D&D 4E and Level Up

 My brother and I collected 4E, and we loved it. That was a rough stretch, and the game got us out of the house and off the floor for the week. Most people hated the edition. It did not matter. We had figures, a battle map, and those tight dungeon fights that felt like chess you could bleed on. We were there for a tabletop-first game. We were not there to win an argument about whether it counted.

It held for the first ten levels. After that, the edges came apart. Monsters carried so many hit points that the fight became hours that dragged on forever. We started looking at each other like nobody had run this game at a table before they printed it.

It got so bad that our monsters wished out loud for it to be over, too.

I get why a 5E referee stops tracking the number. The game feels like it is coming apart in your hands. You can fake a fight that still feels like a night, or you can play it honest and watch people check out because high level is too easy. We did our version of that in 4E. Cut the monster’s hit points in half, doubled the damage- anything to make the mess end. By the end, we could not stand what that edition had turned into. With 5E, if a DM doesn't prep right or doesn't know their players' power, the end boss can turn into tissue paper and the whole night is ruined.

There was a D&D YouTube video recently about how lying to players like this and faking fights is terrible. But if the game is that broken, I don't blame DMs who cheat the system to make things feel more exciting. Especially if your players won't play anything else. What are you supposed to do? At that point, it is either lie to your players or quit a game you can't stand anymore.

At least if you lie, you are all playing together.

That is where we ended up with D&D 4E. In the end, it came down to lying to each other and rolling the dice.

But still, D&D 4E sits in a special place. The last good long campaign I played with my brother. At the start, it felt like it could go on forever. That part of my life still feels that way when I think about the maps, the minis, and the two of us at the table.

We walked to the bookstore to buy the books.

We spent those Saturdays together.

We would play with the new books all Sunday.

Leveling up to 10 in D&D 4E was fun. After that, it was a slow, long letdown.

That is why I hold A5E so tightly, even though Tales of the Valiant is the better-supported game and has more of everything. Level Up feels like a 5E that remembered 4E without asking me to play a broken game. A fighter with a tradition. A road that can go wrong. The commander class returns. Nerrath is still a place you can walk toward. The math is dry and scales well to level 20. It plays like a fixed 4E should feel, without being 4E.

Today’s 5E is at the end of the edition, casters having all the fun while the rest of the table watches. A5E is the last flicker of that 4E candle. I cannot put A5E away. It stays on the shelves I actually play from. I have better games. The memories are stronger than today’s promises.

Off the Shelf: FATE

I still love this game, mostly because of the dice. This is also still a better pick-up-and-play narrative package that is far easier to get into than many of today's overly complicated narrative swamp games that end up coming off like 5E with pools and special dice tacked on. I could have to sort through 400-500 pages of a full-sized game with multiple volumes and a few hundred pages of who-cares character options, or play an easy-to-teach single-book narrative powerhouse game like FATE.

I know Accelerated is out there, but I like Core better, even with the streamlining and improvements of the latter. I feel too much was taken out of Accelerated, and I prefer the classic, expansive, full-featured game toolkit over the Lite framework version. I can do more with Core; it slots into any setting quickly, and it gets the job done. Yes, it is an older game, but that doesn't make it any less powerful or flexible.

Accelerated stripped too much out, and I appreciate Core's "game building" toolkit approach. This works, and I don't need the changes in the smaller book. Sure, Accelerated is a tiny book and very easy to hand out to new players, but the OG Core book is my jam and the one I started with. Plus, I like Core's traditional Skills approach over Accelerated's generic (and too easy to cheese) Approaches system.

In Accelerated, I can pick a high "Flashy" and "Flashy" the entire adventure by overusing the Approach. In Core, I am using traditional skills (the book's list or my own list), and "what can be done with what" is far better defined and clearer. New players will "lean on Flashy" in Accelerated far too much, but they will understand the uses for Core's Stealth and Lore skills easily. Defined choices with clear uses are easier for me, and the players I play with, than catch-all approaches.

Core is the book for me.

Accelerated is too simple and vague, to the point of being the harder game to play.

One thing my brother and I did with this game was binge a TV show and play through the episodes with FATE. We didn't need the fully realized, hour-plus character designs of GURPS, the pool-based power frameworks of Cypher, or any other generic system. FATE described any television show character quickly and cleanly, and you could start playing in five minutes.

Best of all, you could turn any "episode situation" into an aspect for the game, such as "Sienfield gets an important package for another apartment," and run with it. Kramer could have a "winning lottery ticket he is always losing," and that plays into the episode, too. The game is a collection of dice rolls, creating aspects, invoking them, managing your fate points, and laughing your way through a situation. We laughed for hours playing this, and it got sillier and sillier as the night went on. This does everything from Seinfeld, Scooby-Doo, Baywatch, Looney Tunes, CHIPs, A-Team, or any other episodic situation  TV show quickly and cleanly, with minimal fuss.

FATE has a wide dramatic range, too, from slapstick silly to gritty and serious. It can get deadly and grim, like The Walking Dead. It can do romantic comedies better than any system I've seen, and it isn't even a "romance game" filled with that typical heartsy AI art you see in many 5E crowdfunding books these days. You could run "Anchorman: The Roleplaying Game" with this system more easily than with any generic system, and the rules work and create chaos on their own. You could even do something as silly as "KISS: The RPG" and simulate your favorite 80s rock band through medieval adventures, doing things no other game could easily manage.

FATE does superheroes, too. Video games. Lara Croft. Ratchet and Clank. Sonic. Mario. Link. Double Dragon or Streets of Rage. TMNT or Thundercats. Transformers or GI JOE. All with minimal fuss and effort. And if you know the characters or have a guide, anything converts easily, and you don't need a huge character guide to convert a character into the system.

Even classic movies are easily played with FATE. The Maltese Falcon. American Graffiti. Star Wars. Jaws. ET. Indiana Jones. The Thing. Star Trek. Blade Runner. Books, too. Dune. LotR. John Carter. Conan. For some of these films and novels, FATE does a better job, faster, and easier than the "official RPG" for the game. For movies and books without a game, FATE does them very well.

While the collector in me would love a "Jaws 5E" game with a few hundred pages of authentic 1970s New England oil-painting art, what am I doing here? Why am I wasting my money? Just to have something I will likely never play? Why do I need a hundred pages of subclass options for sheriffs, marine biologists, and fishermen again? Honestly? I would rather have the New England art book and no dated and little-tested 5E rules that will likely never be used at a table.

Oh, and martial classes in Jaws 5E still suck; play a caster.

In FATE, you write down aspects, which combine character concept, trouble, and history. You pick skills. You pick a few signature stunts. If you know your characters, like a GI JOE character, then this stuff is trivially easy. It is less of a character sheet and more of a description and collection of signature style moves and phrases. Snake Eyes? Silent but Deadly. There we go, no need for an expensive VTT character creation tool or looking up the feat in a 600-page rulebook, or waiting for the inevitable hundred-dollar minimum crowdfunding expansion to get the character you want.

You just have it.

A one-book game.

Four dice.

GURPS forces you to design the power or know the skill and advantage lists. Cypher forces you to search the archetypes. In 5E, you need to read a few hundred pages of subclasses to see if the designers gave you something you can use, or wait like a good consumer for the next book. In FATE? You just say it and write it down. I'm done with this designer hubris junk! I can do better, and FATE gives me the tools if I have an imagination to use them.

Sometimes I am in the mood for that level of depth. If I am digging in and savoring a simulation-heavy, survive-this-system, it is going to be GURPS. But for a one-book toolkit game? Something pick-up-and-play with cool dice?

FATE still has it.

Magic is Not the Answer to Every Game Design Problem

I am on the 2024 fighter page again. Level three. Four names. Two of them cast. The rogue book is the same habit in a leather jerkin: if the class feels thin, somebody opens the spell chapter and bolts a few slots onto the sheet, and that's where the fun went.

I keep looking at that and thinking they did not write the job. They wrote the thing they already had.

DCC does not do that with the warrior. Mighty Deeds is one die. You say you are kicking the lantern, pinning the spear, putting the shield in someone’s teeth, and the judge answers you. That is the whole engine. No pamphlet. No list you have to finish before you are allowed to be interesting. The move can be stupid and it can still be the fighter’s move.

A5E is sitting on the other shelf, and it is not the same answer, which is the point. Combat maneuvers, traditions, exertion you actually spend. You train the thing. You pick it. It costs you. It is not a cantrip with extra steps, and it is not a tag hanging off the longsword that you swap after a long rest. They built a little machine for people who hit things, and it does not pretend to be Vancian magic with a better armor class.

2024 still wanders off into the subclass pamphlet, or it shrugs and makes them a caster. Weapon tricks, a rider on the steel, a recommendation thread that points at the Eldritch Knight because at least that one has verbs with names. The Deed die and the maneuver tradition sit there. Different tools. Neither one needed the spell list to make the turn belong to somebody.

The spell chapter is the chapter every game comes with and never answers the question.

It is not D&D, the art, or the worlds that really bug me about D&D these days. It is the pedestrian habit of answering the hole in a class by adding a spell list and calling it a day.

Mail Room: Blades in the Dark

This was the go-to narrative game about 5-6 years ago, and I held off because I already had a few other narrative games and my plate was full. The Cypher System was my favorite for a while, but I have cooled off a bit with the new edition; the art and layout are a bit too busy and distracting for my eyes. Blades in the Dark is also one of the games many new games copy from and borrow ideas from; one is Daggerheart, which is commonly mentioned as downstream from Blades in many concepts.

So, here I am, back again, taking a look. People compare it to FATE, but Blades is far more structured and procedural, which keeps the game from the narrative softness of either FATE or Cypher. Narrative games do rely on "out-of-game" structure, but Blades keeps the narrative action closer to the metal and avoids many of the "head jumps" that turn people off narrative gaming.

For example, in FATE, you need to jump out of character, consider what action type you are taking, apply out-of-character mechanics, and roll. You also consider various aspects and other OOC considerations, then need to "jump back into the head of the character" to keep the narrative flowing. This is why many prefer D&D to narrative gaming: there is very little head-jumping out of character, but even 5E begins to fray at the seams when you start managing its sloppy action economy.

The OSR is almost no head-jumping, and you stay in character constantly. The goblin runs up; you hit it with a sword. You see a lock; the thief picks it. You search for a trap; you find one. X does Y, and you follow the constant stream of decisions all the way to the goal.

Blades keeps you in headspace and narrative for most of the action, which feels nice for a narrative game. The only downside is the constant "yes, but..." of the 4-5 partial-success rolls, and the fatigue that comes from deciding what a "yes, but..." means on almost every roll. This is the same issue that Genesys or Daggerheart have, or any narrative game that incorporates partial success mechanics. This is the sort of thing that strikes some initially as "the best thing since sliced bread," but it can go stale just as quickly if you overuse it or make it too important, and you are "yes, butting..." every roll with bigger and bigger stakes.

People end up back in d20, and "X does Y" feels refreshing because failure is pass/fail and doesn't require interpretation. There is no interpretative fatigue. You fail. You see the next thing. You do the next thing. You succeed. And so on.

But like Genesys, the answer is almost always to reduce the importance of "yes, but..." and turn it into a quick ruling or next-turn modifier, then move on as quickly as possible. Save the big "yes, but..." for the most important moments, and don't drag the game through the mud by over-interpreting every roll.

Make a quick judgment and move on. Tick a clock. Raise the stakes. Remove a die. Break an item. Introduce a twist. Or add a wrinkle to the scene, like a crowd gathering, that is neither good nor bad, but could potentially complicate matters. A smart player could use the crowd as an asset to blend in and get away. A not-so-smart player now has a group of witnesses.

The "yes, but..." doesn't always mean "quantifiable negate game mechanic penalty measured by a number," as it does in an "X does Y" game. If you are trying to account for every point and level of negative effect, you are probably overthinking it, and that is leading to burnout.

If it takes you more than 30 seconds to think of the consequence, just pick something at random and keep playing. The first thing that comes to mind. Or ignore it because you are stuck in the narrative weeds. If it is not clear and apparent, it isn't that important, so drop it and move on.

Sometimes a "yes, but..." is just a normal success, and you don't need to overthink it. The whole thing could be a "yes, but you feel terrible about doing it that way," and move on. Let the player decide what to do with that. Make it up to the contact who took the brunt of the negative effect later? Your choice.

Blades in the Dark is a milestone game that changed a lot, and it still has plenty of fans at the table. I am looking forward to digging into this one.

The Best AD&D Style Games

Old-School Essentials put out the 2026 revision, and I have been sitting with the two core books longer than I meant to. Creative Commons instead of the OGL; the rules they actually needed to tidy; a pile of examples the earlier printings were thin on; and Advanced Fantasy is the only game they support these days. I like those books. I am just not sure they have decided which game they are playing.

Classic OSE was a restatement of BX: smaller hit dice, a short class list, race-as-class as the default shape of a person, spells that stop where Expert stops, and a level cap at 14. Advanced Fantasy was always the other product. Same procedures, extra classes, a race-and-class split, and a stack of AD&D features turned down so it wouldn't conflict with BX. It always reminded me of a cleaned-up version of the classic Labyrinth Lord game, or a BX+.

The revision brings first edition back into the game with optional d10 fighters sitting next to the old hit dice. Race-and-class sits next to race-as-class. High-level play is a DIY chapter that tells you to borrow from somewhere else if you want spells past what Expert printed. The publisher is clear about the cap: 14, and nothing BECMI is in the box.

So the question is no longer “is this a pretty BX book?” It is “is this BX, or is this AD&D Lite?” Once you ask that, you need to compare OSE Advanced to the other AD&D-like games on the shelf.

If you want AD&D-Lite: Swords & Wizardry

Swords & Wizardry Complete is my AD&D-Lite game. It is an OD&D zero-edition that gobbled up a bunch of expansion books and parts of AD&D, but refused to leave the 1970s and stuck with the little-book feeling. Assassin, monk, druid, paladin, ranger, one saving throw, 9th-level spells, characters that do not bounce off a wall at name level, and a monster list with magic resistance. That is what “lite” has to mean if the word is going to do any work. A demon can shrug a spell, and casters are not the masters of the universe anymore. We get the high-level spells and abilities here!

The high-level game is in the book.

OSE Advanced gives you the names. Paladin, ranger, illusionist, split race and class, and now the optional bigger hit dice. What it will not give you is the rest of that 1e machine, such as magic resistance, high-level play, and classes with a bit more depth. I still love the S&W fighter better than any other BX or 1E clone; this is peak OSR gaming. The single saving throw number is genius and erases pages of saving throw tables from the game.

S&W has a couple of expansion books that bring in barbarians, bards, illusionists, warlocks, and more monsters. If I want the "AD&D-isms" and don't want the full AD&D weight, Swords & Wizardry wins every time and comes with me in my travel bag.

If you want AD&D: OSRIC

If I actually want first edition, I play first edition, or I play the clone that exists so people can keep writing modules for it without the messy "for the first edition of the world's most popular role-playing game" prose. OSRIC was never trying to be the pretty book on the coffee table. It was a legal, usable AD&D clone so the community could ship adventures and say the name out loud. I am not waiting for it to become a lifestyle brand, and the game is already done, loved, and this is how we play 1E these days.

We had a major revision with OSRIC 3.0, and this is the new 1E standard-bearer. I know we can get the PoD books of the originals (with misprint errors), but I want the definitive source that opens the door for third-party publishers. I support OSRIC 3.0 with its new CC-based license. The originals are fine if it is "just me," but once we start playing with others and wanting new adventures and material, OSRIC will win every time.

OSE does not do that work. It will eat a mountain of BX and a lot of 1e content if I am willing to convert by feel, which I usually am, but that is not the same as sitting down with the 1e stack. I do not grab OSE Advanced because I want segments, weapon speed, magic resistance, and a spell list that treats 9th-level spells as optional. I grab it for BX procedures and a few extra toys. Oh, and the books are smaller and easier to travel with. OSE wins if I am on vacation and need a travel game.

When I want AD&D, OSRIC is the living clone. The revised OSE books are doing something else.

If you want AD&D-Plus: Adventures Dark & Deep

Joseph Bloch’s pitch has always been the continuation question I keep coming back to: what if Gygax had stayed and kept developing first edition instead of walking out of TSR in 1985? Adventures Dark & Deep starts from 1e and from the public hints about where that game was supposed to go next: new classes, a rebuilt bestiary, cleaned-up combat, and the whole thing treated like a product line that kept moving. This started as a what-if AD&D if Gary had stayed, and became a love letter to 1E with a few modern twists and treats.

I love this game but do not have the time to play it. This is my "ultimate AD&D" fanservice game. The combat is cleaned up, and weapon speed actually works. The skill system is genius. There is a Lite version that strips the game down to a playable core set of options, yet still is a remarkably complete game for the levels people actually play.

What OSE Advanced still is

I am not boxing the revision up. Leaving the OGL for Creative Commons is the right long-term move. The examples of play are what previous OSE printings were thin on, and one purchase path instead of five overlapping cores is easier for a new referee. I can still carve a Classic game out of the new books; they include a Basic Play section.

The old books are still fine. I can not upgrade, keep playing for decades, and house-rule in whatever I want. This is BX, not 5E. Factor in the Carcass Crawler zines, and I have more character races than any of the other three games on this table, including the new favorites people keep asking for. Those races will sit at a S&W table or an OSRIC table just as easily. The B/X world is still the more open room that way, and I am not locked to whatever a VTT character builder decided to support.

None of that fixes the focus problem. BX is a low-resolution game. AD&D is a high-resolution game. Put them side by side, and the BX picture gets blurry. Optional bigger hit dice, a parallel character-creation method, and a high-level chapter that admits I will have to loot another book for spell lists; that is two games sharing a spine, with the extra material not in the box.

If they later print a high-level book, a love-letter to BECMI, the conversation changes. One page of optional rules for high-level play does not turn OSE into an AD&D-clone, and so much is missing that this should have been left to another expansion.

OSE Classic, the discontinued Tome, the thing that made the line matter, was the best-in-class BX restatement. The revised Advanced books are a very good catalog of BX procedures plus selected 1e toys, scaled to Expert. As a BX game with extra hats, I will use them. As AD&D lite, they don't beat Swords & Wizardry Complete. As AD&D, they do not beat OSRIC. As the next step past an expanded first edition, they aren't even in the same room as Adventures Dark & Deep.

I try to know which feeling I am feeding before I take a book off the shelf. The new OSE will feed the BX one if I turn off half the options. For the other three, I buy the game built for them. For 90% of the cases, Swords & Wizardry is just right for me.

We just have so many good AD&D options these days that it is hard to see OSE plus one page of optional high-level play rules as real competition for any of them. The new OSE books should have left this out, or did a BECMI-like expansion later.

There Is More Here

I keep hoping A5E is the 5E I can still live in.

Not the brand, not the argument about who owns the shape of the game. The nights. I have sat through too many of those 5E evenings where the fighter is holding a turn and watching the spell list do the interesting work, and everybody knows it, and we still call it a party. The woods are a skill check you talk past so you can get to the room that was balanced. You write a personality in the margin, and the math never looks at it again. Short rest, next slot, next level. Then the page is blank, and you are supposed to care about a new subclass that arrived in a book you did not ask for.

A5E is the first time in a while the jobs felt like jobs again. Exertion and traditions give a martial character something to spend. I remember the first session I ran it, and the fighter was actually deciding things, not waiting for the wizard to be done. Exploration has parts. You can lose the afternoon on the way to the door. Weather, a hunt, a stretch of road that costs hit points before anyone draws. That used to be the part of the hobby I liked before everything became an encounter budget.

Even sleep is not free. A long rest wants a haven. Somewhere you can eat and sleep without a reasonable chance the night tries to kill you. An inn will do. A camp where somebody has to stay awake on watch usually will not. A ranger who knows how to knock together a small shelter in the trees can make one out there. A few spells and class features do the same. You can lie down in the open and get some of it back, but the worst fatigue and strife hang on until you make it somewhere that counts and you have supplies to eat. I have had 5E tables treat eight hours on a dungeon floor like a reset button. The journey keeps a receipt in A5E, and in other versions of 5E, resting feels like MMO hit-point regeneration.

I am sick of the MMO-isms in 5E. Somebody wash the bad taste out of my mouth.

Destiny is the piece I did not know I was missing. It points the character at something that will not wrap in three sessions. D&D and ToV let you say you want revenge, a crown, or to go home, and then the sheet treats that as flavor. Here the long hook sits next to the numbers. I have had characters in other 5Es who were very well built, and I could not have told you, two months later, what they were walking toward. That started to bother me more than the math arguments.

Multiclassing is usually a cheat or a lecture. You either stack the broken pair, or you sit there explaining why the table is not doing that. Synergy feats treat the mix as a build, which is a small thing until you have spent years policing 5E combinations and you are tired of being the hall monitor. Rare spells scratch a different itch. You hunt them. They are not the same list everybody already knows from the basic book, the one you have seen on every sheet since 2014.

That's not what a clone is for. A clone reprints the shape and settles a few arguments so you can keep your old adventures. I already have that. What I wanted was the language of 5E with a longer memory than the next game session. You do not come all the way back from the woods until you have a haven, whether that is a room in town or a shelter somebody knew how to raise before dark.

I do not know if that saves 5E for me. I know it is the version I pull when I still want that language in my mouth and I want the night to be about more than a room that was pointed at the party’s level. A tradition. A road that costs you. Sleep that means more if you earned the place you are sleeping. A destiny that keeps walking after the short rest. A reason to mix classes without feeling dirty. A spell I had to find instead of picking off a menu. I am running that and seeing if the hope holds, which is as honest as I can get about it right now.

Mail Room: Gate Pass Gazetteer 2025 (A5E)

Level Up A5E is the last 5E version I have on my display shelves.

The annual showed up in the mail, and I had to find a gap on the A5E shelf for it. There is a gap. That is part of why the shelf is still there.

Level Up is the last 5E I keep on display. Not the last 5E I own. The last one that gets to sit with the games I actually look at when I walk past. Gate Pass Gazetteer 2025 goes up with the official books, the ones written for this framework, the other yearly bricks. Everything else that used to lean on “it’s compatible” is in a closet. I stopped supporting that pile. It was too much. You can feel a game go sloppy when the characters feel like they come from different universes and the books get lost in a crowd.

This was the first 5E that worked for me in a way that still felt like a challenge. The numbers sat still. Hits meant something. Dying is not a coffee break. They kept bits from 3rd and 4th that I liked, and they left the danger in. They rewrote the SRD from the ground up so they did not have to live on the OGL, which at the time felt like homework and later felt like the reason the game could stay itself. Fighters had a job. That part still matters when I pull the book.

It is a niche version of 5E. I don’t need this to be a popular game. At this point, it doesn’t matter. Support is thin, and I have stopped feeling that was a problem. What they did print is solid throughout, and there is not so much of it that I need a second set of rules for what belongs on the table. Official sources only, and I have more than a campaign. Exploration that can actually go wrong in the woods. Social classes that do something besides talk while the martial character holds a weapon and waits. Martial classes that spend exertion on a tradition the way a wizard spends slots.

Those jobs are in the books. I do not have to handwave them into existence, or spend more on crowdfunding books to fix a version of 5E that will never be fixed.

The Gazetteer is the right kind of new spine for a shelf like that. A year of the magazine in one hardcover. More heritages, more archetypes, a couple of prestige classes, two combat traditions, challenges, junk items, a pile of monsters. It feeds the same game. It does not ask me to invent a second 5E, so the first one looks supported. I already know what that looks like. It is behind a door.

I am not making a case that A5E should have been bigger. I am looking at a lean official shelf that still covers the night, putting this year’s book in the space I have left, and leaving the closet shut.