As I go through shelves of books and box up the ones I am selling, I write these little articles to help work through them. Sometimes, I must give a game or book another shot by writing them. This was true for Amazing Adventures 5E and the Arcanis Campaign Setting for 5E.
I had these two books in a sell box, ready to make a packing list and get a quote to get a mailing label and send away. For a few books, I referenced them, and they are going out the door. If it is from Wizards, it is gone, and I am not dealing with that negativity in my gaming life again. The 2014 D&D books have too much baggage. Today's game differs from the game back then, and those books represent an out-of-touch company.
I could have fun with these two books. They have some great ideas in them. They have a second chance at my table. Do they work well with a community-focused version of 5E? Can they be used to de-colonize my game from Wall Street negativity? Yes, they can. The third-party 5E community should no longer be called "third party" - because they are the party now. They are primary providers of 5E games. Even the language and even the playing field.
Whenever a negative Wizards story emerges, I say, "They don't make my game. I do not support that. The causes I support, free expression and workers' rights, I am not hurting a community by the game I choose. My conscience is clear."
And this series proves there is a lot of great primary-provider 5E stuff to support. We have quite a surprise to discuss today regarding campaigns on which to base your indie 5E game.
Oh, apologies to all my old-school games for this one. I was saving this for Castles & Crusades, but then I realized how old-school this setting is. And how the old school influenced Level Up A5E. Then it went 'click,' and I realized how perfect this combination really is. This is the newly-updated 5E version of the setting, so zero conversion and use as-is.
Check out this art from the introduction. This is perfect. Exploration, an encounter with a young dragon, they are lost and likely thought their ranger they did not let come along from a 2104 copy of D&D instead of LUA5E. Half of them are probably dead, and they will be lucky to make it the mile and a half back to the castle.
This is straightforward in a Swords & Wizardry or Castles & Crusades game - the GM rolls a random encounter, and you die.
In A5E, exploration mechanics help mitigate this situation with rules. A good ranger would have a decent chance to spot this and avoid trouble. From what I have seen of ToV, we are back in 5E and not really doing robust support of the exploration pillar. With other versions of 5E, you are back to the OSR, a random encounter, and you don't die because you can't die in 2014 5E. People complain at the DM for wasting 2 hours of the session on a pointless encounter that "wasn't even in the module!"
A5E does old-school play very well, and you can build characters that excel in combat, social, and exploration parts of an adventure. A5E is "old school with rules."
We need our Waterdeep, right? We have another newly updated book for 5E, same world, and still very old-school. And these books have the traditional mix of a human majority with elves, halflings, and dwarves in here too - but if you want dragon people, drow, tieflings, crow-people, wolfen, fae, and any other fantasy race to blend in - that is up to you. These old-school books can be filled in with the kin you want instead of having a setting force clockwork and steampunk on you when that is not your ideal fantasy world (Midgard suffers from this).
We have a giant book devoted to a vast fantasy town, ready to be used as-is or sprinkled with different backgrounds and cultures - this is your choice.
To complete our old-school betrayal to de-colonized 5E, let's add in another newly-updated 5E book. The Rappan Athuk mega-dungeon is located in the same setting, and it is a deadly, challenging, and years-long campaign focus for any group. This is also very old-school and fits the A5E theme of "5E but old-school" we aim for.
This setting would not play as well with Tales of the Valiant. It would play nicely but feel more like a Basic D&D with fewer rules, simplified and streamlined. I would miss the pillars of play support that the more in-depth (and complex) A5E brings.
If I want a purely social or exploration character, I can do that in A5E. In 2014 or 2024 D&D and Tales of the Valiant, we are leaning back towards the combat-focused 5E for the stories I want to tell.
This trilogy of books is one of the best old-school flavored 5E settings out there, with the best level of support. This feels more like the Forgotten Realms as we ran it back with AD&D, a lower-tech world with low magic and high danger with a considerable focus on exploration and social.
There is also a setting-neutral world book. At around 500 pages, it goes into Midgard-level depth, so you can get lost here. The Midgard book has more town maps, which puts it a step above this, but this is a fantastic world steeped in a lot of old-school charm. This and Midgard are my top two settings in depth and detail, along with the area they cover.
The special ancestries were special; even an elf in human lands was a thing. If I want the dragonkin to enter the game, they can set up an embassy or fort, claim an area of undead land as theirs, and clear it, and everyone can buzz about them. I love the "year zero" introductions of a race into a campaign world - it lets me do it how I want to, with allies and enemies, and how they learn to come together and get along. There are a lot of adventures in these introductions, and they give every background a place and story in the world rather than being "another funny shape on the bus."
I can start this area as a traditional fantasy 4-race mix and then tell how everyone came together.
And A5E puts substantial penalties on "pop-up" healing. This will make the game dangerous, not dull, zero-death, player entitlement like 2014 5E. Due to the dark magic at play, I can put a substantial penalty on death saves and healing checks in some areas. In some areas, if you die, your soul will be trapped until the area boss is killed (or you figure out what object or magic in the area is trapping them). Sometimes, the soul may be in a "soul jar" that could be taken to another part of the labyrinth as a tribute to the demon king of the dungeon.
Ticking clock! Better find that jar to have a chance of resurrecting the dead character. If you even know of its existence.
That is, assuming you even know that, haul the body back to the local temple, pay the tiny 1000gp fee, and find out the spell didn't work, and all they say was, "The soul could not return to the body, or did not want to. And the fee was non-refundable." You will have a player screaming, "But I want to!" and smashing that X card, but that is the danger you accept when you enter the business. All you say is, "But you can't," and leave it at that - let the party figure it out.
The players agreed to that safety tool sheet the GM gave out before the game started if needed.
No resurrection if the soul is trapped (in 5E and A5E, this is in the Resurrection spell; the soul must be free for the magic to work). Who says it is trapped? The GM or the module. Won't that scare people? Yes, that is the point. Don't die in a necromancer's graveyard tomb. You won't make it out.
That is if you even have the body. It could fall down a 300' shaft and land on level 16 somewhere; good luck getting enough character levels to go down there fast and find it before the ghoul ravagers get hungry.
In other places, especially the end level, forget it; the soul will never return.
This is the old school.
You need all that player power for a reason.
Some of the characters will not make it out of these places alive.
This is also why the GM fills out a list of safety tools before the game begins and tells the players, "Unrecoverable death will be in the game." The X card will not save you (except maybe sparing the grisly description of what happens next, just fade to black). You accept it, or you find another game. This is just like hardcore Diablo or World of Warcraft (or any other game) with permadeath, and you agree to that when you check the box and press play. These tools work both ways for a reason. The other players at the table who agree to this experience have a right to play how they want, too.
If you want to do an old-school 5E, A5E is the game, and this is the setting you need to get.
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