Coming Home and Less is More

The thing I love about BX is that it will never get any more complicated, slow, in-depth, or heavy than it already is. There are implementations of "heavy classes" in BX, where they go into an almost 5E level of depth in a class design, but the base gameplay is not affected as much as you might expect.

There is no dozen-page character sheet hidden by thousands of pages of JavaScript code on a VTT, making the game playable. This "backend code support" that makes 5E work is also what will kill the game. 5E was never designed to be played by hand, and once you get to a certain character level, you will find out why. Like a mobile game that eventually forces you to buy something to play more, 5E, after a few levels, requires you to sign up for some online service somewhere to "make it all easier to manage."

BX never, ever, needs a VTT or a digital character sheet.

5E is an inferior game for designing software code support into the game's requirements.

"All you need are pencils, paper, dice, some friends, an imagination ...and a subscription website with a few million lines of JavaScript code maintained by Wall Street."

Yeah, it is that last part that makes it a hard no from me. The problem is, I liked the websites! Roll20 is cool! Shard is amazing! Foundry VTT is mind-blowing! They were cool ways to play the game, and massively convenient. The maps and tokens are cool. Roll20 with the multi-game support is amazing.

I don't have time for any of it, though.

And a game that requires that much time from me is going to be a net negative in my life, and I will eventually need to cut the game off to make myself happier. Sorry, subtraction theory as a life-improvement strategy is a valid way to deal with a life that asks too much of us.

Yes, "D&D makes me happy" is a valid statement for me.

"5E sucked every free moment from my life" is also a true statement.

To make myself happy, I make a dramatic choice, kick 5E to the curb. Stick with an easier game that does "most of the same thing." Eliminate the constant revenue drain of VTTs and crowdfunding projects. Box up, sell, or store all the 5E books. Stick with a few, small, easy, simple OSE books.

Subtraction theory is life simplification.

Less is more.

Pathfinder 1e was this way for me. I enjoyed the heck out of that game. My library got too big, and the game died. The game needed software to build characters. It is in storage now. OSE does most of what it did, and exists as two tiny books on my shelf. One thing I found with these "huge games" is that they often try to make up for weak stories, worlds, and adventures with hyper-detailed characters. With BX, I need compelling adventures, worlds, and stories to engage players. I can't "fall back on the rules" to maintain interest, which often happens with 5E and other big games.

If OSE and BX do 80% of what 5E and Pathfinder do, and take ten times less time, space, shelf, software support, and "head space" requirements - then OSE and BX are the winners for me.

And BX is such an easy game; I can store the entire thing "in my head," like a micro "operating system," and run it from memory. From here, I have science fiction with Stars Without Number or White Star. I have the cyberpunk genre with Cities Without Number. I have post-apoc with Ashes Without Number. I have a few different fantasy games: Old School Essentials, Worlds Without Number, and Swords & Wizardry.

Even without OSRIC and ADAD, I have enough here to keep me busy for a lifetime. GURPS is a guilty pleasure of mine, my last "big game" that isn't actually all that big. That is non-negotiable and sticks around. If I am playing a game with complicated, in-depth characters and relying on "rules interest to drive game interest," I am sticking with the best character-building game ever invented, GURPS. GURPS killed 5E for me. If I am playing one game that in-depth, GURPS will kill anything else that it is put up against.

Plus, I don't need game designers to tell me what my characters can do. I decide that. I am the game designer. I always do a better job. And GURPS can be played with just two books; it is never a huge game if you take it on the road. With 5E, I do not have a choice.

Swords & Wizardry sticks around as "AD&D Lite," honestly. It is math-compatible with OSE, gives me a huge monster list for both games, and is a different way to play. If I have a world that feels more "1E" then S&W will do nicely; otherwise, OSE covers it.

OSE, S&W, Without Number, and even the 2d6 sci-fi games like FTL Nomad exist happily with each other, and alongside GURPS. A collection of "tiny games" and one heavy one that does it all makes a nice library where I can sell everything else off, and be happy again.

Less is more.

Video: One Thing Caused Me To Immediately End Three 5e D&D Campaigns

A good video today, what makes 5E combats so long? Some NSFW language here, salty, not spicy, but honest and correct. Four hours for one combat is too long. And Wizards only writes games where combat takes hours. They have never written an easy, fast, and streamlined game. If you go back to 3.5E and 4E, they have never gotten combat right. Above a certain level, it will take hours.

This is my experience too: combat is too long, too bloated, and frankly, too important in the game.

We are a long way from BX, where combat is a losing strategy and thus unimportant.

No wonder people play to a level 7 character and quit.

To Tweak or Not to Tweak? Capturing the Era

Do you tweak your games? It depends on how important it is to you that you are playing "exactly what was played" in the 1980s, down to the last class ability and numeric value. You are not tweaking the OSE fighter to make it more them, just rolling with what you got. After all, the class was designed like this; it worked back then, and why change it?

I have a few good reasons to bump OSE fighters' attack bonus by 2 across the board at every level, but is that the original game? No, it wasn't. And yes, it was. We did tweak and make adjustments back in the 1980's, too; very few of us played rules-as-written unless we were playing AD&D in a hobby store or other organized setting.

D&D was the home of the houseruled game.

AD&D, we tended to obey Gary's wishes and keep it as it was when we played with new people. Those were the "organized play rules," but even then, houseruled home games of AD&D were a huge thing.

We tend to put older games on pedestals and preserve them exactly as they were, trying to recapture the moment by not changing a thing and sticking to every letter printed on the page. We have a false sense of the past in which sticking to only what was written on that day was "official," and we artificially elevate its value.

Objects in the mirror may appear more important than they were.

It is important to have perspective and not silence the work of creators of third-party zines and others who turn OSE and BX into a living, breathing game open to discussion and expansion. To them, the game is a modern platform, worthy of support and expansion, and new and fresh ideas are the way forward. They take the base game, written in today's era, and move it forward, as if we had the same open license and freedom we could have had back in the 1980s, had TSR not been so closed-shop and litigious.

If you see OSE as a modern platform, you will, of course, tweak and mod it.

If you see OSE as a 1980s rules-simulator, you will be less likely to mod it.

If you are more into the rules-simulation side of the hobby and do not want to mod the game, then games like Swords & Wizardry and its 1970s simulation of the game's state during that time will appeal to you more. Also, there are some who absolutely do not want to list a page of houserules to a new group, and that can scare people away faster than anything you ever understand.

I have had a group of new players never begin a 5E game since I had a page of houserules, and I wanted to use the 2014 game (since that meant a few players did not have to buy new books). The group never started. They all found other things to do. The game died before it even began.

Why do we need all these houserules?

Is the game broken?

I don't want to buy a new game that is broken and needs all these house rules I will never understand!

Houserules can scare off new players, since they see a list of things they don't understand, have to mesh with a new game, and figure out the "how and why" of how it all works before a die is even rolled. Most will just quit and go do something else that doesn't need houserules. There is great value in saying, "This is what we are playing." You can point to one book, and the discussion is over. The contract is set; learn that book. This is the game we all agreed to, and we can play.

I am not against house rules, but I know how hard they can make it for some new players. For a group comfortable with each other and the game, houserules are great.

And games like Swords & Wizardry, which replicate the 1970s state of the game, the rulings, the common assumptions of the meanings, and laying out exactly where the clear and vague parts were, while trying to present the commonly agreed-upon interpretations, are also invaluable, even from the perspective of historical simulation.

If Dungeon Crawl Classics is a reinterpretation of "1970s play" through a modern game design lens, rooted in 3.5E-era sensibilities, then Swords & Wizardry is the actual game we played in the late 1970s. The games offer two views of the same era: DCC is more focused on random tables, imagination, and fun, while S&W presents the game as it was at that moment in time.

The pain of Vietnam was dulling; the gas lines and inflation of the 1970s were still in the discussion; the hippies had all gotten jobs; condo-living was a thing; disco was dying; arena rock was resurgent; and the era of over-the-air TV was being replaced by cable. The Cold War still raged on. The Reagan era was just over the horizon.

And we did not have AD&D yet. We pieced together rules from the original books and did our best to figure everything out. When BX came along, it was a restatement and clarification, the game coming into focus.

And the AD&D books took a few years to release! In 1977, it was the Monster Manual, followed in 1978 by the PHB, and in 1979 by the DMG. Imagine taking two years to release a game today, book by book. There was a whole year with just the original books and the Monster Manual; none of us knew what to do, what rules to use, and what was coming. The Monster Manual dropped into the middle of this discussion, and many pulled it into their existing games as-is.

By the time 1979 rolled around, it was all AD&D, and the 1970s and the original chaotic game we embraced were over. We had our official "organized play rules," and that was that. But those five years from 1974 to 1979? Those were the days of zero edition, and what DCC tries to replicate, along with the game Swords & Wizardry presents and reframes so well.

OSE is both a simulation and a modern platform, depending on your wants. It is best for new players of the game, and it will get better in the new edition with more examples of play and additional features to help new players. You can play this as a recreation, or use it as a platform to support gaming moving forward, just like a 5E.

The original BX games are exactly what they are, without the new presentation or reframing. They are locked in time, cannot be written for (outside of OSE), and will not change. They are more valuable as "the actual thing" and a historical record, and weaker as a platform. They were both released in 1980 and reflect the newer era. Remember, the red and blue books were released the year after the DMG came out, and reflected the "for kids" easier version of the game.

Many of us chose to stick with AD&D and ignored these books, though they had a certain charm.

I feel the same way about S&W as I do BX, in that S&W is the easier version of AD&D, streamlined and stripped down to the best parts, and all the slow, heavy, and excess rules out of the picture. If I want AD&D today, I have OSRIC 3.0. Communities and open licenses are more important than nostalgia. The platform for creativity comes first.

S&W recaptures the lighting-in-a-bottle of the 1974 to 1979 period, along with all the common assumptions, interpretations, and the original "hippies in a van and black felt neon paint posters" sort of feeling that era had. This could be seen as a "modern platform" too, and the expansion books treat it exactly that way. It is also an "easier" version of AD&D, before the huge rulebooks came out and clarified every little vague area of the rules and inconsistencies.

Why Old School Essentials?

There are a few that say, "Why do we need Old School Essentials when we have physical copies of both the original BX books?" Up until recently, you could only get one of the original PoD books in physical form, and now you can have both, which is nice.

Some exclusively play with these, choosing to ignore OSE and say, "I am playing D&D." It is a valid choice, and one that stays true to the game and era. You can't get more D&D any more than this game.

They are nostalgia pieces to me, memories, and nice to have perhaps to display, but these aren't what I play with or support these days. These are the original games, yes, but we have better ones these days. I still love my BX books, and these defined my childhood, but times have changed.

The "X" jump in BX is often ignored, but it is an important shift in focus. The Expert game goes beyond a single dungeon and introduces overland travel, retainers, hirelings, large expedition formations, and domain building. Past level three, you are leaving your mark on the world and choosing how that will be done, along with taking on kingdom-level threats.

If there is one valid criticism of OSE's format, it is that the shift in focus between the low levels (1-3) and the higher levels (4-14) is not defined or laid out as well as the deliberate shift between the red and blue books. You will get OSE players who want to "dungeon crawl all the way up," and that is not how the original game is played.

Once you have the original books and understand this tonal shift, you can play OSE much more like the original game, and divide the adventurer levels (1-3) from the conquorer levels (4-6), and the king levels (7+). And yes, I know what I did there, and ACKS is also an amazing game that puts these tone shifts into much clearer focus.

And you can get B2 in PoD form too, which gives you more of the "how to referee" advice on running dungeons and adventures, right in the module. For the complete experience, grab this, too. If you go for those two books, B1 and X1 are also iconic starting modules to try out, and those came with the original games. Where B2 is more focused on "how to run a dungeon," and the most important of the three, B1 is all about "dungeon building," and X1 is all about "wilderness adventures," and both should not be missed.

When we got these books, we did not have Mystara; we just started our worlds with these adventures and made up the rest of the world ourselves. These were the original "points of light" that we created as part of an entire campaign world of our creation. We did not need a preset world; we made one ourselves.

Old School Essentials is what I play and support because it is far easier to use and supports a community of players and creators who can share new content and participate in the marketplace. While the original BX games started it all, OSE offers the ease of use and organizational layout that define the modern era of BX.

These are also moving to an open license next year, finally free of the OGL. While the current books are still 100% compatible, it is nice to see the game finally stand on its own and away from the terrible OGL mess that has been a plague on the industry for years now. The original BX books and adventures are not even OGL, so there is no chance to create for them outside of starting with OSE or a similar open-license game.

Supporting OSE means we will always have a game that today's community can create, whether it's adventures, additional material, or even entirely new settings and games. And if you would like to play different types of campaigns and worlds, the Without Number games are also BX-based games, and cover every genre imaginable, and are also OSE compatible, so you can borrow magic, monsters, and adventures from them.

And the OSE content creator community is absolutely huge! If only we could have had so much cool stuff back in the day, from sci-fi games to modern games and everything in between. Megadungeons, adventures, campaign worlds, and loads of cool stuff, all for this game.

OSE Advanced Fantasy offers more options, and the Carcass Crawler zines bring this up to a modern standard of content, where you can have Tieflings and Dragonborn as classic, BX characters. The appeal of coming from 5E and playing BX with all your familiar favorites is a strong proposition, making the game far more accessible and easy to jump into.

I love those original books.

But today's games that stand on the shoulders of giants are also worthy and magnificent games with an entire world of creators behind them.

Beware the AI Overlords: The Half-Elf or Semidryas

I made the mistake of fact-checking my half-elf information against an AI the other day. And the AI brought up the gem that using the word "half" was "inherently racist." This was later used by clickbait sites to paint the comment as saying "half elves are inherently racist," and down the rabbit hole we go.

I hate the Internet.

I don't mind the word half-elf, which has been in D&D for 50 years, and it is a shorthand way of saying elf-human ancestry. Granted, somebody at some time should have come up with a "Drow" style name that describes them with a neutral word, as Tolkien calls them, Peredhel (plural Peredhil).

All of us would have been better served with a lore-friendly name that adds flavor, presence, and beauty to the background. Something like Semidryas, Latin for:

Semi: Half

Dryas: Elf or Sprite.

But the AI repeated the claim, and mixed it in with the "inherently racist" clickbait claims, and I realized there are times when AI is just garbage in, garbage out. It started pulling in arguments on RPG sites, and I deleted the conversation. It was like having a virtual agent repeat the most stupid pen-and-paper flamebait from the last 5 years to me, summarized.

AI, you suck. I know what I know. I think what I think. I am not having AI tell me otherwise.

Semidryas, plural Semidryades, I put you in the public domain and pray this ends.

Like dandelion seeds to the wind, spread and make the world a more beautiful place. And remember, it takes human intelligence to come up with this stuff, not an AI.

Remixing the Old School Essentials Fighter

I did this on my Gonzo blog, but we have gotten new options and a few changes coming, so it is time to revisit this article here on the main blog.

One of the reasons I originally felt so indifferent toward Old School Essentials was the fighter class, which doesn't really have much "to" it compared to other OSR games. On the surface, the class is just a d8 hit die, all weapons and armor, and the best to-hit table. Despite its simplicity, you can push the class to high performance within the rules and with a few optional rules.

Weapon Proficiency

First, use the optional weapon proficiency rule (OSE-AF-PT, 23) and specialize in a single weapon for +1 to hit and damage. If your STR is high, this will stack significantly and make a huge difference.

Racial Abilities

The second thing you can do is use the character races with the modifiers, giving your fighter some extra abilities. Humans will get these, too, if you lift the race class and level restrictions (OSE-AF-PT, 78 & 86), and these abilities are beneficial for fighters. Even other races' abilities are helpful for fighters, with some having AC bonuses and making excellent defensive warriors.

Early Domains

You will also advance faster than many other classes, so save that money, use hirelings, and establish that domain early. You can do this at any level. Even a small wooden building is a domain structure and can be built in 3 days for 1,500 gp. This can attract a small camp of settlers and followers; through story events, these could be loyal warrior retainers.

Use these rules. If the hex you start in is your claim, which is unsettled and unclaimed land, build that stronghold and get those followers early. You may find that the fighter and his loyal band of warriors can even outshine the mage and other classes quickly.

Magic Items

Magic items are upgrades! There are many more than the usual "magic weapons and armor" here, and many items are must-haves for an epic hero. If you can find a particular pair of gauntlets, or a girdle of giant strength (far better in OSE than it is in 5E by miles), prepare to amaze even 5E players with how epic and cool your character becomes. Magic items are more critical for OSE character upgrades than in 5E.

This is what I love about the old-school games: the rules may not give you a lot of '5E freebie powers,' but you can more than make up for that with smart play, roleplaying, and steering your character's story right. This level of engagement is what makes these games so rewarding.

Carcass Crawler One

Well, let's keep looking for some more official inspirations and options published in the official 'zine publications, in this case, Carcass Crawler Issue One.

CC1 - Gargantuans

In this issue, we get the gargantuan player race (CC1, p21), and when used as a stand-alone character option, it can level to 10th level as a fighter. This race can also wield two-handed weapons with one hand, using the OSE "attacking with two weapons" rule (OSEAFP, p236), for a -2 on the primary weapon and a -4 on the secondary, and two attacks a turn total.

Combine that with the high strength to-hit modifiers of the gargantuan, the high damage of two-handed weapons, weapon proficiencies (OSEAFP, p23), and you will have a beast of a half-giant character who is a literal wrecking machine in combat, even at level one. This is one of the most potent melee builds in the game, and you do not need to mod the game to have it with official rules sources.

CC1 - Goblins

There are other races here that make for some excellent fighter options, such as the goblin getting a +2 AC versus large creatures (CC1, p22), making them an excellent choice as a defensive "nut" versus dragons and other large beasties, especially in plate mail with a shield. The goblin can get to 8th level as a fighter, which is good given the scope of most campaigns.

The infravision and detection options of goblins are also convenient, along with a high CON-based resistance save modifier. With a CON of 15-17, they get a +4 to all saving throws versus poison, spells, and magic wands, rods, and staves (CC1, p22)! That is a crazy good saving throw modifier, one of the best in the game. Do not sleep on a goblin fighter; they can be lethal and highly survivable.

CC1 - Black Powder Weapons

We have rules for black-power weapons in this issue, too, perfect for high-seas swashbuckling and pirate-themed games, as well as early colonial horror gaming settings, like Lamentations of the Flame Princess. OSE has you covered if you want to use this system with Renaissance and Colonial-Era gaming.

CC1 - Combat Talents

We have something for any type of fighter, too, even our brute or any other fighter in the game! We get Combat Talents (CC1, p. 28), which give our fighters new abilities at levels 1, 5, and 10! We can select cleave, which provides us with a Swords & Wizardry-style ability to strike a second opponent when one is defeated. There are leadership, defensive, two-weapon, and other options here that beef up our fighters and make them feel like other old-school games in the OSR genre.

Carcass Crawler Five

Of note here is the special materials article, which includes both adamantine and mithral as armor and weapon upgrades, for lower weight and extra AC and damage. Also, there is no rule saying adamantine magic weapons and armor cannot exist, but such an item would be amazingly rare and powerful.

Also note that the bone, bronze, and stone options in this article are perfect for OSE Dark Sun games.

Scout Magazine One

Don't sleep on the great third-party zines for OSE! There is an optional rule in this edition allowing fighters to replace their attack bonus with their level, giving them the best to-hits in the game. This is a potentially game-breaking change, as it means +14 at 14th level, versus the old value of +9, so that is a five-point swing for just fighters.

Even at level one, this is the only class that gets a +1 attack bonus. This makes a fighter a strong choice, even for new characters. By level two, you are starting to outpace the group in delivering hits in battle.

But considering this will allow pure fighters to outshine paladins, rangers, and the other "+9 at level 14" classes, changes my mind on this houserule, and elevates pure fighters into lethal dealers of death who can consistently land blows on anyone foolish enough to get close. This also sets them apart from those classes in terms of being able to hit, while those other fighter classes begin to get all sorts of special abilities.

Also, considering that most campaigns will never reach level 14, and level 10 is a better, more reasonable campaign end for many, that would only be a +3 difference, which feels about right. If the game ever gets to level 14, let them have it. The highest AC in OSE is the gold dragon at AC 21, so that is still a 7+ to-hit, or a 30% miss rate for the +14 maxxed out fighter. Figure another +5 for STR and magic item bonuses, and we are at 2+, which is still not game-breaking.

Those are sure-thing hits, but compare that to the power of other 14th-level characters, and I would say sure-thing hits at max-level are a great class feature for them, considering they get very little else.

An alternative way to do this is just bump the existing attack bonus table up by +2 and cap it at +11 at 14. That is a good mid-ground compromise, but another part of me feels "add the fighter level" is cleaner and more of a dramatic change the class needs. Fighters give up so much for so little benefit.

This is becoming one of my favorite OSE fighter houserules, and it eliminates the need to pull in the S&W fighter rules for OSE. And the Scout Magazine books are excellent; they are very close to feeling like official content, they are very well made and interesting.

OSE Fighters are Good

Fighters seem weak at first glance, but there are a lot of options here. The basic fighter is one of the reasons I look at games like Swords & Wizardry and OSRIC, just to give that class a few more abilities and interesting play mechanics. We are getting 1 HD multi-attacks as an optional rule in the new version of the game, so things will change.

But until the new edition drops, there is plenty we can do to make the fighter class attractive and back to being the damage dealers and frontline soldiers that we expect them to be. All of these options and houserules add a lot to the fighter and place it among the best class choices in OSE.

This is the old school; if something seems broken, we don't head out to crowdfunding sites to buy new games. We find fixes for the games we got, use them, patch, houserule, and tailor the game to our liking. We check community sites and third-party zines for fixes. We share information and let others know about the rules and zines we use.

And then, we play.

Removing Half Elves from Our Games

It makes me sad that half-elves and half-orcs were removed from modern games. Half-elves were the fifth-most-popular race option on D&D Beyond before D&D 2024 moved them to "legacy support."

They are mixed-race creations created out of love, not hate. They give bi-racial people an identity in the game and allow them to work through the struggles of belonging to two separate cultural identities and express those struggles within it. This is beautiful stuff, fraught with tragedy and a hard-fought victory in bringing both sides of the family together despite cultural differences. It allows us to mirror experiences from our own lives in the game and work out the divisions between our families and cultures.

And now, Tieflings are the popular choice because the choice that spoke to people going through this internal battle was removed. Why shift the cultural struggle stories to humans and demons? It doesn't make sense.

And Gary Gygax got this right 50 years ago, back during the 1970s, when media and television openly explored biracial themes and struggles in our family dramas and sitcoms. He first expressed those themes in fantasy gaming and brought them into the mainstream through the games that kids played.