Pet Characters

We have had "pet" characters all our lives, and D&D and many games encourage this. Part of me feels they damage the hobby and our gaming enjoyment.

A "pet character" is your favorite character, the ideal ranger, the best fighter, the best mage, the trickiest rogue, self-insert, a perfect character modeled after fiction, "you in the game," which you always play in MMOs, and basically who you simp for. If someone asks you to "play a bard," this is your default choice.

For me, 'pet characters' are more of a game-killer than a game-enhancer.

I want them to be perfect, but the rules always need to meet my expectations. They are the same old, and they always react the same way. They never change. They are stuck in the past. You seek out games that give them more powers to further reinforce why they are so great. They are "too close" to us, and "risking them" forces you to cheat or play games where characters never die.

I am beginning to resent the pet character.

They are destroying my enjoyment of gaming.

In a way, this "pet character" ideal is the entire superhero genre. Batman is the only vigilante in the DC Universe; if there is another, it is always "female Batman." There may be a few others, but they are just a collection of "not Batman" characters. In roleplaying, we have "our Batman," the only vigilante-style character we play.

No other vigilante character will ever be given any "air time" or a chance in anyone's mind as long as Batman is around. You see the same thing with the goofball character and Harley Quinn; time and time again, it is the same old her, and there can be no one else.

Why would you waste time developing any new ideas?

We have our old standby pet characters ready to go!

If you are new here, there is the door; that role is filled. Best of luck in your future endeavors.

And companies use this ideal of a pet character as identity marketing against us. Would you buy cosmetics for a randomly generated character? Probably not. Would you buy cosmetics for your pet character? Where do I put in my credit card, and what do you have? Would you buy a game that puts your pet character on a golden pedestal and throws rose petals at their feet?

Soon, Wall Street will begin tracking our "pet characters" and creating databases to market against us and exploit our weaknesses for these ideals. All it takes is AI-generated imagery appearing in advertisements resembling our pet characters. Would you be more likely to buy something if this happened? Let's say your pet and all your friends' characters were happily drinking the same soda. Would you be more receptive? Does Wizards really know what it has in that character database? I called this here first.

Part of me feels like retiring all my pets and only playing games with randomly generated characters is the best way forward. I will "embrace the rando" and begin living life again. With random characters, I get to see new things; I can invest in them or not, and I am free to take them on new adventures and "see what happens." With a pet, I know what they will do and what to expect. That story has been done a million times.

What is the fun of playing it again? I would rather see something new!

I love my pets, but it is time to put them away. I need to grow, discover new things to love, and enjoy characters who may surprise me. Banning the pets will give room for new characters to grow.

And I am tired of doing the same old thing.

I want to see things I have never seen and watch new characters amaze me.

Cepheus Engine vs. Traveller

Okay, yes, Traveller is expensive. The books are very high-quality, color, excellent paper, and hardbacks. You will pay for that these days, and it is costly. But the universe is impressive and in the top ten of science fiction, even when you include movies and films.

Yes, the Traveller Universe is just as old as Star Wars and, in many cases, more compelling.

I read that Marc Miller, creator of Traveller, recently sold the rights to Mongoose to keep his legacy alive. Marc also had nice words for the Cepheus Engine side of the 2d6-i-verse, and having an open, community-supported implementation is critical for the legacy to survive. Mongoose is working on extending an open license to Cepheus publishers, and there was work on this and updates this year.

It takes a while since this has to go back and forth between publishers, legal, and owners and get community feedback. A license nobody will use wastes time, so I applaud all sides trying to get this right. Nobody wants another OGL.

https://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/threads/traveller-open-content-new-programme-on-the-way.123770/page-5

This is an excellent step in supporting and continuing the legacy and ensuring "everyone can play." The Traveller, part of the legacy, belongs to a good steward in Mongoose, and the 2d6 system belongs to the world. This is important since a lot of creative development and R&D is happening in the community games, which benefits us all.

Also, the Cepheus games are often printed at a lower cost than the Traveller game, being in print-on-demand. This makes them more fun! I love both Hostile and Cepheus Engine games, and there are a bunch of exciting mods and developments in these systems that make them more suited for generic sci-fi or modding to play in universes like Star Trek, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, Mass Effect, or Star Wars, which Cepheus handles easily. It is nice to have a game with no Imperium or backstory and no iconic ship designs so players can morph the system into any universe they can imagine.

The CD game has a "traits" system (like talents) that enhance character customization. This game also expands psi-powers to be on parity with 2022 Traveller.

And, no, "officially licensed games" do not do a better job of playing Star Wars or Star Trek. I can't tell you how many of these I have before the license runs out and the game is forced to switch publishers and systems repeatedly. Also, some games move to a second edition far too quickly.

Also, if you know where to look, you can get "Trek" and "Wars"-like experiences inside Traveller, and at times, they are even better. There are modules and sourcebooks for naval and mercenary campaigns. You can get cruiser deck plans for giant ships and run a "Trek-like" exploration campaign, with complete rules for simulating the ship's crew, encounters, missions, and full support for an entire game. While the licensed Star Trek game does this, very few Star Wars games do this, and the level of support is never as good.

You would be hard-pressed to find mercenary games in an officially licensed Star Trek game, and while it is possible in Star Wars, the support is feeble. Traveller has a boxed set and adventures for these types of games. Exploration? Strong in Trek, non-existent in Wars. In Traveller, you generate systems and make star maps; the game has done this since day one. Space piracy? Non-existent in Trek, weak in Wars. Traveller has a boxed-set slipcase deluxe adventure regarded as one of the best space pirate campaigns ever.

If you can get over not playing in "officially licensed IP," the universe is yours. Traveller has become the "D&D of sci-fi," absorbing all the best concepts and campaign types of every sci-fi universe and making a universe that does it all.

The only weak area of Traveller is the "star knights"-style campaign, which has "force-like" power. The first edition of Mongoose Traveller has a psionics book, and one is needed for the Second Edition. Part of me feels a mythic "Star Knight" faction would fit well in Traveller, who go around, protect psionic adepts, and prevent exploitation and brutalization of psi-sensitive peoples.

This would be a "better Jedi than the Jedi" and give them an "X-Men" style cause to travel the universe for (which the Jedi do not have). This faction could be supported privately by wealthy psi-supportive people and work behind the scenes. If you look at what the Jedi in Star Wars has become, it has fallen far from the ideal.

For me, an X-Men-style campaign of Star Knights protecting psi-sensitive people would be far more compelling and exciting than the muddled mess of the Jedi, which has turned into a strange mish-mash of an intelligence agency, political faction, self-important trainers of Jedi (who have no real reason to be doing anything other than 'they just are'), planetary explorers (?), and Coruscant police force.

You could also have an evil faction led by a megalomaniac "Magento" figure who preaches psi-supremacy over ordinary people, with its own "Dark Knights" who hunt and corrupt psi-sensitives for its side. This would fit well in Traveller, and you could ignore it if this isn't your thing - which, to be honest, applies to Mercs and Naval campaigns, too.

Cepheus Universal has the "force sword" if you want it, and you can rule this weapon as a legacy of ancient psi-knights from long ago. It isn't "on-sale" at weapon shops or mass-produced anywhere. CU is another excellent adaptation of 2d6 sci-fi gaming, with gritty art and more gear.

Cepheus is a lower-cost and community-supported version of the game. You can find fantasy gaming and many other genres in the open system, which expands the appeal of the 2d6 system. And lower cost means just as much fun! Traveller and the official books are more suited to support the Imperium setting, and a lot of work is done for you - which is why you pay for the full-color books and all the information you don't have to come up with.

Traveller, along with the great work in the Cepheus area, is quickly becoming the "D&D of space" and absorbing all the best ideas in sci-fi gaming.

Traveller is Great Sci-Fi Roleplaying

I have not been this invested in a game since my GURPS Fantasy campaign. Where GURPS Fantasy captures that gritty, down-to-earth, realistic fantasy that I crave, what Traveller does is "sci-fi with batteries included."

Many sci-fi games, even those in the OSR, promise a big game and fail at one point or another. Most of them can't do ship combat without heavy math and physics (GURPS Space), others get too goofy (stop copying Guardians of the Galaxy like some games copy Aliens), some have no trading game or economy (Starfinder), others have no way of creating star systems, some have no ship design (Frontier Space), and many others have no exciting universe to explore.

Traveller, the game that set the benchmark in 1977, continues to reign supreme. Its comprehensive approach to sci-fi gaming, which includes ship combat, trading, and universe exploration, has not only stood the test of time but also made a significant mark in the history of gaming. This game locked TSR and Wizards out of the sci-fi market and continues to be a beacon of excellence in the gaming world.

Traveller does it all in a relatively rules-light format. The 2d6 system scales exceptionally well, providing a sense of reassurance about its adaptability, and does an excellent job of 'keeping the numbers down' to a realistic level. It also effortlessly flows from turn-by-turn action to a macro-level of 'handle a few days in one skill roll.'

The only areas where the game falls short are planet types and adventure hooks, where Stars Without Number will always be the king of the generated content. The systems here work well enough with Traveller as a plug-in adventure hook system, so using SWN's planet and system creation systems is the best of both worlds and provides instant adventure hooks for any sci-fi game.

Why not just play the Cepheus system? This is an OpenQuest versus RuneQuest question. If you want to play with the Traveller world, the ships, the organization, and the history, play Traveller. The classic universe, ships, factions, and history are all here. If generic sci-fi is more your thing, or you want to use the 2d6 rules to play another IP, go Cepheus and DIY the universe without the official setting distractions.

Cepheus is also a vast and confusing collection of titles. This will continue until the OGL is purged forever from gaming as a stain. Lots of titles remain under OGL, and the community is working its way out from under that mess. The license is still viable, but with an uncertain asterisk. Still, some of the best 2d6 community content is still being made under this rules framework. An alternate way out is Mongoose putting the core 2d6 rules under ORC, and there were rumblings of that as well.

Cepheus is 100% compatible with Traveller, making using adventures between the systems easy. Cepheus also has a few exciting rules additions (talents). Also, it has many other very compelling settings (Sword of Cepheus, Wild West, noir, and cyberpunk settings) - which can all supply content for your Traveller games. Sword of Cepheus has 22 pages of monsters in 2d6 format, and Westlands has 28 pages). The Under Western Skies game has wild-west and horse-generation rules (you could do a Westworld game with this). New World is a cyberpunk game with excellent urban encounters and gang creation tables. The entire Cepheus 2d6 open-game community is a fantastic resource to draw upon.

The Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition is also coming out very soon.

The entire 2d6 gaming universe outside Traveller is still excellent, and Cepheus Light also powers my Car Wars RPG. You can power an entire game universe with 2d6 mechanics, from fantasy to sci-fi. The 2d6 gaming hobby is as good as 5E but with fewer dice.

Back to Traveller. The pre-2022 game is more classic Traveller, while the 2022 version (and the books supporting it) aims for more generic sci-fi gaming. Traveller is to sci-fi what D&D is to fantasy. You can have a hundred 5E sci-fi games and still never match Traveller. The setting is evolving from a defined, classic setting with much "scaffolding and framework" lore to obey; the new presentation makes the setting your own to play with.

The old setting felt stuck in the 1950s. The new one still could be, but it feels more accessible to make it your own.

But this feels strange, and the game has captured my imagination, which has yet to happen in a long time. When you feel yourself "living in the universe," magic happens. With GURPS Fantasy, these characters feel real; I get that low-level gritty and bloody grid and fight for survival.

With Traveller, the characters are not as "gritty and real" as GURPS. What does feel real are all the possibilities—that sandbox, the hundreds of ships to encounter, the millions of planets to visit, the alien races to meet, and the ones I can create for my games. The types of campaigns are near-infinite: science, mercenary, trader, troubleshooter, navy, pirate, settler, miner, explorer, system developer, spy, bounty hunter, noble, rebel, law enforcement, survey team, and it goes on and on.

While other games have these professions as "classes," you can actually "do the thing" in this game; other games have the "just a name" problem: explorer as a class name, but just end up in combats on a battle-mat. You aren't "really" a spy, hacker, or explorer; you just fight like one (and have a skill for out-of-combat things). This is sort of the problem Starfinder has for me; you aren't a true star captain or merchant; what should be "the thing you do" is just flavor for combat abilities.

And if you can spend hundreds of millions of credits, stand losing hundreds on millions of credits, and find ways of making it all back again - this is your game. The first time we played Traveller as kids, our characters sold a ship for a few hundred million credits, and our game died. We had yet to learn what to do with 300 million credits except retire. We were too into the AD&D "win the game at a million gold pieces" sort of maturity level.

Oh, I know now.

Here? Buy an excellent trading ship, start a mining operation, claim a great planet as your own, start a mercenary company, build a pirate fleet, start a colony, buy a trading fleet, invest in land, develop a company, or earn more money to influence the royals and politicians to buy your way into high society. Hundreds of millions of credits are not the game's end; it is just the beginning.

The support for "doing the thing" is in the game, and it doesn't take that much to figure out how all the parts work. Starship combat can be done through the theater of the mind. Starship design is just a few numbers to add up. Setting up and managing a cargo haul is easy. Flying to another planet is a simple calculation, requiring a few skill and encounter rolls.

This sci-fi is easy, whereas other games make it hard.

The infinite possibilities and ease become the game's most engaging draw.

Traveller: Worldbuilding

Creating planets for a Traveller game can be a complex task. You start with a set of basic stats for the world, and from there, you need to interpret and transform these numbers into a fully-fledged world.

Terra 1827 A867A69-F (N,W)

The above? That number? That is Earth. The UDP is planet name, hex number, followed by:

1. Star-port Quality
2. Size
3. Atmosphere Type
4. Hydrographic Percentage
5. Population
6. Government Type
7. Law Level
8. -
9. Tech Level
10. (Bases)

Numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5 are size, atmosphere, hydrographic, and population, in this case, 867A. Now, think about Earth. We are supposed to imagine Earth from those four numbers. For some people, this is an impossible task. How are you supposed to come up with the deserts of North Africa, the jungles of the Amazon, the frozen ice sheets of the Antarctic, the mountains of the Himalayas, the nearly-infinite oceans, the splendor of Hawaii, the glory of some of the great river valleys in China, the pastoral fields of France,  the great forests and lakes of northern Canada, the endless urban New York area, and all the other places in this world from just four numbers?

867A.

And then, add most of the worlds you will create, which could be fantastic alien landscapes?

While I am moving away from AI art (because of the ethics and theft from artists involved), I can't deny the potential of an AI generator (legal, artist-sourced, and with contributors paid) to inspire ideas you could never imagine. The idea generation aspect of AI is truly remarkable, and while using it commercially is something I do not support, it can be a powerful tool in the right hands.

If you have one of the sector guides, you will find information on a few planets in the subsector, but not all. But remember, 99% of the universe, including random planets, colonies, and stations in systems, is yours to create. You can let your imagination run wild, and anything goes.

In addition, fantastical weather, geology, nature, vegetation, tidal flows, swamps, marches, salt flats, geysers, mineral formations, insects, volcanoes, mineral deposits, islands, beaches, natural arches, canyons, badlands, sea life, winds, atmospheric layers, rings, moons, oddly colored and shaped terrain features, animals, creatures, and space anomalies are all involved. Not every desert looks like California, and not every forest looks like Oregon.

And there isn't just "one location" in every hex map location. Each is a solar system, with a main planet and many other worlds and places within. Again, think of our solar system, Earth, and all the planets. Put a sci-fi civilization in there with ships zooming all over, colonies, space stations, satellites, and places on every planet to explore and do business. A typical Traveller subsector map can be very deceptive since you tend to think "one planet per hex," but it is not that way.

There are probably millions of "points of interest" in every hex. The trick is understanding they are all there, not getting overwhelmed by them all, and deciding the very few that interact with your players and game.

Imagine being sent to find a suitcase in our solar system—just one suitcase. It could be anywhere from Mercury to the deserts of Morocco or even in a cargo container in Jupiter's orbit, in a random ship's cargo hold, sitting in an airport bathroom, or in the back trunk of a car in any parking lot in the world—any world in the system.

Naturally, because your players are so awesome, they will be able to find it with a few vague clues and a matchbook from a random restaurant.

But the players could detour to an infamous "spacer casino" in a side mission. That place was never on a map or in a subsector guide, nor did it exist in anyone's ideas or campaign. But it is in yours. This is why when you play Traveller, people always say, "It is your Traveller." There is no way for anyone to play in the same universe twice. Ever. Not in a billion years. The map and system names could be the same, but none of what is in those planets or subsectors will ever be the same.

This is more challenging work than most fantasy games, and it requires a much more free mind to dream, create, and imagine the speculative and extraordinary. If the players want to help fill in, do some of the imagining, and make suggestions, go for it.

The universe is big enough to hold everyone's imagination.

Make it your own.

Another Bad Decision Reversed

This is why I don't like commenting on Wizards drama. D&D Beyond will allow you to keep what you paid for, and the 2014 content will stay in the system. It is a good move, but...

Every major decision this team makes seems to have to be course-corrected a few weeks after community outrage. If I were a shareholder, this would be my first question to this team: "What is going on over there? Are you that out of touch with your customers?"

It's disheartening to see D&D YouTube claiming victory when the community never truly wins; they just manage to push back another misguided decision. Most YouTube comments on these videos say, "Never going back."

D&D Beyond should be a home to any player who owns any edition to come and call the system home. If you play AD&D or 0e, a 4.0 or 3.5, 4E, 5.0 or 5.5, or AD&D 2nd, a character sheet, books, and rules should await you. You should be able to buy any module and have assets, maps, and conversions for any D&D game right there, 0e to 5.5E. Other VTTs have character sheets for these games. The PDFs exist. They own these games. Why isn't this happening?

This is the dream platform fueled by nostalgia and decades of back content.

There is a massive difference between a company that makes rules and a social technology platform, and the company still needs to figure that out. There is a point where the rules don't matter, but the platform is everything. Every year, this team keeps acting like a "rules company," and it is another year they hand over to their competitors.

Traveller Aesthetics and Inspirations

One of the five defining art styles in Traveller is the plas-tech look. It's a world of clean, sterile surfaces, everything neatly covered up, and a modern aesthetic that's hard to miss. This is progress and civilization, or at least what the most significant players in the universe wish to project. It is cleanliness, power, advancement, profit, and an alignment to the greater purpose.

This is the projection of order and power, law and righteousness, method and tradition, and civilization's progression. If you add places like this in your game, you are sending a message about those inside.

This is contrasted and opposed by a post-tech industrial look, not the overly cluttered Alien "bolt a CRT without the case on the wall" sort of look. Still, the forms are uncluttered like plas-tech but dirty, hanging open, in disrepair, with instructions and warning signs spray-painted. This style can also encompass eight giant 10-meter-wide water pipes for a dirty dam with paint peeling off.

This isn't an "Alien" level of clutter; it is just massive, metal, and imposing, making you feel tiny and unclean in the universe. These places can be narrow, twisted, confusing, and metal, not purposefully cluttered unless necessary. They keep the universe running, dirty, loud, worked in, chipped and scratched, noisy, hot, cold, irradiated, and hard-working.

Post-tech is the machine behind the scenes that crushes imagination and independence. This is war, industrialization, resource mining, exploitation, and subjugation to the machine. If power is the clean, smiling face, this is the dirty boot that comes down after the deal.

Then there's cyber-fi, a style all about neon lights and the hustle and bustle of a commercial zone. It's loud, colorful, and superficial, a perfect cover-up for the decay and the machines that keep the universe running. It pushes buy-now, propaganda from the planet's leaders and factions, 24-7 news and entertainment, and lures you like a shiny, colorful bauble of dizzying colors and patterns.

This is more fake than it looks. Wires hang about, and the images can't be confused for reality. Wires hang down in places. The streets are still wet and dirty. The world isn't perfect, though it puts on a good show. Some genres blur the line between reality and the fake world; this can't cross the gap. Everybody knows how phony it is; the fake is visible, but they enjoy it for the moments of distraction it provides.

This represents the "bread and circuses" of the setting, the lies told to the population to keep them happy, and the constant stream of entertainment to opiate the masses. This is loud, screams in your face, colorful, sexy, appealing, and often happy fakery. Every side of a hot-button issue will have a channel that speaks to it and makes you hate the other side, controlled by the same company. You will be lied to, treated like children, talked down to, and you will be satisfied. Isn't that all you want?

Do you have enough problems in your life?

Let us take you away.

This is the newest part of Traveller in this group of influences. It is heavily influenced by the cyberpunk genre but mixed with today's post-truth information wasteland. There is no true or false; it is all the litmus test for your side. Where the cyberpunk genre is fascinated with flash over substance, this is a more insidious interpretation of the concept. This is the gunpowder on the fuse, hiding the growing unrest of people who feel smaller and smaller in a sea of crushing darkness between the stars.

Contrasting that is a dirty street-grunge look, almost like the red zone of any metro area. This is the most cluttered and layered style in the universe, evoking a chaotic, noisy, foul-smelling urban street area full of people and activity. This also encompasses the run-down and abandoned parts of the future, like ghost towns on forgotten worlds, where the money ran out for the mining colony, and there is no one left, no history, and no reason why people were ever there.

These are also the packed apartments of star-port and mine workers, the endless, shoddy, prefabricated, and dirty flats that 90% of the working class live in. The confusing streets, built on top of each other, with no real rhyme or reason to their layout, the cargo trains that bisect towns, the passenger rails, the roads filled with off-world cars of every make and model (with little hope of standard parts for any of them), and the factories, schools, cafeterias, hospitals, hopping plazas, sports arenas, drainage canals, parking lots, and office buildings that jumble the planets of the universe.

This is reality: the day after day of work, the appointments, permits, and licenses, the bills in the mail, the grit of the street, accidents, and arguments. Loud music shakes the wall. Police drive by with wary eyes. Lines wait to get into places of work and play. Gangs hang out on the corner, knowing the universe makes them insignificant, yet they try to pretend otherwise. Dust storms, rain, snow, heat, and cold. Scavengers. Miners. The rumble of starship engines overhead. The homeless and elderly look up at the stars and dream. Or denying they are there.

And this represents the places everybody forgot.

Broken roads, abandoned towns, crash sites, and closed facilities like the old days' auto plants and steel mills—or new ones going up in a flurry of activity and welder sparks—or being demolished for something new—or just being left to rot.

Just because a planet is TL 3 does not mean castles and knights are down there. It could mean the world is so poor and impoverished, and no one cares about them, that they have reverted to plowing the fields with animals and living in ramshackle houses. Bits and bobs of high tech can exist, just like the days of poor Appalachia, but mostly, there is little in terms of hope or a future coming anytime soon, or ever.

Remember the decay, abandonment, and poverty in this setting. They are just as much a part of Traveller as that sexy, clean, white plastic TL 12 laser pistol. And they will drive the story a lot better than playing sterile corporate troubleshooters.

This forgotten-grunge style is both the present and a past forgotten in a universe so big no one could ever remember it all.

The final type of art is this Moebius-ensue, strangely alien, ancient style—reserved for anomalies, alien civilizations, lost sites of forgotten races, fallen civilizations, and mysteries in the universe likely no one will ever solve. This is saved for only the required moments and serves as a counterpoint to all the art of "civilization" mentioned before.

Humanity in the stars will always be small.

There was always something before that was here, which we will never understand, and all our achievements and progress shall never hold a candle to.

Our minds will never be able to understand what this is.

Or why we are here.

2024 is 1984

D&D Beyond removed all the individual data entries for the 2014 spells, gear, and other "low-level" items and is forcing you to use the 2024 versions instead.

If you're a user of the service, it's hard not to feel a sense of loss. The '2014' content you've invested in, the ability to play the 2014 game 'as was', is now out of your control. You may own the 2014 book, but everything in it will be from the 2024 books. It's a frustrating situation, possibly due to something in an EULA that limits your rights.

Don't play games that force you to use a website to play it or hide the game's "true complexity" behind online tools.

Nothing beats a pencil, paper, books, and an imagination.

Off the Shelf: Traveller (2022-2024)

Traveller's expansive setting, a unique draw for players, resembles RuneQuest or Call of Cthulhu. Over the years, Traveller has evolved from a quirky, 1950s throwback sci-fi game to a more modern and contemporary experience, reminiscent of a Cyberpunk or any modern sci-fi movie out of Hollywood. This evolution uniquely appeals to the game, making it a must-try for sci-fi role-playing enthusiasts eager to explore new and engaging gaming experiences.

Cepheus is still a better platform to express 'your own ideas' outside the Traveller universe, just like BRP is the way to go with fantasy settings outside the RuneQuest universe. But both Traveller and RuneQuest are becoming more and more compelling as D&D goes the way of a mobile game and dies off in terms of providing a space for your imagination to roam free, unmonetized, and unowned by corporate IP barons (and with no Fortnite characters running around in my campaign). This freedom of expression in Traveller and RuneQuest empowers players and excites them about the potential for their own ideas in these games.

The way role-playing is going these days, the big brands will eliminate creating your own characters and force you to play with licensed IP characters as the default choice. You will have to "buy" new characters to unlock them, and the characters you buy will come with special powers and abilities typical player characters can't have (I called it here first). This is one of the reasons I am starting to walk away from games with iconic characters. They take over the game, are copyrighted IP, and tell players, "You will never be as good as them." They will also eventually become "we are more important" GM-NPCs. They will also be sold as value-adds in VTTs, with better models and more animations and voices than regular PCs (calling this too).

Just say no to iconic and licensed characters. I never wanted or needed them. The PCs are the stars, full stop.

Traveller also avoids the trope of "ripping off Aliens," which far too many games do nowadays. Even the sci-fi horror game Mothership has walked away from Aliens and become more popular than the licensed game in some circles because Mothership is about more than xenomorphs. Aliens RPG is still a great game, but you can only play that scenario so many times before you crave something different.

Traveller has eclipsed Aliens and moved beyond that genre appeal. The art and look of the game have a definite "Mass Effect" feeling, that sort of "plastic modern" pastiche with a neon underside of a Cyberpunk, mixed with the "used and dirty" grunge-fi look. It is a solid look for a modern game and can draw in the look and feel of both Mass Effect and Cyberpunk while dipping into the industrial look of Alien sparingly and then going post-apoc in places where decay and overuse wear down the gears of civilization.

In fact, Traveller is better than anything Hollywood puts out these days, and the game's sci-fi setting is now much more coherent and appealing than something like Star Wars or Star Trek. Hollywood has destroyed their sci-fi tentpoles with years of reboots and filler TV projects, so from a "gaming" standpoint, Traveller is the more robust and stable setting and much more playable. Also, even Alien is falling into the remake and reboot trap these days, so it is like a high-milage vehicle for audiences tiring of the franchise.

Traveller has captured "generic sci-fi's look and feel" like old D&D had captured "generic fantasy." New D&D is not in that same discussion anymore, especially with the planar focus. The new D&D is more of a "bubblegum planar pop fantasy" genre outside of the traditional fantasy genre's look and feel.

Also, no 'unkillable Traveller fiction NPCs' are running around being more critical than the PCs, so the Forgotten Realms GM-NPC problem is also solved. This absence of 'unkillable fiction NPCs' in Traveller reassures players about the game's fairness and instills confidence in their ability to shape the universe through their characters' eyes.

Traveller books are constantly at the top of DriveThru lists, and the game feels like a juggernaut for sci-fi gaming these days, much like a Call of Cthulhu is for horror.

Traveller is worthy and relevant in 2024, especially since the old sci-fi franchises we loved are dying, and we have no "space" to express our dreams among the stars.

Off the Shelf: Basic Roleplaying (BRP)

One of the things I hear repeated the most about Basic Roleplaying (BRP) is that "It isn't a game system, but a game system you use to make your own games." While that describes the system, it scares off players.

Contrary to the misconception that BRP is primarily a tool for game creation, it is a fully playable system in its own right. In fact, it shares the same versatility and playability as other popular setting-independent systems like GURPS, Savage Worlds, FATE, and Cypher System. We don't introduce GURPS as a system solely for game creation; the same should be valid for BRP.

GURPS requires setting the campaign, tech level, and setting, which is trivial. And BRP is mostly the same, with 30 spells in the core book if fantasy is your thing. Need more magic? The Magic Book has four power systems and 140+ spells for your game. Like GURPS, you pick the powers, setting, tech, and campaign and begin playing from there.

You are 100% able to play BRP with the base book, never need another book, and never do any "game design" at all. I can easily do any TV show or Movie with this game: Buck Rogers, CHIPS, the A-Team, Fallout, Rebel Moon, Aliens, Star Wars - anything is easily playable. If you need specific weapons or gear, just use something similar in the book and re-skin it. As people who play Cypher System often say, "It is all flavor!"

Magic items? You can create those using the base book, with the rules covering "items with powers," you will discover that you can make far more items than D&D can give you. You can simulate the "+1 sword" with a sword with a level of "super skill" for a +20% to-hit bonus and perhaps +10 STR, which will bump the character's natural damage modifier up a few levels. Give it a POW value and a few magic spells, and your "+1 sword" is turning into an artifact far more interesting than the MMO "green item" boring junk most D&D games give you.

If I were hard-pressed to create "magic items" for a BRP fantasy game, I would use any B/X game's magic item charts, roll an item, and then start there (use the items with powers rules, BRP p161). Oh, a +1 spear? Give it POW equal to double hit points (2 x 15 = 30), and give it a few permanent abilities (they cost 5 x POW cost), like permanent "always one" sharpen level 2 costs 10 POW (+10% to-hit, +2 damage), and give the spear a spell or two to use the remainder of the 20 POW with (lightning level 1-3 for 3-9 POW per cast, 1d6 damage per level, 60m range).

That is an excellent spear, unlike any other! Give it a name, like Storm Spire, and you are all set.

One of the best parts about magic items in BRP is they recharge POW off the character at 1 point per round (when the character wills the transfer). Sooner or later, the character's POW is expended, and the character needs to rest and recover. The concept that "magic items drain the power of the user" and "the user needs to rest after use" is a fantastic game mechanic. A reason for warrior types to have POW? Yes, that is a thing in BRP, too.

The items are mighty, but I would rather have fewer, unique, and memorable items than "random +1 trinkets off tables." That old, tired D&D junk that exists to give a +1 somewhere is boring and MMO-like. It is 2024, and we can have better things.

Oh, and as items lose hit points, their maximum POW decreases, and they eventually break. The balance of magic items is built into the system, and getting them repaired may require visiting a unique forge, arcane crafter, or other specialist who may need particular components or services to perform the task. Characters could learn to do it themselves, but the rare items would still need to be acquired.

The game has superpowers, mutations, and mutated and powered items, so a Gamma World-style post-apocalypse setting is within reach. One of the best parts about a game is that you DIY all your magic items and "lost tech" artifacts; the players will have no idea what to expect, and each item will be memorable and unique and not something of a random chart we all saw 1,000 times before. I could look at the superpower list in this game, create an "intangibility bracelet" powered by rare one-use neutronium pellets, and have an item no other game has.

Need more superpowers to make lost artifacts with or for your mutations? Pull them from the Super World game. You may slowly creep into "game design" as you continue building your world, but this "scary" game design is nothing you need when you start your game. Any game genre can be started cold with just the core rulebook and laying out a few parameters, like what powers and technology are available.

Design as you go. The most important part is to start playing.

Never let the old "this is only for game designers" thing stop you.

In BRP, everyone is a game designer, and it is so easy to do that it becomes part of the game.

Off the Shelf: Runequest

My 5E books are on a secondary shelf while I revisit Runequest. I like the BRP d100 system; it is solid and a 'character builder '- you level up what you use. Want to be stealthy? Do sneaky things. Want to use daggers well? Stab things.

You don't get free powers just to get a level. Every power is earned through hard work and making skill rolls. Since everyone has magic, your spells enhance your weapons and combat powers. Want a magic sword strike? Learn the spell that does it, and cast a sharpening spell on your blade. Learning magic is more than reading a spell list; a few magic systems are in the game, and they all work differently.

Unlike GURPS, you cannot "spend points on whatever." This is an involved character simulator, and if you want skills in areas where it takes work to earn skill points, you will need to work at them. You can't learn history sitting in a forest or how to get better at combat if you find a few thousand GP and convert them to XP.

Nothing comes for free in BRP. You earn every point. Your characters level organically. Combat is deadly.  Roleplaying and knowing the "who's who" in a tribe or culture matters. Getting favors and survival matter. Crafting even has a place. Parts of this game feel like Minecraft, where you hunt, forge, mine, craft, and build. This is another "thinking person's game."

And it is one world, the Bronze Age, with established lore and culture, without silly planar travel to multiverses. There are no robots or talking skeletons here. You play primarily humans, but with such a diverse civilization, you can find all the diversity you want in this game by being human. In D&D, diversity can feel "faked" in that humans are boring, primarily the European stereotypes, and diversity is equated with the fantastical cartoon races.

In Runequest, diversity is not just a feature; it's a necessity. To succeed and thrive in this world, immerse yourself in its cultures and understand their nuances. This game demands that you care about the world you inhabit, and that means doing your homework.

Do you want to be diverse in this game? Learn about the world your character lives in and its history.

Runequest also divorces the same-old Renaissance level of technology with the plate-mail, steel, crossbows, and tall ships that pervade the entire notion of fantasy gaming today. It feels like Minecraft, where you craft your gear, bartering, building shelters, and crawling through ancient ruins. You do not have worldwide trade, steel, universities, huge guilds, giant castles, armies of plate-mail knights, or even the stirrup. This is the Bronze Age, a different time where personal magic, skill, and heroism matter more than "gear loadout."

Everyone has magic, even if it is just minor incantations. Even people in town find ways to use "everyday magic" - minor spells to make the hard life a little easier. The setting isn't high magic; it is very spiritual and enlightened, where minor magic is a part of everyday life for many. You can play this up or keep it down as much as you like in your games, but this personal magic exists. It isn't used as a "technology replacement metaphor," but here.

Spells can be expensive to learn or held by cults, so while everyone may have magic, the spells needed to cast them are not always freely available. A tavern owner may only know two spells that ignite and extinguish small fires, but each spell costs 50 silver coins, and 60 silver per year is the average standard of living for a free family. Compared to today, this is like one minor spell, costing a household the entire cost of living for a year. Magical knowledge can be very expensive!

Runequest is a game with a lot of the lore and culture baked in, and learning about it is as much playing the game as playing is. This is the game that the 1990s AD&D always wanted to be, a mix of race, culture, world, and history where everything and everyone matters. Nothing is generic or cheaply borrowed from Tolkien. Dark Sun came close, but the dream died when TSR did. It is also a game like Traveller, where the setting is a massive part of the fun.

This game destroyed my love for Pathfinder 1e and the old-school Golarion theme park world. You can't throw tropes together and expect a world to happen. It showed me how to create a world, rules, and settings where everything makes sense together. Culture matters. History matters. Geography matters. Religion matters. Technology (and the lack of it) matters. Survival is the goal. Learning about the world makes you more powerful. Understanding people makes you more powerful. Magic is the key to power.

And knowledge is a powerful thing.

There is Too Much 5E

I am reminded of the days when the Atari 2600 market collapsed. Games that were 30 or 40 dollars the week before were tossed into bins in the center of aisles and marked down to a dollar each. We kids had a field day, and Mom saved a lot of money.

Strangely enough, nobody else was buying them, either. The bins were not picked over and were full of good stuff.

These days, 5E feels like this: Everyone is making "my 5E," and Kickstarter is flooded with 5E rules replacement systems. All these projects must be completed before D&D 2024 releases, so there is a flood of them now.

For me, Level Up Advanced 5E is the ultimate 5E system. I've been using it as my core system for years, and it's always impressive. This system was built from a clean-room rewrite of the SRD, and it's a testament to the power of community-driven projects. The old-school mix of 4E, OSR, and 5E concepts to support the pillars of play is an excellent, fun-focused rebuild of the game. Level Up is more for advanced players than beginners.

Tales of the Valiant is also a worthy 5E replacement, and this cuts closer to the 5E rules instead of rebuilding the game rules from the ground up. Due to its compatibility with 5E, it adopts some of the same issues (everyone with dark vision tripe), but the rules are clean, well-presented, and easy to use. Compared to the 2024 PHB, the ToV core book is a lot easier to use, learn, and hand to a new player to grasp.

The D&D 2024 books are non-starters to me. I don't like how the company does business, and from the previews I have seen, the organization of the books could be better. In a world where Shadowdark is winning Ennies for clean layout and presentation, releasing books that look like wall-of-text-layouts in 2005 without cross-referencing is such a massive miss that it is a near-fatal mistake.

Shadowdark feels like it is picking up the ball where D&D dropped it. This is what 9-year-olds play with their families and run the game as DMs. Hasbro shareholders should ask management what the young player strategy for the brand is because I don't see it, and in 10 years, this will come back to bite the company hard.

It did TSR.

We have Nimble 5E, MCDM RPG, and many others coming out, and targeted at current players. The OGL mess told the community, "Make your own," and Wizards fragmented the market into a million pieces. We have a glut of new systems, not to mention the other non-5E fantasy games like Dragonbane, Pendragon, Runequest, Forbidden Lands, Shadow of the Demon Lord, and others, gaining fans and picking up the torch. The OSR is still strong, along with OSE, DCC, Worlds Without Number, Castles & Crusades, and many others.

It feels like "too much 5E" for the market to support. Many, especially the experienced players (which many DMs fall into), never return to D&D and are happy in other games. The 2024 D&D books feel targeted to a narrow set of D&D Beyond players, not the mass market - and certainly not towards the next generation. This is the AD&D 2nd Edition mistake all over again; when Basic D&D was killed, there were no offerings for young players, and TSR just banked on the hardcore players to pay the bills.

Ten years later, they were out of business.

TSR made a few other huge mistakes, and that was a different market, but still, a VTT that does not sustain the level of growth a video game would pull in will be an expensive failure and equal the bad decisions TSR made, just in money and resources spent.

The younger generation played Nintendo in the 1990s, not Basic D&D. D&D 2024's mistake will only be seen in hindsight since AD&D 2nd Edition was incredible when it launched but could not sustain the company and attract young players. And I don't see a static VTT (with a few animations) entirely dependent on DMs as sustaining the market or interesting younger players.

It feels like a glut, and my gut feeling is that we are in that phase where the shelves are loaded with expensive Atari games, and next week, the bargain bins will be full.

I still enjoy my 5E books, and I will for many years. Many people will. The existing players are still a huge number. But I don't see the market here for as many games as we are getting, and the many more coming. And I don't see the replacement players coming into a mature market to replace the natural loss of interest and players.

Tales of the Valiant: Lineages & Heritages, Supplement 1

Man, these titles are getting long. One problem with "fixing words" is that the replacements for the old ones are often twice as long and wordy, and they, too, will someday be deemed inappropriate and need to be replaced with even longer words. The meanings are not as clear; back in the 1990s, this would have been called race and background options, six syllables versus the nine of this title. Also, "Supplement 1" tacked on there makes an even wordy title so long it probably rolls over on my post title.

I was raised on the use of clear and concise language. Using more words than was needed was disrespectful to your reader and their time.

That said, this book is good for ToV players. ToV desperately needs more options! This is a good first step, even if it is PDF-only at this point. I would love to see many more titles come out in this line and for them to be collected into a hardcover.

We get six new lineages, ten new heritages, and a background here, covering some less-popular options but important ones like goblin, lizardfolk, gnoll, dryad, and dhampir. Eonic is a time-traveler who would work better as a background (and allow for different lineages to be from the future, too). They can't time travel; they just randomly see the future.

This supplement is a step in the right direction for ToV players, but it's just the beginning. We're hungry for more, especially in the form of new class options and character development. The Midgard character option department, in particular, is in urgent need of expansion. We're ready for more, and we're ready now.

The downside? Five of the six lineage options have a dark vision ability. I swear this is a massive problem with all of 5E these days (addressed in Level Up A5E and Shadowdark), and most of 5E being a "dark vision party" is a joke at this point in gaming. Tales need to keep compatibility, so they suffer.

Dark vision for nearly everyone is one of the laziest design decisions in 5E, and at this point, just get rid of light sources and assume everyone (even humans) can see in the dark. This is also why many are leaving for Shadowdark, a game that takes light mechanics seriously appeals to so many, and that "fear of the dark" thing ingrained in humans that "in-humanist designers" fail to see in their rush to make everything play fairly like a mobile phone game rigged to sell stamina and currencies.

Nobody wants to play a "light game" in D&D, so they give everyone dark vision and hand-wave it away as a non-problem.

This book needed a few more backgrounds; only having one feels like a mistake. The PDF could have gone two more pages and given us at least four to six new ones. Level Up Advanced 5E blows ToV out of the water when it comes to character background choices, and once you start designing them and pulling in others from 3rd party books, you have almost too many - and that is a good thing.

This book highlights the differences between Tales of the Valiant and Level Up Advanced 5E. ToV needs to maintain D&D compatibility, so they must take D&D's flaws into account and make it work. Level Up threw out parts of D&D that were garbage and fixed the systems to make them fun and support the classic pillars of play.

I feel that maintaining D&D compatibility (which is different from 5E compatibility) will drag your game down with the hot mess from 2014 to 2024, with ten years of broken expansion books. I love ToV, but Level Up is the more radically redesigned and fixed version of 5E on the market. Outside the new "Queen of the Throne" of dungeon crawling, the excellent Shadowdark.

It also tells that the games that fix the dark vision problem are seen as better experiences. We live in strange times.

A great book; more of this is needed; please keep them coming, Kobold Press.

They Don't Own the Idea

This is the first time we have seen this much money spent pushing a game outside of the video game industry. My YouTube feed is flooded with positive D&D 2024 book previews, making every second video either 2024-related or someone discussing 2024 content. It is beginning to feel desperate.

I swear much money is being given to Google to hype this.

The more I see, the less interested I am. An old saying is that a lie repeated enough is the truth, and we certainly see the repetition. Another disturbing trend is this manufacturing of alternate realities. We are no longer allowed to have our own opinions, especially regarding entertainment and gaming.

Our opinions will be delivered to us via YouTube algorithms.

Some billion-dollar company will give a trillion-dollar company tens of millions of dollars, and whatever truth they want to happen will magically be the accepted reality. Shills hungry for pennies and attention will always be there to push new things on the cheap. It is all money passing from one Wall Street firm to another.

The community will never see a dime.

When gamers support indie games and remove money and attention from the cycle? Then they get angry.

Even supporting old games via POD feeds into the cycle; they are siphoning money off you for nostalgia. Those ideas "own" your idea of fantasy gaming. You can never leave the classic D&D settings or mindset.  "The planes" encompass every other setting, even 3rd party ones.

"We own all this, even if we don't."

I see this in gamers. They will want to express a fantasy character, and the first thing they do is run to D&D Beyond to create them; even though the character has nothing to do with D&D, that system "owns the idea."

Beware when one company owns an entire genre of imagination and expression of creative ideas. This is the theft of myth and lore that Disney does so well, where the stories we pass down between generations become "corporate IP monetized for profit."

That isn't Tolkien. That is D&D.

Of course, the Little Mermaid has a talking fish in it.

Putting my money into the pockets of smaller teams, indie creators, and people hungry for my gaming dollars is always better. I willfully remove my money from the cycle. I support communities outside the default choice. I say no to Wall Street, and the cyclic money siphons like a needle in our imaginations.

You can't be socially progressive, preaching communal ownership of everything and giving fistfuls of money to Wall Street to own a part of your imagination and identity. You just can't. It is incompatible with who you are, and shockingly, I need to say this. I'd say the same thing to the people who work there. Why are you doing this?

Myth, legend, heroism, and the concept of fantasy are not owned by one billion-dollar company to be put behind a paywall.

They are freely owned by the people.

The ownership of the ideas inside our heads.

The ones that belong to all of us.

Support the Alternatives

I deleted my rant about the YouTube 5E preview channels that I have never heard of or subscribed to flooding my feed. I feel someone is paying to boost all these videos, and I am not giving them any views. The closer we get to the 2024 D&D releases, the less I care about the official books.

D&D died during the OGL disaster.

It is a mobile game now, and I am not interested.

I prefer supporting new games and communities rather than old games or giving money to people I dislike. Don't reward behavior you disagree with, and don't fall into the hate or hype. These "Wizards did What?" YouTube videos are just as annoying as the other side's boosted shills.

Let go of the old editions and support new, independent games. I'd much rather play Old School Essentials than Rules Cyclopedia, B/X, BECMI, AD&D, or any other classic version of the game supplied by Wizards. With editions like Basic Fantasy, you can even play for low cost or free.

I keep going back to the late 1980s when the community said AD&D sucks, and we all abandoned the game. We moved on to GURPS, Rifts, Shadowrun, BattleTech, Vampire, and other games until Magic the Gathering killed the hobby. The hobby has been dead since 1995 when the market collapsed.

However, the only thing that has changed between 1989 and today is the impact of social media and nostalgia. To those of us who were there, we gave up on AD&D since it was level-based, it was too "kill for treasure," and the class-level-race-alignment system was too limiting and did nothing for roleplaying. There have been no fixes to the game since we all walked away. Nostalgia is not a patch.

But some people in the indie scene are giving it their best shot.

Now is the time to back indie, non-OGL, and non-SRD games and communities. By doing so, we can help them flourish, ensure they receive the support they need, and foster competitive alternatives. People can write adventure and rule supplements for these games, which is a freedom not available for AD&D or any other legacy TSR game.

Do I play classic legacy games like the originals? Yes, I do. They are all from indie creators, though, and the appeal is more for nostalgia than gameplay in some situations. Shadowdark took aim at the gameplay and modernized it, which makes a game that not only hits the nostalgia note but also delivers an upgraded gameplay experience.

I lean more toward OSR games that "fix the game" and make gameplay enhancements rather than copying old games, warts, etc. Other OSR games, like Stars Without Number, use the familiar as a base for new experiences.

For 5E, I am settled on Level Up A5E. Tales of the Valiant is still far too new to make a call. This is another edition that "fixes the game" rather than photocopies it. But this discussion is not about 5E, though my pick for it matches my feelings towards OSR games.

The games I am sticking with either enhance the experience or provide a new one. My top five are Stars Without Number, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Shadowdark, GURPS, and Old School Essentials. I could put Castles & Crusades in here, but that insanely good game tends to crowd out the others. I have it in storage to give the others (OSE & LU A5E) a chance. C&C will kill 5E if I have it out, and I have books I want to enjoy for Level Up.

C&C will have a spot in my top five.

But for now, it feels nice to ignore the bought-and-paid 2024 previews and do my own thing. My mind is mine, I enjoy what I do, and I am no longer jumping on AAAA-game bandwagons for the hype.

Off the Shelf: Stars Without Number

I have looked at many sci-fi games, and none have completed the package, like Stars Without Number. The Kevin Crawford games are masterpieces of simplicity, function, and design. The Worlds, Cities, and Stars Without Number games are all amazing.

One page of rules on an easy reference sheet for each game.

The ship combat in this game is a breath of fresh air, playable and functional without the overwhelming complexity that plagues many other games. Some starship combat systems are so convoluted that it's a battle just to understand the rules, let alone enjoy the game. But in Stars Without Number, you can navigate the rules and one turn without feeling defeated, making the game a truly enjoyable experience.

Not in SWN. The system works like B/X combat, and characters in different crew positions matter.

The base rules? A mere one page, consistent across all the games. This simplicity is a testament to the game's design, making it easy for players to grasp the fundamentals and dive into the action without feeling overwhelmed.

Fantasy? Got it. Worlds Without Number.

Cyberpunk? Got it, Cities Without Number. This can even be a Shadowrun with magic and monsters. Each game is a toolkit with random tables for creating anything in these worlds. They are each hex crawl masterpieces. You can even play Cities Without Number as a dystopian, violent city exploration hex crawl where you encounter random factions, gangs, government types, citizens, and other pieces of a post-modern civilization lying in squalor, decay, and post-prime ruin.

They don't have the "sim power" of GURPS, but they do have fun and content creation included with the game. These also beat many other OSR games for me, just because of the toolkit and simplicity of the rules. While the generators can be used with any game, the game itself, in one book, just begs you to play and explore.

Some games are just rules to use in a universe.

The 'Without Number' games come with infinite universes.