The Romance Fantasy Fallacy

Part of the problem with 5E is that it needs to be everything to everybody.

An old-school dungeon game.

A romance game.

A cozy game.

A social roleplay game.

A storytelling game.

A map-based exploration game.

A rules-light game.

A horror game.

A rules-heavy game.

A tactical combat game.

And it still has to be D&D.

And specialized games that do each one of those things better are replacing 5E. With Daggerheart moving into the romance market, Shadowdark killing it with old-school horror gaming, and Dungeon Crawl Classics with the old-school vibe, I have games that do those focused areas better. Tactical combat? Pathfinder 2 or Draw Steel.

I have games that do better than 5E, and since 5E tries to do it all, it doesn't do any one thing perfectly. And the game needs so many books that it dies under its own weight. I have eight plastic storage crates filled with 5E books, and the bigger the game gets, the more I end up disliking it.

I can't play a game this big anymore.

And for D&D, I have Old School Essentials or any other OSR game that matches the flavor or edition you loved and remember. For me, OSE is the pinnacle of dungeon crawling: focused and capable, flexible and specific when it needs to be, and with classes presented on two facing digest-sized pages. I am not flipping through a dozen full-sized pages to understand a class design, nor are my character sheets a dozen pages or more.

I am done with the days of supporting a game with a shelf full of books. If I can't throw it in a backpack or small tablet bag, I am done with the game. For 2d6 gaming? FTL Nomad. For fantasy? OSE. Those two games cover a lot of ground and can easily provide me with years of entertainment.

OSE beats Shadowdark for me since it is closer to the original, and supports many more generic fantasy ideas and worlds than the new-school dungeon crawler. Shadowdark is focused on table-play, that tense, group-based, timer-ticking loop it developed and supports wonderfully. As a dungeon board game like Monopoly or the classic Dungeon from TSR, Shadowdark is the best-in-class game.

For roleplay and campaigns? OSE wins hands-down. It does more. It does higher levels. It has more character options. It focuses on domain play as an endgame. And it doesn't get mired down in rules like an AD&D clone or 1E. And since OSE is so flexible, it can fill every role from the list at the start of this article. OSE as a romance game? Sure, I can make it work. You don't have silly, pedantic, please-keep-the-game-designer-out-of-this concepts like "romance dice" or some other stupid overdesigned tripe, but a real, actual storyteller and player figuring this stuff out on their own, which is honestly much better.

And trust me, any quirky, gimmicky, too-stupid-to-be-real game design trick like "romance dice" you will get sick of after about a day of use, and you will begin to tire of filtering your ideas through the designer's gimmicks and tricks just to do something common sense would handle much better.

OSE handles combat, advancement, exploration, and ability checks. Honestly, that gives me a lot of room to write my story, design my own silly concepts, and present it the way I want, without a know-it-all game designer pushing their ideas as "the right way to do it."

More gamers should tell these egotistical game designers to touch grass and get a life.

A basic set of rules is 99% of what you need to play "romance fantasy."

And stop wasting your money on "romance games" and learn how to write in the genre, and just adapt the game you are playing to support those concepts. Stop falling for the crowdfunding "new and shiny" trap, again and again, and realize the game you already play can do it better. Seriously, go pick up a "how to write romance" book and tailor your adventures around the concepts, challenges, conflicts, and roles presented in those writer-focused books, and skip the game. All a "romance game" does is repackage these ideas and write clunky rules around them that you will outgrow. It is always better to "learn the actual thing" and incorporate it into your current game than to "waste money on a new thing."

OSE is a better "romance fantasy game" than most any other game on the market, including the dedicated ones. It stays out of the way and lets you incorporate the concepts the way you feel they should work.

And 5E can stop trying to be all these things, too, since the game is dying a slow death of trying to do it all and collapsing under its own weight.

And honestly, if Pathfinder 2 is your jam, incorporate the "romance fantasy" ideas over there and use that game as your game engine. Same with Shadowdark or Draw Steel. For me, OSE does it all and can fit in a small travel bag, so it wins since it goes where I go. And there are so few rules that my ideas of "romance fantasy" gaming have room to flourish and grow here.

And "doing it for real" may teach you an actual skill you could use to write that romance novel or book outside of gaming, instead of constantly having these concepts repackaged, gamified, and sold to you as "new and inventive things" again and again on crowdfunding sites.

It is 2026.

Stop buying gimmick games.

You can hustle and DIY this all yourself and turn that into a sellable skill.