Freak & D: The Mutant Game

D&D isn't one game anymore.

It is a mutant mix of everything.

You get groups that will base their play on a stable version of the game, most likely 2014, and they will take the best from everything else, including 2024, ToV, A5E, and various third-party books.

Since 2024 has not set the world on fire, the community collectively shrugged its shoulders, took the 2024 books, and used them as "patch notes" for their 2014 games. Sure, they may pick up a book, but so many are deeply bought into 2014 that they will not leave unless a new edition with a radical design shift comes along and changes everything.

You can do most of 2024, the best changes, while staying in 2014 with a page of errata. 2014 is arguably better and closer to classic D&D, with alignment, humanoid monsters, and races still in the older game. The whole background, ancestry, species, etc., character creation complicates character creation. It isn't D&D. I don't mind in other games, but we don't need this many "false choices" in D&D when the "do whatever you want" system in Tasha's was much better for classic D&D, or sticking with the racial ability score bonuses.

Only a dozen or so spells are broken. A few multiclass combos are broken, and this can be fixed with the limitations on action surge and the "one leveled spell" per turn limit. Most issues are fixed by limiting multiclassing to a roleplaying context instead of letting people build characters like an ARPG.

With a page of fixes, 2014 is the superior game.

Even Roll20's D&D with extra DM Guild content vastly differs from 2014 or 2024. The game is bizarre, built out of a Frankenstein patchwork of books and Roll20 supplements. While it is based on D&D 2014, the game is more like this strange, generic 5E unique to Roll20.

Roll20 D&D is nothing like D&D Beyond D&D once you fully kit the game. It is a freakish game, with almost a random assortment of spells, races, and subclass choices.

Add a page of community-sourced house rules to the game, and you have something superior to D&D 2024. These house rules can pull in the best D&D 2024 patches, but ignore all the problematic changes.  Monks from 2024 and rangers from ToV are in the same party. Modded 2014 D&D with house rules is a better game.

Orcs and humanoids are still monsters, alignment is still here, half-orcs and half-elves have not been erased, and the game feels classic, yet wholly random and freakish.

It is Freak & D.

It is even different from A5E, which feels more like B/X D&D than mutant Roll20 D&D. Some of the best rules from this version are must-haves for F&D, and there is a lot from this game that will get pulled in, such as counter spell rules, exploration challenges, and much more.

ToV also feels vastly different, like another version of the basic game, like the D&D Rules Compendium. We have excellent class designs here; you are free to use them. I saw a game with the ToV ranger, the 2024 monk, and a few other classes from other books and publishers in one party.

However, the D&D game inside Roll20, fully modded with third-party content, is one of the closest things you can get to experiencing a version of F&D you can look at and play in the wild. Without VTTs, people have stopped caring and are mixing every game with every game and calling it 5E.

D&D feels like it died, and we are left picking through the game's ruins and modding it to be whatever we like. 2024 isn't a new version; it is the patch notes that people choose the best parts from and mostly ignore. D&D is a boneyard system these days, where we pick and choose parts to cobble together a game. This is the OGL fallout. Wizards lost that fight.

I wonder if D&D even has one set of defined rules anymore.

Everything is this generic "5E roleplaying," and the base version of that is "whatever 5E rulebook you happen to own." SRD included.

Even the base version does not matter anymore. What is your base game? 2014? ToV? A5E? 2024? The 5.1 SRD? Do you stick to one VTT's character designer, and that is your game?

That is the exception if you are a purist and want to play in one system, like a ToV or A5E table. It is nice since you have one "source of truth." I like the fixes that both the ToV and A5E teams made. I can play Roll20 D&D, which is a different version of 2014. I wish Roll20 supported both A5E and ToV (I know about the ToV announcement and it sucks).

Rolemaster United vs. Everything Else

I support Rolemaster United, and the team at ICE is a good company and deserves success. To be brutally honest, the art in the new books is very cartoony, and I wish we had pieces like we had in the older books. That said, I don't mind the art; I just wish we had some of the OSR artists in there, creating outstanding pieces.

RMU also feels like it is chasing the dungeon-crawling audience. The simplifications in the new version are welcome, but I am beginning to see how parts of the experience are lost in the update.

However, I understand that they need to simplify the game so they can rebuild sensibly.

I love RM FRP, and see this as the most "roleplaying" version of the game. I feel that this game drew inspiration from GURPS for a significant portion of this edition, and the add-on systems in later books felt like "us too" additions to the core. I love the training packages in this game, and they function similarly to GURPS' template packages. The skill categories are also helpful, as they help reduce the number of skills you need to train with.

At times, the game felt like it tried to follow GURPS too closely; an example is the incorporation of a flaws (disadvantage) system in Character Law. It is a great system; however, on top of everything else, the system feels like it was designed by expansion books, rather than from a solid point-to-point base, like GURPS.

Then again, it was the 1980s and 90s, lots of games innovated and copied from each other.

Most of the expansions to RM FRP went overboard in complexity, on top of an already massively complicated game. I can see why many went to GURPS to simplify the experience and work around a core mechanic and character system. GURPS is more manageable, as it does everything with a core mechanic, allows for greater character customization, and you are dealing with far fewer books.

Both games are very close. A colossal skill list, detailed combat, and a few key ability scores. One uses 3d6, while the other uses a d100 with no upper limit. GURPS offers a more robust character creation system, while Rolemaster provides more comprehensive critical charts and richer fantasy trappings.

The difference is, GURPS lets you do anything with anything. RM FRP sets up its races and professions to work together in a certain way. Where GURPS gives you everything on an equal footing, RM FRP sets up races and cultures that are better at specific skills and magics than others.

GURPS builds any world.

RM FRP creates a world rooted in established fantasy tropes.

There is a difference here; yes, you can do 'fantasy world building' in GURPS, giving elves a bonus to this or dwarves a bonus to that, but this is your choice, and not one that ships with the game. Some groups are not comfortable or skilled enough to undertake this type of world-building and prefer a set of premade assumptions.

Rolemaster requires tentpole knowledge, where you grasp a key set of concepts along the way, and know where to search for related rules later around those tentpoles. You can get tripped up in the procedure and the methods of spending development points. Some of the "way you do things" get lost in the text when they should not. Rarely will you have a character without the necessary skills.

GURPS requires a basic understanding of how a few mechanics work, allowing you to proceed smoothly from there. It is possible to completely overlook a necessary skill, such as those required to search, navigate, hike, patch wounds, interrogate someone, find clues, or spot an ambush. GURPS is a more straightforward game.

I can see why some groups say "to heck with it all" and just play Rolemaster Classic, or a modded version of this game. RMU also feels quite similar to Classic in many ways, and the new edition draws heavily from the classic set of rules, building upon them. RMC is the original game, similar to B/X in the series, and before the legendary amount of bloat was introduced with RM FRP. RMU is rebuilding RMC and selectively incorporating the best features of RM FRP; that is how it feels to me.

I am on board with RMU, but RM FRP resonates with me more than all the other versions.

Do Power Fantasies Ever End Well?

Most of today's role-playing hobbyists are consumed with characters who aim to gather personal power. This reflects an age where everyone feels powerless and helpless, and popular entertainment feeds the beast of insecurity.

The internet and social media have destroyed traditional consciousness.

It used to be back in the day, you could grow up, find someone you liked, and have a family. You could buy a house. You could have a career that lasts most of your life. Your power was more local, within a small place and time, but the fact that "you made it" means you "won at life" and your name carried on to the next generation.

The false god of the corporation pushes the lie that we can be young forever.

They keep selling kids' things to adults.

D&D 5E is a prime example. Classes only exist as "intravenous power delivery" paths. At times, the different character classes are slightly different photocopies of each other. There is no real difference between a warlock and a cleric besides marketing. I don't care about your eldritch blast or your pacts; you are still a cleric, and only one set of rules makes you feel more special than the other.

Pandering is a symptom of games that market false power to their players.

I have my 5E books out for my game with others, and they contain piles of buffs, snowflake class options, power builds, and more of the same thing, just reworded and resold to us as the same thing, only different.

Could a bard just be a rogue with a musical background skill? Do we need all this silly, magical music? Would a bard feel more powerful without all these "song of X" and "ballad of Y" false powers driven only by marketing that this class is somehow now needing to be different, and complicating our games with another version of something similar, again?

If a referee said, "Because you are a high-level hero and have this special background skill, just play a song and tell me what you want it to do."

That same thing works all the time for blacksmith skill, or bowyer. A level 20 character with smithing should be able to forge an epic weapon. If Bard was a background skill for roleplaying-based powers, would that not work just as well?

Why do we need yet another class and set of subclass options?

I could give every one of the four base classes in Basic Fantasy a "background skill pick" that mirrors a D&D class, and just let people make up powers with that, and I would get the same feeling and in-game effects without a few thousand more pages of rules. Warlock? Pick that as a magic user or cleric, and have the player tell me what it does, make up powers, and change their spells. Druid? Bard? Barbarian? Ranger?

Let's make any special abilities for those work like an ability score check. Have the player tell you what they want to do, and what in-game effect they want it to have.

Does the fighter with the ranger skill want to make a shelter?

Does the thief with the bard skill wish to sway a hostile crowd?

Does the cleric with the druid skill wish to calm the grizzly bear?

Does the thief, using acrobatic skill, want to tightrope walk?

Does the cleric with the warlock skill want to summon a demon to ask a lore question?

I don't need spells or chapters full of rules for those things. I will make it an ability score check, apply a modifier, and make a ruling. I will consider the character level to determine how much power they have. We are done, put down your phones, and we don't need all those books to waste our time and money.

Most of these powers don't even need die rolls either, and that is another secret today's overdesigned consumer service games don't want to tell you. The level 8 thief walks the tightrope. The level 11 cleric summons the demon and gets the answer.

Don't let the dice control your game or ruin the story.

There, now I don't need to carry around a few thousand pages of rules, nobody needs to use D&D Beyond, and we avoid hours of rules reference on our phones every game session. Plus, people get distracted by notifications and do something else at the table when they should be participating.

With one small change, Basic Fantasy is doing more than D&D 5E does, with far fewer rules.

And the power levels are still under control.

Four classes with a simple skill choice for each can do far more than one or two thousand pages of overwrought rules that were written using a pay-by-the-word payment contract. And in my modded Basic Fantasy, I can have a cleric with the bard skill, or a fighter-acrobat.

Want even more power? Give characters a second skill at 10th level.

What?

Is game design hard?

Can only people in Seattle do this?

Filling a book with words is entirely different than creating a game.

In games where I have less power, such as classic D&D and others where you play a mostly normal "skilled person," I end up feeling more powerful because I need to effect change outside of my character, make relationships, achieve achievements, and change the world outside my character. Even in a classic AD&D style game, I must clear land and build a stronghold. Those gold pieces are my XP. Those demon-worshipping orcs in the next valley? They must be destroyed or they will cause pain for everyone around them. No "getting along" or modern sensibilities and diplomacy exists in a fantasy world.

Defeating them feels like actual power. I have changed the world for the better.

In modern D&D, playing a game is about "me and what I get out of it."

I have never seen a comic book survive the "more power" period, a late-stage affliction of most fiction and media. This is the final run of most stories, where the writers give the characters all the power they could ever want and blow out what they took so long to build.

When a game or story goes "power first," it is late-stage media.

Rolemaster FRP: Training Packages

Many dislike the training packages, but I love them. These were removed from the Rolemaster Unified rules to streamline character creation and development. They were not popular since they slowed down character creation, were prone to min-maxing, and added "another step" to the process that players had to sort through. Still, they provide me with numerous options and choices for a character's background, making them indispensable to the system.

This marks the first significant divergence between the Rolemaster United philosophy and the classic Rolemaster FRP philosophy that I have identified. Yes, RM FRP is bloated and takes a considerable amount of time to create characters for. And RMU does not need to be a "modern" game like 5E, and I have a simplified version of Rolemaster...

If I want simple, I have HARP.

For me, Training Packages are a significant part of the Rolemaster experience, and they provide me with more than just a skill list to purchase.

They give me a reason for my character to be the way they are.

For those who are unfamiliar, Training Packages are purchased during character creation and have a point cost associated with each profession. They are essentially a "package deal" of skills, items, contacts, bonuses, and other features unique to the training package, along with a required time in months that adds on to your character's age.

The list of training packages for the RM FRP Character Law book is provided above. There are likely others in other expansions, but this is the core 'base game+' list of choices you have. Packages have a different cost per profession; for example, if a bard chooses the performer, that costs only 16 DP. If a fighter picks the performer training package, it will cost 28.

You can get skills, items, contacts, stat-gain rolls, and a few other items with these packages, and they are not always the same, even within a package.

Each training package adds time to your character's starting age; for example, a performer is 40 months. If you picked the traveler alone, that would be 18 more months, a cost of 14 DP (for our bard), plus the list of things gained by the package.

These packages are fantastic since, instead of "paying for skills and claiming you are something," you are buying a package deal that includes items, skills, contacts, and stat gains, and writing your backstory in the world. If I choose the Diplomat training package, then for whom am I a diplomat? And who was I a diplomat to? Am I still in the role? Do I have contacts? Do I work out of an embassy? Who are my contacts back home, and in the foreign location? How do these two countries get along? Are they allies, neutral, hostile, or at war? Are you an elven diplomat working within the orc nation, and your two nations are at war?

Performer? Where? Was it bars, theaters, plays, orchestras, street performances, or other forms of entertainment venues? Do you have any popular songs, plays, books, poems, or other works of performance art that people know you by? Did you stick to one town or travel to others? Did you have a schedule, play at fairs, work at playhouses, or were a part of a band? Do you know anyone who can help you find work in different towns? Do those people sometimes ask you for help, knowing you are the adventurous sort? Do you have a stage name? Are you reviled or beloved in a few towns? Have you ever missed a performance or gone above and beyond what was expected of you? Have you performed for anyone notable, like at a prince's wedding?

You picked this package! Make it work for you! This is now part of your backstory.

I pick a sailor. What ship? Was this a merchant, scout, fishing, whaling, other, or navy? Who is my captain? Did anything happen during my voyages? Where were the ports of call we visited? Do I know others on the crew? Do I have contacts at various ports?

The Loremaster is a significant faction in the Shadow World setting. Are you a part of that? Do you have contacts there? Do they have bounties and missions for information and exploring lost sites? Are you a lore-master for another faction?

The who, what, where, when, how, and why questions are all on the table and need to be answered for every training package. Significant events can be thought up and added to the time spent in the role. Locations can be added. People, places, and things. Battles. Shipwrecks. Monster attacks. Mysteries and lost expeditions.

A few of these sing to me. Spy, diplomat, explorer, detective... mix these with the professions of the game, and perhaps a second training package, and all of a sudden, my "I am a magician" character becomes a magician, loremaster, and explorer. I have two sources of contacts and missions. My role in the world changes at the first level.

Fighter, merchant, soldier? A caravan guard. Mentalist, herbalist, con-man? Snake-oil salesman. Ranger, hunter, detective? Bounty hunter.

D&D does not give you this.

Every training package is a potential source of contacts, missions, adventures, business opportunities, information, expeditions, travel, and those asking for help.

D&D is the LCD

I am helping a friend start her gaming group, and she goes on endlessly about how hard the whole "getting started" thing is. There are days she just wants to give up because "Getting people to commit and get started is impossible."

She got the D&D starter set as some sort of "social contract," as if to say, "Trust me, we will run the boxed set as it is, and this is designed so everyone has fun." That increased interest somewhat, but she still has far too much difficulty getting a group started and off the ground.

I bet 70% of the people who try to play D&D are in that "We could never get it started, so we gave up" camp. Half of those turn into collectors, who help ruin the hobby for people who play the game. I have collected too many games, and they sit in crates in my garage, so I have a right to complain since that is my weakness. If a game has a collector's component, that is a huge negative. The game gets too bloated to play and eventually dies under its weight.

D&D also suffers from this, so some clones are in slightly better shape. They are not popular enough to support a collector's market, so they are the basic books, and I am happy with that.

But getting people to start feels impossible. She talked to me last night, wishing D&D were as easy to begin as Monopoly. She said that because roleplaying "opens people up to each other," it felt impossible to start with people, even if you know them, because of a fundamental lack of trust.

The more you make D&D a "self-reflective exercise," the less people will play it. Nobody trusts each other. Nobody wants to open up to each other. No one wants to express themselves honestly to each other anymore. It is safer to adopt the persona of a "Scottish dwarf" and talk in a funny voice than to "play yourself" and open yourself up to attacks and let people into that personal space.

D&D feels doomed with a degradation of social cohesion and a loss of reading and math comprehension. I don't see how roleplaying survives outside of the older age groups. I don't know how D&D transitions to the next generation if the game isn't a mobile app for phone-addicted eyes.

This is why old-school games are generally easier to start, which also applies to Shadowdark. A "random character" is far easier to start playing with new people than a "reflection of yourself." Random characters are also easier to deal with the loss of, being just a random "playing piece" of a gamer and played without too much personal and emotional investment.

Wizards is killing D&D by turning it into a "lifestyle game" because society is becoming more divided and factionalized. The already running groups will be cemented in, and very few new groups will be able to start. The already close-knit groups don't have a problem with this and probably wonder what I am talking about. Those on the outside, trying to get started, have a massive "ice-breaking" problem.

You have to use starter sets. It has to be the name-brand game, D&D.

Trying to sell some obscure "other game" to people, even though you know it aligns with their interest and would be more fun for the group, is a nonstarter. D&D is the lowest common denominator. We put up with it since it gets people into the hobby before we can transition them to the games we like.

There are fun parts to 2014 D&D, but I prefer other game implementations.

Even she has a new favorite game after I introduced a bunch to her, which was a mistake since she now wants to get to them and find interest. This puts her in a worse spot. She will probably be stuck with a freakishly mutated and expanded 2014 D&D, but that is a far better place to be than "not playing."

I am helping her through this, but it is a massive challenge for her, and reflects the wider hobby.

Target Markets

We put Basic D&D on such a pedestal today.

It is funny that in the 1980s, Basic D&D was the "kid's game," we all played AD&D to be with the older "cool kids" crowd. Even Gary Gygax and TSR positioned Basic D&D as the version for younger players. AD&D skewed to an older audience, and the math and complexity of the game reflected that age group.

This was back when one reasonably assumed the average adult was educated to a certain level of math, reading, and logical comprehension. The 1980s had a higher level of basic education and high school completion than today. Being in the "adult target market" in the 1980s also included an assumption of knowledge of classic, popular, and fantasy literature.

We did not have the Internet or cell phones. We had the library and Tolkien and Tor fantasy novels in paperbacks. If you wanted anything outside the three main networks without cable TV, you read books for your escapism or followed comic books.

Reading unlocked worlds.

We had different educational expectations back then. As a kid, I remember having to memorize historical dates, know how the government works, and read the classics. We had full slates of classes and no computers or Internet to help us. I also had to be able to do algebra and geometry. We had to use libraries and books to look things up. Calculators were our only electronics and could not be used for tests. I hauled a dictionary and thesaurus around to classes, which were my "spell and grammar checkers." High school was like college prep.

I saw a video in which a college student (in 2025) was asked to define a basic word everyone should know. They had to read the definition off their phone. They could not "think" without reading it from a screen and substituting a website for what should have been basic learned knowledge.

These days, I see reports that specific demographics have stopped reading as entertainment, and kids are coming out of high school unable to read or perform basic math. A family member in education confirms this and tells me it worsens yearly. The bottom has dropped out of education; thus, games like classic AD&D are not even in today's players' target market and expectations. I doubt that D&D 5.5E is even in the "popular gaming" comprehension level of the younger market these days.

We tend to see simplification and streamlining as "good game design" when that is not always true. Yes, if your goal is to ensure that "everyone can play your game," then lowering the barriers to entry is a good thing. But there were games in the 1980s that we did not want to be simplified and made for kids.

We didn't play B/X back then; it was too simplistic for us.

Nowadays, people swear by B/X as if it were a pinnacle in design.

Time has a strange way of changing perceptions.

In a way, Shadowdark hits that modern target market far better than 1,000 pages of D&D 5.5E. This is not to denigrate Shadowdark; it is an S-Tier game for me. The design of the game and books is far easier for anyone to grasp and understand, regardless of their background, than the collector's market website-required, mobile-game-influenced monolith that D&D has become.

The fact that I can play Shadowdark with anyone and the game is so easy to grasp and lock into, even for those with minimal education, should strike fear into Wizards if they were paying attention. They are still assuming that the 2014 levels of education will remain constant when their target audience of the future loses the ability to understand and play the game.

This isn't you, your group, us, or even the current audience of D&D. This is the general trend of the next generation, and it is dropping standards and reducing comprehension to the lowest common denominator. Blame phones, the government, and/or the lack of standards, but this is where we are heading.

I look back at the games of the 1980s and the level of reading, math, and logical comprehension we needed to play them, and my mind is blown. Even the knowledge of the "Appendix N" classics was where we needed to be educated. And "the need to simplify" games was a thing back then, too. We had simple games, but the older audiences preferred the games that demanded more of us.

We loved the Aftermath game, and the fact that math was in the title was appropriate. This was our home system during most of the 1980s. It was crunchy, obscure in parts, d20-based, and glorious when the combat critical hits happened, and body parts flew.

Speaking of body parts flying...

Some of us played Rolemaster back in the day because if someone did not have the patience or smarts to figure out character creation, they were probably not worth playing with. This was not gatekeeping; it was like the role-playing equivalent of the SAT and college placement. We had many highly intelligent players of every race, color, and sexual orientation in our group; they were all hyper-intelligent nerds like me, but they were cool.

Some were better at math and science than I was, and I miss that group. I am proud I had a chance to play with them, too. We played GURPS, too, and it was awesome. Yes, there is a lot of math, but math is fun. The equation is your character, and optimizing the character for the best performance is a challenge we took on.

The game wasn't for you if you didn't want to learn and put in the time. People had more popular games, and there were many D&D games with other groups, so nothing was "gatekept"—it was just what we liked, and whoever joined our group was expected to put in more effort. This is the same sort of "filtering" any community has, and the game's complexity determines who stays around to master it. This sort of "skill filtering" makes games compelling, and even chess has it at the higher levels of play.

I don't buy the argument that "simple and easier is better" today. If the depth is there and requires some crunch, then I am there. We played Space Master by the book. if a game had math and crunch, it held our interest. Many games were considered too simple for us.

We also played Champions and a D&D version of this game. We converted monsters, magic items, and spells and designed them using the rules. This game will give your calculator a workout. This is another game we loved, and it plays fantasy games well.

These days, going through all the advanced rules and additions of a game like ADAD is a joy for me, bringing back memories of those days. I like "getting into the weeds" and seeing how the designer finally made weapon speed matter.

Level Up A5E is my version of 5E. I prefer to play this "fixed version" over every other version of Open 5E. I keep this game tight and focused on the core rules, and it is an enjoyable game. While sometimes I get forced back into 5E, my home system always provides sanity and fixed math.

Tales of the Valiant is worthy, too, as a drop-in replacement for the 2014 books.

The games I'm finding that are staying on my "most played" shelves are ADAD, GURPS, Rolemaster, and the others with a bit of crunch and a lot of math. Shadowdark is the exception.

Non-D&D Games Get Higher Hits Here

I look at my article views, and D&D articles generally don't do as well as random games, and very few play some of the ones I cover. It feels like the end of an era, or maybe my audience is a bit more diversified, and other sites are better for D&D.

The only exception is Level Up Advanced 5E. Those articles do well. I get the feeling Tales of the Valiant landed like a thud with the not-D&D 5E crowd, not many changes, plus a rewording of 5E was not what people wanted. Most of the Open 5E crowd bought into A5E and saw no reason to switch.

Tales is still a nice game. The spell, monster, and adventure support is top-notch. In many places, A5E is still far ahead of ToV, and ToV is scrambling to catch up and forge an identity.

ToV is more the game you want to play if you like 2014 D&D and want the fixed game that 2024 promised. You don't like many rule differences, and the game should play exactly like 2014 with very few changes. ToV kicks 2024 D&D to the curb and is a better game, with classes that are better built for fun at the table.

ToV is the game 2024 should have been.

A5E changed a lot about 5E. The 2014 version of D&D was utterly wrong in many areas, even the math. A5E is a complete rebuild of the system instead of a clone, and a lot was changed under the hood for the better. A5E is AD&D for 5E, pulling in a lot of great rules and concepts from 3.5E and 4E, while keeping what made 5E work so well. The game is not easy; the play testers wanted it more deadly, and they got the game they asked for. They wanted game rule support for every pillar of play.

A5E is the game that 2014 dreamed it could be.

D&D and 5E Have Lost a Lot

I swear, D&D and 5E have lost a lot of players. From the interest levels I see, the views of YouTube D&D content, views, impressions here, and everything else across the board, the market is way down.

Nobody wants it.

Even the 5E clones are having a hard time. Those who were betrayed did not come back. Other games took off. Shadowdark took the mantle. Many walked away from roleplaying.

I explained a few factors behind the split in the community, and some in my group bailed.

Right.

It is "fun" playing D&D.

A divided game and community sucks.

There are the die-hard D&D Beyond-ers and a few who hang on as influencers. Many in my group have no money to buy new books. Wizards killed the golden goose, and the leaders left. It is becoming a D&D Beyond game, and the holdouts keep it alive.

I had high hopes for Tales of the Valiant. However, the name and the art are minor issues in an otherwise solid game. If it is a battle on design, Level Up Advanced 5E will win every time.

The OSR is better than most games in the 5E sphere. It has less drama and solid nostalgia. It is also less expensive and has higher-quality game rules. I can get complete, high-quality PDFs of many OSR games for free and start tonight.

Level Up's Ranger

I watched all these 2014 D&D videos on YouTube about "how to fix the ranger" and how people house-rule and patch them, comparing them to the still-broken class in 2024.

Then I saw videos comparing them to the Tales of the Valiant ranger, and said, "Wow, they fixed the class!"

Then I went back to Level Up.

They had the ranger fixed years ago. And not only fixed, but fixed well. It is even better than Tales of the Valiant. The ranger in Level Up is a different beast, pun intended. The class has exploration skills called knacks. You can focus on various areas, such as combat, survival, companions, supplies, survival checks, or any other area. Your familiar terrain ability is for all terrains. You get three subclasses, and only one of them is a spellcaster.

Of all of the 5E clones, Level Up is the best-designed of them.

Compatibility and the 2014 Mess

Getting back into 5E for my group, and getting them into it, sucks. D&D is intimidating for new players or those returning, and getting a group to learn and explore options seems like an impossibly high wall. The patch list for 2014 is killing me, and I am not buying into 2024. Would it solve problems? Yes. Does it solve the issues I want solved? Some classes are still terrible or worse off, while others are now horribly overpowered.

On a personal level, would I buy 2024 books? Probably not. Then again, I am not convinced 2024 is the way forward for D&D. My gut feeling is the next edition is a few more years out, and 2024 won't have a complete shelf life. The x.5 games from Wizards never really last, and they are more patches for end-of-life systems. Both 3.5E and 4E Essentials (4.5E) were like this.

The work begins on the next edition when a new team joins. If money pressures mount, this version will come sooner rather than later. This is unlike Castles & Crusades, where one version of the game can last for 20+ years. 5.5E will likely have 3.5E's shelf life, about five years. It will be closer to three before the buzz starts for 6E.

It is hard enough to step down to play 2014 D&D. I would rather play any other 5E clone with this group, but this is one of those situations where it has to be "name brand" or nothing.

Tales of the Valiant is the game I would play if I had a decent character builder. I may do them by hand and give up looking for character creation and storage services for this game. Subclasses from any 5E book port effortlessly, just read the ToV Conversion Guide and start pulling them in (only the highest level feature needs a minor tweak on placement). Part of the advantage of using ToV over Level Up A5E is that you have better third-party compatibility since there are very few changes to core systems from 5E.

ToV is a direct drop-in replacement for 2014 D&D.

ToV has its own fixes; many are still better than 2024 D&D. The game was designed for maximum fun at the table, so the "fun features" are pulled forward so you can use them more at the lower levels. That makes sense for a design goal. Put the fun first.

I like Level Up A5E, but from a compatibility standpoint for existing subclasses, ToV is easier and has fewer issues. ToV is a CR+1 game, but all the monsters are also CR+1, so there is that. A5E feels like 2014's sibling, but with many of the systems redesigned for depth and pillar of play support. Level Up also feels more like a CR+0 game with extensive fixes to the math.

ToV also has more spells and monsters than 2014 with the add-on books, so you won't be short in those departments. It also has a premium game world with many adventures.

With an extensive library of character options, ToV will be a better game. If you bought those options for a VTT, then you will be doing conversions of them as you play. Get things in print! Most 3rd party content does a good job at subclass design, but you may also be tweaking power levels to be more in line with ToV subclass options. ToV is the best game for playing 3rd-party content.

Without 3rd party content, ToV is a clean and fixed version of 2014 D&D.

The game is also far easier for beginners and better organized, and character creation flows and makes logical sense. The classes are also "fun stacked" with the good powers coming earlier, so you can get more use out of them at the levels you need to have them. There is a monk power for reducing ranged damage you get in 2014 D&D, where by the time you get it, it doesn't matter, ranged attacks typically exceed what the ability can stop. In ToV, you get that at level one, and you can have the most fun with it while it matters.

I still like Level Up, but it has always been self-contained and less dependent on third-party books. It is compatible with them, but the game does its own thing many times, and it is more fun to play within the framework it creates. The math is very tight, and a solid CR+0 game that preserves the original number balance. The game has many 4E and 3E inspirations and features, and it is a love letter to the 2000-2014 era of gaming, but done with 5E rules. Many of the systems in Level Up are so good that you don't need third-party books, tons of subclasses, or book after book of player options.

Where ToV revels in options, Level Up provides so much depth that you don't need them.

Level Up is the best game if all you ever own are the three core books.

Level Up also feels strikingly old-school; it is deadly and unforgiving of stupid decisions. In D&D and even ToV, you can mitigate a run of bad luck or a plan that backfires, but in Level Up A5E, your party is likely headed to a TPK. ToV and D&D are more "casual heroic," while Level Up is more old-school.

Level Up does its own thing, and it does it exceedingly well.

If I want to play with a book like Battle Zoo Ancestries, that will work best with ToV. Any random third-party book will work better with ToV, since you are not worrying about Level Up's fighting styles, supply system for survival, expertise dice, and many other subsystems missing from "generic 5E content." Level Up will do better with settings and adventures with an old-school feeling.

I can split my library between the Level Up and ToV sides.

ToV will likely be the larger side, since 2014, D&D has collected strange character-option books like flies to honey. ToV also has the excellent Midgard campaign setting, an underappreciated gem that is a drop-in replacement for the Forgotten Realms, and far better supported.

For Level Up, my Frog God Games books for the Lost Lands setting are already on that shelf. This is an old-school game world with its roots in the classic Swords & Wizardry game, so using an old-school version of 5E feels perfect here.

Even from the covers of these two setting books, you can sense what type of game and world this is. Midgard looks like a World of Warcraft-style world and game, with over-the-top heroics and larger-than-life heroes, something ToV does perfectly. The Lost Lands setting feels more realistic, deadly, and dark, which is what Level Up does the best.

ToV Player's Guide 2 Kickstarter

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deepmagic/players-guide-2-new-power-for-5e-and-tov-players

Color me interested after sorting through dozens of videos for D&D 2014 house rules and balance fixes. From the preview page:

Three new base classes including the Vanguard, dozens of subclasses, new lineages, hundreds of new spells, and more for TOV and 5E D&D.

I am interested in dozens of new subclasses, which would single-handedly fix one of ToV's most pressing issues at the moment. I am tracking this.

Fixing 2014 D&D is tiring, and making lists of house rules overwhelms and scares off players. I am tired of the "house rule culture" that D&D fosters, and I would like to buy a game that works.

I Fell Back Into D&D

I found some interested in playing D&D as a group, so I fell back into it. Initially, I wanted to keep my Level Up A5E books and a small subset of those, and keep the rest of my D&D books in storage. This group wanted to play D&D, and any amount of redefinition would have ruined the moment.

I love A5E but can't call it D&D and confuse people.

I am sticking with 2014, though. Some in my group have 2014 books, and the economy isn't letting them upgrade or buy new books. Asking people to buy books will kill interest. Asking people to buy 2024 books will kill interest for others.

How do I feel about the entire A+B character creation method with background and species? I am fine with this method in other games; in those games, it goes A+B+C and even more. Mechanical benefits for backgrounds are a bitter pill to swallow, and while those are fine in other games, they aren't D&D. There are intelligent farmers just as there are strong city folk; you are deflecting the old "racial essentialism" argument and putting that into "social essentialism" and it is just as dumb.

D&D is supposed to be easy: race plus class and go.

Let players come up with their own backgrounds.

And they don't have mechanical benefits.

Besides, Tasha's 2014 book cleared the whole issue up and let you put bonuses where you wanted them. If you are just going to argue, let people say where the bonuses go and be done with it. I am fine with the A+B+C systems in ToV and Level Up; those are "boutique D&D" and get a free pass. Basic D&D is supposed to be easier and more straightforward, just like the older games, and race + class is all I want players considering.

Otherwise, all fighters come from these subsets of backgrounds, and all wizards are in that set. We are back to square one. ToV did its best by putting the "extra points" into ability score creation and removing them from the A+B+C choices, which I prefer. The simpler system lets the A+B+C choices focus on options, not mechanical benefits.

ToV wins this round. Sorry, 2014 and 2024 D&D, and even A5E. Give players more points to generate characters, and stop adding them later.

Another +1 for D&D is the ease of creating characters. Finding a free character creation tool in Level Up A5E or even Tales of the Valiant is nearly impossible. Especially one with character storage and a good web UI. Kobold Press and Level Up cancelling ToV Roll20 support hurts. I want character designers, importers, and a free and open system for character creation support.

And Wizards is far too stingy on their books. I want my PDFs. Not having them sucks. I feel a step removed from the game. With ToV and Level Up? I have my PDFs. It is 2025, and forcing people onto gated websites or physical copies to read a book is unthinkable.

Another loss for 2014 and 2024 D&D. No PDFs? It is 2025, stop acting like it is 2008.

So, 2014 D&D is for my group. I would like to swap out 2014 D&D for Tales of the Valiant, and people in my group could own PDFs. ToV and D&D are interchangeable, and I would like to standardize the core rules and classes on a modern, sane set of options (that isn't 2024). The ToV classes are better designed than the 2014 ones by a long shot, and are more fun to play.

Monks are fixed. Rangers are fixed, and the mystic mark feature is solid (and combine that with Ranged Weapon Mastery's bonus action). Rogues feel like rogues. Every choice is good without all the exploits. There are fewer headaches and house rules here. They are not overpowered and feel like they have the "dry and realistic" 2014 power levels.

The classes in ToV are better than the D&D 2024 ones.

There are fewer subclasses in ToV (for now, they have new ones in The Old Margreve and the Dungeon Builder books, and are working on more) than in 2024 D&D, but they are higher-quality choices than quantity. They are working on more, so we can give Kobold Press time. You can port old ones in, too, since compatibility is very high.

The only honest criticism is that casters seem favored over martials. That is an easy problem; be more generous with magic items for your martial classes and give them parity through loot. Also, consider using the Expanded Special Melee Attacks rules in the GMG (page 73) and the Parry and Defensive Combat rules (page 77), and the game allows stunts like this to replace the need for 2024's weapon masteries and tracking special weapon properties. The parry reaction is a nice rule that expands ToV's action economy.

ToV has weapon options, plus the rules from the ToV GMG feel better than 2024's weapon mastery system, where a few classes have the "learn them" in a slot system and "unlearn them" on a long rest. In ToV? Everyone gets them with being proficient in the weapon; they don't use slots, nobody needs to track them on a character sheet, and they are just "there to use." Plus, the GMG's extra combat rules add more options.

Will it break the game if a wizard wants to use their quarterstaff to bash something in an emergency? No. This is a fun option and should be opened up to everyone. Wizards aren't in melee enough for this really to affect the game, and having it as a tool is a net plus to "fun at the table."

D&D 2024 is, in many ways, overdesigned. All these tracked resources did not need to be added to the character sheet. 2024's weapon mastery is a mistake.

Tales of the Valiant got it right.

ToV also gives you more options regarding ability score improvements and feats; you always get at least a point when you choose a feat. There are no dead levels in ToV, either. ToV is the best of the "modern 5E systems" at this point, and it leads D&D 2024 by a mile in design, function, and usability. If I play with others, ToV would be my ideal choice since I am not posting pages of house rules for 2014, the power levels are close to 2014 (CR+1), and every choice just works out of the box.

Magic item crafting? ToV also offers that as a downtime activity. I love these YouTube channels acting like crafting magic items is some new thing that D&D 2024 invented. Oh, and we have a price list for magic items, too. No automatic bastions, which is a plus, but Kobold Press has books on running kingdoms, so the subject is well-covered.

We have more wins for ToV, which is managing to be a complete and well-thought-out design. Kobold Press listened to playtest feedback, and it did not disappear into the nether like a marketing campaign.

ToV is also far better regarding access to the base rules. I can point everyone to the Black Flag SRD, which has the game's rules for free. People can own PDFs. Most legacy 2014 books and player options are compatible. Yes, the art is a little cartoony, but there is a charm to that. The rules are why I play.

If you are one of these people, like me, defending 2014 as the better version of D&D, and will never buy into 2024, you need to give ToV another look.

ToV is better designed than 2024 D&D, is easier to learn, more open, is a modern game, and retains the charm of D&D 2014.

For my home games and solo play? I will play Level Up A5E. This system just clicks for me and provides the depth and options I like in a hybrid 5E and old-school game. If I want "overdesigned for good reason and great effect," I will play Level Up.

But if I am stuck with 2014 5E?

I am looking at ToV, the fixed version of 2014, for which I don't need to maintain a list of house rules and patches.

ADAD: Legitimacy

A group of goblin bandits are holding the quarry outside of town.

I played this scenario in 5E, and I felt this sense of comfort. It will be no problem; I have an unrestricted power that lets me toss magic bolts every turn, we can heal, this one gets an advantage on many attacks, and we are all doing super significant damage with maximum ability score modifiers. Every magic character can fling damage as if we were playing an MMO.

In fact, the entire encounter felt like an MMO. I had this "bored sense of it being a waste of time" running through my head as I played it out. Just get me to the boss fight to finish this and turn in the quest rewards.

In 5E, I had so much power before level five that I was tired of the game and uninterested in whatever stories I could tell with it. This was the ultimate easy mode, and I quit the system.

5E is over-reliant on false empowerment, where they double the hit points and make daggers do 1d4+5. There was no damage scaling in the original game, so we did not need all these fixed modifiers. B/X started these out-of-control modifiers, and I prefer 0e or 1e games where those modifiers are scaled way back and kept under control.

You could not infinitely blast away with cantrips. You did not have feats that added damage to attacks. Your ranger had 20 arrows and a melee weapon. That is what you have to deal with the situation. Do you have a mage? Do you want to expend magic to solve this, or is there another way?

Swords & Wizardry was like this: The game did not hand out bonuses like popcorn and candy, and only fighters thoroughly enjoyed the STR bonus for to-hit and damage. Other classes, even the fighter sub-classes, did not get the bonuses. Swords & Wizardry gets it right like Shadowdark gets it right by keeping the numbers under control.

You start throwing fixed modifiers into everything, and they take over the game. A fixed modifier of more than half the dice size, like a 1d4+5, is a sloppy game design that invalidates the meaning of the dice. It is a significant mistake in 5E's math. For all the vaunted 'bounded accuracy' 5E hyped (and later tossed out) in the design, they did nothing on the damage dice and let those numbers get out of control.

In ADAD, to-hit modifiers for STR start at 17, and damage starts at 16 - which is only a +1. Most characters will never see a melee damage modifier unless they use magic weapons or are fighters who selected weapon specializations. You need to understand the rules and where your fixed modifiers come from, and you aren't just given everything.

I can play a character who does flat weapon damage; it is not a problem, and the game is designed that way if the monster hit points are low and kept under control. The polyhedral dice mean more if hit points are lower, and when Wizards' D&D starts scaling hit points two to four times and you lean on fixed modifiers far too much, the game breaks hard.

Dungeon Crawl Classics has replaced D&D for me. Shadowdark is still the best 5E, but if I want super-heroic fantasy with many character powers and toys, then DCC fills the need. It is far less complicated than D&D, with its mess of actions and complex builds, and I can run DCC character sheets by hand.

ADAD is perfect for first-edition games. I want characters to do without and have limited powers and options in the first five levels. They need to work together during this time and think smart, use gear, leverage skilled classes, and play smart.

In my 5E game, the party rarely needed synergy or cooperation. Everyone was an “army of me,” and healing did not need to be shared; everyone could heal themselves or rest it off later.

ADAD hits the serious game notes perfectly for me while providing new options to explore.

In DCC, monsters can be deadly, and my characters must work together. At first level, they have quite a bit of power, so they are capable and potent. The world can hit back hard, death is easy, and healing relies on a cleric and a god’s benevolence, which can run dry.

With ADAD, I am playing stories again, and characters must make hard choices when taking risks. Sometimes, there is no choice at all, and fighting is unavoidable. The fewer powers and abilities characters have, the better the stories become. What they get means something, and being a thief in these games is fun; since few have repeatable powers, your thief skills begin to shine, and you are doing all sorts of sneaky things to get away with the crazy plots the party thinks up.

Your weapon speed matters, your armor matters, your encumbrance matters, and the few powers you have matter. Your party composition matters, along with your hirelings. How you travel matters. Rangers can make a journey where you are lost and lose party members to wilderness encounters into easy navigation, and a few times, you make camp. Did you take enough hirelings, pack animals, and carts to haul your treasure back home? Do you have a home?

DCC, S&W, and ADAD all have this style of gameplay. Some are a little more rules-light than others, and some are more gonzo fantasy. They all have that legitimate game loop, where you need to be careful about how you approach situations and think beyond an encounter, and the game forces you to consider the entire journey.

Mail Room: Cepheus Universal

Cepheus Universal (CU) is one of the most impressive science fiction games I own. The Lulu book arrived yesterday, and it's significantly better than the previous print-on-demand (PoD) I received (I think it was from DriveThru); the book is gorgeous.

The game is also awe-inspiring. The original Traveller Little Black Books promised a universal science fiction game, but ultimately delivered only upon the Imperium. The Cepheus Universal game delivers on the one-book, any-universe promise. You can build Star Destroyers and Constitution-class UFP cruisers using the capital ship rules. You have mechs. You have vehicles. You have star-fighters. Everything Traveller forgets to include, you get in CU, including classic Traveller.

CU is the closest thing we have to the original Space Opera game, and that says a lot since that game was a legend in our group.

Hostile, from the same publisher, is a custom-built version of the same 2d6 rules, but tightly tied into the setting. Hostile is better suited for those who enjoy the corporate sci-fi genre, such as Alien, Blade Runner, and Outland, as well as industrial hard-science settings. You can also throw in "underwater" movies in here too, like The Abyss or Deep Blue Sea. Where CU is a toolkit that allows you to create settings ranging from Star Wars to Star Trek, or any other science fiction setting you can imagine, Hostile is built exclusively for the hard-science setting.

But if you are looking for that flavor of industrial, hard-science, dark universe, life is worthless to corporate greed, gritty and dirty science fiction, go straight for Hostile and don't try to emulate it through CU. You could, but Hostile is a complete universe and game built to support the concept.

Hostile reminds me of the Traveller 2300 and 2300 AD we always wanted to have. We played this in a campaign, and it didn't resonate with us. We leaned more into Alien, and that salvaged the game. Still, 2300 was not interesting enough to us on the low-level, humanistic, grease-and-gears level of science fiction gaming.

Traveller 2300 always had that identity problem. What was this game? It was somewhat of a "not Aliens' setting, and beyond that, it didn't fully take off with our group. To be a great setting, it needs to move beyond the xenomorph. Hostile has your standard 2d6 animal and creature generation, and just replacing these with "strange variants of Earth creatures that want to kill you" works well. Featherless, bat-like vultures that swoop in and rake hooked claws from packs that hunt from the air, squid with ripping claw-like teeth, horse like maw-beasts that look like undead lizards, and if you put a little effort into it and possibly a book on insects and worms, you can come up with things a hundred times more scary than a xenomorph.

There is an excellent Xenomorph expansion that turns them into all sorts of creepy monsters, such as snakes, spiders, runner dogs, and many others. The game is more unrestricted to run with the concept and turn it into something truly terrifying, and it also opens the doors for the referee to take this in many different directions.

If the corporations of the universe want to kill you, then none of the alien creatures you encounter will be something out of a D&D cozy RPG. Everything wants to kill you, tear you into steaks, and feast on your flesh and internal organs. I dislike this "cutesy sci-fi" that assumes a standard distribution of cuddly animals throughout the universe. Sorry, planetary ecosystems activate their creatures, which serve as white blood cells to hunt down and consume colonists, miners, explorers, and anything else the planet sees as "alien" to its billion-year history. Even the rocks and geology will try to get in on the act, trying to kill you.

Roll 2d6; if you roll low, the planet gets to try to do something to kill you.

The game is called "Hostile" after all.

Just assume everything is.

Back to CU. Eliminate Traveller and Alien from your thinking. Although this game does those things, other games do them better, such as OG Traveller and Hostile.

For everything else, CU is going to win. Star Trek, Star Wars, Star Frontiers, Firefly, Pitch Black, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010, and the list goes on. This also wraps up the Cyberpunk, Battletech, and Blade Runner genres quite nicely, along with a fair number of non-gonzo post-apocalyptic genres. CU does all that in a simple, fast, and quick 2d6 format that gives you a heroic option for play.

CU is the best "everything else" science fiction game there is.

It is challenging to review a game like this without discussing the alternatives. Part of my problem with this game is that the first time I saw it, I thought it was "alternate Traveller rules" or "another Alien game"- both of which were incorrect. I saw Cepheus Deluxe (the black and white printing) as a better generic Traveller game, since "Why should I change?" I have a lot of current-edition Traveller books, so that game is the king of that setting.

I didn't understand this at first, which is why I initially discounted it.

I know now not to.

This is one of the best universal science fiction games of this generation.