The Gen Con Announcements

From what I hear, EDGE Studios is not losing the Star Wars license, but Wizards will still produce 5E Star Wars books. Wizards is also releasing a handful of D&D and World of Warcraft books.

I do not yet know how deep these two product lines will be, or whether they will be one-off books with little follow-up support. These two IPs alone deserve libraries of material: bestiaries, race and culture books, era sourcebooks (not just a couple of quick releases). If they turn out to be limited, self-contained products, I am far less interested. What I want is a full, complete game experience that can sustain years of play.

The announced World of Warcraft book includes 50+ monsters. That does not even begin to cover the depth of WoW’s creatures, which could easily fill multiple bestiaries. Every major race deserves its own lore, history, and background treatment.

At the same time, Dark Sun is returning, along with Dragonlance and Greyhawk. In some ways it feels like the 1990s again, when too many settings helped push TSR toward bankruptcy. We will also see the D&D engine power G.I. Joe, Transformers, Power Rangers, and other licensed games in the coming years, further splitting attention. Traveller 5E is on the way. Many other publishers are announcing 5E-compatible versions of their own games.

We are watching partners brought on board to share financial risk, and other companies spending time and resources on D&D books when that energy could go into their own systems and releases.

Does flooding the channel with 5E-compatible versions of every popular IP, and every classic D&D setting, risk the same kind of consumer fatigue that hit the video-game industry in 1983 and TSR in the 1990s?

This is not a question of popularity. It is a question of volume without focus.

Is D&D Only Good for D&D Stories?

When the first version of AD&D 2nd Edition came out, it looked more like a generic game than D&D. The art was all over the place, but it included historical imagery that felt more like a simulation of Greek myths and stories. It still had plenty of generic fantasy art and pieces from noted TSR artists, but the entire game felt more setting-neutral than many editions. The revised edition shifted back into the D&D norms, but it still had that generic feeling, and that game could be used as a generic fantasy game.

TSR felt pressure from GURPS in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so it is understandable they shifted away from the "D&D lore" and more into generic fantasy tropes and imagery. AD&D 2E is peak D&D for the kind of flexible fantasy play I’m talking about; it does not have the Gygaxian prose, but it does have the modern tropes, including the bard. The best Open 2E version is For Gold & Glory, and one of the best alternatives to Wizards' D&D out there; it is a better game for generic fantasy than AD&D 2E since it removes the D&D tropes, and the art is fantastic and deeply thematic. If you go in expecting D&D tropes or demons and devils, note those have been removed, but the game itself is very strong.

When D&D 4E came around, Wizards went full "World of Warcraft," and we now had the official D&D setting, planes, and worlds firmly set in stone as the default setting. We never left this model of world delivery, and D&D 5E still feels like it is set in the "official" D&D universe.

The subclass design does not help things; they are designed for a specific world model and idea. These drag in a lot of D&D-isms, mixed with the high-and-flashy magic spells, and you are doing more work to remove things than enjoy a game with a neutral base. The cosmology, planar travel, and monsters all feel like a "World of Warcraft world, but D&D" and far out of the realm of generic fantasy. They drag their assumptions with them. Even the “simple” Fighter and Rogue have gotten more layered with subclass features that often feel anachronistic or tonally off for a grounded historical-fantasy game.

The Open 5E clones still feel like "different flavor D&D worlds" rather than generic fantasy, with Level Up A5E feeling the most generic of the three, compared to the heavily Midgard-ized Tales of the Valiant. Even then, Level Up A5E makes specific assumptions about races like Orcs, and still crafts its own setting in the rules.

Treasure, magic items, and gear round out the assumed pseudo-Victorian post-Renaissance setting, and once you introduce guns, all bets are off. Modern D&D is all over the place in terms of technology levels. Even the manner of dress has morphed into "trenchcoats and pauldrons" steampunk fantasy. In many modern games, the equipment lists help define the world.

Granted, with enough work, D&D can be used for historical fantasy, but I get the feeling it is a lot more work to do it, or you need a "5E compatible" game specifically designed for that setting and time period, usually a crowdfunding buy-in whenever it rolls around. The costs for supporting 5E are typically higher than other games.

The game has spent the last decade doubling down on its own identity rather than staying a neutral chassis. The D&D identity is popular and commercially successful, but it does make the system less transparent when you try to use it for something outside its preferred aesthetic.

While I play GURPS for these types of games, there are drawbacks. The rules weight and character creation times of GURPS prevent quick adoption, and many groups bounce off the system in the first 20 minutes, never to return. There is also a lot more referee work up front.

GURPS is better at supporting any setting without fighting you. Whether it is the better game for a given group depends on how much they value setting fidelity versus ease of play, speed of character creation, and built-in high-fantasy energy. GURPS is not low-prep or fast-starting; I would play Shadowdark for that type of "pick up fantasy game."

Shadowdark is a legitimate middle option, and it sits in an interesting spot between modern 5E and something like GURPS. It is deliberately lighter on baked-in setting and cosmology than current D&D. The core game gives you four classes (Fighter, Priest, Thief, Wizard), a short spell list, a focus on torch-and-resource pressure, and a tone that leans classic pulp fantasy rather than the high-magic, multiplanar, subclass-heavy world of 5E. Because so much of the “D&D-ness” has been stripped out or made optional, it is easier to tilt toward other flavors without constant subtraction.

I can do a classic Greek or Roman game in Shadowdark easily. But Shadowdark is not a blank slate. It is still a class-and-level, hit-point, armor-class, dungeon-crawling fantasy game at its core. Shadowdark wants to be dangerous, resource-aware, and slightly pulp. That is a feature if you like that feel. It is a mild constraint if you want something closer to pure historical drama or very low-fantasy mythic storytelling.

Shadowdark will not hand you a perfect classical or Norse game out of the box, but the amount of material you have to remove or rewrite is noticeably smaller than in current D&D. You are also not having to create everything yourself or leverage sourcebooks like you are in GURPS, though the GURPS sourcebooks are excellent. On the plus side, Shadowdark is far easier for new players to get used to, and the "flavor" of the campaign is "classic Greek" or "classic Roman," and the existing classes work as-is.

How much setting and tone does the system assume?

With 5E, you have a strictly defined world.

With GURPS, you have everything and nothing, and it is all DIY.

Shadowdark sits in the perfect center of this discussion: light, fast, and familiar - it hits the D&D notes. It is also far easier to mod and flavor than full D&D. It is far easier to start new players with than GURPS. Magic is already constrained and dangerous. The system can be modded into any setting with minimal effort.

D&D 5E: Centrally Planned Fantasy

They put your ideas into a box, define all your powers and abilities, and allow you to think that the few choices they give you are complete freedom and customization. D&D's class-based system has always tried to define your role narrowly to make the game easily approachable, but at the expense of constantly offering ways to break out of the small boxes it puts you in.

And these days, if you multiclass at all, you never get your 20th-level power. So we are back to punishing those who seek freedom and customization. The punishment is a lie, since almost no campaigns ever reach 20th-level play, but the threat is there. Disobey the centrally planned single-class paradigm, or the game-designer-as-state shall punish you for self-expression.

We had all this figured out in the 1980s when all of us AD&D players dropped D&D for GURPS. This happened, and it was partly responsible for the end of AD&D 1E. These pre-Battletech days were brutal, and AD&D declined in the late 1980s as other games took over. Magic: The Gathering in the mid-1990s was the nail in the coffin.

But we all wanted more character customization, which is why most hardcore groups went to GURPS and never looked back. The "central planning committee" of game designers at TSR could not contain our ideas, and we needed games that could do it all. Some went to Champions, and many flocked to GURPS. The only really strong class-based game to survive the 1990s was Rifts, which was greatly helped by the TMNT franchise.

And GURPS doesn't tell you that you can't have a power because you multiclassed. There are no classes.

These days, it is the crowdfunding grift crowd keeping 5E alive, and even this model is crumbling. We have far too many options in a game that can't support them; the character designers with a few dozen books have UI dropdowns to pick classes, feats, and powers that extend for a few screens and a few hundred selections, and the choices we were promised become shackles and confusing, messy, junk-filled lists to sort through. There are times in 5E character design when I feel I am digging through a garbage can of smelly, disorganized trash to find the one thing I am looking for.

GURPS? All options are equal; there are no class or level requirements, and they are all in one chapter. Buy them if you can afford them. They aren't scattered across six classes, with vaguely similar options with different names here and there, and only found in some "digital purchase" that took someone weeks to piece together in a database program and you paid forty-dollars to have the right to access.

D&D is a centrally planned game, but with a deeply capitalistic and exploitative sales model. There is always something new to buy, and another brand-new platform to buy it again on. Yet, you get these shill gaming sites calling D&D a "deeply socialist game," yet that is a deeply dishonest lie, and everyone can see how the digital sales model flies in the face of that statement. Are you kidding me? Even with the Open 5E clones, I am buying multiple digital copies of the same thing so the character designer can work on the latest site to support it.

GURPS, with its "buy what you want" character design system, feels like a game that leverages capital and the buying power of character points, has zero crowdfunding grift, and is far, far, far less exploitative since if you own the core two books, you own the entire game with zero digital add-ons needed to create any character. In GURPS, you "own the means of production" of all your characters, and these powers aren't given to you by the game designers far away, piece by piece, always for another buck for a new option, always something new the next quarter.

To be fair, you also "own the means of production" in the OSR, too, for all your characters. So this concept is a universal selling point for most old-school games. Modern games? Mostly live-service models, and mostly forgettable. They will all go away when the websites go offline, and we will be expected to buy the next thing.

A universal, open, no-character-class point-design character-creation system solves all of D&D 5E's problems. You don't need to keep watching YouTube videos on how to fix the game. You don't need to keep buying books to fix the game. You don't need to invest in more and more DM advice books on prep and adventure design. When you realize all of D&D's scaffolding is there to entice you into a buyer's market and collector's FOMO mentality, it all becomes clear.

Also, if it is printed in a physical book, and the character creation system works offline, it is a real game. Many of these modern games trick you into thinking the "first few levels are fine," but by the time you hit level five, the software requirement to manage complexity hits hard and you are forced to open your wallet.

And the surrounding D&D 5E market feeds off that buyer's market; the YouTubers and add-on book sellers are all fighting for a piece of the shrinking pie, and the parent company will start cutting off markets and keeping them for itself. Of that crowd "willing to spend big for a game," everyone is fighting to get that money. Even the media sites surrounding this market have been compromised by this cash flow.

We had all this figured out in the 1980s.

Most of the kids we played with were so poor they were lucky to own one or two gaming books. A live-service model game back then? You're kidding, right? None of us had the money to buy imagination, nor go into debt for a game. We picked games that gave us the most flexibility for the money we had. We dropped AD&D 1E for GURPS and never looked back.

These days, with AD&D 1E making a comeback for nostalgia, I play it again and am right back in the 1980s. Wanting to switch to GURPS.

GURPS: Bundles of Holdings!

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/G4Essentials2026

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/G4Infinite

We have two GURPS bundles on the Bundle of Holding; they are really worth checking out if you are new to GURPS. Jump in now, and open your mind to a universe of gaming!

Resolved: Paizo & The Archives of Nethys

It is nice to hear that the issues between the Archives of Nethys and Paizo are resolved. This should never have gotten to the level it did, and it feels like a lack of communication on all sides. Our community sites are special places, and they help share and promote the games we love. I bounced off Pathfinder 2, as it is better for groups than solo play, but I still like the system.

It's good to hear that this part of gaming's current woes is resolved in these horrible times for everyone.

The Downfalls of Story Gaming

"The game doesn't provide any tools to help players engage with my world, have meaningful relationships with my NPCs, engage in my storylines, or support my villains if they should be defeated too early."

I heard that said recently about D&D 5.5E.

My, my, my ...how far we have fallen.

The biggest mistake here is the very pretentious overuse of the word "my" over and over again. People come into D&D thinking they can become a dungeon master and force-feed any random group of players their theater slop, and players have to accept it because it is brand-name D&D, or any other of these story games that promise to solve the golden calf problem of "what game can I play that the players must interact with my story?" 

Some games use narrative tokens and storytelling rewards, milestone leveling, and other tools to carrot-and-stick players down the dungeon master's preset narrative arc. In a sense, yes, you are a dungeon master in this case because this is a form of torture.

In "real D&D," players can kill all your meaningful NPCs, walk away from the villain and not care, ignore your world, blow off your storylines, and not care about your never-published novel, and that is okay. This is D&D; let them kill monsters and take the loot. Focus on running the combats well, and you will be fine.

Some story games are great and help me tell wonderful solo-play stories. But on the flip side, I could never imagine using those narrative tools against a group of players trying to do their own thing. Use them together with the players to collaboratively tell a story and reward story beats? That is okay, but what are you doing? We can tell a story together without all this story-game scaffolding.

Why am I giving bennies or narrative points to players for accomplishing story beats? I feel this is like treating your players like dogs and giving them a biscuit and saying "good boy!" Why do we need all these metacurrencies and out-of-game point systems? Too often, they can be used for negative reinforcement rather than the positive reinforcement the game pretends people will use them for.

And I don't need to drop out of the game and pat players on the head for doing something narratively important. They should know that in their heart and feel it. But, no, here are some story point rewards, and a narrative token for you. Good job; have a gold star too.

This is the difference between a DM coming in and expecting to be the director of a play, with the players their "hired actors," versus the DM coming in and being the neutral arbiter in the world who merely decides "what logically comes next."

Give me a strong simulation of a fantasy world and its characters, and my players can do all the rest. My NPCs have the stories, not me as the referee; talk to them if you are interested. They also have all the information about the world; if you are interested, go talk to them. Not me, the referee; I have nothing to do with this at all. I just run combats and make rulings.

Talk to the NPCs.

They are not even "my" NPCs, either; they are the world's NPCs.

If you don't and want to do your own thing, that's cool, too. Just don't expect the NPCs to react a certain way to your tomfoolery, and they will be fine. They may even be interested in what you are up to as well! You never know, and the dice will decide that.

If you can't understand the invisible wall that a DM needs to have between the world and the referee, that this is not "your world" or "your NPCs" or "your story" - that all this belongs to the world, then you will never understand what it means to be a referee. Kill the king? Fine, I don't care. But the world will, and you will find that out. That invisible wall protects you, gives you necessary distance, and maintains your impartiality.

Like the referee in a sports game, you are not here to make one team win over the other. You are here to do a good and fair job where the players can say you handled their interactions between them and the world fairly, and you helped make the world's stories and NPCs come to life.

The players will tell their own stories, and the ultimate story is their rise to power or fall to tragedy.

The Perception Check

Something feels wrong about the perception check.

This is a "screw the players" mechanic that forces players to roll to learn secret information. In the old days, there was no perception check. The referee carefully described the environment, and players pushed, poked, looked, searched, and prodded the environment to find its hidden secrets. Even spotting an ambush did not force a roll; the referee described an environment, perhaps laid a few hints in there, and then the players could react accordingly.

The tracks stop right before they reach the pass.

If they look closer, then, yes, someone attempted to cover up the tracks.

And those tracks lead towards each side of the pass.

I am not forcing a Perception check for that. The players need to figure out if there is an ambush there on their own, using common sense and good judgment. Granted, those two things are in short supply these days, and with everyone a phone addict, many do not know how to interact with a natural environment or spot trouble like this.

"Why would people who hid in the bushes cover their tracks? I don't know! Hello?! Why are you hiding in there? Can you come out and explain why you covered your tracks?"

There is no rule to cover it in older games; it was what it was. The referee described the environment, the players were not on their phones, and they paid attention. Some skill-based games of the time did have perception-like skill mechanics, but D&D never did. Then again, the old D&D way of doing it was superior, and we only used those perception mechanics in edge cases and for situations where things weren't that clear.

These days, the entire passive perception "industry" and the "roll to see everything" sort of design slows the game down, and it sucks. It feels like the characters are looking through the world through tiny holes in cardboard boxes and rolling or having to check a number to see anything in the environment. Perception isn't a skill anymore; it is a set of blinders to view the world through.

In older games, we never needed the entire perception dongle.

Describe and let them react.

No rules. No numbers. No checking character sheets. No rolling the dice.

Player skill, listening, and using your head instead of your character sheet matter. The referee's descriptions matter. The skill on both sides heightens the experience.

Yet the perception trope seems overused, and this one mechanic defines 2/3rds of the interaction with adventures and the game. It is too important, too overused, and anything this prevalent should be designed out of the game. Otherwise, the game feels like it relies too much on one mechanic.

Imagine if every turn, you needed to "roll to move." Fail your movement roll, and you can't move. Fail your perception check, and you can't see or hear. The perception check is every character's eyes and ears into the world. Granted, it is only for situations where there is uncertainty involved in "if you see it," but the entire mechanic is far, far too overused, slows down play, and eliminates player skill.

The perception check is a terrible design.

Also, Wisdom should cover perception. This also falls into the category of having a "lift heavy objects" skill to replace the STR check. We have skills that duplicate ability score checks, and that is another sign of a terrible design. I don't know how you fix this other than admitting it is a flaw in the D&D 5E design and designing around these "rules bottlenecks" in the next edition.

When it started, it felt innocent and cool. These days, it acts as the default eyes and ears of every character in the game.