The Romance Fantasy Fallacy

Part of the problem with 5E is that it needs to be everything to everybody.

An old-school dungeon game.

A romance game.

A cozy game.

A social roleplay game.

A storytelling game.

A map-based exploration game.

A rules-light game.

A horror game.

A rules-heavy game.

A tactical combat game.

And it still has to be D&D.

And specialized games that do each one of those things better are replacing 5E. With Daggerheart moving into the romance market, Shadowdark killing it with old-school horror gaming, and Dungeon Crawl Classics with the old-school vibe, I have games that do those focused areas better. Tactical combat? Pathfinder 2 or Draw Steel.

I have games that do better than 5E, and since 5E tries to do it all, it doesn't do any one thing perfectly. And the game needs so many books that it dies under its own weight. I have eight plastic storage crates filled with 5E books, and the bigger the game gets, the more I end up disliking it.

I can't play a game this big anymore.

And for D&D, I have Old School Essentials or any other OSR game that matches the flavor or edition you loved and remember. For me, OSE is the pinnacle of dungeon crawling: focused and capable, flexible and specific when it needs to be, and with classes presented on two facing digest-sized pages. I am not flipping through a dozen full-sized pages to understand a class design, nor are my character sheets a dozen pages or more.

I am done with the days of supporting a game with a shelf full of books. If I can't throw it in a backpack or small tablet bag, I am done with the game. For 2d6 gaming? FTL Nomad. For fantasy? OSE. Those two games cover a lot of ground and can easily provide me with years of entertainment.

OSE beats Shadowdark for me since it is closer to the original, and supports many more generic fantasy ideas and worlds than the new-school dungeon crawler. Shadowdark is focused on table-play, that tense, group-based, timer-ticking loop it developed and supports wonderfully. As a dungeon board game like Monopoly or the classic Dungeon from TSR, Shadowdark is the best-in-class game.

For roleplay and campaigns? OSE wins hands-down. It does more. It does higher levels. It has more character options. It focuses on domain play as an endgame. And it doesn't get mired down in rules like an AD&D clone or 1E. And since OSE is so flexible, it can fill every role from the list at the start of this article. OSE as a romance game? Sure, I can make it work. You don't have silly, pedantic, please-keep-the-game-designer-out-of-this concepts like "romance dice" or some other stupid overdesigned tripe, but a real, actual storyteller and player figuring this stuff out on their own, which is honestly much better.

And trust me, any quirky, gimmicky, too-stupid-to-be-real game design trick like "romance dice" you will get sick of after about a day of use, and you will begin to tire of filtering your ideas through the designer's gimmicks and tricks just to do something common sense would handle much better.

OSE handles combat, advancement, exploration, and ability checks. Honestly, that gives me a lot of room to write my story, design my own silly concepts, and present it the way I want, without a know-it-all game designer pushing their ideas as "the right way to do it."

More gamers should tell these egotistical game designers to touch grass and get a life.

A basic set of rules is 99% of what you need to play "romance fantasy."

And stop wasting your money on "romance games" and learn how to write in the genre, and just adapt the game you are playing to support those concepts. Stop falling for the crowdfunding "new and shiny" trap, again and again, and realize the game you already play can do it better. Seriously, go pick up a "how to write romance" book and tailor your adventures around the concepts, challenges, conflicts, and roles presented in those writer-focused books, and skip the game. All a "romance game" does is repackage these ideas and write clunky rules around them that you will outgrow. It is always better to "learn the actual thing" and incorporate it into your current game than to "waste money on a new thing."

OSE is a better "romance fantasy game" than most any other game on the market, including the dedicated ones. It stays out of the way and lets you incorporate the concepts the way you feel they should work.

And 5E can stop trying to be all these things, too, since the game is dying a slow death of trying to do it all and collapsing under its own weight.

And honestly, if Pathfinder 2 is your jam, incorporate the "romance fantasy" ideas over there and use that game as your game engine. Same with Shadowdark or Draw Steel. For me, OSE does it all and can fit in a small travel bag, so it wins since it goes where I go. And there are so few rules that my ideas of "romance fantasy" gaming have room to flourish and grow here.

And "doing it for real" may teach you an actual skill you could use to write that romance novel or book outside of gaming, instead of constantly having these concepts repackaged, gamified, and sold to you as "new and inventive things" again and again on crowdfunding sites.

It is 2026.

Stop buying gimmick games.

You can hustle and DIY this all yourself and turn that into a sellable skill.

AD&D Started This Mess, and I Love that Game

I love AD&D.

But I also understand that it started many of the problems we have with D&D today. Race-plus-class, the proficiency system eventually turning into a full skill system, overloaded classes with tiers of power, ability unlocks at certain levels, hit point inflation, multiclassing, and so many other issues started here. We started to see power creep, and 5E is defined by power creep.

When there was very little wrong with BX to begin with, and that game is the essence and heart of D&D. I am hesitant to use "D&D" since the current game isn't even D&D anymore, it is 5E, and BX is a truer statement of what the genre really is, and what makes it special.

A bunch of the problems that AD&D introduced were later ham-fistedly fixed in every edition that followed, and they still never fully fixed the issues it introduced. The Wizards team keeps trying to make a broken game fun, even though the original BX implementation was never broken. They will keep "fixing" D&D in edition after edition, when, like Monopoly, the original BX-based game is fun, isn't broken, and doesn't need to be changed.

AD&D is what I remember and love, but it is flawed, and those flaws get us to where we are today. It is still so much better than 5E, and it is the ultimate fantasy role-playing game. An amazing amount of depth, options, and it retains the classic, old-school experience? AD&D is the true fantasy role-playing game. But is it the best version of D&D?

But there is still something about BX that remains the gold standard. Where AD&D added special cases and rules for things that rarely come up, and tried to be the "de facto" convention ruleset, BX is still more flexible, easier for worldbuilding, and captures the essence of D&D with a much more straightforward framework.

BX is the far superior worldbuilder to AD&D.

AD&D is the best generic fantasy game.

But if I want to live in the world of D&D, BX is the truest expression of the ideas. The tropes are built into the classes. The classes build the world. Even if you do "race plus class" BX, it is a stronger expression of the original D&D idea, since stat and hit point inflation are under control. There is less to track and manage. The game is more about the story than the characters or the acquisition of power.

Doing "race plus class" confuses worldbuilding. Before, humans and halflings were the sneaky, stealthy, thieving types. This is their nature. Elves were the magic and battle types. Drarves didn't do the thieving stuff; it wasn't in their nature. Yes, this is a simple view of the world, but it is valid. Even DCC does the classic race-as-class designs, and these are valid and very thematic. So they are used in modern games, and even ACKS does amazing race-as-class options.

If you want a dwarven "tomb robber," make a race-as-class and give them abilities unique to both dwarves and tomb robbers. This will not be a thief and is unlikely to backstab. It will have unique abilities that enhance its core role in the game. Maybe they will have a bonus for fighting undead? This is how BX works: you create a race-specific role, and you design an amazing class that fills a niche and worldbuilds the race it belongs to.

Every BX class does heavy lifting in worldbuilding. Paladins? Human only, this is what humans do with crusades and holy knights. No other race gets involved with this. Bards? Human, again, and the entire concept of an elven or dwarven bard would be an entirely different thing. Dwarven Loremaster and Elven Spellweavers come to mind, and those would be much more thematic and do amazing worldbuilding.

AD&D classes give up, and while that gives the referee more options in creating the world, everything becomes more generic. There are "allowed race and class combinations," but we are one step away from "allowing anyone to be anything," and here we are in D&D 3E and further.

But, for generic fantasy, race-plus-class is fine and needed. In this world, we have Drow paladins. Fine. This is a choice. But allowing race-plus-class makes a LOT of choices you may not want made. You may not want Drow paladins. That may confuse your world's core conflicts. This may give the player too much narrative control. In a Dark Sun world with no Drow and no paladins, both are choices the world does not support.

Plus, allowing a Drow paladin all of a sudden shifts the game's narrative focus almost exclusively on that player and the conflict with the evil Drow. Some character stories will hijack the campaign and allow little room for other players to take part, or even for the referee to tell a standard fantasy story (especially if Drow are distrusted on the surface world, and the entire focus of the campaign shifts to that one character trying to prove themselves).

The original BX sidesteps all of that by strictly limiting race-as-class options. The game is easier to worldbuild and run stories in, since the stories write themselves and the conflicts stay out of the way of the dungeon crawl and adventure.

Old School Essentials also allows "anyone to be anything" with their optional rules, and those are useful for one-off classes and special PCs and NPCs. The Drow assassin comes to mind, along with the Dwarven cleric. I still love the race-as-class options, and they are very thematic and support worldbuilding like no other game.

5E gets everything wrong by allowing anyone to be anything and making all the races the same. It is magnitudes more difficult to worldbuild and play because of this.

AD&D started us down this road, and they did have strict race and class level limits to try to fix the problems that arose. But this is our first fix, one in a long line of many that lead to today.

As much as I love AD&D and 1E as a generic fantasy experience, BX is the purest form of the dungeon game.

Anybody Can't Be Anything

I like the concept of 'race as class' in BX. The designs are thematic and iconic, and they force you to learn the unique style the race brings to the table. The Elf in Old School Essentials is an arcane caster, while the Drow are divine casters (with web also added to their spell list). Both can use all types of weapons and armor. There is clarity and clean design here, and OSE does not face the problem of 'too many races' because each must support 'race as class' while retaining its thematic design.

If you come from an AD&D point of view, where "anyone can be anything," the design gets muddled, and the thematic choice of a race is very weak. Nothing is special. An elven fighter can't cast spells, whereas an elven wizard can't use all the weapons and armor. In essence, all races become human variants, and typically, humans get an extra buff and still are the best choice in the game.

We lose more than we gain.

Before we had plate-mail-wearing 1d6 hit die elves that could use a bow and fling a fireball at level six.

After, we have a d4 hit die magic user who can't wear armor and uses a dagger or staff, and can't fire a bow. But they are an elf. I guess. Maybe infravision and detecting secret doors? Immunity to ghoul paralysis? Who cares, just pick human.

We lost that flexible, unique, iconic, armor-wearing, and bow-shooting elf who could cast magic spells for another human variant with infravision. The race-as-class elf is a uniquely crafted class that is, in essence, a multi-class option specially reserved for the elf. Humans can't do that, nor should they. In later editions of D&D, any race is anything, anyone can multiclass, and every option feels the same and is flavorless. There are very few viable multi-class builds. No race is special. Nothing is.

If I want a special Drow "spider rider," I will get out my BX class creation book and craft one. It is not too hard, and I will have a unique, thematic, and interesting choice based on the current Drow class, but less oriented towards divine spells and more towards mounted combat underground. Sort of a mix between the current Knight class and a Drow.

Or, as a one-off, I could use OSE's "race plus class" system and do a one-off pick for that NPC, and allow a "Drow knight" and be done with it. Most Drows will be the race-as-class pick, but there will be exceptions to the rule, and the OSE rules allow this. You can do this for exceptions, or you can do race-plus-class for everything.

I like the race-as-class designs in OSE enough to make them the standards in a campaign world, and leave the exceptional cases as one-offs for iconic NPCs. Having all elves knowing magic and being able to wield bows makes them exceptionally dangerous and cunning foes, and makes messing with them a very lethal affair. The Orcs should think twice about entering Elven forests.

In a race-plus-class world, most Elves are fighters, and who cares? Most everyone is a fighter, the orcs, too, and we lose the danger and iconic nature of Elves and their kin. Who has magic? All Elves do.

That is a compelling and cool campaign world.

It beats out the muddled, later "iconic" realms such as The Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk easily. We are not assuming "all Elves have magic" because "AD&D does not require it." Thus, the study of arcane magic goes back to Human norms, magic schools, and high wizards, and we assume this is true for the Elves, too.

Race-plus-class worlds adopt a human-centric perspective. We look at everything through a human lens.

Race-as-class worlds feel far more compelling and unique.

I Can't Play it Alone

It's over, again.

5E is packed up in my eight plastic storage crates, and in the closet, it is too big a game to play solo. The combination of the online character sheets, digital purchases, character sheets a dozen pages long, and all the rules is just too much for me. My brain can't handle it, especially for a party of characters.

I love Tales of the Valiant. This is guilt-free 5E for me, and the best of the 2014 rules.

It is just too much game.

First through third level, fine, I can do that. Any higher? Forget it, I would rather run a party of GURPS characters, it is less work on the character sheets. It works for a while, but by the sixth level, with four characters, it feels like a massive slog for no great benefit, and by the eighth level, with four characters, it dies.

5E is a better game with a group to manage the complexity, just like Pathfinder 2E. 5E may seem an easier game, but that is very deceptive, since complexity ramps up steeply past the 6th level. I love my ToV books; they are the perfect version of 5E, but the complexity as a solo player kills my enjoyment.

I only play solo.

So I end up not playing.

And 5E loses hard at this point; I can't deal with it as a solo player at all. It is not worth the complexity or constant, too detailed, overly complicated character builds. If all I play for is a story, I am better off with a simple game, such as a 2d6 game like FTL Nomad, or a solid BX game like Old School Essentials.

My 10th-level 5E character has a character sheet 16 pages long.

My 10th-level OSE character is half a page, and not terribly different than a 1st-level sheet. This is a clear win for me. I can solo a party of four to even eight with no problems. With 5E, eight characters require 30-50 sheets of paper, at 4 to 6 sheets per character. It only gets worse as they level, and at level ten, it could be over 100 sheets of paper for that same party.

Versus eight half-sheets that are no more complex than a level one sheet.

There is a point for the solo player at which a game becomes unplayable.

And if you find BX characters boring or lacking abilities, you are not playing BX right. Are you a bard? Roll CHR to do most of the other things that 5E locks behind feats and subclasses. And there are plenty of hacking guides for training and character options in BX, the amazing On Downtime and Demesnes, and the Carcass Crawler zines are prime examples of BX expansions that will make the game incredible and give you the customization you are looking for.

BX characters are infinitely more flexible and customizable than 5E characters since you gain abilities through your story in the world, and you just "add them to your character sheet" as you gain, train, or collect them. Cursed by an evil statue and gain a demon tail? Write that down, and it may be useful, cause negative reactions, or you can figure out a way to use it to pickpocket someone or grab an item, make a DEX check.

No feat expenditure needed.

No subclass choice.

No $80 Kickstarter books.

No new shelf is needed to store all these books.

No digital purchase on a VTT.

There is no hoping the online character designer supports the option.

You just write it down and have it.

If you don't have the imagination to play BX, and you need every rule laid out for you as if you were some computer compiling code, you should probably be playing a computer game and not a tabletop role-playing game. Games with depth and rules are fun, but D&D is not D&D anymore.

OSE is closer to what I remember.

And I don't need "rulesy rules" like Shadowdark to create fear and tension. I love Shadowdark as a board game, but it isn't the game I played, nor do I need torch timers and rules for what happens in the dark to make a dungeon scary. That is all in my head. A great BX referee can turn any dungeon crawl into something terrifying, just like the Tomb of Horrors.

Six rooms, goblins, a giant spider, one trap, a puzzle, and a carrion crawler? That is my Tomb of Horrors. BX turns that environment into a nightmare. My thief has 3 hit points, and the fighter has 5. One hit could kill either of them. Death is permanent. No death saves. You or the monsters can choose if your attacks are subduing or not, and what they want to do if they subdue you? That is terrifying.

When you get to AD&D, you begin to realize where we started to go wrong. AD&D is the beginning of the road that got us here. Too many rules, a rule for everything, and too many pages of the game. AD&D is the best game ever written, but BX is simple, expressive, does everything, and handles any situation clean and fast. With AD&D, I begin needing more books and rules again. I am locked into rulings. I am flipping through pages of rules to find something. Not knowing a rule could kill my character. While OSRIC, ADAD, C&C, and DCC are incredible games, I am tied to the books.

BX frees you from the books.

They are there if you need them, but for the most part, you don't.

The rule system is simple and invisible.

Things are resolved in a natural, consistent, and logical progression of rulings.

As things come up, rulings outside the rules are made, and the bare minimum of a rules framework handles the hard parts. Combat, spellcasting, light, and other factors are covered. The most important parts. The game then gets out of your way.

As it should be.

The D&D Collapse

Wow, I have never seen such a total collapse of a YouTube community before, and D&D YouTube is getting absolutely savaged right now, with creators quitting and ending their channels.

It is like they did the numbers, and wrecking your health trying to keep the plates spinning for a dying game is not worth it anymore, and going into the workforce and competing with AI for jobs is a better idea than D&D YouTube.

It is sad.

But the game in its current form can't support that much D&D content, especially when everything has been talked to death. Seriously, there are so many advice videos on prep, DM-ing, and other topics - much of the information is terrible - that nobody cares and everybody has had enough of being told how to play a game that should be easy to play. With the amount of advice out there, one would think 5E is the hardest game ever written in the history of gaming.

My shelves are full of 5E books, none of which I have time to play with. I find myself gravitating back to easier games, FTL Nomad for 2d6 science fiction gaming, and even games like OSE for dungeon crawling. I have no clue what 5E is these days, except for a version of BX that takes forever to create characters, takes five times longer to prep and play, and you need to pay loads of money to create online character sheets. The books are heavy, take up six shelves, and one small book replaces them all.

At this point, it feels like my "big games" are all dying with D&D.

I don't have time anymore.

They aren't interesting. They take up too much space and playtime.

And the communities are dying, especially 5E.

Downsizing feels like the clear winning strategy here. Play small games, enjoy focused experiences, and simplify my gaming life.

Clan, Family, and Lineage

Modern gaming feels almost entirely divorced from the notion of family, home, clan, and lineage. You don't find these concepts in gaming these days, with the focus being more on personal power than protecting one's home and kin, dealing with family issues, blood feuds, heritage, and continuing the family lineage.

Heritage and lineage have been radically redefined in modern gaming to the point of being hilariously wrong, and the phrasing smacks of an anti-family bent.

A lot of the writers of these newer games ignore family, to the point where the writing feels detached, alone, and sharing the misery of a life spent without close family connections, a homeland, a deep and storied lineage, and that essence of the fantasy story where who you are, who came before, and who will come after.

All that matters.

All of these concepts are core to the myth and essence of storytelling.

And these new games lack these concepts to such a degree that older games feel more real than the newer ones, and this is that "magic something" that is missing. This is an indictment of the writers and creative teams of these games; either they chose to willfully minimize the strong societal glue of family and homeland, or the writing reflects their own lives and experiences, which lack that crucial concept of kin and blood connection to a home and people.

And 101 special race options from every point and place in the planes make the entire concept worse. These silly, colorful marshmallow shapes are ultimately meaningless character options that have the net effect of isolation and loneliness. If I only have the four classic race options: human, dwarf, elf, and halfling, I am forced to make clan, kin, homeland, and connections to kingdoms and peoples.

If I am a fire elemental, well, who cares? I have no connection to anything, and I can forego any connection back home to the plane of fire, the clans, and the nations of the fire-home. I don't even need to think about it. I am the "wookie" of the group, have a silly voice, and am the constant outsider without a connection to anyone or anything. With a group of special races, the entire group becomes outsiders in a relatively normal fantasy world, and can just sort of skip across the surface of the pond like a rock, never needing to involve themselves in local issues of blood and nation.

We end up with the "party of complete outsiders," and those connections to the world become meaningless. The outsiders are constantly forced into the middle-person role in any conflict. They always wander into a strange town. They are forever strangers in town. They have no connection to anything, and they are essentially nobodies in the game world.

Too many aliens in science fiction also do this. It is always a strange foam-rubber creation with no connection or meaning, the silly shape of the week, and none of them have any meaning or reason to be there other than being background filler.

I would rather play a game like OSRIC 3.0, with very limited race options, and have each one be richer and more meaningful. Even if you add the Drow, Centaur, and other special races from Adventures Dark & Deep, I still have a far more focused and limited set to work with. I can work with these. I can world-build with this set of special races.

You start adding in aliens, like plant people, mycanoids, elementals, void creatures, dragonkin, and other special races - you start to get into entirely alien societies in the traditional fantasy mix. It becomes almost impossible to worldbuild. Layering on the concepts of kin, clan, and family is a huge reach for building a world like this, especially with alien societies thrown in there. How do mycanoids gather in "pods" or "clutches" and how do they see the concept of land and ownership? Do they even? Are they communal? How would they react to a dwarven kingdom taking their caverns and land? Would other kingdoms, like elves and humans, even see the mycanoids as familiar enough to care about, or are they utterly monstrous and alien to traditional society?

Would dragonkin be seen as the allies of evil dragons and trusted? They would just be "large kobolds" to some people, and more of a threat since their bloodlines run with the evil winged beasts of lore. A "red dragonkin?" Would they even be trusted if all red dragons are chaotic evil?

I have no time to think about kin, clan, and family, since I am dealing with how 101 alien societies are trying to interact with one another, how they see each other, and how fundamentally alien societies are trying to co-exist in a world too small for all of them. The easiest way to handle this is to ignore it all, and most games tell us to do just that.

So if I ignore this all, the shapes become meaningless. I have no distrust of dragonkin. I have no communal mycanoids. I have no clans or kin among the dwarves. The star elves are there because they just are. Every race thinks and acts like each other; they are just "special character shape selections." Oh, I can write strong family stories between them, now, even though the rules say nothing about it.

But I lose something with too many random fantasy races. I lose meaning and conflict. Everything becomes too cosmopolitan and modern. The planar norms apply. The mystery and wonder of a magical world are gone. Entering a fantasy world feels like walking into a giant airport with connections to every part of the world, each a different plane of existence.

It is an impossible task to worldbuild here other than to throw up my hands and give up. Are there wars between planes? Migration? Do they know about each other? Are some planes conquered by demons? Is there a planar military or police force? Do angelic planes run crusades on evil planes? Are some planes filled with infectious organisms or hazardous and invasive biological life? Are some planes entirely dragon-based life? Are there modern and science-fiction worlds in here?

It is easier to ignore it all and assume "nobody knows about anyone except the players."

It is a cop out.

It ruins my worldbuilding.

These special, anything goes race selections remove more than they add.

I can tell better stories in more grounded worlds with fewer options. My worldbuilding improves significantly with a limited palette of choices. I can make family, kin, and clan matter much more. This is why classic games feel more real to me. Even if the rules are exactly the same, the original games were written in a different time, when who you are as a person, who you are related to, and who will come after really mattered.

The special shape you choose does not immerse you in the world; it insulates you from it.

Today's writers and creative teams just cannot deliver what they have no concept of. These games mirror a transient, aimless, side-hustle, and temporary state of life for the modern artist and writer. They have no concept of history, homeland, family, or future. The most important quality is not performing acts of goodness; it is the acquisition of power in an increasingly shrinking world - at any cost and by any method. Alignment is gone, so the game won't even judge your vile deeds to achieve your goals.

All this choice in modern gaming is a fallacy.

Modern gaming reflects a fake and aimless life.

And it shows.

A Brush with Disaster

I had an issue where I nearly had to evacuate the house last night. So I got my clothes, computer, and other necessary things packed and ready to go. Thankfully, it turned out to be nothing but a big nothing, but it was scary. All is well, and I unpacked, having survived a brush with disaster.

But my 2d6 games were in my travel bags, again. If I were to "lose it all," then my 2d6 games would be the bridge that gets me through. I wanted GURPS, but I would need to have a bag ready with GURPS, since there were way too many choices to make when throwing things in a travel bag and packing in a panic. The 2d6 games? In a small mini-tablet bag, and still ready to go.

The biggest advantage of 2d6 games over GURPS and even 5E is that no software is needed to play, and all you need are commonly available six-sided dice. I should be hauling GURPS and possibly OSRIC 3.0 along, but the 2d6 games are just enough for an emergency, given my state of mind. The polyhedral dice set would need to be pre-packed, since sorting and choosing one in an emergency would take too much time. That is easy enough, but I always have six-siders in my travel bags.

Not needing access to computers or character design software clearly gives you an advantage when carrying around a simpler, fast-playing, no-software-needed game. My 2d6 games fit that role, and OSRIC 3.0 also does. Shadowdark would also work. OSRIC would be a bigger, heavier book, but you can get a lifetime of gaming out of that. With GURPS, all you need is the two core books, but needing software puts the game at a disadvantage for portability.

OSRIC 3.0 is brought up here because it is a self-contained, complete implementation of the original 1E rules and the best version of the greatest role-playing game ever made. The PoD book from DriveThru is a single, softcover volume that would travel well, but be a little bulky. It replaces all of 5E and every OSR game ever written, so there is a value to choosing that game as my champion to grab when I am rushing out of the door and into oblivion.

GURPS is far more compelling to me as well, so there is that to consider. Two books for any genre imaginable is a strong prospect, and that promise still holds up. I still need software to play this, so that adds a computer, Internet access, and power requirement into the equation. Arguably, OSRIC is far better with printed character sheets as well, to keep all the numbers straight. The 2d6 games beat them both in not needing much of anything in terms of character sheets or software.

Remember to pack pens, pencils, erasers, dice, a ruler, and a small journal notebook or two! You can grab the books, but you still will not be able to play without the basics. It is best to pre-pack these sorts of things and leave them in your bug-out bag.

The thing that keeps those 2d6 games in my "grab and go" bags is genre support. FTL Nomad and Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition have tons of tables, charts, world and universe creation systems, encounter tables, and lists of stuff to keep me busy for a good, long time when my mind is in a panic and not thinking straight. With a game like GURPS, I still need to "design it all myself," and with my brain not working correctly due to panic, that's much harder. With the 2d6 games, I can turn my brain off, create a character, and have random chart adventures while I sit in that hotel room trying not to think about home. Even OSRIC fails that test; where the 2d6 games shine is that they are portable "mini-games" and entire universes and adventure-creation engines in a small book.

What a night.

Well, disaster averted, but a few truths were revealed as I rushed to leave behind a history of gaming and had thoughts of seeing it all burn.

What I chose to be left with are my truths.

I can play these 2d6 games with the stationery they supply in the hotel room, and I do not need access to a printer, my library, the Internet, or anything else. And the bags are as big as my iPad Mini, and that travels with them.