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.

Losing Touch With Reality

My SCA experience changed me.

The one thing "doing it all for real" highlights is how utterly childish and fantasy-land D&D and many of these fantasy games have become. We have talking frogs, bear people, planar magics, every class with infinite-use video-game blaster powers, glowing magic coming out of our hands, impossible weapons, combat tactics that would get you killed in the real world, death is impossible, and being able to sleep a night's rest and heal off a shotgun blast to the face.

Today's tabletop role-playing games have turned so silly and childish that I can't really call them games anymore, because part of the definition of the game is "there needs to be winners and losers."

And all of these games tell you outright, "everyone wins."

In Tomb of Horrors? Your character dies, you lose. Just like it was in AD&D. We started to go off the rails with the "too heroic" AD&D 2nd Edition, and the railroad "novel adventures" that defined that game and era, and eventually led to bankruptcy.

Since then, D&D has been defined by two of the most toxic forces in gaming: the MMO and the mobile game. Both of these gaming models turn loneliness and FOMO into profit, and those are harmful to our well-being and mental health.

Bits, bytes, MMOs, and having your face stuck in the digital coffin of a phone mean you will die lonely and alone. You will not have a life. They engineer these games this way because they know that if they provide a "fake answer" to the problems they create, they can monetize the solution.

I found an escape. The SCA. A real place with real people, and no phones. Playing pretend, but doing it for real. No gaming, just the reality of trying to do this all ourselves.

Granted, if you "find a D&D group" that is also an escape, but in the post-COVID era, it is very hard since so much has moved online, and Wizards is turning D&D into a "digital first" experience. The era of the local game store and finding people to play with is ending. Those stores, face-to-face groups, and places will slowly die off like the Detroit automobile. Wizards will kill them all in the search for profits. The character sheets, chat rooms, and best place to find a game will be in the connected graveyard of D&D Beyond, where face-to-face interactions go to die.

D&D (and 5E) is designed to require a heavy backend support model to play. This isn't like AD&D, where you could play on a sheet of school notebook paper. You need thousands of hours of software and web development to ship character sheets, storage services, online systems, portals, websites, backend servers, and support teams just to run a character sheet.

What is this?

It is corporate D&D.

Paid subscriptions required.

5E can't really be played alone, and the model pushes you online. The game is designed to slowly strip away your connection to reality, with too much of the fantastic and not enough to keep it grounded. D&D isn't even fantasy, the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance anymore; any connection to history has gone through a messy divorce, with the original creators called terrible things. Those sins caused the game to lose touch with what it was, and today it joins the rest of "fantasy slop" that World of Warcraft, mobile games, and Wall Street push on us like "the next Fortnite."

I need my fantasy games to connect to history and reality. Sorry, that is non-negotiable. The fantastic isn't special anymore when it is commonplace. The planar multiverse sucks and is just a writer's cop-out for not wanting to put in the work or learn the lore. I will gladly pay the company that has a writing and creation staff that cares about the lore, rather than these outfits that "hire anyone out of college" and tell them, "do whatever you want."

Sorry, lazy Wall Street holding company, not good enough, no money for you. I couldn't care less about you being a way to pay people in your college clique. Care about the lore, because the "old school players" will be the first you come crawling back to when your new edition fails. And we will be the first ones kicked out the door when you get popular.

We'd better get something from it.

I like ToV and the 5E I built.

It is still inferior to the game and connection to reality and history that we had.

History and tradition matter more than the next big popular "mobile game thing."

Wall Street has that backward, and it will never, ever change.

Society for Creative Anachronism

I attended an event put on by the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) the other day, at a friend's invitation, and I joined the next day. The SCA is a legendary organization, dedicated to period recreations of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is an amazing group of people, dedicated to their crafts, and just an amazing experience to take part in.

But be forewarned, you get out of this what you put into it.

And this is 100% diametrically opposed to roleplaying. While I bet many of their members roleplay, what they do at the events IS THE REAL THING. You are not pretending to be a medieval knight; you are putting on armor, fighting with padded swords, and actually being one. You are not showing up at events and playing D&D, either, since that did not exist in this time period.

You do not roll dice here and play pretend.

You actually do the thing.

Be it arts and crafts, scroll making, being a knight, archery, fencing, cooking, clothier, musician, or any other occupation or craft they did in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, you actually learn and DO THE THING.

You are not pretending to be a dragon boy, wearing a fur suit, putting on pointed elf ears, wearing cosplay Tiefling horns, or swinging around a prosthetic tail; you are taking on the role of a person who "could have existed" in the time, with the skills used during the time, and you participate in the events, battles, court, and other games and ceremonies.

You can't play a wizard, warlock, or other make-believe thing here - if it was real and existed in the world at the time, that is what you do.

D&D and many other fantasy games have this tendency to slip into areas harmful to mental illness. They are far too pretend and make-believe, and they lose touch with reality. Everyone has magic, every place is planar, every modern convenience has a fantasy equivalent, every race is a special magical animal or planar being, and you get into this one-upmanship and insane power curve that just reeks of childish "nuh-uh, I am more powerful than Godzilla" sort of "my pretend character is better than you."

In modern games can suck, you can have a number on your character sheet and magically not suck. You can walk around, say "my father is Odin, so I can..." and tell people how you do stupid, impossible things.

In the SCA, if you can't bead, craft, cook, sew, or do something of value, you suck, and no number on a character sheet will say otherwise. Spend time, learn, get better at the real skill in the real world, maybe make some money with the skill you have now - and NOT SUCK.

And you can't say you are Merlin, Gandalf, or some real-world historical figure.

You are who you are, and you do the real thing.

Guess what, if you spend 100 hours "learning the thing" on the character sheet, and have that skill, that is 100 fewer hours of playing pretend and learning a real trade or craft. You get the satisfaction of learning how to fire and glaze clay pottery or figurines. You get the skill to know how to sew period clothing, sing, or play music. You get the skill in melee fighting.

You get to do the things.

And you never pretend to, using dice and numbers on a sheet to cheat at real life.

And not one person at the event I went to yesterday had their face locked to a phone. They were all pretending to be "the persona they adopted," and since phones were never available at the time, nobody got them out, nobody used them during the event (except to take pictures), and nobody was locked into death-scrolling and ignoring the world around them. There were hundreds of people, dressed in period clothing, all speaking face-to-face, none of them on phones, and I felt like I was back in the 1980s.

While these games are fun hobbies, never, ever pretend they are a replacement for the real thing. Again, I am sure many members enjoy historical role-playing games, but none of them hold a candle to actually going out and doing it for real. Until you are there, doing it, at an event, you just don't know.

It was an amazing day.

And it made me see how modern "role-playing games" have lost touch with reality.

Tales & Battlezoo = My D&D

There is an innocence and clean implementation of Tales of the Valiant that I really appreciate. This is the best "generic 5E" you can get, and unlike D&D, I don't have to keep telling myself excuses to justify playing the game, despite all its baggage from Wizards.

I grew tired of the constant virtue signaling in the art, the absolute disaster of the OGL, them telling an entire group of players they could not leave fast enough, and all the terrible, negative, hurtful things they did over the years. The warning labels on the older books were like those on cigarette cartons. The disrespect thrown at the game's original creators.

There comes a point where you prove the company is unworthy of carrying the legacy forward, and Wizards has done that over and over again. And I don't really trust "the new guy" since these people come and go every few years. I saw this with the D&D 3E, 3.5E, 4E, 5E, and 5.5E teams and creators. Nobody stays at Wizards for long. In a few years, it will likely all be run by AI anyway.

Tales of the Valiant has a no-AI pledge, and the company needs this game to be their lifeline should 5E get dumped into the dustbin of history by Wizards, and make no mistake, that day is coming. They say 5E is evergreen, but history proves that a new team will make something new, and that will be the next, new, official thing.

The 5E "platform", just like the Linux "platform", is a solid, workable, good system. Just like there are some Linux vendors I can't stand, there are some 5E vendors I refuse to work with. One of them is Wizards, despite my memories, nostalgia, and history. I support the 5E platform, not D&D.

ToV was written as a beginner's game, and it was criticized for offering only two subclass choices per class; this was later addressed in the Player's Guide 2. Then again, for a beginner's game, I only want two subclass choices per class instead of D&D's four per class. The book gets too big for new players to grasp; there are too many choices, and those entering the hobby will walk away with choice paralysis.

Two clear choices are better than four for a starter game, and the ToV ones are very clear, offering "A or B" choices that support new players, and don't leave me feeling "did I make the wrong choice?"

ToV feels like old-school Labyrinth Lord back in the day. The "no baggage" and "clean support" version of BX that introduced me to the OSR. I have my original BX books, but I still chose LL over that. LL had the support, community, and love of its creator to drive interest. There is no "product identity" in here lying in wait as a trap, so I can't share content; if it is in the Black Flag SRD, it is pretty widely supported everywhere.

ToV's designs are close to the original 2014 standards, and all the "roleplay" powers are bept intact. A clear example is the ranger. The D&D 2024 version of the ranger feels like a combat-only class that focuses more on tactical battles, and the nature and roleplay powers were stripped out, likely because they were harder to support in a (now defunct) VTT.

Tales of the Valiant's ranger preserves the nature skills and abilities, and it aligns closely with my ideas of what the "5E ranger" is all about. I want a design closer to 2014 than Tasha's or 2024, and ToV hits that nail on the head. ToV keeps the best parts of the game, fixes all the problems, and creates a "clean room" version of 5E that can be supported forever.

D&D 2024 will only last as long as it takes Wizards to pump out a new version of D&D, and the life left in 5E as "the D&D system" is on a short clock. If the 2024 version failed, it would trigger the official D&D 5E support's sunset phase.

I would rather have a system that will be around a long time. And that is Tales of the Valiant.

The Battlezoo books complement the game perfectly, adding all sorts of all-ages fun while preserving the innocence of the core game. These are my "expansion books" that fill in a bunch of thematic gaps, and add a wealth of new options for dragons, monster training, and a rich assortment of other backgrounds to play.

If I am going to invest in a Battlezoo campaign and the hardcovers, I am going to invest in a 5E system that won't be replaced a few years down the road.

And there are all sorts of fun things to play here, and so many adventures to be had with all of these wonderful books. The Roll for Combat team "gets it," and they keep their books family-friendly while overdelivering value and creativity. These are fun books meant to engage your imagination, 5E system-neutral, and highly compelling, delivering enjoyment.

If I wanted to play a dragon, I could play a dragon.

Instead of promising adventure and delivering virtue signaling, these books expand what is possible and deliver amazing potential and infinite stories. They stay out of politics. They stay out of the online culture wars. I want an escape from this world, and they deliver.

ToV does the same; it doesn't insult old-school players by removing orcs and goblins from the bestiary. If I want them, they are there, just like they were in 2014 D&D. Nobody is making that choice for me; I make it. D&D 2024 feels the need to make these choices for us, and it rubs me the wrong way, like the designers are making a value judgment on me and how I play, and that is no place for them to be.

Sometimes the best thing a designer can do is stay out of my game.

But these days, I only want positive influences and happy games that don't trigger hurtful feelings or memories. I don't want to see the war on the Internet all over the pages of a game I use to escape it. I want something suitable for everybody, without hidden sex coding or demon fetishes all over the art.

If I want mature concepts or the sensitive topic of devil worship, I will add them myself. My choice: stay out of it, agenda-driven design team. A family-friendly game that avoids prejudging old-school players gives me the room to make that choice.

All of this works together so well, and the Battlezoo books are the last reason I keep 5E around on my game table. Highly engaging and worth the money.

There's No "Saving" D&D - It Is What It Is

Modern D&D has become a "platform" like Steam or Xbox; there is no going back to "what it was." Any attempt to do so will force platform customers to another product, the also-ran versions of 5E like Level Up, Nimble, Shadowdark, and Tales of the Valiant. It would not surprise me if Goodman Games isn't making its own version of Zocchi-dice 5E they can support, while also remaining compatible with "platform 5E."

At this point, everyone is making 5E. Give a company enough time and a catalog of adventures they need to support and sell, and they will make their own version of 5E. This is "Kobold's Law," and it is an accepted fact. I eagerly await DCC 5E and can't wait to see what they come up with.

Long live 5E.

D&D is just a name, but 5E is the platform.

The platform is more important than the game.

Wizards going on a nostalgia tour with Luke Gygax is the equivalent of an 80s hair metal band touring with an aging line-up. Yes, I love the artist and the skill, but D&D was replaced by 5E a long time ago, and people have moved on. Even if your books still say "D&D," it does not really matter; you could be playing any other 5E and still be in the 5E market.

Whenever D&D gets in trouble, they roll out Greyhawk and eventually replace it with the Realms a few years later. I can sing these oldies by memory at this point, guys.

Not to mention the OSR holding the ground of every previous edition. I have my "vision of D&D" over there, made by amazing creators who don't answer to shareholders who only care about stock price; they answer to players who choose their game out of love of the hobby and appreciation for the support.

Castles & Crusades.

Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Old School Essentials.

Swords & Wizardry.

OSRIC 3.0.

Adventures Dark & Deep.

Those are more D&D to me than D&D.

The last group of D&D creators built D&D 5.5E, a house that fell in on itself. Few bought, and most still play 5E. Creating a 6E is just going to create "another version Wizards has to support" and not solve the problem of the company being out of touch with the market. Wizards should have gotten out of the "edition creation game" long ago, and any more work splitting the market is going to bog the company down even more.

We do not need a 6E.

If they were honest, they would reprint AD&D, word-for-word, no sensitivity readers involved, no warning stickers like the game was a pack of cigarettes, and let the best game ever written stay in print. AD&D is like Tolkien now, please accept reality.

Stop making new editions in an era where few have the money to buy new books.

AD&D is 6E.

5E is your consumerist D&D platform, with or without you.

The market supports it.

This is where the game is now.

FTL Nomad: Winning Me Over

FTL Nomad is slowly winning me over as my science fiction game of choice. It is fast, fun, stays out of the way, has tons of options, and has a universal Xd6 dice mechanic where the only modifier is your skill level. And there are no attributes, just skills. The modifiers are minimal (skill only); this is an advantage/disadvantage multi-die system like 5E, with only one target number of 8+.

This is rules-light 2d6 gaming, but it doesn't feel rules-light.

It is just enough game without going so light that it feels inconsequential or too light to care about. There are a few systems that feel throw-away, like they don't have enough genre support or tooling that, once you start playing, you wish you were playing something else. And that something else is usually so full-featured and heavy that getting started is a massive effort you rarely have time for.

There is a companion book that increases the number of skills to 14 or 20 for more in-depth games, but the basic seven-skill game is good enough for most science fiction. In Star Wars-type pulp science fiction, a vehicle character is good at nearly any vehicle, and the combat specialist excels in both melee and ranged combat. In a universe where "anything goes," a pilot shares proficiencies between speeders and starships, that "vehicle control" skill applies to a wide range of things, and "you just don't worry about it."

Having a specific "Model 301 antigrav speeder" skill in a science fiction setting would lead to having millions of skills and a character sheet as long as a typical 5E character, dozens of pages long. In pulp settings, reduce the skill list and focus on broader proficiency categories.

If you want a difference between melee combat and ranged combat, do the 14 skills. If all you care about is "this is a combat character," then stick with 7 skills, and it does not matter. If you are going to have to buy up your melee skills to the same level as your ranged weapon skills, why not combine them? Also, if you find yourself favoring ranged combat skills, you are denying yourself chances to take advantage of melee attacks.

If the soldier is the "combat guy," then he can shoot, punch, kick, use a knife, wrestle, and fire a starship turret just as well as any other combat task. There is an elegance to one combat skill that many games lose once you are buying separate skills for knives and short swords.

The game has archetypes, so it is not "just skills," and these give you special "class benefits" in an area of activities based on archetype. The referee can also use this to cover a wider range of activities, such as a diplomat interacting with others, having the knowledge diplomats would have, exclusive access, and immunities by treaty and roles in society. You can even use these as unlocks for using weapons and gear, such as a soldier or pilot knowing how to drive a tank, where a diplomat or scholar would not.

There is a talent system that allows even more customization beyond this, ensuring you are not pigeon-holed into a specific role. Some of these support combat, social, technical, piloting, and other activities, so you can specialize within a role and get the benefits of a "5E subclass" with a far easier system.

What is interesting is that the game does away with ability scores. If you are super-strong, that would be more of a talent than a high ability score. The standard rack of ability scores gets min-maxed in OSR and 5R games anyway, and it only exists to be gamed for a single or dual benefit. Why not get rid of ability scores and pick a "charismatic" talent instead of gimping an ability score rack for one high CHR stat? The talent is far more flavorful, can be tailored to cover a specific benefit, and it does not introduce a rack of ability scores to track and manage.

Simplify, archetype, collect, aggregate, and focus on iconic roles.

FTL Nomad is a solid, modern, streamlined game that is an excellent alternative for any 2d6 system.

Roll for Combat: Best of 5E

The Roll for Combat books are among the best for 5E. I have a lot of garbage for 5E, and 90% of it could go, and I would be happier if I did. But these books, plus a generic full-featured 5E implementation, such as Tales of the Valiant?

This is good stuff. These are every bit the equal of a major publisher release, and are on the level of an "official expansion" of any version of the game you play.

Instead of making races as "flavorless dough" options of "say what you are" and shifting a few points around, we get full ancestry classes, feats, and options that improve as you level. Solid design and care are put into these options. They level up, get powers, give you that "full hit" of playing a dragon, fae, or whatever ancestry is in the book, and supply the full experience instead of a watered-down "oh, you are that, too" of the core rules.

Do I want to play any type of dragon and have full rules support for that as I level up?

This is the only place it happens.

And this is written for all ages, and I would be comfortable giving it to a younger audience, saving them from a book with "sex coded" elements and themes. It is innocent, written for all ages, and fun. Not even D&D 2024 can say that, and that is sad. There is an art and discipline to putting together an "all ages book," and the RfC books get it perfectly. ToV also does better in this department, keeping things innocent, clean, and for everybody.

I am not against those themes, but they should be in books where those topics can be discussed and shared fully, not snuck in and hidden like Easter Eggs, as they are ultimately distractions and inappropriate for all audiences. Even topics like demons and devils are treated with care in these books, and they are not as objectionable as the Tiefling ancestry is in most core books (since the game often ignores the infernal aspects and just presents them as innocent cosplay).

It is sort of shocking and stupid that the half-elves and half-orcs are removed from most of the new games, while demon-blooded characters are everywhere. I guess pop culture gotta "pop" someone out of reality and exclude somebody to please somebody else. 5E has so much of this baggage that I tire of the constant war waged on the pages and play other games. I want to escape to a fantasy world, not be reminded of this one.

Which is why innocent, all-ages games appeal to me so strongly. They have a classic, clean, and beautiful innocence untouched by the problems of this world. They are books about playing a dragon or a mimic. They deliver innocent fun, just like a Mario game does.

The Roll for Combat books are on my "best of 5E" list, and they are where I am starting my 5E library rebuild. Tales of the Valiant is my core 5E, just so I don't have to be reminded about the OGL or things like "we can't leave the hobby" remarks. Those are hurtful things, and I don't want to be reminded of them while playing a game for escapist fun.