The Case for ADAD

With Old School Essentials and Swords & Wizardry, why do I need Adventures Dark and Deep?

ADAD is a huge game. This is the ultimate version of the first edition, and it does not even belong in the same class as OSE or S&W. This is a big book game, with everything you would ever want in it, looking through a detailed, stat-heavy, and complete first-edition lens. It is so comprehensive and massive that there is only one game it could compete with.

ACKS II. 

ACKS II is a game just as large, just as ambitious, just as complete, and just as compelling as ADAD. Both are in the heavyweight division of gaming, and these two massive games can slug it out for tabletop dominance. Where ACKS II is the Bronze Age powerhouse of savage lands and the wickedness of chaos tearing apart civilization, ADAD is classic first-edition gaming at its best.

ADAD is gearing up in town, wandering through the woods and avoiding deadly encounters, and prying open the lost tomb's sealed entrance to delve inside. It is the slow grind, every bonus matters, count the coins of encumbrance, and full-bore first edition game, plus so much more. The game expands our knowledge, with page after page of what could have been. And it reflects the future, some, while keeping its boots firmly planted in the golden era of roleplaying.

ACKS II is the tale of conquering kingdoms. Zero to hero, or diabolical villain. Savage lands, conquering cities, raising armies, and rebuilding civilization. It is equal parts brutal, beautiful, notorious, and glorious, with iconic heroes and vicious creatures of myth and legend.

So, why ADAD? Isn't the rules-light S&W close enough?

ADAD features classic monsters, classic presentation, and tons of additional content inspired by years of research and inspiration. This is the big "what if" first edition got a proper second edition, but it was done by the original creator. And then, the game evolved into its own thing, no longer a fantasy "second edition" but a distinct game in its own right. We offer new classes, including magic, monsters, and races, as well as various other options. We have a skill system. We have so much more than the original books, and it would take years to explore them all.

And really, we have the best of everything in this game.

Not to mention a wealth of excellent add-on books and adventures from the same creator. If you like the classic "stuff" and that retro crunch, this will be a new favorite game. The Swords of Cthulhu book is not to be missed, and can feed an entire campaign's worth of action fighting against elder gods as first-edition heroes.

Both games are similar in that they limit character race and background options. ACKS II offers a diverse selection of humans, while AD&D offers the classic races, plus a small number of new ones to try. If you don't want a bunch of silly talking dragons, half-demons, and other modern distractions, both of these games will challenge you to be diverse in a smaller set of options. The more I limit race choices to the classics, the better the diversity of people represented at my table becomes. ACKS II is a master class at including setting-specific, heroic, and noble backgrounds of diverse cultures in the setting, yet they are all humans. ADAD is the classics plus a few new ones.

ADAD feels like the real thing, plus everything that could have been. It is like AD&D 2nd Edition never happened, and the world kept moving on with the original first-edition game. The game hasn't been streamlined; there is no THAC0. We write down our to-hit numbers on our character sheet by AC numbers, and all our stats have these wonderful secondary modifiers.

Grappling hooks have their own chart, which determines different percentage rolls based on the object they are trying to grab onto. Additionally, some results have a chance to slip off after a random amount of time passes. That is wonderful, first-edition, pedantic, nerd-delighting, wonderful nuance and detail. This is why I play this game. If something can happen, it has a chart somewhere. If it doesn't? I will create one that generates a set of fun, random results.

ADAD is about every last detail, minor modifier, and rolling on a chart for something, somewhere, for almost anything.

It is like Dungeon Crawl Classics in a way, only the charts are not wild and gonzo results, but all manner of great and terrible things that can happen to normal people. If there was ever a game that required a percentage chart for pulling potion bottles open with your teeth, this game would have it, or you would need to create one.

For any not-by-the-rules action, you could always roll 1d100 and interpret the result as a disaster (1), a miracle (100), or a combination of both, with failure and success being the intermediate outcomes (2-99). Modify up or down based on the ability score or situation, if needed.

Want to read an ancient text? Make that 1d100 roll.

If I did not have the energy to "drill down" into this level of detail, Swords & Wizardry is a great alternative, with far fewer charts and modifiers floating around on random pages. It depends on your tolerance for charts and modifiers, and ADAD may either be the perfect game for you or a nightmare. The rules state that you can ignore most details, and the specifics are provided if needed.

ADAD is clearly a "superfan" game, just like GURPS. If you are devoted enough and love the system, no amount of complexity and detail is too significant. Otherwise, even if you are half-interested, go for a more rules-light game, such as C&C, S&W, or OSE.

If you can be a nerd about that grappling hook table, then ADAD is clearly your game.

ACKS II is complex in a different way. As you level up and your game scales to dominion management, you start to delve into the more complicated areas of the game. The lower-level games in ACKS II are more akin to a B/X-style set of game rules in terms of complexity, making it easy and straightforward to dungeon crawl without needing extensive rule references.

ADAD keeps you in the weeds from day one.

While ACKS II went its own way with dominion-style gaming and that savage, classic, myth and legend feeling, ADAD goes back to the hobby's roots and gives us a wealth of new toys for our toybox. ADAD is like if 5E and AD&D had a collision, and AD&D came out on top.

But both games are giant, huge-book heavy hitters. There are games in the "superheavyweight class" of tabletop gaming, and these games are for some people, and not for others. Both are excellent games, and each has its place.

Mail Room: Draw Steel (PDFs)

I got the 1.0 Draw Steel (formerly the MCDM RPG) PDFs today, and wow, what a beautiful game. That four million dollars poured into crowdfunding was put to great use. The art is consistently outstanding, and much of it is better than that of their competitors. Art-wise, this beats Daggerheart.

These are my first impressions of the game, based on a quick flip-through.

"This is a game about fighting monsters. About larger-than-life, extraordinary heroes plunging into battle against terrifying, monstrous enemies." - Draw Steel, Heroes, page vii.

The game is ambitious. They aim straight for D&D 5E, Daggerheart, and Pathfinder 2E. The page with the above quote is very enlightening. They say the same is not about dungeon crawling, wilderness exploration, horror, comedy, combat-less conflict resolution, or anything else. They go on to recommend Shadowdark, Forbidden Lands, Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia, and Daggerheart by name. They say that if you are a fan of those genres, you should go play those games.

They then use the four words to describe what they were aiming for:

• Tactical
• Heroic
• Cinematic
• Fantasy

This sounds like the same goals of D&D 4E. And this definitely puts Draw Steel in Pathfinder 2E's wheelhouse. They then go to print a 6-page glossary index after that intro, with page after page of game terms explained. I did not expect that. Okay, rules-light players, please add Old School Essentials and Nimble 5e to that game list. This is not a rules-light game. This hits on the level of a Pathfinder 2E, and there are even special symbols and notation for different rolls, with edges, banes, and tiers of rolls. There is a huge dialect and language in this game that may turn off some.

I didn't expect this game to go to the tactical wargame level of depth and complexity. I expected a more damage-based system, similar to Tunnels & Trolls with a damage versus damage system. This is a combat-focused game that feels like a miniatures game.

The class powers are heavily map-based tactical abilities, which reminds me of D&D 4E. There are push, rugged terrain, slowed, slide, restrained, and all sorts of other conditions abilities inflict upon foes. The focus of this game is on tactical combat, and the game goes into wargame-like detail in that regard.

The game targets D&D 5E's weaknesses, specifically how sloppy combat becomes at higher levels. To be fair, Pathfinder 2E does the same thing, and those high-level, TPK or total snooze fest 5E combats are an easy target to design against. Story, exploration, dungeons - blah, blah, blah - if you can't get combat right, you might as well be playing FATE and fa-la-la-ing your way to the next story part. Who really cares about 5E stats and character sheets if all we are playing is a narrative game?

I said no more AI, but this is hilarious.

I could make "the ultimate narrative game" with a single d6. Class abilities are a 3+, and non-class abilities are a 5+. Most monsters take one hit and die. Bosses and characters have three hits. Now, excuse me while I write 400 pages of rules for narrative play. Somewhere in here will be a die result of one, "fails with hate," and a 6 "succeeds with love." Players get all the love points, and the referee gets all the hate points. Given how narrative games load the referee with all sorts of expanded systems and resource tracking, giving them all the hate feels about right for these games.

I still love you, Daggerheart. And I kid, but you are a lot of work for me as a referee.

Draw Steel is not like that. They deliver a great combat engine, ensuring that play loops are fun and that different roles have unique ways to contribute. If you can't make a compelling combat engine, you don't have a game.  The engine can't break at level 10 (like D&D), and it can't be a sloppy mess at level 20. Pathfinder 2E knew this and did a great job at making that a reality. Draw Steel aims to achieve this by eliminating the frustrating whiff factor that d20 games are notorious for, and by making a bad roll feel like "waste your turn."

Where this competes with Pathfinder 2E is that the Paizo game does try to "do it all." As a result, PF 2E is a huge game. Many OSR games appear unfocused, content to be "just rules" and not bring anything new to the table, nor focus on a key group play dynamic. D&D 5E is even worse off, as it tries to be everything to everyone and exclude nobody or any playstyle, and it fails at just about everything it tries to do (and often ends up telling you to "make it all up yourself" in the DMG).

The era of these "please everyone" junk drawer games is hopefully coming to an end, and we are now going into an era where games focus on one or two areas to excel in, while pushing the fringe stuff to the side.

Design is important and matters.

Especially when you have clear goals.

And you communicate these goals up front.

Shadowdark drills in and focuses on the play at the table, with those ticking clocks and tight rules based around light. If all you did was read the Shadowdark rules, you don't know the game. You have to play Shadowdark with others to understand it, preferably with people you don't know.

I am hopeful for Draw Steel. A game that knows what it is and is not trying to please everyone is a good thing for the hobby. I initially felt negative about this game, as if I would read about it but never play, but the designers' tight focus gives me a reason to care.

Focused designs are far more compelling because they aim to deliver a tangible experience.

YouTube: Wizards Should Be FREAKS!

Another great video from Save vs. BS today, and he hits on a lot of the points I feel about the MMO-ification of D&D. This has been going on since Wizards took over D&D, and it is a sad state of affairs to have magic turned into an everyday commodity.

The definition of magic is something ...magical.

Strange and unusual.

Unpredictable.

Dangerous.

Powers with a steep price to pay, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

The same thinking should apply to fighters, thieves, clerics, and every other hero class. They aren't boring "party roles" but something larger-than-life, personal, mysterious, and wield great powers. Their class should reflect their outlook. A thief should be a conniving and backstabbing thief. A cleric should be a font of the will of their god. A fighter should be a killing machine.

Wake up! D&D has this tranquilizer effect that puts you to sleep. You create your character and you are instantly bored, entering the MMO LFG queue, and waiting to speed-run a dungeon and enjoy nothing. you are not a party slot filler! You are a hero! Just what you do is very dangerous, but only a select few can!

Yes. One thousand times, yes.

DCC: Comic Crawl Classics

Wow, DCC has this underground popularity that's really boosting my hits. Thank you! Let's do some more capsule reviews and see how I use a few of these books in the series.

I like the Comic Crawl Classics superhero rules expansion for DCC. It exists in its own comic universe and gives you a good selection of iconic powers to choose from. The DCC-style superheroes are fun, and you can use these in any DCC/MCC/XCrawl adventure.

What is even better is that this system can be used for "highly trained" heroes without superpowers at all, so you can make a Chuck Norris, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, or any other action hero with the rules and run them through the adventures, too.

Toss in some firepower from the Orbital Assault Vehicle Guide, and you have a fun action-movie style system with larger-than-life characters. This book has modern classes too, but the Comic Crawl book lets you spend the "power dice" you earn to raise ability scores, which can give you those larger-than-life heroes with the muscles that bulge, and they get insanely strong, or agile, or charming, and so on...

Comic Crawl Classics is an excellent toolkit book for both superheroes and action heroes, and this gives you another tool in your DCC toolbox that is worth having for those special characters or heroes that come up in this insane and fantastically crazy universe of fun.

DCC: Cyclopedia of Common Animals

This new book for Dungeon Crawl Classics is a bestiary featuring common animals, dinosaurs, and even fairy animals. It is a massive tome of 252 pages, and amazingly comprehensive and complete. There are stats for everything, along with knowledgeable notes on almost every animal.

Best, there are story hooks in here related to the animals! How to involve them in stories, how to make them feel special, how to handle them in spellcasting, what parts are valuable on each, and a bunch of information is given to make the 'background animals' in the world add to the depth and storytelling of the world. We even get details like how to harvest frog poison and what that does, so even thieves and assassins can benefit from a lot of the information here.

There are tips for making special animals memorable, not overdoing it, and breaking immersion. Suppose every deer is a six-legged moss-brook deer. In that case, the world becomes too fantastic; everything becomes a monster, and having nothing normal takes players out of the world, losing opportunities for storytelling.

We get dinosaurs and fairy animals, too! Encounter tables, animals by terrain and climate, and a bunch of other information on how to make an area of the world believable by choosing the creatures that live there.

This book is elevating my DCC experience and raising the immersion of my worlds to a point where DCC will eclipse worlds made with first edition rules, which is currently the king of immersion for me. This is a great book that goes into detail about my worlds, giving me a palette of animals to paint into the background of the world and make everything feel grounded and real.

Primitive worlds are all about their animals! I see a lot of D&D art, and not one animal is present. People here in the modern world have little contact with animals outside the domesticated few we have in our homes. In an actual fantasy world, there will be many more animals in the environment. It's as if the artists behind these games are too invested in Uber and Starbucks, forgetting the holistic, country, and pastoral aspects of life in these worlds.

Highest recommendation, this book is an invaluable resource for creating a believable, grounded, realistic world with a world of creatures playing background roles, parts of the story, and as monsters themselves.

DCC: Tales of the Fallen Empire

Tales of the Fallen Empire is a setting book for Dungeon Crawl Classics, and it is an ambitious one. This tries to rebuild DCC into a savage setting, much like the Conan books. The art is consistently good, we get classes, races, gods, spells, equipment, and a world to adventure in. This is a great starting point for brutal and savage barbarian adventures, and it hits all the right notes.

I wanted more! Especially the art of the world, those lost temples, crowded cities, maps, and the inspirational pieces that get our imaginations flowing. This book could have easily been twice the size, packed with art, and I would have loved every bit of it.

The back lists Roger Corman as an inspiration, well-played. There are many more in Appendix N of the book as well, including Elric, Lemuria, Leiber, Xanth, and many others. We even get a music list, which isn't always done in these inspiration sources.

It suffers somewhat from the "also-isms" of similar savage settings, such as Savage Thule, which offers much more in terms of campaign support, maps, lands, and detailing a compelling world. I prefer Thule over this setting, even though it is DCC and has rules support. Thule has more to the world, and I want to dive in and explore these places. Both would equally work well together, however.

They are also both "not-Conan" settings, and if you want me to play in your world, you need to give me more than just the original inspirations. Thule does this by giving me a complete world with all the nooks and crannies to explore, lore, lands, and maps. Tales is a good setting, but it lacks the delivery and power that make it truly effective.

It is strange, as Hubris gives me less in terms of describing a world, but it makes up for it in the tools I would need to run the land, especially in the encounter charts. Hubris is also more its own thing, a mess of demonic and dark mechanical overlords in a twisted hellscape which could also double as a plane of Hell.

Hubris is very close to Heavy Metal as a setting, and a shade less Conan. It is more a feeling than a setting, and it succeeds in delivering a world primarily through random charts.

Dark Sun is another setting in a similar vein, succeeding in both the number of adventures and the strength of the world. It succeeds because of all it delivers, not just rules and classes, but in a sandbox (literally) to explore and play in, with built-in villains (if you do not play in the revised setting).

Hyperborea is also a great game and setting, and it is a solid choice, too, outside of DCC but still in the old school genre.

Tales of the Fallen Empire is a good book, full of lots of DCC "stuff" and a solid base for what you need to have a savage campaign using the DCC rules. I wanted more, but the book remains handy and worthy if you are willing to put in the work to bring the setting to life. Some of the games and settings on this list are easier than others, and Tales sits on the lower end, but you can't replace the DCC-specific support for the genre in this book.

It is great, but I wanted more.

A recommendation, especially if you like to DIY and make the world your own place.

Old School Games Never Let You Down

I bought a few D&D adventures a while back, and I discovered that the resale prices are about $3-4 per book, just like the 2014 edition, but they are now considered "out of date." I'm unable to obtain PDFs for them, as it's policy and walled garden content. I will probably end up playing most of these with Tales of the Valiant, since I have given up on D&D as a system, and ToV has good 2014 compatibility.

What good are these books if I don't own my PDFs?

Tales of the Valiant will be the system I will still be able to play all these with when D&D 6E comes out in a few years. All these books will be "previous edition" someday, and in a way, they already are. It feels strange to call ToV an "old school game" - but one of the most essential traits of an old-school game is to maintain compatibility with previous edition adventures, and what does that sound like? That sounds like ToV. With D&D moving on, ToV is now in the OSR. This feels so wrong, but it is true, and in a few years, it will be even more so.

As D&D moves on and abandons its history, we will see rewrites for every classic adventure and module, even classics like the Keep on the Borderlands, which does not need a rewrite. We are being told we need to buy the same thing repeatedly. Tyranny of Dragons proves we can have "new stuff," and we don't need endless nostalgia bait and companies forcing us to buy the same thing repeatedly because they feel they can pull at our heartstrings.

I'd love to see a new team create something like The Tomb of Horrors. Classics. All-time great adventures. These are beloved works of fiction and do not need cigarette pack warnings. Throwing these into compilations and cheaply converting them to 5E is disrespectful. Goodman Games did it the best by expanding and celebrating them, while printing the originals in their entirety to preserve them.

I doubt the current team at Wizards has the skill to create a classic like the Tomb of Horrors. I highly doubt we will see the innovative and original adventures our hobby needs to thrive and survive.

My problems are, 5E conversions have a "shelf life" on them, without ToV. The originals? I can still play them with any OSR game of my choosing, such as Basic Fantasy, Old School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, Adventures Dark and Deep, Castles & Crusades, and even Shadowdark.

All my OSR adventures still work fine! These can be played with any OSR game. They hold their value exceptionally well and can be played with anything I own. They are all "new stuff" created by talented people, and I am seeing new adventures and thrills, rather than retreads and conversions. I pulled these out of storage the other day, and guess what? All of them still work flawlessly.

Lovely to see you again, old friends.

And I don't need to depend on online character sheets to create a character, which is a strike against ToV and all of 5E. That dependency on online character sheets will be ToV's downfall when those eventually go away and become unsupported. With old-school games, I don't need any of that online garbage. Just some dice, pencils, and paper.

The world could end, and I will still be over here playing my OSR games.

D&D players will be wandering around like the hordes in The Walking Dead, moaning about their phone's 5G bars, and looking for an Internet connection. They will be cut off from their digital copies and character sheets, and I will still have mine. But you can never replace books. Books survive wars, plagues, and famines. Print is eternal.

Full-game 5E is flawed, and since it relies too much on online support, it will die. As sites close down, publishers pull their character sheet tools, VTTs get bought out and go belly-up, we will see huge groups of people lose access to their games and content. This also means Tales of the Valiant is flawed, and can't be truly considered an old-school game. Yes, you can run a character sheet by hand, but 5E was not designed to support that, and it was built to create add-on support sales. ToV is fun and I support it, but in a bittersweet way since I know the game has inherited a fatal flaw.

All my old school games?

As long as I have a hand, a pencil, and paper, I can play them.

Even the ones in science fiction, cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, and other genres are all cross-compatible. Do I need a quick space alien mutant monster? One where several lifeforms were merged together by a space virus? The chimera from Old School Essentials (or any other old-school bestiary) looks nasty, so I'll use it as-is, just reskinning the looks, but the stats all work perfectly fine for Stars Without Number. Giant space bugs? Hey, that ankheg from OSE looks cool as a giant hive insect. Some ravenous space slime? A black pudding from the same book works well, and is only hurt by fire, so break out the flame units.

Do I need those for a post-apocalyptic game? I have the rules, and all my monsters still work. That chimera is just as frightening here, and just as deadly, and it doesn't need a stat block a page long to do it, either. This mutant could be roaming a long-abandoned research facility, terrorizing its main corridors. OSR monster stat blocks are wonderfully brief and concise, and like alignment, say a lot with very little text. This is another reason to love an OSR game over 5E.

Cyberpunk game? I have that covered, too. All those monsters and adventures still work. That chimera is something that escaped from a megacorporation's bio-research labs and is now crawling around the sewers, subway lines, and drainage tunnels of the city, causing havoc. It all works together, giving me instant access to adventure and on-demand content at my fingertips.

Fantasy game? I have dozens of old-school fantasy games that all work amazingly well. I have not even mentioned Worlds Without Number, ACKS II, AD&D (1e or 2e), For Gold & Glory, or Dungeon Crawl Classics in this discussion yet, but they are all compatible. That chimera? It is a chimera here. Everything still works together, and I have my choice of systems to play with.

All my old-school games work together in a way none others do. This puts the current crop of narrative and "post-5E" games to shame. All those games will let you down someday. Daggerheart, Cosmere, MCDM RPG, ToV, and all these "post D&D games" have a lot to prove. None of them works with anything I have, and they are asking me to "buy more."

Any OSR adventure I buy will be playable from now until the end of time.

Any OSR game I have will work with any of these adventures.

Old school games will never let you down.

Video: BRW Games Big Announcement

BRW Games, the publisher behind Adventures Dark & Deep, is publishing ADDventure Engine, a system-neutral first-edition generic ruleset.

https://www.addventureengine.com/

This is a core game, a game creation toolkit, based around a stripped-down first-edition license. This is scheduled for 2026 and is an interesting development in open development and game engines. I like this, the hobby needs these sorts of toolkits and base systems under open licenses. For those who are fans of first editions, this is a good thing. Along with OSRIC 3 being released under a Creative Commons license, we are entering a new era of first-edition gaming that looks to be a fun one.

Of course, the Worlds Without Number system has been released into the public domain, and that is a fantastic game engine as well. That isn't a first-edition engine, but it is very close.

A great announcement, and this is on my radar!

D&D Feels Like it is Dying

Not a day goes by on YouTube that I see another D&D content creator quitting or switching games. What Wizards didn't do with the OGL, YouTube's de-prioritization of D&D video recommendations did the rest.

The powers that be decided that "there is no money in D&D" after the cultural follow-ups to the billion-dollar hit of Baldur's Gate 3 (the D&D Movie, VTT, spin-offs, the streaming shows, and the new edition) proved that the "franchise did not have legs." Every big corporation pulled out of the hype machine. Wizards sold their media division, incurring billions of dollars in losses. YouTube's decision to tell D&D content creators to "do something else" put the nail in the coffin.

Wall Street decided it doesn't sell on Main Street.

If YouTube is not on board with your hobby, just give up. The impossible dream of making a living off being a D&D YouTuber has become even more impossible since the platform is working against you.

This is also a call to arms to move to other video-sharing platforms and bring your audience there, even though the profits and attention are not in those places. This is the price of putting all your eggs in one basket, and it being the only basket in town. It's a terrible mixed metaphor, but you get the point.

The age of the golden goose franchise is dead. What did not work for Marvel or Star Wars will not work for D&D. Adding a brand name to subpar products does not make them sell.

The mass market was not interested in D&D. The broader market did not adopt identity marketing. Only a small fraction of players "adopted" their character identity as their real-world identity, mainly because it was super cringeworthy and a fading social media fad. Frankly, the furry community is a stronger fandom in terms of openly "wearing their identity" on social media, and that concept has not been widely adopted by the general public.

Identifying yourself as your D&D character on social media is super cringeworthy. This did not go over well with Middle America and the younger audience. Even the art direction in the new books, where the characters appear as "ordinary people" in "fantastic situations," is trite and undermines the fantasy vibe. If this is the direction they want to go, eliminate all non-human character options.

Fantasy is fantasy, where we imagine ourselves to be the muscular Conan or classic Red Sonja character. Even Critical Role, being professional actors, gets that.

This "self-insert" branding is terrible, and it makes everyone disinterested in your franchise. This happened in comic books, movies, and every other place it has been tried. You are killing interest by normalizing heroes and making them easy to cosplay in street clothing, frumpy looks, and modern hairdos. Nobody wants to be average, since the point of fantasy and escapism is to be extraordinary.

This generation misses the point of fantasy.

Nobody that I see these companies hire "gets it."

They don't know what fantasy means.

It's not about cosplay or seeing yourself in anything. It's not about branding or seeing yourself as part of a Wall Street IP. This is not like wearing sports team apparel.

It is about being someone else, outside of yourself.

The "brand" is a brand.

The game lost its way.

Wow, OSE is Good

Old School Essentials is one of the most underestimated games in the hobby. Like many, I sat here thinking, "But 5E gives me the character power I need in heroes!" When it is absolutely not true.

Just check the fireball damage in this edition versus any other, and put that against the hit points of an ogre. OSE gives you more character power than 5E, especially at higher levels. Compare fighter damage with monster hit points at high levels, given the to-hit chance and single strike damage versus maximum hit points. When you look at damage output and monster hit points, OSE comes out ahead.

And this is a game that encourages you to avoid fights.

The characters may be more straightforward, but that gives you room to mod and tweak the system to your liking. I have all of the character options (and more) in terms of race and class that I do in 5E. There are no subclass distractions and multiclass cheats here, but I will take OSE's higher level of character power as I level over the 5E MMO model of getting weaker as I level.

I can even create custom classes, and the excellent B/X Options: Class Builder book provides you with the tools to do so. I can do this far more easily than 5E, and I don't need to pay people on Kickstarter for their help, either. If I want a custom class or a custom race-as-class, I can have it.

While other first-edition games are comparable, OSE still stands strong on its own. Some give me more power and options, such as Swords & Wizardry with its deeper classes, and Adventures Dark and Deep with its first-edition-plus mega-game. OSE offers me all the great options I had in D&D 4E and 5E, but with one-tenth the complexity, fewer overwritten books, and less shelf space than either of those games. Character power is preserved. I get fun race-as-class options for every modern option. The classic stronghold and henchman systems are in place and very strong. The rules stay out of the way.

OSE has the simplicity of Shadowdark, more campaign depth than 5E, and a higher level of power than most fantasy games today.

Dungeon Crawl Classics is White Hot Right Now

This is a peculiar trend, and one I have not observed yet. All of my Dungeon Crawl Classics posts are currently extremely popular and receiving a high volume of views. Wow. This is actually cool.

Thank you.

The interest in Dungeon Crawl Classics feels like they are approaching Shadowdark levels. The game is gaining popularity among ex-D&D players seeking something different, searching for old-school alternative games, and those looking for Shadowdark alternatives that are more fast-paced and built for fun. Where Shadowdark is more of a turn-by-turn survival crawl, DCC is the game built for insane, quick, and unpredictable fun, based on the classic tales of Appendix N.

I would love to see the estates of more classic authors sign up and have projects in DCC! These give the game something other games do not have: authenticity and the ability to explore classic worlds and inspirational novels in the fantasy genre. Nobody does these boxed sets like Goodman Games. They are fantastic dives into gaming history and the worlds that inspired the original D&D. While Wizards may shift more of the inspiration of the games to the original creators, the true inspirations for D&D lie in the books of Appendix N. These inspired Gygax and all the others.

And Dying Earth is awesome, do not let the strange cover art fool you! This just opens the door to all the strangeness inside, making things seem alien and special. I love these books, and they are a fantastic world to explore and be inspired by.

Gene Wolfe? Michael Shea? There are so many other fantasy authors I would love to see DCC boxed sets for. Even HP Lovecraft, with a Horror Crawl Classics boxed set of pulp investigations and creatures, all being sent into a Lovecraftian funnel of doom and madness.

Even classic authors in the public domain, such as a DCC version of Alice in Wonderland, could be a huge Kickstarter success and generate crossover interest with a gonzo, insane, psychotic dungeon romp through that world. And I can imagine the DCC's artists take on all the classic fairy tale characters, too. Other adventure writers could contribute to the Kickstarter (like Purple Planet), with a few warnings on what is in the public domain versus what is not. This would be worth the price of admission, and I would love to see this done.

Goodman Games could follow the classic 1950s Walt Disney model and retell these stories in its own style, bringing new ideas and artists to the table for this generation. There is a wealth of stories to mine in this area, Gulliver's Travels, Bram Stoker's Dracula, HG Wells' The Time Machine, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Treasure Island, among others. The ideas are as endless as the adventures in them.

Thank you again for making my DCC Day posts popular, and there are more coming where that came from!

What If D&D 6E is Shadowdark-eqsue?

This is a hilarious thought.

What if D&D 6E starts as a "stripped down" simplified set of rules and tries to compete with Shadowdark? Of course, the "expert rules" will come later, after they hook you in, and you will be paying for character creation tools and digital add-on books after the community heaps praise on them for "seeing the light," and we all get walled-gardened later.

The problem is, I can see this happening.

This is what I would do if I were in charge of Wizards.

Split D&D 6E into a basic book and an expert book, and release the basic book first. Of course, the 5E players would complain to high heaven, but D&D would be "back in the OSR" and "back to basics" with "everything everyone loves."

Play like it is 1980!

You can finally give up all those "not D&D" OSR games. Ugh. Finally. Insert sarcasm tag here.

Later on, the expanded "6E expert rules" will, of course, have subclass options, extra powers, spells, and all the "expert combat" rules you will need the VTT and character creation software for. The 5E players who love complexity will be happy then. The expert rules are an online-only option. The expert monsters would require combat trackers and online-only tools. The expert spells have effects and targeting options made much easier by the VTT. Expert campaigns have support requirements of bastions and dominions.

The only weak part of the plan is that people may never upgrade and remain satisfied with the Basic rules. But this is Wall Street, and they can motivate purchases and upsells all the time, especially if you get "three free months" of expert rule access if you buy basic. Some monsters would be expert only. You know how it goes, and what they would hold back to get you to enter your credit card information.

Even if this did happen, if D&D 6E were a rule-for-rule copy, I would never leave Shadowdark. The third-party support is here. The licensing is excellent. The creator is awesome and listens to the community. The game is built on a promise, and it holds to it as a core principle. The books made for this system are excellent. The art holds up. Respect is paid to the creators and traditions of this hobby.

And I trust The Arcane Library.

After the OGL, I can't say that about Wizards.

Deathbringer & Shadowdark

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rollforcombat/expand-your-shadowdark-games-with-three-new-secret-tomes

I love this video, which contains some NSFW language and addresses some of the community's reactions to Professor Dungeon Master's Deathbringer game, created using the Shadowdark rules, and the project is developed in partnership with Roll for Combat.

Watch it all the way through, like and subscribe. This video is a banger and one of the best of the summer.

Shadowdark is cool, Roll for Combat is excellent, and Professor Dungeon Master is a legend who is living the dream.

"The haters are gonna hate, man."

Shadowdark is a success and the biggest threat to 5E and D&D ever to come up from the community. Shadowdark crowdfunding projects are clearing ten thousand for their first efforts, and they are the new hotness. Shadowdark is the off-ramp for D&D 5E, and that is a massive number of players leaving that game for the OSR. And Shadowdark is in the OSR.

The Roll for Combat partnership is part of the new RFC Kickstarter books for Shadowdark, with the three new tomes expanding the game. The RFC Kickstarter will seed the Deathbringer Kickstarter next year, and include early notifications and beta access. The latest RFC books are both Shadowdark and Deathbringer compatible, making this a win-win situation as everyone works together to build a publisher ecosystem.

This is a new publisher ecosystem and support model developing around Shadowdark, with bigger players stepping in. The next domino to fall will be the larger publishers working for Shadowdark, such as Kobold Press and others. Shadowdark is to 5E what Old School Essentials was to the OSR. It is a rebuild, a simplification, a refocusing, and a rebranding of the core experience.

"And this move, this move makes sure that Deathbringer won't vanish. And that matters. That matters to every player who's tired of fifth edition fluff."

Ah, yes, everyone is starting to see that D&D and the Open 5E clones are overly written, overly detailed fluff. You have to read three paragraphs of filler text to understand how cleave works. The writers are clearly being paid by the word over there. And the other half of the page is filler art. This video is filled with raw, unfiltered, and quotable quotes, and I love it.

It feels like someone slapping you in the face, handing you a cup of strong coffee, shaking your hand, and saying, "Good morning!" to you with a big smile.

Why don't some like this? "It is not for my game!" Deathbringer trying to do its own thing in this climate would have been a disaster, and the game would have been fighting for a slice of an ever-shrinking pie. We are clearly in a market contraction following the demise of D&D, and it is time for people to work together and for small players to support one another, rather than competing.

Shadowdark is the best way that 5E survives the death of D&D.

Deathbringer is a standalone variant of Shadowdark that brings awesomeness and old-school sensibilities back to the game. 5E is becoming a new game publishing ecosystem outside of Wizards and the other big players.

The Roll For Combat expansions work with anything Shadowdark, so it is a win-win-win situation. I originally was not that interested in the RFC Shadowdark books, but now I am all in. I have seen what is happening here, and it is a very good thing. A new "Rebel Alliance" is forming around Shadowdark, made of OSR players, disaffected D&D players, and many others.

This is the best chance 5E survives this generation of gaming, and also a spear through the heart of a future walled-garden "back to basics" copycat 6E, which is coming sooner rather than later.

If you love Shadowdark, jump on the RFC Kickstarter and follow Deathbringer.

If you want to save 5E, focus on Shadowdark and ignore everything else.

Moving On

5E books are certainly not worth much on the secondary market. I'm trying to sell mine, and I'll be lucky to get a few dollars for each one. Wow, either these are so commonplace that everyone, even third-party sellers, has a literal ton of them, or everyone is dumping them right now and getting out of D&D. They aren't great "investments," let me tell you that.

Part of the reason for the drawdown of this part of my library is to save Tales of the Valiant. My 5E library is so bloated and obese that no edition of the game will survive against a more focused and fun game, and Dungeon Crawl Classics is breathing down its neck, along with GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. I'm not sure a generic 5E can compete with either, given my limited playtime, but I like ToV a lot. Things will be better when Player's Guide 2 arrives, but the hardcover for that is due in January 2026.

The specific will always beat the generic, and that is my case with ToV. If my "fantasy interest" lies in the gonzo fantasy genre,  the game that caters to that as its specialty will win over a generic role-playing game every time. Compared to ToV, DCC will consistently outperform it in terms of playtime and interest levels. The game gives me more "fun per minute" invested than 5E, by far.

The only generic fantasy game that could compete with ToV and DCC is Old School Essentials. This game is so simple that it takes nothing to support, so it does not take a considerable amount of "mind space" or "reading time" to enjoy. OSE is like clicking on YouTube and finding something interesting to watch, and the convenience factor is even higher than DCC. 5E takes a lot of support from online character creators, rules reference, subclass options, character builds, spells, and other "hard support" that it wants to take over all your hobby time and budget. 

That high built-in support requirement is a problem that will haunt 5E until people abandon the system. This was the same story in 4E and D&D 3.5E, and frankly, any game that Wizards designed.

If OSE does half of what 5E does, it still wins by default.

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy falls in the same place, but the genre is "realistic fantasy." This one outshines a similar genre of games, such as Warhammer, Zweihander, Rolemaster, and numerous others. GURPS does all that easily, without requiring tons of chart support, and it can handle any genre within realistic fantasy. I can create anything from a realistic Warhammer to a realistic Conan with the same system, and achieve great results with minimal effort. Granted, GURPS is not a lightweight game, but in terms of its capabilities, it is very high, so the time invested is a multiplier to my enjoyment at the table.

GURPS gives me a high amount of fun per minute invested. OSE gives me a high amount of fun per zero time invested. Both of them are high-reward games. DCC is also close to OSE, but with a little more time needed for chart support. Still, DCC plays off the character sheet quickly, so once you get rolling, the amount of time required to support the game is very low.

With 5E, I am paying monthly fees to support character design software and constantly reading pages of fluff text that describe character abilities in the most page-filling format possible. Even ToV is horribly overwritten, just like 5E, where a power should have been described in a bullet point and one-line explanation, they will take a long paragraph or two to explain what a cleave does.

Just like in my library, the bloat will kill 5E for me. I'm trying to fight it as best I can.

No to D&D 4E, Yes to Old School Essentials

There is a segment of the D&D community pushing for a return to D&D 4E. My brother and I played this, a whole campaign to level 30, with multiple characters. And it's a hard pass from me. We collected the entire series, played every book, ate them up as they came out, and slowly watched a game that was great at levels 1-9 turn into a nightmare past level 10.

The multiple conditions per character, per monster, and tracking everything with tiny scraps of paper was atrocious and one of the worst examples of how not to do conditions in a game. Everything mattered! That extra minus two to one save for one turn was a core class ability for some, and we have these six PC versus 10 monsters fights that would turn into complex wargame scenarios worse than a by-the-book full-binder game of Advanced Squad Leader.

Sometimes one monster would have 4-6 "-2" conditions stacked on them in one turn, and those would end on different turns. If anyone sneezed, we would lose track of everything.

The bags of hit points led to combats where the PCs would stand around the boss, knock the monster down with turn-denial tactics, and have the damage dealers whittle another 20-30 hit points off a turn to a monster with over 450 hit points. The damage dealers missing their attacks elicited groans from everyone, players and DM included.

I ran a group at my work of D&D 4E players. Nobody liked this game. They put up with it. We needed computer programs to design and track characters. Does that sound familiar?

D&D 4E was great when it started, and I doubt the design team even play-tested this at all. The books were notorious for being obsolete when they were released, as the day-one errata for each were pages long. We were unable to keep up with the errata and had to rely on the online program to manage it all for us. Did they even test these before they went to print? Does that sound familiar?

The D&D 4E game is dead, and those wanting you to give this another try are likely just trying to keep you in the Wizards ecosystem for another few years while they rush out the "fixed" D&D 6E books in three years. A new team is in place, and the next edition is coming. This is how it always goes with D&D. You will drop 4E for 6E in two years, and never leave the mind-space of D&D.

Play Old School Essentials instead of 4E, and pick up the Carcass Crawler zines. You will have all the familiar races and classes. The game will be easy. You won't deal with shelves of broken and untested books. There isn't as much "flash bang" character power, but what does any of that matter when the damages and powers are so weak and the monster hit points so high, who cares if you get to use them every turn?

I would rather play the OSE magic user who gets fireball at level 5, and have one use of that a day that does 5d6 damage (18 hp) to everything in twenty feet. No attack roll is needed; it just happens. Save versus spells for half damage. No damage cap, 1d6 per level. OSE Ogres have 4+1 HD and 19 hp on average, which is enough damage to kill or seriously injure most of them within the blast radius. That one-use spell is more potent than most D&D 5E powers by far, just because damage scaling is not a thing on OSE.

D&D 5E? Let's go to the SRD. The fireball does a fixed 8d6 damage (28 hp) to ogres, who have 59 hp on average. Oh, so now my D&D wizard does half the damage as their first-edition counterpart? None of them dies in the blast. And damage only scales when you cast from a higher-level slot, and not even by that much.

5E takes away half your power and then expects you to be overjoyed when they give you half of that back. Then, scaling kicks in, and you get weaker anyway. This is the MMO shell game.

D&D 4E? I got the PDF. The fireball does 3d6 + INT mod (let's assume +4), for 15 hp of damage, in a 3 square burst. The ogre? 111 hit points. So my D&D 4 wizard is doing one-eighth the damage of my OSE wizard? The ogres laugh it off and apply a few layers of sunscreen. Fireball is a daily spell in this edition, too. The scorching burst spell I get as an at-will (cantrip) does 1d6+4 to creatures in a 1 square burst. I can use that every turn, and it will be a better damage output during a fight than fireball.

Was this even tested?

The D&D 4E wizard is a 1-hp minion mop.

Is D&D 3.5E any better? Fireball does 1d6 per level to a max of 10d6, so we are back to 5d6 damage, with an average of 18 hit points. The 3.5E ogres have 29 hit points. They will all likely survive the hit, since you would need to roll all sixes to kill one. So we are back to doing about half the damage again in D&D 3.5E. This hurts a little, but it does not take any of them out of the fight.

Wizards D&D started this whole videogame rebalancing of the game. Everyone got weaker.

AD&D and 2nd Edition AD&D are more like OSE, though 2nd Edition did cap the fireball damage to 10d6 (only scrolls were capped to 10d6 in AD&D 1st). 2nd Edition also upped the dragon hit dice from the first edition AD&D and B/X, with an ancient red dragon having 23 hit dice (104 hp), and in first edition AD&D, the same dragon had 88 hit points.

In OSE? That dragon has 59 hit points. That 5d6 fireball packs more punch in a game without scaled hit points. And that fireball does 1d6 a level without a damage cap. We were better off in terms of character power with TSR. All these powers you get as you level up in 5E are meaningless if the base math is wrong. Who cares that I get an action surge? The monster's hit points are doubled.

Shadowdark? This is a different game where a fireball inflicts a fixed 4d6 damage, and you can cast it repeatedly until you fail a spellcasting roll. The hit points are lower in that game and not scaled, so it feels like a higher-powered game in relative terms, especially with the repeated casting. OSE's fireball keeps going up in damage, whereas in Shadowdark it stays fixed.

Swords & Wizardry? On par with OSE, but a zero-edition game, with the same damage and ogre hit points. Functionally identical in balance to OSE, and you can't go wrong with this one either. There are fewer race options in S&W versus OSE + zines, but the OSE races are compatible with this game, so you could use them as-is in S&W without a problem. S&W includes the magic resistance mechanic first seen in AD&D, but ogres do not have that resistance.

S&W fighters are excellent. A lot of the classes have extra "heat" to them. Also note that not everyone gets the STR bonus to hit and damage; it's exclusive to fighters. Fighter sub-classes do not get the bonus either, such as paladins and rangers. This is how it was back in 1974, and I like these rules since they give people reasons to play fighters, and other subclasses get all sorts of different powers to balance that out.

The S&W fighter is very close to the DCC fighter in feeling.

S&W is like AD&D-lite based on the CC 5.1 SRD in the CC, under the AELF license. This is a future-proof game, where OSE is still OGL-based. The S&W team is bringing OSRIC 3 to an open license, as mentioned in their recent Kickstarter. I would love to see this same team tackle BECMI.

The hit point scaling started in AD&D 2nd Edition, by about 20% over AD&D for the iconic monsters.  OSE keeps them at B/X levels, or about half of AD&D 2nd. OSE maintains a lower B/X-style hit point base than AD&D, with every class being a die lower than AD&D. In contrast, AD&D scaled up character hit points by a die size per class (probably to say it was a different game; there were royalty issues back then).

The fights are faster and more deadly in B/X games, and the spells and melee attacks are far more potent in OSE than any modern version of D&D.

The damage scaling that Wizards of the Coast introduced to make it more like a videogame ruined D&D's play balance. In no version of the game have they gotten it correct, and they have been trying to fix this for the last 25 years. You can keep buying new books until you are broke, or play a game that gets it right.

This is the original Gygaxian math.

It still works today, and it preserves character power.

My Old School Essentials magic user puts every "Wizards wizard" to shame in terms of damage and power. Sure, at fifth level, that fireball is a one-use-per-day spell, but WOW is it powerful. That is a "nuking them from orbit" level of power, not to mention what it would do to creatures with fewer hit dice, such as orcs or goblins, and you don't even need to roll for them, the damage is so high, they are just instantly turned to ash and incinerated. Bugbears? 14hp and likely all dead.

That is the wizard I want to play. The one with absolute power.

"But I play D&D 5E because I have options and character power!"

No, you don't. Wake up from the delusion.

I enjoy the D&D 5E character builds, too, but I know my history and games. They lowered the power level to increase party synergy, dragged out fights to keep them exciting, and turned it into a "combat for fun" game. It is like Diablo or any other MMO.

Weak characters and repeated attacks make it seem like you are doing more than you actually are. You get weaker as you level. Once you are hooked, the company slowly stops caring; the higher level you get, the less they care.

This is the MMO formula. The start of your game, the first few levels in, is the peak of your power. You go downhill from there. At the end game, you are getting one-shot-killed by the bosses, just like you were by the boars at the start of the game.

BECMI, AD&D, and B/X were designed to give higher-level characters more power. OSE is created along that same model. In any of these games, combat is best avoided, but the characters hold far more personal power than any counterpart in any version of the game made by Wizards. This also sadly includes Tales of the Valiant and Level Up A5E.

Even the OSE fighter has more power since the hit points of monsters are under control, and those attacks will hit harder than in any other version of the game. Red dragons? 45 hit points, and my 1d8+2 longsword is doing far more proportional damage per hit than in any other edition of the game. Make that a +2 magic longsword, and I am doing 9 points of damage per hit, and my fighter alone will have that dragon down in five solid blows.

Dragons are not pushovers, though, and they can decimate your party and TPK you in a single turn. You all have lower hit points. The red dragon's base attacks are two 1d8 claws and a 4d8 bite, per turn. Or a breath weapon equal to its current hit points, and if that is the full 45 hit points of damage on a failed save, your 10th-level magic users and thieves with 24-30 hit points will be turned to ash. Even a high-damage bite could swallow them whole.

That can't happen in any other version of the game.

And this is in a game that tells you to avoid combat if you can. But if you can't, you will likely mop the floor with your foes. It's amusing how two tiny OSE books offer a game with significantly more character power than D&D 5E. Yet, the general consensus is that D&D 5E reigns supreme in terms of character power.

The math says otherwise.

Today's games give you repeated attacks, more power usage, for less damage. You get weaker as you level. They are MMOs with dice.

D&D 4E is even worse off than 5E by orders of magnitude less in terms of character power, and has to use minions and other tricks to make the illusion happen. At low levels, it feels great. Just like that MMO, get past the 10th level and start counting the games that grind by before you want to quit and find better things to do with your time.

Old School Essentials preserves character power better than any modern edition of D&D, especially 4th Edition.

But Wizards still sells one version that stays true to the original math, and it is still called Dungeons & Dragons. OSE offers more of the options I want in a game, including a broader range of character choices, a better publishing model, and a company I want to support. OSE is also far better laid out, clearer, faster to use at the table, and easier to learn and teach. OSE also supports modern class and race options, once you get into the Carcass Crawler zines.

The above BECMI book is still a scanned copy and is not as well put together with modern publishing techniques, facing pages, or bulleted layouts. It is wordy, jammed with text, and harder to read and reference. It is still a classic. If you absolutely need to have D&D on the cover, then that is your go-to book.

While the Rules Cyclopedia is a good preservation of the past, OSE remains a solid game for today and into the future.