D & Disappointment

Every time I give 5E a chance, I get let down. D&D, ToV, Level Up A5E, and other "full" 5E variants are just not that good of a game. I don't get why this game was even created, as an apology for D&D 4E? We had two of the best games ever made, D&D 3.5E and the original B/X and AD&D games.

Let's not talk about the new books, another even-numbered version release and the pattern holds true. Listening to people talk about that version I get the feeling the state censors stripped out anything revolutionary or nonconformist from the text, filled it full of mandatory party-approved nostalgia, and it is more about indoctrination into corporate identity brand consumerism than fun.

Reprint AD&D, B/X, and BECMI in nice leather-bound tomes (without errors), and just give me that. D&D was done back when Gygax left the company, and there was a 3.5E revival which Paizo ran with after it was abandoned.

Otherwise, I have better. 

Shadowdark is the lone A-tier exception, but then again, Old School Essentials is far, far better than a rules-light 5E old-school clone, firmly in my S-tier list of games. I used to think people who just said "OSE is all you need" were strange, now I get what they were talking about.

Castles & Crusades is in this S-Tier list, too, along with Swords & Wizardry. These days, I prefer the S&W "rules light AD&D" far more than either full AD&D or C&C, and the game has the best options and true "zero edition" rules. There are changes in AD&D that altered the original play of the game, most notably fighters and overly-generous ability score modifiers, and I like the S&W classes the best. If I play AD&D (or the equally excellent ADAD), I am taking an hour to do what S&W does in a minute or two.

Playing S&W feels like the perfect rules-light AD&D, like a Shadowdark version of AD&D, and it just effortlessly sails through anything I throw at it, from classic adventures to mega-dungeons. The single-save mechanic is pure genius, still. Plus, the game has options galore, and can pull in the race-options from OSE if I want anything special.

If I want B/X adjacent games for science-fiction, cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, or fantasy - I have my Sine Nomine games. Need a monster for Stars Without Number? Crack open any B/X bestiary and there you go. Magic items and spells? They just work. Want a B/X Shadowrun style cyberpunk world? Cities Without Number, and port in OSE races. These games work so well with what I already have and are my "super expander" games for a small library of B/X and S&W books.

Want a book with D&D on the cover that works with OSE and S&W? Get the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. There, now you can say you are playing "D&D" without suffering through 5E. Plus, no company is attached to your wallet draining subscription fees from it for the privilege of playing a broken system. Want beholder and other classic monster stats for B/X? This is your book.

"5E is cool" is the same lie I tell myself when I get excited about a new FPS game, telling myself I will be able to get into the game, have fun, and not constantly have to deal with thirty people using aim-bots and doing head shots from across the map. I do not care about the false options, the low-damage attacks, the laser-pistol cantrips, the choices that don't matter, and how confused the entire game is with all its action types. There are massive structural mistakes in 5E that slow play to a crawl, like the bonus action, which is a garbage mechanic that forces players to re-read their character sheets every time they get to act.

I still have my 5E game PDFs, but the 5E books are going in the garage. I have another crash-out with the system, and it ends the same each time. Of all of them, I like ToV the best, with Level Up A5E coming in second, but EN World's newsletter this year turned me off to that system and company pretty hard (even though the design of A5E is better than ToV).

I have games that take far less time and money to play, do not require special "software support" for characters, and work well each other by design. Plus, these designers and companies are small and hungry. They want my support. I would rather be somewhere where people want me to be.