OSRIC vs. DCC

Dungeon Crawl Classics is an all-time classic and an A-tier game for me. I love the emergent gameplay and iconic classes. It is a modded 3.5E-style game and, for me, a drop-in replacement for all of D&D 3.5E that does away with all the overpowered builds of that game but retains the over-the-top outcomes.

The game was created as a reaction to the hobby's drift away from Appendix N sources and seeks to model an experience based on those books. It is a reaction to Wizard's mainstreaming of D&D from version three to today. The hobby has gotten so used to superheroes as a fantasy that we forget what made the hobby strange and extraordinary.

OSRIC is the best version of first-edition gaming. It includes all the strange and arcane limitations, ability score requirements, level limits, low ability score modifiers, and that "flat and dry" feeling that old-school games need. Too many games these days are "pander and gimme" games, where they give everyone ability score modifiers; things are far too simple, and you are given everything and expect even more.

In this game, your ranger's to-hit is what it is, you have no hit or damage modifier, and your AC is okay. Then, you decide if you want to open that next door. You don't get "free XP" for quest completion; killing monsters is a secondary source, and gold is the primary. If a referee wants to give out "quest XP" for destroying an abandoned fort housing orcs, the referee should say, "A nearby town puts an 8,000gp bounty on the destruction of the fort and all inside." When the deed is done, the town pays up, and the party splits it and anything they found inside as their reward and experience.

There are your "quest XP."

What do you spend money on? You can't buy magic items, but you can purchase retainers and upgrade fortifications. The only weak part of OSRIC is the stronghold rules, but there are so many games (and 3rd party books) that cover this, and you can always borrow one you like. The Into the Wild Omnibus has a sound system for domain management with costs, and this works well. Also, training for the next level costs gold; you must find a trainer or work this out with the referee.

Going back to DCC, I love this game for all the crazy stuff that happens, but a part of me wonders, "How did we get here?" We got here because a generation of gamers forgot what the first edition was all about. In first-edition games, if something strange was on the wall of a dungeon, nobody knew what it was unless they pushed, prodded, examined, and used a few spells to figure it out. Nobody knew all the monsters, and the referee was free to reskin and add abilities to the existing ones, creating entirely new monsters for their games.

You could not rely on rules, books, bestiaries, spell lists, or anything else as "reliable information."

Everything can be changed. This is rule zero.

Today's games rely on rules on certainty, fairness, sound options, and predictable character builds. Everyone, even the referee, should follow the rules. DCC comes along and tells you, "You can do this!" It gives you charts with hundreds of silly and unexpected results.

In OSRIC, it doesn't even need to be said. The game is not whacky and crazy, nor over the top or insanely silly. It can be played seriously or over the top; there are no rules for this, nor are there table results telling you, "You can!" This is greater freedom than DCC, as you are not opening a book and finding a table result to justify your creative urges. I love DCC since it opens my mind, but my mind opens far broader than that.

It happens if something happens to a character that gives them a permanent adjustment. I don't need a chart, table result, or something in the game which allows me to. This happens in DCC, but in OSRIC, it isn't said, so it is the rule.

AD&D 2nd Edition started the slide, and D&D 3.0 accelerated the decline. We are lost in a sea of rules, rulings, and books telling us what we can or cannot do. Gaming has been destroyed by overruling and printing books for every subject and topic and turning them into mini-games inside the structures of more significant games.

DCC is both remarkable and utterly unnecessary. While excellent and mind-opening, the tables and charts can ultimately limit your imagination. Those tables and graphs are only needed because we lost our way and need rules to return to what we once had.

To be fair, DCC says you can do away with everything. Any result can be substituted for "one more fun." DCC is still one of my best games, and the dice alone are incredible.

Still, I remember the old days. We never needed any of this.

Also, the modern concept of "Quest XP" puts the referee in an unwanted role of "XP welfare" for "good deeds" when the original games did not have the concept of rewarding anyone for the referee or module writer's "pet stories." This began in AD&D 2nd Edition to support the fiction, and it was a corporate move to mainstream the game. In the first edition, the referee could award XP for anything, but the main driving force of advancement was written into the rules one way for a reason.

Where did characters get XP from?

Gold and defeating monsters.

Whose stories are we playing?

The players.

"Quest XP" is the behavioral modification and control of player actions. It tells players, "You will not advance in the game unless you jump through the hoops presented to you by the referee or module writer." In the first edition, you only advanced by killing and taking the loot. Your stories, and the stories of others, were backdrops and motivation, but no rewards were tied to them.

The first edition got it 100% right. This is where the slide and decline began, and how we got to today, when the entire game is presented as a behavioral modification.

DCC gives you the tools to break free.

OSRIC is where you escape to.

Overpowered, Complicated, Theater Characters

When a game begins to give you everything to convince you to like it, something should fire off in the back of your head, telling you there is something wrong here. I ran a few 5E campaigns, and every time, my characters had piles of special abilities as if the game were begging me to "like this character" and "please level up for more!"

My characters had so many special powers and abilities it took me forever to decide which one to use.

I did not feel like a hero or like I was struggling. At about the sixth level, I was bored. Nobody dies, there is no risk or threat, we can rest off shotgun blasts to the face in 10 minutes, and the game feels dumb. No matter what version I switched to, 5E OGL, Tales of the Valiant, Level Up A5E, it was still that "pander bear" core gameplay. In these overcomplicated characters, the designers piled abilities on you you were forced to use.

At least in a well-designed computer ARPG, they know how the powers work together, how many to give, and how leveling should increase power without increasing complexity too steeply. In 5E, a slop bucket of powers is thrown at you. They "give you something each level," but very few classes have any sense of flow or well-thought-out design.

Your character feels like a plate of buffet food you piled on there that you don't want to eat when you get back to the table. I was rarely excited by 5E characters. They were all piles of junk. What is the 5E designer's answer to any design problem? Toss more powers and abilities at you. Give you toys like a child, and hope you stop complaining.

Level Up A5E characters felt the best designed of the bunch. That game is deep enough and has enough other systems in there that they can spread powers out and focus them on the new subsystems.

5E gives you so much power that you end up sitting around all session playing theater kids. Nothing can touch you, but your feelings can be hurt, so this is how you lose the game. It is fake.

ToV, I give you credit for trying to replace D&D. But you aren't competing with D&D these days. You are competing with D&D Beyond, the game and platform. You will never be able to compete with that. That is an entrenched software system; if it dies, all of 5E might as well be.

But why do I need subsystems or websites? Shadowdark works better than all of them. I can see why many groups are putting their 5E books in storage and just sticking with Shadowdark. You get "all the 5E" without drama or exploits. It does just enough 5E without taking up a dozen storage crates to get the options you need for a complete game.

You are immune from the min-max players, theory crafters, and level dippers. The game is the game, and the story is the story. The next room has something or nothing in it that could kill you. Get in and get out of the hole you wandered into, and try to stay alive.

I have not put this "5E book" in storage. This is my only 5E game. One small book, plus a few zines if I want, is all I need. Shadowdark does not go out of its way to anger people and stays neutral. The entire game pays respect to what has come before. The designer is brilliant and savvy and one of the best designers of this generation, up with greats like Monte Cook and others.

Shadowdark replaces D&D entirely.

If I want 5E, this is the one book.

If I want the actual D&D? I have my first-edition books and OSRIC as my guide. Why do I want Satanic Panic AD&D 2nd Edition or any other B/X-style game that lets anyone be in any class? I want my paladins to be rare and unique. I want to deal with the level limit charts. I want the allowed race and class combos. Descending AC is a part of the mystique. I want the original initiative system. I don't want a game designed for kids but repackaged for old-school gamers and simplified to the point of boredom.

OSRIC is a game that challenges you to determine how your character will live within this arcane maze of restrictions and combinations. You have to know something before you play. Most likely, your character will die, but a few will shine brightly.

You need to learn the rules, and you aren't given much. You must take what you get.

This is real D&D.

Everything that came after was fake D&D.

5E: Hangers On and the Bottom Falling Out

I get the feeling that Indie 5E failed. Open 5E is my chosen version 5E, but the bottom is falling out of the market for anything not on D&D Beyond. For me, Shadowdark is the last 5E I will play. As for everything else?

5E, how Wizards designed it, is not a roleplaying game. It is a software platform.

Shadowdark, and arguably, Low Fantasy Gaming, simplifies the engine enough that it doesn't need a software platform to support the game. They are exempt from the issues trying to "clone" or "reverse engineer" the system brings to the table. Shadowdark will likely be the only 5E book I keep and play. This is the best implementation of the 5E rules I have ever seen.

Why? They stripped out the software platform requirement. This can be played straight from the book; no machines are needed. Shadowdark is "my 5E" and the last version I feel like supporting.

The hangers-on to 5E are buying the new books and signing up for D&D Beyond, where "the software platform" resides. This is where the VTT will be. No character sheets are needed to be imported. Everything is right there. Again, D&D and 5E are software platforms, not role-playing games.

If you understand this and buy in because you support the "software as service" model for your entertainment, then you are making an informed decision—good for you. However, you are making a huge mistake if you equate D&D to other games where you don't need the software platform support.

There is also the problem of several political movements on any side of an issue co-opting D&D and severely factionalizing the community. D&D, as a game, is of secondary importance to them. These groups will conform to the largest group and sign up for D&D Beyond as a recruiting tool. Sadly, this is true in so many communities these days, and all the activists want our eyes and anger, not the games and fun of being together as a community with shared interests.

If you are a third-party producer and not on D&D Beyond, you will always be a second-class citizen in that market and shut out of the smaller platforms and VTTs due to your size. It is not economically viable for a small producer to be on every VTT and support those platforms, so the "data issue" arises.

Many people play without the software platform, but most consumers are on the software, so this is the market. Many have walked away from 5E entirely, including the Open 5E versions, and found it easier to play other games. Why would you invest in Open 5E and be stuck with second-rate software support?

It is easier to learn a new game or play an older version of D&D than to play Open 5E and deal with all the hassle of creating 5E characters by hand or using clones and trying to get the options and choices you want. I tried Hero Lab online for Tales of the Valiant, and it feels like a dead system over there.

As for myself, I went back to D&D 3.5E, and this is my best "modern" D&D. I have all my Eberron and Realms sourcebooks; all the books were designed to work together, and it is a complete package, and if needed, you have Hero Lab (one-time fee, offline, no subscription) to create characters in. D&D 3.5E had some incredible designers running the show; Monte Cook and many of today's legends were involved. This is an all-star band of talent here, and it has yet to be replicated. This game is still very broken, but it is fun and a classic.

5E's design relies on corporate dependence on character designers; 3.5E's design is also, but 3.5E feels like true-modern D&D, whereas 5E feels like an overly power-generous story game.

For anything else, Castles & Crusades or Dungeon Crawl Classics work well, depending on my mood, for ease of use and randomness.

Also, for tabletop tactical play, the torch has been picked up by Pathfinder 2 Remaster. Want something balanced, works well to level 20, has many published adventures, and gives you near-infinite build flexibility? Don't listen to D&D YouTube; they are just farming clicks. Pathfinder 2 gives me fewer headaches and breaks rules, and it just works well at any level. This is the game if I want that tight, tactical play on a tabletop.

Using anything other than D&D Beyond is too much hassle, and the game is the software platform—not the books.