Too Many Rules

There are too many rules in today's games. Designer hubris is killing the hobby. Every game needs to be an overdesigned, complex, thousand-page, dense, autistic rules monstrosity where every situation needs a rule. Every character option needs a page of rules. Every narrative possibility needs to be tightly controlled by a rule or a brand-new system, with something else to track. Metacurrencies create the need for new rules and systems for how the referee uses "fear" to counter the players' "hope."

Stop it.

Get some help.

The games of 2000-2026 have mostly been a disaster. Overwritten, obese, corporate controlling, live service, unfocused, hundreds of pages, complete messes. Most of the books are piles of fluff and garbage.

I love you, AD&D, but you started this mess. That was the first version of D&D to ever be horribly overwritten, sort of a glorious madman's manifesto on roleplaying and the hobby, a magnificent, unhinged, and train-of-thought document, but as a game, it started to diminish.

The real "game" was always BX.

The game was always BX.

Simple rules that reminded me of my Monopoly set: a basic framework for creativity, rulings over rules, the supreme importance of the referee as a neutral arbiter, and the basics for handling the game's critical points.

Combat.

Exploration.

Progression.

Magic.

There are four legs to this table, and there always were. Social? No rules needed, roleplay it. And I do not need a book full of rules for everything to ensure "convention play is being handled fairly." This is the designer and the company intruding on my game.

I do not work for you, TSR, Wizards, or any other random YouTube crowdfunded creator.

I am not here to enforce "the official rules in book #12" for this specific case that comes up once every 20 years. This is why the X-in-6 rulings, time considerations, applications of torch times, wandering monster checks, morale, retainer reactions, surprise, and all the other simple systems in BX merge together to form a cohesive game. Once you put a few hundred more pages of rules on BX, it stops being a game, and it becomes more of a technical document, like a C++ programming book. We are expected to "follow the code examples" to "produce our output."

The core rules of BX are enough. Once you read the book and put them all together, there is a clean, efficient, expressive, and fun game engine hidden in there when it all comes together.

You do not need a skill system.

You do not need 3,000 feats.

You do not need subclasses.

You do not need to "get something every level." This is what treasure is for.

You do not need 3,000 spells.

You do not need infinite ammo attack cantrips.

Casting rolls to "recast a spell" is player-coddling and cheating, absolutely ruining the balance of the game and diminishing the strength of martial classes. Once you start coddling players, handing out gimmies and freebie powers, you triple the amount of work it takes to run the game. Trust me on this. Trying to "get people to like you" or "giving them power to like your game" only leads to more work for the referee, and you are putting the burden of the work it takes to play the game on the referee. We do fall for this crap every time.

The old one-shot casters were fine, and it kept magic rare and special.

That one-shot magic spell is perfect.

The low-level life of a magic-user is not a broken design, but it is the game on hard mode and a challenge for the promise of near-infinite world-changing power later. Martial characters hold the line. Thieves break the game. Clerics care for others.

Bards? They have always cared more about themselves. Add them to your game at your own risk. Playing songs in a dungeon will attract an audience, and I will double-up those wandering monster rolls for your new "fans."

You pick a tough class to play, and you reap the rewards if you have a lot of luck and can make it work for you. Today's game design includes all the strategies for you, pre-chewed food that tells you how to play the game, class features that activate special rules, and they lead you down that regurgitated path the designers want you to walk.

I want to walk on the wild side.

I want to figure this out.

Modern game designs are limited-choice graphic novels with a limited set of paths and options that the designers allow you to go down. The design of 5E subclasses and those progression paths, all laid out for you, mirror the "X or Y" graphic novel choices perfectly. Curated designs. A curated experience. Narrative rules that tie the referee's hands. You are not supposed to activate the dragon's fire breath until you have the "fear points" to do so. Referee, stop breaking the narrative system the designer requires you to follow. You would not want to be accused of playing the game in a way the company did not intend.

Today's games reflect the ultimate live-service corporate control that today's leech-capitalism entities want to push on you to extract revenue streams from an audience. Microtransactions. Online character sheets. Digital book purchases. Subscription models. Season play.

Jesus, please chase the merchants from the temple. This is a game, not a timeshare sales pitch. If a game's sales pitch is that it "solves the problems of other games," then you should be automatically suspicious. They are trying to sell you answers to problems you never had, and more of their marketing will be trying to convince you that "you always had this problem." Well, yes, you did in many cases, because other games sold you answers to problems that you never had, and those solutions just failed when everyone saw through the sales pitch.

I am done. Certain games are everlasting and free of this nonsense.

BX is the rules of a sandbox world that you are expected to explore and thrive in. AD&D made the mistake of writing rules for everything. We never go to the point where the game morphs into the massive corporate control of today, but the road was chosen, and you see many parts of the design that would later become the nightmare reality of today. The standardization, high level of control, accepted ways of play, official rules, and other concepts that suck the life out of imagination and a magical, shared experience.

BX is the original Minecraft of roleplaying. And a word of warning, today's Minecraft has also lost its way in the era of corporate live-service gaming. There are a few versions of this game that I hold close to my heart.

That is where I am.

Back in the sandbox.