The D&D 32X

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

I feel One D&D has this design goal of not invalidating ANY previous book in the entire D&D line. If you remember back to the 1990s, Sega tried to extend the life of the Genesis console with a series of "add-on" devices:

• The Sega CD
• The Sega 32X
• The Sega Channel 
• This was an add-on plugged into a cable outlet, and our family had one on our Sega CD
• ...and so on

All of them would plug into a Genesis console and offer new functionality. They never wanted to force consumers to "buy a new console," so the Genesis became this massive pile of add-on devices, dongles, and expansions that grew like some Steampunk machine.

And the graphics and sound capability of the original Genesis limited all of those devices.

Compared to a Super Nintendo, the Genesis was this massive pile of junk. And some things have different levels of quality control; we had parts break and had to be returned. It was all cool junk at the time, but ultimately none of it mattered.

I get the same feeling with One D&D, and they will support the original three 2014 books in a way. The new version will NOT fix any problems introduced in the expansions. As we see in the playtests, they already have to roll back changes that are cascading waterfall effects WITH those old expansion books.

Wizards did something like this before with the old D&D Essentials line for 4E; they "soft rebooted" the game - without invalidating previous books - and it just heralded the beginning of the end of that edition. I feel D&D 2024 will be the same, a soft "5E Essentials" reboot with a few ideas that will make it into the true 6E dropping a few years later.

4E Essentials did not magically fix 4E; and 2024 will not magically fix 5E.

We will get a shuffle and minor improvements, at best. But we are still waiting for a new design. It makes sense; the engine is still good. But what hurts are the legacy books holding this game back. All the old cheats will still be valid. The old expansions will give overpowered options. They should have taken more care of writing expansion content (just look at Spelljammer), so we are stuck with a legacy of splat-books that sold power gaming options. And these old expansion books will hold the new game back.

What happens when post-2024 expansions start breaking pre-2024 books? Or worse, when pre-2024 books break the new stuff?

Like Sega, this company is asking customers to support an even more and more cantankerous pile of systems, understand it all, be able to support any legacy book that shows up at the table and know how it breaks the current game, and hope it all works together as advertised. The DM crisis will worsen since maintaining domain knowledge of pre- and post-2024 books and rules interactions is out of reach for the average customer. That Super Nintendo is looking better and better all the time.

Wizards must jettison the past and move on to a true 6E.

And they need to support the Forgotten Realms as the official campaign world.

But I don't see those happening. So I am moving on to other games, and even the 5E SRD is worth hacking into new games at this point.

On the other hand, we have new versions of 5E to play with from different design teams. Tales of the Valiant looks like an incredible clean-room 5E design. We are getting a new official world, new monster books, and redesigned everything. It is all compatible, but the team is much more free to improve. The Kobold-verse is a fantastic place, and they are a team known for mastering a lot of 5E class designs and improvements that focus on mechanics and fun. Midgard is excellent, and it is fun to see an officially supported campaign world again, which Wizards is afraid to commit to and deliver (even though they have some of the most iconic campaign worlds in gaming history).

This game gives me that Super Nintendo feeling, compared with One D&D's mess of "pile of Genesis" books and legacy expansions. It is a new system with its own world and a self-contained experience you can immerse yourself in. And Kobold has a wealth of 5E adventures and content already made, so the game is well-supported even before its release. Like the Super Nintendo, you can forget about every other videogame system and just be a fan of this, and have a fantastic experience.

Advanced 5E is still great too. Oh, I know it is not a shiny new thing, but it is a fantastic OSR-style rebuild of 5E that does many exciting things. They build all three pillars of classic gaming into the rules. Character designs are tightly tied to the world, and backgrounds interact with the world! A soldier background can get you a small unit of 8 soldiers to use in your adventures. Where ToV cuts closer to the 5E core, A5E cuts closer to the OSR, with exploration and background being necessary again, which is beautiful. They pull in some of 4E, too, with environmental challenges in combat and exploration, one of the best parts of 4E brought back.

This is one worth picking up and playing, and it really is a fun version of the game that feels like an "OSR meets 5E" experience. Of all the versions of 5E out there, this one feels a lot like AD&D, which is no small feat. And they have a feat that can make you into a Batman-like vigilante. There are many cool things about this game, and it is worth picking up and playing - especially if you are an OSR fan with a collection of 5E books.

If I had to compare this with a 90's videogame console? I would have to go with 1990s-era PCs, like the 486DX. I was going to say TurboGrafx-16, but this game has those early SSI and Ultima feelings to me, along with the original Daggerfall and Arena 3d adventure games. There are games here you can't get on the Super Nintendo or Genesis, and Advanced 5E feels like those old "gold box" D&D games where you could walk 8 squares to the west of town on the overland map and have your whole party die from a random encounter of 5 giant spiders.

Yes, A5E is that game system where some hacking and system knowledge is required, but the experiences you can get from it are not available anywhere else. You need to port in adventures and 3rd party content, so more work is in store. Using this to build original worlds is fantastic. I am still a fan.

But also, the tighter world-binding of the characters here is something ToV doesn't do, along with maintaining the inspiration mechanic but tying it to a destiny system. Want to have your character turn into an angel? Select the Metamorphosis destiny, and earn inspiration from every act that moves you down that road to your ultimate character goal. Tying character stories to inspiration and rewarding the ultimate goal is another thing other 5E games do not do, and this makes the system worth checking out.

This is the game where the designers said, "I wish 5E could do that," and they made it do that.

Low Fantasy Gaming replaces Warhammer and Zweihander for me, and it is all 5E compatible while blending OSR concepts with a 5E framework and a brutal level of grit and survival-focused gameplay. If you want to play a gritty game but want to stay within 5E, this tremendous one-book game delivers a hardcore playstyle while still staying in the 5E sphere of rules. This game does what many "dark fantasy" games do, but a lot easier and in a familiar framework.

They have tremendous grimdark rules and mitigate balance issues with an escape and evasion system. They also allow you to invent your class feature every three levels, so no two characters will be identical. This game opens up every player's inner game designer and allows incredible customization and class expression. They also do a luck system that burns down and exploits that would enable pulp-action like saves and exploits.

Another 5E-like game is Shadow of the Demon Lord, which has horror covered. This is a little farther from 5E, but the mechanics are similar, and there is a LOT out there for this game. The build options increase exponentially as you level, and some fantastic mechanical improvements here make this the fantasy horror experience.

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

There are many options for 5E gaming, and none need to port in the broken 5E legacy content. You can start fresh and ignore what came before in all of these. In One D&D 2024, you can't. A vast library does not equal fun, especially if it invites hundreds of broken builds and exploits. And if a new set of base system books won't fix that, why do I need new base system books at all? Do the new base classes play better? Okay, but how many play those base classes anymore? The other stuff isn't going away.

I like the remakes and new experiences better than a patched game that relies too much on backward support. Yes, that back support is a strength of the game, just like the original Genesis game library. But time moves on, and people want new things to experience and play. Those Genesis games collected dust on our shelf as the SNES took over and had some fantastic experiences. The old library of 5E books will do the same, while One D&D looks increasingly like a stack of Sega hardware trying to keep the old books selling and viable when customers want to be amazed and experience new things.

The war is over if Kobold Press puts out an impressive "adventure path" that feels like the original Final Fantasy III (6j) game on the SNES. Inspire and amaze me, deliver an experience everyone talks about, and you cannot ignore it. One D&D, I don't care about new rules - I care more for experiences. The rules only matter if they spoil the experience through exploits and overly complex book collections only big-spending players can access. All that Sega hardware cost money too, and the SNES delivered a better experience with less complexity and cost.

I hate to sound negative, but I have seen this game play out. I want D&D to do well, but Wall Street, history, product design, a backward compatibility fallacy, and consumer moods work against them. They are already dealing with customer anger over 2023, and asking people to buy a fixed set of base books to support stacks of legacy books is a tough sell.