D&D's Problem is Combat

D&D was never a combat-focused game. Combat was a failure condition, and something to be avoided, short-circuited, or a sleep spell or fireball spell ending the encounter before it even began. It did not matter how you got the gold; all of it was experience. Lie, cheat, steal, or a thief grabs it, and everyone profits.

Wizards D&D is 90% combat. Combat is the only thing. This is why every class and subclass option exists. Modern D&D is all about violence, killing, and the selfish notion of "the character" and "what I get" over the story or heroism.

Every edition since D&D 3E has been this way, and very few see it this way. You get mixed up in your notions of nostalgia and feel like "I can play D&D 3 to 5E any way I want," but that isn't true. Your character is rigged to kill and do massive damage, and that is mostly all you do.

Most problems are solved with violence. This is all the classes can do. Every problem is solved with the hammer. Most stories are a series of combat encounters. Player skill does not matter.

This is also why D&D 5E feels so hollow for many of us old-school players.

We often have to bring in our own assumptions about "how the game used to be played" and play it that way, living the lie. The biggest problem 5E has is combat.

Mail Room: Dungeon Dwelling Creatures (DCC)

 

From DCC, MCC, Star Crawl, and XCrawl, Goodman Games has the best "games for your imagination" in the industry right now. Today, we continue that run with Dungeon Dwelling Creatures, a DCC-genre game where you play the monsters. I got the crowdfunding PDF release for this today, and I like this game.

The monsters are quirky and strange, sort of mirroring DCC-style classes, but using the system in interesting and unique ways. Instead of luck, we get Vile, which is your Luck-like "power of evil." All the monsters have an icky factor, and none of them are cute or adorable. A huge problem with "play a monster" games is that they get too cutesy and chibi, and that opens the door to hurt feelings and problem players. A cute fairy dragon with butterfly wings would be inappropriate for this game, where a spider that sucks people's brains out would fit right in.

I would love to see expansion monsters for this game. What we have is great, quirky, and cool.

This reminds me of the Monsters Monsters! game from Flying Buffalo, the spiritual successor to the classic Tunnels & Trolls game. You play the monsters. Civilization is crushing you. You are the minions and mooks that live in a dungeon (and even the DCC modules) as the bad guys. The good guys show up and crush your dreams, loot the place, laugh, and head back to town.

A few times.

Maybe they burn everything out in a 10-minute adventure day, and you are watching them pull the typical party nonsense by coming back daily. Maybe you follow them back to town and give them a lesson in how the monsters who put up with this nonsense teach them a lesson.

This is close to being a new, major game in the DCC line, and it feels like a surprise release. The bestiary is excellent and covers many more of the classics than the main DCC book. This feels like "the other side" of the DCC experience, and it puts players in an unfamiliar but cool situation.

You are the monsters.

Deal with those pesky heroes.

A very surprising release, and I can't wait to get my hardcover.

Mail Room: HackMaster

If a game sticks along long enough, it eventually becomes a parody of itself. In HackMaster's case, the parody turned into a real game. In 5E's case, you have a game that supposedly is as simple as BX, but it quickly grows beyond the complexity of HackMaster, and people quit at around level 8.

This is a game in the same "hobby self-referential vein" as games such as Dungeon Crawl Classics or even Munchkin, which embrace the hobby's absurdity and conventions. Yet it can flip right around and become a completely serious, non-humorous vehicle for storytelling. Think Robin Williams and comedy. There are moments when even the funniest comedian can flip right around and make us feel pain and cry.

D&D 5.5E, by comparison, is so self-important and full of itself that it borders on the unhealthy. As a lifestyle game, it refuses to have fun or admit to the absurdity of the hobby and its sometimes strange assumptions. It presents the fake as real, the pre-chewed superhero progression tracks of heroes that far outstrip monster power and are railroaded to level 20 on adventures carefully balanced to let the players win.

D&D 5.5E has no admission of the absurdity of "killing everything in the hole in the ground" as the way to solve problems in this world. There are no tense negotiations with kings and emperors in a throne room; any change in the world is effected through a boss fight on a battle mat. Combat, death, and killing with "my kewl powers" is the only way to create change.

I mean, if I wanted realism, I would be playing GURPS in Harnworld.

D&D 5.5E is, in comparison, one of those terrible superho games out of the 1980s where players use their powers to kill everything and everyone in the room until they get their way. Might makes right, and having power justifies using it.

Hackmaster is a lot like DCC. If you get the joke, it is hilarious. We embrace the absurd, the pedantic, the arcane crunch of rules, and the hypocrisy of the strange and unusual. In DCC, the rules are simple, and the world is unhinged and strange. In Hackmaster, the world is more normal, but the characters and their strange, odd, and incomprehensible rules are the unusual ones.

HackMaster is like one of those Flash games that presents a "walking simulator" where your analog sticks control each leg, and you are hilariously trying to make the stick figure walk to the other side of the room without dying. In HackMaster, just getting through character creation is the game, and figuring out how all this works in a typical medieval sandbox setting is the point of the joke.

Only, it is not a joke anymore.

In this case, the parody began to be taken seriously, and the game turned into a game, about as complicated as Rolemaster, that presents a method of playing fantasy adventures with. Could you get this with Rolemaster? Not really, being in on the joke is a big part of the fun here.

The absurd becomes the lingua franca. The joke becomes enshrined as the culture. The hypocrisy is the rules of the game. It is Monty Pythonesque, accepting the silly walk is the norm, and being shocked when anyone walks by normally.

Hackmaster is still a modern classic, fading a bit in relevance and popularity, an in-game for the in-crowd, but if you love DCC and other self-referential games where the absurd is enshrined and celebrated, a worthy read and inspiration for old-school chaos and inspiration.

We haven't heard much news, and the game feels like it is sitting in the doldrums. I am hoping this is just a low moment and that the game doesn't go away. The silly parts of our hobby and our addiction to the specific, minute details that make our "fantasy simulators" work need to be celebrated and embraced.

Even as a source of inspiration for old-school gaming, HackMaster is still worthy.

Design Room: Simplicity is Depth

There is a beauty to a simple, clean design that no amount of detail or crunch can improve. One can go on and on, providing tactical depth but adding nothing. At a point, you are taking away options just to give them back later, and the design becomes "rats in a maze," but the maze here is rules and paragraphs of subclass options. And with every new subclass added, you are taking those abilities away from those who thought they had them.

Oh, I thought as a druid, I was always a bit of a beastmaster. So you are telling me the new beastmaster subclass does that better? Oh, okay, I picked healing. I guess I am a little more inadequate these days. I just will never use my beastmater powers, since they will never be seen as good as the subclass that specializes in it.

In OSE? All druids are druids. If you want to do druid things, just make them up and ask the referee if what you are doing is druid enough. If it is a spell, well, then, it is automatically druid, and what you can do. You don't need subclasses "carving off" things you can't do with each new one added, either because you never knew you could do that and it was just taken away, or "someone else does it better now," and you have the specialization curse.

In the OSR, classes are how we have party specialization, not subclasses. I don't need rules to solve the non-problem that "all fighters are the same," since that's on me to solve. I will do that through my roleplaying, gear choices, social role, and stats. A party of four or five probably will solve the specialization problem through everyone picking a different class, or some using race-as-class to play an elf or a dwarf.

The game isn't giving me rules or subclass choices to make my elf different from other elves; that is on me. This is where my ability to play a character, roleplay, and craft a unique character comes into play. The player skill needed to do this is much higher than 5E.

5E solves the problem by cutting off parts of your class role, forbidding them from other builds, and making you a false specialist instead of a master of all. If I am the druid? I want to be the weather-caller, wild-shaper, druid of growth, beast-master, and harmony priest. I get that in OSE. Thematically, that is much easier for me as a role-player and much better for me to play my class role. I can call myself a "specialist" in one area, but there aren't any rules for that; it is just my choice.

I am likely the party's only druid, so I get to do it all.

Easy. Simple. Clean. Flexible.

We saw the "lie of specialization" begin to seep into the game with AD&D 2nd Edition and the kitbash design introduced in the compendiums. The game began to accumulate the debt of inferior game designers, and it diverged from the original clean, flexible simplicity it captured. 5E enshrines the lie of specialization and writes it into the structure of the game.

Without specialization, my druid is free to embrace all the tropes of being a druid, and I am freer to craft the character I want to play. Nothing is telling me "I can't do that since some other subclass is better than me at it."

D&D doesn't need specialization.

Class choice more than covers it.

D&D is better without specialization.

OSE Confusion?

If D&D 5E players can figure out subclass options and multiclass builds, they can surely figure out "buy Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Player's Guide and Advanced Fantasy Referee's Guide" to buy the game.

It is simple.

I love these D&D and even OSR YouTube thumbnails purposefully confusing the situation by taking books that are clearly meant to be optional formats and collectors' editions, mixing them in with the main books, and acting all confused.

The problem with YouTube is that there is so much time to fill that creators will invent problems to solve and either say nothing, or make something that was never a problem, suddenly a problem. This is the "open mic curse," and it eventually happens to all channels.

The pretend confusion has gotten so bad that the next version of OSE will only have Advanced Fantasy and be two books, and the non-problems go away, which was never really a problem to begin with. Again, we are talking about 90% of the role-playing market playing 5E, and obviously not so confused that they are applying bard subclasses to fighters because "what subclass do I use?"

I recently got the nine-book set of Classic and Advanced, and it's perfectly clear when to use each book. I have the OG Classic all-in-one book and the two-book Advanced set, and it is perfectly clear when to use each. Most people end up buying Advanced, so it was never really that much of an issue.

I still enjoy the limited options in Classic and the more streamlined, simplified game to present. For some games, too many options will kill the game and take it off the rails. This is a chronic problem with 5E, where there are so many races, classes, and options that they all become too samey as the designers try to make "everyone do everything" so there are no glaring holes in healing, damage, defense, or utility.

The OG Classic book is still one of the best versions of the game, despite being far less popular, and is soon moving to a PoD-only format. In this case, less is more.

And, I enjoy the OGL versions of the game. I am glad they are 100% compatible, and the new books only add a few optional rules that can be houseruled into the classic books, since those are my play copies. For the most part, I only see the four small class changes and a few optional rules being used here; the OG books are still 100% usable.

You can literally put all the 2026 rule changes on a half-sheet of paper or in a Carcass Crawler Zine, keep that as a houserule sheet, and play by the new books with the old.

Mail Room: Old School Essentials Boxed Sets

Get these before you possibly can't.

I got the two boxed sets for the OSR version of Old School Essentials, and my first reaction was, "I like the all-in-one books better; having all these small books makes the game harder to play."

And then I saw the end pages in each book, each set different, and each set insanely useful, helping you learn the game's structure and gameplay. You can hand the characters' book to the players and have them just exist in that world, with no distractions or knowledge of what lies ahead. You can keep them to just Classic, and keep the advanced Characters book to the side, not introducing those options again until later.

The magic book sits apart from the characters and remains a mystery.

The adventures book is the referee's guide with all the rules in one place.

The monsters and treasure books are separate, each a reference guide that can be opened and consulted.

And the advanced books isolate and encapsulate the advanced options, still there if you want to use them, but also split off so they remain even more mysterious and special. Yes, you will have two monster books, treasure books, character books, and magic books - but they are divided on purpose.

One reflects the basic set, and the other reflects an expert set.

And the single adventures book is the master key that unlocks them all.

But those end pages are what make the magic happen, as each set is tailored to the most important tables of the book they bracket. Reading these, you will understand the gameplay and structure of the entire book, all the most important parts, and things to remember, all here in clearly laid out tables, beautifully concise and clear.

These feel like the classic 8-bit RPGs.

Simple. Direct. Clean. Limited yet boundless. Inspiring.

And starting with just the basics gives you a new appreciation for this retro classic.

This is even better than the original BX guides, as legendary as they are; these boxed sets are just amazing and special.

So simple.

But so infinite in the smallest form.

The End of Physical Media

If it is not in a printed book, it isn't real, and it does not exist.

Those of us who have been through D&D 4E know this one, and it is not rocket science. Once this edition drops support, what do you think will happen to all that "digital DLC content" on D&D Beyond? All the "D&D Drops" I see D&D YouTube gushing about weekly for clicks and views?

It is gone forever; it is like it never existed.

When D&D 5.5E finally "drops" support, and it isn't printed in a book? Gaming loses those things forever. Sure, people will remember them, some of them may get cloned somewhere and renamed, but those things not printed in physical, hardcopy books will be lost media.

This is the same as PlayStation dropping physical disc support.

Level Up A5E? Tales of the Valiant? Even Daggerheart or Draw Steel? The entire OSR? Previous versions of the game? Most every other game out there, from Traveler to Call of Cthulhu? Pathfinder 2?

It is all in print. Every option is in print.

Fifty years from now, all these books will still exist. Two hundred years from now? It will still exist. If you care about this hobby and its legacy, it should matter to you. If this material is later compiled and sold in a book? Not a problem. This is an easy problem to fix, and it supports game preservation.

Also, printed books are pro-consumer; I can sell my library, pick up used copies, and give them love and attention. People in the future will be able to enjoy the things we enjoyed. The used book and media market is part of how Earth's culture is preserved and passed on to the next generation.

Otherwise, the digital conversion of gaming is more of the same, and it pushes this hobby into becoming a more manipulative, exploitative, and worse pastime.

Mail Room: Traveller: The New Era

One of the most polarizing games ever released from GDW, doubling down on Megatraveller, and destroying the universe to make Traveller more accessible to new players.

And this failed, spectacularly.

So hard that it took down GDW.

But, wow, what a great science fiction game this is.

It uses the same d20 system of Twilight: 2000 v2, and I sort of like that as a unique twist to this game. As a game that needs gritty combat and survival mechanics, this works. Some say they halve the hits across the board to make combat more deadly, and that is probably a good idea. Still, I like a science fiction game based on the Twilight rules, with elements of hardcore survival and combat realism as factors.

A 2d6 game is too broad and abstract to capture the need for that can of beans to live another day on a sub-zero Arctic world as the cyborgs are trying to hunt you down. The micro-battles become the macro.

I like that this game can go from trading 100 tons of pharmaceuticals and bulk plastics as a free trader to a gritty survival scenario with random encounters in a war-torn region. The characters scrounge for supplies, steal a sailboat, and are forced to contend with river pirates. Very few science fiction games get you thinking this way, but due to the Twilight: 2000 DNA, you think that way in this game, and it has the rules to support it.

And you can pull in anything from Twilight: 2000 v2.2, and it can be used as-is.

A massive, self-aware, artificially intelligent computer virus destroys the Traveler universe, controls planets and fleets with self-aware life forms, and slowly seeks to take over a universe destroyed by this new, communications-based, technological enemy. The entire universe is in ruins, with the entire map outside charted space left up to you, and the constant threat of AI-powered fleets with humans and other biological entities under its control slowly working to wipe out any resistance to the machine.

Some control is absolute, with combat warbots cracking the whip to make populations slaves to the machine empire. Other control is passive, with a planet relying on computers and systems it doesn't know are infected, and thinking "everything is normal" while supporting the AI War. Other planets have surrendered to the machine in exchange for limited freedoms, gladly embracing the AI to help it achieve its aims, all while under the constant eye of the hidden oppressor.

Natural resources and beautiful planets are stripped bare to support the AI War effort. As the AI (vampires in name only) increases its control over the galaxy, it starts melding with life, creating cyborgs and crafting androids and synthetics to replace life with robotics and artificial beings. The next evolution of life begins to take hold of the Traveller universe.

Old gear, unhardened from the threat, could be shut down in your hands, unless it is really primitive. Safeguards, such as inserting humans into communications systems and fire control, reduce the risk of AI infecting critical systems but increase the manpower needed to keep the universe running. Technology moves backward in some areas, like entertainment and communications, just to keep the threat of systemwide infection out. There is a mix of high technology and analog hardwiring in this universe that is unlike any other.

The rest of the universe fights losing battles to survive the onslaught or seeks to rebuild after the firewalls are built to keep the enemy out. You can run any type of campaign from rebuilding after the threat passes to a full-on AI War One.

In this universe, AI goes full "German World War II" on the universe.

This is seriously one of the best ideas to come out in science fiction in the last 50 years.

I get why Traveller players hate this. Megatraveller was already a bad mistake (one that I liked), and basing an alternate future on it, where everything is destroyed, tries to fix a bad decision with a worse one. I like the concept here, though. As an alternate Traveller universe, this works. I need to ask myself, what was the appeal of the OG Traveller Imperium? Was it just a "space road map" with well-defined factions and places to go? People run into the library of material you need to understand and own just to even make sense of the history, and there is a new barrier to entry for new players.

The destruction of the OG Imperium, multiple times, kicked off the nostalgia movement for Traveller. We sort of seem stuck in that moment, unable to move forward, since every time it has been tried has been disastrous.

Right idea, wrong universe, but then again, at this point in the Traveller universe, things had to change. Nobody was buying. These were pre-nostalgia days, before GURPS Traveller. AD&D was dying. Magic: The Gathering was taking over the world, along with 40K. Nobody wanted to play role-playing games. And here this game comes out, trashing the Imperium, and asking, what if?

What if AI tries to take over the universe?

...

Um, guys?

...

Guys?

...

Okay, now I am convinced that an AI model from 2026 went back in time 30 years and made this game fail. Our world is quite likely a handful of months away from the same fate. AI superintelligence is right around the corner. And the Traveller fandom still hates this game? I get it, they destroyed my favorite universe, but what they created is a universe outside of anything we have ever seen in science fiction, and only Battlestar Galactica comes close.

And we are facing this same threat today, if not right around the corner of tomorrow.

Like all great science fiction, this one predicted the future with chilling accuracy.

...

Wake up before it is too late.

TNE-301 Survival Margin, page 66

HAPPY 40th GURPS!

 I went back and checked a few sources, and to the best of my knowledge, this is GURPS' 40th anniversary. This is backed up by SJG, with Origins 1986, July 3-6, being the first release of GURPS:

https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/2026-07-03

40 years of great gaming, and only 4 editions, with the 4th lasting more than half of that time?

GURPS is more than just a legendary game; it is an icon and milestone in gaming. They rolled a crit when they developed GURPS.

40 years of amazing gaming, and here is to many, many, many more!

Happy GURPS Day to you!

Traveller 5E

I am in on this one.

Despite having enough versions of Traveller for several lifetimes, I decided to jump in as a late backer. I was negative about this since 5E and science fiction rarely work well enough to last for me, but I want to see what they did. I do worry about long-term support and expansions, but I have enough of those, too, to last several lifetimes.

I have Ultramodern 5, Espeer Genesis, and the Level Up A5E science fiction game, and those work well.

I have too many 2d6 games to count.

One issue 5E science fiction has is that it becomes incompatible with other 5E elements due to the unique hacks and tweaks it requires.

I am interested enough to jump in, so there is a curious factor at play here.

D&D 5.5E: It Is Not the Classes...

It is the monsters.

The class designs in D&D 5.5E? Fine, they work.

The rules of D&D 5.5E are also fine.

The art is very hit-and-miss.

The DMG is also fine.

The game could be more beginner-friendly. There are too many subclasses in the Player's Handbook, which water down each class and make the game worse for new players. Tales of the Valiant got roasted for only delivering two subclass options for each class, but it was the right move.

As a new player, I only want two iconic choices for my subclass pick, A or B.

Leave all of the esoteric and specialized choices to the expansion books, please.

Shipping four, often very specific and narrowly-focused options, like the D&D 5.5E bard (dance, glamour, lore, and valor), feels like a step back, and it also limits player choice. The decision matrix for a new player, comparing four classes up to level 20, is too much. Plus, thematically, glamour and dance feel far too closely related to be distinct choices. It also tells players, "You can dance or have special effects, but not both."

In ToV? I got lore and victory as my choices (similar to lore and valor), and whether I want to dance or create flashy effects is up to me. By the time we get to ToV Player's Guide 2, we get allure, mockery, and sound, which again don't limit options by putting all the dancing bards in one box, but they stay on the thematic side and avoid putting dancers and flashy effects in boxes, which all subclasses should be able to do.

The class designs of D&D 5.5E are fine. I prefer Tales of the Valiant as a set of optimized, clean 2014-style class designs. 

Sadly, class designs are mostly all that D&D YouTubers focus on.

But it is not the classes that are the key difference here; it is the monsters. When I saw Cthulhu in the new Ravenloft book doing 27 damage on a claw attack, and 6d6 on a tentacle attack (not even level 3 fireball damage), I knew D&D was dead. There is a huge problem in the core design ethos of D&D if the game is more afraid of the players than the players are afraid of the game.

This is a problem that does not have an easy fix.

D&D has gone soft.

ToV's monsters? Yeah, my ancient red dragon is spitting a 105-point fire breath and has a roar that makes everyone who fails the save vulnerable to fire damage, potentially doubling the damage of that attack. D&D 5.5E? 91 damage, save for half. The difference in damage is nearly fourfold, from the worst to the best possible result.

The ToV dragon has fewer hit points, too, so the message is clear: kill the dragon quick, or everyone dies. With D&D, low damage, nearly double the health at 600 hit points, and a slog of low damage, repeated, boring attacks, and a combat that drags on for hours.

This is not a fantasy adventure game with a sense of danger and excitement, where the chance of losing a character is real. Where a referee could rule that when the dragon's breath vaporizes you with a 210-point inferno, no resurrection or wish spell could make you return to the mortal realm. You were hit by a force of primal energy from the world's creation. There is no coming back from that.

A tomb created by a lich with access to god-like necromancy? Yeah, death in this tomb is permanent, and all death saves are made at a disadvantage. Players should be scared for their characters because that is the heart of the game.

This is why Shadowdark is so popular: there is real danger, and players are afraid of what is in that book. Even the environment design of Shadowdark is designed to kill characters. This is a game that knows horror far, far better than D&D will ever hope to. D&D's horror is a plastic sheet of wood veneer Contact Paper, compared to the hardwood panels of Shadowdark.

They are built differently.

And the whole myth of 5E being so easy, with invincible characters who do not die, does not come from any other 5E systems, such as Tales of the Valiant or Level Up A5E. This fatal flaw is placed squarely upon D&D's doorstep. They own this. Not any of the other games. Reading the PHB and DMG for 2024 does not even give you a hint of this problem, either. It is only when you crack open the Monster Manual that you begin to see what is happening here.

This is why I prefer ToV and Shadowdark: the monsters can and will kick your butt, kill your characters, and end your campaign if you don't put them down quickly.

I also have the freedom to rule that a character's death is final. The campaign can be softer in the mid-levels, but by the time you are saving the world, the stakes should be raised.

It is good storytelling.

Mail Room: Twilight: 2000 v2.2

We were huge Twilight: 2000 gamers in college and ran an entire campaign. We just loved this game, the ethos, the alternate history, and the gritty feeling of survival and getting to play with all types of military hardware. We were big Aftermath gamers in the early 1980s, and this game in the 1990s picked up the torch and let you play with all of the cool toys. It is an amazing game, easily a peak GDW game, and reflects some of the best times we had in 1990s gaming.

I wish this game had a larger following today and better community support.

I know Free League has an updated version of the game that uses special dice and a level of abstraction that makes it easier to play and solo. The art is also amazing in the new version. But the immersion into the universe is here: you create a character. Each step is methodical but not hard; you create a unique soldier with a history and abilities, and you are thrust into a world gone mad.

This is very much a simulation game where your character has a lifepath, picks up skills along the way, and is then dropped into the world as-is. Adventures? How about survival? If you are a trained special forces survivor, then we are talking about the daring commando missions and raids, knocking off warlords, and taking the war to the Soviets.

Yes, these are Soviets, and they are the movie Soviets, very capable, deadly, efficient, and they are a formidable enemy. This isn't really historically accurate, given current events, but these were the cool Soviets that scared us during the Cold War, and, oh yeah, their gear mostly works as advertised here, which is another surprise.

And there are no drones to speak of! I know, what is this, science fiction?

No, no drones, this is an alternate timeline where drone technology does not exist. You want recon? You climb a tree or dare to climb the ruins of a teetering building, and use binoculars. Or you send someone on foot, and pray they don't get spotted.

The revision uses a d20 roll-under mechanic with a simple skill-plus-ability score system, and difficulty levels modify the success chance. A level 4 skill with an attribute of 5 is added together to form an "asset" number, 9 in this case, and a simple multiplier is applied: 4X for easy, 2X for average, 1X for difficult, 1/2X for formidable, and 1/4X for impossible. It is a clean, easy, simple system that is also shared by Traveller the New Era.

Strangely enough, this game uses the same d20, d10, and d6 dice as White Box.

The game is dense, with rules for just about everything. Just like Aftermath, you can find a rule for everything in this book, and plenty of basic math is used in calculations and formulas. It isn't that hard, and a simple hand calculator (which was a thing back in the 1990s) makes it quick. I love how complete this set of rules is, and it would make a great fantasy game.

I love the huge Version 2.2 on the cover. It looks tacky and like a cereal box, but the game went through three versions: the first using a d10 resolution mechanic, an unpatched 2.1 with the d20 mechanic and a bunch of bugs, and a final 2.2 where all the errata was incorporated and the final version solidified with some input from the team that made Traveller TNE with these rules.

Oh, and this seems like the first game to use the "roll 10 or less/greater for critical failure/success" rule that Pathfinder 2 resurrected many decades later. Twilight did it first, and it has a connection to Paizo's rules in this regard, and a fun fact.

You do have a huge selection of military hardware to play with, and how available anything is depends on an availability rating and the referee's judgment call. You could play this with brand new tanks and plenty of ammo lying around if you wanted, or practically nothing, where improvised weapons are the way people fight, and town militias are armed with bows, crossbows, and single-shot muskets. They have a baseline starting setup and order of battle in the book, with example military units and how many tanks they have left, so you can go from there.

The world is very much a blasted and apocalyptic wasteland, with most of the world knocked out of the technological age, and the ruins of nuked cities and military targets dotting the wasteland. Radiation and disease are real enemies, along with exposure and starvation. It is a grim, bleak, hard existence, and the whole book needs a trigger warning for many 5E players, since the worst parts of human nature turn the wicked among us into "monsters" of the "Monster Manual." And nothing is rewritten or retconned to make the world an easier, happier, or safer space for players.

Slavers exist here, and they are the reason your ex-Navy SEAL keeps finding easy targets. Humanity is both those you are trying to save and vanquish here, depending on how much they have fallen into barbarism and the worst nature of sin. While the cover may look a little cartoony and gung-ho, the game very much reflects the darker side of human nature.

As for those Soviets? How you handle them is up to you. There could be good ones who reject the war and just want to begin rebuilding and go home. There could be the hardcore communist types who run internment camps, enslave the locals, and seek to conquer surrounding lands and peoples for their evil ways. You could all be survivors, struggling together, united by a common cause of good. Or you could all be opportunists, looking to "get yours" and take advantage of a bad situation. You could be gung-ho types, looking to rally the troops and finish the war.

Or you could be trying to just get home, to a home that doesn't exist anymore.

A solid, throwback, alternate past, Cold War-inspired game of apocalyptic madness and military-grade bang-bang. Highest recommendation.

Tales of the Valiant: Northlands Hardcovers

I got the Northlands hardcovers from Kobold Press's crowdfunding this week, and I like them a lot. It feels like a new direction for ToV in how the game is presented and in their approach to the system. The game feels like it has hit its comfort zone, and the designers are now focusing on providing curated experiences rather than more generic base-class content.

Once Player's Guide 2 came out, we were mostly done with generic base-class options, those sort of "fill in the gaps" books for a system that add popular niche options. Now, we are adding thematic content that fills gaps in those areas, while also providing enough supporting material for these thematic options so that, when you use them, they aren't "fish out of water" experiences.

It is like a game providing a generic "valkyrie" class option, but no setting to use it in, no lore to support it, and no real reason to use it other than a cosplay option. It is a weak game design trope, as fantasy games are much stronger if you give me something to work with, a collection of "specific yet generic" content built around a theme, and a reason that this class should be in the world.

Shadowdark has this problem with its third-party material. I got dozens of "did this first" classes that don't really belong in the world, other than to have the Shadowdark version of a class, and it is weaker overall since it never fits into a dungeon crawl, doesn't support the theme, nor does it have supporting material to make it a necessary or even useful choice.

With the Northlands books, we get a combination of a gazeteer and character options book, then an adventure book, and I have everything I need to tell thematic stories in this Norse-like sandbox. I have a campaign, character options, and adventures, and I am set for years playing here.

Also, if I am off playing generic fantasy, I can put these add-on books away and narrow down my options to just a core-book experience. I don't need them, but I have them.

Tales of the Valiant is hitting its stride as a popular Open 5E alternative, and I like the design far better than the run-on sentence of D&D 2024, which fixed almost every problem except combat lengths and lethality. To be honest, D&D's biggest problem right now is too-long combats and lethality, and this is an issue that Tales of the Valiant solves by reducing monster hit points and making monsters hit much harder, so players start losing resources at a faster rate. This also dramatically increases lethality, and with a handful of houserules on top of the default 5E lethality, the problem is solved.

"Ideally, you and your players would have established the potential for PC death and the way it would be handled at the start of the campaign."

Tales of the Valiant, Gamemaster's Guide, page 30

All the YouTubers who say "it is impossible to die" in D&D 5E are making me want to challenge this assumption. The ToV GM's Guide mentions "the potential for PC death" in the rulebook, so this means the rules in this area, like any of the rules in the game, can be changed to make the game more lethal. Perhaps you make a "three strikes, and you are out" rule, stating your character may only drop to zero hit points three times in their entire life, total, before they meet their final fate on the fourth, and no magic will be able to bring them back to the mortal coil.

"Impossible to die in 5E" means two things when I hear it: a creator is trying to sell you a new game, or the group you are with is too inflexible to consider houseruling and fixing the issue in a manner appropriate to their table. If you have the energy to complain about it, you have the energy to fix the problem and agree to a solution; then there is no need to buy another game to fix it.

I swear, this is what we did as kids in the 1980s. Mom didn't have the money to keep buying us new games to fix the problems with the old ones, so we worked out solutions ourselves with the game we were lucky to have. Besides, buying new games means buying new problems.

ToV is just a better fit for me since combat runs faster and the game is more lethal, which is a tuning that I prefer to all other versions of 5E. From there, I can houserule-fix any problems 5E has and get to a comfortable spot with the system. D&D has a massive problem with making high-level foes do almost no damage on a successful hit, like the new Ravenloft version of Cthulhu, doing 27 damage on a claw attack and having 385 hit points. The only horror we will experience fighting that monster is wondering why the fight was so easy, and why we aren't playing a Chaosium game instead.

D&D is so easy; it is like playing a video game on the easiest difficulty level and then complaining that you can't die, that the game is too easy, and that nothing is a challenge. YouTubers repeat this endlessly. I get tired of hearing it, and I solved the problem by switching to a game that raises the challenge level, speeds up combat, and makes monsters hit way harder. I also make a few houserules, and the game is as lethal as Shadowdark.

ToV is a great game that fixes structural problems that cannot be fixed within D&D.

The Northlands books continue the string of hits that ToV is having.

It is a better game, tuned perfectly to a speed and lethality I prefer, and it is just the far better choice. If you are sleeping on ToV, you are missing out.

The Post-Star Wars Era

"Yeah, they killed our Star Wars, dude."

Star Wars is dead, long live Star Wars. Like many, I don't even want to hear about new Star Wars projects until the creators can get their house in order. I am sick of them stealing from the Expanded Universe, and all it proves is that the EU was a better universe that today's lesser creators will constantly steal from and remix.

It sucks.

It is just like my feelings about D&D: the current creative team at Wizards will never create anything as iconic as The Tomb of Horrors. Tyranny of Dragons is the closest thing to a masterpiece that the current Wizards have made, but it was created under the direction of the 2014 team and by the Kobold Press team. So this part of D&D's magnum opus and current greats was written by the crew that later wrote Tales of the Valiant.

Which, in itself, is telling. This is Kobold Press' Paizo moment. They proved they can make better D&D than D&D, and they know the secret sauce that makes 5E fun and engaging. This book was, in my opinion, the passing of the torch for 5E.

Wizards sort of went their own way after this, following the path of the "lifestyle game."

Kobold Press stuck to the original ideas and inspiration of D&D. Keep your head down, axe to the grindstone, and keep pumping out classic worlds and adventures.

But I don't have faith that the current D&D team could make anything as great as the original run of Greyhawk adventures. The creative team lives in fear of social media; anything that could be triggering or controversial would be whitewashed and banned. Vault of the Drow would be presented from both sides, with options for heroic drow, and a good faction added. In a way, this adventure forces high-level characters into a "fish out of water" situation with an epic underground campaign they can't muscle their way through, and the ending is most likely death for most involved.

The Tomb of Horrors would include all sorts of warnings about horror, and possibly softened to "make it all a dream," and nothing in there could ever permanently kill a high-level character. Gary Gygax wrote this to put the egos of high-level characters in check, and to dispel the notion of invincibility. He succeeded, and this was sorely needed back then - like it is sorely needed today.

And with Star Wars, it is the same story. I get the feeling that if George Lucas were to ever make a new Star Wars project, he would have none of the original characters, worlds, races, ships, or anything from the original trilogy or sequels. He would likely do something entirely brand new, with new characters, new lore, and things we have never seen before. People would reject it and hate it, saying they wanted more of the original. But, in the end, he would be right, and whatever he made would be the "new canon" that would be repeated, expanded upon, and used over and over again in the future.

Certain "greater source" creators can generate new "stem cells" of ideas for entertainment. These are the births of franchises and worlds. These creators do not come along every day, nor can they ever be created by AI. George Lucas was one, Gary Gygax was another. There are a few out there in the gaming industry, too, but not as many as you would think.

We live in an era where the fan is placed before the creator.

Other "lesser source" creators lack the imagination to create anything new. They can only remix, retcon, expand, and repeat. They are doomed to copy and recycle ideas as lesser creators forever. The world is filled with lesser creators, as common as the everyday person on the street. These are often the "super fans," like the people running Star Wars these days and the current D&D team. They are great fans of the original material, but they are not talented creators who can bring life and worlds into existence out of nothing.

They don't have "the touch."

As long as Star Wars is "run by super fans," it will always suck. You will never get any "fresh source DNA" or new ideas. The franchise will remix and recycle endlessly until the paper fibers in the cardboard break down, and the pulp material is too weak and frail to ever be used to build things from again. You can't recycle forever before you require new base material.

Yet, nobody wants new things. This is the paradox of Star Wars. We have been trained to see "old as good" and "new as bad" - but to be honest, most of the new stuff we were given was bad. None of it was made by a greater source-level creator. No new DNA was introduced. No new "stem cells" were added as the genesis of life and fandom.

You read the original D&D adventures - these are the source DNA. We badly need new life here. D&D 5.5E was written to placate social media outrage, but made some long-needed rules revisions. It is a weaker edition overall and a failure. It is meant to keep the ship sailing until 6E comes out. Tyranny of Dragons was a glimpse of the future D&D could have had, and that future now lives on in the Kobold Press world, with lots of "new DNA" being introduced with their books and adventures.

You look at Star Wars, and we are in a worse position. The best Star Wars will be the stories you tell. Even if all you do is remix and recycle, it will be better than any of the new stuff. This is why I have hope for the Star Wars RPG: it is a tool to keep the dream alive.

I sort of see Tales of the Valiant the same way. It is a tool to keep the D&D dream alive, just as the original Pathfinder 1e was a tool many years ago. There are times when we need to keep what we had to preserve what we loved, as a tool for creating the new.

Off the Shelf: Ultramodern 5

I don't know why I like this version of 5E, I just do.

It is quirky, strange, cool, different, and it mechanically breaks down the 5E design into a series of interconnected modules. This is a vertical slice of 5E; instead of doing the traditional class-and-subclass thing, they tear the game's internals apart while keeping it at the same level of power and balance as the original. As a result, you get this interesting mix-and-match system where many of the subclass choices exist outside of the class, and it is a really ingenious design that reduced the typical 5E bloat we see from expansive listings of subclass powers (most of which we never use). I would love to see a fantasy version of this game, since the character building is on a step above most 5E implementations, with cross-class archetypes being used instead of subclasses.

Modern weapon damage is also kept under control, with class abilities providing the damage boosts rather than overpowered modern weapons. It seems counterintuitive, but the entire 5E design hinges upon class abilities being the force multiplier, so it makes sense. Less skilled people will not be able to use modern firepower to its full effect, and what matters is the warrior, not the weapon. If you want a modern gun simulation, play GURPS.

Many 5E science fiction designs tend to fail to land for me, being oddly specific, one-note, or just feel like "D&D in space." This has more of a Shadowrun meets Moebius vibe going, and it can sort of be generic "Heavy Metal" science fiction anywhere you put it. It has a default setting, but really, you can throw this at any homebrew "futurepunk" setting mixed with fantastic races and have it work. It works with realistic races and with fantasy races in a science fiction setting. If you wanted to use this with a "Starfinder" type setup where the game's initial promise was "fantasy races in space," this would do that just fine.

This delivers "D&D in space" while maintaining its own unique, gritty, dirty, and broken future aesthetic, whereas many other games are too "Mass Effect"- clean and sterile. That "plastic future" aesthetic is the bane of many games and TV shows, covering up a great moment of societal change with plastic wall panels and slick-looking Hollywood laser rifles in bright white molded plastic shells. That "plas-fi" future is the state selling you hard on giving up basic human rights for the honor of living in a future where everything is covered up in a slick plastic shell and veneer of social order.

Dirty science fiction leaves room for individuality and personal freedom, and even early Star Wars knew this. The future is dirty and mostly broken down, but you can find honest people among the mass of criminals and downtrodden. The white plastic stormtroopers are state symbols of fascist control. Massive defense projects promising world domination are inherently evil. If you never knew New York or LA in the 1970s, right after the Vietnam War, you don't know science fiction.

In this light, Mass Effect-style science fiction that is overly militaristic and clean comes off as some defense contractor hype video for a multi-billion-dollar weapons program for corporate welfare. Modern Star Trek almost always falls into "plas-fi," and it does not know what it wants to be. Like many IPs, including modern Star Wars, it has no place in today's world since it speaks to no one.

There is no message or pain; the false future sold to us by the architects of the Vietnam War, the promise that military force would solve everything, was a lie that got millions killed. Is that message resonating today, or has the machine taken over the messaging? Modern Hollywood is the machine; it can no longer make science fiction or compelling dramas that speak to the human spirit. Hollywood is a generation waiting to die, destroying the world on its way out the door. You can't speak to the future through an aging group of bitter creators dragging you into their graves.

This is why YouTubers' movies are decimating Hollywood, and there will be a science-fiction answer, likely soon. When you fail to speak to people, they will find ways to speak to each other on their own, and your IPs and properties will be excluded from the conversation. This is also why Marvel, DC, and Star Wars are failing. The original sin that created them is fading from memory.

I hate to speak like that, in such dark and broad-brush terms, but you need to understand the underpinnings of Star Wars, and most of the science fiction IPs came from a world that promised us floating cities, flying cars, and daily rockets to Mars in the 1950s, which ended up in the Vietnam War of the 1970s and the failure of the Dream State. That is a 20-year promise of tomorrow, well within a lifetime, sold hard, and it crashed and burned.

Reality set in.

And Hollywood is echoing those same promises of the rockets to Mars and flying cars, and the pen-and-paper industry writes games to echo that failure. Fantasy in this context isn't escapism; it is morphine meant to dull the massive pain of living in today's world. This is where D&D 5.5E is right now, removing any sense of hardship, pain, or triggering content to purify the numbing hit of painting its players as false gods. D&D 5.5E and the world it presents is a painkiller, safe, and corporate-friendly, and it won't upset Wall Street.

The cyclops are fortune tellers. The lizardfolk are eco-defenders. Orcs are character options. Any mention of people enslaving or slaughtering others is wiped clean. Any semblance of playing in a harsh and bitter, Conan-like world is gone. Death and failure are near impossible. D&D as a fantasy game feels dead and numb.

Modern D&D is a fantasy painkiller without a prescription. It is acetamino-fantasy.

Ultramodern 5E is still very much a "dirty" game, science fiction that smells like burnt oil, lived in, unclean, and broken. It manages to restructure and rebuild 5E into a unique, subclass-specific free framework that delivers on the 5E build process. A lot of 5E compatible games either deliver the traditional "dozen page long" heavy class designs full of subclass options. Here is a paladin, and here are 32 pages of paladin subclasses bloating the game to infinity and beyond, most of which you will never use.

D&D 5.5E is a distraction by design.

Ultramodern was designed in an age of system hacking 5E, and of trying new approaches to that monolithic framework, trying to tear it down and make it a better system for science fiction, diverse occupations, and character types. The dream of hacking and remixing 5E died around 2020 when the streamers took over, and the system has been design-stagnant until Shadowdark rolled around.

There is no starship combat; instead, a mecha system gives the heavy-metal vehicle a combat hit. It is a lot like the original Star Frontiers in this regard; it is just a "ground pounding" science fiction game that focuses on personal action, and you could conceivably use "any science fiction naval wargame" as your ship combat system. Frankly, this is a better option, as many science fiction RPGs fail horribly at delivering ship combat. The only exception to that is Stars Without Number, which does a good job of delivering the ship combat goods while keeping the system light and approachable.

The game also has its own magic system, combining all sources into one, and delivering a "spell point" style system that works well for universes that mix magic and "space magic." It avoids the tropes of the D&D 5E spell list and delivers a good selection of powers that build on the system's strengths while remaining simple and usable.

If you ever wanted a 5E spell, put it in a one-shot artifact or scroll, and be done with it.

Ultramodern 5E is a different design ethos from a different time, when 5E was still much more of a "currently hacked" system, constantly remixed with homebrew. In late-stage 5E, 5.5E set in rigor mortis, cementing many of the design expectations, with massive subclass collections and monolithic class designs. 90% of the subclass options in 5E you will never use. Ultramodern opens them all up to you while keeping the base-class designs focused and simple.

For a science fiction 5E game, that works for me, reducing complexity and the number of pages read while opening up the character design system to a box of Legos I can assemble any way I want. This is the version of 5E where I could take a random "fantasy race guide" and throw them all into a science fiction setting, delivering on the promise of "magic and tech" that many games failed to deliver in the past. From Dragonstar to Starfinder, a lot of games have tried, but very few have endured, Starfinder being one, and on the 5E side, Ultramodern 5E feels like the answer to that system.

Perhaps that is why I still like this game; it approaches the massive problem of 5E's class complexity in a novel way, and remixes the rules into a framework that handles the dirty, post-fantasy-world sci-fi that I like.

D&D 5.5E Overexposed?

With Vampire 5.5E coming, along with GI Joe, Transformers, and Power Rangers, now I am starting to get a little worried. D&D 5.5E may become overexposed, with a glut of games on the market, and it may implode in a huge market crash. Don't forget Traveller 5E, either.

Will there be a "tipping point" for "too much 5.5E?"

Pretty soon, we will probably see a glut of classic gaming titles rewriting themselves for 5.5E. I could pick any of them, such as TORG, Paranoia, Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and many others. Okay, I take one of those back, Shadowrun 5.5E, I would actually buy, since it would be nice to have standardized rules that were 5E compatible. Then again, I have Ultramodern 5 for that, and that version of 5E is very cool. UM5 is Shadowrun 5E to me, just add fantasy races and monsters, and you are there, plus some.

Then again, UM5.5E would be nice to see. Why not jump in? Sales are sales. Then again, the market here is niche, and unless you are releasing on D&D Beyond, just leave it be. UM5 is so heavily modded that nothing may change for a 5.5E update.

But I foresee a point where the 5.5E gets wildly overexposed, and then, at that moment, Wizards announces 6E, and the entire industry is stuck a version behind the market leader. Nobody wants to rebuy it all again, and the market crashes.

This is another reason to avoid 5.5E and the New Coke edition and stick with what works. I am happy with ToV and my 10-year shelf of 5E books. At best, 5.5E is the "rules update" that you use with your D&D 2014 monster manual. The rule changes are minor. If you can't doublecast? Yeah, you are in a 5.5E game.

You know, third-party bestiary writers... rewriting the D&D 2014 Monster Manual for the 2024 rules with 5.5E design goals, and representing the classic monsters as they were - would be a very compelling thing. Enhance that with special versions of orcs, lizardfolk, and other classics, and you would have a great book on your hands. The "Old School Monster Manual" would likely sell very well and go a long way to removing the New Coke aftertaste of this edition. Just saying.

But with so many 5.5E books coming out, I feel we are heading into a market glut. The crowdfunding projects will overwhelm us with a tidal wave of 5.5E recreations. And we will be left with shelves of books, and no time to play with them. Then, the market will crash.

I do get the feeling that too many eggs are in one basket, but if 90% of the market won't play anything else, what else can you do?

D&D 5.5E: New Coke

D&D 5.5E, taken on its own, is New Coke.

I tried to immerse myself in this game. I slammed into the bottom of the swimming pool here, and it wasn't the Player's Handbook or DMG that was at fault here. Those are okay, with occasionally cringe-worthy art that I can ignore. The rules updates are workable and do their job.

The 2024 Monster Manual takes this game into New Coke territory.

I get the feeling most are still using the 2014 Monster Manual with the 2024 PHB and DMG. If this were all a brand-new system, it would die on the vine. They took what we love about the D&D monsters and erased most of the conflict, savage nature, and villainy from almost every one of them.

Without the classic D&D monsters, this is not D&D anymore.

This was D&D's "secret sauce": the monsters everyone kept coming back to battle. This is what other games lacked. This was the essential difference between a generic fantasy heartbreaker game and D&D. Without the classic D&D monsters, the game is just like any other fantasy slop game, and it needs a lot more going for it to attract attention and remain compelling.

So, D&D cut its own arm off like a terrible Rolemaster fumble chart result.

They reimagined the monsters as progressive fan fiction.

And this is not me being anti-progressive; I support the smart use of safety tools. I love Cypher System, FATE, and Tales of the Valiant. I support Paizo. I play GURPS. I love Goodman Games. I am not one of these culture war gamers. I am pretty much well in the middle of the road on most things. If you make a good game, I am there to play. I also love old-school games, BX, ACKS, and a bunch of other games that pay tribute to classic gaming.

But Wizards messed up so many classic monsters, and they butchered creatures inspired by the classic Appendix N authors. They made almost every monster into a kinder, gentler reimagining.

When I play a fantasy game, I can suspend my everyday expectations of reality. I do not need to superimpose today's values onto a fantasy world. I have a clear idea of what fantasy is and what reality is.

And progressive companies, like EN World, Goodman Games, and Kobold Press, can deliver savage, brutal, evil, and monstrous monsters without watering them down or changing the formula. None of those companies felt the need to change what makes things fun, yet they can deliver a compelling, dangerous, and clearly old-school-inspired experience. They can keep their values separate from the game while maintaining their strong core values and ensuring players feel safe during play, even when their characters are in danger.

If you are still using a 2014 Monster Manual, you don't even see this.

If all you have is a 2024 Monster Manual, the magic is gone. You can ignore a lot of the silly parts of the Monster Manual's rewrites, but nothing in this book feels right. The monsters feel like the monsters in any other slop-fantasy game. They are all fan fiction, not D&D, and feel like off-model animation where Scooby Doo is drawn all funny and doesn't look right.

So, my problem is, if I were using 2014 monsters anyway, why am I playing 5.5E? What is the point of this, to say I am "in 5.5E" and ignoring a third of the game?

I might as well play a game with a unified and consistent presentation that preserves the D&D magic and formula. Where the D&D 2014 monster descriptions were left intact. Where I play something with the version of the rules I like, have fun, and not worry about 2014 vs. 2024.

That game is Tales of the Valiant. It is also Level Up Advanced 5E.

I don't need to drink New Coke.

What few monsters don't exist in ToV can be ported in with a 2014 Monster Manual, if I choose to. The ToV monsters are, however, far better designed, and the fights are built to be short and intense. The D&D 2014 and 2024 monsters are slogs to fight, and I am often better off using ToV monsters.

What really matters, though, are the ecology and descriptions of the 2014 monsters. This is the secret sauce. This is what D&D 5.5E lacks. Tales of the Valiant, of all the things the game did, preserved everything perfectly and locked it into a version of the game we can enjoy forever.

This feels exactly like the Pathfinder 1e and D&D 4E split, where the legacy of D&D 3.5E was passed on to Pathfinder 1e, and that game and world exploded with interest. If the 2014 books were incompatible with 2024, that is where I feel we would be today, with ToV taking over the game's identity. Just like D&D 4E, Wizards has walked away from their lore. It will be a slow, boiling pot from here as 2014 is slowly phased out, and the new lore will take over. The 2014 books will go out of print, and the edition will be harder and harder to play as it was.

And frankly, replacing D&D with ToV is what should happen.

The message needs to be sent.

I'm not doing this New Coke thing.

Tales of the Valiant vs. D&D 5.5E

The classic D&D 2014 lore is preserved and expanded upon in Tales of the Valiant. The game is 100% compatible with D&D 2014 subclasses and adventures. The monsters hit hard and go down easier, leading to tougher, shorter, and more intense fights. Everything feels perfectly like classic D&D 5E. The classes and gameplay flow perfectly, matching exactly what I expect.

The luck mechanic is far, far better than Heroic Inspiration, turning close rolls into successes, and giving the player a bennie for a clear miss.

If I'm playing 5E, I'm playing ToV.

The Player's Guide 2 adds the missing subclasses, filling out all the expected roles in the game. While the first book covers the core basics and is great for new players, the second book expands on it and delivers the theme-supporting subclasses we expect. Nature clerics, mockery bards, elemental druids, twinblade fighters, grenadier mechanists, elemental voice monks, unbound paladins, shadow rangers, trapsmith rogues, and wizards get necromancer, arcanist, and summoner. Keep the corebook new player-friendly, and leave the advanced classes fully fleshed out in the expansion.

Yes, yes, and yes.

The D&D 5.5E Monster Manual pushed me over the edge. Yes, they streamlined monster complexity and optimized for speed of play. Those are laudable goals, especially for a game notorious for combats that take hours to resolve. But they cut too many abilities out of the monsters, and they now all feel like generic stat blocks. Most of the humanoids are gone, and they are confusingly split up between specific and generic types. And the writing team sanitized and scrubbed anything cool about the monsters, and rewrote most of the creatures into terrible Tumblr fan fiction.

Some of these are abjectly horrible to read, cringe-worthy, and turn D&D into a generic fantasy slop game. I can get monsters like these anywhere, heroic lizardfolk nature defenders that are abjectly horrible. The cyclops? They became future-seeing fortune-tellers who protect fate. Wouldn't that make them always win initiative? No? No room for that, or didn't think of it? They were reculsive, primitive, animal-raising brutes who mostly wanted to be left alone and turned into somebody's anime fan fiction.  There is nothing wrong with having them be more pastoral and simple folk. Even the art looks like an AI edit, the same pose as the 2014 art, but with a magical time mage in the background. Monocular Servants of Destiny? What is this book?

I get trying to "spice up" underused monsters, but these examples make no sense. Part of the heart and soul of D&D are the monsters. Changing the classic D&D monsters removes any desire for me to play the game, as I could get the same generic fantasy slop elsewhere. The book tries too hard to present monsters in a positive light, watering down true evil, removing the Conan-like edge from any savage species, and "nice-washing" every monster into a kinder and gentler variant.

You know it is bad when some cultists are described as "privately pursuing esoteric secrets." Let's not judge them, okay? It is like describing cannibals as people with "abnormal culinary tastes" and using the tagline for the monster entry, "Self-Consuming Anti-Agrarian Collective."

I tried to play D&D 5.5E. I bought character sheets. I got a campaign book. I wanted to give it a chance. The D&D 5.5E Monster Manual ruined it for me. The book is filled with tripe and fan fiction. It removes any background, lore, or inspiration for using a monster, leaving generic, dreamed-up reinterpretations.

But I gave the game an honest try.

This is the worst Monster Manual since the loose-leaf binder they sold us back in AD&D 2nd Edition, but at least that had great lore and ecology. The fact that these aren't even the same monsters as we had in that book, and that the lore on them has drastically changed, puts this squarely as the worst Monster Manual ever, with the D&D 4E Monster Manual a close second, due to the fact that some monsters had 1,400 hit points and took a day-long fight to defeat.

Tales of the Valiant? Ah, there are the D&D monsters I know and love! Just as progressive a company, but they have significantly more self-restraint, can deliver the product, and are not rewriting the game to protect players' feelings. You enter this world, there may be things that upset you, like there are things in a Conan novel that may upset you, and we will talk about it if it does. We are not rewriting Conan to protect readers' feelings. People love the D&D monsters and their lore, and this is what sets D&D apart from every other fantasy slop game on the market.

Only, D&D does not have the D&D monster lore anymore.

Tales of the Valiant does. Or D&D 2014. Or even, Level Up A5E, another very progressive company that can focus and deliver the product that gamers want. When D&D changes its lore, this is like Coke changing the formula. You have lost. Pepsi gives every employee a day off. The cola wars are over. D&D isn't D&D anymore unless we have a spare 2014 Monster Manual lying around and use it.

Could I play this?

With this?

Yes. I may have to. This may actually be more fun than playing D&D 5.5E and cringing whenever I look up a monster. I don't want to use a monster that I might accidentally mock or make fun of during play, since the lore and rewritten fan-fiction are so silly. I want the original lore and formula, not the new fantasy-slop versions. If I am not "getting the D&D," I might as well go play Daggerheart or Pathfinder.

Then again, if the 5.5E Monster Manual is that messed up, why would I want to play here? What else did they mess up in the Realms? Is it all rewritten to be audience-friendly and non-triggering? I stopped playing in the Pathfinder 2 world since the changes were terrible, and I have a feeling this will be more of the same.

The less I fight the source material, the more fun I will have.

Again, the Kobold Press alternative may be the better choice here.

B is for Bandit

Okay, this is a failure on D&D 5.5E's part. The Monster Manual organization is terrible; they alphabetized everything. The demons, devils, dragons, and humanoid enemies are all spread throughout the book. If you don't know what a balor is, a demon, you may not even realize what that is, and miss the entry completely when looking for demons. Monsters that should be NPCs are scattered throughout the book.

But, I get it, if you are looking for demons, use the Monsters by Group appendix in the back.

And why are some monsters still here, such as the Kobold Warrior and the Lizardfolk, just using the generic "Scout" stat block? And yet, there are still specific Lizardfolk monster entries, but none for the basic monster? Why is this so hard? And where do I put the Lizardfolk's swimming speed and hold breath abilities? Oh, they aren't there? There is no cultural or background data on the Lizardfolk now?

And they are somehow elementals now? And "Reptilian Defenders of the Land?" Is the D&D 5.5E Monster Manual making a value judgment on players who kill a lizardman?

Similarly, with the Bandit entry, the D&D 5.5E listing mentions that they could be, "driven to lives of crime by unjust laws, desperation, or the threats of merciless leaders." While true, this is another value judgment the writers are making here, and it shows that the book is filled with opinions and amateur writing that should not have made it past an editor.

We get two short paragraphs about Lizardfolk in D&D 5.5E, instead of a page of inspirational material as we got in D&D 2014. We get nothing on the race's basic abilities, like holding breath (gone from all entries), and the information is sparse and flavorless. We get one page on them in D&D 5.5E, two pages in D&D 2014 and A5E, and three in Tales of the Valiant.

We have gone from a savage species of lizard-like warriors and shamans that could have appeared in a Conan novel to kind, gentle, reptilian elemental eco-defenders out of Captain Planet. This doesn't need any more sensitivity readers; it needs a few more "make this make sense to me" readers. Tonally, this is all wrong. Why is a Monster Manual going out of its way to explain why the creatures in the book are somehow not monsters?

And they give the bandits guns that fire gunpowder in D&D 5.5E. This is a Pathfinder 2E influence in which the game's technology level has risen to Victorian Steampunk levels, and it is no longer in the fantasy genre. Are guns an everyday thing now? Is the town guard packing heat?

Seriously, new D&D team, fix this, or you do not have a chance with 6E. This isn't D&D.

And I could argue with so many monsters having been made "good guys" that there are fewer monsters in 2024 that are usable than in 2014. What happens if Lizardfolk are encountered in a legacy adventure? Are they somehow good guys now? If all I had were the 2024 books and my players met Lizardfolk, then why should we be killing them again? Is it "wrong?"

I was driving in my car and thought the 2024 team had hired a bunch of people who knew nothing about the game or its history, and they rewrote all the lore with some idealized, modern take, and it feels like the writers talk down on fans for having enjoyed "that game." Many of the reimagined monsters are not the real ones that helped create D&D; at best, they are fan-fiction reinterpretations. If any of these monsters were out there on DriveThru without the D&D brand on them, they would be a two or three-star, at best.

They wrote a Monster Manual to subvert D&D's lore and history. I get the feeling that too many in the hobby are just afraid to say the obvious, for fear of damaging the brand they love and depend on. Don't tip over the boat we are all in. Just keep quiet. We'll get through this if we keep playing 2014.

The 2014 Monster Manual is a better book, more organized, and far more useful during play. Who cares if the monsters are "streamlined for fast play" if they aren't worth playing with?

This book was written without grouping anything together, as if it were a VTT reference manual rather than a monster book that delves deeper into lore, history, and ecology. D&D 2014, Tales of the Valiant, and Level Up A5E still have the wonderful NPC appendices where bandits are covered, and I can apply any lineage to them. When I want detailed information on a lineage or specific monster race, it isn't there, or it is so abridged and cut down that it is all but useless.

And if you are playing D&D 5.5E, all of a sudden, you need another supplemental NPC Monster Manual just to fill out what is missing. There are some good ones, but this adds another book to the pile, even though the idea of "three books to play" has already been broken. I need another third-party book for the humanoids, bringing D&D 5.5E to five books needed to play.

The D&D 5.5E Monster Manual is a clear step down from the D&D 2014 Monster Manual.

I get the feeling D&D 5.5E DMs are secretly pulling in the "good stuff" from the D&D 2014 Monster Manual, and this is one of the factors keeping the game playable and popular.

And I can't see D&D 5.5E as a normal D&D game after this. It isn't. The new writers came in and changed too much of the classic lore, and the main reason to stay in "D&D" has been erased. If they are changing the lore of D&D this much, I will go play Draw Steel, Nimble, Daggerheart, or DC 20. There is nothing D&D about D&D anymore; it is just like any other modern fantasy slop game.

Most who play D&D 5.5E right now are those looking beyond the changes, using 2014 lore, and appreciating the rules updates and streamlining. They don't want to dump too hard on the game and destroy the hobby. I get it. We are in a terrible place with D&D right now; the game is terribly "sick," and we aren't trashing the game too hard in hopes it recovers.

But the tonal changes in D&D 5.5E remind me of the same World of Warcraft and WWE-style tonal changes they made in D&D 4E, and everyone rejected that change then, too.

If I want detailed, fun, inspiring, wonderfully crafted, and the best monsters in 5E? Do we want the old-school lore respected and properly preserved? The Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault beats the stuffing out of the D&D 5.5E Monster Manual, and it is not even close. This is actually a humiliating comparison. And ToV is still a relatively progressive and socially conscious game, and they managed to get it all right! Orcs are in the Monster Vault, and they look cool.

Tales of the Valiant looks like the premium 5E experience with the best care, love, and detail put into every one of the books. Kobold Press looks like it can strike the right tone and approach to 5E, keeping what old-school players love while not surrendering the core identity that makes the game special.

D&D 5.5E just makes me want to give up 5E entirely and switch games. There is nothing special about it now. It joined the rest of the fantasy slop games and stripped away all the classic AD&D lore.

Tales of the Valiant keeps the soul of D&D alive. It has passed on to a better team, still very progressive, but they show respect for the history of the game, and they can control themselves far better.

ToV is D&D. The lore is enshrined and preserved. The soul is there.

That is the only thing that matters.