, and there is no easy way back from that state.

This is one of the best death and recovery systems in 5E, and it beats my old favorite, Level Up A5E, in balancing costs and recovery. We have the heroic comebacks that 5E players love, balanced with the fear of permanent death. Resurrection is only possible in once-in-a-lifetime situations, and it is not something players can rely on - even at high levels.

Your level 17 thief can go out in a blaze of glory and die a hero. If they managed to save the day, then the legend is written in the annals of history; you accept the outcome and have a chance to start again as a fresh-faced character with a new story once again.

This is perfect.

This is what I wanted 5E to be. These are the "fixes" that I wanted in Tales of the Valiant, and only half-got in Level Up A5E. I wanted something fair but bold, allowing for heroic recovery while also carrying real and lasting consequences. The state of death remains a final truth for every character.

Now, how will you live your life?

Nimble 5e looks like "rules light 5E," but it's actually "fixed 5E." Who knew that fixing D&D involved removing 95% of the rules and adopting industry-standard frameworks and sensible rulings that fit the theme of the game? Oh, that's right, Shadowdark did that, too. While in Shadowdark, they set the theme to "dark and deadly," in Nimble, they set it to "heroic and legendary."

With the terrible parts of D&D fixed, what do we have left? Just the archetypal 5E adventure parts. The monster fights. The skill checks. The roleplaying. The epic hero feels. A rest-and-recovery system that does not create an invincible party. The flashy powers. Managing resources. Meaningful death. OSR-like play if you enforce it. A straightforward action economy. All the best parts of D&D, without any of the parts that make me want to pull my hair out.

While 5E started out well enough, by later books, it got so bad that I stopped playing.

Nimble 5e is a reset button for D&D. It is not "broken" anymore.

And Nimble 5e works very well.

Mail Room: Gaslands Refueled

Forgive me, Car Wars, but I have sinned.

This is a remarkably solid car combat game. Where Car Wars these days is more of a sleek, high-tech vehicular battle game, Gaslands embraces the DIY, Mad Max-style scale combat mayhem. This is more of a hobby and modeling game: take a bunch of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, Dremel them apart, glue kit pieces to them, paint the plastic bodies like road-warrior vehicles, and assemble them into scale battlecar conversions.

This is very different than Car Wars.

The last time we had this in Car Wars was the Chassis and Crossbow rules out of the old Dueltrack game, but this leans into it hard and puts you in charge of a team of cars to accomplish races, missions, and other vehicular mayhem. Car Wars was always meant for one-player-per-vehicle battles, since the record sheets were complex, whereas Gaslands is simpler and aggregates a lot into easier-to-track values. You are meant to run a multi-vehicle team here, and record-keeping is not a burden.

It reminds me of a mashup of Car Wars and Warhammer 40K, meant for big-table battles and automotive mayhem. This would play extremely well in a hobby shop on a Saturday afternoon, and the team size and tracking requirements mean the game would run fast, and much faster than the all-day battles we had with classic Car Wars that took all day to simulate a 30-second combat. Head over for fast food and ice cream after, and you have yourself a good day.

Fast, fun, lightweight, and simple car-smashing and minigun-firing fun.

A huge DIY aesthetic, meaning you can hack up and create your own custom force of battlecars. Tear up cheap die-cast cars and break out the glue, plastic bits, and model paint. This hobby balances kitbash creation with automotive destruction.

That is Gaslands.

Nimble 5E Kickstarter Preview....

Umm...

I was not ready for how awesome the Nimble 5e preview material was.

Complete does not even begin to describe the monster book. It is expansive and amazing. It stands equal to the D&D Monster Manual.

In fact, this is one of my favorite 5E-style monster manuals of all time. This has to be one of the best since the D&D 4E Monster Manual, with all the customized versions of kobolds, goblins, orcs, and other themed humanoids designed for specific roles and abilities. The monsters fill roles specific to their culture, organization, and preferred fighting style. Everything has FLAVOR and STYLE. The monsters have quirks, special abilities, traps, and tactics built into each section.

Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

The game has a certain D&D 4E-reimagining charm. Without the baggage and need to support legacy content. This captures the magic and love we had for D&D 4E before the game was ruined and abandoned. The new character options they shared are equally amazing.

This is making me rethink OSE as my primary system.

Do a late pledge NOW! Hop on board if you can.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nimblerpg/monsters-and-more-a-nimble-ttrpg-reprint-and-expansion/description

Off the Shelf: Nimble 5e

The best part about Nimble is that it is a tiny game. It is everything 5E should be in three thin OSE-sided books. The biggest criticism is a lack of utility spells, but since this is directly 5E-compatible, put those on scrolls and let players find (or buy) them, or rip them from the SRD or any 5E game you have on your shelf.

Other than that, this is a perfect, rules-light, fast-and-fun version of 5E. It scratches the 5E itch perfectly, and remains math-compatible with any 5E adventure. There are two questions here:

• If you like 5E, why not stick with that?
• Doesn't an old-school game do all this better?

A smaller version of 5E that doesn't take a thousand pages of reading and has all these interlocking and special action types? Sign me up, sanity has returned to modern gaming. We have a clean, three-action system here, and a combat engine that greatly reduces whiffs and worthless turns. It plays cleaner and faster than 5E, and that is a clear win for everybody.

And 5E has gotten too big. This is one tiny box of fun. There is a compelling argument for Nimble just in how bloated 5E has become as a game. You can design a smaller, more streamlined, and just as expressive game with a minimal set of rules. There is a point at which all the tropes of D&D hold 5E back, and Nimble managed to take the best of those tropes and craft a game around them.

Nimble tossed out all the D&D tropes, just like D&D 4E did, and ended up with a better game without all the baggage. If they had only gone this way with 4E, they would have had a winner. It makes me feel that the only true home for what we think of as "D&D" is the OSR.

That is the only place that can do it right.

But leave the new games free to innovate and create new, fun experiences like Nimble, Daggerheart, DC20, Pathfinder 2E, and Draw Steel. These are the "next generation" of gaming, here today.

D&D feels like it is trying to play catch-up with every new edition, stuck fixing legacy issues, and forced to support a boatload of spells, magic items, and options that are better left to the OSR. Otherwise, what? 6E will come along, trying to pander to nostalgia while being weighed down by a few thousand options they need to design around. It will not be a good game since they need to constantly pander and design backward, when they should be designing forward.

These new games are fantasy gaming reimagined.

And they are cool.

The second question is harder to answer, and depends on your tastes. Do you like the fantasy superhero-style play in 5E? Do you like the focus on battles and light narrative play, and not worrying about dungeon turns, burning torches, and wandering monsters? Do you just want to "get in the game and beat up monsters?" The larger-than-life heroes of 5E are replicated perfectly here, with iconic roles and amazing powers. The fights here are tactical and satisfying.

Or do you want less of an emphasis on superpowers and a more methodical and structured style of play where the over-the-top powers are turned down a few notches? Do you like the classic gameplay loop, the dungeon turns, the wandering monster checks, mapping, and the burning through of torches? This ain't it, and you will be happier with OSE.

This won't replace OSE for me. It can't. I like the old-school play too much. I grew up on it.

For me, Nimble replaces 5E. I feel good about playing this. I have fun. It is my "transition drug" away from VTTs and online character sheets. It shows that 5E can be a simple, fun, and focused game again. This is proof that 5E can be a better game for everybody. Nimble 5e gives me hope that 5E can be salvaged and built into a better game, one in a small box that does not need all these pages of rules and complicated action types. The 5E rules can be saved by great design and a lot of love and care.

And I am a huge fan of small games.

This year's crowdfunding will address the lack of native monsters and add more character options. I am looking forward to that release. As it is? A good game, solid and simple, very well put together, pulls in 5E monsters as much as you want, and it all works together nicely.

Nimble will compete with OSE, and that is an uphill battle. But I feel Nimble's design lets it compete and find a space in my game rotation. For adventure gaming that is 100% 5E math-compatible and has that rollicking band of epic heroes feeling, Nimble can find a compelling spot in my lineup. This is for those times when I don't want to follow the dungeon-turn structure too closely, and I just want to play the "battle adventure" style of game that 5E does so well.

Well, wants to do well, since 5E is bogged down in too many heavy rules and action types.

Nimble does it easier, faster, and without the messy character sheets that run a dozen pages long.

And this is a game so small that it seems to find a way to sneak onto my best-of-the-best shelves quite easily.

How GURPS Killed 5E for Me

I still enjoy 5E for what it tried to do, and I still have my Tales of the Valiant books. But if I am playing one game at that complexity level, and simplifying my gaming life to the games I enjoy the absolute most, there is only room in my gaming life for one massive game, and that game is GURPS.

I get more out of GURPS per minute spent with it than I do from 5E.

If the old solo-play adage "everything is playing" is true, then when I am designing a GURPS character, optimizing their points, fine-tuning their advantage and disadvantage list, picking their armor, carefully loading them out as to not over-encumber them, and finely crafting them to fit a role in my game - then GURPS gives me a constant stream of enjoyment at every minute I spend in a character designer.

In 5E, it is just "making big choices" and having the designers and web programmers add another huge list of junk to my character sheet. I make a few big choices, and they keep throwing things I don't want into my shopping cart. I get to decide very little, and all the choices I make are these aggregated, huge ones that feel less like character design and more like picking items off an à la carte menu and ending up with too much food on the table.

And if I want more choices?

In GURPS? The game comes with them all. I have an infinite number of choices at my fingertips. Batteries are included here. With just the core books, I get it all.

In 5E? I need to buy the next book or crowdfunding project to have more choices. I need to pray that they support those choices in the VTT of my choice. I need to constantly spend money to have new choices.

I love ToV, but I am always buying the next crowdfunding book to "have more."

With GURPS, I have it all in two books. Yes, you need to learn the system to make it work well, but it is better than paying $100-200 every 3 months for another 5E book. I learn the system, and save the money.

And GURPS works exactly the way I want it to. Do I want clerics to be like "fantasy superheroes?" Fune, give them a healing power that costs fatigue points, and let them heal whenever they want. Do I want them to use magic and spells? Okay, healing works that way in that framework. I am not dealing with "spell slots" or a class description a dozen pages long with subpaths that I am forced to pick.

Is it more work than being "told what to do?" Yes.

Does it work exactly how I want it to? Yes.

But I get it, some people don't want to do all the work and have "things to choose from." I am like that too, but 5E has grown beyond my ability to support it, since it tries to take over my entire gaming life and library. For those times, I will just play a game like Old School Essentials and a BX system, where everything is chosen for me, and all I need to do is play my role. It is far easier and cheaper than supporting a 5E habit, and I do not need the weight and complexity of 5E to enjoy a game of focused, limited choices.

And guess what? In OSE, you get 90% of anything you would want to play, and a handful of zines fills in some of the missing parts. I can fit more choices and options on a quarter shelf of OSE books than on eight shelves of 5E books. My OSE collection is small, but very expressive and expansive. Sure, every choice isn't as "deep" as a 5E class, but they do 90% of the same thing anyway in play, and the game is more focused on the dungeon turn, exploration, and the classic gameplay loop.

And 5E wants to be a narrative game, not a dungeon crawler. For narrative games where character-focused choices and narrative tools are more important on "damage per turn", GURPS will absolutely be the best choice. GURPS has far more tools for a narrative game than 5E ever will, with self-control rolls, advantages, disadvantages, and a whole host of roleplaying choices I can buy with character points.

What am I losing? Fantasy superheroes. I am a bit tired of that genre, and I prefer the classic, old-school dungeon turn and gameplay loop to that style of play. Also, if I play fantasy superheroes and want a tactical battle game, Pathfinder is a better choice than 5E, and it is balanced all the way to level 20. Draw Steel is another great tactical game. Nimble 5e does the entire genre fast and rules-light.

If I want to "support" 5E, I have Nimble: one small box that contains the entire 5E experience. The fantasy superheroes genre does not have to be a game that eats shelves. Nimble 5E takes the sting out of dropping full 5E, and it lets me keep 5E support on my shelves without a massive library or a huge time investment. It is a small game, like OSE, and it does everything.

Nimble makes putting 5E into legacy support so easy. I am not losing a thing. The game is tiny. It does fantasy superheroes well. It can sit on my OSE shelf and happily support 5E adventures and gameplay without all the books. Nimble does enough fantasy superheroes well enough that I do not miss a thing about 5E. This is also getting an expansion soon, and we will have more to play with.

And unlike 5E, Nimble plays fast. You get to feel more like a hero and less like someone who scans a character sheet, trying to figure out what to do during a turn. Why am I reading my character sheet multiple times during a combat? It feels like trying to drive a car, with the user manual open on the dashboard and flipping to the page for the left turn signal as you roll up to the intersection. And before you make the left turn, you need to have the DMV book open on the seat next to you so you can review the rules for making a left turn.

Is that a free action or a bonus action? Am I allowed to make a left turn on a bonus action? Oops, sorry, left turns are full-round actions. Please watch for oncoming traffic and turn when it is safe to do so. Where is that left turn signal again? Please give me the other book. Why is this car manual 400 pages long? Why do the rules for left turns go on for 12 pages?

And with an easier 5E, I have the time to focus and balance the games I love, meaning I have more time and shelf space for GURPS and OSE. Nimble sits happily alongside my big two games, offering me 5E if I want it. Nimble avoids cluttering my game shelves by being tiny yet feature-packed. It commits no sins and happily lives alongside my best games.

GURPS?

Yes, it is my last, best "big game."

I get more out of GURPS per minute spent with it than I do from a few thousand pages of 5E rules. At most, it is three shelves of amazing books, with only two core books mattering. GURPS gives me narrative "oomph" and power, and outshines 5E in story-based, narrative games. GURPS does social roleplay far better than 5E does, because what I choose during character creation matters. It is not all "classes and powers" in GURPS; my character's "physical and mental profile" is fully designed, whereas in 5E it is just assumed and scribbled in (if at all) in the notes section of the character sheet.

5E cares more about a button on a VTT character sheet you can press to roll a d20 plus skill modifier. I still like 5E, but we have gotten so lost in the woods with this system and VTT support that it no longer feels like the game we were promised in 2014. It is all gimmicks, tools, and power gaming in a JavaScript interface. The game isn't even dungeon-crawling anymore, and it feels like we are just pretending it does.

OSE is defined by the dungeon exploration turn.

Nimble gives me the heart of 5E without the complexity.

And GURPS cares more about the character than the character sheet.

My life feels better with just my best games on my shelf, and the ones I can support.