Peanut Butter & Chocolate

My two absolute best games right now, and they work together incredibly well, are Castles & Crusades (C&C) and Swords & Wizardry (S&W). They go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

Peanut Butter

As a 100% throwback OSR game, Swords & Wizardry is my game. It has the AD&D magic resistance mechanic, plays precisely like AD&D light, and while it does not have as much "stuff" as a game like Old School Essentials (OSE), what it does have is that every piece is well thought out and works together very well. The ability score modifiers are less critical in this game, so you rely more on player creativity than 4d6 and drop the lowest. Fighters are awesome. Casters are tough to play. And the one save number is genius.

While I still love C&C better, S&W is my second game of choice since it gets so much right in balance, mechanics, and flavor. OSE may be easier to use, but S&W leaves so much more up to the group and frees you from even needing the clarification and simplification that OSE does (and in an incredible way). If a rule does not exist, you make it up - and when in doubt, make a save or ability score roll. No cleaned-up reference books are needed because, in the OSR, they were never intended to be needed.

You made the game your own.

What really stands out is the collection of adventures for Swords & Wizardry, along with compatibility with every OSR mega-dungeon and adventure ever made - you get them all. The excellent Greyhawk-replacement Lost Lands world is fantastic. The hundreds of adventures here beat the old TSR classics in variety and freshness. I am done with Tomb of Horrors! I did an inventory of my primary shelf of modules, and I estimate I have 20,000 hours of adventures I am waiting to play just from the mega-dungeons plus Lost Lands adventures I collected.

That is 25 years of gaming if I play two hours a night.

All of this is OSR, so I can play these with any game I choose, from OSE to Labyrinth Lord. Whatever OSR game comes out in the future (the next community favorite) will work 100% with my adventure collection. Not a bad investment, and since I never played any of these, they are all experiences waiting to be discovered.

5E, the Times are Changing...

I can't say this about 5E adventures since every 10 years, the game changes. Yes, they announced no new editions, but you look historically at the employee turnover at Wizards, and I doubt any of them that made that promise will be working there in 10 years. Plus, I would never want a new group of creators with great ideas to have their hands tied by the promises of a team in the past and to not deliver a great game - if it stays a tabletop game.

And in 10 years, I expect D&D to be a 100% online live-services game. There simply is no stopping the want of the potential billions of dollars of yearly profits if they turn D&D into a Madden. The big tech people are already moving into Wizards. At this point I do not think there is any stopping this, and in 10 years, I feel the OSR will be the home of traditional role-playing over tabletops or VTTs. Likely with a cloned OGL version of 5E.

Chocolate

A modern AD&D does not bet any better than Castles & Crusades. Gary Gygax played this game, likely had input into the rules, and AFAIK this was the last RPG he chose to play. The modern framework throws out 90% of the cruft and stat-tracking of OSR games, saving throw charts, skill lists, ability percentage charts, and class abilities all work under one unified system based on ability scores. The game is 100% compatible with OSR numbers: AC, hit point, damage, and adventures.

The character sheets are beautifully simple. I play other games, and their systems just seem clunky with the number of minutiae I am recording; even D&D 5E's massive skill list feels like a massive dongle hanging off the game, unneeded and just serving as this long list of numbers the scan through every time a character enters a room. There is a secondary "tool proficiency" system that acts as another skill list.

And some of the skills are "ability score replacement" skills; why do I need athletics and acrobatics when I should make a DEX check? Perception and insight are skills you roll with when you want to use WIS. Intimidation, deception, and persuasion are used instead of CHR. Some of the tool proficiencies replace STR checks. If my character is trained in acrobatics, make it a feat or class ability where you write down acrobatics and modify the distances and special moves a standard DEX check can perform.

I far prefer enhancement feats to ability score rolls to skill lists. And skill systems and saving throw lists are what you put in a game when your ability scores are not working hard enough.

Maximum Mayhem Reprints (excellent adventures BTW), level one 5E pre-gen

I have seen a few 5E pre-gen characters, and the character sheets are long, almost Palladium Fantasy RPG long. There are as many numbers on a 5E character sheet as on a Hero System character sheet. With C&C, the ability scores and Siege Engine system work together as the skill and save system. I do not need a list of saves or a list of skills. The design is elegant and genius-level in simplifying and tosses out the tacked-on and heavy design elements of 5E.

My C&C character sheet on a 4x6 card

C&C is a marvel of design, and once you understand everything the game throws out, it is hard to go back to anything else. It is almost an iPhone-level user interface simplification compared to old flip-phones and complicated Blackberry devices.

While C&C has more rules than S&W, the game is the best interpretation of a modern fantasy game framework. Even compared to S&W, the character sheets are more straightforward. C&C supports a balanced high-level play, and there is very little "opening the book" during play. Really, only when characters level up, or I want a monster statistic, do I have to open a book.

And all of the excellent Swords & Wizardry bestiaries are compatible with the game.

C&C is not changing; the game has been the same for nearly 20 years. All the old books are compatible with the new ones. And the game is hackable and modifiable to an incredible extent. There are so many classes, and you can combine and hack them all that I do not need expansion material.

These games are like my special treat; they give me everything I want and work great together. I can shop S&W, OSR, or C&C and be 100% sure my purchases will last and be compatible.