Standardizing on BX

You have many options if you standardize on BX as your game of choice. One is science fiction with Stars Without Number. This is as easy as science fiction can get, and all your BX adventures and materials are cross-compatible. This is easily one of the best science fiction games out there, and with a procedural universe generation mode of play, you get infinite adventures and a ton of expansions for the official campaign universe. Don't want an official universe? Randomly generate billions of worlds and have adventure seeds on each one.

This is the best BX science fiction game out there, and it stands the test of time.

Sticking with the Without Number games, you get cyberpunk with Cities Without Number. Add BX races and monsters in here, and you have BX Shadowrun with a classic gaming feel. The whole BX besiatry is usable too, so go to town with machine guns and minotaurs. This is one of my best BX Shadowrun replacements, and a worthy BX-style Cyberpunk game. This game is a major flex in terms of street-level play with faction and mission generation.

Add Ashes Without Number, and you have post-apoc gaming, again, with full BX compatibility. Need ogres and lizardmen for your Thundarr-inspired science-fantasy ruin? BX will supply the fun; just toss some mutations on them and have fun. This is a game-changer for post-apoc roleplaying, and the tables are instantly usable in any post-apoc game, be they The Walking Dead, Aftermath, Mutant Future, Mutant Crawl Classics, Mutant Epoch, or any other gonzo science fantasy game of your choice.

Worlds Without Number does fantasy, but we had a lot of fantasy games here. Still, the world generation charts here can yield decades of adventure and hex-crawling. These are the big four from Kevin Crawford, but having your entire BX library cross-compatible and your monster books working with any of these games makes life so much easier. These four books make a compelling case for standardizing on BX and storing all your other games; they do just enough, don't reinvent the wheel, and handle adventures in this universe well.

There are other amazing BX games, too. Dark Places & Demogorgons for 1980s kids on bikes adventures. This one looks fun, moved from its own system and ported to BX via the OSE engine. This one is a winner, fun, thematic, and 100% better than a licensed box set that presents a version of the game that was never played in the 1980s. At least this version of the game was played back then, and having it "run the game engine" is a far more authentic experience than another 5E game.

Besides, if I wanted to have them encounter any BX monster, learn BX spells, meet BX NPCs, and even adventure in BX worlds, I have my OSE books, and it is all there. This is far more fitting and accurate for running a "cartoon-style game" than any licensed 5E box set ever will be.

If we ever had 5E in the 1980s, the game would be ridiculed as overly complicated, math-heavy, impossible character sheets, and too much of a mess to ever be figured out and played effectively. I know the game Aftermath was 10% of 5E's complexity, and that game was savaged by 1980s gamers as impossible to ever figure out or manage. Aftermath these days would be rules-light compared to games like Draw Steel or Pathfinder 2.

White Star is an amazing space-adventure game compatible with BX. This is a more "Guardians style"-style mix with a little bit of "space empire and rebels"-style play. This is a more freewheeling science fantasy adventure game where you shoot lasers first, swing laser swords as a star knight, and ask questions later. This is getting a new version from the same team that did OSRIC 3.0, so it has a bright future ahead.

Operation Whitebox for WW2 adventures. There is a sister game, a tribute to this, with Operation B/X, which is another amazing game. Some of the best WW2 gaming is in BX, since the genre is so niche, but BX does it pretty well.

B/X Gangbusters is one of the best 1920s and 30s style gangsters versus G-Men games, and a worthy mention. Another very small niche game that BX fills very nicely.

From the same creator comes Tall Tales, a western-style game that offers more options.

Modern Necessities is an amazing supplement covering modern weapons and classes. This, plus OSE's core books, can run any modern game, movie, adventure story, or scenario very easily. If you limit hit points, make weapons deadly, and apply a little common sense, BX games with a level system can run modern games very well, and just as well as any simulation-style game.

This line of books also comes with the great Single Action book, which also does wild west style classes and gear, so you have another choice for cowboy roleplaying. Want to pull in werewolf and magic-user spells and have a weird west game? It is trivial and does not require a few hundred dollars in crowdfunding 5E books to play, along with the never-happening VTT support that actually playing requires. I swear, 90% of the 5E books I own will never get VTT support and are all but worthless.

It is hard for me to say future 5E investments are worth my time without VTT support, and most of what I bought, I can never use. They looked cool at the time, but I just wasted money on promises that the data entry tasks, digital purchases, and other support would never be completed.

And don't forget the X! Series Games. These are amazing minigames based on BX, and they are just the core pieces of the game. They are small, fast, and fun. All your BX stuff works with them, too, so reskin a few monsters, pull in space orcs, and just get playing. These are early favorites here on the blog, and they also have a lot of heart.

I am likely missing many games, and I have a few more of these on my shelf, but you get the idea. There is a wealth of gaming here that all use the same system, support all of your other books, and you can mix and match freely. You do not need a VTT, subscription, or online character designer to start playing!

And 0E and 1E are not that far off, and fully compatible, so you have OSRIC 3.0, Swords & Wizardry, and Adventures Dark & Deep to choose from. If you like the system and want the goodness and depth of 1E, you have plenty of solid choices that do not invalidate the BX side of your hobby.

All these games, plus a few adventure books, take up four shelves in my library. This is half the size of my 5E collection, but they mostly stand alone as books, and many are single-book games.

And there are too many great games on this list, and they are not all that hard: just roll 3d6 a few times, build a character, and get started in about 3 to 5 minutes of prep.

In a time where I have very little time to play, this is the difference between playing something and not.

BX is really the way forward for me.