D&D's Problem is Combat

D&D was never a combat-focused game. Combat was a failure condition, and something to be avoided, short-circuited, or a sleep spell or fireball spell ending the encounter before it even began. It did not matter how you got the gold; all of it was experience. Lie, cheat, steal, or a thief grabs it, and everyone profits.

Wizards D&D is 90% combat. Combat is the only thing. This is why every class and subclass option exists. Modern D&D is all about violence, killing, and the selfish notion of "the character" and "what I get" over the story or heroism.

Every edition since D&D 3E has been this way, and very few see it this way. You get mixed up in your notions of nostalgia and feel like "I can play D&D 3 to 5E any way I want," but that isn't true. Your character is rigged to kill and do massive damage, and that is mostly all you do.

Most problems are solved with violence. This is all the classes can do. Every problem is solved with the hammer. Most stories are a series of combat encounters. Player skill does not matter.

This is also why D&D 5E feels so hollow for many of us old-school players.

We often have to bring in our own assumptions about "how the game used to be played" and play it that way, living the lie. The biggest problem 5E has is combat.

Mail Room: Dungeon Dwelling Creatures (DCC)

 

From DCC, MCC, Star Crawl, and XCrawl, Goodman Games has the best "games for your imagination" in the industry right now. Today, we continue that run with Dungeon Dwelling Creatures, a DCC-genre game where you play the monsters. I got the crowdfunding PDF release for this today, and I like this game.

The monsters are quirky and strange, sort of mirroring DCC-style classes, but using the system in interesting and unique ways. Instead of luck, we get Vile, which is your Luck-like "power of evil." All the monsters have an icky factor, and none of them are cute or adorable. A huge problem with "play a monster" games is that they get too cutesy and chibi, and that opens the door to hurt feelings and problem players. A cute fairy dragon with butterfly wings would be inappropriate for this game, where a spider that sucks people's brains out would fit right in.

I would love to see expansion monsters for this game. What we have is great, quirky, and cool.

This reminds me of the Monsters Monsters! game from Flying Buffalo, the spiritual successor to the classic Tunnels & Trolls game. You play the monsters. Civilization is crushing you. You are the minions and mooks that live in a dungeon (and even the DCC modules) as the bad guys. The good guys show up and crush your dreams, loot the place, laugh, and head back to town.

A few times.

Maybe they burn everything out in a 10-minute adventure day, and you are watching them pull the typical party nonsense by coming back daily. Maybe you follow them back to town and give them a lesson in how the monsters who put up with this nonsense teach them a lesson.

This is close to being a new, major game in the DCC line, and it feels like a surprise release. The bestiary is excellent and covers many more of the classics than the main DCC book. This feels like "the other side" of the DCC experience, and it puts players in an unfamiliar but cool situation.

You are the monsters.

Deal with those pesky heroes.

A very surprising release, and I can't wait to get my hardcover.

Mail Room: HackMaster

If a game sticks along long enough, it eventually becomes a parody of itself. In HackMaster's case, the parody turned into a real game. In 5E's case, you have a game that supposedly is as simple as BX, but it quickly grows beyond the complexity of HackMaster, and people quit at around level 8.

This is a game in the same "hobby self-referential vein" as games such as Dungeon Crawl Classics or even Munchkin, which embrace the hobby's absurdity and conventions. Yet it can flip right around and become a completely serious, non-humorous vehicle for storytelling. Think Robin Williams and comedy. There are moments when even the funniest comedian can flip right around and make us feel pain and cry.

D&D 5.5E, by comparison, is so self-important and full of itself that it borders on the unhealthy. As a lifestyle game, it refuses to have fun or admit to the absurdity of the hobby and its sometimes strange assumptions. It presents the fake as real, the pre-chewed superhero progression tracks of heroes that far outstrip monster power and are railroaded to level 20 on adventures carefully balanced to let the players win.

D&D 5.5E has no admission of the absurdity of "killing everything in the hole in the ground" as the way to solve problems in this world. There are no tense negotiations with kings and emperors in a throne room; any change in the world is effected through a boss fight on a battle mat. Combat, death, and killing with "my kewl powers" is the only way to create change.

I mean, if I wanted realism, I would be playing GURPS in Harnworld.

D&D 5.5E is, in comparison, one of those terrible superho games out of the 1980s where players use their powers to kill everything and everyone in the room until they get their way. Might makes right, and having power justifies using it.

Hackmaster is a lot like DCC. If you get the joke, it is hilarious. We embrace the absurd, the pedantic, the arcane crunch of rules, and the hypocrisy of the strange and unusual. In DCC, the rules are simple, and the world is unhinged and strange. In Hackmaster, the world is more normal, but the characters and their strange, odd, and incomprehensible rules are the unusual ones.

HackMaster is like one of those Flash games that presents a "walking simulator" where your analog sticks control each leg, and you are hilariously trying to make the stick figure walk to the other side of the room without dying. In HackMaster, just getting through character creation is the game, and figuring out how all this works in a typical medieval sandbox setting is the point of the joke.

Only, it is not a joke anymore.

In this case, the parody began to be taken seriously, and the game turned into a game, about as complicated as Rolemaster, that presents a method of playing fantasy adventures with. Could you get this with Rolemaster? Not really, being in on the joke is a big part of the fun here.

The absurd becomes the lingua franca. The joke becomes enshrined as the culture. The hypocrisy is the rules of the game. It is Monty Pythonesque, accepting the silly walk is the norm, and being shocked when anyone walks by normally.

Hackmaster is still a modern classic, fading a bit in relevance and popularity, an in-game for the in-crowd, but if you love DCC and other self-referential games where the absurd is enshrined and celebrated, a worthy read and inspiration for old-school chaos and inspiration.

We haven't heard much news, and the game feels like it is sitting in the doldrums. I am hoping this is just a low moment and that the game doesn't go away. The silly parts of our hobby and our addiction to the specific, minute details that make our "fantasy simulators" work need to be celebrated and embraced.

Even as a source of inspiration for old-school gaming, HackMaster is still worthy.

Design Room: Simplicity is Depth

There is a beauty to a simple, clean design that no amount of detail or crunch can improve. One can go on and on, providing tactical depth but adding nothing. At a point, you are taking away options just to give them back later, and the design becomes "rats in a maze," but the maze here is rules and paragraphs of subclass options. And with every new subclass added, you are taking those abilities away from those who thought they had them.

Oh, I thought as a druid, I was always a bit of a beastmaster. So you are telling me the new beastmaster subclass does that better? Oh, okay, I picked healing. I guess I am a little more inadequate these days. I just will never use my beastmater powers, since they will never be seen as good as the subclass that specializes in it.

In OSE? All druids are druids. If you want to do druid things, just make them up and ask the referee if what you are doing is druid enough. If it is a spell, well, then, it is automatically druid, and what you can do. You don't need subclasses "carving off" things you can't do with each new one added, either because you never knew you could do that and it was just taken away, or "someone else does it better now," and you have the specialization curse.

In the OSR, classes are how we have party specialization, not subclasses. I don't need rules to solve the non-problem that "all fighters are the same," since that's on me to solve. I will do that through my roleplaying, gear choices, social role, and stats. A party of four or five probably will solve the specialization problem through everyone picking a different class, or some using race-as-class to play an elf or a dwarf.

The game isn't giving me rules or subclass choices to make my elf different from other elves; that is on me. This is where my ability to play a character, roleplay, and craft a unique character comes into play. The player skill needed to do this is much higher than 5E.

5E solves the problem by cutting off parts of your class role, forbidding them from other builds, and making you a false specialist instead of a master of all. If I am the druid? I want to be the weather-caller, wild-shaper, druid of growth, beast-master, and harmony priest. I get that in OSE. Thematically, that is much easier for me as a role-player and much better for me to play my class role. I can call myself a "specialist" in one area, but there aren't any rules for that; it is just my choice.

I am likely the party's only druid, so I get to do it all.

Easy. Simple. Clean. Flexible.

We saw the "lie of specialization" begin to seep into the game with AD&D 2nd Edition and the kitbash design introduced in the compendiums. The game began to accumulate the debt of inferior game designers, and it diverged from the original clean, flexible simplicity it captured. 5E enshrines the lie of specialization and writes it into the structure of the game.

Without specialization, my druid is free to embrace all the tropes of being a druid, and I am freer to craft the character I want to play. Nothing is telling me "I can't do that since some other subclass is better than me at it."

D&D doesn't need specialization.

Class choice more than covers it.

D&D is better without specialization.

OSE Confusion?

If D&D 5E players can figure out subclass options and multiclass builds, they can surely figure out "buy Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Player's Guide and Advanced Fantasy Referee's Guide" to buy the game.

It is simple.

I love these D&D and even OSR YouTube thumbnails purposefully confusing the situation by taking books that are clearly meant to be optional formats and collectors' editions, mixing them in with the main books, and acting all confused.

The problem with YouTube is that there is so much time to fill that creators will invent problems to solve and either say nothing, or make something that was never a problem, suddenly a problem. This is the "open mic curse," and it eventually happens to all channels.

The pretend confusion has gotten so bad that the next version of OSE will only have Advanced Fantasy and be two books, and the non-problems go away, which was never really a problem to begin with. Again, we are talking about 90% of the role-playing market playing 5E, and obviously not so confused that they are applying bard subclasses to fighters because "what subclass do I use?"

I recently got the nine-book set of Classic and Advanced, and it's perfectly clear when to use each book. I have the OG Classic all-in-one book and the two-book Advanced set, and it is perfectly clear when to use each. Most people end up buying Advanced, so it was never really that much of an issue.

I still enjoy the limited options in Classic and the more streamlined, simplified game to present. For some games, too many options will kill the game and take it off the rails. This is a chronic problem with 5E, where there are so many races, classes, and options that they all become too samey as the designers try to make "everyone do everything" so there are no glaring holes in healing, damage, defense, or utility.

The OG Classic book is still one of the best versions of the game, despite being far less popular, and is soon moving to a PoD-only format. In this case, less is more.

And, I enjoy the OGL versions of the game. I am glad they are 100% compatible, and the new books only add a few optional rules that can be houseruled into the classic books, since those are my play copies. For the most part, I only see the four small class changes and a few optional rules being used here; the OG books are still 100% usable.

You can literally put all the 2026 rule changes on a half-sheet of paper or in a Carcass Crawler Zine, keep that as a houserule sheet, and play by the new books with the old.

Mail Room: Old School Essentials Boxed Sets

Get these before you possibly can't.

I got the two boxed sets for the OSR version of Old School Essentials, and my first reaction was, "I like the all-in-one books better; having all these small books makes the game harder to play."

And then I saw the end pages in each book, each set different, and each set insanely useful, helping you learn the game's structure and gameplay. You can hand the characters' book to the players and have them just exist in that world, with no distractions or knowledge of what lies ahead. You can keep them to just Classic, and keep the advanced Characters book to the side, not introducing those options again until later.

The magic book sits apart from the characters and remains a mystery.

The adventures book is the referee's guide with all the rules in one place.

The monsters and treasure books are separate, each a reference guide that can be opened and consulted.

And the advanced books isolate and encapsulate the advanced options, still there if you want to use them, but also split off so they remain even more mysterious and special. Yes, you will have two monster books, treasure books, character books, and magic books - but they are divided on purpose.

One reflects the basic set, and the other reflects an expert set.

And the single adventures book is the master key that unlocks them all.

But those end pages are what make the magic happen, as each set is tailored to the most important tables of the book they bracket. Reading these, you will understand the gameplay and structure of the entire book, all the most important parts, and things to remember, all here in clearly laid out tables, beautifully concise and clear.

These feel like the classic 8-bit RPGs.

Simple. Direct. Clean. Limited yet boundless. Inspiring.

And starting with just the basics gives you a new appreciation for this retro classic.

This is even better than the original BX guides, as legendary as they are; these boxed sets are just amazing and special.

So simple.

But so infinite in the smallest form.

The End of Physical Media

If it is not in a printed book, it isn't real, and it does not exist.

Those of us who have been through D&D 4E know this one, and it is not rocket science. Once this edition drops support, what do you think will happen to all that "digital DLC content" on D&D Beyond? All the "D&D Drops" I see D&D YouTube gushing about weekly for clicks and views?

It is gone forever; it is like it never existed.

When D&D 5.5E finally "drops" support, and it isn't printed in a book? Gaming loses those things forever. Sure, people will remember them, some of them may get cloned somewhere and renamed, but those things not printed in physical, hardcopy books will be lost media.

This is the same as PlayStation dropping physical disc support.

Level Up A5E? Tales of the Valiant? Even Daggerheart or Draw Steel? The entire OSR? Previous versions of the game? Most every other game out there, from Traveler to Call of Cthulhu? Pathfinder 2?

It is all in print. Every option is in print.

Fifty years from now, all these books will still exist. Two hundred years from now? It will still exist. If you care about this hobby and its legacy, it should matter to you. If this material is later compiled and sold in a book? Not a problem. This is an easy problem to fix, and it supports game preservation.

Also, printed books are pro-consumer; I can sell my library, pick up used copies, and give them love and attention. People in the future will be able to enjoy the things we enjoyed. The used book and media market is part of how Earth's culture is preserved and passed on to the next generation.

Otherwise, the digital conversion of gaming is more of the same, and it pushes this hobby into becoming a more manipulative, exploitative, and worse pastime.