OSRIC 3: Hacking the Bard

There are no bards in OSRIC 3.0, at least, not yet.

The bard is turning out to be a bit controversial these days, and some groups don't like them because they weren't part of the original game. They do not add much to a traditional "dungeon crawling" party, nor do they support the classic "fighter, mage, thief, cleric" holy quadrology. Also, bards tend to attract the wrong type of player, the "spotlight hog" who ends up wanting to RP for everybody and who takes over every social interaction between the party and every NPC in the world.

If you have the best social skills, charmiest charms, and have the highest chance to "get through the required social skill rolls" part of the adventure, why not just lean on the bard some more? Social skill rolls and giving one class "all the RP skills" were among the worst additions to the game, as they siloed all RP in the game's only "diva" social class.

You can even make people do whatever you wish, even without their consent. It is a great class for Hollywood casting-couch types. Seriously, the amount of mental manipulation they give most bards in most games makes them the sleaziest character class ever written, and I would trust a thief more than a bard. At least with the thief, you will be allowed to be angry after he robs you.

Be careful about adding bards to your game. If your game is more about detecting poison needles on treasure chests, listening to doors, and quietly dispatching enemies in a stealth run through a dungeon to take its loot, why do you want a "Rock Band" wannabe along, making blasted noise? Do you know how far "bard singing" carries for? Two or three rooms, typically. You are going to give every monster in the area a free concert? We will have the dwarf shove a bag in your mouth to keep you quiet.

Bards are not for everyone; they silo RP, attract disruptive players, and shift the game's focus onto themselves as spotlight stealers. It is hard to design a great bard class without breaking the classic dungeon-based game. Most designers follow the D&D 5E mentality toward bards, and they deliberately design the class to be disruptive roleplay hogs.

Every class should be potentially "great at RP." My dwarf fighter, talking with other dwarves, about an honor-bound blood oath between dwarven clans? I don't care how high the elven bard's persuasion skill is; my dwarf will be the best at speaking to those matters, and quite possibly the only one who will be listened to. In D&D 5E? Forget it, the rules trump common sense, and the elven bard will do the talking. My dwarf will be reduced to saying "he's right" and "the elf makes sense!"

You do have a few options if you want bards in OSRIC 3.0. The first is to port a bard in from another game, such as Swords & Wizardry. This is the easiest way to do it, but it relies on having more books and rulesets around.

The next is to say bards are essentially multi-class thief/clerics or thief/magic-users with music as their focus (divine or arcane), and leave it at that. Leave the singing to RP, and just let the game's core classes define abilities. Since you are multi-class, you will level slower, but you are a hybrid with the powers of two classes, so prepare to walk the long, hard road of stardom. You will channel your magic through song and just redefine the game's existing abilities into "bard stuff" that you cast through the power of magical music. On the plus side, you will always be a full thief, and not these weak "half thieves" other games allow you to be.

I like this solution a lot since it keeps the game's core classes intact and shifts the flavor's focus to new sources of power. A cleric could be the cleric of a demon lord, and you would just reflavor the powers, but still keep the character a cleric. A kobold could channel arcane "magic user" power through shamanistic rituals, and the implementation stays the same as other magic users. This is a clean, simple, easy solution that requires no expansions, other books, or external material. It reinterprets what is there into a new method and outlook on casting magic, and keeps the fundamental roles and spells balanced.

My bard isn't "less than a thief" or "less of a caster" than other classes, only in the rate of advancement. The combinations of powers will enhance the character in many ways, while not gimping them in functioning as either a thief or a caster. You need a thief? Well, the bard will do, but they won't be as good as a dedicated thief, just due to the slower rate of advancement, but they can do everything a thief does, even backstab. Other games take that away from the bard, but this solution doesn't.

The final answer is to play Castles & Crusades, but that is another discussion entirely.

Mail Room: OSRIC 3 Hardcovers

There is a tendency in the OSR to muck things up, add too much bloat to the game, and put in so many new ideas that we lose the brilliance of the original game. Part of the reason I loved Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy was the beautiful simplicity; there are not many ways to go wrong with buttered toast, and OSE Classic was the perfect, simple, atomic, perfect recreation of the original game.

OSRIC 3.0 is exactly like that, but for AD&D.

Where Adventures Dark & Deep goes off the deep end of the pool with hundreds of pages of new additions ot the game, the ideas feel muddled and overly complex, where if all I wanted was an AD&D 1E clone, then I do not need all that extra fluff and positing of what could be.

There are times I want only the base game.

I want simple.

I want the best options.

I want a clean and streamlined game.

If I want to play just like it was the 1980s again, OSRIC 3.0 is the perfect game. The PDFs are PWYW, and you can get a free option if you're just checking them out for curiosity.

There is a post on Dragonsfoot that compares AD&D and OSRIC 3.0, and many of the differences stem from carefully considered legal reasons. The differences are extremely minor and not really a game-changer, and are only for rules lawyers. Some are welcome simplifications and clarifications (one roll to pick pockets, and rules for high-STR characters wielding 2H weapons with one hand). I like the changes and improvements, and this version is far clearer written than the original AD&D 1E PHB and DMG.

If I were starting new players with 1E, I would be playing OSRIC 3.0. Never has there been a clearer, easier-to-learn, and well-represented version of the game than this. This is a cleaner-presented, product-improved 1E with all the best options and mechanics.

And the game is derived from the Creative Commons release under a new, more open license. The now-hated OGL is finally gone from OSRIC! The game is free to live its own life without legal threats.

Stepping up from a BX set of rules to full 1E is a refreshing experience. A lot of what was left vague for younger audiences is cleared up in the full 1E version of the rules, and there is less room for interpretation in critical areas. OSRIC 3.0 seems easier than OSE in a few ways, with clearer rules for things that will come up during the game, and there will be less "winging it" at the table and more straightforward play and adventure.

Gary Gygax wrote AD&D for organized and tournament play, and the rules were designed to address the most common questions and situations that arose during play. While BX is perfectly playable at conventions and public settings, 1E clarifies many things individual groups would have to "make up on the fly" or "wing it," and standardizes play, keeping organized play clearer, fairer, and more consistent across game masters.

If you are playing organized play, 1E is a far better choice since less is left up to interpretation. Everything is compatible, from BX to games like Swords & Wizardry, so if you want adventures or more character options, they are there for the picking. The OSE Drow race? Use them as-is. The bard from Swords & Wizardry? Use that as-is. It all works together nicely.

But basing your game on OSRIC gives you a simple, consistent, and clean start. This is something more advanced, expanded games can't deliver, since you tend to have to "take in everything at once," and you lose that beautiful simplicity I like to see in a game.

How Far We Have Fallen

Never did I ever imagine we would have Bugs Bunny put in a game where kids use high-power military assault weapons to kill each other. If this were the 1980s, this would have been enough to get a CEO and the entire board of directors fired and run out of the entertainment business for life.

But here we are.

No wonder D&D sucks. This is the corporate thinking these days. This is the Wall Street zeitgeist. This is where "you can't die in a role-playing game" comes from. You can take a shotgun blast to the face and sleep it off in D&D 5E. This whole notion that stabbing someone or shooting them "doesn't do anything" makes me want to vomit. This is why roleplaying sucks. There are zero consequences for actions; the game has safety tools to prevent the referee from using them, death is impossible, and avatars are goofy animals in silly costumes. The entire game is a fantasy fulfillment simulator with self-identity coding and sexual overtones.

D&D owners and shareholders, this is where you went wrong. You don't need a survey to tell you what is right in front of your own eyes.

Foxy the cute fox man can't have his head blown off by a 5.56mm NATO assault rifle! You will scar me for life! It's "damage"; this is a "game." I am throwing up an X now! I identify as him! Sorry, that is a real weapon, and we treat real weapons with respect. We are too far down this road in real life to ignore this now. The world is at war. This may come home at any time. Shootings are on the news nearly every day. Foxy was cute, but he is dead. There are fox brains all over the wall behind him. Roll a new character.

There is a quote in this video:

"I don't think he understands that weapons don't do anything here..."

As the players get on a school bus.

God, I miss the 1980s. Do you know the outrage this would cause? Multiple state attorneys general would be on their ass about this. Donahue would be running this for two weeks. The nightly news would lead with this for days, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and the rest, all with grave undertones of what this is doing to our children's impressionable minds. Front page news around the country. Time and Newsweek would be doing stories on how corporations are militarizing our children and how gun manufacturers are profiting.

Are all you 1980s liberals dead, or did you just never believe the things you were saying back then? Where are you, people? We need you. This is your last chance to make a stand and say what is right. I know I am. But I am just one Gen-X'er with a stupid blog.

And here we are.

Now they got to Bugs Bunny, and that part of me will forever see this.

Classic Car Wars

I love classic Car Wars.

The new game is cool, and more miniature and card-based. Nothing beats the original for me, as I remember long summers of my brother and me playing days-long battles like a massive wargame on card tables covered with quarter-inch ruled maps.

And the game lets you design the vehicle your mind could imagine, from sports cars to buses to 18-wheelers. Motorcycles, too! Tanks, helicopters, boats, and planes joined the fight later. The game had both electric and gas engines for the cars, though, really, you could just say whatever you wanted the engines to be, and it did not really matter when we started playing. The gas engines were cool, along with the metal armor rules and the low-tech "Mad Max" style of play, where the battles were more "chassis and crossbow."

The game was slow. You were simulating a vehicle battle with real physics, one-tenth of a second at a time, though later that was increased to one-fifth of a second, and that sped up play by double. That level of accuracy was needed, since the battles were these chaotic dances of death where everything was in motion, and those "planned random moments" where a damaged side of armor appeared for a fraction of a second were often the difference between life and death.

If you don't have the patience to play a battle one second at a time without a computer, this game is not for you. And we designed these vehicles by hand, using an LCD scientific calculator. I still have this TI calculator, 50 years old at this point, and it is still working (and on its second battery).

Seriously, this country used to make stuff that lasted back in the 1970s and 80s.

Car Wars is a lot like simulating World War 2 dogfights: motion, fire angles, momentum, control rolls, lucky shots, and planning movement in slow motion were the keys to victory. Though on the ground, tire management became an issue. You are only as good as your contact with the road, and mines and spikes took their toll. Oil, paint, smoke, and other defensive weapons were highly effective.

Predicting your opponent's movement hours ahead of "real world time" and figuring out where you wanted to move, for 15-second slices of "game time," helped you gain foresight into where your opponents were likely to move. A car moving 40mph moves 4 inches per second, which gives you an idea of where it was going and could be in the next 10 seconds of play.

If you don't have the patience for this, stay far away.

But if you ever wanted to simulate a car-versus-car battle where every heartbeat of time matters, this is car nirvana. This hits the classic American "car culture" vibe perfectly, mixing it with Western and post-apoc genres in a tasty blend of nostalgia and muscle-car madness. The game slaps hard and is the meat and potatoes of simulation wargaming.

Fighting on foot is a death sentence, as cars were like ogre main battle tanks. You can mount an effective pedestrian defense against a vehicle assault, but you need urban terrain and a lot of coordinated fire and ambushes to do so. Pedestrians are slow compared to vehicles!

The game works for post-apocalyptic play, flashy autoduel arena battle play, low-tech car battles, battle cars versus superheroes, and every place in between.

Gaming is Adult Daycare

I had this huge rant on the topic, but I deleted it since it was way too negative. Big corporations are turning the games we love into adult daycare, aiming to extract live-service revenue from us all.

Season models, battle passes, micro-transactions, digital DLC, paid cosmetics, and all the things we hate about gaming are coming to every game.

This is happening in every game, from video games to tabletop role-playing games. The games are being written as "kid-friendly games touching on adult topics," and toxic fandoms are cultivated in order to create an online army to destroy and discourage competition.

And it is all-digital, all the time, and paid for by every hyped and released part.

I removed all the bile and negativity.

But the point still stands.

Gaming is being ruined.

They get us to sign up for these services, lock us into online systems, and they never let their hooks out of us. They foster this "adult daycare" vibe, the cartoony characters with the adult undertones, sexual preferences, and who sleeps with whom. Yet they keep the art sanitized. They tell us to "see ourselves in the game" and express our identity through our characters. It is insidious and toxic.

This is why I play older games and indie releases. They are mostly immune.

But I won't play any of these games that expect me to "buy in" and "keep buying in" over and over again.

Nor will I play a game that asks me to see myself inside its world.

Back in the day, we were warned against that since it was bad for mental health.

The Strange Post-D&D World

D&D can be dead, over, gone, finished, post-prime, yet people will still play it. "D&D is dead" is just a statement, and it means nothing, because people will still find a way. There are still people praising and playing D&D 4E, an untested, broken, copy-and-paste corporate disaster we had fun with and enjoyed for its run. In the end, it let us down, and that was a terrible moment.

We never started playing 5E because there was always something that felt "wrong" about the game. My brother loved the Ranger class, and that entire class was a ball of suck in D&D 2014, and it still is today. D&D's ranger is Charlie Brown and his infamous "bag of rocks" every time they put out a new edition. The rogue is close behind, and many games don't even know what to do with a rogue other than throw skill points at them and pray the game's skill system gives them something to do.

The real truth is "D&D is many things," and it covers the OSR, adjacent games like Dragonbane, any version of D&D since Chainmail, games like EZD6, and anything else you can "D&D at." When I say "D&D is dead," it really means "feeling you have to play the latest, supported, official Wall Street-endorsed version to have fun is dead."

That type of D&D is dead, and it has been since the OGL. Half the audience walked away in disgust, and they are still out here enjoying games like Pathfinder 2, Castles & Crusades, and Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Games like Shadowdark and Nimble have stepped in as better alternatives. You want hardcore dungeoning with a classic feeling? Shadowdark should be your D&D. You want that classic, pulp-adventure, D&D feeling? Nimble 5e should be your D&D.

D&D? They over-designed it with one of the worst action economies in any version of the game, and it is even worse than D&D 3.5E. They blew it with the bonus actions, free actions, what-is-this-action, and all the confusing, obscure, not straightforward, and frankly stupid action-economy rules that led them to write more rules about how not to break the system than about how to use it effectively. If you are writing special rules to ban double-casting Fireball on a turn, you have failed at game design and should be laughed out of the industry. It's embarrassing.

Something that should be obvious, "you can't do" has been discovered by D&D YouTube, celebrated and enshrined as a legitimate tactic and "rules as written" allowable player action, and as a DM, I am now fighting with PNG YouTube videos meant for clicks and humor, and my game goes in the garbage.

Sure thing, we can double-cast Fireball!

And then the next version specifically writes rules to disallow it, and the mess of special cases, patches, and fixes makes the game unbearable to play. The action system was broken at launch; you can't patch it by adding a point-five to the edition.

Even GURPS is far easier than this with its one-second turns. Do one thing if it can be done in one second. I draw my sword. Turn over. Next! My player argues (for 500 seconds or more) that they can do more things in that one second, and I sit there and count to one. Then I point to the very clear rules. One second, one action, unless you have or do X, Y, or Z. The special cases are very limited, since this "turn stuffing" is a major exploit in pen-and-paper gaming, along with "turn denial" against enemies.

I count to one.

Your turn is over.

GURPS seems like a breath of fresh air compared to D&D 5E, where I am sitting there, flipping through a dozen printed pages of a character sheet, trying to tax-form together a string of allowed actions my character can make during a turn, and then having another player argue with me about how I can't do that because this action combination is banned in this book or that.

Pretty soon, the entire table is flipping through books or on their phones, looking up rules. Half of them will get distracted by TikTok by the end of this, and there goes the entire game's focus and flow.

I have Tales of the Valiant, and that is my "last full 5E" game. The game still has enough sense not to go out of its way to anger the old-timers; orcs are still in the Monster Manual, and the game still feels like it respects the classic ways. It is not a classic game, and it is still 5E. If I want the real deal, I will play Adventures Dark & Deep and live in my childhood. That is a seriously great version of 1E, and it is the king, even with Castles & Crusades out here being the best 2.5E we have ever seen.

Castles & Crusades should have been D&D 3E. It streamlined the game while keeping depth and that classic feeling. C&C is the best modern D&D ever written.

Adventures Dark & Deep is "full Gygax" with the charts, factoring weapon speed into combat, and all the fiddly bits we used to love about the game that modern players can't understand or even stand to comprehend by taking five seconds away from their phones. If you ever seek to go "full Gygax," start with ADAD.

If you want zany, gonzo, over-the-top D&D with plenty of random death and emergent play, play Dungeon Crawl Classics. This is also another version of D&D that I remember fondly, recreating those "felt posters in a van" moments of the original game and its counter-culture.

And I think that is where I can sit here and clearly state that "D&D is dead" is because it became the culture. When "Ted the talking teddy bear" is your "D&D ambassador" because two Wall Street companies "thought this was the hip, cool thing to do," then you have just oversold Bart Simpson and made him, and whatever he is attached to, uncool. I have no idea why they did that; it was cringe.

You Icarused too close to the sun, D&D.

The game is now uncool.

Thus, it is dead.

D&D was always about the counter-culture. The fact that the original game had nudity and college-level reading in it was a clear sign that the game was counter-culture, High Times, post-hippie, nonconformist, and cool, "not in the mainstream" gaming meant for the fringe hobbiests. The sanitized, violence-free D&D Cartoon was a betrayal to us all, not a wholesome, fondly remembered artifact of the times. Putting the D&D Cartoon on a pedestal is an insult to those of us who were alive at the time. This was the moment D&D sold out to Hollywood, became mainstream, and went uncool. The dagger was further stuck in the heart with the Satanic Panic reaction and AD&D 2E, no-demons edition, safe for Waldenbooks in the heartland malls.

D&D was never supposed to be the culture.

D&D was counter-culture.

Is High Fantasy Just a Lack of Consequences?

You take any classic game system, such as RoleMaster, GURPS, or any OSR system, and put it up against 5E or any of these other modern "high fantasy" systems, and you will hear people say, "The newer games are more high fantasy."

Well, what is that?

High magic? Lots of fantasy races? Pulp action?

Not the "actual definition" but the "today's definition."

I get the feeling the meaning of high fantasy is being lost with D&D being so consequence-free, no deaths, superpowered characters, slap giants in the face, toss a dragon by their tail, planar characters, and godlike abilities. High fantasy is starting to mean something entirely different from the definition I grew up with.

The traditional definition of high fantasy was a world of plentiful magic with epic storylines. That hasn't really changed. I get the feeling that death is so hard (or even short-circuited with an X safety tool), combined with a "everybody wins" attitude, has shifted the meaning of high fantasy to a zero-consequence model and expectation. Safety tools being used to override referee judgments (you kill the guards, okay, you are caught and thrown in jail, X, we are triggered, take that back, no, we aren't) again reduce logical consequences and change the definition of the genre to a very cartoonish and zero-cost style of play.

You can't die.

There are near-zero consequences for your actions.

You have planar power.

You have a safe space to fall back on with your bastion.

No one can kill your followers there. Trip the safety tool, and your pets and followers won't die in the real world either.

Trip the tool again, and any consequences of your actions in the world won't be held against you.

Granted, this is an extreme example, but rules-as-written, this is allowed. No one in their right mind would allow safety tools to be used like this, right? Twenty years ago, if you had told me dying would be impossible in D&D, I would have laughed. This new breed of safety tools will change the game; we just don't know how yet.

With all these mobile game-like additions to the core rules, I really don't know what D&D "is" anymore.

The relative immunity of characters is a feature of epic fantasy, but it is not generally required. I could do high fantasy all the way back in AD&D, with lots of magic, plentiful magic items, and epic plots. Granted, you can do low fantasy with relative immunity, but that really isn't low fantasy anymore.

I can do high fantasy with GURPS or RoleMaster just fine, and the game is still deadly with high consequences to any possible action. In D&D, I feel my hands are tied by the designers to adhere to their style of play.

"Everybody wins" is not high fantasy.

I get the feeling that this high-character-power, zero-consequences, constant-winning, and immune-to-death aspect of D&D is becoming part of "high fantasy" to some, and even the genre as a whole. We lost the historical aspect of the game, too, with modern writers coming in and making everything too cosmopolitan and modern, and traditional high fantasy was one of the staples of the genre, and that seems like it is slipping away into D&D, essentially becoming an adult babysitting game, where there aren't consequences for any action.

Nimble 5e: They Broke a Million

There is something so fun about watching a Kickstarter campaign inch toward a million-dollar goal, especially in the face of all the naysayers and those on the bandwagon of billion-dollar corporations, and watching true gems like Shadowdark and Nimble 5e rise and find an audience.

This is the little guy winning.

This is cool.

I still play "full 5E," but this is just so much easier. Like a 2d6 game, it packs a lot into a small book that does so much; that feeling of infinite adventure in a small package has to be felt to be described. The original Traveller Little Black Books captured that spirit, and many of today's Cepheus games keep it alive and carry on its legacy.

Shadowdark captures that "magic in a small book" feeling and brings endless enjoyment to millions, being the OSR gateway game of choice for many 5E players.

Nimble is this generation's "Savage Worlds meets Traveller" in a clean, fun 5E package for fantasy gaming. It does everything D&D does, but without the whiffs, mystery action types that can and can't do various things, and general endless rules referencing and page-flipping that we have all come to loathe over the last 12 years because VTTs are too good at hiding the true complexity of D&D from us all.

If you want superheroic fantasy gaming, Nimble is the clear winner. It plays fast, satisfies the character builder itch, captures the essence of 5E, all without getting dragged down into the weeds. It is a game more about adventure, less about references to rules, pointless monster stat blocks, and rules interactions that bog the game down. You have all the same character power that you do in 5E, without needing a 16-page character sheet at level 14.

It feels like D&D, without all the problems of D&D.

Nimble joining the "Shadowdark club" is a great thing for gaming and the industry, opening up doors for competition and innovation, and allowing more people to play and expanding the hobby. This is the death of the "network effect" on which the OGL was based; the success of D&D does not foretell the success of other games, and the success of other games does not automatically "feed into D&D" anymore. The death of the OGL was also the death of the "D&D Network Effect."

All we need is the concept of fantasy adventure, and the indies can take it from here.

We have eight more hours, and I hope they can break the million-dollar mark.

Go, go, Nimble.

We are opening the book on a new chapter of the hobby.

...

UPDATE: They broke a million with four hours to go. Congrats, guys.

Nimble is Pushing 1 Million

Get ready for the new Shadowdark, because Nimble 5e is pushing one million dollars in its Kickstarter.

Congratulations to the team.

This is now one of the post-crash 5E Kickstarters to approach this level of success. This is actually huge news. I am happy for them. We need these sorts of small 5E book versions on the market, and I hope they achieve Shadowdark levels of success in the future.

Well done, and I am in on this one and looking forward to this in the mail!

Nimble, Shadowdark, and That's It...

Digest-sized 5E really is the way to go.

I love my Shadowdark books, and Nimble 5E is joining that collection as my "heroic fantasy" version of the game. The books do not eat up shelves of space, nor do they require subscriptions and double purchases to function properly and be playable. They do not take up a huge part of my life and sit on a shelf. They are small things, packed with potential, like all games should be.

The books are small, filled with fun, and every page is filled with imagination and inspiration. As much as I love Tales of the Valiant and Level Up A5E, they are huge games that require digital tools. With these books, I can have 5E, be free of subscriptions, and they play either grimdark or high fantasy, and I have it all in a very small space.

I am done with embarrassing myself with huge shelves full of books I never use, and games that exist in my house solely as bloatware. Honestly, the last "shelf games" I will ever support are GURPS, Castles & Crusades, and Dungeon Crawl Classics. The latter shines particularly well thanks to its special editions, size, and over-the-top attitude. GURPS is a blue-collar game; every book I own works hard. C&C is perfect in every way.

But for my "5E games?"

Give me the small, digest-sized, compact, and fun games I can throw in a suitcase and travel with. I am done with these massive, bloated, wordy 5E implementations, full of confusing action types and 30-minute player turns, character sheets that are dozens of pages long, and just want a game that is small and that works.

I am done with "big book" 5E.

That era is over.

Video: Dead Internet Theory Is Real: Resident Evil Requiem Exposed It

This is very important.

You know I am real since I am often wrong, I have silly opinions, and I have strange opinions, often based on a unique life experience. If you frequently disagree with me, I am a real person. I play GURPS and games no one has heard of. This is why you come back. You know you are reading someone with a soul.

I am not an AI.

Gambling companies are buying up gaming media sites, faking a staff with AI, and directing people to online gambling sites through embedded ads.

Now, do you know why "the officially licensed D&D slot machine" is so bad? They are selling our trust to casinos. They are creating a path from childhood to a life of gambling for children through our games. This is not "just for fun" and "harmless."

It is a complete betrayal.

D&D's "Digital First" Strategy

I heard today that Wizards is embracing a "digital first" strategy for D&D.

I am not interested. This is something that drives me away from the game, since it forces customers to D&D Beyond for exclusive releases, digital-only DLC, and other money-making schemes that remove the game from the tabletop and turn it into an "online only" game.

D&D 5E already has a massive "digital problem": you need to buy the physical books, then a digital version elsewhere just to play the game, and you are locked into a VTT platform. I have even seen this with games like Tales of the Valiant, where I am locked into the Shard VTT for that game.

Forget playing on a tabletop with your friends, maps, and miniatures.

I can still play Nimble and Shadowdark around a table with friends, and these are the 5E versions I support. Other than that, it is either an OSR game or Castles & Crusades that fits the fantasy tabletop gameplay style the best.

Digital first means players last, and heralds the death of the game.

You will never compete with mobile gaming in the digital market.

Nimble 5e: Is it a "Real" Game?

The core rulebook is impossibly thin. I pick it up, and the first thought that comes into my head is, "Is this a game?" It feels more like a mod for a full version of 5E than a full game, like the book is meant to use "with" an established game as a rules hack.

But it isn't.

This is actually a full game. The core rulebook is 58 pages, and very concise. Granted, you pull in a lot of the "how to play" stuff from other games, and a lot of that fluff isn't needed here. In fact, I prefer a game that keeps the "how to play" section light and doesn't tell you too much; many games go overboard in this area and end up helping you plan what snacks to bring. Also, there are so many "self-help" books on D&D on Amazon, and so many YouTube videos on the subject that there is no lack of information on how to play a role-playing game. There may be too much information, and most of it is bad.

In fact, the lack of "how to play" information in the original role-playing games helped develop many of the "OSR tropes" we use today, since many of them were never written down back then. There is an argument to make that "how you play is the right way" and to stop micro-managing gamers who are smart enough to figure this out for themselves. Who knows, maybe the "new tropes" could have been built without all this "how to play" advice, and we are missing out on something?

But at first glance, Nimble 5e feels too small to be a real game, yet it is. The "core rules" of Old School Essentials (minus the classes and spells) are about 60-70 pages long, so it is of a similar length; just the rules needed for in-game play are not all that long in most games. OSE also has a lot of "old school procedures" built in, so it is about 10 pages longer due to the OSR standards for travel, exploration, hiring, and so on. The character's book in Nimble 5e is the primary source of information, and the two books are wisely split so as not to force people to fight over books when referencing class abilities versus game rules.

5E can't be this compact, can it? Shadowdark proves it can be, and the core rules of that game are only about 10-12 pages, last I checked. 5E does not have to be the game that takes up a shelf. It can be small, tight, focused, and just as expressive as a set of rules the size of a set of encyclopedias. All it takes is a better design team and a company that does not pay by the word.

Design matters. Concise rules are a highly desirable feature. We can demand better.

One of the issues with the core set is a two-subclass limit to the core classes, but that should improve with the expansion and the subclass additions in the zines. The monsters are being massively expanded, too, and that is a welcome change. All the standard fantasy tropes are here, plus a bunch of expansion roles, races, and modern fantasy standards. This is more of a modern fantasy game where "anything goes," but that is the current state of fantasy: random shapes gather with random roles, and everyone figures out a way. Classic fantasy has more established roles: tanks, healers, damage, rogues, and so on.

Tales of the Valiant is still an excellent "companion game" for Nimble 5e. Anything Nimble needs, monsters, magic items, spells for rare scrolls, potions, gear, and other random bits, ToV can fill in. Adventures can be pulled from any 5E source, but Kobold Press also publishes excellent adventures that directly port into Nimble, and that modern adventuring feel is present here.

Nimble needing other games is what made me think Nimble isn't a full game, but as time goes on, Nimble gets better and better, and these things get filled in and Nimble-ized. Magic items, potions, runes, and unique spell scrolls, I would love to see come next. Having 200+ monsters fills in a huge gap in the game.

ToV is excellent on its own, but it is still "full 5E." Nimble is something else entirely, not rules-light, but rules-fast. I like systems that get out of the way of my imagination and character sheets that are not 12 pages long. Nimble can do everything ToV does, but with an open 3-action system that encourages fast and imaginative play. If I want to play "adventure heroes," I will reach for Nimble before I do a full 5E implementation, just because 5E is too much game in most cases, designed with a clumsy mix of modern storytelling and old-school sensibilities that don't always work great together.

Nimble? The closest we are getting to OSE in 5E outside of Shadowdark, without the grimdark.

If you want the gritty old-school feeling, play Shadowdark.

If you want that freewheeling, anything goes feeling, play Nimble.

With these two games, there is very little reason to pick up a slow-playing, big-book version of 5E ever again. Why am I wasting time and money on online character creation tools and printing out character sheets dozens of pages long? If I can get the same experience from a single-page character sheet, that is what I have always wanted from a 5E game, so I will play that.

Nimble started as a 5E mod, but it slowly became its own thing and remains side-grade-compatible with everything in 5E, which is a very smart move. Nimble feels like the BX version of 5E, moddable, easier to play, faster, and far less complicated than the original game, but that simplicity is freedom and expressiveness to try new things, focus on stories, and break away from the chains of rules and limited, pedantic action types limiting your ideas and playstyle.

5E's action economy sucks, and telling players, "you can't do that cool thing because of this rule," kills the game for many. D&D 5E's action types mutated into a horrible, terrible, slow, and confusing game, and it never should have been that way. They redid the game in 2024 with 5.5E and never fixed the worst part of the game. The broken D&D action economy is the first thing Pathfinder 2E fixed, and there is a reason for that.

In Nimble 5e? Three actions. Have fun. This is the way it should be.

The fact that Nimble is math-compatible with 5E and that monsters can be ported directly is a huge help. This means we get all the 5E adventures directly usable with the new rules. Nimble looks at piles of 5E rulebooks, shrugs its shoulders, and smiles, saying, "Come play this with me and stop slogging through endless rules and incompatible action types."

Why am I spending my time in an online-only character sheet program and being forced to buy digital books to access character features? Why am I buying books twice to play the game? Why am I being forced to play on VTTs? Why do I have to care about the difference between standard actions and bonus actions, and what can and can't be done with either?

Again, everything I dislike about 5E is fixed in Nimble. I can just play. I am not bogged down in rules or character sheets. Part of why I like Numble 5e so much is the parts I dislike about full 5E. I have to stop myself; every time I talk about why I like Nimble, I begin talking about how I dislike 5E.

It is a vicious cycle. If all you see Nimble as is "how much you hate 5E," then yes, Nimble is not a "real" game to you. The only thing that defines it in your eyes is your dislike of another game. Nimble is its own thing, worthy of standing on its own without 5E hanging over its shoulder constantly.

Nimble is what 2024 D&D should have been. This is the superheroic fantasy version of 5E, like Shadowdark is the old-school version.

Stepping back and looking at Nimble, how I look at Shadowdark, then, yes, Nimble 5e is a "real" game for me.

And a really good one.

Monsters & More! A Nimble TTRPG Reprint & Expansion

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nimblerpg/monsters-and-more-a-nimble-ttrpg-reprint-and-expansion

The Nimble 5e game is an interesting box set, and they currently have a Kickstarter going for a sorely needed monster expansion book, and the game now feels complete. The original game felt woefully short of monsters, and while all the existing 5E monsters (and magic items) are directly convertible, the game desperately needed its own bestiary. There are also expansion classes in this Kickstarter, so the game is growing.

Everything I dislike about 5E I like about Nimble. They fix the number one problem that 5E has, the size of the game and books. The only issue is that, like most 5E books, this is an expensive game and a premium product. The price of everything has gone up, and unlike OSR games fighting to keep the value proposition, this is not an inexpensive hobby. Thankfully, you only need the core books, and the per-player cost is lower than the gamemaster buy-in.

A few digest-sized hardcovers are all you need to play 5E. Nimble 5e captures the magical Old School Essentials compact design style perfectly, and it proves you do not need fifty pounds of books to play and enjoy 5E. Nimble 5e perfectly serves as an OSE 5E, capturing that heroic playstyle in a small-book format without needing to go hardcore Shadowdark. While Shadowdark is a great game, Nimble replaces the need to have a massive, multi-shelf library to support heroic 5E play.

Nimble 5e does everything 5E does, but with far less tripe, overwriting, and worthless fluff. Please don't force me to break my back carrying hundreds of pages of coffee-table art to a game, or listen to the game designers spend a dozen full-sized pages explaining what a paladin does. Obviously, a lot of 5E books are paid-by-the-word, and it is our shelves and backpacks that suffer. In the era of endlessly-generated AI fluff and pure generative agentic e-waste, Nimble 5e is refreshing.

They state Nimble 5e has no AI content. All of this is real. Another huge thank you!

Also, there do not appear to be any passive checks in this game, and it leans more into the "say what you do" old-school sensibility, limiting checks to what matters. Finally. Passive skills are horrible, putting the GM in VCR mode, and it removes interactivity and verbal exploration. If something is a "passive check," then just say it. Why are the rules forcing you to hide information, and putting whether you say it or not behind rules tied to character builds? If there is a pit trap, telegraph it. There are two rules in Nimble that put a wooden stake in the heart of the "hidden information" game:

"When information is necessary: Choose one hero who "knows" the information. For instance: the Hunter knows about this forest, the Mage knows what an arcane symbol means. Alternatively, have everyone roll a skill check and reward the hero with the highest roll with the information. They are the ones who knew it!" - Nimble, GM Guide, Page 5.

So if you have a rogue character or a machinist, they will have the trap knowledge. Have one with the party? Make them automatically spot the suspicious floor ahead, and give them the best information.  If you don't, you still see something is off, but you don't have the best information on what it may be. And:

"Telegraph Danger. You MUST be clear about danger: you are their eyes and ears. They cannot make meaningful decisions if they are in the dark about how deadly a situation is. If you telegraphed danger and the heroes still make bad decisions, let them suffer the consequences of their choices." - Nimble, GM Guide, Page 5.

And they say make traps obvious, and not to gate critical information behind skill checks. This even applies to lore, persuasion, and other checks. Do not gate story progression behind the skill system, or hide information that is needed to move forward.

This is an area where modern games "get it," and D&D tries to walk the line between OSR play and modern adventure gaming, and pleases no one. While I love my OSR-style "10-foot-pole play" and "verbally poke and twist everything" sort of verbal, descriptive puzzle-solving, there exists an equally viable "narrative action RPG" style of play that does away with those tropes and focuses on combat and roleplaying. You can have both, but D&D tries to codify the old-school play style in endless rules and fails terribly in a passive quagmire.

Also, no whiffs or to-hit rolls. Just roll damage. If you roll a one, you miss. If you roll max, damage explodes. This is good stuff, and it speeds play. What is the difference between a low damage roll and a miss anyway? In 5E, versus a monster with 30 hit points, rolling a one on damage might as well be a miss. Only make me make rolls that matter, thank you.

Where is the game still lacking? Honestly, utility spells and magic items. The former is solved easily by a bit of GM fiat, letting similar or attack spells have utility uses, or just allowing a skill check to produce a utility magical effect. The latter is solved easily by using magic items from any 5E game. Similarly, popular utility spells from 5E can be ported in using scrolls, either finding or creation (passwall, teleport, etc.). These are not huge problems and are easily solved.

Personally, I like being able to control game-changing and story-breaking utility spells like passwall,  ESP, telepathy, teleport, gate, scrying, banishment, and resurrection through spell scrolls. You find a scroll of teleportation, use it wisely since this may be the only one you find. They are still "in the game," but not so accessible that they are breaking every story the players come across.

There is a lot to like about Nimble, and as a lightweight (but not rules-light) system that can play all my 5E adventures without breaking my shelf, hurting my back, or wasting my time.

The Kickstarter for the monster expansion is worthy. This is the last week, and this is a worthy game and buy-in.

Highly recommended.

D&D 5.5E

Well, that seals it, D&D 2024/5.5E is a complete failure.

Wizards made an internal policy change: on D&D Beyond, they call it 5.5E, but outside the company (and in every book printed), it is still D&D 2024. I haven't heard of anything else changing, such as requiring books on DM's Guild to use "the latest version of the rules," and they are not reprinting or supporting D&D 5E books, so at this point, who cares? If they are still not officially supporting 2014 5E, what does any of this matter?

The 2024 name was terrible, since it is two years old now and will be three next year. This is as bad as songs that mention the current year, with lines like "It's 1990!"

Sigh.

An already terrible and confusing strategy gets worse, with the game being called one thing on your website and another thing everywhere else. Your partners have two sets of rules to work under. If we are publishing here, we can call it this, but elsewhere it has to be that.

I've seen less confused customers walk away from things that even slightly gave them pause. I've seen people not buy a car because of the sound the gas tank cover makes when closing, or how operating the controls feels. These little things matter so much, yet nobody gets it, or feels "they will ignore that."

They don't ignore that.

In fact, the tiniest things are often the biggest giveaways.

Why is this company even writing new editions of the rules? What they have are the best games ever written. AD&D should be treated like the original Monopoly rules, or a novel such as The Lord of the Rings; it is timeless and does not need updating or changing by sensitivity readers. Leave it be, and let people play. Support classic 5E, and allow people to publish for that. Get out of creating new editions of the game to support; it only gets worse from here with 6E, 7E, 8E, and 9E, and all the 0.5 variants of those rules, too.

We also have better, less confusing, better supported versions of the game out there, like Tales of the Valiant and Level Up A5E. Many have moved on to Pathfinder 2, Draw Steel, or Daggerheart. The OSR is huge. Even Dungeon Crawl Classics has a massive number-three spot in gaming (by GenCon game numbers). While 5E was a huge hit, the edition's end showed confusion, creative weakness, and a floundering strategy behind the brand.

But, by all means, keep playing 5E or 5.5E if that is what you like. "The game is dead" is just a temporary thing here in D&D land, and it has happened many times before. The only way D&D can truly die is if they keep printing new editions, and people grow tired of the entire confusing hydra of different versions of the game, all incompatible with each other. Here is another edition of the game; another head grows, and the fandom is again split into a group who like this one versus the dozen previous editions of the game and all their subflavors.

Like a multiverse, a multiedition game will die under the weight of customer confusion.

And you are inviting an Apple-like company to step in with an "it just works" strategy and steal all your customers. Someone will step in and "out D&D" you.

These tabletop game companies that think they are mobile game companies or OS vendors will always fail. D&D isn't a Windows operating system that keeps getting worse every year as features are removed and AI is shoved into everything from Notepad to Calculator, it gets arcane version and patch numbers, and all of a sudden, your favorite apps (or adventures) no longer run. Different computers only run different versions of Windows. You aren't sure when you buy a program if it will work, or how long it will work. You are constantly forced to deal with incompatibilities and workarounds.

Or wait, maybe D&D is just like Windows, and that is its problem.

Off the Shelf: HARP

If you like Rolemaster, but you do not want the complexity, there is always HARP. With the HARP implementation of Martial Law, you get a good 75-85% of the Rolemaster experience with the crit tables, and you can always make up results similar to have more variety. But the rules are far easier to understand and manage than those of Rolemaster, especially for character creation.

What does playing Rolemaster gain you? You get the full crit tables, all the spells in Spell Law, and the original game experience. The characters are more flexible, and the system is far more robust and classic. Most players, I would say 90%, do not have the time to put into Rolemaster and enjoy the complexity and depth. Most players, especially those coming from OSR games and B/X, will enjoy HARP far more than Rolemaster. If you picked up Rolemaster, bounced off character creation hard, and gave up, give HARP a try. If you do not have the time for Rolemaster, honestly, play HARP.

Rolemaster does the best job of simulating the effects of specific weapons versus specific armors, whereas in HARP, this is all abstracted. If you crave that "weapon X versus armor Y" style of combat,  and having the effect or crits change depending on that interaction, play Rolemaster. There are optional rules that add this depth in HARP Martial Law, but they slow down combat somewhat and force adjustments to the numbers depending on target armor.

If all you want is to grab a sword and wander the hills to battle orcs and collect their loot, where story means more than simulation, play HARP. You will see the benefits of a more engaging simulation game than a B/X, and have the best parts of Rolemaster without the complexity. HARP is a good middle ground between B/X and Rolemaster, and perfectly captures that Tolkien-style adventure and storytelling, far better than 5E, which has lost its way and become a planar superhero game.

If you want the OG, mace versus chainmail, hard realism game of simulation combat, play Rolemaster United. If you don't want the complexity and just want a close-enough experience, play HARP. Both have a place, given your interest levels and time.

And HARP is a complete game, ten books (plus an adventure), and you have a nice-sized library. The secret to enjoying HARP is just starting with the core book, which has everything: monsters, treasure, magic, and more, and ignoring the rest of the library. The crit charts in the core HARP book may get repetitive, so pull in the expanded tables from Martial Law if you want a little more variety and complexity; otherwise, they are not needed, and you can just make up similar results.

The criticism of the original HARP book's crit tables stems from the fact that it lists 19 results per attack type. It sounds like a lot, but in large combats, the same critical results can happen twice. For example, a result of 51-60 on a crush attack gives us, "You broke his collarbone. Foe takes 15 Hits, is stunned 1 round, and is at -10." Keep rolling that versus orcs, and you have a lot of broken orc collarbones, and you start to break immersion. But we can avoid breaking immersion by simply choosing to break other things.

HARP, Hit Location optional rule, page 99.

Now, if we use the optional hit location rules, you have 10 locations to factor in on top of that. We could simply change that "collarbone" to "whatever we hit and break that." It does not matter too much; just reinterpret the result and perhaps force a roll to keep hold of a weapon or shield if a hand or arm is hit, or to avoid falling down on leg or foot strikes. Now, we have possibly 190 results per attack type, and the problem is far less than we imagined.

You could even add a d10 qualifier to the word "broke" to allow for a variety of interpretations, such as grazed, bruised, crushed, broken, broken open, or completely smashed. How bad is it really? Roll a d10; let 1 be the most forgiving, with 10 the least. Now modify the result by ±50 %, and you have 1,900 results per attack type, and you are starting to eclipse Rolemaster (and you are inserting your imagination into the tables). Perhaps the bruise is 8 extra hits, no stun, and a -5. Perhaps the smashed result is 23 extra hits, 2 stun turns, and a -15.

With 1,900 results per attack type, I would say that is an insane amount of damage results. Mind you, I am only talking about using the base book. I do not need Martial Law to do this. I am not adding in any of the expansion books, and the combats are already this good.

Perhaps the result of a 1 is that the blow is deflected and no damage occurs at all, or it hits an enemy next to the player, sending that insta-killing head blow meant for you into the nearest orc. Perhaps that 10 result is not even damage at all, but the blow sends the magic shield the fighter is holding flying off a cliff and is lost forever. Maybe the attack sails into the party's light source and smashes the lantern, spilling flammable oil all over the holder (or a nearby ally). "The worst possible thing" on a result of 10 can be interpreted in many ways, just as the "best result of 1" can be as well.

That d10 qualifier roll is a tool to introduce environmental, situational, material, physiological, story-based, or even psychological factors into the damage equation.

Just by adding a few drops of our imagination, and only using the basic game's "supposedly limiting" tables, we are beating Rolemaster in both variety and outcomes in combat crits, adding in environmental and situational dependent elements, while keeping HARP's simplicity. HARP was designed to be flexible like this, and it did not take me much tweaking to craft critical results that excite me to play this game.

Let Rolemaster be the wargame-like, X versus Y, medieval simulation game.

Let HARP flow with the story, and leave much of the interpretive work to you.

ERA for Rolemaster

The ERA character creation system for Rolemaster works. It is a strange system, a batch file that pops up a webpage where you can create your characters, but I give them credit for making this cross-compatible and even including a Linux launcher. I tested the Linux version, and it works.

With Windows dying on the vine, seeing more indie devs embrace Linux and character-creation tools that run natively on it is encouraging. Not a day goes by that Windows isn't trying to steal and hide my files from me, and it sucks. I hate this new world, and I can see Microsoft banning local file storage one day.

There will be a day when I walk away from Windows, and that day is coming.

You can't "go back" once your character sheet is finalized, and you get a template sheet that you can "level up" and allocate skill levels. This is how Rolemaster works: you do a lot of work in character generation, "setting up a sheet" where the costs of different choices will be predetermined, and when you level, you will be spending CP to fill out those choices as you gain them.

Unlike GURPS, where the cost for skills in different categories is the same for everyone, in Rolemaster, your class and culture determine the costs you pay for different skills. You can go outside your build, but it will just cost you more points, so your fighter can learn magic. In that sense, Rolemaster is very similar to GURPS, but character creation sets up the cost for every skill in the game based on choices made. GURPS assumes every character is a blank sheet of paper, and a medieval fighter can go on to be an astrophysicist - you just have to spend the points. 

In Rolemaster, the cost for those science skills will be prohibitively high, and that fighter will struggle since that is not "who they started as in life," but they can do it, just not as easily as someone trained from a young age to do that task. The "class system" in Rolemaster defines what is easier for you in terms of future progress, but it does not completely control it.

GURPS is more in line with modern educational thinking, where anyone can retrain for anything at any age, whereas Rolemaster emphasizes the importance of early childhood education. In my opinion, your early schooling will determine much of your life, and it only gets harder the later you go in life when you try to retrain and do something new. Rolemaster understands the basic human condition and uses class and background to model a character's "early years" quite effectively.

This is why we can't shortchange education, nor allow it to be used as a trust fund for the greedy among us to raid and live off of. If you are not creating doctors and engineers at an early age, decades down the line, everyone will suffer, including those who stole from the system for short-term gains. You steal from education today, and there goes that doctor you will need 20 years from now.

Philosophically, I am more in line with Rolemaster's view of education, the traditional method of younger minds learn easier, and setting up those neurological pathways where a young mind can be trained to think in ways that make their career and later progress in their life in the areas their minds have been well-experienced in.

Rolemaster models early education as the character's "class choices," and those are the areas you are deciding: "I want to be great at these things later." The "Role" in Rolemaster is not for role-playing; it is more for the characters' "Role" in the world and life. The "Role" you set yourself up in for the story, and the "Role" you will take in a life on the stage built by your choices.

The ERA software does a good job building your character sheet and then letting you level up your character. You can create printable sheets with this software, and that helps a lot. Rolemaster is a d100 game with many skills, but it's simple to play; creating characters is a major hurdle.

The ERA software also serves as a "training tool" for character design, walking you through the steps and explaining what happens next. It helped me get a handle on the character creation method much more easily than reading the books.

Click on a spell list, and it tells you the known spells in that list. The HTML files it creates are nice for a basic reference sheet, but the "view character sheet" function feels more complete and useful during play. I like the spell lists in the character sheet view for my casters. Like GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Rolemaster's spell lists start off in the "magical tricks" realm, and they gradually move into the more fearsome magics. GURPS does this through prerequisites, while Rolemaster does leveled spell lists.

They have modules for RMU, RM Classic, RM FRP, and Spacemaster Privateers. Some of the games are better supported with the books than others, and each book is a separate purchase.

This is a must-have for Rolemaster players, and it walks you through character creation slowly and lets you understand each step along the way. There is even a helpful system that explains what is happening on each screen. A strong recommend for Rolemaster players, and it gives you that confidence in character creation to start imagining characters in the game, and in your worlds.