Okay, we are still on our quest to get rid of 5E from our gaming shelves once and for all. Personally, I am slowly coming to the realization that 5E breeds dependency on the attached digital services they want you to sign up for, and it is purposefully designed with these "strings attached" and an inferior game.
I do not want to pay subscription services to play a game that could have been designed to make things easier and without the need for all this heavy online support, digital book sales, and subscription services. When the next edition comes out, guess what? All those digital purchases will be useless, and you will need to buy it all again. Also, if a VTT or character creation service shuts down, you lose all those "paid for" digital books you don't own, and they disappear.
I love you ToV, but you are following a failed, exploitative business model with the "classic 5E" style rules and not eliminating the digital dependency. OSE keeps a higher level of character power without the digital sheets and monthly fees. With On Downtime and Demesnes, we get a high level of gold-based character customization that beats 5E's preprogrammed progression charts.
By sticking to Classic Fantasy as our default game, we get a predictable, limited set of options that all games start with. We do not have "too much stuff" and our game gets muddled and confused. The options are all classic options, with no half-casters, specialist classes, and high-skill options that change the nature of game play. We do not have too many character races, and the basics (human, elf, dwarf, halfling) are the core of the world, and this is more equitable to the classic non-human options since those rarely get played these days.
Okay, our base campaign framework as laid out last time is this:
- Our campaign starts with Old School Essentials: Classic Fantasy
- All options in Classic Fantasy are what players start with.
- The only Advanced Fantasy rule we allow is Weapon Proficiency and Specialization (AFP23).
- Carcass Crawler Issue One has combat talents for fighters, and those can be used.
- Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy (or any other book or Carcass Crawler option) can be unlocked in entirety after enough of the options are unlocked, or the campaign reaches a certain level, like 10th or 12th. You decide.
- You can adopt "fairness rules" if you want, like max hp at first level, and a minimum "half the die size" for hit point gains for new levels; you still roll, but there is a floor to the roll.
- The campaign progresses with a system of campaign unlocks.
- Unlocks are like achievements in video games and are tied to quest completions, successful adventures, or discoveries, as set by the referee.
- The options in Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy not in Classic are campaign unlocks.
- Similarly, any race, spell, or class option in a Carcass Crawler Zine or other OSE book we use is a campaign unlock.
- Spells outside Classic need to be researched, unless they are needed for an entire class.
- Track our campaign unlocks in a journal, and those open up for future characters in our current campaign.
- We are using On Downtime and Demesnes (ODaD) for downtime rules and the special training options.
- Talents, Skills, Expert/Mastery, Training Proficiencies, Crafting, Research, and Raising Statistics rules are used.
- All the other rules are optional, but very useful.
This gives us a focused campaign to start, with better character customization options than 5E gives us. It also breaks us from the invincible character system of 5E, and the immortal characters. We are playing old school, like Shadowdark, but without the torch timers and random progression. Characters need thousands of gold for advancement and training, as you cannot rely on class progression alone for specializations and abilities.
Also, if a player really wants to start as a druid and have that unlocked, and offers to bring the pizza for the first night of play, why not let them have it? Do a very nice thing for the group, and we can work together and make something fun happen.
Our campaign type needs a cool name, so it can be popularized. Let's call this the OSE Unlocks and Downtime campaign type (OSE U&D). You playing by the "unlocks and downtime" game? Yes, that is better than Shadowdark for campaign play, and my players are hustling for gold right now. I my game has three characters in training, so players had to roll some alts to pick up a few other things that came up in town. They are currently doing underworld quests and hoping to unlock the Drow in the game as characters.
Yes, there is a gamification of the campaign, where achievements are needed to unlock classes and races, but this is exactly the sort of gamification Shadowdark uses in its torch timers, darkness rules, and random progression. This takes OSE and makes it into a "Steam game" where campaigns start in a basic "new game" state (with Classic), and the players need to work to unlock the cool stuff through achievements.
Do we want to play the campaign more and unlock the Bard and Paladin classes as character options? Can I be a Drow Paladin? Sure, but we will need to advance the campaign a little to get to that point. This can happen as fast or slow as you want, and it makes each new option special while maintaining a "classic game state" for the world each time a new campaign begins.
A little bit of gamification can be a good thing if it provides structure and goals. In Shadowdark, gamification is used to enforce negative game states, such as the torch timer and darkness rules. There is also a little bit of negative game state reinforcement in character progression with bad rolls, but that is mixed with some positive, so that is a wash. Shadowdark is very effective with where it gamifies things, and this is what makes the game compelling.
OSE U&D uses gamification to enforce positive, goal-based, campaign-supporting game states. It sets a "default state" to all games, and then creates a structure to add options as the campaign progresses, and puts a gold piece cost on new character abilities. On Downtime and Demesnes is a pivotal book here, as it sets up that progression model that is outside of classes and is shaped by the players. OSE plus ODaD is an entirely new game with a different power dynamic.
Also, our campaign embraces gamification and keeps players coming back to unlock cool stuff, and as each campaign progresses, each one is different. The players will drive the unlocks and what they work towards. If they see that "circus adventure" and feel they will unlock bards and acrobats by completing it, they will charge in and advance the campaign through this story goal. The circus could be the source of all bards and acrobats in the campaign, and that will make the characters' story drive the game's options and choices. If we find the "Dragonborn city" and this is where the Paladins are trained, that is also a powerful motivator to drive the story and have it meaningfully change the campaign.
5E has terrible gamification, and it only really exists inside subclass choices and multi-classing. There is no "campaign state" progression in 5E, and the entire game starts from an ever-worsening "default state" where "all options are available." Every time you buy a new book, your game gets worse and worse. Campaigns get harder and harder to start.
I had a group, presented the modern, current set of options to them (in D&D 2014), and they all quit even starting the hobby due to choice paralysis. Nobody wanted to sort through dozens of classes with hundreds of options in each of them. Add to that they had to all sign up for something to create characters, and get presented with "digital book sale" push marketing. They quit D&D before they even started. Never again.
The hobby is jumping on Shadowdark as the "next big thing" and while that is cool, I feel the bandwagon is getting a little overloaded and we are in an early glut phase of the game's life. We are trying to use Shadowdark to solve all our 5E game and campaign problems, but Shadowdark has a unique set of gamification rules that drive the action into a predictable state. This will not be great for everybody! Another thing that is happening is we now have far too many classes for SD, and we are just recreating the mess we had in D&D.
I love Shadowdark, but too many people are using new games to solve old problems. And the game won't solve every problem, and if you can't identify the problem you have with the game you are leaving, then you are probably just doing a "soft reset" and will have that same problem again after a while with the new game. I have the same problem now in Shadowdark as I did in 5E, far too many class and race options, and we are back to choice paralysis and garbage choices.
Why not stay in 5E? Well, I have to go to ToV to own a PDF, and I am still doling out money for character creation services and throwing money in the bin with fake digital books. 5E has its own problems that are structural that would require heavy modification to solve, like gold being worthless, and progression tables and multi-classing ruling the game. Even with limited choices, I still have a ton of problems with 5E to solve that OSE fixes with zero effort, plus OSE preserves character power better than 5E by far.
Just look at fireball damage, +2 magic sword damage, and ogres. OSE beats the pants off 5E (magic and martial damage output) and any version of D&D that Wizards ever made. Once you do the damage output versus monster hit point comparisons, you can't unsee those numbers. TSR had the math right, sorry.
But we can take the games we already have and use a very light touch, creating a little gamification of our own with proven and solid options like OSE, and create entirely new games with that structure we desire. With OSE U&D, I am setting out to solve the "too many options" problem of D&D, and using the system's often-ignored "Classic Fantasy" book to set a default game state, and then expanding from there. My gamification is very simple, true/false unlocks for anything outside of Classic Fantasy, linked to the campaign story. The Downtime book for character progression opens up new options for players, puts players in the driver's seat in picking what they want, and puts a hefty gold piece cost on new abilities.
OSE U&D is such a solid campaign setup I may recreate my "D&D 4E campaign world" with it and play that again, and work on unlocking all the cool options we had in that game. The lack of character power, too many choices, progression chart advancement, and meaningless gold problems 5E has are all solved with this OSE campaign setup.
Instead of chasing new games, focus on identifying and fixing the problems with the old ones.
Many times, you have everything you need with what you already have.
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