5E: Have All the Best Players Left the Building?

I like the Open 5E implementations like Level Up Advanced 5E and Tales of the Valiant. Still, another part of me sees so many re-invigorated classic games and OSR communities with tons of players and plenty of renewed interests that I need to ask the question of 5E:

Have all the best players left the building?

I know the 5E market is enormous, and everyone keeps saying that. However, I am seeing a dramatic increase in participation and activity in non-Wizards groups and games. The tide outside D&D is rising, and many great players are there.

"Best," in this case, refers explicitly to "players interested in the classic old-school playstyle."

Or, best for me and my tastes.

The best for you will be different.

Many of the best 5E players who still carry that torch of the old ways have left 5E and taken their toys to play in better places. We see the "New OSR" beginning to form, with excellent, OGL-free interpretations of B/X but tweaked to play better than the original. Where the early OGL games put "rule for rule" compatibility first, these new games are beginning to put "world building" or "fun" first, such as ACKS2 or Dragonslayer.

For me, the best players are going to games like these. They are hot right now—even Castles & Crusades is hot, and getting de-OGL'ed.

5E is in a strange, slow decline. I see the player base focusing more on identity (cute/cozy RP, romance, safe story play, bucket list experiences, etc.) than gameplay or classic dungeons, and 5E is dying as interest in the pandemic fad wanes and people move on. Granted, there is nothing wrong with those play styles, but they just don't interest me (and don't play well in solo play). Are Open 5E games compelling enough to capture attention, or are they just a middle finger to Wizards for a tiny fraction of players? When the 2024 books come out, will there be enough good players left to form a classic-play community of 5E gamers, or will most of them have moved on?

And will Open 5E hold interest?

I don't see it.

D&D Beyond is so huge it is like Facebook. D&D will live forever, but I have no interest in the games, gamers, or adventures. D&D is like McDonald's; it is there, but I won't eat there, and it will always be around.

My hardest-hitting 5E killers are GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy. For all the "build options" 5E professes to give you, it pales compared to anything powered by GURPS. Even Pathfinder 1e is a weak replacement for what I can do in GURPS; I can muck around for 5-6 levels in 5E or Pathfinder 1e to sort of maybe get a character I imagine or have the character I want, working correctly in every aspect - combat, exploration, and social - in GURPS right when I start playing.

GURPS has put my 5E books into storage. Add to that, I have a new interest in the Chaosium games too. 5E will not find much time on my table anymore.

This hurts, but I get far more enjoyment from character crafting and combats in GURPS than anywhere else. I could sell all my 5E books and not miss a thing. Chaosium has the great d100 system and the Runequest and Call of Cthulhu worlds.

I am running a "GURPS-Finder" game with my Pathfinder 1e books and enjoying seeing the iconic characters come to life in ways I never expected. The game feels like classic PF 1e but takes on an edgy, realistic, grounded feeling I love. Gone are the leveling, commoditized magic item economy, artificial hit die scaling, CR-based challenges leveling up with the characters, videogame-like, every-increasing gold piece reward, more damage every level, and scaling world. It is replaced by a flatter power level based on realism, a very character, story-driven, and "people, not levels" world.

1,000gp is still worth a lot, no matter how far along your character is.

I love the flattened power level in GURPS. Everything is dangerous. The monsters are the most challenging part of the conversion, and my experiment won't last long. Level-based games are not my thing; they feel too much like video games.

If I sell all my 5E books—even Open 5E—it will be because of GURPS and Chaosium games. 5E takes two shelves of core books and third-party expansions to give me a workable set of options, and it can't even come close to what the GURPS core character book gives me in options and builds (or even the 130-page digest-sized Dungeon Fantasy adventurers book).

For all the "pillars of play" support A5E provides, GURPS does it all the better in a unified system that does not require all this "class support" for the particular subsystems. ToV will probably only support this expanded play once the GM's Guide comes out in September, and then again, this will be an add-on system instead of something unified in the main rules. PF 1e and 2E? Same story. Books and books of options that don't give me what I have in point-buy systems.

Outside of GURPS, I like Castles & Crusades. I had this in storage but pulled it out. It is still a great game that feels like the best parts of AD&D with all the junk removed. This game is very comfortable to me and plays off 4x6 cards. Of all my level-based games, this is the one I am keeping.

Other than that, I am getting into an amazing world with Runquest.

The Scaffolding

One of the worst parts about Wizard's D&D is all the rules scaffolding they brought from Magic: The Gathering. The team invents unique sorts of actions, like bonus actions and reactions, and this is just one area—but there are many. Then you get into problems like double-casting spells with a bonus action.

TSR D&D wasn't like that; the designers understood the game to be more straightforward without many of the frameworks card game designers brought in. Again, you only get into some of these layered rules, which are primarily designed to be cheated and taken advantage of, like in a card game, where they create card synergies and situations for one particular card or deck build to shine.

Wizards' D&D also has the concept of "deck builds" in characters, which is what multiclassing and subclasses provide. A character is like your deck; each subclass, power, spell, and ability gained is your deck composition.

This is why some love 5E and some hate it. It is also why the break with Critical Role is inevitable. They are story gamers, and they need a system that appeals to that audience. It is unacceptable to ask their fans to do these 5E "deck builds" and constrain their stories to those few viable options. This is also why the OSR exists; we remember the TSR D&D as it used to be for the first 30 years of its life. Even Paizo is an offshoot of the Wizard's model, with many of the same 3E designers.

D&D and Pathfinder are character-builder games, like MtG is a deck-builder game.

GURPS has far more rules, so it should be worse. It is more of a character builder than 5E. The rules here are all built to maintain a simulation and character-builder system; when you get to combat, you take one action on one turn. It is even more fine-grained than D&D since readying a weapon is all you can do. It is just one thing; moving and attacking inside one turn is penalized. You don't have a lot of action types here or bonus actions to try and turn stuff before another 45 minutes go by for the table to decide what they are all doing next.

While you can "deck build" to take advantage of a rule in GURPS, it is usually bad form and highly unrealistic since the build system is supposed to reflect a lifetime of learning and experiences. In any Wizards' version of D&D, optimizing is typically seen as a good thing, and the same is true in Pathfinder 2, where optimization goes much harder regarding gameplay.

I can only play GURPS with 3 characters, which is a huge ask. It is better-played solo, as a single hero game, and doing that hardcore simulation.

But I don't see GURPS as a character-builder game, unlike how 5E or Pathfinder are designed. In those games, paths, and synergies are built into your limited choices. In GURPS, you have unlimited options and no paths to follow. The 5E designers put in trick builds and good combos; in GURPS, you are what you are and the game designer.

Cypher is a rules-light system, so it should be the best. Not really; while I love Cypher, I sometimes must be in the mood for the game's abstract nature. Running many characters in this rules-light game is also as much of a chore as GURPS, since after a while, the numbers, pools, edges, and abilities all start to blur together in a jumble of rules-light game linguistics and special terms make my head spin. The more rules-light a game gets, the more abstract and conceptual it gets, and I feel my brain slowly leaving reality in some FATE-induced mental haze. I still love Cypher.

With these new games, my eyes glaze over when I see 5E and Pathfinder 2 "tier lists" for classes and abilities for builds and videos going over this on YouTube. Don't take this. It's the wrong choice! It's a garbage-tier ability. Overall, it's the best pick. Why would you go with this? Terrible pick.

It has come to a point where I am selling all these other character-builder games. GURPS is my favorite; I can build with my own choices, and I will stick with it.

Shouldn't your story take priority over optimization if it is all about the story? Or are people steering their stories into optimized builds? I feel that this is why Critical Role is doing its own story system; how can players' stories be vital if they are beholden to the builds that Wizards decides are "hot" this season?

With a digital game, prepare for seasonal builds and options that are moved out of live support and into legacy. This will be like the ever-changing ground of an MMO, Magic the Gathering, or even Warhammer 40K, with entire armies or cards removed from active play. A digital game will never stay the same and be constantly flipped over like a compost pile to keep options fresh. Prepare for classes, races, subclasses, spells, powers, magic items, gear, and every other game part to move to live service models. Legacy options may still be supported, but I feel 'official play' builds will only be allowed with choices the designers think are viable and in "live rotation."

To their credit, Pazio has avoided live service models, and they deserve to be commended. If GURPS did not exist, I would be doing PF2. GURPS keeps random game designers out of my character builds, and I make the choices based on what suits my story.

Modern character-building games are one step away from a live service model. Don't be fooled.

This is the MtG and Games Workshop model, which has proven to work and drive profits. I don't have to like it to acknowledge it exists. And this is precisely how I would move D&D if I were in charge and had to answer to shareholders. It's the same thing; you get put in that position and don't have a choice.

Answering fans is a different thing.

$80 Books

I read people defending expensive roleplaying books as luxury items.

Then, I saw some of the new price points from one of the top two publishers, one of which was $80 for a sourcebook.

...

Luxury items? That is where we are going? Soon, these books will break $100. I bet softcovers will break $50. All for books that will need a second printing in a year due to errata.

Right.

It roleplaying industry is dead. The collectors are killing games.

I remember when $20 got you a game that lasted 10 years. We have games out there with free PDFs, and books are printed "at cost" for a tenth of what they want for a book these days.

Long live the hobby.

The hobby I grew up with.

Not this.

Mail Room: Car Wars Bundles

The Car Wars Bundle box sets from Steve Jackson Games are fantastic. All of the original boxed games are here, and they include both the original cardstock "cut them yourself" counters and a set of very thick-stock punch-out counters for all game pieces. A Car Wars game with thick "sneeze-proof" counters is impressive.

This is the original game, with the later 5-phase turn instead of the game's original 10-phase one, and it plays faster without losing too much simulation.

There is a new version of Car Wars with 3D-printed cars and cards, but this is the old-school, designed vehicles, cycles, rigs, busses, and everything else on the road - and take them to war. This is closer to an RPG than a card game, and it is what I grew up with. I have not tried the new game, and I am sure it is fun and fast-paced, but it is not the original.

The original is more than just "car versus car" - it is a game creation kit for any automotive mayhem. You could do motorcycles versus a big rig, races, road battles, arena PvP battles, street battles, police chases, heists, offroad racing, spy car versus pursuit, and any other vehicle battle with these rules. You can design today's no-armor vehicles or future armored battle cars and battle them all with hand or vehicle weapons.

They have four boxes with a collection of everything you need to play the original game, maps, counters, road sections, rules, and the original box sets. You may want to invest in the Car Wars Compendium if you wish to use all the rules in the final form (with the most options), but the pocket boxes work great, too.

This is such a fantastic throwback nostalgia ride, and you can also base an entire roleplaying campaign around the battles with a 2d6 Traveller-like set of rules (Cepheus Light is my choice).

This is one of my best purchased this year, and will give me a lifetime of throwback, nostalgia, thrill-ride fun.

Fallout Kills D&D?

It is funny how the Fallout roleplaying game sold out worldwide after the Amazon show.

A small team of creative showrunners captured the imaginations of the "wider audience." They did this by honoring the lore and original creators. Fallout has won over the "normies," Now, you will see a shift away from D&D.

Fallout has replaced Stranger Things.

If I were a YouTube live-play streaming show, it would be Fallout, Fallout, Fallout.

I would not be playing D&D to a small crowd of D&D players; I would be playing the Fallout RPG and attracting mass-market viewers. Chase the wave.

Fallout may replace D&D in the larger culture.

Is it a fantasy game? No, but it doesn't matter. People are fickle. Fads change. D&D fantasy cosplay and play-acting may be seen as "old" and "dated."

The sad thing is for D&D, they got taken for a ride by Hollywood, bought a movie studio (and sold it for a considerable loss), and are now falling into the trap of trying to modernize their IP for a small crowd on social media for a handful of book sales. All it does is destroy their brands. Keeping the lore untouched would make it a much more attractive property for people to create shows with.

They had the right idea trying to get into entertainment.

Where they went wrong was buying a movie studio.

They bet everything on one movie and blew it.

The original creators of these worlds are getting older, and they are being pushed to the side when they could easily be creative voices for projects like Fallout. The creators of Dragon Lance have been alienated, and the creator of the Realms isn't getting any younger. The people who could help create a Fallout TV show success are being pushed to the side by small-minded people who just want to make books for social media popularity, which targets primarily non-paying customers. Or a book-only crowd, which is tiny.

Here's a tip: Social media popularity and book buyers are nothing compared to having a hit TV show.

They had the IP to do this but needed the vision and self-control to do it right.

They tried to make D&D the only fantasy game with the OGL debacle. They angered so many old-time players that they tanked their movie. The rest of the hobby saw their OGL license as a threat and walked away.

Now, all they can do is make mobile games.

It is a sad end to many great stories.

It was also a happy beginning to many others in other games.

Good Video: How an 'Innocent' Game is Stealing BILLIONS from Players

 

Check this out.

And you wonder why companies hire people from the tobacco industry, and there is this revolving door of addiction experts going on in these circles.

And it is all 100% unregulated gambling being sold to children using familiar IPs.

The games are slot machines.

You get suckered in and keep telling yourself, "It is a hobby I enjoy."

"This is where all the good players are."

"I don't want to miss out."

"Look at everyone having fun."

"At least I will find a game."

"This is easier than playing the real thing."

There was a reason, in the old days, churches hated casinos and gambling. It drained the money out of a community, created heartbreak and strife, and sent people into decay and addiction, along with the place they lived in. It preyed on the young. Pretty soon, what was a nice place with people in charge of their destinies, finances, families, and futures became slaves to the dice and roulette wheel. The dependency cycle could never be stopped.

And all the money was gone.

This is happening in the book collectors market as well. The number of books to buy and collect is skyrocketing. Digital versions with subscription fees attached. Virtual goods on virtual tabletops. But the book market pales in comparison to mobile.

You let an app onto your phone; they own a piece of your soul.

It's not a phone anymore; it is the screen of an unregulated slot machine.

A tiny square of addiction and heartbreak.

Daggerheart vs. 5E

The Darggerheart game is the elephant in the room with 5E players. Few want to criticize it because there are so many fans, yet secretly, many of the 5E stalwarts want to savage it because it threatens the player base.

Daggerheart is the logical evolution of the Critical Role fanbase. They must get their fans on their own game and control their destiny. This is a good thing, in fact.

But what happened to D&D when Critical Role gained popularity is very telling. Notice how the 2024 celebrations of D&D omit or reduce Critical Role and, honestly, most mentions of the game as a spectator activity. This is all about the spectator sport of D&D, and this is the impact of Twitch and YouTube on the game.

Critical Role drove D&D for a few years and steered the entire game into "story gaming" mode like a FATE. I am hesitant to call 5E—as it exists today—a dungeon game. The DMG doesn't help anyone play that way, and every expansion leans hard into that "narrative bucket list" sort of "watch this or that group of YouTubers" play through a "shared experience."

The focus on character and identity in 5E has been so overwhelming that those who love pure dungeon crawls had to go off and make their own game, Shadowdark. The original designers of 5E, who still defend the numerical and mechanical aspects of the system, don't see the metric ton of my character as an ABCD... combo of all these particular terms and choices meaning different things like background, homeland, ancestry, etc. - along with class, multiclass combo, subclass choice, etc.

There are too many choices in 5E.

Every one of those choices is a custom set of rules.

It is killing the game.

And some Open 5E designs make it worse.

In GURPS, the skill system is the same and works the same for everyone. The same goes for powers, advantages, disadvantages, spells, and subsystems. I play Dungeon Fantasy, and does the same advantage work the same for any character type or monster? Does one skill work the same for everyone? Yes, to all of that, it all works the same. All combat options work the same way for everyone, and designers can't write custom combat moves into subclasses.

In 5E, you get a subclass, giving you custom-designed abilities for which other games would have skills. It is frankly a horrible design, inconsistent to hell, forces you to buy new books for new skills, nothing works the same way twice, and overloaded cruft and bloat that game designers solved in the 1980s.

In games that do it right, 'faith healing' is a skill on a skill list. Clerics, druids, paladins, and anyone with that skill can buy it. It works one way for everyone and is written down in one place. In 5E, it can mean a dozen things in a few hundred subclass choices and works differently for all of them.

These combo choices of heritage, ancestry, culture, background, class, and so on are further subdivided into deeper and deeper levels of madness—with unique abilities, powers, and skills written into each one! What's next? We need a choice for education, society, early development, family, and outlook! And every one of these choices needs a spaghetti-coded list of designer-imagines custom powers. If you went to college, please write down your ability to use a 'deduction' power! And reduce study time by 20%! That sounds great! Was your family life 'one of many'? Please write down a 'lost in the crowd' ability that gives you an advantage in not being noticed in crowds! Public school or private? Oh no, you need a new power for those!

And I am writing down huge lists of custom abilities and powers with no end. Everybody wants something for every unique part of their background and life. This is a terrible design trend of snowflake-ism, where we feel obliged to give everyone extraordinary power for every mundane and everyday aspect of their life. Subclasses are the same way. Are you a crusader paladin or champion? Oh no! More powers are needed because you are a particular word!

5E gets sickening after a while with this pandering custom options and power tossed at you like candy you don't want or need. The designers blew it by replacing universal systems with letting designers write custom-written tripe powers and abilities. This killed the game as if a diet high in cholesterol clogs the heart. The core books are fine, but get over three shelves of 5E books, and your game dies.

Will Critical Role force its viewers to sign up for D&D Beyond, potentially exposing them to other streaming shows being pushed via that platform? Or will they release their own rules-light story game with easier character creation so viewers can "play along on their own?"

The answer is easy.

Control your platform.

And rules-light story games come out every day. Good ones are tough to create, harder than a game with defined systems, but they must ultimately serve your market's needs and goals. Daggerheart is a game "that looks and plays like the show."

And that is all it needs to do to be successful.

You can't judge Daggerheart on the merits of 5E, and in doing so, you miss the bigger picture.

5E's mess of designer-driven, custom-hacked works differently every time. Duct-taped-together characters are a game design that locks you into a single platform because character complexity is so high you need a computer to figure it all out. You don't see it in a single character at level one. Give them a few levels, and once you pile on paragraphs of special powers, rules introduced in subclasses, and other custom designer flourishes, you realize every character is a trap.

With a monthly fee.

You are paying Wizards to control the complexity of the game they create. They need an incentive to simplify this design, and even Open 5E falls into this trap. At this point, D&D and 5E are D&D Beyond. Many say they can only figure the game out with it.

That is the plan.

The game was designed that way.

Daggerheart is an off-ramp for Critical Role's casual fans; no matter the quality or design, it is good for them. It will get better with iterations.

All they need to do is keep their audience.

Castles & Crusades: Reforged (OGL Free)

https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/UdtYMs1

Troll Lord is celebrating OGL-free books and giving away a PDF of the 10th printing of Castles & Crusades Player's handbook - but you must sign up via the above page. This is a limited-time offer before they roll out the Kickstarter for the three core books, which are OGL-free and forging their destiny.

The link above came from Troll Lord's official Facebook page, which is legit.

The OGL disaster succeeded in balkanizing the hobby; good job, Wizards. Maybe they wanted to divorce their legacy, non-digital players, and go after the mobile gaming market. In that case, they succeeded. Tabletop D&D is dying. Even though it is still huge, like a dying whale, the time it takes for significant things to die can be pretty long. They are going to mobile gaming, and D&D has had its time in the sun.

C&C is my game; even without the OGL, the best parts are still here.

Old School Car Wars

We only had calculators back in the day. We did not have Excel, spreadsheets, computers, cell phones, or the Internet. We designed these cars by hand. Columns of numbers down a sheet of paper, sums and totals, points of armor, notes on weapons and accessories, and a grand total at the bottom, making each design fit into a cost and weight budget.

Pencil, paper, and imagination to create dreams.

The tables were covered with maps and counters. We laid large sheets of posterboard over the maps to ensure the counters weren't disturbed and picked them up carefully and slowly each day. We wanted to return to the game as it was tomorrow.

The games went on for days, with the story of each car a little plotline running through a massive battle with 12, 24, or even 200 cars on the board. By the end, the wrecks covered the battlefield, and those tough, lucky, or smart enough survived. The battles took hours to complete, 30 seconds of play, or days for massive battles. We had lists of who went next and handled them down the line. Special counters to track conditions like fire and lost tires.

This was the long summers in a poor Appalachia household with no Nintendo and no Internet, as they did not exist at that time. The Atari 2600 was a dead console, and there was nothing to do but go outside or play Car Wars all day.

We played Car Wars all day.

This game is in my blood.

Every other game faded away. AD&D and Mystara died. New games paled in comparison. There was no BattleTech, nor was there Warhammer. Just Car Wars, Star Frontiers, and a little West End Game's Paranoia. We made our own roleplaying game to go with Car Wars, a Traveller variant that seamlessly meshed with the board game.

We had pencils, paper, colored pencils, and magic markers to make our counters and maps. We covered poster boards in huge maps, laying out our grids and planning the maps with rulers, drafting tools, and drafting French curves. Inking and coloring them. those hand-made maps took weeks to plan and create, but they were ours and cool.

I still have them.

It also helped set me up for a lifetime of learning in science, math, engineering, and creative problem-solving. It taught me the value of seat belts and the importance of driving slowly on dangerous roads. It taught me how to be aware at night, how to drive defensively, how to be responsible and budget for the things I want, and how to deal with adversity. It taught me how to know when a battle can't be won and to bow out before things get too bad.

The honor of accepting a surrender. And expecting the same mercy in return. And when to know there would be none.

This was life.

And life was Car Wars.

Appendix N vs. Harry Potter

I feel this generation could care less about the classic 1970s fantasy books like the ones in Appendix N. Every 5E book I watch feels influenced by either Harry Potter or anime.

I have to ask myself, with 5E, does 1970s fantasy matter anymore?

It is a sobering feeling coming to this conclusion, which influenced my decision to rid myself of all my 5E books. I was never really into Harry Potter (which is like a bible to this generation), and I do like anime, but not in my tabletop gaming.

Did Harry Potter kill Appendix N?

My 5E and Pathfinder 2 books felt like they were talking to an alien audience. I did not care for the art, which was all too disconnected, floating on the page, and too happy fluff. The content was overwritten and bloated, and it felt like pay-by-the-word filler.

The books weren't speaking to me.

Even if some were written for a more mature audience, the inconsistency between the core rulebooks, which looked like YA comic books, and the darker-themed books like Inferno or Dante's gave me this horribly inconsistent, food-at-a-low-quality buffet feeling (with a few great entrees) that turned my stomach.

There is a reason Dragonslayer was created. The game has a strict art requirement and consistent style. I can get into the feeling and vibe of the game. Shadowdark is the same way. Reading the book makes you want to play what it is showing you. Free League does an impressive job in terms of art and direction.

Shadowdark is amazing. This is what 5E should be instead of the narrative superhero game it turned into. I greatly respect this team and what they managed to do, fix 5E and bring it back to its roots. The original designers of 5E have yet to learn how bad it has gotten, and a patch 2024 release by Wizards will not fix the bloat and fatty mess the game has turned into.

Shadowdark is emergent storytelling based on fear and tension.

5E has strayed so far away from dungeons that it feels like it has become a FATE-style story game.

Dungeon Crawl Classics is fantastic in terms of art direction, even though the styles vary widely - they all fit that old-school theme. This is also the game that holds Appendix N to be the inspiration for the hobby it should be. But do those 1970s fantasy books speak to people who create 5E books?

With my old-school games and classic modules, I know they speak to me.

And I can't say the presentation of 5E, Open 5E, or even Pathfinder 2 excites me. This may change with Tales of the Valiant, but I grow less hopeful knowing the mess of books I already have.

I can't play 5E without feeling like I am forcing myself to like it. The system works at low levels and worsens at higher levels, like 4E's broken promise. Level Up A5E addresses the problem, but I feel overpowered and bored at level six even with those rules. And I need more than a broken promise to give 5E shelf space.

But Appendix N is the heart of the hobby, and it feels irrelevant today in many of the newer games. Harry Potter was so huge, developmentally, to so many that I am begging to wonder if the earlier classics are being forgotten, and the trends in gaming are more inspired by Marvel, 3D animated movies, and anime than anything the hobby started with.

Kickstarter: Adventures Dark & Deep, 2nd Printing

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brwgames/adventures-dark-and-deep-core-rules-2nd-printing

Adventures Dark & Deep is doing a second printing, and they have a Kickstarter out. I have the first printing, and it is an excellent AD&D-style throwback game, with a ton of speculative material, extending the experience to include items that were discussed but never implemented. From the Kickstarter page:

This second printing incorporates numerous errata, expands the material with new classes like the blackguard and skald, and centaurs as a player race, and makes many other improvements to the original three books. In addition, the original three books have been consolidated into two; the Core Rulebook and the Core Bestiary. Everything is being comprehensively re-edited and re-organized to make it much easier to use. 

The Kickstarter includes a core rulebook and monster book, each at over 500 pages, and a total of 900 monsters included at $90. It is a great deal, and if you are an AD&D diehard looking for a game that respects the old while adding what could have been, this is a great game for you.

Hero System Basic Rulebook

At 138 pages, the Hero System Basic Rulebook is more of a superhero roleplaying game than most dedicated superhero games. This is a low-cost introduction to the full-blast Hero System, and the differences are described in a paragraph in the book below:

BR differs from the full HERO System rules in just one major respect: the amount of details, options, alternatives, and minor/special rules available. The core mechanics of the two systems — how you make an Attack Roll or a Skill Roll, how characters take damage, and so forth — are identical. But where the HERO System might include ten paragraphs and four special Power Modifiers to explain a particular Power and provide ways for gamers to customize it, BR probably only has a couple of paragraphs. It leaves out a lot of the detail and options of the full HERO System. The intent is to pare the HERO System down to its most necessary rules — that way you can easily learn them before diving into the more complex, but much richer, rules of the full system.

A good example is the Change Environment power, a 3/4 column of rules in the Basic Rulebook; the full rules are 4 pages for many unique situations. I could run a superhero campaign with the Basic Rules and never need the complete rules. As it is, the basic rules are more complete and powerful than many full superhero games.

One thing I love about the Hero System is that conversions are stupidly simple. Instead of converting, you design the item as a power source. All weapons and items are created as powers. Do we want a laser pistol?

RKA 2d6 (30 points), AP (+1/4); 37 active points; OAF (-1), No Knockback (-1/4), 20 charges (2 clips max) (+1/2). Total: 21 points.

And any superpower can be designed into an item. So you can have flash grenades, ESP helmets, luck potions, tangle guns, holographic illusion projectors, mind control rings, powered attack claws, and anything the power system can do can be designed straight into an item. I am calculating the points; you don't need to go through that for "found items" that you pick up; this is just a convenience if someone wants to use that laser pistol in a character design and also to know the relative power level of the device compared to others.

This makes games like Gamma World or Fallout in Hero System infinitely more fun since the devices of the ancients can go way beyond what they have in the books, and they can have all sorts of strange and wild effects that nobody expects - along with side effects that can be designed as limitations. And your mutations are also essentially superpowers.

It is all one power system, go to town designing.

And if you always wanted to, you could just say an item "is what it is" without designing it.

In this sense, it is a better design framework than GURPS since everything in the world is designed using the same system. In GURPS, you will have characters on one system and other items on another; nothing is unified and straightforward. Here? It is easy. The entire system will be unlocked once you learn how to design a power.

The Basic Rulebook is capable of running many games and conversions. There is also a great PWYW introduction to the system here. Also, for those who complain about all the math, this game isn't for you. I see a lot of complaints about math-heavy games like this and GURPS, and frankly, if you aren't willing to put in the work, plenty of other games out there may suit you better. This is the same with all the reading needed to play Runequest; if you don't want to put the work into learning about people and cultures, you will miss out, but there are always alternatives.

Sometimes, I like a game to be more complex since those who want to love and play the system will put in the effort. The community will be smaller but more interested, engaged, and knowledgeable.

Hero System is one of those games. If you buy into and learn it, you can design any other game imaginable using the same framework. It scales from gritty, low-level street heroes to cosmic superheroes.

It is a worthwhile game, and the design system itself is a hobby in its own right.

Off the Shelf: HERO System

As I went through my storage boxes, I pulled out the set of HERO System 6th books I got during the pandemic, but I needed more time to play. It got put into storage last year. I got them out because I played a lot of Hero System 4th with my brother, and we liked the system enough to run it as a fantasy campaign. We also used it for our superhero system in the 1990s when we abandoned the heavily censored AD&D 2nd Edition. What is old is new again, with 6E being rewritten to avoid upsetting people; the old rule of every even version of D&D sucks is still true today.

These days, I would never use this to play Marvel or DC, and I would likely stick to the official Champions universe. Steaming service media companies have killed all the legacy superheroes. The death of Marvel and DC isn't about politics; it is a lack of self-control at the highest levels that allows directors and comic book writers to do whatever they want. You see it in many of these newer superhero movies; they are passion projects and self-inserts by the creators and have nothing to do with the original source material.

So, if Marvel and DC are dead, why play superheroes? The costumes?

I don't have an answer to this question. Another part of what killed superheroes is that everyone co-opted the model. This is like the overuse of wirework and bullet time after the release of the Matrix movie, and you see it today with those dumb "180 flip shots" that movies do, where they flip the screen upside down in some cheap visual candy.

D&D is superheroes. The D&D movie was a superhero movie. 5E-based games are superhero games. Story games are superheroes. Every genre is a superhero genre these days.

Today's tabletop characters are overpowered, never die, push enemies over, and larger-than-life figures. They walk into any situation and "boss" it. All media is superhero media. Any form of escapist entertainment is superhero entertainment.

Do we even need the superhero genre anymore?

I honestly don't know.

Are capes and costumes enough? Or is that just marketing and cosplay?

I play games grounded in realism, like Basic Roleplaying or GURPS. They give me a mental break from everyone being over-the-top and invincible. I am tired of the superhero genre these days. It has turned into a junk power fantasy, the same everywhere, and the entire message of the genre these days is this semi-fascistic "power makes me right" theme. All that matters is power, getting more, and using it to prove you were right in the first place.

There is no responsibility for possessing power anymore. Power is just a tool that validates your point of view. That may be what my HERO System game is about: the vast tide of "power makes right" versus a few still holding onto the old ways and them all destroying the world.

We will see.

Off the Shelf: Call of Cthulhu

I had this game stored and never thought I would return to it. However, my recent interest in Runequest led me to dig it out, and there is a reason this is the second most-played game behind D&D.

Horror games are fantastic.

5E absolutely cannot do horror.

The Alien RPG by Free League is my other horror game, but nothing beats the Lovecraftian classics. Nothing will come close to this game, except maybe Vaesen by Free League. But these are world-ending horrors, Cthulhu himself and other society-eating, world-crushing, madness-incusing things from beyond the veil of reality.

This does modern-era gaming and the 1920s, just like its superset sister game, Basic Roleplaying. CoC has the madness rules, ancient lore, the artifacts, and all the spooky horrors that turn a seemingly ordinary small town in the middle of nowhere into a frightening experience of sheer terror.

The beauty of this game is that any situation can be played entirely normal, and then when the world turns upside-down, what was once safe and familiar becomes a no-man's land of strange cosmic horror.

I once had a scenario in a small Nebraska town where the investigators investigated a series of mysterious cattle deaths. They had a packed town hall meeting in the local church, which dragged on into the night. A small group got tired of the pointless meeting and said there was no threat. It was wild dogs, and they left to go to their cars.

When the meeting ended, the first out discovered the group that had left, sans heads, lying in the street.  They never made it to their cars. The clouds in the sky were strangely moving like snakes.

And all the guns were in the general store three blocks away.

And the only one with the keys to the gun safe was lying in the street. Oh yeah, you are screwed, and those guns will not likely do you any good.

That was a long night.

Until they realized what was under the church.

No X-card is saving you. You saw the sign-up sheet's "what can happen" reverse safety tool and agreed. I am an old-school "eff-er" DM. I will happily bore you, twist the situation on its head, make you fear for your lives, and then unfairly pull the rug out from under you. I will replace a party member with a doppelganger and never tell the player until their character bursts open into gory tentacles.

If I pull things back or say, "I'm sorry," I am not doing my job. People who play with me come to enjoy a specific type of no-limits experience. This is like popping John Carpenter's The Thing into the Blu-Ray player.

You are in a horror game.

This is what you paid admission to see.

Open Quest (Update)

I stand corrected. 

In March 2023, Open Quest became Creative Commons and is now off the OGL. They printed a new edition, but nothing in the book changed other than a few small rewordings of rules.

Very nice! It is good to see the hobby dump the outdated and legal-threat-filled OGL and move on to better things. The divorce of Wizards from the hobby is continuing, but it is healthy since small indies are now being forced to decide how to open license their works so they genuinely belong to a community.

Also, it is better for D&D since that IP is its own thing. There are far fewer questions about whose toys are who's today, and Wizards is free to make D&D-branded t-shirts and sneakers and do their own thing. I wish them well in their lifestyle brand choices. Still, I ask them to refrain from using sweatshops, pay workers a fair wage, use environmentally responsible manufacturers, and not use unfair labor practices in making those lifestyle brand items. Taking progressive in the books while acting corporate behind the scenes is a huge mistake.

But this break is crucial because nothing should threaten the free flow of ideas, the sharing of content, and the games the community can play. You are seeing the war play out now in Warhammer. To control the IP and "idea" of the game, the rights-holders must turn to even more and more authoritarian tactics, and we are in the same place that Wizards tried with the OGL now, "If we don't control the license, then toxic people will take over the game!"

A year after the OGL mess, toxic people have not taken over the communities that steward these games, and open-license games are doing just fine. In fact, community-moderated games are often better moderated than corporate ones. Wall Street does not trust the community to steer its ship on the right course, and these finance and paid media people are wrong. When you finally realize how the world works, you learn that anything with fake anger around it is usually a cash-grab grift by social media wannabes.

Roleplaying is a hobby, not an industry.

Open Quest is growing on me. This feels like the Old School Essentials of the d100 BRP and Runequest World. Mythras is the Pathfinder, Runequest is the D&D, Open Quest is the OSE version of BRP that says "less is more" and "we don't need all this layered complexity." Where Runequest does layered strike ranks and Mythras does fantastic combat options - Open Quest sticks to the basics.

The "BRP planes of existence" are a fascinating place. They are a parallel world to the d20 cosmology that does its own thing and has its own outlook and model of the universe. The Call of Cthulhu part keeps resetting itself as the investigators there fail to save the world from destruction time after time.

I played the classic Arkham Horror with all the expansion boards, so I know what this world is like. The chaos part of BRP reality is constantly resetting itself like Groundhog Day.

You have the overall BRP rules that control every reality, from cave people to Star Federation-style starships. You have the open BRP  games and their places like Mythras, M-Space, and others. Runequest is the fantasy showcase world. And over there, you have Open Quest, a more traditional dungeon-crawling fantasy game with Middle Ages technology (plate mail and crossbows are present), and it does its own thing.

Open Quest, having traditional dungeon-crawling gear, weapons, and armor, plays to its benefit. People are familiar with plate mail, chain mail, and crossbows and associate them with "dungeon fantasy gaming." There are ways to build paladin and cleric "concepts" in the game, along with a mage concept, so you can start like a beginning adventurer of any type that would be familiar in other games.

They let Runequest be Bronze Age while keeping the game simple, taking the Middle Ages and pre-Renaissance route and embracing dungeons, sword and sorcery, and overland adventures. They even have the concept of exclusivity between divine and sorcery powers (in the premade concepts), where knowing one precludes the other.

Open Quest is brilliant in the choices they make. While you can use Basic Roleplaying or Runequest to do this genre, every choice here focuses on and supports the dungeon-crawling Late Middle Ages genre. Direct support of a narrowly defined genre wins every time. They give a sample campaign setting, but in the true spirit of old-school gaming, the setting is "any world" of fantasy dungeon crawling with the traditional races and professions.

The classics are here, too. Instead of the plant-people elves of Runequest (which I retcon anyway because I am an RQ 3 player), we get real elves and all the great standard fantasy races. You can even play as monsters with group approval, and all the best old-school monsters are here.

Open Quest is easily dismissed as "another indie game," but once you take a moment to read it and realize what they put together here, it becomes an awe-inspiring package with a clear design goal and the ability to deliver the classic dungeon experience.

This is worth playing over BRP or Runequest, especially if classic dungeon crawling is your thing.

Highly recommended.

Class Structure

Staying with 5E, even the Open 5E versions, is hard. However, it is easier for groups to play class-based games since roles are easier to define. You are the mage, rogue, fighter, and healer. These roles are iconic and easily adopted. You can pick a class and play.

Class and level games are better for groups.

I play solo.

The 5E game structure gets in the way. I still like A5E and ToV and will keep and support them, but I need to see myself playing them regularly since I have better. Even with ToV's pillars of play support, I have games designed decades ago that do far better overland survival and social encounters.

New games are not always better.

I am slowly switching to GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy for my fantasy gaming, and I could not be happier. A more deadly system with fewer hit points, more combat options, and better character customization than anything I could ever get in 5E, no matter how much money I spend. I control how much magic is in the world, not the game designers.

The big difference here is that the rules aren't meant to be exploited but intended to be used. Sometimes I feel D&D has gotten too "Magic: The Gathering," where every class, subclass, multiclass combo, and option can be exploited and abused for maximum winning potential. The game is defined by the abuse of the rules.

I am also looking at Runequest. The BRP system does not have classes either.

Can GURPS be abused and exploited? Yes, but the exploit and abuse culture isn't ingrained here. A group can say build cheese and ban it, or pare it down to a level that works, doesn't blow out the game, and makes it unfun for everyone. Put a cap on Dodge and Parry. If someone is getting too many attacks, reduce them. Or you can play blown out, and every group will have a different feeling on how they like things to work. Put a cap on character points and disadvantages. This game has many ways to limit character power and complexity, and it isn't hard to recognize builds that exploit an area of the rules.

Then again, one-trick ponies in GURPS who put all their points into one combo usually die quickly once they realize a balanced character is better for survival. One freak ice storm will promptly sort out the cheese builds, so natural selection will care for characters who abuse the rules.

I am doing a GURPS Pathfinder game because I have all of the pawns for PF 1e and like that set. This is in the original world; the 3.75E rules never happened, and we are in the early days of the world. The world isn't 3.75E at all; it is more the classic Dungeon Fantasy and GURPS magic systems, where magic is still a mystery and strange to the world. It isn't low magic, more like medium magic. Magic isn't typical or every day, but some practice and are known - and feared.

One thing D&D gets wrong about magic is "free" arcane magic. Cleric magic can anger the gods, and you get turned off, so you may have to do quests to keep in good favor. Wizards and sorcerers are free spigots of magic power, and it leads to abuse. While I like DCC's costs to magic, the actual cost of magic should be societal, and reaction modifiers to magic should be based on the cultures and suspicion levels. Demons should offer "free spells" and "free character points" - just take this slight disadvantage, and more power can be yours! That should be enough to make the general population mistrust casters, and those seen playing with "evil magic" like necromancy could be run out of town or killed.

I hate the D&D and Pathfinder neutrality towards evil magic. My character is a necromancer and proudly proclaims it! I am a warlock who serves the elder gods of madness! What do you mean the town is trying to lynch us? Even druids could be seen with suspicion, and that has historical precedent. Witches? There is a lot there to unpack. Good towns will not see their characters as welcome, and they could even be hunted as enemies.

But you are punishing players by taking away options!

I'm sorry, but the town does not like you. They don't want you raising dead grandpa to use as a minion.

Too often, modern fantasy games put your mind in a state of the "MMO stupid zone" and force you to treat every option as equal and acceptable to all cultures. But it is fantasy! That is not a blanket excuse since fantasy can mean so many things - to put one definition on the word is highly rude to others who may have other points of view. Fantasy is what the group says it is, and it can be anything.

So, players need to be careful about how they build their characters. Even a thief with a kleptomaniac disadvantage could cause serious trouble for a party. Certain disadvantages are minor, while entire power systems and character types may have the peasants getting out the pitchforks and torches.

This also opens up evil campaigns if you look at it another way. Go to the World Wound and join the forces of evil. Start your beginner adventures there, spreading corruption and darkness. The rules do not "default to a heroic reality." If you play an evil demonologist, go live that life and get stabbed in the back—maybe. Stab them in the back first and prove your worth; this is evil.

This is another problem with 5E rulesets, the default hero mentality. Even the art is overly happy and heroic. The game isn't a simulation of anything; it is that typical "heroes doing dungeons" thing. GURPS doesn't have alignment; it has social and mental disadvantages. The world will react to your actions accordingly.

When you remove the Pathfinder 1e rules (or 5E, for that matter) and really think about how this world could be, your mind opens, and you realize there is much more depth here than that heroic party of level-one adventurers killing rats and goblins.

Off the Shelf: Open Quest (3rd Edition)

I found this one at the bottom of one of my storage boxes and forgot I had it. With all my interest in BRP and Runequest, it seems appropriate to take another look at this game.

First off, why?

I have BRP and Runequest. I have Mythras.

Why another d100 BRP-style fantasy game?

Open Quest aims to be easier to play and dramatically simplifies the d100 rules. This is on the same rules lineage as Legend, M-Space, and Mythras. From the rulebook explaining the differences:

So, like a Basic Fantasy or other "simple" implementation of a B/X system, this is the d100 answer for the "quick and easy" BRP-style system. This game is better for new players starting with d100 instead of 5E or B/X. It is definitely easier than Mythras, Runequest, or BRP. Also, some are tired of all the minutiae and simulation in BRP games, so stripping out all the cruft and boiling this game down to the base elements makes the game more approachable.

That is a good thing, and the new BRP book tries to do that, strip off the excess, and present a simple core engine; Open Quest takes it a step further and rewrites the game in a one-book format. Is it a "full game experience" like the complete Runequest or Mythras rules? No, and it isn't supposed to be. Sometimes, a simple dungeon-focused game without a world is all you want a game to be.

This is still on the old OGL license, and I hope it gets updated to ORC, using BRP as a base. The Mythras team is busy with new open-gaming licenses and a few new titles in their "Imperative" line. It is past time that the rest of the industry broke from Wizards; it's Wall Street garbage, which controls communities by fear, and players should follow suit and walk.

Also, OQ is more Runequest than B/X; it still keeps the concept of "personal magic" that everyone can use. So, this game still has a different feeling than a B/X-style game with magic haves and have-nots. Everyone using magic doesn't make the game more complex; it just unifies the "special power system" seen in 5E subclasses and lets people pull from a pool. It is actually a simplification over 5E subclass "gimmie" powers.

For example, Weapon Enhance is a spell that adds hit and damage to melee weapons. A fighter-type may want to learn that and use that to enhance attacks. Personal magic replaces subclass features, and it is a more straightforward and more democratic system of "special powers." Could a rogue-type character learn that? Why not? No need to take a level in fighter here; just learn the spell you want.

Open Quest is a worthy game. It is an excellent introduction to BRP-style games and a gateway to games like Call of Cthulhu, Mythras, and Runequest. For some, this is all the complexity and game you will ever need in one book.

Mail Room: Runequest Starter Set

A few notes: The Runequest Starter Set does not have a character generation system and uses a simplified subset of the rules in the full Runequest game. You will play with many relatively attractive pre-gens (on the cover, plus many more in the box).

Runequest also has some vast misconceptions from the D&D crowd. You are not playing in the Renaissance, and not having European castles, plate armor, crossbows, gunpowder, iron, and giant-masted sailing ships does not mean this game is any less fun.

You are not King Arthur; you are playing the epic heroes of ancient times, like in Odessy, Jason and the Argonauts, and many other classics. You all have magic, even fighters. In some ways, you are more epic and capable than starting D&D characters.

Less gear and technology means a greater focus on characters and story. I have had players in D&D whose characters' motivations were "plate mail, shield, and longsword."

You are not playing a creature cantina of different races. Your starting characters will likely be humans, who can be wonderfully diverse—just look at Earth.

Fighters have magic to sharpen their blades and do extra damage, plus damage to magic creatures. Archers can use a spell to ignite arrows and cause massive damage if they hit. Rune spells expand the possibilities, and every character has them.

Also, characters are linked to both elemental and power runes - which have oppositions and hierarchies. These form your powers, but they are also roleplaying cues. Characters also have passions, which are more roleplaying ability scores, and these can even be used to buff a skill roll. There are more ability scores for roleplaying - directly linked to powers and story - than in any other game.

Runequest puts the D&D inspiration system to shame.

This game puts story games, like FATE, to shame.

My character's loyalty to a people can be used to buff a combat roll if they are threatened. On a critical failure, I can become wracked by despair and have my passion level decrease. Passions gain experience, just like skills.

There is a rune called disorder, which covers disorder, egocentricity, greed, strife, thoughtlessness, and the self. Let's say you have this at 70%. You now have a 70% chance of getting a buff (inspiration) to a roll that this rune could help. If you are a greedy thief, this rune helps you. It can level up. Also, if it gets above 80%, it may guide your actions over your best wishes, for good or bad.

If you want to change your ways or tamp down an extreme personality type, you can work on the opposite rune, truth, and try to level that up. Every point gained in disorder takes a point away from truth, and vice-versa. You can pursue a balance or go all-in on one.

This also means if you are water-aligned, you will swim very well and fast and be able to hold your breath underwater longer (less effort). Air rune characters will likely have the breath-holding thing, too, but not the swimming (more air). There are many roleplaying ways to use these, which will blow your mind.

These scores are also used for casting rune magic linked to your powers.

Your runes and passions make you a hero. They can be used for buffs. They are used in roleplaying.

Sometimes, I wonder why streaming shows like Critical Role aren't playing games like Runequest, where the roleplaying stats are real and matter. If the entire premise of your show is characters and their personalities, why are you playing D&D?

To 5E, or not to 5E?

Every version of Wizards' D&D is designed to break compatibility.

The previous version of books are worthless.

You have to rebuy it all.

I see shelves full of great OSR content being released that does not break the original hit point, save, AC, damage scale, and attack bonus of the original B/X framework - and all those books, adventures, and class and spell expansions still work today.

If the game doesn't have the core AC, damage, hit point, save, and damage scaling of B/X, it isn't D&D. This is the same as the core mechanics of Monopoly; those can't be messed with and still be able to call the game by its original name.

Open 5E preserves 5E's numerical model, which is good. It is still "scaled damage" and is not the best system. They did this back in 3E to break compatibility. I hope 2024 keeps 5E's numeric compatibility, but looking back at 3E, 3.5E, 4E, and 5E - nothing they do gives me confidence. Even the 3E to 3.5E jump was so messy that rebuying the books was more straightforward than converting.

That said, Tales of the Valiant is a CR+1 system that is a step more powerful than base 5E, just like Pathfinder 1e was to 3.5E. If you want a stricter numerical CR+0 5E compatibility, stick to Level Up A5E. The 2024 books may also be CR+1, and I strongly feel they will.

But I feel myself drifting away from 5E, even with Open 5E. For one, the excellent Dragonslayer game hits all the right OSR notes for me, and I see this becoming the de facto OSR game (B/X and Advanced blend), mainly due to its POD nature and the books' availability and consistency of presentation - in addition to the available mega-dungeon and campaign support. OSE is a challenging game to get physical books for, hurting the game's popularity.

All my OSR, B/X, and AD&D adventures work with this. One book and done. Castles & Crusades is moving up fast since it just works.

5E takes a shelf full of books, and the game is too big, as the old wargames of the 1980s got too big. Advanced Squad Leader took binders full of rules and options to simulate simple small unit battles. I don't want games this big anymore. Pathfinder 1e was my last one, and while I said 'never again,' I made the mistake of buying into the 5E hype.

And how much inertia is there with Open 5E? We need the open framework, but playing with basic set classes and races seems like stepping back 10 years. The only real difference between the OSR and 5E is the overpowered characters in the latter.

The real problem here is I am slowly mastering GURPS. As I gain system mastery, I become the game designer of my system and world. I just need one book in GURPS to build two shelves full of character options for 5E, plus more. I get exactly what I want, and there are no compromises.

Be my own game designer? Or pay more money to get half-baked filler-packed 5E books?

Not a hard choice.

5E professes to have many options, but I see books piling up on the shelf. And even better, I can change how character powers work. Does a cleric use a "healing spell," or is the "healing power" more like a healing superpower that uses fatigue? I can go traditional Dungeon Fantasy magic and have those "cleric spells" or just design a healing power that a cleric can use and buy with points.

Any way you want to do it, it works.

People need to understand this about GURPS. If you want to be told how it works, play 5E. If you are a game designer, play GURPS, and don't waste your time or money on other things.

Once I have complete control, I don't need all those 5E books. What is better: having character powers that a designer gives you or the power to design anything you want? The combat isn't bad; it can be "hit and damage" if that is all you want, just like in 5E.

Also, buy too many books and invest too heavily in 5E, you are locked into D&D Beyond. Without it, there is no way to "get value" from that many options spanning that many books. GURPS does infinitely more in fewer books.

Also, if an option breaks the game or a combo is too powerful - ban it. You are the game designer. They give you the tools. Set internal limits for your games and use them.

I don't need 5E at all.

Open 5E I support because it does the most good in that space.

But as a system for a professional player?

It still falls short.

Basic Roleplaying Solves the Runequest Problem

I see many reviews of Runequest from a few years ago that say the game is too tightly tied to the setting, and they wish it wasn't. Most complaints are from those who did not use the setting but liked the rules. Mythras, the BRP fork supported by the creators of Runequest 6, solves the problem by creating a set of rules not tied to a world.

I like Runequest 7 being tightly tied to the setting, making the game different and unique. I am tired of the cookie-cutter, planar-linked, faux-modern, non-colonial, neo-Renaissance, Harry Potter meets pop-culture settings that Wizards puts out, and they are all the same at this point. Baldurs Gate 3 takes the entire D&D genre into sci-fi, and it is hard to call anything D&D fantasy these days. Call them Spelljammers, but they are starships, and most D&D settings are now wannabe sci-fi settings that force characters to start as primitive stick-using townspeople.

There is so much sci-fi in fantasy these days. This Conan meets Buck Rogers stuff gets tiring, and all it serves to do is put every genre in a blender and press the highest number on the machine to create flavorless multi-genre scop paste.

The science-fantasy fad also subconsciously tells every fantasy character, "You are a low-intelligence primitive." It is the designer's way of describing the audience as inferior for wanting to play fantasy archetypes and is also colonialist in theme. Fear not, stupid barbarians and primitive peoples of the world! The space people are here! Sorry, our cleaning robot killed you. Don't kill yourself figuring out our space artifacts!

Sci-fi in fantasy, unless this is the game when it starts, sideswipes the players and their expectations and feels like the DM and module writer talking down to the players.

And how do you return to caring about the everyday fantasy world when you know UFOs are out there? Do I care that the Black Knight ruined the King's celebration? Am I mad that the Dark Elf raided the Border Keep? Do I care about the lost island? We need to rescue the princess, but we really want to be chasing aliens.

I have never had a fantasy campaign recover from a sci-fi incursion.

And frankly, Gamma World is a better mix of the genres. Post-apocalyptic is the place to be for mixed sci-fi and fantasy, and it does the genre the best, with mutations as the power source. You belong here, and the great mystery is figuring out what happened to the world and who the ancients were.

Dungeon Crawl Classics does it right, too. The sci-fi elements are so crazy and strange that they are alien and unrelatable. You are not getting a "Star Trek" ship that is more civilized than you up there, with a crew teleporting down and telling the characters what primitives they are.

Runequest is pure bronze-age high fantasy, with even everyday people using magic. You think "everyone knows magic" as something that blows out the game world, but it works here with a heightened sense of spiritualism and magic being a part of life. The magic is minor and more like charms or incantations, something used to help clean a room, like the old AD&D cantrips. In 5E, cantrips became "laser" attack spells like a video game (and fell into the 'why take anything else' category). In AD&D, they were minor incantations, like magic tricks, with no combat use.

If I were using Runequest for a generic fantasy game, I would use the old Basic Roleplaying game 'Big Yellow Book' before using Runequest since the assumption that 'everyone knows magic' is nonexistent. These days, we have even better...

The only answer here is the same one that was true back then as it is now: the Basic Fantasy Game is the generic d100 system for non-RQ fantasy, and it always was. These days, we have an ORC-licensed system ready to expand upon and use, and it works out of the box for generic fantasy, high to low. It also works in Gamma World-style settings.

But letting Runequest be Runequest is a strength. I love runes and passions as part of the character. I love the tight tying to tribe, cult, and family. No other game does this! Let the game's systems reflect the world, culture, and experience of living there.

BRP is for everything else except Cthulhu. BRP is designed as a toolkit and fits better as a generic fantasy starting point. And the starting point is an excellent way to describe it since fantasy games are always better when the generic part is tossed out, and the group adds their ideas and magic to the system.

Mythras is also a great option if you go off-Chaosium, and they have a classic fantasy supplement if you want less Bronze Age and more high fantasy. Yes, the font size is small, and I use a PDF on a tablet (and I bought reading glasses). Hopefully, when this team goes ORC license, they reprint the book with a larger font.

The BRP-like d100 systems are a great place to play and are also very compatible with each other.

BRP is the best thing to happen to all of Chaosium's games since it takes the 'universal system' pressure off them. This also allows Runequest and Call of Cthulhu to be their own thing, with system-specific game rule extensions. This also sets the model for your worlds and creations, inviting you to build subsystems to add to the game.

I love GURPS, but with Chaosium games, the parts unique to the world are essential to the flavor and play of the game. You need to flip optional rules in GURPS to get the same thing, but there is a freedom in BRP that allows the designers to customize the game for the setting—and it invites you to do the same.