Local Play? Mostly All D&D 2024?

I checked my local hobby store's game schedules, and they are nearly 80% D&D 2024. If you want to play in person at a hobby store, you will be playing D&D 2024. I don't blame hobby shop owners; they want more people through the door, and niche games are harder to arrange and support.

This store is pretty typical of the ones around here, 90% D&D 2024, with a few niche games, such as Daggerheart on Saturdays, and a monthly Star Wars campaign. We have some regular 2014 games and generic "5E" sessions in here as well, along with a handful of 3.5E games. The lack of Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Draw Steel, Pathfinder, and a few other games surprises me. Also, Daggerheart having a regular weekend game is nice, but D&D 2024 is still crushing that game in live play every evening.

Most evenings, you have two or three D&D 2024 games.

Different stores, though, support different games. This one is more of a WotC store.

It is all about creating public events with broad appeal, since only a fraction of the gaming population will make time to play in person. The fall-off in D&D 2014 support also surprises me, given how vocal D&D YouTube is about "people sticking with D&D 2014" - I am betting there is a "reality distortion field" happening in D&D YouTube versus actual, in-store play. Some of those D&D YouTubers need to visit an actual hobby store and "touch dice" to get back in touch with the reality of what is happening in live play.

More people are playing D&D 2024 than they say, or even what D&D Beyond is reporting. That often-quoted "15% of created characters are for D&D 2024 on D&D Beyond" number seems pretty insane when I look at the above game schedule for live play. Also, you need to take into account that this is 10 years of character creation for 2014, versus a few years for D&D 2024.

Yes, my played games calendar is a very limited data point, since I am not looking at the schedules of thousands of hobby stores. But now I am wondering if the narrative on YouTube matches reality.

If every night of the week at a major metropolitan hobby store has two or even three D&D 2024 games going on, are you sure those D&D Beyond numbers of 15% are right? With this data, I am wondering whether more people play D&D 2024 in hobby stores, face-to-face, than on D&D Beyond.

Are you sure you want to go through with that digital-first strategy, Wizards? Is the whole VTT thing fading, and are people going back to traditional, in-person play? Wouldn't you want to double down on hobby stores and in-person play? I am beginning to wonder if a digital-first strategy is a disaster-ending one.

If I ran Wizards, I would hire a data expert and figure out where the game is being played. Then, I would go there, and that is where we would invest our resources. Hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on a VTT could have been invested in live-play programs, yielding a far, far, far better result. I am beginning to wonder whether the soft landing for D&D 2024 at launch was due to a lack of resources to support live-play programs.

The ground game matters.

But like D&D 5 itself, things are picking up a few years in.

This hobby-store data is also about curating an "audience" in these stores who will play one game, show up, and buy the overpriced drinks and snacks. Supporting fewer games builds the population of people who will show up every week. They do what they gotta do, and I don't blame them.

You follow the audience.

Also, if I am running a game? Yeah, I want people to be at my table, and I want the most people to choose from. D&D 2024 all the way, standardize on what 90% of the people play, and not waste a trip to the store for nobody to show. Even though I like other 5E variations, I can play D&D 2024 if that is what others are playing.

Two or three D&D 2024 games per night? Do I want a game? Do I want overflow players? Yes to all of the above. If you are in this crowd and find a good store and group, why wouldn't you jump in? The pool is hopping, jump in!

While I may prefer a more niche version of the game, such as Level Up A5E or Tales of the Valiant, I can play D&D 2024 if need be. 95% of it is the same game. It is not that big of a jump, as say, from Daggerheart or Draw Steel. Also, I suspect many of these are hybrid games that use 2024 books, but pull in popular house rules from 2014.

Online is a different universe, where any game can be played at any time, and you can usually find (or set up) a game with whatever version you want. One limitation is game support on your VTT of choice; if you are on Roll20, you don't have full support for Tales of the Valiant or Level Up A5E, as the platform is 90% D&D 2014 and 2024, plus other games with official support. Foundry is a different experience, as is Shard VTT.

I can play on a VTT for a niche game with fewer than 500 total players worldwide and still find a game.

But D&D 2024 is the game people will drive to a store to play in person, face-to-face.

Mail Room: Compendium of Dungeon Crawls (Volume One)

I can almost hear the people asking Goodman Games this, "I love your adventures, but our group plays 5E. I wish you made old-school-style adventures for 5E!"

So, they did.

These are actually kind of cool. If I am considering playing Level Up: Advanced 5E again, I don't want the Wizards' adventures and worlds. I am looking to get away from them and do new stuff, rather than retreading Ravenloft for the third time in 5E. Nostalgia only goes so far before I get sick of it all.

And while I love the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, they feel so overused to me, known, cosmopolitan, and done with after playing in them since 1980. The Realms especially feels so overdone and overblown; every time I look at it, it feels like walking around Manhattan, and it's too much to grasp and comprehend.

I play in the Realms, and it is "what about the Harpers, this group, that group, or the video game characters?" I don't want a world like that; it is too busy, too pop, too hard to grasp the lore, and I would rather make my own world than be forced to deal with a stream of canon and adventures 40+ years in.

Even Greyhawk feels too much like nostalgia bait to me. If I accept Greyhawk, that gives Wizards the license to re-release every AD&D module in that world, and I am doomed to never see anything new. I played all those adventures when they came out. I still have them. I am not interested in them.

I want Wizards to prove that they can write an all-new, all-time classic like The Tomb of Horrors. They have a few out, but they come from the early days of 5E. I have not seen too many absolute bangers from Wizards lately, and it all feels like nostalgia.

These are very creative and inventive adventures, written a lot like the all-time classics of the Original Adventures Reincarnated series, which I am blessed to have a complete collection of on my shelf. If you loved those and want adventures in the old-school style written just like these, then the 5E Goodman Games releases are a perfect continuation of that theme and series.

If you loved those, you will love this.

Oh, and these get a pass on nostalgia from me since these are amazing, faithful, and incredible recreations. I have these. I would love to see Goodman do more of these, but they will likely never revisit this line, and the reprint licenses have expired. This is the best nostalgia, since it includes history, interviews, the original adventures and maps, and is a complete history of the moment.

Nostalgia, the original adventure, plus history and interviews? Yes, please. This is preservation of the hobby and creating a historical document. This is not a remaster or rewrite.

Would I play them? Maybe, maybe not. I appreciate that they are not CR-balanced and they "are what they are." Playing without balancing and letting the players balance things without the referee needing to worry about it is how I play 5E. You set up a dungeon, stock it, let the players roam around it, and the players will figure out when they need to stop or if they can take a fight. This is the OSR way.

The adventures in the Compendium of Dungeon Crawls feel like they were balanced with the CR tools. I can live with that, since I am free to expand these as I wish. Having them balanced is good for groups who play that way, but I can always create my own themed dungeons as add-on areas to these. Plus, if I want adventures not CR-balanced and "as it is," I always have my 5E megadungeon adventures.

And really, they are a perfect fit for a more old-school themed version of 5E, such as Level Up A5E. This version of 5E supports the exploration pillar of play, which makes it unique and matches the old-school feeling of these adventures. This is a peanut-butter and chocolate combination; having exploration play supported and written into the rules makes A5E play like an old-school game, but with 5E rules and builds. The social pillar, fully supported by the rules, helps, too, and it makes my social characters shine more than they do in either D&D or ToV.

A5E is a unique mix of 5E, 4E, and old-school gaming. The danger is here. Pop-up healing and other exploits are fixed. The martial classes rock. There are rare spells to collect. The three pillars of play are supported in the rules. The exploration game is real and supported by class features. Multiclassing is expanded upon and fully supported. The characters are more complicated than straight 5E or ToV characters, but the details are appreciated and needed for the new rules systems.

Yes, you are doing extra work on the characters to support the new subsystems, but that extra work matters. Paired with adventures written in the old-school way and keeping the library pared down, perhaps this fixes everything.

A generally innocent and fun series from Goodman for 5E, and it shows the system can take on a different complexion and feeling with the right adventures, and a system written in that style.

Star Wars: Inspirations

https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/starwarstheoldrepublic

Watch the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO cutscenes on YouTube if you want inspiration for characters and adventures. Yes, they are not the current setting or world, but all of Star Wars is pretty much interchangeable in terms of lore, gear, and stories. There are parallels across every role, ship, and faction in that game, as there are in "modern day" or even "1970s" Star Wars.

It is all the same universe in look and feel, with slight changes in lore and backgrounds.

The MMO is still fun, too, if that is your thing, and you will find many Star Wars fans there. Sometimes, being inspired to do something takes a little immersion in the source material.

Also, there is nothing stopping you from playing Star Wars as an SWTOR-style game, with strong Jedi and Sith factions playing a larger role than they do in the canon universe. In fact, the Force and Destiny game assumes there are quite a few Jedi and Sith in the current universe. You could run with the theme of strong "Jedi and Sith" users all over the place in Episode 4 continuity, along with major factions, and be just fine. Or you could simply play in the SWTOR universe of the MMO, if that feels better for you.

Information about SWTOR is mostly online, and many guides and books are out of print. I am lucky enough to own the SWTOR Encyclopedia, which is becoming hard to find. It gives me all the information (though a bit outdated compared to the current game), and it remains a rock-solid campaign sourcebook for SWTOR roleplaying. I am lucky to have this in excellent condition.

I do hope the MMO keeps going strong. I played it a few times, and it is classic BioWare, with voice acting, and a fun experience that is better than most single-player games in terms of voice acting and storylines. The cut-scenes for this game are worth the price of admission, and they are instant inspiration for roleplaying in this universe, or any of the related Star Wars timelines.

The comics and EU books are also solid sources of inspiration, as is going back and watching the original movies. Stay away from newer TV shows and movies if you feel disappointed by them, and just focus on the things that make you happy and help light that spark of inspiration.

Als, start small, in the micro, and in the moment. Just make a small scenario and nothing big, like stormtroopers hunting for

Thinking About: Level Up A5E

Ever since I standardized on Tales of the Valiant, I have had my Level Up A5E books in the garage, in an airtight plastic case, protected, yet waiting there in case I wanted to return to them. I have missed this system because it is one of the best-designed and most well-thought-out revisions of the 2014 5E version on the market.

If you are bought into LUA5E, Tales of the Valiant is nothing to write home about, since it is just a "patched 2014 5E." With Level Up, the game was rebuilt, the SRD rewritten, and the game designed around core pillars of play. I have never seen exploration done so well in a 5E system, and the entire system supports wilderness adventuring beautifully. 

With ToV? It is more of the same as 2014 5E, which is honestly a good thing. But if the exploration pillar of play is not supported, why even choose a ranger? At least ToV keeps the "soft powers" for exploration from D&D 2014, but they have no mechanical benefit since there is no exploration system to support them. Many A5E players never jumped to ToV, preferring the rebuilt classes of A5E, and not seeing enough new to switch. This market fragmentation hurt both games, ultimately helping D&D, but A5E is still out there and doing well.

A5E should be doing better; it is that good.

D&D 2024 is nothing to write home about either. For the ranger, they eliminated all survival powers and focused solely on VTT powers. The design of D&D 2024 is horrible at supporting anything other than VTT play, and it is really the weakest version of 5E out there today in terms of supporting the different pillars of play.

Again, A5E players saw this and said, "Why waste our time?"

In Level Up A5E, we need rangers! All martial classes gain fighting techniques at a stamina cost. Mages can find rare versions of spells. The social pillar of play is supported. There are massive environmental challenges built into the system. Where ToV is content to patch and provide the same thing, A5E rebuilds the entire 5E system in every area, keeping it 80% the same, but that last 20% of the rebuild is what takes an engine from a rough idle to a smooth, powerful purr of power and responsiveness.

This is still 5E, but in every darn way it has been rebuilt and improved. We lose 3rd party subclass compatibility, but when the existing classes are this good, why do I need junky, made-to-fix-2014 subclasses ever again? Many 3rd-party subclasses are either flavor or patch material, and they are nothing I can't simulate by sticking to what is in A5E, rebranding it, and making a few tweaks.

The downsides? It takes a lot of work, by hand, to create a character. The process is slow and painful. But you learn more about the system this way, and if this is the way it is, then I accept it. You want to play 5E, and no VTT will hide the pain for you; play it raw and accept the truth. If you can't, then play an easier system. A5E is a more in-depth system than 5E, and why I would ever want that seems like a recipe for disaster, but somehow, it works.

My low-level character sheets run two double-sided pages per character in A5E.

I do not know how bloated they get at higher levels, which is something I am interested in finding out. Hand-run sheets are generally more compact than a VTT print-out.

A5E is like AD&D for 5E. While I feel 5E character sheets are too long, A5E gives me the extra depth that makes the game actually work well enough to he considered a serious system, rather than "just another 5E." 5E character sheets reprint a lot of rules they don't need to, and some of these "print to PDF" character sheets from VTTs are atrocious and make the game worse for everyone.

What we have in A5E works so well that I feel many 3rd-party subclasses take more away from the rebuilt game than they add. Many 3rd-party subclasses are worthless bloat or are meant to create a style of play that the corebooks should have supported. 

What we have in the core game of A5E, plus the expansion books, is excellent. Multiclassing is not an exploit, but it is celebrated and supported here with multiclass synergy feats and builds. They thought of this stuff! Amazing!

And so many of 2014's issues are fixed, and these continue on into 2024 D&D. Like character death. Fixed. Supplies and survival. Fixed. A weak social game. Fixed. Martial class disparity and boredom. Fixed. Exploration. Fixed. Page after page, if you sit down and read these rules, every one of them fixes a huge problem in 5E, and many of these are still unfixed today, or heavily houseruled in 2024 D&D.

Level Up A5E is the 2024 D&D we should have gotten.

I may revisit this game.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Built for Fun

There is no "off the shelf" with DCC; it is still firmly "on the shelf" for me. This is a game built for fun; it feels like a heavily modded 3.5E, but does things its own way, drawing on old-school tropes while taking them to crazy places. This game took all my shelf space for D&D 3.5E and Pathfinder 1e, and it proudly sits as the most gonzo and insane game I have, filling that power fantasy need, while still delivering loads of unpredictability.

Note, this does not replace 5E for me. 5E and I are complicated. Currently, C&C is replacing 5E for me while 5E and I work it out. My 5E books are in the closet until they can find an answer to the character sheet problem they have.

I wish 5E were better.

But, at this time, I can't support a game that forces me to do more work and flip through pages of a character sheet every round. It is in the closet until I want to fight with it again.

DCC is my 3.5E replacement, and it sings as that.

DCC drives the engines of many games, most of which are built and played out of zines and strange books that clutter my shelves. It is a crazy existence, one moment playing what feels like traditional fantasy, while the other powering a science fiction game. It really is more of a "game engine" driving any type of game you can imagine, with whatever random character classes you find being "tonight's entertainment."

Veer off into mutants and mahem? Fine. Bug hunts? Great! Surviving on strange alien-filled worlds? No problem. Crawling through the esophagus of a sleeping giant to rescue a singing parakeet? Sure! Fighting marshmallow goop creatures from a random gate a mad wizard opened? Works here! Playing "Keep on the Borderlands?" Why not?

DCC is the role-playing game equivalent of a Sharpie pen. A million and one uses, and it leaves a permanent mark on your psyche that makes all other games seem boring.

And the game isn't complete! You can pull in monsters from other editions, steal treasure tables and magic items from other games, pull an equipment list in from over here, use an adventure from over there, and generally mish-mash whatever you have lying around into your DCC game.

This one is sticking around, and it displays amazingly well.

Mail Room: Age of Rebellion Beginner Game

The Age of Rebellion Beginner Game never really took off for us, as we were more into the Jedi and smuggler paths in the Star Wars universe, and those held a higher interest for us. There is a stark good-versus-evil in the Jedi boxed set, and the smuggler boxed set was a classic "space rogue" where your allegiances could shift depending on which way the credits were flowing.

My copy came with the old-style box, and I wanted to see the newer, high-quality box, but I understand if cost concerns were a thing. Still, I would have loved to see the new-style box on my copy.

This set is focused on the rebels, but it never felt like it answered the question, "Who wants to fight in a war?" And while the genre may seem ripe for anti-Imperial sabotage missions and deep strikes, most players of the game will have never fought in a real war, and real wars are brutal, neighbor-against-neighbor, scary, randomly terrifying, horrible things.

Also, unless you are a team of special commandos and have some freedom and agency, like the secret strike team of a diplomat, you may find yourself under a huge command structure, stuck on a planet fighting a war of attrition, and locked in a battle where you have no freedom at all. You play the "troopers in Hoth base" - have fun in the trenches!

The answer is always to play as a small, dynamic, mission-oriented team, not "soldiers in the barracks."

I prefer the dynamic campaign type that covers special operations, elite strike squads, undercover military strike teams, and other high-agency operations, where players have some flexibility in how they accomplish their goals. A smaller team with a direct line of command to an authority figure and clear objectives is a far better setup.

Imagine Princess Leia with a small rebel strike force at her disposal, and her wanting to give them missions she can deny any knowledge or involvement in, but the success of those missions directly helps her fight against the Empire - even with her operating as a senator from within.

You get a small, heroic, and covert team that needs to keep things quiet when the shooting stops, they are not stuck in a military base, and they get to participate in intrigue and social situations frequently, and then they get to "go in" and suit up into battle for those high-stakes missions, and get out before the Imperials swarm in and shut it all down.

The gear they have is likely all disposable and will be destroyed when the mission is complete, and they will all blend back into normal society. The transport and contacts are all paid well to keep quiet. And after the chaos, it is as if none of them were even there, yet the wreckage is still smoldering.

And you all melt back into society, going your separate ways. Then, you are given a location to go to, and no further information. You know this is the next mission, where you will all meet up again at a safe house, say your hellos, have a drink and a laugh, and the next set of plans is made...

While the game exclusively covers rebels, you could 100% play this from the Imperial side as a faction that is against tyranny and the Sith. The Legends universe at the end of the EU timeline has a noble house that is an Imperial remnant, strong in the Force, who end up being more the good guys than the bad, yet they are still Imperials. They even have a princess, their own Imperial Knights, and a very cool faction setup that puts them in the middle of the war.

Remember, many future rebels will come from the borderline and good-aligned Imperial sectors such as this, so there is a lot of gaming to be had with a civil-war-style scenario where it is just stormtrooper-against-stormtrooper, with rival governments and sector Moffs fighting for dominance in the post-Death Star chaos. It does not have to be a declared "rebellion" to fit within this game's framework; it just has to be a small military unit fighting for an objective.

That sector could "flip" to the Rebellion later, and then all the TIE pilots get shiny new X-Wings. Or, the sector could stay Imperial, and you get TIE on TIE bloodbath fights with the PCs hoping to get better ships someday, but making do and being careful in their flying deathtraps.

The old TIE Fighter PC game has a huge campaign focused on TIE pilots and Imperials, and it was widely considered to have an amazing story and to be the best Star Wars video game of all time. Of all the games in the Edge Studio collection, the Age of Rebellion game will be the best one to run a campaign like this that focuses on the Imperial side.

If you focus solely on the Classic lore and universe, you can enjoy all these amazing experiences and games without any modern movies or missteps. I would love to play in a TIE Fighter campaign, and watch the brooding Sith skulk about acting high and mighty, and trying to figure out which commander to trust, and which ones are being paid by the Hutts, and trying to survive in flying tissue-paper boxes.

Sure, you may get chewed out for failing another mission, perhaps this time you failed it on purpose, but at least you are alive. This is good, survival-focused, garbage-equipment, who-do-I-trust, the-Sith-suck, stay-alive-another-day, intrigue-based gameplay.

You won't be "living the high life" as a pilot in Yavin base, with a shiny new X-Wing, and you may never defect, but your adventures will be legendary struggles from within a corrupt system, trying to do good in a limited way, and making a small impact from within that will have ripple effects throughout the galaxy.

Perhaps the senator's shuttle that your fighter wing was asked to "accidentally destroy" you all "missed on purpose," and she got away, and you knew letting her get away would be better for everyone. You all silently agreed, "this is how it would go down," and while your corrupt commander may chew you all out for being incompetent, you know the galaxy will be a better place tomorrow.

Still, if you play Imperials, keep it to the smaller, mission-oriented special missions teams, even on the starfighter side, a small squadron that does special missions together is just fine.

These sorts of stories I love, and Classic Star Wars was built to tell them.

The inclusion of a spy character is a good one, since it nicely sets up the "special missions" flavor I prefer. The spy is the intelligent, plotting, leader type, while the soldier is the heavy. They do tend to pick great character archetypes for these start sets, and these are no exception. The spy is a cool, sneaky guy, while the soldier is the shooty guy.

We have a Jyn Erso-type pilot in here, and a cool mechanic character. I can see the Calamari as my favorite (as a kid), setting all sorts of traps, only to yell "It's a trap!" when I trigger one. Each and every trap. I don't care how old it gets; he is shouting it out every time. 

Since his name is Tendaar, I can see my nickname for him being "Chickee."

That sort of stupid, kid humor is why I still love Star Wars. This is not the infantile Grogu type of goo-goo gaa-gaa humor, but the dumb, adolescent, ha-ha type of bad pun dork humor that keeps me coming back.

"It's a trap!"

We finish with a generous rulebook that covers the basics of the game. I love these starter sets; they are everything you need to play a fun adventure, plus a rulebook to create your own adventures with, before you dive in and get the full game. This is a high-quality, long-lasting, excellent value starter set.

We finish with dice, tokens, and a map. I love these tokens and maps, and they are fun to play with. I am making my own 1"/25mm tokens myself, and it is a fun project with a lot of character.

As the least appealing starter set for us, I am beginning to see where the fun is regarding this set. If you put the troops in a barracks, you won't have any fun. If you make the team a dynamic special-missions force, now we are talking.

A fun starter set, one I never realized the true potential of, but now I see a little more clearly with time and perspective.

Is There Hope for 5E?

No.

The audience is aging, and the format lacks that broad market appeal. The next generation is so addicted to their phones that it is hard to pull them away from a screen to sit down and enjoy a game like we once did.

The only way D&D survives is as a name on a mobile phone game.

5E survives, but not as a live-service game. Wizards will keep putting out new versions of D&D, such as the upcoming 6E, and quite likely 7E, and 5E support will be sunsetted since a live-service model has "end of life" support built into the game as a feature. They will not pay to keep 5E support going once they need you to "move on."

5E will be well supported by third parties and the community, which is why Tales of the Valiant remains relevant. That will continue past the official support of D&D 5E and 5.5E and be "the only 5E" outside of finding books and playing it by hand, or on a VTT that still supports it, but even they will be pressured to move on.

Tales of the Valiant will likely be the last major and supported version of 5E ever written. It is a solid game, I still like it, but I have no room on my shelves for it. I do not play it as much as my other fantasy tentpoles, like BX, C&C, GURPS Fantasy, and DCC. It still has a massive problem with character sheet length, which slows play and hurts the game. I doubt any version of 5E, outside of Nimble, fixes this core flaw in the system.

If it takes me 3-5 minutes to flip through my character sheet to decide what I am going to do on a turn, that is a massive problem with the game. Some people take as long as 30 minutes. Character sheet length and choice paralysis will be what kills 5E, and what 6E will be "marketed" as solving, before, of course, they break it again because they now have "room to expand the game" and "we have returned tactical player choice to 6.5E."

And sort of the weak reaction to ToV and other major 5E variants means D&D will be the gold standard, and that also seals the fate of the game when live service support is eventually dropped. More should get on the ToV train and support this game, as it means the 5E rules will have a life past the D&D 6E launch day, and the loud din of voices tells us to "upgrade or be left behind."

Old School Essentials is the hot game right now, taking the torch of BX support and standardization across the hobby. This is compatible with everything: light, fast, simple, and fun. This, plus games in the Without Number series of books, can last you a lifetime of fun across any genre you can imagine.

GURPS, once you know the system, plays faster than 5E. That one-second turn does not allow much wiggle room. The character sheets are easier, too.

DCC is the more fun game, with each class constructed to provide fun choices during a turn, with all the junk cut off and tossed out.

Shadowdark, I don't consider 5E, as it is more of a tweener game between 5E and OSE. It is closer to OSE and BX in feel, and while it uses 5E mechanics, it is an OSR-variant game.

C&C is the closest thing I have to a 5E replacement, in the modern rules and 3.5E variant play, with broad compatibility with every BX and 1E adventure.

D&D will be the thing that kills 5E when they move on to 6E, and the announcement of that feels really close. The best hope is to support the community games and continue that legacy and Open 5E rules support. The real light here is Open 5E, and the community ultimately supported the game. I do see potential for an OSE-style version of 5E that simplifies the game while staying math-compatible, streamlines character sheets, and provides a simple experience that remains compatible with 5E adventures. Nimble is the first game of its kind in this genre, and there will be others.

There will be a major OSR-style game that is 5E compatible, keeps the 5E math, yet feels and plays like a traditional OSR game. Shadowdark is close, but not entirely there. There is nothing in this niche now, and it will come. This is probably one of the best hopes for 5E going forward: an OSR system that adopts the math but simplifies play.

My money is on ToV, since they have the best support and community model. As for the other alternative, Level Up A5E, I am still a fan, but it is a niche game that needs an update. The character creation support is also lacking, and doing a character by hand takes me 90 minutes, which is unforgivable when I just want to play. A5E is still a solid, well-built system, but it is an older game that not many know about.

Level Up A5E is the type of game that will sit around in a box in my garage for years, and I will end up sticking with it in the end, since this is the one I always liked the best out of all of them. Design matters. Fixing the inherent problems of 5E matters more than compatibility. Making the game lethal and serious gives the game teeth. While ToV has more books and stuff, Level Up is a smaller game (a bonus) and has far better design. They were not afraid to break compatibility to solve the system's problems.

Level Up A5E may win the "who survives 5E" question for me, after all is said and done. While ToV has the best compatibility among all versions of Open 5E, I have to ask: Is compatibility with a system that offers me little more than a patched 2014 version what I want? Or is a redesigned version of the core game built around the core pillars of play a better deal in the long term?

A5E is still the better game than D&D 2014 (which it directly fixes), ToV (which is a patched 2014), and even D&D 2024 (which A5E eliminates the need for). Design-wise, A5E is still far ahead of the others, since it rebuilds the core to fix the system's flaws. Yes, it is the oldest Open 5E game, but 5E's problems were known a decade ago, and this game fixes almost all of them.

So, to answer the question again?

Yes.

5E does have a future.

The answer depends on your perspective, needs, and whether you are bought into the live-service model of play. It also depends on your willingness to try new things.