I Can't Play it Alone

It's over, again.

5E is packed up in my eight plastic storage crates, and in the closet, it is too big a game to play solo. The combination of the online character sheets, digital purchases, character sheets a dozen pages long, and all the rules is just too much for me. My brain can't handle it, especially for a party of characters.

I love Tales of the Valiant. This is guilt-free 5E for me, and the best of the 2014 rules.

It is just too much game.

First through third level, fine, I can do that. Any higher? Forget it, I would rather run a party of GURPS characters, it is less work on the character sheets. It works for a while, but by the sixth level, with four characters, it feels like a massive slog for no great benefit, and by the eighth level, with four characters, it dies.

5E is a better game with a group to manage the complexity, just like Pathfinder 2E. 5E may seem an easier game, but that is very deceptive, since complexity ramps up steeply past the 6th level. I love my ToV books; they are the perfect version of 5E, but the complexity as a solo player kills my enjoyment.

I only play solo.

So I end up not playing.

And 5E loses hard at this point; I can't deal with it as a solo player at all. It is not worth the complexity or constant, too detailed, overly complicated character builds. If all I play for is a story, I am better off with a simple game, such as a 2d6 game like FTL Nomad, or a solid BX game like Old School Essentials.

My 10th-level 5E character has a character sheet 16 pages long.

My 10th-level OSE character is half a page, and not terribly different than a 1st-level sheet. This is a clear win for me. I can solo a party of four to even eight with no problems. With 5E, eight characters require 30-50 sheets of paper, at 4 to 6 sheets per character. It only gets worse as they level, and at level ten, it could be over 100 sheets of paper for that same party.

Versus eight half-sheets that are no more complex than a level one sheet.

There is a point for the solo player at which a game becomes unplayable.

And if you find BX characters boring or lacking abilities, you are not playing BX right. Are you a bard? Roll CHR to do most of the other things that 5E locks behind feats and subclasses. And there are plenty of hacking guides for training and character options in BX, the amazing On Downtime and Demesnes, and the Carcass Crawler zines are prime examples of BX expansions that will make the game incredible and give you the customization you are looking for.

BX characters are infinitely more flexible and customizable than 5E characters since you gain abilities through your story in the world, and you just "add them to your character sheet" as you gain, train, or collect them. Cursed by an evil statue and gain a demon tail? Write that down, and it may be useful, cause negative reactions, or you can figure out a way to use it to pickpocket someone or grab an item, make a DEX check.

No feat expenditure needed.

No subclass choice.

No $80 Kickstarter books.

No new shelf is needed to store all these books.

No digital purchase on a VTT.

There is no hoping the online character designer supports the option.

You just write it down and have it.

If you don't have the imagination to play BX, and you need every rule laid out for you as if you were some computer compiling code, you should probably be playing a computer game and not a tabletop role-playing game. Games with depth and rules are fun, but D&D is not D&D anymore.

OSE is closer to what I remember.

And I don't need "rulesy rules" like Shadowdark to create fear and tension. I love Shadowdark as a board game, but it isn't the game I played, nor do I need torch timers and rules for what happens in the dark to make a dungeon scary. That is all in my head. A great BX referee can turn any dungeon crawl into something terrifying, just like the Tomb of Horrors.

Six rooms, goblins, a giant spider, one trap, a puzzle, and a carrion crawler? That is my Tomb of Horrors. BX turns that environment into a nightmare. My thief has 3 hit points, and the fighter has 5. One hit could kill either of them. Death is permanent. No death saves. You or the monsters can choose if your attacks are subduing or not, and what they want to do if they subdue you? That is terrifying.

When you get to AD&D, you begin to realize where we started to go wrong. AD&D is the beginning of the road that got us here. Too many rules, a rule for everything, and too many pages of the game. AD&D is the best game ever written, but BX is simple, expressive, does everything, and handles any situation clean and fast. With AD&D, I begin needing more books and rules again. I am locked into rulings. I am flipping through pages of rules to find something. Not knowing a rule could kill my character. While OSRIC, ADAD, C&C, and DCC are incredible games, I am tied to the books.

BX frees you from the books.

They are there if you need them, but for the most part, you don't.

The rule system is simple and invisible.

Things are resolved in a natural, consistent, and logical progression of rulings.

As things come up, rulings outside the rules are made, and the bare minimum of a rules framework handles the hard parts. Combat, spellcasting, light, and other factors are covered. The most important parts. The game then gets out of your way.

As it should be.