I had a moment there where I wavered and considered using Dungeon Crawl Classics for my 5E replacement. DCC is one of my beloved games, and my Pathfinder 1e and D&D 3.5E replacement, but it still does not match the elegant perfection and simplicity of Old School Essentials.
Old School Essentials is the perfect role-playing game. People will come along with their simplified 5E, 5E fixers, two-die story systems, tactical combat games, and all sorts of other avant-garde nouveau-riche RPG systems of the week, but none will ever compare to the original.
Anything based on 5E is based on a flawed system, and thus built of sand and flawed itself.
The massive problem with DCC and Shadowdark are the casting mechanics, allowing wizards casting rolls and multiple casts of the same spell destroys the fundamental "miracle-like nature" of magic and turns it into a commodity. At this point, you are a video game, and not a role-playing game. DCC is the best of that bunch with its emergent mechanics.
This may sound un-fun and extremely hardcore, but as a caster, I want a my spells to be single shot miracles; and never repeat-use, do-them-every turn, magic attacks the rest of the party takes for granted. The infinite-use cantrip and the "spell slot" system in D&D 5E are profane and blasphemy to the nature of D&D and the myths they supposedly represent. Even the DCC and Shadowdark casting systems are supposedly better alternatives, but built upon lies, and thus they do not represent the truth.
This is all "tech-bro video-game BS" sticking its Axe Body-wash smelling self into our hobby.
Yes, who cases about a 1d6+1 magic missile that is one-use? But given how few hit points every living thing has in a B/X world, it is death to any commoner. This spell at 6th level this increases to three missiles, and five at 11th, that is the AR-15 of the wizard world. At 11th level 5d6+5 damage (23hp on average) removes half of a red dragon's 45 hit points, and all but kills a 27hp white dragon in a single cast of a first level spell. Next turn, cast the other one you have memorized, or read it off a scroll you made.
5E would never allow this. Most of these newer story games would never allow this.
No attack roll, no saving throw. No 2d10 or 2d12 roll to mess up. No causing corruption and losing the spell on a bad roll. No hope and fear. There is no gamification to this, it is a miracle out of myth. Expend a first level spell slot and kill a dragon. In OSE and most B/X games, magic missile is an "instant death" spell when cast at higher levels.
A magic user is not a "wizard" but a being who is almost a god in power.
Still very weak in body, but that is the trade off.
Fighters are no slouches, either. I am over here with my girdle of giant strength and gauntlets of ogre power doing double damage with my weapons, +3 to-hit and damage for STR, and +2 for my magic weapon. With a long-sword that is 2d8+5 damage per hit, and another +1 if we are using the weapon specialization rules, for an average of 16 points damage per hit. A bugbear has 14hp, so you are killing a 3 HD monster each turn, and you alone could take a white dragon down in two hits, or a red dragon in four.
The martial and caster power difference in old D&D was a myth, and it only really became an issue (and got progressively worse) once Wizards took over the game and started scaling hit points.
This isn't opinion.
This is math.
And it is not because dragons are weak. They can kill a 10th level character in a single blow. Death is real in this game since the Advanced rules limit the number of resurrections, decrease CON each time, and put a percentage chance it fails and the character is happier in the afterlife. That character has had enough of this would and would rather be in Valhalla with all of their ancestors, awaiting another chance at life and 3d6 down the line.
Death saves, pop-up healing, and all this gamification around death is garbage video-game mechanics where you die and come right back, just like an MMO. Even the new "pop-fad" game mechanics like "go out like a hero" and "I take a emo scar" narrative death rules of the newer games are more ego pandering to players, and will only foster comfort and boredom.
No death? It's not D&D.
Do I want more character customization and options? There are plenty of mods to OSE, such as the rules from Into the Wild and On Downtime and Demesnes. These two books put 5E and its sub-classes to shame, and give me more options to tweak and customize my characters so they feel both thematically and mechanically unique.
And ODaD allows me to pay gold for feats and training, so those "level based progressions charts" can go back to the lands of centrally planned economies and gaming and stay there. If I have the gold, and blow it all on myself for the ability to shoot into melee, then that is capitalism, baby. If I fall in a pit trap it all goes to waste, but at least my OSE characters have a reason to get and spend gold.
And we are not given "state housing" like bastions either, and then getting hounded for micro-transactions from a VTT. If I want to pimp my crib and buy 66 towers for my castle, and a grand library for each day of the week, and a 10,000 man army, I can do it here.
Game designers, you are not telling me when I can "take a feat" on some "level chart." Sorry, I am going out there, beating the hell out of Dungenar the Dragon, taking his gold, selling his hide for shoes and suitcases, and blowing that treasure horde on me and my friends for college tuition, lavish housing, and partying.
The lack of a big-money treasure game is also a flaw of DCC and most all of these other modern games, including Daggerheart, Draw Steel, Shadowdark, D&D 5E, Pathfinder, and many others. Shadowdark is closer to Warhammer in that you will live poor and die poor, and you have nothing to do with a few thousand gold anyways.. They are often self-centered games that play to the "hero's ego" and ignore the wider context of living in a world.
If gold means nothing, it is not D&D.
If magic fells like a video-game, it is not D&D.
Don't be fooled by lies and games pandering to your ego.
They are not worth it.
You will get bored, drop it, and be on to the next one in a year.
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