Dice: Roll 4 Initiative: Diffusion Volcanic Blast

What a nice set of dice.

https://role4initiative.com/products/diffusion-volcanic-blast-fc

These are the Roll for Initiative 15-die sets, and they come with:

• 3d4 (Arch'd4)
• 4d6
• 2d8
• 2d10
• 1d00
• 1d12
• 2d20

The dice are also 20% larger than regular polyhedral dice, so they are high-visibility and roll well. I like that they come with multiples, like the 4d6 needed to do the 4d6 and drop the lowest character creation method.

We get 2d8, 2d10, and 2d20.

The only die we have is the d12, but I rarely need more than one.

Of interest are the Arch'd4 dice, which are shaped like little doors or tombstones but with opposing rounding on each side, so they can only land on four faces with the number on top. I loathe regular d4 dice, and these are a fun addition to my collection that will make playing rogues with daggers fun again. I can pick these up without shoving them against something, using the stickiness of my skin, or getting a fingernail under a corner. We get three of these dice, so we can roll a 3d4 roll easily.

The d20s are also numbered, so adjacent five-face groups add up to 52 or 53, the Balnce'd20 design. This ensures a more even distribution of results (as they say). I am very superstitious about my d20 dice and if they are rolling right, so any reason to blame them for being strangely off from the biased-high results I expect is reasonable. I swear, we are at the point where people will say they are broken if we ever have unbiased dice. Roll them well, shake them in your hand, or use a dice tower. Never "pick up and throw."

The contrast and readability are very high, with the lettering being very high-contrast but not overly bold.

The dice are more expensive than average sets because they come with so many and are of a larger size. This is really "all the dice you need," though that statement is a lie to myself.

Old School Essentials in 2025

When I was on the Labyrinth Lord bandwagon, Old School Essentials was the hot newcomer, replacing everything as the hobby's old-school standard bearer.

I even have my original books!

These days, it feels like Shadowdark took all of OSE's steam. Any significant outflow from D&D will create its own market due to the size of the D&D market and the smaller sizes of every other game. Shadowdark, with a few percent of D&D players moving over, will steamroll any other OSR game.

OSE is still out there; it is just that Shadowdark came in with a small percentage of 5E players and blew out everyone's numbers. OSE players are sticking with OSE, but there is a flood of Shadowdark players in the OSR market.

Shadowdark is in the top spot, and there is a good reason for this. With very little explanation, you can play this with any 5E player; everyone knows what is happening and how to play. I have seen this happen. I will play this with others with zero-prep, and they can join in without a book, needing to read rules or taking time to understand differences and significant sections of books.

Some with OSE Kickstarters say things are slow. Things will slow down this far into the game version, and attention will be elsewhere. Shadowdark may have taken some of OSE's steam, but I see Shadowdark more as a 5E alternative than an OSE alternative.

Still, Shadowdark has a hefty amount of "play design" baked into the system, like the torch timers and other aspects of the rules that focus the experience. The game was designed to be played one way and exceedingly well with the "fun baked in." The game is closer to a board game than a roleplaying game, and that is its charm.

OSE is more of a rules reference to a B/X style of game. The "design" was done long ago, and the source game matters. If you enjoy the play of B/X, you will enjoy OSE.

Shadowdark is 5E to me. The only other game in the "5E Lite" space is Tales of Argosa. This is another game to watch in 2025, and it is amazingly crafted and full of charts. The entire book is a campaign generation system, and it borrows many great ideas from other games, along with coming up with a few great new ideas of its own.

As players move away from 2024 D&D, Tales of the Valiant will immediately surge into relevance again because a large player base is moving over.

I suspect ToV will have a significant upswing this year as an alternative to the controversial and divisive 2024 D&D. I have ToV in my garage, with the rest of 5E. I am not in the mood for the system or needing computerized character sheets that don't support all the options I want.

Still, ToV is a worthy, supported system, and if you want to leave Wizards, it is worth your time.

I miss OSE. This is still the standard bearer in the world of B/X, though many equally great games compete for that spot. OSE tends to be "dry" in some places because it is first a reference guide. The fighter class is very dry unless a few optional rules are used; even then, other games give us fighter classes that can do a lot more and have bonuses above and beyond what B/X allows.

The OSRIC fighter gets multiple attacks against lower hit-die monsters, high-level multi-attacks, weapon specialization, and even double specialization. Where B/X does fighters plain and a bit flat, OSRIC has a Gygaxian design baked in from years of play experience and feedback.

B/X can be overly simplified at times, where it becomes either too easy or too deadly. A more detailed system like GURPS or Adventures Dark and Deep will give me the detail and granularity I want to model a situation with more realism. Sure, you are facing 8 goblins with short bows with your AC 4 and 6 hit-point fighter character in plate mail. They have a 17+ to hit, right? In ADAD, short bows are -4 to hit against plate mail. This is the difference between a character's death and not having one.

Even 5E's advantage/disadvantage rule is far too simple and a "hammer for every problem" to simulate this situation and possibly make for a very cool, character-defining, memorable moment in the game.

Swords & Wizardry is a good example. With the expansion books, S&W can completely replace 5E for many groups while delivering a solid AD&D-like experience. S&W replaces Castles and Crusades for me, despite how much I love C&C. The fighters in S&W are also fun, with them getting the damage and hit bonuses from STR, and the other classes do not.

OSE is currently drowning in a sea of fantastic options. I don't see it being "replaced" as the "gold standard" version of B/X. The game still has many of the best "race as class" options in gaming. The books are compact, dense, highly-referenceable, and easy-to-use gems of gaming goodness. OSE is also highly deadly and harsh, with multiple PC deaths per session in low-level games.

OSE also beats Shadowdark in many areas. The game is more expansive and covers more ground regarding overland encounters, hirelings, strongholds, and the classic B/X experience. You have a lot more race, class, and spell options. You are not dealing with torch timers or darkness rules.

You lack healing at low levels, especially with clerics not having a first-level spell. Also, characters die at zero hit points; there are no rules for unconscious characters. Again, OSE was written as a reference guide for B/X-style gaming, so it tends to be harsher, and even OSRIC and ADAD are a lot softer on player death, allowing bleeding out to -10 hit points. Swords & Wizardry and Labyrinth Lord are as harsh as OSE, with death at zero.

Shadowdark is also very "board game-like," with the initiative roll and movement happening in real-time and never entering a narrative mode if played by the rules. OSE is the better choice if you want a looser theater-of-the-mind play style.

It feels strange to say this, but if you want a less lethal game, especially versus OSE, LL, or S&W, play OSRIC or any other AD&D variant (like ADAD).

OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord have healing at low levels (clerics get a level one spell at level one). OSRIC /ADAD gives bonus spells for high wisdom for clerics. A WIS 14 and higher will give a cleric three first-level spells, which could be all healing spells. Clerics in AD&D games are potent allies and beat the armored greaves off of their OSE, LL, and S&W counterparts. Magic Users do not get the bonus spells since they will reap the benefits they earned if they survive to a high level.

I swear, the cleric bonus spells of the first edition are there for a reason, and every version of D&D past 2nd and every version of B/X just don't understand why. The first edition rules gave clerics those extra slots for healing boosts, which in turn increases party longevity, which in turn increases fun at the table.

OSE is still a solid choice for a more straightforward game with a quick reference. You could always mod in the -10 hp rule from OSRIC and have the best of both worlds.

Would I play OSE instead of Shadowdark? Yes, OSE has more options, especially if I am playing solo. Online? No, since I can find far more 5E players willing to try Shadowdark and interested in the game. OSRIC gets so many things right that it is tough to consider games from the B/X genealogy when I have a first-edition game and a wealth of expansions to play.

I hate comparing OSE to OSRIC, but that game "the game is based on" matters. If you enjoy B/X more, OSE is your game. First edition games have rules, complexity, and depth.

Gygax made critical changes and needed rule fixes for the first edition (for fun, depth, and balance) that B/X games ignore. As a "base for other games," B/X works well since designers will put their own spin on the rules. As a stand-alone game, the as-written B/X rules need house ruling or an extra layer of interpretation.

Also of note is the fantastic Adventures Dark and Deep, which takes the first edition in a new and unique direction. I am devouring and enjoying this new version quite a bit, and it builds on my love of OSRIC and the first edition. ADAD is becoming one of the games I am most excited about this year.

OSE still is on my most-played shelves, will never be put in the garage, and remains a fixture of my inspirations today. OSRIC remains more my "flavor" of a d20-based game, but it doesn't take anything away from the streamlined simplicity of OSE. Shadowdark remains more of a 5E-based board game and a 5E replacement for me, while OSE remains superior for exploration and campaign play.

ADAD: Expansion Races

Expansion races for first-edition games are a little tricky to find. For one reason, the game's focus was never on the spectacular races, such as people playing as merpeople or dragon-kin, and the base races were great.

The "fantastical" races introduced in D&D 3.5E and D&D 4 were Wizards trying to compete with World of Warcraft, and we saw a plethora of human-like races added to the game. We also saw the planar nepo-babies of the Tieflings, and Aasimar added to the game, and these soon became default choices for many, making humans, elves, dwarves, and others "boring choices."

One Pathfinder 1e book even had a "race designer," which I thought was imaginative, but it fell flat since the world is a history and collection of races, and coming out of left field with a race of half-alligator half-turkey people with diva wings drove me insane.

One exception is the AD&D 2E book, The Complete Book of Humanoids. It is not too hard to back-port this to a game like ADAD, and it does include level limits for each race. You get about 20 here, and it is a good value if you want a monstrous PC in an earlier edition of the rules. Rules for monsters as PCs were very thin in the first and second editions.

Something tells me to keep the default race selections as-is and force people to have fun within a more constrained and average starting set of options. Still, I wonder about some of the modern assumptions that make Tieflings and Aasimars "default human" like they were more cosplay options than something akin to a "roleplaying condition" and "story element" for the character.

And I see Tieflings and "children of gods and humans" much differently. These conditions can happen to anyone; a dwarf can be a child of the gods, and a halfling can be twisted with infernal blood. We don't need "races" for these, which are mostly cosplayer human artwork, and these special situations should belong more in the character's story and background and never be codified into game rules with rules that apply the same to all.

Did your character have infernal blood in their family? You can go through life and have nothing happen because of it. If you encounter a source of infernal power, you may grow horns you need to live with for the rest of your life, complete with the reactions people will have to you (good, bad, or they run in fear). Same with claws, wings, demon traits, hooves, special attacks, and any other power a referee can add to your character sheet.

The same goes for god powers. Hercules was a normal human with high strength. If appropriate, the referee can add "special powers" and allow "god-like feats" at any time in the adventure. If one becomes a permanent addition to your character sheet, like the daughter of a love goddess getting a 1/day charm person power, guess what? Or if Hercules gains his godly 18/00 STR as a godly boon for holding back a collapsing dam above a village? That is what happens.

It will depend on the story if and how they manifest.

The referee will "call it and add it" to the character sheet.

Trust your referee more than you do the West Coast game designers. I don't need several pages of rules or dedicated character options on a computer-generated character sheet for this. I don't need to "buy rules" to have these character options.

How do you play "monsters" then? You take them from the bestiary, start them with those statistics, and then tack character levels on them. My succubus bard? She begins at 6 HD, 1d6 extra hp for her class, the powers listed in the book, and gets one level of bard to start her music career. She is now a 7-HD creature, but who cares? Let her play taverns, steal souls, and level up as usual. The human paladins representing the PRMC will be by after a few shows.

And oh, do I love the human-only paladins of ADAD. They are almost bad-guy "good-guys" with their righteous order, purging the land of slightly questionable evil and slight corruption. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Have a character turning slowly into a maralith? Well, that had 7-HD, so the complete transformation isn't happening until level seven, but we do have a list of powers in the monster to give to that character throughout the campaign in the monster entry. I see about ten special abilities, a snake tail, multiple arms, some defenses and weaknesses, and many other powers that can be handed out as the transformation manifests. One night, you have nightmares, and now you have a snake tail instead of legs.

Is someone turning into a vampire or lycanthrope? Same story. Dole out powers, and unforeseen things happen. The last night was a full moon, and villagers are dead, and you have no memory of anything that happened. This is how we did it in the old days! No game designers or Backerkit projects are needed! We don't need books filled with AI art or text, either.

Imagine a world like that.

I don't need a unique book of rules, a Kickstarter, paying a few hundred dollars for the collector's edition, or even the base game to support this. I don't need to wait years to be let down because no online character creators support these options. I have an imagination, you know. If I am a player, I can work this out with the referee, propose it, and have it play out.

Yes, 5E players, you don't need to buy books to have cool things happen!

Also, if someone really wanted to play a gnoll in a game, we just flip to the entry in the bestiary, give them those powers, start them with 2d8-HD, and tack on a class level. All monsters will have a set of classes, maximum levels they can reach, and multiclass options, but guess what? Work those out with your referee. If you want a gnoll ranger thief, set the ranger to a max level of 6 (centaurs can be ranger 8, so I say a little under that potential) and add an unlimited cap thief class there. We are done! They are a 3rd level character at first level, so consider that.

And yes, this article starts as a "where to get them" thought exercise and ends as a DIY article. You can't find many great sources of 1e expansion races these days, and most require you to do them yourself. You could buy a 5E book, like the ToA race guide, as an inspiration, but your creations for the first edition will be much more integrated into the multi-class system of first-edition than the "generic races" of 5E will have you believe. Books like this aren't "one-stop shops" since you will still need to do some design work to make them work correctly in a 1e framework.

This book has a "transformer" race of car people that would rate a first-edition monster at least 10 to 20 HD, yet the 5E "all must be the same" lens makes them first-level, 1-HD creatures. This "it is all the same-ism" mental plague infects most 5E products and removes you from reality.

Ask yourself, what monster is this race most like? Then, go from that starting point. You don't need to artificially weaken something to make it like everything else. Have faith in your game design skills.

Doing them ourselves is how we did it in the past before the Internet taught us how to do it.

We sat in our bedrooms, opened our books, and did what we thought was "cool" and "fun" for our game. What we created was "right," and the game was ours.

ADAD: It Morphs Into My Game

I wrote down house rules from our past AD&D games this morning, and it hit me.

Any first-edition game you play will become "your game" after a while.

Granted, this is also likely true for any B/X game; we did house rule those back in the day, but this is very true for any first-edition RPG since they are so fiddly and have lots of little parts to set and tweak. OSRIC, AD&D, and ADAD all qualify, and you have tons of little settings in here, from hit points, racial level limits, allowed races and classes, and so many other things to tweak to your liking. B/X did not have that much to tweak, so we more-or-less played it as-is.

As I write down house rules, any first-edition game becomes mine increasingly.

And I remember the game we had, and it was highly tweaked and tuned to our liking. This wasn't your usual "mix of B/X and AD&D" but a vastly expanded game with pages of house rules, tweaks, classes, monsters, spells, adjustments, weapons, powers, and so much more.

With Wizards of the Coast, the design mentality is "you all will play the game our way." Sure, there has been a lot of homebrewing in every modern version of D&D since 3.0, but the game's mentality is set to a default of "only what is in the official books is legal play."

Even the new edition focuses more on "mechanics and rules" than "you and the act of playing a role-playing game." This is a huge loss for the game. People don't play because of mechanics; if they do, they will play Pathfinder 2. Crunchy, mechanical editions drive players away.

The design of D&D has become heavy, with intricate subclasses defining character power, and those subclasses "level up" and get increasingly complicated. The longer I play 5E, the more books I collect, and the more complex the game is. It gets to such a point of obese overreach that the game is impossible without referencing a dozen books from the company and third parties.

With every 5E book, Kickstarter, or crowd-funded book I buy, my 5E game becomes less mine and more theirs. This is the fundamental difference between today's games and the ones we played.

5E is a game where you will never own your game. There is no investment or attachment.

Could I house rule 5E? I have.

Will I? No, there is too much to buy. I own too much stuff.

I never needed to house rule 5E. I bought a version of the game that worked for me. The framework of 5E puts you in a dependency relationship with the company that makes the game. You don't need to house rule; you have enough stuff! Look at all this stuff! I have more books than three lifetimes of stuff!

When I have eight shelves of 5E books, why house rule?

Here comes another Kickstarter for another 5E book; I do not need to be creative or imaginative. I need to be a good consumer and pay for the next thing. The new edition does not include monster design rules; they tell you to buy theirs.

I have one book for OSRIC, AD&D, or ADAD. The first edition is more of a simple framework, and the game has room for my ideas. I am not overwhelmed by 5E's rules, subclasses, multi-class exploits, relationships, and all sorts of action economy or cross-class issues.

But the first edition is designed to house-rule. I started a page here with my thoughts, preferences, and optional rules. I will improve, tweak, and test them as I play so they will get better. This set of house rules will grow and be my investment into my game - making it mine. If things are broken, I will fix them. If things are blah, I will drop them. If things work great, they will be kept. It is just like getting into the hobby of modding games like Skyrim; it makes the game yours.

The characters are simple.

The classes are simple.

The races are simple.

The rules are simple compared to 5E. If I want the easiest, I will go with OSRIC. If I want some of the modern classes, I will go with ADAD. I have both books, and they are nearly identical regarding the engine.

The game is built to mod.

The game will become yours, given time.

ADAD House Rules: Grok 3 Character Classes

Over on the ADAD House Rules Page, I added a simple tutorial for using Grok 3 to create ADAD/OSRIC/AD&D first-edition character classes using AI.

I am still not using AI art on this site since it takes jobs and artist talent from our communities.

But seeing and experimenting with AI-created character classes is something I have never seen before, and it produces some interesting results for just about any character class idea. I have gotten great results for barroom brawler, barmaid, torch bearer, dragon handler, axe master (fighter subclass), magic school teacher, and many others.

Also, I don't recommend doing this and then "selling it on DriveThru" since that is cheap and low-effort. However, this is fine for personal use if you only use it yourself. If I see someone doing that, they are getting a one-star review!

The characters are simple enough to pull this off with the first edition. Having AI design an entire 5E class with subclass choices that level up would take a lot of work since 5E puts a lot of "design effort" into subclasses. AD&D does this just fine, and the generation and prompts are quick.

Seeing first-edition characters going from level 1 to 10, getting abilities as they level, and having those reflect whatever you want is mind-expanding fun. If you wish to see a one-off class for a "Mermaid Trident Warrior," you can have that instantly. The class won't likely be balanced, but that is where your human mind comes in to tweak and fix the design.

This may diminish the skill and effort of game designers who put a lot of careful work and testing into a class and open the door for tons of junk to enter the hobby. This is a better use as an idea generator and something to create a new framework to begin work on. I will stress personal use only and use these as a recipe to "bake new ideas" with.

My Torch Bearer had this power at the 6th level:

Beacon of Hope

At the 6th level, the Torch Bearer can rally allies with their light. Once per day, they can hold their light source aloft for 1 round, granting all allies within its radius a +1 bonus to attack rolls and saving throws for 1 turn (10 minutes). At the 10th level, this becomes +2 and lasts 2 turns.

It is an interesting power, and I would increase the daily use limit, but I have never seen anything like it. And I have never seen a torch-bearer class designed with 10 levels of powers, an XP chart, hit die, minimum stats, and all the other trimmings.

If you see something you like, put it in a Word document and save your work! You can always return to a query, but having these in a personal idea stash is smart.

Again, please use this ethically and for personal use only. AI use has responsibilities attached, just like driving, gun ownership, a hunting license, or any other human right that society gives us that can hurt or negatively impact others.

This is also very scary, and it warps my mind about what pen-and-paper gaming will be like in five or ten years. Will entire role-playing experiences be AI-created, with the AI understanding dungeon mastering and every player living in a world of their own creation—with custom classes, races, peoples, NPCs, and every other aspect a DM usually comes up with? Will we even have traditional books with lists of character classes, monsters, races, and other content?

Will we even have "gaming as books," or will it be "gaming as an AI platform?"

At that point, how will the rules change? Will we even have rules, or just a set of descriptors for our character, like Cypher System?

It is a scary new world in which we live.

But also one that may have infinite possibilities.

ADAD House Rules Page Started

I started a page of house rules for the Adventures Dark & Deep game over here, and you can find it on the pages bar above:

https://sbrpg20.blogspot.com/p/adad-house-rules.html

As I remember some of the rules we used in our 1980s AD&D campaign, so I will add them here for people to try and use. Some of them are also inspired by modern games.

One of them I added today is semi-inspired by Gamma World's pure strain human ability score buffs, which gives humans more ability score points if racial class level limits are raised. If you want "high level" play with different races, you can raise all the limits by up to 8 points, but this gives humans four extra points of ability scores during character creation.

So, a high elf fighter's maximum level goes from 5 to 13 (or more with a high STR), which means all humans in the game get 4 extra points of ability scores to allocate during generation. Now, you can have your high-level elf fighter, but humans across the board will have excellent starting scores since these points can be put wherever the player wants (to a maximum score of 18).

This will lower humans' overall difficulty and make demi-humans very powerful at higher levels. Human characters will be more likely to survive the low levels, which achieves the intent of the level limit rules, ensuring a "human world" will be the typical campaign setting. This also lets you tweak the rule instead of throwing it out entirely, which many do, ruining the balance.

If you don't want the maximum level to be that high, you can set it at a lower amount, such as +4 levels and +2 ability score points.

ADAD: Core Books and Expansions

The core books to play Adventures Dark & Deep are the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary. This is the original Pathfinder 2 setup, where the game should be able to be played with one book purchase for all player-facing information and a second book of monsters. Asking groups to buy three books versus two is a huge ask these days, and conceivably, you could play ADAD with just the Core Rulebook plus any first-edition monster book.

I love my first-edition gaming even more than the second edition because the game still has that arcane and mysterious feeling, something that ADAD does well - while still being very nicely organized and easily referenced. The ADAD Core Bestiary includes all the classics, including Orcus, so all your gaming memories and classic bad guys are included here. These two books are over a thousand pages of gaming goodness, a first-edition retro-clone going in a new direction, complete with all the parts of the first edition that seemed strange at the time. Still, once you give them a chance (initiative system), they become integral to the experience and a part of the game's tactical play.

I would pick up the Book of Lost Tables next. This book contains random terrain, dungeons, encounters, towns, and many other random tables packed into one fantastic book. These three are the heart of the game, and the tables book is an incredible resource for idea generation.

Swords of Cthulhu is a referee-focused book for Lovecraftian lore and is one of the best treatments of the subject, including classes for the evil cultists of these beyond-space and time beasts. If you want your game to "go there" and have these monsters or just focus a campaign on these monsters and sects, this is the book to get. If you aren't interested, then skip this book.

Swords of Wuxia is another tricky recommendation, but only if you like the Mystic China fantasy setting and if you have fond memories of the old Oriental Adventures book for AD&D. This is a fantastic book that treats the entire subject and genre with respect and research, and is well worth a look if you are into this fantasy genre, or like to see cross-overs. This is another "skip if not interested" book, but still worth it for opening your eyes to the genre.

Three "Darker Paths" books on DriveThru are worth checking out (PDF-only) for the optional necromancer, witch, and demonolater classes. These make for great enemies or options for evil campaigns. I hope these books get updated and compiled into an "Even More Dark and Deep Arcana" volume with expanded content and character options.

A first-edition expansion for ADAD is still worth picking up: the Adventures Great and Glorious expansion for high-level and domain play. This is a good book to check out if you are into mass combat and domain management.

The publisher also has Castle of the Mad Archmage, a mega-dungeon hardcover featuring a multi-level dungeon and cave crawl. Any adventure written for OSRIC will work without any modifications. Most B/X adventures written for Labyrinth Lord, Old School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, or other similar system will also work without needing many changes (just make sure to know if the unarmored AC base is 9 or 10 in the original game to convert the monsters correctly). Also, any classic AD&D first-edition adventure module will work without needing changes, and the D&D ones will work well. There are many classic first-edition adventures on DriveThru; some also come in print.

You have decades of adventures to play between the classic and new adventures written for OSRIC or any other B/X-style game. You will not be short of things to do.

If you are new, download OSRIC (for free) and check out the style of play since the games are very similar. If you want more, jump into ADAD with the first two books, which expand the first-edition play of OSRIC and take it in fantastic new directions. If you already know AD&D, you will have a good understanding of what you are in for.

Ask yourself, would I want a more in-depth game than this, with more options and modifiers?

Most will be happy with rules-light B/X, I will be honest. This game delivers layers of complexity and depth as you cut through the cake, and I can see many rolling their eyes at the number of optional rules, like the to-hit modifier for blowguns against full plate armor.

Some twisted souls will smile and know, "This is what the first edition is all about."

When the goblins with poison blowgun darts are firing out of their murder holes, and your plate mail armored nut tank with a shield walks through the hail of lethal darts as if they were harmless flies, laughs, and pulls them from their hiding spots to deliver swift death to them with multiple attacks per turn, you will know why unmodified, flat B/X would have been a deathtrap, but first-edition ADAD delivers the goods.

Some games are so simplified they produce unrealistic results, and the numbers become meaningless, targets to roll against for very little rhyme or reason. As someone who depends on a weapon in melee combat, I need to know what types of armor my weapon does well against. As someone who depends on a specific type of armor, I need to know what weapons are more effective against my protection. This isn't "too much detail" - this is what soldiers have been doing on battlefields for thousands of years, and even today.

Roleplaying games make you stupid about weapons and warfare when it is serious business with lives in the balance. Yes, the modifiers can be too much for some, but for those serious about the subject, games like this are amazing and get closer to modeling the ideal of reality we seek in wargaming. And there are situations where B/X is far too simple to model anything complex, and the abstraction breaks reality.

Unlike 5E or Pathfinder 2, ADAD does not require many expansion books. The core books are really all you need. One I mention is a "book of lists," which is arguably a referee resource. Two of them are specialized campaign books. One is a high-level dominion play guide. Three are extra-class PDFs. The final is an adventure.

You only need two books, the Core Rulebook and Bestiary books.

Also, ADAD is not rules-light, as it considerably expands upon the first-edition gameplay. If you want rules-light, stick with Old School Essentials or even Shadowdark. If you want depth, options, and fantastic expansion books, ADAD is the best first-edition experience.

Hex Paper Pro

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/220331/hexpaper-pro

If you are like me, you hate doing Google searches for specialized hex paper, especially hex paper with sub-hex grids. I often end up at a site with broken links, suspicious web pages, and strange PDFs. I don't know if they are infected with viruses.

Don't do that.

Get the product above instead.

It is six bucks.

It has hex papers as True-Type fonts, but it also comes with an 181-page PDF with all types of hex paper in black and cyan. It even includes sub-hex grids of 3-tall, 5-tall, and 7-tall varieties. You get graph paper. You get iso-paper. You get more than you will ever need. Print what you need from the included PDF, and forget about the searching.

Now, go an make all those random hex-crawl campaign maps in peace.

ADAD: Character Creation Notes

To test the system, I created four characters using the book's ADAD rules, including demi-humans with multi-classes. I have a few notes.

Where are the high-level ability score modifier rules? I can't find them, even with a search. I know this is a +10% XP if you have "high ability scores," but I can't see where this is. I know in OSRIC, this is usually a 16+ in your relevant score, so I set it to that.

Monster treasures are now hidden in the bestiary descriptions. The old books had an entry for each monster, but it got repetitive since most treasure-type entries were "none." Now I need to search in the description for treasure. If it is none, don't put it in the stat block. If it is anything, put it in there.

If an expansion book is made, please create standard equipment kits for each class. This is a more modern game design improvement, but it helps new players and speeds up first-session play.

I know this is heresy, but an expansion book with a "spell slot" option (instead of memorization) for magical casting may be more comfortable for 5E players.

Also, consider a fate-point reroll for any die system for pulp play in the game. This is another modern invention, but it smooths the way for 5E players to start with that and discard fate points to play the hardcore OG game. As an optional rule, this smooths out the experiences of newer players (giving a chance to reroll that failed death save), and since it is optional, it does not interfere with players who like the original game. It is a cheat; it is training wheels, but it ultimately gets more players in the game. Shadowdark does this!

Do not implement advantages/disadvantages in an expansion book! The modifiers in the first edition make the game what it is, and that is a "hammer for a screwdriver" solution that eliminates all nuance and difficulty in the game.

Oh, how I missed you, lower fixed modifiers. B/X is blown out with modifiers starting at 12 or 13, making the game worse. The "give-me everything" of the B/X line of rules started the stat inflation and ever-increasing ability scores. Most of my characters have no hit or damage modifications, and guess what? That is fine.

Similarly, as a referee, I can toss modifiers around on both to-hits and percentage rolls. Not having so many fixed modifiers gives me leeway to say, "You have the high ground, +1 to hit!" Or, "That is an easy lock, +20% to open it." Low-level play does not have to be frustrating; just adjust the difficulty slider in your referee toolbox, and everything will be fine.

Please add the updated Darker Path books to the expansion, along with more race options. Make similar races to what 5E players expect, do a better job designing them, and watch them start to show up to play.

Shelter and survival rules are needed. I could probably rule this as "no resting without a shelter" and require a level of Woodcraft skill or Construction (carpentry) to build shelters, with the former being simple shelters only. Woodcraft is this game's do-it-all survival skill but requires a terrain specialty.

Skills could include advanced fighting styles with unique combat benefits, specialized magical fighting styles, or magical schools.

Open the door for "character modifications" - if a strange, weird magic effect gives a player a third eye, the referee should be told it is okay to add anything to a character sheet "outside the normal rules of play." A character could grow bat wings and gain a flying ability as a side-effect of strange mutational magic. Changing characters in permanent ways because of unpredictable magic and strange alien powers is a part of the game.

Dungeon Crawl Classics does this, and we did it back in the day. Too many players are "trained" today that if they get something, it has to eat a feat slot or be paid for in some way. This is the old school; everything is paid for. Madness, mutations, mental powers, sensory changes, permanent injuries, new abilities, magical maladies, side-effects, afflictions, changes in skin or form, shapeshifting, magical diseases, lycanthropy, vampirism, and any other effect can be added to a character - temporary or permanent.

Mutations and mental powers could be handled like skills, with the first level being achieved through an in-game event and the abilities improved through XP spending.

Oh, and since this is a first-edition game, that above wish list?

It is already in my game.

House rules, baby!

Adventures Dark & Deep ...Returns!

I never expected to see this game again.

Adventures Dark & Deep (ADAD) started life as a first-edition retro-clone under the OGL, with an interesting premise, "What if Gary Gygax had stayed with TSR to write the second edition of the game?" This was a strange concept to work under, and who would know what would have happened, but we have enough historical data, magazine articles, and work to present a theory of "what could have happened."

This is sort of the same "mind experiment" that Dungeon Crawl Classics uses for its concept, "What if we wrote an old-school game that adhered to the principles of Appendix N books?" The "game concept" is essential since it guides the designer's decisions and creates a unifying statement that fans can support.

Well, the OGL fiasco happened, and ADAD was taken out of print, but we still did have most of the "expanded content" with books by BRW Games with the Book of Lost Lore, Book of Lost Beasts, and so on. This is where my love of OSRIC comes in because these books are meant to be expansions. You can "play" the old ADAD game using OSRIC and the expansion books.

My original first-edition ADAD books are still in the garage; I have not found them yet, so how I had to play the game was with OSRIC, plus my BRW Games expansion books. This was fine since the expansion books had updated content, and it worked well enough (with a few missing pieces).

So, last night, I was looking for OSRIC character option books on Drive Thru RPG, and I found out that the ADAD game has been rebuilt, new content has been added and is under the Creative Commons SRD 5.1 license. We have two books, the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary, comprising a first-edition, CC-licensed, retro-clone with over 1,000 game pages. Also, it bears a stamp of "No AI Content."

An instant buy.

I was reading this until one in the morning.

I could not sleep, so I was excited to get up and read more.

Now, OSRIC is no longer needed; the game stands alone. We also replace the Book of Lost Lore and the Book of Lost Beasts, but we keep all the other excellent books in the series, including the Book of Lost Tables, Swords of Cthulhu, and Swords of Wuxia. These three books expanded the game incredibly and were a part of my OSRIC collection. We can still use the Darker Paths expansions for the necromancer, witch, and demonologist with the game - adding three new classes and spell lists.

This is not a "rules-light" first edition. The rules go deeper into many areas, and the tables are revised and expanded. Many "great ideas" from outside sources are included, giving the character's ability scores deeper meanings and broader uses. The game moved beyond a simple "WWGGD" concept and became a first-edition mega-expansion under the CC SRD.

So what? Why play this?

One, this is a Creative Commons first edition retro-clone. No AI content is in the book.

Two, the first edition race choices are widely expanded, including centaurs, four types of dwarves, drow, five types of elves (including half-elves!), four types of gnomes, two types of half-drow, four types of halflings, half-orcs, and humans. The race selection alone is excellent, expanded in areas I dreamed of seeing race options, and some of the all-time classics are back and ready to play.

Three, no Tieflings or Aasimars keep the game grounded and terrestrial, and it is a refreshing change of pace. Too often, players who want to "be more holy" will pick the angelic race, and players who want to be instantly "more devious" will go for tiefling. Here? You have to roleplay it and not lean on the rules saying you are. I would instead write my own rules for these situations or roleplay the notable ancestry differently for each player. God and demon-blooded backgrounds should be more of a role-playing and story thing, and even in classical literature, this is the right way to go. Hercules was a human first, and his story of being the lost son of Zeus was a story thing (with a lot left to the referee).

Four, the half-races are back. I feel sorry for all the 5E role-players who lost the half-elves and half-orcs. Roleplaying these trying to fit into society is some of the best roleplaying I have ever had. We get half-drow in this tome and a classic full-drow character race. Half-elves were one of the most popular race choices in any fantasy game, and these mirror many people's lives of the struggle of constantly needing to fit in. Removing half-races destroys the game and hurts role-players severely. Here, we have half a drow of both elven and human parentages.

The fifth reason is we have six main classes, with two subclasses each, for eighteen and twenty-one, if you include the Darker Path books. We get the bard, with the jester and skald subclasses. The cavalier is the main class, with paladins and the evil blackguards being subclasses. Clerics have druids and mystics. Fighters have rangers and barbarians. Magic users have illusionists and seer-like savants. Thieves have assassins and con man-like mountebanks. Paladins and barbarians can only be humans, which mirrors the classic literature and gives humans exclusive classes to experience.

We have "evil character classes," which is glorious. We have a classic nine-axis alignment. You can play classic "evil campaigns" with these books, watch your campaign fall apart, and smile as players backstab each other. Ah, the good old days we were warned about were glorious times.

For the sixth reason, we have the classic demi-human class-level limits, balanced by demi-humans being the only ones able to multi-class. This is why we play races other than humans, as multi-classing is insanely powerful, and this is also why we need level limits. Also, in this game, the most permissive abilities override the other class' limitations. An elven fighter/magic user can wear full armor and cast spells without spell-failure rolls or other restrictions. Thieves have no level limits for any race, so that option always does multiclass well.

You can ignore the level limits if you don't like them, but I love them since this is a massive part of the "creating a character build" game in the first edition. These are also here for balance since why not be a fighter/magic user and go to the 10th, 20th, or even 30th level and beyond? Some classes have no level limits, and the game sticks to that.

The seventh reason? Clerics get bonus spells for high wisdom. This is in OSRIC, but this is a critical feature for me considering playing a cleric.

The eighth reason? A secondary skill system allows characters to spend XP permanently to gain skills like hunting, construction, jeweling, or other 36-skill specialties. These have specialties and skill levels, so you can spend more XP and improve the skill level. No other first-edition game has this, and it gives characters a reason to get XP and not level up.

The ninth reason? A 1d10 initiative rolled each round and was modified by weapon speed and action type. The combat system is more crunchy and detailed than your typical B/X game, with a large attack table (write your character's numbers down), rules for helmets, firing into melee, unarmed combat, morale, and rules for spell casting in combat. There is no spellcasting if engaged in melee combat, so there is a balance to casters overpowering the game. Again, if you don't like all this detail, ignore it. But I love the crunchy systems and options.

The tenth reason? It is one of the most detailed and exhaustive equipment and magic-item systems in any retro-clone. We also have many significant sections of ships, henchmen, construction, and anything else you can imagine.

I can go on about this game, and I haven't even touched the monster book yet. Many "5E favorites" return and are incorporated into a first-edition framework. We have a few renamed ones for SRD purposes, but that is fine. This first-edition game will make you look at many 5E monsters in a new light and give you reasons to fear them again.

Do you need this game to play the first edition?

No. You can be happy with the OSRIC book and play a lifetime of games.

Is this a massively expanded first edition with many options and surprises, ideal for the first-edition player who may have "seen it all?"

Oh, yes.

If you love the first edition, want more and even more on top of that? ADAD is your game. This is my new favorite first-edition game.

Off the Shelf: Dragonbane

Dragonbane has always been a hard game for me to start playing. It is a fantastic game with a lot of options and flair, and even a solo-play mode. Most all of the Free League games these days have excellent solo play rules these days, which is a huge attraction for me, a mostly solo player.

Shadowdark is killing this for me since it is easier to play with others, being a 5E Lite game. I can play Shadowdark with people, they assume it is homebrew 5E Lite, and then they are surprised that it is a real game, easy to play, and well-supported. A game I can play with others will win over a solo experience every time.

Dragonbane is also close to some other excellent games I own, such as Runequest and Basic Roleplaying. It isn't the same game, but it shares a few similarities. Dragonbane leans more towards token and card-based play, with initiative cards, treasure cards, and all sorts of extras - including bosses that are random tables of special attacks.

Still, Dragonbane feels like a simplified d20 version of Runequest, meant for fast combat and dungeon play with a skill-based flavor. The classes and races are very compelling. The art is amazing, all the books are top-quality, yet I never seem to have time for this one. I guess I am not hearing the call to adventure, or something just feels "off" to me.

Fair or not, I feel the game is tightly linked to its setting, in the same way Forbidden Lands and Runequest are. With Shadowdark I feel this can be "any world" and fit in with any setting I can imagine. Same with Basic Roleplaying. I loved the original Nerrath setting for D&D 4, and Dragonbane feels similar, but I am not feeling it.

Perhaps I need to play this some more to understand.

All of my Free League games have a home in my living room, since these are more social, sort of "bookcase" games that appeal to everyone. The Walking Dead, Alien, Blade Runner - many of these people "know" and they are better suited to being in a more social space. Even Forbidden Lands, Tales from the Loop, and Twilight: 2000 are living room games.

I have never boxed up a Free League game into storage.

Dragonbane is a game many move to after Shadowdark, and it is a more heroic, kick down the doors, roll for skills, and go in, spells blazing sort of game than the careful playstyle Shadowdark can tend towards. The game also uses words carefully, I have a few "supposedly simple" games go on and on for long-winded paragraphs on how a rule works, when all they need is one sentence and to move on.

The game uses different systems than my OSR, B/X, and Shadowdark core games. I suppose it is different enough my nice library of OSR games doesn't play well with it. When in doubt, I play OSR, and I can switch games if I get bored with one, and everything still works the same. This is another reason why I don't find enough time for the equally excellent, but also different, Forbidden Lands.

Dragonbane is going back on the living room shelf, for a while. I have too many other things out, needing to be played. This one is still a gem in the rough, though, and worthy of keeping out of the garage.

Mail Room: Tales of Aragosa

I missed out on the Kickstarter for this one, and the hardcover finally came. This one is sort of fell off my excitement level, since I already have enough fantasy games, and my desire to collect new ones has fallen off a cliff.

Honestly, I like Shadowdark, DCC, OSRIC, and Dungeon Fantasy. Do I have room for another?

This is essentially Low Fantasy Gaming 2.0, a 5E variant I really liked. It tackled the problem of "too much magic" that is chronic in D&D, a problem that spoils the entire experience for that version of the game. Sure, it is fun to "flippy whippy woo" powers around, but eventually it all becomes meaningless and the martial characters quit after a few levels because nobody can put up with the constant caster nonsense in the game.

D&D with too much magic becomes "the game permanently on hallucinogenic mushrooms." Like an addict, the game suffers, divorces itself from reality, and develops chronic conditions. The game also keeps telling itself, "I don't have a problem."

I had this one version of the game where a warlock had this "energy whip" - usable every turn. The entire game felt like a pen-and-paper ARPG, the cool power wasn't special, and it got to be boring after a few turns of "aww cool" turning into "this thing again?"

My group got tired of D&D's overdone magic system.

Even Shadowdark rolls back caster power and puts a cost on magic. If magic is a "shortcut to great power" then it should have a cost. It should be special. Using a magic power should be a single-use game changer. Period.

Infinite use "attack power cantrips" are an abomination to the game, and are as dumb as the "bonus action." Even the word "cantrip" means a minor magical trick or effect. They are not "magnum laser pistols" to be used infinitely with zero cost. 5E cantrips are superpowers, not magic.

Tales of Aragosa is a dense book. I swear words were packed in here extra tight, and I feel the game would have benefitted by being two books instead of one. Shadowdark is a minimalist game, where ToA is a dense rulebook that should have been given room to breathe. I love this much information, but there are times when I flip through this book I get overwhelmed by how much is packed into each page.

It is a good thing and a bad thing. It is a super high-value book full of tables and information, capable of generating entire campaigns by itself. The usability and new player friendliness suffers. If I am playing with new players or random other people, Shadowdark is still my go-to game.

ToA is sort of "Shadowdark plus" in my view. They keep compatible with the monsters and damage scale, which means the ToA book can be used as a "Shadowdark campaign generator." This is still based on 5E-like rules, so it is still familiar to this group of players who have a 5E preference. If you are looking for a 5E Lite game with more rules than Shadowdark, and more options, this is also a good choice.

Considering this is numerically compatible with Shadowdark, you are not losing anything by "side grading" to this game. They have conversion notes in the back of the book for various games, and this keeps with the Shadowdark, B/X, OSRIC, OSE and other scales - while 5E remains the "bag of hit points" outlier. My old-school games are remarkably compatible with each other since they keep the original (non-Wizards) hit point and hit die scale.

I can buy any OSR game, monster book, adventure, or anything else and have easily work with any other OSR game of my choice - Shadowdark, Old School Essentials, ToA, Swords & Wizardry, the Without Number games, OSRIC, or any other. The "damage scaling" Wizards introduced in 3E and on broke compatibility, and these "high hit point" numbers make the game tedious and combats take forever. There is an argument that Wizards never understood D&D from a mathematical foundation, and every version of the game they made missed the mark. DCC feels like an exception, and feels like the game is more tuned to 3.5E hit point levels with classic AC ratings.

If you feel like you outgrew Shadowdark, and you don't want to go to Dragonbane (or back to 5E), ToA is a great game that gives you more depth, options, while keeping that low-fantasy, gritty, dangerous world feeling.

ToA feels worth trying, and as an "advanced Shadowdark" style of game may fill a need I have in my "5E Lite" dark & gritty style of game.

OSRIC is Still my Death Metal Game

Some don't like the Death Metal genre, and some don't. When I listen to that style of music, I listen to a group of musicians trying to cut through "programmed music" or "classic rock" - which can become stale and tired as a genre. And they have to shock you since very little else works to break you out of a repetitive, nostalgia-drugged, almost comatose level of entertainment these days.

And I like parts of the DM genre and a few others that are a bit further from my liking. Some bands I like give me that "gonzo fantasy" feeling I want for some of my games.

I liked Mork Borg since the game was a wake-up call to a stale OSR movement, too concerned with B/X copies and clarifying rules. The game has too many imitators these days, but the entire movement felt like a fresh take on the genre and broke us free of many bad habits. This game was influenced by the DM genre, so gaming is influenced by this heavy metal movement. Mork Borg, DCC, and Shadowdark all have that "evil game" feeling, and they breathe life into a stale gaming scene. Of those three, DCC does seem the most "mainstream" of them all, avoiding a lot of controversial subjects and art. I would put OSRIC on this list, since the game is what you bring to it, and the game doesn't enforce a modern "safe" style of play.

Music does influence the hobby.

To escape from what D&D has become today, I return to some of the musical genres that inspire me—the original games. I found what I loved about the hobby back when I started. There was no death metal back then; it was just classic rock.

Still, I must escape today's corporate identity gaming social media pap.

And classic rock needs a break, too.

We have become over-reliant and diabetic on nostalgia like corn syrup in every food.

Nostalgia is getting sickening.

D&D these days is the worst of corporate entertainment. Focused on a nostalgic cartoon that few even cared about back when we played, that D&D cartoon was more of an embarrassment to the hobby than something we held in high honor. This was censored by parents, the network, and religious groups, could not show any violence, and was just not representative of the game we played. The cartoon was the lead-in for AD&D 2nd Edition, the most censored "mass market" edition ever produced.

The D&D Cartoon captures today's D&D era perfectly. Censored by Wall Street, social groups, and everybody else under the sun, it turned into a game that offends nobody. After this point, the novels drove the game, and I suspect the streaming shows and other entertainment will drive things from this point on until Bankruptcy 2.0 arrives. The censored AD&D 2e was not a success; if it had, the company would not have gone under in the late 1990s. Only the novels drove interest, and I suspect we are entering that corporate lifecycle phase for the IP next. These days, it will be streaming shows for ten years and then burn itself out.

D&D 3.5E also, was not a success, and it was getting crushed by World of Warcraft.

Dealing with modern D&D is dealing with "version death" and the replacement cycle of the game forced on us by the rise of fads and games outside of pen-and-paper gaming. With D&D 5E, the game itself was a fad due to pop-culture, and now we are in the slow decline again. When the numbers sink to a certain point, the new edition will be announced, just like clockwork.

But when I return to an earlier time, I want something that speaks to me.

And taking on a "5E attitude" in the original game will kill you quickly.

Today's games use that cocky smirk permanently etched on the face, an overconfident attitude that screams, "Nobody is better than me!" Then, they sell you a few thousand dollars of books to have their mythical "complete game" as they string you along, one book after the next.

And, of course, nobody dies or has anything bad happen to them because you are supposed to "see yourself in the game" and "nothing bad should happen to you."

Strung along for a buck, constantly.

With all its quirks, OSRIC perfectly captures the early AD&D. I have the original books (and the PoD ones) for inspiration. Still, I support the community version since that is a play where everyone is free and open to publishing. If I play this game, OSRIC is the game, nothing else.

The level limits, the strange modifiers, the incongruent systems of how things work—it is all a love letter to the peculiar, not-mainstream, niche hobby that we loved (before we all quit to play GURPS).

Not AI, my art.

Death Metal also seeks to break through the ordinary and overdone. Where some hear a cluttered mess of screams and guitar thrashing, I can listen to cleanly separated, acoustic, very skilled, and clean parts strung together in a coherent composition. There is an operatic, almost apocalyptic charm to a few artists, like you are listening to something you are not supposed to be hearing, which parallels the concept of "going into a dungeon you are not supposed to be in," ideally.

I see a lot of 5E adventures, and they look like Cartoon Network shows for kids. Talking anthropomorphic animals with giant heads and human expressions, overly colorful paintings, and a look and feel like prepackaged food with 12 cups of sugar per serving. Everyone is happy with a "too cool for school" smirk on their faces. The adventures are not deadly, the enemies aren't evil, everyone is just misunderstood, and if we could only swing unsharpened weapons at each other and fling non-lethal spells, the "town would be happy," and we could get a pile of XP.

OSRIC and first edition characters aren't there to "make the town happy."

They don't get free "quest XP" for some objective that feels more like behavioral modification enforced by the game master than a real reward.

They are also not there for "nostalgia."

Evil isn't a "misunderstood, well-meaning person."

Adventurers were greedy souls, many of whom paid the ultimate price for that sin.

I will go back to the music again here and note in a lot of it that the world is doomed, and the souls within are just waiting in line for punishment. First-edition gaming had this feeling the progression of characters toward their ultimate forms was a loss of humanity, idealism, and heroism.

AD&D 2nd Edition formalized the notion of "quest XP," which took away all the old-school charm. If you make the module writer and game master happy, you could be rewarded for progression by "moving the story along correctly" and by the "censor-approved outcomes." Often, these were tied to the "novel modules," and if "you ended the chapter how the novel ended," you got the XP and were rewarded for "playing along as intended."

I love how organized and cleanly put together you are, AD&D 2nd Edition, but you have no soul.

Pass.

D&D 3.5E is the only thing worth mentioning after this point, and this is the authentic version of "Wizards D&D." It is not Pathfinder 1e, though; that was a completely different game.

D&D 5E is so far down the road and embracing the modern censors and Wall Street and Hollywood mentality that it isn't even D&D anymore. The characters are "me, myself, and I" drop-ins, where you "see yourself" in "classic dungeons." The "whoa!" sound effect plays, and you can feel the cringe. It is the worst mobile game marketing these days: expensive art, flashy graphics, and no gameplay or heart.

2025 D&D is "Influencer D&D," and it has no soul.

It's not AI; it is my art. Pick up a pencil or brush.

The newer genres of music, incredibly hardcore and "wake me up" genres, appeal to me like OSRIC does. The edge and brutality remind me of the better days in gaming before the corporations took over and lobotomized the experience. Level limits, the harsh nature of the environment, save-or-die, and all the strange combinations of races and classes you need to discover are a part of the "simulation" you need to find and experience.

Entering the rules is like entering a labyrinth.

And you can't expect your humor, witty remarks, or cosplay ability will help you survive. Nor can you fall back on rules that won't let your character die, or mechanics that reward you for failure. Failing forward in this game means falling into a 30-foot deep poisoned pit of spikes full of snakes.

Playing OSRIC isn't nostalgia. It is a challenging game to play and survive. It isn't an easy mode. But it is the first and best version of the game ever imagined. Characters can and will die. Unlike 5E, it is not you, so it is okay.

Even though I have all these fantastic old-school games, OSRIC still holds a place on my shelf.