BackerKit: Castle Whiterock (DCC)

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/goodman-games/castle-whiterock

The Castle Whiterock mega-dungeon for DCC & 5E is over on BackerKit, and the price was very reasonable for what you get. I expected this to be three times the price, and it came in on what I wanted to spend. There are plenty of shiny add-ons, but the basic clamshell boxed set, plus hardcover (in the first 48 hours only, softcover after), was a great deal.

Some companies still keep gaming affordable and fun, and Goodman Games has a winner here. Backed and supporting.

The Death of Fantasy Slop

I feel the tide turning.

I saw a review of Nimble today criticizing the "too broad" fantasy race options and saying it didn't feel like a defined world; the modern "anything goes" mish-mash of fantasy backgrounds didn't feel real to them. The game itself and the rules were great, but that modern "fantasy slop" of "any race is valid" was tiring to them.

I love Nimble, but I feel that way too.

While I love having choices, I get that same old feeling of choice paralysis when walking down the cereal aisle as I do when picking a fantasy race. There are far, far too many options in these games; designers have given up on worldbuilding, and as referees, we are expected to "support any idea" that drops by our table. Forget that the world we built (or play in) does not have cat or demon people; if someone wants to play one, we have to make adjustments and change our world to fit their idea.

Normally, I would be cool with this. But lately, it just makes me tired. Fantasy worlds are planar bus stops, filled with anything and everything wandering through. For some worlds, that works, but I sense the general consensus is moving away from that direction.

People want defined races in a sandbox world with history and consequence.

Every fantasy game does not need to look like the cantina in Star Wars.

I miss the days of the core four: human, elf, dwarf, and halfling. That's it! If you want to play gruff and dour, play a dwarf. Practical jokers and foodies, play halflings. Elegant and noble, play an elf. Everyone else plays humans. It is a simplification, but the simplicity in a world where some games offer time travelers and cyborgs as race options is welcome.

Race-as-class reduces the urge to keep adding new races, since they would all be new class designs in the game and thus hard to design and support.

And this is not a question of "real world diversity," which is how many frame it. I was bused as a kid, and I loved the experience of different cultures and races. None of my best friends looked like me, and we all played D&D as the outcast nerds. We had black kids, a gay kid in a tracksuit, and me in our D&D club, and the modern feeling "not enough diverse kids played D&D back in the 1980s" is a complete lie. Teachers would confiscate our dice and books as "Satanic literature and trinkets." We didn't have phones or PDFs back then, either.

TSR had a diverse player base for D&D. The affordability of a hobby in general helps adoption across all backgrounds. This is why the OSR today is a far more diverse place than a hobby exclusively for the wealthy, which is where corporate gaming is headed.

And a world with "just humans" can be incredibly diverse (hello, Earth).

This is a question of game design.

As a referee, creating a world like that is hard. I could give up and make it that planar bus stop, but a part of me stops caring about the world and designing a cohesive history. With the core four, I can design a world and keep the lore and history straightforward. As a world-builder, my job is easier the fewer options I have. When the selection gets into dozens of races, my mind begins to overload, and the game is harder to referee, in that my worldbuilding now needs to take into account "X squared" numbers of interactions between all the races, and sub-factions within each race, so it could even be "X cubed."

How do dwarves feel about parrot people? Plant people? Stone elementals? Fae dragons? Coconut puppets? Tieflings? Half vampires? Skeleton races? Ghosts? Living dolls? Dark elves? Light elves? Stone elves? Mimic races? Changelings? Werewolves? Cat people? Weasel people? Magic cloud full of sparkle races? A random race stolen from the next popular anime person? Octopus people? Normalized mind flayer races? Beholders as player options? Displacer beast kin? And now figure there are subfactions within each one of those races...the good mind flayers versus the bad ones.

And I just give up.

It's a planar bus stop.

I am not doing worldbuilding for this mess.

Or I will just go play a game with fewer options and be happier.

Like our incredibly diverse D&D club in the 1980s did.

Traveller 5E Update

I am happy to see the Traveller 5E campaign doing well and nearing the half-million mark. The books are still expensive; four at $80 each is not cheap, but that is the current going rate for 5E hardcovers. Many are being priced out of the market. Also, the October 2027 target is 18 months away, which is a long time to wait.

Also, shipping prices are going through the roof. I just paid $50 for shipping for one campaign, and I am seriously scaling back my pledges this year. Castle Whiterock for DCC will be my next one (4 days), and any other campaigns this year will have to be knockouts.

Granted, the PDFs will likely be out sooner, and I have not heard much on VTT or character designer support, which is a must-have for many to even consider supporting a campaign. Some versions of 5E I can't play because the tools aren't there, and even then, it is always an extra "digital purchase" in a VTT store to "own the rules there," and I feel I am being fleeced by the 5E industry again.

I can play Traveller with the 2d6 system today, or even cheaper (and free options) with the Cepheus system. There is a massive price gap between the free Cepheus Engine PDF and the $1,000 all-in pledge here. It sort of highlights where the entire 5E market is going, premium crowdfunding "experiences" with $1,000 buy-ins for the "ultimate fan package."

And for $1,000, I can get a much more complete and rewarding experience with GURPS or even Battletech. I could get a box of mechs that would fill a table for that much, and have months of painting to do.

I like the Traveler 5E concept; it sounds exciting. This would have been an instant buy for me last year.

This year, it isn't. Times are tough. I have Battletech and GURPS, and those are amazing games. I have a complete 2d6 Traveller collection. I have more 5E than I can play, and DCC will happily take all the attention for fantasy for me.

I don't have the time or money for this, and it is sad to see this going at such a high price point. This is the world we live in, but I do wish them well and all the success they can earn.

We are in the age of the premium 5E "fan experience," and it sort of sucks.

Backerkit: Traveller 5E

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/world-s-largest-rpgs/traveller-5e

If you like science fiction and 5E, this is the game to get.

But the prices are a bit of a sticker shock. $350 for the core book bundle and $1,000 for all-in. Wow, I have not seen a basic book bundle of a crowdfunding campaign this high before. I wish them all the best in selling the books at this high a price point. Licensing fees also play into this.

I would get this, but not at this price point.

Just as video gaming is becoming a hobby for the rich, tabletop gaming is moving in that direction, too. 5E is also an expensive system to support, and you can easily sink thousands (if not tens) into the hobby every year.

I like both systems, but I have Cepheus and GURPS to cover all my Traveller science fiction gaming needs. I like GURPS far better than 5E, especially for science fiction. While the MMO-ness of 5E is appealing, I would rather just play GURPS and have it all without the complicated character sheets of 5E.

That is another problem, the absolute need for character creation tools for 5E. I see Roll20 support, but how complete is that? Creating 5E characters by hand is a complete non-starter for any version of 5E. I am refusing to do that anymore after seeing character sheets print out to 16+ pages. My GURPS character sheets are only four pages for a 1,000-point character, and two pages for most other characters that I play.

And for $1,000, I could buy nearly every GURPS book ever printed and have a complete, three-shelf library of a game that can do anything. I checked this on Amazon too, and it is just under $1,000 for most of the 3rd- and 4th-edition books in PoD. Don't ask me how I know, but I have six shelves like this.

Also worth noting is EN World's 5E science fiction game based on the Level Up system. The Void Runners Codex is a complete boxed set that includes the physical books for about $200. I enjoy Level Up and have this, and it is a solid, more affordable alternative if you don't care for the Traveler universe and just want a generic, 5E science fiction system.

It is a strange world to live in, seeing GURPS as the easier game to support and play than 5E, but here we are in 2026. It comes down to preference and willingness to learn the rules, ultimately, and is a personal choice. While the core systems of 5E are easier than GURPS, in the end, character sheet complexity in 5E is an order of magnitude more complicated than GURPS, with expensive software requirements (and subscription models).

Traveller 5E is a really nice game, expensive and it shows, but it is not for me. As I get older, I have less time for these games, and I tend to stick to the ones I know and love that cover many genres. For me, that is GURPS.

It Is Time for the New

Before Tolkien, we had stories of knights and heroes, King Arthur and Sir Lancelot, Merlin and the dragon, and earlier times of Rome and the Ancient Greeks. We had the Bible, too.

I still have the Bible.

Tolkien resynthesized what came before and made it new again. The Appendix N authors were the new wave of creators, Conan and many others, who cut a blaze of glory through our minds and imaginations.

D&D came along in the 1970s and resyntisized all of that. We had a good run with that game, and eventually D&D became stale. The last real high point for the brand was pre-Wizards, in the 1990s, with the NYT Bestseller novels. But, like any IP, they never took care of the brand, never protected it from the garbage of pop culture, video games, Internet memes, and the toxic influence of social media, and the game died.

Oh, you can still buy the books, but like a necromancer resurrecting grandma, the soul of D&D isn't there anymore. It is full of anthropomorphic races, too modern anachronisms, steampunk, pink hair, Victorian trench coats with plate pauldrons, the neon-colored planes of every idea, and I don't even know what this game wants to be other than "Fortnite: Fantasy Edition."

That is the Fortnite legacy: toss a million and one random characters in the same world and put it on a blend. It is a buffet full of familiar but low-quality food. Pizza you would never touch, but since it is on the buffet, you grab a slice. And in the end, you walk away feeling sick and vow to never eat at a buffet again.

I can see why people are returning to strongly curated experiences, with the "toxic modern mashup" kept out. I don't want the goofball Fortnite crap in my games anymore.

I don't want "everything" anymore; I want "that one best part" with all the garbage kept out.

I want pizza that I would order if that is all I was eating. I want a pizza experience that I would return for. I don't want a cold, tasteless, dry, garbage slice of pizza-like bread thrown on my plate next to the turkey and mashed potatoes.

I am done with the garbage "all-in-one" experience.

They never took care of D&D, and like a pet you never take care of, it died, and there is no bringing it back. Many of us have moved on. We remember through the OSR, and needing "D und D" as some sort of three-syllable noise we make when someone asks us "what we are playing" is not all that important anymore.

In fact, D&D brings with it so much baggage, like the OGL, that many of us dislike the three-syllable sound, and it provokes a gut reaction of revulsion toward the brand. How am I supposed to play Greyhawk without alignment, D&D 5.5E? Or is it another corporate skinsuit?

"D und D" becomes the problem: the modern corporation telling us what to like, what the game is, who should play it, and the toxic social media enforcement mobs these companies wink and nod to, acting as their online thought police. How companies let this devolve to this point is beyond me; it is as if they all collectively gave up on the brand and let the mobs run the show.

Maybe there was no value there, and they were throwing everything against the wall in a desperate plea for attention. Like the end days of Fortnite and Warner Brothers, here comes Bugs Bunny to pick up an AR-15 to kill people with. Might as well go out with a bang, buddy.

Hey, all of us in the office are happy to be paid; we don't really care. The rest are pushing their own agendas with the brand. Even corporate doesn't care anymore. As long as we "move the engagement needle" like a needle filled with heroin, nobody cares.

With D&D, I get that "death of a brand" feeling all over again.

And we have better.

We have the OSR, other games, and the break with the OGL made is a divorce that was long overdue. Instead of OSR games being "D&D-likes" and a wink-and-a-nod, they were forced to innovate and become their own thing. Tribute games, like DCC, arose and became their own brands. Shadowdark emerged from the darkness. Nimble did a million dollars in its reprint and expansion. The OSR has a dozen strong games: S&W, OSRIC 3.0, ADAD, Dragonslayer, C&C, DCC, ACKS, and a few others.

Even with 5E, we have Shadowdark, Nimble, Level Up, Tales of the Valiant, and likely more replacement games coming. You can play 5E without touching D&D.

We are in the age of the D&D replacements. I have more than I can play. I can afford to be choosy. Some will collapse and fail. Others will be taken care of through this coming downturn and survive.

D&D is becoming those old comics and stories that Tolkien replaced.

And I will return to those classic fantasy comics and play them with GURPS, and turn the clock back to better days. Even simulationist gaming, like where my 250-point Sir Lancelot is struggling with a crossbow wound to the leg with bandits approaching, is better than the mess that D&D has become these days. That one story is more engaging than anything D&D or 5E can give me. What, short rest, and that wound and the pain are magically gone?

The short and the long rest are not engagement mechanics; they are narrative game mechanics meant to reduce the pain of consequence, just like that needle filled with heroin. Let's keep the goofball antics coming and not think about what happens after the trigger is pulled. Storytelling games have become part of the larger problem in gaming, as the corporations use those consequence-free tools to push engagement.

I enjoy the low-fantasy stories more these days. I don't like the modern mish-mash. I want consequences in my gaming. I want a heart. I want a story. I crave a game with a soul.

Those old comics still have that.

The old games still have that.

Creators making games to appeal to those feelings "get it."

The Nostalgia Play

When every big franchise fails, they will do the Nostalgia Play. You see this in comics, movies, TV, and superheroes, where they hire a bunch of writers and artists from the new generation to "revitalize the franchise," and it fails to deliver.

The "modern take" on an "old classic" will always fall short. No classic franchise has ever been revitalized for a new audience. I do not know why they keep doing this. Shows like K-Pop Demon Hunters show that if you want a new audience, do something new.

Do something new.

That is where your new audience waits for you.

Companies think that buying nostalgia is a gold mine, when it isn't. Most of these cultural recycling projects fail.

So, here we are with D&D. After the World of Warcraft version of D&D 4 and the Fortnite D&D 5 (which is how it all ended), what is going to come next? A rollback to AD&D? The company has no clue what it owns, other than "they should make it fit the times," and they are determined to change it all and fail again.

Let's put an OSR coat of paint on D&D 5 and see if it sells.

It is the same mess of a game with too many confusing action types and broken multiclassing. There are too many rules! The books are horribly overwritten and long. Nothing has changed, just the contact paper, fake wood veneer, they will put over the same books to try to sell them to us again.

And since reading levels are dropping like a stone and many are graduating high school unable to read, who are you going to sell a 1,000-page game to again? Tell me who this new audience is, I want to know, because there they are, over there with their faces glued to their phones. Unless you can put D&D on in a 6-second TikTok video, I don't think they know you exist.

If this generation can't read, the next one won't know how to roll dice and interpret results.

Shadowdark is an easier game for people to play "D&D" with. The rules you need to know are barely 10 digest-sized pages long. Shadowdark speaks to the "next generation" much more clearly than a thousand-page game does, lost in identity gaming and the social strife of the 2020s.

All D&D does is remind me of how many people fought over the game and "what it was." They tried to battle for the game's identity and control the hobby's cultural zeitgeist, and when it became unpopular, they all left to fight over something else. The game only exists to support their politics and ideals, and nobody really cares about the game itself, only the platform it gave them.

Everyone moved on, the end.

And the new team at D&D has an impossible job. Sell the old books and try to appeal to those who still care, yep, it's us, the grognards again. We are being asked to support them, again, and form the core audience of the next version, this time, "appealing to the old-school crowd" - just like D&D 5 did.

They always keep coming back to the grognards, and we are always the ones kicked out of the club first. THACO the clown. The warnings on older editions. "We can't leave the hobby fast enough." The D&D history book that tore down the original creators. They keep wanting us back, but they keep kicking us out at the first chance they can get. Once they get a hit and something that appeals outside of the grognards, they will show us the door as fast as they can.

But, sorry. I have better games. Dungeon Crawl Classics, Castles & Crusades, Shadowdark, Nimble, OSRIC 3.0, and many more. Even GURPS is a great experience. The Critical Role crowd moved on to Daggerheart and Nu-D&D storytelling games. So D&D wants me to give up my old friends to "come back to them?" Sorry, my old friends are great, and they like what I like, and they are not changing with the wind. They won't kick me out once they get popular.

Dungeon Crawl Classics "gets it" for me, and it isn't changing. It still calls to me, and I have two shelves dedicated to its glory. DCC is more Greyhawk than D&D 5E will ever be.

Even GURPS is more Greyhawk than D&D 5E. We used to play Greyhawk with this in the late 1980s. It was fun and felt real. I loved that game.

I don't care how much D&D wraps itself in the Gygax family and Greyhawk; the heart and soul of D&D are gone. It lives on in other games. Wizards isn't delivering NYT Bestseller paperback novels like they were in the 1990s. D&D 5E is a 12-year-old game. The company sits on a gold mine of previous editions, yet refuses to sell or support them. But then again, they would just mess them up if they did, so leave my memories alone, please.

Sorry, D&D.

I have new friends these days, and they are just fine.

I'm not coming back.

Sorry D&D, no, I'm Not Interested

I'm sorry, D&D, but I have moved on. Like any abusive relationship, I decided to end things on my terms, find other games, and enjoy my time gaming. I know you are cozying up to the old-school crowd, putting a coat of polish on Grayhawk, but I am just not all that interested in you anymore.

You are happy with your modern influencers, the endless D&D news sites (that will turn on you, give it time), and D&D YouTube, who seem to see this new outreach to the OSR crowd as a second coming of 2020. The endless hype and courting of us old-school players feels hollow.

The warnings are still on those books on the DriveThru site. The art in your books makes my eyes bleed. Your Fortnite-level of pandering with "nobody dies," "weapons do nothing here," and "identity gaming" makes my stomach turn. That "history of the game" book that accuses the original founders of being terrible people still is for sale. Orcs and humanoid monsters have still been removed from the Monster Manual.

You haven't changed.

Nor can you have it both ways.

I have found better games from people who want to be in a "gaming relationship" with me. They have given me endless enjoyment, have been "stable partners" for years now, and I am happy with them. Unlike you, which will change again and again based on the whims of your parent company, venture capital firms, and the gaming media, these companies need to focus on making me happy to survive.

The games I found "work hard at making this relationship work" for both of us. And I do my work too, support them, and make them a part of my "gaming life" so we can be "happy together."

The gaming media will turn on you, the bile and hate will come your way from the other side that hates the old-schoolers, and they will accuse you of being a terrible person, too. You don't want to "associate with us" because the people you hang out with these days have hated us, and they will always hate us because hate is the only thing they have in their empty lives.

Us? We have games and happiness in their lives, and maybe that is what they hate. You chose to hang out with that crowd, not us, and all your "new friends" are going to turn on you hard very soon. Expect headlines of "how D&D is embracing its problematic past" to land very soon from the people who used to be your friends.

Some of these companies are as progressive as you, but they know how to balance what they say with what appeals to everybody. You just went off the deep end, hoping your new friends would support you. They didn't, most moved on to other games, and you discovered that they were not really your friends, you thought they were. All they wanted was for you to say the things they wanted to hear, and they never really enjoyed being with you, only that you were popular.

And they found new friends to play with in Daggerheart and many other games.

That new audience has walked away, and here you are coming back to me?

It isn't 1980, 1990, 2000, or 2020 anymore!

Things "can't be like they were."

Even that time in 2010 when you tried to hang out with World of Warcraft players didn't work out so well, either, huh?

But 2030 will be different this time!

Sorry.

That ship has sailed. I only have a few more decades to play games, and I have better ones that make me happy and cater to what I like. Seeing you change like a chameleon again is not what I am interested in. I know you have money and can pay for nostalgia bait, but that is not writing a game that I like to play, nor does it make up for the hurt you caused with things like the OGL.

I'm not stupid like most of the D&D YouTube channels that will "forget about it all" just for a few views. "D&D is back!" they will scream, and I will casually scroll by, choosing the next video since I am just not interested in any of that anymore, just like I have given up on 5E Kickstarters and other wastes of time.

Even if I wanted to play 5E, I'd rather play something better. ToV, Level Up, and Shadowdark have orcs in the monster lists. You don't. You can't "write a Greyhawk book" and ignore that. Ald ToV and Level Up are far better balanced than modern 5E, written by people who played the game and know the pain of D&D 2014, and worked hard at making things fun again at the table.

Nimble exists, too. It gives me everything 5E does, but in far fewer pages and with far less complexity.

And we are not interested in DLC sold to us as power creep; that sales tactic just leads to the next edition dropping sooner rather than later. I hate splatbooks that are better than the original game, invalidate my original books, and introduce a new high-damage meta and baseline of play.

I've been through that time and time again with you, D&D, and I am not falling for it again.

We can't help you anymore, since most of us have already moved on to better things. We are over here enjoying our games and playing them, having fun with all the new relationships we worked hard to make. We have better games now. I am not giving them up to come running back to you.

And there are games written far better than the bloated mess D&D has become. Even if I wanted you back, there are far better presented and written games that "do the same thing" but are far easier to play, travel with, and carry around than the library you force me to maintain. I can throw Shadowdark in a laptop bag and have a complete game on the go. D&D? Sorry, I am not carrying a shelf full of books or maintaining a subscription to read my PDFs. It is thousands of pages to do the same thing Shadowdark does in tens.

And Shadowdark does a better "Greyhawk experience" than D&D, and I don't need to buy another book to "make 5E play like an old school game." I don't need to "mod the 2024 rules" with another digital purchase to "play like it is 1980 again." It is another book, hundreds of pages of rules, on top of a game already over 1,000 pages long. Only to see someone drop in with a DLC build meant to break the game with power creep, and all of a sudden, my "authentic Greyhawk game" is broken by your digital sales department.

I have games that understand the original experience and are written to provide just that.

And they are easier to manage and play.

And I am over you.