How Much Game Do You Need?

Recently, I had to flee my home and stay in a hotel for a few days after a minor disaster. So, I had to take a game on the road. I grabbed the first game I could see, one sitting on a shelf the contractors threw there when they had to move my hall shelves. This one was completely a random "grab it off the shelf" moment, since everything was all over the place, and I needed to head out fast.

That game was Sword of Cepheus, Second Edition. This fit in my iPad Mini travel bag, I grabbed a handful of d6 dice, and I was all set and good to go. This was a choice on a whim, and, in part, the workers in the house made it for me. They left it face-up, alone, on a shelf shoved in my bedroom; they had to move there to get it out of the way.

So, it is fate that decided this for me, just like the roll of a die. I accepted the result and grabbed the book. This was my choice, one of possibly many, but in a way, the book called to me and said, "Grab the sword and accept the quest which first presents itself."

Whoever put that book there for me made a karmic choice for my future, and since it sounded fun, I went with it. Life is about adventure, and there are moments when you do not understand why something happens or how it happened, but you go with it, take that path, and see where it leads.

My small tote bag doesn't even fit an average 10-inch tablet; it is made for smaller devices and holds a digest-sized book (like Shadowdark) nicely. I could have grabbed Shadowdark, but I like the d6 games better for travel, since who wants to carry around a ton of special dice? Six-siders work; they are easy to replace at any supermarket or pharmacy, and they are the universal die.

As I was sitting in the hotel, the thought occurred to me, if my house burned down and I lost all my games, would I be happy with just this? And then I knew, I would. If I lost it all, this game would be good enough for me, and that is a freedom I neer knew I could come to terms with, and a liberation from the massive libraries and shelves full of books this hobbhy foists upon you, constantly screaming, "more is more!" and "you need hundreds of pounds of books to enjoy a game!"

It is all lies.

It is all consumerist garbage.

And it is all designed to part you from as much money as these exploitative gaming companies can manage. In a way, your average pen-and-paper role-playing game company is no different than a mobile game company, though the model is designed to be a little slower and a lot heavier. If they are selling you a library, they are selling you a lie.

These small, indie, community-focused games? They are closer to the true spirit of the hobby: throw-a-book-in-a-bag games that offer the same "depth" and "expressive options" as a game a hundred times its size and weight. Traveller has sort of lost its way with that massive, three-shelf library, and the digest-sized Cepheus games remain closer to that spirit of freedom and portability.

Why do I need to tie my life down with thousands of pounds of books? I am just burying my decades of roleplaying under a mountain of paper and lies. Giant gaming libraries are the dirt we throw on the coffin of our hobby, and they do nothing for me other than to appease some "collector's bug" I have inside my brain.

Collecting is not playing.

Owning more is not enjoying more; it is often the inverse.

Owning more means being more unhappy and playing less.

If I were to add one more game to this, it would likely be the OGL-free FTL Nomad for science fiction (and anything modern) gaming. I would need a slightly larger bag for this, but it would fit into my mobile life much better. I could do fantasy gaming with FTL Nomad, but SoC2 has so many wonderful tables and a Conan-like feeling that I cannot pass that game up.

FTL Nomad covers the rest, and while it doesn't do the 2d6 attributes, if I ever wanted a more traditional 2d6 science fiction game, Cepehus Light (my Car Wars RPG) fits in the bag, too, and is digest-sized. FTL Nomad does more genres and has a nice collection of thin expansion books, so I am getting far more with less.

I have a slightly deeper tote on order, with a 5" depth rather than my current bag's 2.5". While I like the slim bag, I will try the deeper one to see if it is a bit more comfortable for gaming on the go, plus my little notebooks, pencils, erasers, dice, and other gaming bits and bobs. The idea of finally freeing myself from a few thousand pounds of worthless gaming fat and overload is extremely appealing to me.

A few dice that give me a touch of randomness, but not so much that I am deciding which die to use. The polyhedral dice are distractions, and very few of them are statistically different enough to make a real difference. The only difference between a d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12 is a one-point average shift between each die, and nothing a one-point modifier could simulate. Maximums and minimums are nothing compared to the average result you expect over a thousand rolls.

I don't need the polyhedral dice, nor the games that use them.

This is an extra requirement, and another chain tying me to an already worthless and bloated library.

There is a certain magic to carrying every world, game, and universe in a small bag and taking it wherever you go. I have the freedom to point to a destination, attraction, or event and say, "Let's go," and take it all with me. Every world, character, campaign, and idea is in a tiny bag that I can toss over my shoulder and travel with.

All I need are a few six-sided dice.

And my imagination.

And I am finally free of a pile of paper that only serves as a weight to bury my dreams and experiences under. Digital is not the answer. PDFs are not the future.

A simple book that works without an Internet connection or electricity.

The basic die that I can find anywhere.

And freedom.

Off the Shelf: Dungeon Crawl Classics

This is my fourth "off the shelf" article for Dungeon Crawl Classics. I write one of these articles every time a game returns to my "gaming shrine" and most-played shelves. I had DCC in the garage twice over the last four years, grew disillusioned with the game for a while, put it away, and then realized the games I felt would replace it failed me and never were as fun as this one.

One reason is that some on the OSR YouTube channels don't like DCC much, and they are entitled to their opinions. Sorry, DCC is worthy as Shadowdark is. And even Goodman Games says, "DCC does not equal OSR," and that break is good for everyone. This is a beloved game, a throwback tribute rock band to the 1970s and 1980s era of role-playing, when the game cared more about fun, and everyone could play.

The OSR and DCC are different things.

The OSR is the actual game we played in the 1970s and 80s, and there is an open question of whether today's players can understand how it was played back then, amid the mess of other games and sources we brought in. They are a faithful recreation of the rules, often without the context of the time they were played in. People who never played in the era will wonder what the fuss is all about and return to 5E.

A big problem in the OSR is being excellent while replicating rules, but terrible at providing context.

DCC captures the feeling of those times, and how a modern set of rules (3.5E-derived) could recreate that moment and feeling. DCC is more of an "early-age role-playing simulator" that pulls in external influences into the experience, like listening to Asia and Styx at Shakey's Pizza Parlor while Pac-Man and Defender arcade cabinets buzz in the background. Then someone has a story about their game, and something insane and cool happens (that, by the rules, could never happen since it is clearly not in the rules), and you are all in awe of the coolness that is this game.

A player in 1980 at that pizza parlor is saying, "Your character turned into a demon?! Wow!"

A player in 2026 is flipping through the original rules, "Nowhere in the rules does it say that this could happen. Were they even playing the OSR correctly?"

While DCC is not the OSR, DCC is the context of the OSR.

Castles & Crusades is similar; while it is not AD&D 2E, it is an AD&D 1E/2E simulator in a modern rules framework. It captures the feeling while not being the thing it is inspired by, opting for a modern play experience. Call them throwback games, but they capture the experience rather than replicating the rules. If all you want is "how it plays" without "all the confusing tables and junk," then DCC will sing for you.

DCC is worthy, fun, imaginative, and it displays on my selves incredibly well.

This is the time I grew up with in gaming; if not the original game, it captures the feeling well enough.

Take me back to that pizza parlor and let me live in that moment again.

BackerKit: Castles & Crusades Adventurers Spellbook Reforged

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/troll-lord-games/castles-crusades-adventurers-spellbook-reforged

Troll Lord Games launched the reforged, OGL-free Adventurers Spellbook today. This is another winner, and I look forward to it. Check it out if C&C is your thing!

GURPS, Castles & Crusades, and Dungeon Crawl Classics

My seven shelves in my room are my gaming shrines.

5E just left the room for my storage shelves, and it is likely heading into the garage this week. I can't support a game where my characters finally get interesting, only to have the character sheets be dozens of pages long. Sorry, I can't support that. I don't have the time, and I don't play digitally. 

I am left with my three best games.

GURPS is my toolkit, the best character creation system in gaming history. Forget what game designers "think" I should have in a class build, I am just going to pick it myself. After you are fluent in GURPS, there are a lot of games you don't need, and you begin to see the held-back character options that these game companies pull on the community as another way to drain your wallet on a slow drip.

You are the game designer. And the idiots in these companies that tell you they know better can pound sand. You can do it better here, and they give you the tools. I don't need Kickstarters to sell the parts of the game they left out, or the things I need to build great characters; none of the modern grift is needed.

If you don't like GURPS, Champions, and Hero System are nearly the same thing. Buy a robust, useful, and buildable point-buy system and stop being taken for a ride by modern game designers. You are smart enough to do it all yourself, and you frankly should stop wasting your time.

Even with character creation programs, my character sheets are typically a page-and-a-half long. That isn't too long. For a game with enough depth to enthrall me and give me complete control of my character designs, GURPS works better than any 5E alternative.

Another reason I love GURPS is that I have eight crates of Pathfinder pawns. The hex-based combat system in GURPS is amazing, and I have mega-hex tiles from The Fantasy Trip to play on. This is my miniatures and figure-based gaming these days. I play a variant, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy version of Pathfinder 1e (original Golarion), with low magic and brutally realistic characters, and I have fun here. Am I creating my own stats for monsters? Yes, but I don't care, and I can always convert the BX monsters to GURPS and be close enough.

GURPS-Finder, original 3.5E Golarion is the way to go. This is the best version of the world as I remember and began to love it, before it was ruined by retcons, the removal of savagery for boring, modern, pedestrian writing, and the fear of upsetting others ingrained into the world.

My pawn storage will fill the space 5E vacates on my upstairs storage shelves. 5E went the way of Pathfinder 2. I don't have a group to manage complexity, so I can't play the game, and it would be too much work to slog through it myself.

And if I don't feel like doing it all myself? Castles & Crusades beat out all my OSR games with a system that is so straightforward and easy, it does fantasy gaming in the blink of an eye, and remains compatible with all the best of my OSR adventures. Yes, the designers are in control here, but the design is so good that it was the last game Gary Gygax played in, and it has stood the test of time for 20+ years. Great things don't need to be constantly rewritten and rereleased.

All the silly charts and tables in OSR and 5E are gone. The save system is the ability score system, and those scores mean something. Everything else is so streamlined that the game puts your characters and the story first, not artificial builds ot systems for VTTs. You are not buying the game a few times on different VTT platforms just to have the privilege of designing characters.

C&C also has an amazing pulp game called Amazing Adventures, which feels like a d20 version of Savage Worlds, and covers modern, pulp,m or science fiction settings just as effortlessly. The game has a lot of tools it can bring to the table, and this could be your only game, and you would not need to touch anything else.

C&C is the best OSR game in a sea of pretenders, designers trying to outdo each other, and crowdfunding chaff. You don't need much else once you have tasted the best.

Oh, Dungeon Crawl Classics takes a lot of heat in the OSR community, but those of us who know, oh, we know. Frankly, I don't care about the company's policy of including everybody, who cares? Everyone can play together, and should.

I love the game because it embodies the spirit of playing it as we did in the 1980s. It embraces the nerd culture, the outcasts, the gamers in the smoke-filled van with the neon felt paintings, and the whole end of the hippie counterculture that ended up in fantasy gaming. D&D has become corporate and soulless, while DCC's soul is what keeps the game's heart beating strongly.

If D&D lost its soul, DCC cut it out, took it, and owns it.

And the designs here are fun to play with. This is designed for fun at conventions and around the table, where D&D can turn into a game of Advanced Squad Leader, with deciding what to do during a turn. DCC designs each class with resources, special dice, and fun things to contribute to party-based play. The dice are amazing, quirky, cool, and fun. The emergent play and random tables are a shot of unpredictability in a hobby where D&D can feel like a long slog, feeling more like Warhammer 40K than a fantasy game where players play imaginary characters.

Strange and hilarious things can happen in DCC.

In D&D, I rarely have anything cool happen other than killing things with the same boring, predictable, the party wins outcome. D&D is boring in comparison. I would rather be heavy metal swords & sorcery than I would some overdesigned character build with a character sheet longer than my arm.

There is no shame in DCC, you can have bare-chested barbarians and chainmail bikinis here, and no one will tsk-tsk and judge you. Orcs, goblins, and kobolds are evil here and worship demons (which are also evil and not character options). Werewolves are lycanthropes and insane killers on the full moon, and not character options. Modern games with this demon, noble monster, and animorphic influences bore me, and the worldbuilding is not great. Tieflings are the demon-blooded spawn of Satan. Frankly, we are sick of it all and just want a game that embraces the Gen-X spirit and tosses out all the tail-tucking and pretentious BS rampant in gaming these days.

These are the games that have endured multiple rounds of purges and reorganization.

These will be the games I carry forward, and most of the rest, save for a few exceptions, can go to Goodwill.

Pinball Crawl Classics: Last 9 Days!

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/goodman-games/old-school-adventures-1

We are closing in on the final days of the Pinball Crawl Classics campaign for Backerkit, so now is the time to jump in and make a pledge. This is one of the more original projects in the old-school space, and it has me excited.

When we get something new and different, licensing IP outside of gaming to bring in those ideas into our world, and this is a perfect combination of arcade culture mixed with gaming.

We don't see much "new blood" in gaming, and we typically end up with self-insert vanity projects that are some "author statement" for the writer trying to bandwagon people onto, "I am right, my critics are wrong." Nobody wants to make players play through your self-insert NPC's "quest of personal fulfillment" with the players on the sidelines doing all the heavy lifting.

Nobody cares about your utopian setting, Tasha, or any of these other self-inserts or idealistic snowglobe societies.

Let the players be the heroes!

This is their story.

Not the DM's. Not the adventure writer's.

We are back in the 1990s with TSR's "bestselling novel adventures" that railroad you through a story, only this time, we are being railroaded through some writer's personal beliefs and the times they were wronged on Twitter. This is the difference between the Tomb of Horrors and the newer D&D adventures. One is a classic, and the others are soon-to-be-dated fan fiction.

But this project excites me, and is a shot in the arm for gaming.

We are getting new ideas and new inspirations. The writers create a fun little world or reality, and it is up to you to navigate through it, with your story being what drives you forward. The pinball machine, and the story behind it, is just the backdrop to your greatness.

This stuff is cool.

It kicks butt.

Worthy.

5E and Me

I still play low-level 5E, but I feel my desire to keep playing starts to fade around level 6 to 8. The build is fun; the unlocks are fun, but the complexity isn't. I play mostly solo, so building characters is fun, but level after level, the characters just die for me under the weight of complexity and too many options.

The higher level my characters get, the better the choice of options gets, but the less fun they are to play.

And the worse they become at playing as a group, when playing solo.

I play solo; I don't have three other people to manage this complexity. Pathfinder 2 failed for me for the same reason. I can't be a "class expert" in everything. With a game like GURPS, the characters are all the same, slightly different, so I can manage a few of them in a group. With these games that require a few dozen pages for a higher-level character sheet, the capacity for my head to wrap around everything goes away.

5E, any version of it except something simple like Shadowdark, is a terrible game for me.

It is tough coming to terms with that, but it is what it is. It is a game I want to have fun with, but because of how it developed and the design it brings to the table, it slowly becomes increasingly difficult for one person to solo. Above thenth level, running a party of four would be a lot of work. I could do it, but I would not enjoy it. Some probably do this and enjoy it; I don't doubt that if you are a fan of something that big, you could probably do it.

But I am not that big a fan of 5E as I am of other games, and those games are an order of magnitude simpler than 5E. So the entire effort is less worth it for me, and I don't get much out of it.

I have games with emergent gameplay, amazingly detailed character builds that are easy, and some so easy they play off 4x6" index cards at any level. I have better games I am interested in, all the way up to high-level play. And I don't have too much time for games that take that much effort. While I could play on a VTT, my heart is on the tabletop. I don't like the digital world. I like rolling dice by hand.

At low levels, 5E is fine.

At higher levels, it all starts to break apart.

Today? I'm Frustrated at 5E

My faith in 5E was shaken recently by a level 14 character sheet. The sheet was 16 pages long. Now, I don't normally play via a VTT; I like playing on a tabletop with minis, pencil, and paper.

There is no way in hell I am flipping through 16 pages during a turn to figure out what my character is going to do. I imagined running four of them solo, and my brain melted. There is no way to play 5E except on a VTT with "digital content support," and I am sorry, I am not being forced to do that anymore.

The terrible design of 5E forces those who do not pay for a VTT out of the game by level 8 or so. Instead of "pay to win," the 5E game is designed to "pay to play."

Low levels? Fine, that is the free tutorial and demo. High levels? You'd better pay up, or the game will kill you with complexity.

I still like 5E, but it feels hopeless. I will be forced to play it "as a solo computer game" on a VTT, and I have MMOs that compete with that.

D&D is sadly becoming a game written only for VTTs or streamers. Sorry, tabletop and miniatures gamers. You have been written out of the game when they dropped the dungeon exploration rules and turned the game into "Dungeon Boss Battles, the RPG."

I sound bitter, but I am. I am sorry. But seeing a 16-page character sheet generated pissed me off, and there is no way I am printing that out and wasting that much paper. Nor am I playing via PDF.

Dungeon Crawl Classics? My level 10 character is still on a single side of a sheet of paper. Castles & Crusades? The same thing, a single-sided character sheet for a level 24 character. Old School Essentials or Swords & Wizardry? The same thing. One-sided character sheets, yet still near-infinite depth.

Wizards of the Coast will write rules and rules and rules, and those will bleed over onto your character sheet, and you will be expected to support them.

It is not impossible to design a game that plays off one side of a character sheet for the entire experience.

And the emergent play of DCC proves it is never boring to do that, either.

I am more frustrated than angry, though. But 5E is now on my secondary game shelves. I love Tales of the Valiant, but the length of the character sheet, digital support, and double-purchase requirements make it hard for one person to support and play. Even GURPS is easier for me at this point.

I feel like I loved 5E, but the game walked away from me for the VTTs and streamers.

I don't know how to square that up without packing the game up and putting it in storage again.