Legacy Star Wars, Your Own Universe

Part of what went wrong with modern Star Wars is the de-canonization of everything we loved. The audience said, " Okay, let's see what you got?" We gave them a fair chance. A few movies in, and the writing was on the wall. They did not have any new ideas, any good ones, and what they came up with relied on borrowing from the past; they kept farming what they threw out for nostalgia. They rewrote the past to create alternate-timeline shows. They brought back the dead as pet characters and created movie and television series around them.

They had nothing new, and it showed.

They did not have a story or a plan.

They made it up as they went along.

How you could spend billions of dollars without a plan is beyond me. Disney Star Wars is the Death Star, big, useless, slow, and a constant target for criticism. The hopes and dreams of an "empire" were pinned on this as the savior, yet we ended up with something nobody wanted, a tool of a corporate bureaucracy, and the entire project never did what it said it would deliver.

And the weaknesses of the entire effort were right there, open, and built into the design.

It is not hard to see why they failed. If George Lucas left a character dead, leave them dead. Move forward. Create new things. The universe is an amazing and wonderful place. Why do we need to keep returning to the past? Can we not have vision and purpose? Storytelling? Breaking free of the familiar and showing us something new and fun?

"Do. Or do not. There is no try." - Yoda

Resurrecting Ashoka, Palpatine, and Yoda (through Grogu) were the three greatest mistakes of modern Star Wars. We are now firmly stuck in a cycle of repeating the past, leaning on legacy characters to carry us through, and we will never break free from the black hole of nostalgia and its inescapable gravitational pull. And muppet baby Jar-Jar can't be too far away.

The Mandalorian is just a discounted Boba Fett. Remember when Boba Fett was new, and there weren't a hundred of them? Why can't we have every bounty hunter being cool and unique, and not the same ones run through the photocopier? The original magic of Star Wars, and part of the marketing, was to show us things we never saw before - and then we all bought the toys. Why are we stuck in a permanent recycling loop? All these nostalgia-bait drops are not cool; they are cringe.

To be honest, this is a part of the D&D problem, too. D&D will never break away from its mind flayers, spelljammers, tieflings, owlbears, and all the product identity IP. The copyrighted parts of that game will always define the adventures and experiences. In a way, Baldur's Gate 3 was the ultimate D&D experience, and that will never be topped. They are also stuck in a permanent cycle of recycling everything rather than showing us anything new.

But, real Star Wars is still out here with us. It is in our games and, surprisingly enough, in the AI Star Wars videos on YouTube that discuss lore and fill in gaps in canon. The creator community is "our only hope" at this point. Those who create their own Star Wars stories and preach the lessons of "the force" are, at this point, those who know and can recite Legacy canon, the "Jedi masters" of this movement.

We are in an era in which a single fan represents the resistance and a corporation represents the Empire.

How can you be a part? Join the Legacy community, play the games, and tell your stories. Buy the licensed game and support it before the inevitable corporate shuffle happens, and then make your own games to tell stories in this universe. Supporting a classic game that supports the lore we love sends a message. Telling stories in the classic universe counts, and adds your voice to one of millions who keep the hope alive through dreams and stories.

Every drop adds up to become an ocean, which cannot be denied.

The formula is easy. George Lucas would take some of the old, mix it with a lot of the new, and make a movie like that.

That is the way to make a good Star Wars story!

It is a simple formula.

Do that. You can't lose.

But the best way to focus on the past is to try to recreate the feelings of seeing something new and unusual, being taken out of your comfort zone, and experiencing something amazing and fresh again, but using the games and tools we are given.

Spend each day making it amazing.

Open your eyes wider with each new story and discovery.

And going back and reading the Legacy lore and books is just a font of awesome, inspiration, and good feelings. I get none of that from the new stuff. The old stuff? Oh yes, this thrills me like the OSR and classic dungeon-crawling. Lore-crawling is a thing in classic Star Wars, and you can get lost down here and burn through all your torches and rations.

Like Yoda allowing Luke to find himself, for good or bad, every Jedi must walk that path. This is your progression as a Star Wars storyteller. Find yourself, good or bad, but please, walk that path. Don't let others do it for you, or your feelings for the "state of the franchise" dissuade you. Who cares? Play!

"If one sits and does nothing, then nothing they shall be." - GM Yoda

I will happily let the new creators do as they wish. My memories of what I grew up with are mine, and they can't be tarnished by whatever the YouTube complainers are up in arms about today, nor by how horrible things are at the box office. This is not to excuse the poor state of today's films and TV shows; I have just given up on them, and even the griping about them has become a given.

I would rather create my own stories and memories from here on out. Like the famous line in the Twilight: 2000 game, "You're on your own now." Only in Star Wars, it is, "May the force be with you." And take that line to heart and understand what it means. The force is with you. It is not on YouTube. It is not on Disney+. It is not with the latest disappointment at the metroplex.

The force, the power to create and change the galaxy, to imagine, create, write, and feel the magic and wonder of this universe again, is in you.

And here, back in the old-school lore with my games and stories, is where I will be my happiest. Give me my Legends books and comics, and I can take it from here. If Hollywood can't give me what I want, I will just make it myself. I am beginning to feel "this is the way" for most modern franchises.

The fans will just have to create their own stories using the tools we have. If this weren't an official Star Wars game, it would be something BX that I hacked together to make it all work, the Genesys game, or even GURPS. However you will tell the story is up to you; just tell it.

I only have so much time and energy for listening to complaints. I would rather be making new, positive, and fun memories with my time.

These memories of this universe are mine.

No one will ruin them.

Part of why I still love the Star Wars RPG line is that it is a complete game. The company managing it does reprints, and I am happy with that. As long as there's interest, the game will remain in print and receive reprints for those who want them. And this is our last, great Star Wars RPG. Unlike the d20 version, this one stays relatively balanced at a higher play level, and combat does not break at a certain level.

And if I never want to see a legacy character, I can never use them; if I want to, I can kill them all off. This is an alternate universe where fate changed everything, and nobody can lean on the old favorites anymore. The GMNPCs are all gone; it is up to you, players, to pick up the torch and carry on. Yes, these games lean on the legacy characters and feature them in art, but nothing says you have to use them.

The universe is a huge place.

While they were important to one story, they are not at all important to every story, and they can't be. Even in the original movies and books, we met new characters! The PCs in this game are the new characters, and these are the stories we will tell.

Or I can lore dive and use those characters. I am free to change the lore to whatever I want. Maybe a character doesn't die and turns to the dark side? None of this lore is official or canon these days, so I am free to have fun and let YouTube complain about how things don't work in the lore anymore.

It is all mine, and I am happy with that.

In fact, this is the best thing ever.

There is nothing modern about this game; it ends around the time of the first sequel movie and focuses entirely on the Legacy timeline and characters. That is not a bad thing at all.

If you wanted to, you could tell stories from the new movies, but you don't have to. You will tell the stories that matter to you. Would I like to see sourcebooks for the new movies? Why not? I am a collector. They aren't needed, and I don't want anyone to feel they have to make things we already have versions of. If most of the new movies are just reskins of stormtroopers, TIE fighters, and star destroyers - why do we need a new book when we can use the older stats and have something close enough?

The current movies and shows recycle so much that nobody will notice.

Star Wars and Edge of the Empire are games close to my heart. When my brother was recovering from a stroke, we played this together, along with D&D 4, and he learned to write again by making his character sheets. He had to pick up the dice himself and roll them. He moved the tokens around the maps, even though his hand was shaking. He rehabbed with this game, with me running adventures with him. These were good times. The force of this game helped heal his body and mind, and gave him hope to fight an impossible battle for a little longer.

This is why I have so many pictures of this game.

These were the actual games we played together.

And here I am years later, he a force ghost, and I soldiering on and fighting the dark side (of the hobby). Am I letting the latest box-office disaster take any of this away? Will I let a bunch of know-nothings take history's best science fiction lore and universe away from me? Is anyone going to tell me that the Legends universe is not canon? Do I feel Star Wars is tarnished and "less of a special place" now? Will I listen to the clickbait complainers who say "Star Wars is dead?"

No.

This is a part of me that is non-negotiable. I know what Star Wars means to me.

Hope.

Off the Shelf: Edge of the Empire

Part of me misses this classic game, the old Fantasy Flight Star Wars RPG with the funny dice. Made before the Disney movies came out, this is the last, best window into the world of Classic (Legacy) Star Wars that we have left.

If there is such a thing as an "Old School Revolution" regarding D&D, there is such a thing as "Old School Legacy" when it comes to Star Wars. The OSL regarding these movies and books should be a real force in the galaxy, as powerful as the force itself. If all you want to do is ignore the modern movies, play in the original universe of the movies and the expanded universe, and just bring back all the good times you felt while you were growing up, this is your game.

I give you the power to do this. It is fine to ignore the new movies and just enjoy the old ones. You have my permission. Be a kid again and live in those moments. May the force be with you.

And you can still get this game, now published by Edge Studios and not Fantasy Flight, and I am happy to see it still in print and being sold. This one brings back memories.

I played this game with my brother, and we enjoyed the low-level play before things started to fall apart at higher power levels. Rolling four of those yellow dice for a skill meant you were the best-of-the-best, and you needed to be real stingy about character improvement to make the experience last and have meaningful play for any length of time.

Also slightly annoying was constantly deciphering the symbols on the dice and constantly coming up with "what this means" for every attack for every character. Special dice systems have this problem built into the game, and we often used them as a positive or negative modifier to the next turn's actions to speed things up.

One rule we had was not to "overroll" things and let one roll stand for a longer sequence of events. If you were trying to cross the town and blend in, avoiding Imperial contact, make one streetwise-type roll for the entire scene, interpret the results, and move on to the next scene. Do not make this entire scene six separate skill rolls with cascading special die-result interpretations! You will slow down the game, and, as a result, punish players by "forcing stupid stuff to happen" for every little thing they try to do.

The game played fast, especially if you kept the action macro on, and we even used the macro rule in combat. The turn-by-turn combat for us was more like playing through an action scene where a few blaster bolts were exchanged by each side, and we were not doing a GURPS-level, shot-by-shot, down to the second time tracking of a simulation system. One die roll and its consequences were the simulation of a short combat sequence, like what happens during this 5-10 second cut shot to the character, instead of trying to handle things at too granular a level of simulation.

Another issue the game had was that many of the classes in the "sister games" were too similar to each other, and you could double up by picking one spec in one book, and then cross-training in another spec in another. You will see the same sort of ability reprinted across the games, and some of the classes felt like ability shuffles. Still, the talent trees were fun to build up, and it is a more satisfying game to build a character in than D&D 5E. The build paths here beat the pants off D&D 5E's subclass system by far and allow for greater depth of control and planning your character build.

If you want a detailed, satisfying, talent-by-talent build system, drop the d20 and pick up the OG OSL game for Star Wars, and play through your childhood memories. These characters are fun to progress and build, and you start to become a specialist in areas that actually matter to your character concept. Never did I feel I was being forced to take a worthless power I would never use, and this happens all the time in 5E when you get something at a level, and you are like, "huh."

Since you don't have "magic items" or "levels" and character equipment is pretty static, your talents and experience define character power. The characters, while detailed, are still far easier to run than D&D 5E characters, and today's online character sheet games feel like a mess compared to a clean Legacy Star Wars character in this game.

When you start to add sourcebooks, things get more complicated, and the game begins to slow down. It is best to just stick to the core books when you begin. Have fun with the amazing amount of stuff they give you, and never play with too many expansion books.

Mixing characters between games felt like a "fish out of water" moment for us, and it felt best to keep characters and campaigns in the games where they belonged. You had to do this if you wanted to start adding Jedi into games, and forget canon when it comes to Jedi; there are Jedi everywhere in this game. Order 66 was an obvious failure, and what we saw in the prequel trilogy was the version they released to the press. Fewer than 1% of the Jedi and force-sensitive people were killed, and there are still a lot of these "magic users" running around the galaxy, good and bad.

It is more of a "game view" into this universe than a canon one, and that allows you to do whatever you want. I appreciate the freedom. This is my universe, and I will do what I want to. Also, do not feel beholden to canon in this game; if you want "Gray Jedi" or "Red Jedi," just do it and ignore the huge number of people on YouTube who will complain.

It is YOUR canon now.

Do time travel, mess things up, make Han work with the Imperials like a galactic scumbag. Play the Rebellion game, but play an Imperial campaign where they are the good guys and paint the Rebels as a terrorist faction. Work for the Hutts. Play as students in a Sith temple that backstab each other like it is "Evil High School." Whatever you want to do, you are free to do here, and never let others judge you for your take on Star Wars and "how you play with your action figures."

Because this is an "action figure game" even more so than D&D. You get a bunch of toys put into themed toyboxes, you are given a handful of toy dice, and you go make stories and play with your toys. Every character you make is a new toy; some of them may have short lives as you never want to leave them on the lawn for the lawnmower to eat, but, hey, that's life in the galaxy. You are not losing anything, and you get to make a new toy for the next story, next time.

All I want Star Wars to be these days, as a source of happiness, is as a "story simulator" - and that is exactly what I get here. Why am I endlessly watching YouTube complain about Star Wars, when what means more to me is "playing Star Wars" and "telling my own stories."

As a happiness delivery system, the Edge Studio games are more Star Wars to me than anything else right now. This, and the original movies, can deliver decades of happiness, and that is all I care about.

D&D has lost its way. It isn't about "play and fun" anymore, like these games were. D&D feels more like an online identity cosplay system than it does a storytelling game where you play with cool action figures and tell stories. In this game, I create a smuggler, run him around a remote outpost city, and try to steal his ship out of the Imperial impoundment yard, fail a bunch of rolls, get drilled and filled by Stormtrooper blaster bolts (they are a lot more deadly in these games and more accurate), and have him die on the street.

Sad? Yes. But did this serve the purpose of telling a tragic tale in this universe that I will always remember? Definitely. You are not invincible here; it lets you tell stories with a rotating cast of characters who may not make it to the next session, but there could always be a special connection among them. Characters do die or retire in Star Wars, and that is a part of the natural cycle of life in the universe.

My next character would be an eyewitness to the event who is handed the starship's control codes in his dying words, and he tells her, "Have a great life, kid. Take care of her."

And that is where the next story begins...

Is OSE Dropping BX?

https://necroticgnome.com/blogs/news/ose-2026-update-faq

I see some handwringing over OSE's move to a unified, standardized edition based around the Advanced rules. If what Castles & Crusades did with their amazing "de-OGL-ing" of their game, I would not worry one bit, and removing some of the "iconic terms" that some find so endearing (beholder to eye of terror, as given in the above link) is nothing but a nuisance, since call it what you want.

A few name changes to "owned IP" are not going to kill BX, but will make it stronger, able to stand on its own for the first time, and enable creators to use the iconic monsters and magic items in their adventures with a brand-new, not-tied-to-Wizards creative license. This is the birth of Open BX.

C&C did it just fine; I am not worried.

Breaking free of Wizards is exactly what the game needs in this moment.

Troll Lord Games did an incredible, exciting job of removing the OGL.

And the OGL is not BX. It should never be, since the OGL can be taken away from us someday. I am not letting them take BX from us as an extension of that. It is probably a moot threat, but I have no trust in companies with billions of dollars to throw around at a whim, and what they may do with that to kill competition. The little guys need to do everything possible to protect themselves and, by extension, our hobby and the investments we've made in our games.

Getting rid of the OGL is worth it at almost any cost.

A few name changes, or having the game under permanent threat because of "the feels?"

Who cares?

BX is greater than D&D. BX is greater than a few names we used to call things. BX is more than an old set of terms and spell names. The community of BX creators comes first. And 98% of the terms are already in the CC 5.1 document, so not much will need to change, anyway.

BX is a way of life.

The game will still beat with the heart of BX, and there is no need to go running back to dead-license versions and reprints from Wizards just to have a few names printed in your books. You are turning your back on a larger community of creators who need the support of passionate fans to run back into that cave of Wizards and the versions of the game that can never have new content created for them.

My old books work fine; they are not going away.

But creating new content is what this move is all about. They can't go forward with new starter sets, demonic grimoires, adventures, and expansions under the OGL. We will get more new stuff once the license is finally cleaned up and the game stands on its own. The new products will be possible because of the new license, and the game's future will be secure. We already have so much more in OSE than we did in the original books, with new classes, races, and ideas in an amazing game! Why would I go back?

If we want BX to live on its own, apart from the OGL and Wizards, we should embrace the new version and this new vision of the game. This is still 100% BX, but it is now Open BX. If the "old books" can't be expanded upon or adventures written for, then we will go crawling back to the dead-end versions of the game, and the game will eventually die.

An open-source and open-license version of any system will be superior to a proprietary one.

We need to move on. A few things here or there are nothing compared to having an open system.

This is the version of the game that will move forward as the old system slowly dies, goes out of print again, and is pulled by the parent company for whatever reason they come up with on a meeting room whiteboard. I want a game that is protected from "someone's stupid idea" for increasing profits.

Sure, for a few moments, playing with the original books will take me back to the 1980s. But nostalgia is a form of depression, and it is also selfish to support a version of the game that creators cannot write for. The BX community comes first, as this is the Open BX version of the game that will live forever.

OSE isn't dropping BX.

They are making it permanent.

A few changes are needed, but we will come out of this with a better game.

Mail Room: Gods of the Forbidden North (OSE)

If you can afford to pick up the hardcovers for Gods of the Forbidden North, do so. These volumes for OSE are mind-blowing, easily outdoing some of the classic BX megadungeons of yore. Where Barrowmaze is an amazing hexcrawl sandbox of its own, Gods of the Forbidden North is all that plus an expansive campaign setting, with many adventures scattered around the map.

GFN is easily large enough to "eat" every other megadungeon ever written, and has room for them all in this super setting. Though, to be honest, I don't know why you would, this place is massive enough on its own.

GFN is "an event" and not to be missed.

And this epic mega-setting easily outdoes many 5E mega-settings of the same caliber. It certainly outdoes most OSR megadungeons.

This is one of the most amazing mega-campaigns for OSE, and one of the most comprehensive and amazing since Rappan Athuk for Swords & Wizardry. Though this is more than a megadungeon, two whole volumes of this giant three-volume set are the campaign setting and the vast undercaverns.

And there is plenty of room for you to expand this setting and make it your own, placing your own dungeons and other adventures anywhere in this vast and savage land. There are cities to expand, plenty of room on the map, and your campaign can expand to be as large as you want, though there is enough in these books to last for a decade or more of regular sessions.

You have it all in just what they give you.

And the campaign ends with a megadungeon in the third book. You will never explore this all, and most will just discover the surface 10% of what these books have to offer. Still, the quality of the setting and adventures here is among the best in gaming, including 5E, and is not to be missed.

OSE is just as much of a "heavy hitter" in delivering cinematic and premiere experiences as 5E.

D&D 6E = 2E?

The latest rumors are that D&D is going back to AD&D 2E for D&D 6E.

They trained their audience to hate the game's creators, to laugh at THAC0 the clown, and to mock the old-school crowd.

D&D 5E is a death-free narrative game of "whack a mole" monster bashing, overpowered characters laughing at the feeble DM. There is no resource management or time management, and you can sleep off getting your face crushed flat by a warhammer.

The art and themes of the game are so far removed from the AD&D feeling that it has become another game entirely. The old settings are dead and abandoned, there is no fiction in these worlds worth reading, and the magic is gone.

If there is one "lost its way" franchise I can best equate D&D to, it is Disney Star Wars.

And they will never give up locking people into D&D Beyond with character sheets that are dozens of pages long and require tens of thousands of lines of JavaScript to function properly.

If they want to re-release AD&D 2E without messing it up? Great, thank you, please stop writing new editions and support the ones you have. Get out of the "new edition" business, please, and love and support the 50 years of games you have, rather than writing yet another Wizards edition of the game that will be replaced in 5-10 years.

We have had D&D 3E, 3.5E, 4E, 4E Essentials, 5E, and now 5.5E in just about 26 years. Three major and three minor versions of the game just for Wizards alone. That is re-buying the game every 4 years.

Stop making new editions and revisions. You can never get it right like they had back in the TSR days.

If they want to support, print, and preserve AD&D 2E? And open the AD&D 2E license and rules under a Creative Commons license? And begin to bring back the expansion AD&D 2E content under the same license? Maybe even reprint and support the AD&D 2E campaign settings?

Then, we are talking and making sense here.

Oh hell yes!

That would make me support Wizards of the Coast again and be a huge step in the right direction.

Nimble 5e Thoughts

Nimble is 5E, but it is small, dicey, and fast-playing. It is a quick, action-focused, and play-oriented system. The best way to describe it is Nimble is like 5E and Savage Worlds having a baby, and Nimble could be described as "the Savage Worlds of 5E."

The game started as a 5E mod, grew into a few books as a new way to play 5E, and is now becoming its own standalone game. The Monsters & More book is a watershed moment for the game, sort of where it went from being "alternate 5E playstyle" to "full 5E-based game." The monsters in this book have this amazing "D&D 4E" quality to them, where they are a mix of rules and special actions that impart a lot of flavor on each creature, and affect how they work in combat.

And this is still 5E, so you are meant to fight everything; the reaction roll does not exist, and drive interactions like it does in the OSR. That is one of the largest differences between 5E and the OSR. In 5E, it is generally assumed you will fight every encounter presented. In the OSR, 50% of all the encounters will be neutral or positive towards you (unless they are mindless oozes or undead). Roleplaying and negotiation are built into OSR gaming, and morale provides a way out of conflict. 5E does tend to assume every monster is there to fight, a combat-forward game, like this is a tabletop version of Diablo. Keeping this in mind will make you a better 5E referee, and adopting OSR reaction and morale rolls will improve your game and how you referee.

Since Nimble does away with D&D's atrocious, broken action economy and adopts a clean, industry-standard 3-action method, the speed of play increases dramatically. D&D wrote the game into a ditch by adopting all these special action types, and many of the rules now revolve around "what you can and can't do with different action types." The exploits are typically around abusing action types and descriptions to get away with cheese combos. If you keep the action economy simple and straightforward, you eliminate a few hundred pages of rules and infinite paragraphs of special "can and can't do" rules in every subclass ability and power.

D&D players are spending 10 minutes re-reading their character sheets every turn to check to see if the actions they chose this turn are allowed by the rules! Why is this in the game, again? Why are we forcing players to slow the game to a glacial pace just to see if a combo is viable? Why not just fix the rules, adopt an industry standard for actions, and get rid of all these problems and the flipping through pages of character sheets and rulebooks at every turn?

Nimble 5e fixes D&D's problems.

And it fixes them for good.

Even the resting system is fixed here, along with the constant revival and coming back from death that plagues 5E. The resurrection spell is a "secret spell" and insanely rare, and it makes death a motivating factor again. All of 5E's annoyances are addressed, and you are not getting a full rest in a dungeon closet anymore. You can't even fully rest while camping in the wilderness.

Finally, sanity comes back to D&D.

I don't mind the superheroic qualities of 5E as long as they are balanced with a realistic fear of death and balanced resting mechanics. Superheroes I can manage, superheroes with rules written in the game to prevent them from suffering any consequence, death, or needing to manage resources? I'm out; this superhero game sucks.

Even the death system is fixed, while keeping the zero hit points as a dying condition. There are no "death saves" in the game; if you gain a wound, you enter the dying condition, and someone must help you out, or you can drink a healing potion. You accumulate 6 wounds, and you are dead, and these only heal on a safe rest. Getting damaged, attacking, or casting a spell while in the dying state causes extra wounds. It is a clean, simple, elegant system that puts a real cost on zero hit points, and keeps resting and recovery important.

Healing potions are assumed to be standard equipment, so the default world is a little video game-like. Again, this contrasts with the OSR, where potions are in the realm of magic items rather than something you can buy at a shop. In a high-magic 5E world, I do not mind this as much as long as the death and wound mechanics are solid, which they are here. Go to zero hit points too many times, and the character is still dead, and there is no easy way back from that state.

This is one of the best death and recovery systems in 5E, and it beats my old favorite, Level Up A5E, in balancing costs and recovery. We have the heroic comebacks that 5E players love, balanced with the fear of permanent death. Resurrection is only possible in once-in-a-lifetime situations, and it is not something players can rely on - even at high levels.

Your level 17 thief can go out in a blaze of glory and die a hero. If they managed to save the day, then the legend is written in the annals of history; you accept the outcome and have a chance to start again as a fresh-faced character with a new story once again.

This is perfect.

This is what I wanted 5E to be. These are the "fixes" that I wanted in Tales of the Valiant, and only half-got in Level Up A5E. I wanted something fair but bold, allowing for heroic recovery while also carrying real and lasting consequences. The state of death remains a final truth for every character.

Now, how will you live your life?

Nimble 5e looks like "rules light 5E," but it's actually "fixed 5E." Who knew that fixing D&D involved removing 95% of the rules and adopting industry-standard frameworks and sensible rulings that fit the theme of the game? Oh, that's right, Shadowdark did that, too. While in Shadowdark, they set the theme to "dark and deadly," in Nimble, they set it to "heroic and legendary."

With the terrible parts of D&D fixed, what do we have left? Just the archetypal 5E adventure parts. The monster fights. The skill checks. The roleplaying. The epic hero feels. A rest-and-recovery system that does not create an invincible party. The flashy powers. Managing resources. Meaningful death. OSR-like play if you enforce it. A straightforward action economy. All the best parts of D&D, without any of the parts that make me want to pull my hair out.

While 5E started out well enough, by later books, it got so bad that I stopped playing.

Nimble 5e is a reset button for D&D. It is not "broken" anymore.

And Nimble 5e works very well.

Mail Room: Gaslands Refueled

Forgive me, Car Wars, but I have sinned.

This is a remarkably solid car combat game. Where Car Wars these days is more of a sleek, high-tech vehicular battle game, Gaslands embraces the DIY, Mad Max-style scale combat mayhem. This is more of a hobby and modeling game: take a bunch of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, Dremel them apart, glue kit pieces to them, paint the plastic bodies like road-warrior vehicles, and assemble them into scale battlecar conversions.

This is very different than Car Wars.

The last time we had this in Car Wars was the Chassis and Crossbow rules out of the old Dueltrack game, but this leans into it hard and puts you in charge of a team of cars to accomplish races, missions, and other vehicular mayhem. Car Wars was always meant for one-player-per-vehicle battles, since the record sheets were complex, whereas Gaslands is simpler and aggregates a lot into easier-to-track values. You are meant to run a multi-vehicle team here, and record-keeping is not a burden.

It reminds me of a mashup of Car Wars and Warhammer 40K, meant for big-table battles and automotive mayhem. This would play extremely well in a hobby shop on a Saturday afternoon, and the team size and tracking requirements mean the game would run fast, and much faster than the all-day battles we had with classic Car Wars that took all day to simulate a 30-second combat. Head over for fast food and ice cream after, and you have yourself a good day.

Fast, fun, lightweight, and simple car-smashing and minigun-firing fun.

A huge DIY aesthetic, meaning you can hack up and create your own custom force of battlecars. Tear up cheap die-cast cars and break out the glue, plastic bits, and model paint. This hobby balances kitbash creation with automotive destruction.

That is Gaslands.