Anti-Energy and the Hobby

Anti-energy can be a dangerous thing. Let me define it.

This happened to me. My disappointment with Star Wars built up over years and finally peaked with this year’s lackluster movie release. So I dove in, collecting Star Wars RPG books and telling myself, “I can do better than them.” My goal was to tell classic Star Wars stories at the table the way they were supposed to feel.

The concept of “proving them wrong” is the crux of anti-energy. When that moment fades, the anti-energy fades with it, and you are left holding empty feelings and piles of useless books. Anti-energy is best redirected: create your own sci-fi universe and stories instead. Refuse to “fix theirs” out of spite.

Whatever actually appeals to you about science fiction—low-level free traders scraping by on payroll runs, explorers in barely spaceworthy junk craft, space mercenaries on the fringe, or the classic hard sci-fi stories you love—do those things. Do them instead of channeling anti-energy into fixing someone else’s pile of broken junk that no longer even knows what it is supposed to be.

Then the anti-energy starts to wane. You feel the riptide pulling your creative urges into the abyss. That is when you realize what this feeling actually is.

Anti-energy is a destructive force. It feeds on schadenfreude and the false-positive rush of “I can fix this.” You move on to the next thing. I can fix Dark Sun. I can fix D&D. I can fix Star Trek. You buy more books. You fall into the next trap. The anti-energy fades again, and you are left more drained and empty than before. Time wasted when new stories could have been told.

Look at where the official material is going. Dark Sun is turning into Splatterpunk meets WWE for the new D&D 5.5E version. Star Trek’s shows are crashing and burning—no longer exploring strange new worlds, but turning inward into Gen Z feelings and emotions, the kind of show better suited for the CW on those fringe syndicated budget networks. D&D itself is becoming a fantasy superhero game, and everyone by default accepts it like D&D is the new fantasy MCU. The original had those deep-rooted feelings of myth, heroism, savage survival, crawling into the unknown, crossing into the mirror, the dungeon funhouse of death, and personal struggles where you were not invincible and immortal.

Parts of the OSR are based on anti-energy for D&D. I feel that if D&D were ever to disappear, a good portion of that scene would retract and recede into a much smaller niche audience.

I’m not saying the OSR is artificial. But why you love it may be.

If you are in the OSR primarily to “correct D&D,” you are setting yourself up for disappointment the day modern D&D dies or stops mattering. That corrective drive is still anti-energy. It needs the thing it’s pushing against in order to keep its heat.

If you are in the OSR out of genuine love for the old ways—the resource tension, the real danger, the mythic grit, the dungeon as a place that does not care about your story—and you refuse the toxic anti-energy, you are in a far more creative and better place. That version does not need modern D&D to exist as a foil. It can keep generating new material and new tables even if the official line vanished tomorrow.

The same distinction applies to everything else. Star Wars, Dark Sun, Trek, whatever. When the urge is “I will fix their broken thing,” the energy is finite and extractive. When the urge is “this is the specific feeling and structure I actually want at my table,” the energy becomes self-sustaining. That is the difference between ending up with another stack of unused books and ending up with campaigns that actually happened.

Anti-energy is finite and extractive. Positive love of the play experience itself is generative.

The practical move is simple. Notice when the urge to collect, redesign, or “restore” is coming from opposition rather than appetite. Isolate the actual texture you want—mythic vulnerability, desperate scarcity, outward exploration, low-level free-trader grind, whatever it is—and feed that directly. Build the stories that only exist at your table. Refuse the invitation to fix someone else’s pile of broken junk that no longer even knows what it is supposed to be.

When the spite runs out, that is what remains: the campaigns that actually happened, instead of the books that never got used.

The Age of Distillation

We are entering the Age of Distillation.

The “big iron” systems of the last two decades- multi-book, thousand-page engines like Pathfinder 1E and the various iterations of D&D are no longer the only way to deliver their own fantasies. A growing body of design work is taking those dense rule sets and re-expressing them as lean, fast, highly accessible games. The goal is the same: keep the fantasy, dump the friction.

Just as the iPhone was initially mocked for stripping away the complexity of earlier smartphones, these distilled games deliberately remove the mechanical overhead that once felt necessary. Shadowdark took the core appeal of modern D&D-style play and condensed it into a tight, elegant, torch-lit framework. Shadowfinder does the same for the 3.5E/Pathfinder 1E tradition: it is a Shadowdark-adjacent reimplementation that preserves the class fantasy, the option density, and the sense of a complete campaign toolkit while running on a far lighter chassis.

Old-School Essentials performed a similar act of clarification for B/X.

OSE took the complete rules of the 1981 Basic and Expert sets and re-presented them in a ruthlessly clear, modular, and quickly referenceable format. Strictly speaking, it is more of a definitive rules reference than a mechanical redesign. The underlying procedures stayed very close to the original. What changed was the presentation: ambiguous wording was resolved, scattered rules were gathered, and the entire system became instantly legible.

The practical result, however, was the same as distillation. Players and referees could find any rule in seconds instead of flipping between books, interpreting unclear language, or simply missing procedures that had been poorly organized in the originals. A game that had been written as a teaching text for a new hobby was transformed into a fast, reliable reference that removed most of the friction of actually using it at the table.

Shadowfinder takes the next step. Where OSE primarily clarified and organized an existing ruleset, Shadowfinder actively rewrites the 3.5E/Pathfinder 1E tradition into an entirely different chassis, Shadowdark’s lean, lethal, real-time framework, while deliberately preserving the fantasy, option density, and campaign-scale toolkit that made the original appealing.

Distillation is not replacing the big systems. It is not coming for OSR, D&D 5.5E, or either edition of Pathfinder.

What it offers is a parallel path for players and GMs who no longer have the time, focus, or bandwidth that denser games demand. In an attention-scarce world, many people still want the fantasy those systems deliver; they simply cannot (or will not) invest the cognitive and temporal overhead the original rules require. Distilled games give them a way to stay at the table.

You will hear people say they “moved from D&D to Shadowdark.” Some of them prefer the leaner rules on pure design grounds. Many others made the shift because they no longer have the sustained attention that 5E (or Pathfinder) asks for. Keeping those players inside the hobby through a distilled experience is better than watching them drift toward video games or other entertainments.

This is additive, not zero-sum. The existence of Shadowdark and Shadowfinder does not diminish anyone’s preferred ruleset. It simply widens the door so more people can keep playing.

One of the clearest “missing the mark” moments in the current industry is that neither Wizards of the Coast nor Paizo appears to recognize this movement.

Both companies still treat their dense, multi-book systems as the primary (and essentially only) way to experience their respective fantasy brands. They have no serious product answer for the growing audience that wants the D&D or Pathfinder feeling but no longer has the time, focus, or bandwidth those systems demand.

Just as TikTok distilled the time and attention required to consume video, a significant portion of the tabletop audience is looking for a distilled version of the big fantasy RPGs. The major publishers have so far offered none. Instead, they continue chasing live-service and subscription models for their digital platforms. This approach increasingly resembles the same failed live-service strategies currently damaging many AAA video game publishers.

While third-party designers are busy creating lean, playable expressions of the very fantasies WotC and Paizo own, the companies themselves remain focused on heavier systems and ongoing monetization layers. The gap is real, and the distilled games are filling it.

Yet the absence of an official response does not mean the demand is going unanswered.

Shadowfinder currently stands as one of the clearest and most successful examples of what distillation can achieve. It takes the broad fantasy, character options, and campaign-scale ambition of Pathfinder 1E and re-expresses them inside Shadowdark’s fast, lethal, and highly usable framework. The result is not a stripped-down novelty. It is a complete game that can support the kind of sprawling, multi-region campaigns many Pathfinder fans originally fell in love with, without the mechanical weight that made those campaigns increasingly difficult to sustain.

For players who still want the class fantasy of the magus, the alchemist, the gunslinger, the specialized wizard, or the unusual ancestry, Shadowfinder delivers those options in a form that actually reaches the table. The same is true of the wider toolkit: meaningful gear and materials, alchemy, travel and mounts, downtime systems, richer character advancement, and a bestiary drawn from the full span of the Pathfinder 1E monster books. Where core Shadowdark intentionally focuses on the dungeon crawl, Shadowfinder expands the same engine into something that can carry a full campaign without feeling incomplete.

In doing so, it elevates the Shadowdark experience for a specific and underserved audience. Pathfinder 1E fans who bounced off the denser rules of later editions (or simply no longer have the bandwidth for them) are given a way to reclaim the open, slightly savage, high-option fantasy they enjoyed, now running on a system that respects their time and attention. The fantasy remains. The friction is largely gone.

This is distillation working as it should: not as a lesser substitute, but as a parallel avenue that keeps more people playing the kind of games they actually want.

When some OSR and 5E fans dismiss Shadowdark as “nothing new,” they are missing the actual point.

A growing number of modern OSR systems have themselves become mechanically deep, especially once high-level play enters the picture. In practice, they can demand as much rules mastery and table time as contemporary D&D. The people turning to distillation are often not looking for novelty for its own sake. They are looking for a way back into the fantasy after real life stripped them of the time and attention the heavier systems require.

I have been that player. Games I once loved now sit in crates in the garage, unused and unloved, because I no longer have the bandwidth to support a multi-shelf library of books and the cognitive load that comes with them. The disappointment is real. The promise of those systems eventually collides with the limits of available time and focus.

A distilled version of the same fantasy changes the equation. It lets me return to the world I cared about without the same drain on my days. The campaign can exist again. The characters can exist again. The sense of possibility returns, but it no longer requires the same costly monopoly on attention.

Whether the density of the “big iron” games is intentional or simply the result of decades of accretion, the practical effect is the same for many of us: the system becomes too expensive in time to sustain. Distillation offers a way to keep the dream without accepting that cost.

The Age of Distillation is not a rejection of the games that came before. It is a recognition that the fantasy itself is more important than the particular weight of the rules that once delivered it. For those of us who still want to live in those worlds but can no longer carry the full library, these leaner expressions are not lesser. They are what allow the dream to continue.

Go Big or Go Home

What did Gen Con 2026 reveal about sustained RPG interest?

Looking at the announced play sessions and how the tables actually filled (based on available seats, player-hours, and final sell-out patterns), a clear hierarchy emerged: 

• D&D: Still the clear top tier by a healthy margin, but the 90% leader narrative no longer applies
• Pathfinder + Starfinder: The institutional alternative
• Daggerheart / Pirate Borg / Call of Cthulhu: Mid-tier systems that convert attention into filled tables
• DCC + Shadowdark: The strong fantasy alternatives
• Shadowrun + Marvel Multiverse: Established but lower relative heat

The ranking is not random. It tracks closely with publishing scale, cadence, and independence.

The Core Pattern

Systems backed by operations built for volume and continuous output tend to hold or climb. Paizo maintains Tier 2 through institutional infrastructure and steady product flow. Chaosium keeps Call of Cthulhu in the mid-tier with a large, expanding catalog.

Goodman Games runs the most aggressive mid-scale version of the same model: near-constant crowdfunding, megadungeons, crawl collections, and special editions. Dungeon Crawl Classics is no longer a critical darling or the hot newness; it is an older game, yet it ranked in the same statistical band last year and this year. Sustained support and a deep indie community are what keep it alive and filling tables, more than media attention or novelty. That relentless catalog growth is why DCC continues to place consistently highly despite its age.

DCC being its own system with its own dice also creates a stickiness factor that is hard to escape. We have seen this with a few other special-dice systems (Genesys, the Fantasy Flight Star Wars line, and a handful of others). They either fail to find an audience at launch or, once they do, the proprietary dice keep people engaged simply because “they already have some.”

The high-heat test cases Shadowdark and Daggerheart currently occupy the opposite position. Both have strong design and cultural momentum. Shadowdark remains the most visible pure-OSR-style system that cracked the fourth tier; Daggerheart sits in the mid-tier as this year’s critical darling. Yet both operate with thinner, slower release pipelines. The data pattern from previous breakout systems suggests their long-term Gen Con footprint will depend on whether the support infrastructure scales — or whether they settle into the “excellent but constrained” category.

Necessary Qualifications

Volume alone is not enough. Kobold Press maintains a massive professional catalog, yet remains largely invisible in system-level rankings because so much of that output lives inside the 5E ecosystem. It supports the dominant game rather than competing with it for independent tables and identity. Tales of the Valiant has not yet broken that gravity.

Traveller offers the genre counter-example. Mongoose has one of the deepest catalogs in the hobby, but pure science fiction consistently underperforms fantasy at Gen Con. Even large-scale support hits a lower ceiling when the genre itself draws a smaller share of attention. Starfinder only performs as well as it does because it combines Paizo’s infrastructure with science-fantasy positioning.

What Drives Interest?

Sustained high engagement at Gen Con scale tends to require volume + independence + favorable genre positioning (especially fantasy).

Volume without independence gets absorbed by the larger ecosystem.

Volume in a smaller genre hits a structural ceiling.

Independence + high-cadence support inside the big fantasy lane is what converts popularity into durable table presence.

Old School Essentials sits as the cautionary case on the other side: real reach and critical respect (especially via Dolmenwood’s awards), yet a publishing approach that left the core line feeling under-supported and statistically quiet.

In a crowded field, design quality and early heat still matter. But the systems that keep filling seats year after year are the ones whose publishers treat catalog growth and delivery cadence as non-negotiable. The rest, even the breakouts, tend to peak and then settle.

Gen Con 2026 RPG Observations: Five Tiers of Interest

Looking at the announced play sessions and how the tables actually filled (based on available seats, player-hours, and final sell-out patterns), a clear hierarchy emerged:

• D&D – still the clear top tier by a healthy margin, but the 90% leader narrative no longer applies
• Pathfinder + Starfinder – the institutional alternative
• Daggerheart / Pirate Borg / Call of Cthulhu – the mid-tier systems that convert attention into filled tables
• DCC + Shadowdark – the strong fantasy alternatives
• Shadowrun + Marvel Multiverse – established but lower relative heat

D&D remains the biggest single block of seats and player-hours, but the gap is no longer the old “everything else is a rounding error” picture. The second and third tiers are visible, active, and drawing real demand. That’s the story the 2026 schedule told.

DCC, Change, and BYOB Imagery

Dungeon Crawl Classics still has a spot at my table. While Shadowdark is a stripped-down acoustic guitar performance, clean and melodic, DCC brings the Heavy Metal vibe and lets you turn the dials to your liking. You can have as much body horror, the bizarre and strange, personal corruption, slasher horror, and chainmail bikinis as you want. Goodman Games is smart enough to let you BYOB on the controversial elements. They imply rather than declare, walking what looks like a more conservative line, and the net effect is that the company pays almost no online discourse tax when the game is discussed.

Contrast this with Deathbringer. It feels more like a statement game, a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag planted squarely for the chainmail bikini and the full Heavy Metal vibe. There is real value in that kind of open declaration, but for my table the combination of DCC plus a stack of SQP Art fantasy books does the same job better. I already have one of the best-supported gonzo fantasy games available, complete with the mechanical depth the genre actually needs to stay relevant at the table. The SQP books simply supply the visual frosting: the exact Del Rey, Tor, and classic pulp paperback energy I’m after when I want the unhinged version of the game.

Goodman Games is a very smart company. They walk a fine line, paying real tribute to the past while carefully avoiding the online discourse rakes that leave wooden handles smacked across a publisher’s face. They have stepped on a few over the years, but they have always managed to course-correct and come back stronger. In a hobby that regularly kills its own, Goodman Games is a survivor. The way DCC stays BYOB on the touchier subjects does not feel like censorship so much as shrewd business navigating the messy times we live in.

For me, DCC has the strongest campaign support for the Appendix N vibe of any game in the space, stronger than other OSR titles, 5E clones, tactical fantasy battle games, or narrative story games. Shadowdark is stripped down, tight, and instant fun. DCC goes further. It excels at delivering the essential story of change that fiction actually needs. Weak movies and stories refuse to show real change at all. The characters feel stuck in a syndicated television show, delivering a new adventure every week while remaining exactly the same. On the other side, if the change is all positive, the way a typical 5E character develops, it becomes an ever-increasing rise to power that eventually turns boring.

Permanent consequences create meaningful change.

That statement is true, and many story-driven and level-progression games fail this basic test. If there are no real consequences, no negative progression, no new disadvantages, and no lasting drawbacks on the quest for power, the entire exercise cannot answer the simple question: so what? So what if you gain twenty levels of druid power and become a master of nature? What did you give up? Did you sacrifice part of your humanity, your ability to speak with ordinary people, your place in civilization, or even your mortal form? What cost does any of it carry, or is the power simply a game-designer gimme with no price attached?

DCC is a smart game because it actually delivers on those stories of personal change. The cheesecake art we are free to bring to the table is icing on the cake, decoration rather than delivery. Shadowdark is too bare-bones to support the deeper stories of change that longer campaigns lean on. Many OSR games still mirror the same power onramp found in modern 5E; the biggest difference is tradition versus modernity. Deathbringer feels like a statement, and we will have to wait and judge how well it delivers on the concept. To build on Appendix N, DCC goes a few hundred pages deep. Because many players have never read those original books, or simply do not have the time, the size of the DCC rulebook functions as teaching material. It guides the table into the proper genre headspace.

But the art and vibe we bring to the table are our own, and we remain free to define them. There is a personal space in the game that the books do not dictate. The rules allow us to bring our own interpretations and refuse to spell out the obvious. DCC lets us decide the amount of gore, sex, violence, mature themes, and body horror that will appear in our games. They will not tell us, because they cannot, yet the system still gives us a wide lane to interpret those areas for ourselves. If a full-plate bikini (or loincloth and shoulder pads for the men) grants a +8 AC bonus, that is our choice, and it is our game. That is how it worked in the 1980s, and that is how it works here. If we prefer the OSR grognard view of full plate and closed visors, that is equally our choice.

The real game happens in the space the books leave open. DCC gives you the tools and the headspace, then steps aside so you can decide how far the unhinged elements go. That is the design, and that is why it still works.

The Last Decade of Living Inside the Bubble

Most full-stack 5E games promise that greater character complexity will produce richer play. In practice, the heavy inward-focused sheet enhances neither the dungeon crawl nor the social and exploration pillars. Shadowdark and GURPS sit at opposite poles that actually deliver on their investments: one by keeping characters simple, the other by making complexity external and relational. The middle is mostly wasted effort.

Does the six-page character sheet actually improve the core dungeon-crawling experience? In most 5E implementations, the answer is no. The design is painfully inward: a dense collection of personal powers, tricks, and options that mostly resolve inside the character or, at best, inside the tiny party bubble. Very little of that complexity reaches outward into the environment, the dungeon’s pressure, or the decisions that actually matter in a crawl. Even less of the internal character design reaches out into the world and matters in terms of social or exploration play. Shadowdark (and the broader OSR) demonstrates the opposite approach: keep the characters simple so the procedures, scarcity, and danger can stay in the foreground. The long 5E-style sheet does not enhance the crawl; it often functions as sand in the gears, adding extra cognitive load and decision friction that slow down the very experience the table showed up for.

GURPS sits at the other pole. You can build an almost purely external character (150 points of social advantages and disadvantages, minimal skills, no attribute increases) and the design still works. The character may be mechanically fragile, but the sheet is packed with hooks that force interaction with the world: Reputation, Duty, Enemy, Ally, Code of Honor, Social Stigma, Dependents. Those traits generate ongoing narrative pressure and shape what the character can and cannot do in the setting. GURPS is every bit as complex as modern 5E, yet the complexity (in this case) is pointed outward, and it can be as balanced as I want it to be. It is not trapped inside the character or the party bubble. That is the difference: 5E mostly sells internal options, while GURPS can sell external consequences.

Level Up A5E is the main attempt inside the 5E family to escape the inward trap. Character creation is even heavier than in standard 5E or Tales of the Valiant, yet more of that complexity is pointed outward. Heritage, culture, background, and destiny options are designed to situate the character in the world rather than simply stacking more personal powers. The system also gives real mechanical support to the social and exploration pillars instead of treating them as afterthoughts. It is still built on the 5E chassis, so the sheet remains long and the cognitive load is high, but at least the extra investment is trying to buy external pressure and world interaction rather than more internal options. In that sense, A5E is the closest the 5E ecosystem comes to the GURPS approach, even if it never fully reaches it.

I play full-stack 5E games, and they make a clear promise: a deeply complex mechanical character will reward you with better story and a better dungeon-crawling experience. They do not. Shadowdark proves you can strip almost everything off the chassis and still end up with the best dungeon-crawling 5E-derived game written. With D&D and Tales of the Valiant, I often feel I am wasting a great deal of time just to arrive at the same place. My interest and excitement do not live inside the character- and party-centric bubble. Level Up A5E steps outside that bubble to a meaningful degree by giving real support to all three pillars of play and pulling more of the surrounding world into the design. In that sense, it does some of the same work GURPS does: the focus shifts toward a worldview instead of remaining trapped inside the party.

In the end it comes down to return on investment. If the table wants a pure dungeon crawl, the extra pages of inward-facing powers buy very little and often get in the way. If the table wants genuine narrative pressure and world interaction, that complexity needs to point outward the way GURPS (and to a lesser extent A5E) allows. Most full-stack 5E games ask for the cost of complexity without delivering either benefit. Once you see the two poles clearly, the middle starts to look like a lot of work for not much gain.

How much internal design work is actually needed for a satisfying dungeon crawl? The OSR answered that question decades ago. After ten years of hyper-focus on the party and on character-internal dynamics, it is worth asking whether that investment still delivers the core promise and the entertainment people show up for. The market is already moving. Shadowdark and the broader OSR are defining the pure dungeon-crawling experience with far less internal complexity, while games like Daggerheart pull narrative-focused players in the opposite direction. Staying inside the party-focused bubble makes it harder to see what comes next.

The Hydra and the Quiet Walking Away

Combat should be fun and not a failure state. We don't want magic forcing a 15-minute adventuring day. Supporting a game should not feel like a job. The table's attention should stay focused on the adventure rather than books and character sheets. We are the huge middle-ground audience, the gamers who care more about fun than worldview, ideological noise, or orthodoxy.

What is the Hydra? It is the eleven shelves I have devoted to D&D (three shelves), Tales of the Valiant (three shelves), generic 5e (three shelves), and Level Up A5E hardcovers (two shelves). You have these games that start out as three core books, already too big a game at nearly a thousand pages just for the core rules, and you start piling on option after option and book after book. You can play with "just the core books," but that creates a social problem when someone comes in with their favorite design, and a logistical one sorting through the chaff.

Session zero is now required and a barrier to entry. For most tables, it involves a website signup and learning how an online character creator works. I go to social events with the Society for Creative Anachronism and ask myself a simple question: if people are taking a break and want to get involved with a game right there in the park, could I do that with D&D 5.5E? No. With an OSR game or Shadowdark? Yes.

That portability is real. But it is not the whole answer. Some players do not want to play a one-shot caster. Others want combat that still feels fun rather than like a failure state. Most of the middle-ground audience comes from games like Diablo 4, World of Warcraft, and console RPGs. They do not care much about tradition. They care about having fun.

So we are in a world where many will reject the system advocates and quietly walk away from the game, either moving on to easier games or other hobbies entirely. Few people want to fight the Hydra or its adherent disciples, deal with the coded language, purity tests, the enforcement of aesthetic conformity, or other social glue that is meant more for loyalty and cohesion than gameplay and fun.

And the Hydra will push back against the mainstream alternatives. Players fear losing their investments as other games become popular, and those loyal to the old ways criticize modern alternatives that are more about gameplay improvements than social conformity. Many don’t even choose to throw in with a side, leaving the opposing camps to argue while the mainstream grows tired of watching. They join the multitude of those quietly walking away for better alternatives, positive, creative spaces, and communities more focused on fun than advocacy.

They don’t have time for the shelves full of rules, nor do they have the interest in watching the conflict anymore.