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.

OSRIC 3: Hacking the Bard

There are no bards in OSRIC 3.0, at least, not yet.

The bard is turning out to be a bit controversial these days, and some groups don't like them because they weren't part of the original game. They do not add much to a traditional "dungeon crawling" party, nor do they support the classic "fighter, mage, thief, cleric" holy quadrology. Also, bards tend to attract the wrong type of player, the "spotlight hog" who ends up wanting to RP for everybody and who takes over every social interaction between the party and every NPC in the world.

If you have the best social skills, charmiest charms, and have the highest chance to "get through the required social skill rolls" part of the adventure, why not just lean on the bard some more? Social skill rolls and giving one class "all the RP skills" were among the worst additions to the game, as they siloed all RP in the game's only "diva" social class.

You can even make people do whatever you wish, even without their consent. It is a great class for Hollywood casting-couch types. Seriously, the amount of mental manipulation they give most bards in most games makes them the sleaziest character class ever written, and I would trust a thief more than a bard. At least with the thief, you will be allowed to be angry after he robs you.

Be careful about adding bards to your game. If your game is more about detecting poison needles on treasure chests, listening to doors, and quietly dispatching enemies in a stealth run through a dungeon to take its loot, why do you want a "Rock Band" wannabe along, making blasted noise? Do you know how far "bard singing" carries for? Two or three rooms, typically. You are going to give every monster in the area a free concert? We will have the dwarf shove a bag in your mouth to keep you quiet.

Bards are not for everyone; they silo RP, attract disruptive players, and shift the game's focus onto themselves as spotlight stealers. It is hard to design a great bard class without breaking the classic dungeon-based game. Most designers follow the D&D 5E mentality toward bards, and they deliberately design the class to be disruptive roleplay hogs.

Every class should be potentially "great at RP." My dwarf fighter, talking with other dwarves, about an honor-bound blood oath between dwarven clans? I don't care how high the elven bard's persuasion skill is; my dwarf will be the best at speaking to those matters, and quite possibly the only one who will be listened to. In D&D 5E? Forget it, the rules trump common sense, and the elven bard will do the talking. My dwarf will be reduced to saying "he's right" and "the elf makes sense!"

You do have a few options if you want bards in OSRIC 3.0. The first is to port a bard in from another game, such as Swords & Wizardry. This is the easiest way to do it, but it relies on having more books and rulesets around.

The next is to say bards are essentially multi-class thief/clerics or thief/magic-users with music as their focus (divine or arcane), and leave it at that. Leave the singing to RP, and just let the game's core classes define abilities. Since you are multi-class, you will level slower, but you are a hybrid with the powers of two classes, so prepare to walk the long, hard road of stardom. You will channel your magic through song and just redefine the game's existing abilities into "bard stuff" that you cast through the power of magical music. On the plus side, you will always be a full thief, and not these weak "half thieves" other games allow you to be.

I like this solution a lot since it keeps the game's core classes intact and shifts the flavor's focus to new sources of power. A cleric could be the cleric of a demon lord, and you would just reflavor the powers, but still keep the character a cleric. A kobold could channel arcane "magic user" power through shamanistic rituals, and the implementation stays the same as other magic users. This is a clean, simple, easy solution that requires no expansions, other books, or external material. It reinterprets what is there into a new method and outlook on casting magic, and keeps the fundamental roles and spells balanced.

My bard isn't "less than a thief" or "less of a caster" than other classes, only in the rate of advancement. The combinations of powers will enhance the character in many ways, while not gimping them in functioning as either a thief or a caster. You need a thief? Well, the bard will do, but they won't be as good as a dedicated thief, just due to the slower rate of advancement, but they can do everything a thief does, even backstab. Other games take that away from the bard, but this solution doesn't.

The final answer is to play Castles & Crusades, but that is another discussion entirely.

Mail Room: OSRIC 3 Hardcovers

There is a tendency in the OSR to muck things up, add too much bloat to the game, and put in so many new ideas that we lose the brilliance of the original game. Part of the reason I loved Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy was the beautiful simplicity; there are not many ways to go wrong with buttered toast, and OSE Classic was the perfect, simple, atomic, perfect recreation of the original game.

OSRIC 3.0 is exactly like that, but for AD&D.

Where Adventures Dark & Deep goes off the deep end of the pool with hundreds of pages of new additions ot the game, the ideas feel muddled and overly complex, where if all I wanted was an AD&D 1E clone, then I do not need all that extra fluff and positing of what could be.

There are times I want only the base game.

I want simple.

I want the best options.

I want a clean and streamlined game.

If I want to play just like it was the 1980s again, OSRIC 3.0 is the perfect game. The PDFs are PWYW, and you can get a free option if you're just checking them out for curiosity.

There is a post on Dragonsfoot that compares AD&D and OSRIC 3.0, and many of the differences stem from carefully considered legal reasons. The differences are extremely minor and not really a game-changer, and are only for rules lawyers. Some are welcome simplifications and clarifications (one roll to pick pockets, and rules for high-STR characters wielding 2H weapons with one hand). I like the changes and improvements, and this version is far clearer written than the original AD&D 1E PHB and DMG.

If I were starting new players with 1E, I would be playing OSRIC 3.0. Never has there been a clearer, easier-to-learn, and well-represented version of the game than this. This is a cleaner-presented, product-improved 1E with all the best options and mechanics.

And the game is derived from the Creative Commons release under a new, more open license. The now-hated OGL is finally gone from OSRIC! The game is free to live its own life without legal threats.

Stepping up from a BX set of rules to full 1E is a refreshing experience. A lot of what was left vague for younger audiences is cleared up in the full 1E version of the rules, and there is less room for interpretation in critical areas. OSRIC 3.0 seems easier than OSE in a few ways, with clearer rules for things that will come up during the game, and there will be less "winging it" at the table and more straightforward play and adventure.

Gary Gygax wrote AD&D for organized and tournament play, and the rules were designed to address the most common questions and situations that arose during play. While BX is perfectly playable at conventions and public settings, 1E clarifies many things individual groups would have to "make up on the fly" or "wing it," and standardizes play, keeping organized play clearer, fairer, and more consistent across game masters.

If you are playing organized play, 1E is a far better choice since less is left up to interpretation. Everything is compatible, from BX to games like Swords & Wizardry, so if you want adventures or more character options, they are there for the picking. The OSE Drow race? Use them as-is. The bard from Swords & Wizardry? Use that as-is. It all works together nicely.

But basing your game on OSRIC gives you a simple, consistent, and clean start. This is something more advanced, expanded games can't deliver, since you tend to have to "take in everything at once," and you lose that beautiful simplicity I like to see in a game.

How Far We Have Fallen

Never did I ever imagine we would have Bugs Bunny put in a game where kids use high-power military assault weapons to kill each other. If this were the 1980s, this would have been enough to get a CEO and the entire board of directors fired and run out of the entertainment business for life.

But here we are.

No wonder D&D sucks. This is the corporate thinking these days. This is the Wall Street zeitgeist. This is where "you can't die in a role-playing game" comes from. You can take a shotgun blast to the face and sleep it off in D&D 5E. This whole notion that stabbing someone or shooting them "doesn't do anything" makes me want to vomit. This is why roleplaying sucks. There are zero consequences for actions; the game has safety tools to prevent the referee from using them, death is impossible, and avatars are goofy animals in silly costumes. The entire game is a fantasy fulfillment simulator with self-identity coding and sexual overtones.

D&D owners and shareholders, this is where you went wrong. You don't need a survey to tell you what is right in front of your own eyes.

Foxy the cute fox man can't have his head blown off by a 5.56mm NATO assault rifle! You will scar me for life! It's "damage"; this is a "game." I am throwing up an X now! I identify as him! Sorry, that is a real weapon, and we treat real weapons with respect. We are too far down this road in real life to ignore this now. The world is at war. This may come home at any time. Shootings are on the news nearly every day. Foxy was cute, but he is dead. There are fox brains all over the wall behind him. Roll a new character.

There is a quote in this video:

"I don't think he understands that weapons don't do anything here..."

As the players get on a school bus.

God, I miss the 1980s. Do you know the outrage this would cause? Multiple state attorneys general would be on their ass about this. Donahue would be running this for two weeks. The nightly news would lead with this for days, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and the rest, all with grave undertones of what this is doing to our children's impressionable minds. Front page news around the country. Time and Newsweek would be doing stories on how corporations are militarizing our children and how gun manufacturers are profiting.

Are all you 1980s liberals dead, or did you just never believe the things you were saying back then? Where are you, people? We need you. This is your last chance to make a stand and say what is right. I know I am. But I am just one Gen-X'er with a stupid blog.

And here we are.

Now they got to Bugs Bunny, and that part of me will forever see this.

Classic Car Wars

I love classic Car Wars.

The new game is cool, and more miniature and card-based. Nothing beats the original for me, as I remember long summers of my brother and me playing days-long battles like a massive wargame on card tables covered with quarter-inch ruled maps.

And the game lets you design the vehicle your mind could imagine, from sports cars to buses to 18-wheelers. Motorcycles, too! Tanks, helicopters, boats, and planes joined the fight later. The game had both electric and gas engines for the cars, though, really, you could just say whatever you wanted the engines to be, and it did not really matter when we started playing. The gas engines were cool, along with the metal armor rules and the low-tech "Mad Max" style of play, where the battles were more "chassis and crossbow."

The game was slow. You were simulating a vehicle battle with real physics, one-tenth of a second at a time, though later that was increased to one-fifth of a second, and that sped up play by double. That level of accuracy was needed, since the battles were these chaotic dances of death where everything was in motion, and those "planned random moments" where a damaged side of armor appeared for a fraction of a second were often the difference between life and death.

If you don't have the patience to play a battle one second at a time without a computer, this game is not for you. And we designed these vehicles by hand, using an LCD scientific calculator. I still have this TI calculator, 50 years old at this point, and it is still working (and on its second battery).

Seriously, this country used to make stuff that lasted back in the 1970s and 80s.

Car Wars is a lot like simulating World War 2 dogfights: motion, fire angles, momentum, control rolls, lucky shots, and planning movement in slow motion were the keys to victory. Though on the ground, tire management became an issue. You are only as good as your contact with the road, and mines and spikes took their toll. Oil, paint, smoke, and other defensive weapons were highly effective.

Predicting your opponent's movement hours ahead of "real world time" and figuring out where you wanted to move, for 15-second slices of "game time," helped you gain foresight into where your opponents were likely to move. A car moving 40mph moves 4 inches per second, which gives you an idea of where it was going and could be in the next 10 seconds of play.

If you don't have the patience for this, stay far away.

But if you ever wanted to simulate a car-versus-car battle where every heartbeat of time matters, this is car nirvana. This hits the classic American "car culture" vibe perfectly, mixing it with Western and post-apoc genres in a tasty blend of nostalgia and muscle-car madness. The game slaps hard and is the meat and potatoes of simulation wargaming.

Fighting on foot is a death sentence, as cars were like ogre main battle tanks. You can mount an effective pedestrian defense against a vehicle assault, but you need urban terrain and a lot of coordinated fire and ambushes to do so. Pedestrians are slow compared to vehicles!

The game works for post-apocalyptic play, flashy autoduel arena battle play, low-tech car battles, battle cars versus superheroes, and every place in between.