Too Much Magic

There is too much magic in modern fantasy gaming. It is everywhere, in most subclasses; some classes are entirely magic, and it is magic, magic, magic everywhere and all day long.

It gets tedious. Nobody can be skilled at anything anymore. You need the magic crack to do anything.

AD&D 1E featured anti-magic fields, creatures, weapons, and even planes. Put any modern D&D 5 characters there, and they will be helpless. There is too much magic in the game, setting, and universe. It isn’t high fantasy anymore; it's ultra-fantasy and magic overload.

Some of the old modules had lists of spells that were not allowed to be used in certain dungeons, and too much magic was a problem back in the early days of D&D, too. There were dungeons where a simple passwall spell would ruin the whole thing, the Tomb of Horrors being one of them.

I doubt there are many 5.5E classes that aren’t magic-touched anymore. Look long enough, and every class has to have overpowered magic options, which begs the question: Are you anything without magic? Do skill and non-magical training matter?

Magic in D&D is like sex on the Internet: it's everywhere, there is too much of it, and I am tired of it all.

In Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy, four of the seven classes were non-magical. In Advanced Fantasy, eleven of the twenty-two classes are non-magical. That is about half or more of the classes have no magic whatsoever. While there are magic items, half of the classes themselves are entirely non-magical. The game is set in a low-magic world, which is the norm.

I could easily play OSE without magic; you can do the same with both BX and 1E. It wasn't a problem, and the game had enough to it that removing magic would not feel like you were losing too much.

There is so much magic in fantasy these days that it does not feel like "magic" at all; it feels like power entitlement and magic being used to prop up weak class designs and lackluster combat options. The amateur game designer uses magic as a crutch. If your game works without magic and is exciting and engaging, you've got me.

The default setting for fantasy should be a low-magic world. This keeps the game grounded and believable. This is also the reason humans should be the default choice for races, since they are the most diverse and familiar race to which we are accustomed. I find that in a game where everyone is forced to play humans (ACKS II being the best example of this), we get a wonderful diversity of cultures, whereas in fantasy games that allow the typical fantasy race selections, the diversity of the average tiefling, dragonborn, or dwarf is actually quite low, and they fall into stereotypes and parody way too often for my tastes.

In GURPS, I have the freedom to create campaigns without one bit of magic at all. I can play a historical game without being weighed down by magic, witchcraft, divine magic, nature magic, or planar interference. Not all humanoids are magical, elemental, or fay, as they are in D&D 5.5E. I can create a compelling fantasy game with not one iota of magic in it. I can craft authentic fantasy campaigns based on real historical settings.

I don't have to default to a multiverse planar setting at all.

I can play a pirate game in the Age of Sail and not worry about a mage flinging fireballs at the other vessel. Use the cannons, please, you aren't a cannon yourself. I know, that's not fun, but in a game where I expect my scurrvy dogs to be able to learn how cannonry works, what is the point if half the party can fling equal death from their fingertips? Use the cannons like a pirate and stop complaining, or you are walking the plank.

Better yet, without magic, players have to drill down and focus on melee weapons, how to fight, archery, thrown weapons, special attacks, advantages that give them the edge in combat, weapon reach, defenses, and attack and defense actions. The flow of combat becomes the "magic" in the game and the key to victory. Knowing how to fight, stacking the odds in your favor, and never giving the enemy a chance are your "spells," and there is no easy solution to a fight.

Players need to pay attention to the combat system and rules to do well, and they can't lean on spells or special powers to save them. Thank you, finally, sanity is in my game. Immerse yourself in the world and realistic fighting techniques and tactics, and you will find a much greater satisfaction in mastery there than you will in casting an infinite-use cantrip every turn and being bored with your choices.

Too common magic isn't magical.

It is the mundane and the everyday.

There is no mystery or unknown.

And it becomes boring.

Self-Destruction as Marketing

This happened to me in D&D 3.5E: players came in, bragged about broken builds, and wanted to play them in my game.

I said no. I knew the build. I knew the site he got it from. What is the point of this exercise? For you to come in, find something online, and use it to wreck my game so you can get a few laughs? To ruin the game for everyone else who makes time every week to come to the game?

I said no.

Not in my game.

We are entering "late phase 5E," and what I see coming out of D&D Beyond are horribly broken player options. This is, again, the corporate gaming playbook. At the end of an edition's lifecycle, they purposefully make more and more outrageous and broken builds just to keep player attention and make the game "fun again," and it ends up wrecking the game to the point where people are screaming for a new edition. In a game with declining interest, the only way they can attract interest is through shipping broken mechanics and options to generate buzz and excitement.

Everyone "still hot on 5E" is having the edition slowly ruined for them, and they don't even know it.

Players will seek out groups to try the "next broken thing" and laugh as the abuse is enabled from up top, and another table's game is ruined by stupid ideas coming from corporate.

I saw this same thing at the end of every edition: the company hits the self-destruct button and wrecks the game with OP, power-gaming, and completely broken player options.

If you are a 5E purist and can play with a limited set of books, fine, you will probably never see this happening at your table. The players are there for the stories and heroism, and that's great. If you limit your options to the classic choices or play a 5E version that cares about balance and game integrity, wonderful. The small fish in the industry, like EN World and Kobold Press, don't have much of an incentive to ruin their games with powergaming options, since they can't create a new edition out of thin air.

If a player is on D&D Beyond and has access to broken expansion material, and is all excited to play, that is a red flag to me. I know the type. The power gamer is too interested in wrecking games and looking cool, rather than in everyone else's enjoyment at my table.

No.

Not in my game.

Must Have Skills vs. Mechanics

Perception is a skill everyone must have in 5E. I really do not know why this is a skill at all; it is so common that it should just be made an ability score at this point. Some skills are so common and "must-haves" that they should be removed from the game and made core mechanics.

If your life depends on your ability to spot things in a dungeon, why wouldn't everyone have this trained?

Just give this to everyone trained and skip having to buy it, or get rid of these "perception skills" (like insight) and fold them into the rules. Create perception secondary abilities (physical, mental, magical, and social) and get rid of them as skills.

These "non-job" skills always bugged me. Blacksmith? Fine. Survival? Okay, passible. Religion? Good. Climbing? Another okay skill.

Perception? Who can get a job as a "Perception Expert"? Insight? What are these other than "screw the player" skills to punish those who don't buy them? Skills should mirror professions, not activities.

If something is in the game that is a core ability in perceiving, understanding, or participating in the natural environment, it should not be a skill. These should have baked-in mechanics in the rules, since they are so common that they are core to the game's experience. Remove perception from the skill list and bake it into the game.

Even movement skills should be trained to open up movement types, such as climbing, balance, hiking, or swimming, and the rest of the movement-related checks should be ability score rolls. They should just be checkboxes.

The entire skill system has always been a core flaw of Wizards' D&D, to the point that they rarely get things right, and have some situations where they lean on the skill system too hard to drive the game engine.

Kickstarter: Hackmaster XXV

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kenzerco/hackmaster-25th-anniversary-edition-a-fantasy-rpg

Well, this is interesting. HackMaster is getting an updated version of the rules. The Kickstarter announcement page just dropped, and it looks like they are cleaning up and patching the 5th Edition of the game.

"We painstakingly honed the mechanisms and strategy of HackMaster to continually improve and streamline game play and make it something truly unique in the RPG world: a perfect blend of old-school feel with modern mechanics, offering fast tactical play combined with the most immersive roleplaying experience." 

-HackMaster Kickstarter announcement, July 2026  

This is an interesting development, and a welcome return. Hopefully, the new edition balances the expansion books more toward the 4th Edition (which covered all classes and also had adventures) than the 5th, which seemed to focus only on cleric classes. But it is also true that a great game needs no expansions.

I am looking forward to this, having been watching from the sidelines and never really into the game, but appreciating HackMaster's unique take on fantasy. There is a lot of room in the Grognard OSR for this game, which includes DCC and many other greats.

Science Fiction Gaming

Why? Why play sci-fi?

Fantasy gaming has built-in motivation, especially old-school or modern gaming. In modern gaming, everyone typically comes in with "their ten-page backstory," and you have built-in motivations to complete those arcs. In old-school gaming, XP = GP, dominion play, leveling, and getting treasure.

Exploration exists in both genres, uncovering those sweet blank hex-maps and filling in what is out there. Fantasy gaming has an edge over science fiction in terms of exploring culture, family, and local politics. In science fiction gaming, you get more of a modern bent and experience, like trying to find local culture in a mall.

Especially if the science fiction culture is anywhere close to modern, you begin to pull in cyberpunk elements, local law enforcement, governments, military, and all sorts of "big picture" factions. Fantasy tends to be easier since most everything is close to home, based in family and ethnic groups, and local relations. The rare exception is "Wild West science fiction," which leans more into the local style of relations and interpersonal interactions than the more modern takes.

Fantasy tends to be more popular because its focus is tighter and its conflicts are more personal.

There are times when science fiction feels too big to wrap my head around, unless it is the day-by-day of exploration and survival. On a low level, things work. Try to pull in too many sweeping space wars and galactic conflicts, and the characters feel very small, and the nature of a space war feels too large to even comprehend, let alone change the course of. Even Star Wars works better as a low-level, interpersonal, survival, and smuggler-based game.

Cyberpunk works better as street-level drama. So do Wild West stories. This is also why we see a lot of science fiction stick to these stereotypes and archetypes.

Also, ship combat matters. The Star Wars, Cepheus, and Stars Without Number ship combat systems work well in the abstract and don't require calculus or a physics degree to figure out. So many science fiction games fall flat on ship combat that it is a real problem with the genre. Some games omit ship combat entirely.

The setting matters. A great, classic, compelling setting works well for me, but I can also get into hex-crawls in space and the feeling of discovering something new. A Forbidden Lands-style start also works well, where the galaxy is recovering from a massive event that disrupts communication and travel for a few hundred years, records are lost or out of date, and everything out there changes. At this point, a hex-crawl makes sense, and your campaign universe can slowly expand.

Star Wars? Expanded Universe only. Otherwise, the New Republic and Leia's leadership were all for nothing, since nothing ever changed. Leia was running around tarmacs as a grandmother, still fighting the Empire. The whole idea is stupid, and it robbed her of the chance to ever be recognized as a transformative leader, mother, Jedi, and figure. The sequels trashed the original universe and continue to rip off the EU, which only proves that we had it better before Disney, and that today's creatives can never get out from under the shadow of better writers and creators.

Traveller feels too huge for me. It is the best universe in gaming, but it is far too big for me. I know, pick a small spot and start there, but the universe feels stuck in one point in time, unchanging, and written in stone. The universe has undergone various iterations as it tried to change, but it is sort of set in stone at this point and is unable to change. It is a starting point for campaigns and ideas, and a great one, but I like to roll my own or start smaller with less.

Fantasy is easier since it is so generic, and sci-fi tends to be a harder sell. Very few want to get on board with a campaign, since the genre is either tightly tied to an IP and played with the official game, or it is so vague what your motivations are that people can't connect. What are we doing? What is the point?

Another problem is that science fiction, as a genre, borrows so much from the Western that playing the Western is the easier game to pitch and put together. Why are we playing a space western when we could play the for-real western, ride horses, wear cool hats, and talk like cowboys? The cowboy movie may be dead as a film genre, but it is still a far better gaming genre than most science fiction IPs.

Part of why Western beats science fiction is that too much science fiction is a "do anything" genre with no rules of physics, and creators feel free to break those rules. Any of the rebooted Star Trek movies are great examples, as are the Star Wars sequels, which used hyperspace as a magic teleportation system. You might as well invent a "hyperspace belt" and get around that way. When you start pulling the rug out from under players with "anything magic," they often quit.

With the Western, we have rules, partner. Even the "Weird West" genre has rules and expectations.

Sci-fi is a tough genre to sell to players.

You almost have to avoid the rules and sell the campaign concept first.

Are Modern Games Doomed?

https://www.archivesofnethys.com/agreement.html

Some terrible news for open gaming today, as Paizo ends its partnership with the Archives of Nethys, the free online rules resource for everything Pathfinder and Starfinder.

At this point, if you invest in digital, ot support games that live behind paywalls, you need to ask yourself some hard questions. Many games are guilty too, such as 5E versions, where the SRD is free, but what you actually need to play (subclasses and character options) are locked behind book or PDF purchases.

When the major VTTs shut down and all those digital books are lost, nobody will get anything back. If D&D Beyond ever folds or is sold to a group that shuts it down, all of that is gone.

I also get why Paizo would go this way. Who would ever buy digital copies of Pathfinder 2 rulebooks with Nethys out there providing the more popular and free alternative? Major VTTs don't see any money from supporting Paizo games, nor will most people buy VTT books for something they can get for free, better supported elsewhere.

At this point, why wouldn't I only support games like Basic Fantasy or OSRIC? Kevin Crawford put a few of his core rule sets under a public domain CC license. The excellent 2E clone game For Gold & Glory, you can distribute the PDF for free as long as you aren't selling access to it; you can share it freely and post it on a website. Basic Fantasy's PDF is free, and the books are printed at cost.

We have far better alternatives.

When does modern gaming get to be too much?

If this were the world of open-source software, Pathfinder would be forked and cloned, and the free version would start development. It took far less for OpenOffice to be forked into LibreOffice. This is how the real world works.

But this isn't how the silly world of gaming works.

One group would attack the other for "hurting the game," and nothing that people swear they believe in, open and free gaming for everyone, would ever get done. People who complain that capitalism is ruining gaming will not support games owned and run by the community, and will go out of their way to attack those communities as they keep playing games printed by Wall Street. They won't consider free and open alternatives.

I will miss the old Nethys site.

It is the end of an era.

Deathbringer TTRPG by Professor DM

Backed.

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/roll-for-combat/deathbringer-ttrpg-by-professor-dm

Why?

Because the hobby needs it.

Mail Room: Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: The Northern Marches

Highest recommendation.

Let's just get that out of the way. This is an OSR-style living sandbox campaign with enough room for your ideas, plus a book full of hexes described with history, story, and current events. We get city maps. We get locals. The art is flat-out beautiful.

This is the setting the Forgotten Realms should have been. Not an author's setting where your characters are allowed to play alongside a cast of unkillable GMNPCs, but your setting where the characters are the important characters in the novels and stories.

The book uses BX-style hit-die rating for monsters, but this is usable by and large with any fantasy ruleset.

This is sort of the Holy Grail of old-school style settings, clearly on the same level as the amazing Harnworld. While Harnworld leans more into historical accuracy while folding in fantasy concepts, this starts with fantasy concepts and works to give them historical accuracy and a weighty feeling. Harnworld, at times, feels like magic, dragons, monsters, and fantasy elements are optional and not central to the "alt-history" realistic setting. The Northern Marches feels like fantasy was already there and helped shape the world, yet the setting doesn't "go modern" and remains grounded in the medieval fantasy baseline.

An insanely great book, replacing a shelf-full of fantasy settings for me.

This one feels like home to me.

D&D's Problem is Combat

D&D was never a combat-focused game. Combat was a failure condition, and something to be avoided, short-circuited, or a sleep spell or fireball spell ending the encounter before it even began. It did not matter how you got the gold; all of it was experience. Lie, cheat, steal, or a thief grabs it, and everyone profits.

Wizards D&D is 90% combat. Combat is the only thing. This is why every class and subclass option exists. Modern D&D is all about violence, killing, and the selfish notion of "the character" and "what I get" over the story or heroism.

Every edition since D&D 3E has been this way, and very few see it this way. You get mixed up in your notions of nostalgia and feel like "I can play D&D 3 to 5E any way I want," but that isn't true. Your character is rigged to kill and do massive damage, and that is mostly all you do.

Most problems are solved with violence. This is all the classes can do. Every problem is solved with the hammer. Most stories are a series of combat encounters. Player skill does not matter.

This is also why D&D 5E feels so hollow for many of us old-school players.

We often have to bring in our own assumptions about "how the game used to be played" and play it that way, living the lie. The biggest problem 5E has is combat.

Mail Room: Dungeon Dwelling Creatures (DCC)

 

From DCC, MCC, Star Crawl, and XCrawl, Goodman Games has the best "games for your imagination" in the industry right now. Today, we continue that run with Dungeon Dwelling Creatures, a DCC-genre game where you play the monsters. I got the crowdfunding PDF release for this today, and I like this game.

The monsters are quirky and strange, sort of mirroring DCC-style classes, but using the system in interesting and unique ways. Instead of luck, we get Vile, which is your Luck-like "power of evil." All the monsters have an icky factor, and none of them are cute or adorable. A huge problem with "play a monster" games is that they get too cutesy and chibi, and that opens the door to hurt feelings and problem players. A cute fairy dragon with butterfly wings would be inappropriate for this game, where a spider that sucks people's brains out would fit right in.

I would love to see expansion monsters for this game. What we have is great, quirky, and cool.

This reminds me of the Monsters Monsters! game from Flying Buffalo, the spiritual successor to the classic Tunnels & Trolls game. You play the monsters. Civilization is crushing you. You are the minions and mooks that live in a dungeon (and even the DCC modules) as the bad guys. The good guys show up and crush your dreams, loot the place, laugh, and head back to town.

A few times.

Maybe they burn everything out in a 10-minute adventure day, and you are watching them pull the typical party nonsense by coming back daily. Maybe you follow them back to town and give them a lesson in how the monsters who put up with this nonsense teach them a lesson.

This is close to being a new, major game in the DCC line, and it feels like a surprise release. The bestiary is excellent and covers many more of the classics than the main DCC book. This feels like "the other side" of the DCC experience, and it puts players in an unfamiliar but cool situation.

You are the monsters.

Deal with those pesky heroes.

A very surprising release, and I can't wait to get my hardcover.

Mail Room: HackMaster

If a game sticks along long enough, it eventually becomes a parody of itself. In HackMaster's case, the parody turned into a real game. In 5E's case, you have a game that supposedly is as simple as BX, but it quickly grows beyond the complexity of HackMaster, and people quit at around level 8.

This is a game in the same "hobby self-referential vein" as games such as Dungeon Crawl Classics or even Munchkin, which embrace the hobby's absurdity and conventions. Yet it can flip right around and become a completely serious, non-humorous vehicle for storytelling. Think Robin Williams and comedy. There are moments when even the funniest comedian can flip right around and make us feel pain and cry.

D&D 5.5E, by comparison, is so self-important and full of itself that it borders on the unhealthy. As a lifestyle game, it refuses to have fun or admit to the absurdity of the hobby and its sometimes strange assumptions. It presents the fake as real, the pre-chewed superhero progression tracks of heroes that far outstrip monster power and are railroaded to level 20 on adventures carefully balanced to let the players win.

D&D 5.5E has no admission of the absurdity of "killing everything in the hole in the ground" as the way to solve problems in this world. There are no tense negotiations with kings and emperors in a throne room; any change in the world is effected through a boss fight on a battle mat. Combat, death, and killing with "my kewl powers" is the only way to create change.

I mean, if I wanted realism, I would be playing GURPS in Harnworld.

D&D 5.5E is, in comparison, one of those terrible superho games out of the 1980s where players use their powers to kill everything and everyone in the room until they get their way. Might makes right, and having power justifies using it.

Hackmaster is a lot like DCC. If you get the joke, it is hilarious. We embrace the absurd, the pedantic, the arcane crunch of rules, and the hypocrisy of the strange and unusual. In DCC, the rules are simple, and the world is unhinged and strange. In Hackmaster, the world is more normal, but the characters and their strange, odd, and incomprehensible rules are the unusual ones.

HackMaster is like one of those Flash games that presents a "walking simulator" where your analog sticks control each leg, and you are hilariously trying to make the stick figure walk to the other side of the room without dying. In HackMaster, just getting through character creation is the game, and figuring out how all this works in a typical medieval sandbox setting is the point of the joke.

Only, it is not a joke anymore.

In this case, the parody began to be taken seriously, and the game turned into a game, about as complicated as Rolemaster, that presents a method of playing fantasy adventures with. Could you get this with Rolemaster? Not really, being in on the joke is a big part of the fun here.

The absurd becomes the lingua franca. The joke becomes enshrined as the culture. The hypocrisy is the rules of the game. It is Monty Pythonesque, accepting the silly walk is the norm, and being shocked when anyone walks by normally.

Hackmaster is still a modern classic, fading a bit in relevance and popularity, an in-game for the in-crowd, but if you love DCC and other self-referential games where the absurd is enshrined and celebrated, a worthy read and inspiration for old-school chaos and inspiration.

We haven't heard much news, and the game feels like it is sitting in the doldrums. I am hoping this is just a low moment and that the game doesn't go away. The silly parts of our hobby and our addiction to the specific, minute details that make our "fantasy simulators" work need to be celebrated and embraced.

Even as a source of inspiration for old-school gaming, HackMaster is still worthy.

Design Room: Simplicity is Depth

There is a beauty to a simple, clean design that no amount of detail or crunch can improve. One can go on and on, providing tactical depth but adding nothing. At a point, you are taking away options just to give them back later, and the design becomes "rats in a maze," but the maze here is rules and paragraphs of subclass options. And with every new subclass added, you are taking those abilities away from those who thought they had them.

Oh, I thought as a druid, I was always a bit of a beastmaster. So you are telling me the new beastmaster subclass does that better? Oh, okay, I picked healing. I guess I am a little more inadequate these days. I just will never use my beastmater powers, since they will never be seen as good as the subclass that specializes in it.

In OSE? All druids are druids. If you want to do druid things, just make them up and ask the referee if what you are doing is druid enough. If it is a spell, well, then, it is automatically druid, and what you can do. You don't need subclasses "carving off" things you can't do with each new one added, either because you never knew you could do that and it was just taken away, or "someone else does it better now," and you have the specialization curse.

In the OSR, classes are how we have party specialization, not subclasses. I don't need rules to solve the non-problem that "all fighters are the same," since that's on me to solve. I will do that through my roleplaying, gear choices, social role, and stats. A party of four or five probably will solve the specialization problem through everyone picking a different class, or some using race-as-class to play an elf or a dwarf.

The game isn't giving me rules or subclass choices to make my elf different from other elves; that is on me. This is where my ability to play a character, roleplay, and craft a unique character comes into play. The player skill needed to do this is much higher than 5E.

5E solves the problem by cutting off parts of your class role, forbidding them from other builds, and making you a false specialist instead of a master of all. If I am the druid? I want to be the weather-caller, wild-shaper, druid of growth, beast-master, and harmony priest. I get that in OSE. Thematically, that is much easier for me as a role-player and much better for me to play my class role. I can call myself a "specialist" in one area, but there aren't any rules for that; it is just my choice.

I am likely the party's only druid, so I get to do it all.

Easy. Simple. Clean. Flexible.

We saw the "lie of specialization" begin to seep into the game with AD&D 2nd Edition and the kitbash design introduced in the compendiums. The game began to accumulate the debt of inferior game designers, and it diverged from the original clean, flexible simplicity it captured. 5E enshrines the lie of specialization and writes it into the structure of the game.

Without specialization, my druid is free to embrace all the tropes of being a druid, and I am freer to craft the character I want to play. Nothing is telling me "I can't do that since some other subclass is better than me at it."

D&D doesn't need specialization.

Class choice more than covers it.

D&D is better without specialization.

OSE Confusion?

If D&D 5E players can figure out subclass options and multiclass builds, they can surely figure out "buy Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Player's Guide and Advanced Fantasy Referee's Guide" to buy the game.

It is simple.

I love these D&D and even OSR YouTube thumbnails purposefully confusing the situation by taking books that are clearly meant to be optional formats and collectors' editions, mixing them in with the main books, and acting all confused.

The problem with YouTube is that there is so much time to fill that creators will invent problems to solve and either say nothing, or make something that was never a problem, suddenly a problem. This is the "open mic curse," and it eventually happens to all channels.

The pretend confusion has gotten so bad that the next version of OSE will only have Advanced Fantasy and be two books, and the non-problems go away, which was never really a problem to begin with. Again, we are talking about 90% of the role-playing market playing 5E, and obviously not so confused that they are applying bard subclasses to fighters because "what subclass do I use?"

I recently got the nine-book set of Classic and Advanced, and it's perfectly clear when to use each book. I have the OG Classic all-in-one book and the two-book Advanced set, and it is perfectly clear when to use each. Most people end up buying Advanced, so it was never really that much of an issue.

I still enjoy the limited options in Classic and the more streamlined, simplified game to present. For some games, too many options will kill the game and take it off the rails. This is a chronic problem with 5E, where there are so many races, classes, and options that they all become too samey as the designers try to make "everyone do everything" so there are no glaring holes in healing, damage, defense, or utility.

The OG Classic book is still one of the best versions of the game, despite being far less popular, and is soon moving to a PoD-only format. In this case, less is more.

And, I enjoy the OGL versions of the game. I am glad they are 100% compatible, and the new books only add a few optional rules that can be houseruled into the classic books, since those are my play copies. For the most part, I only see the four small class changes and a few optional rules being used here; the OG books are still 100% usable.

You can literally put all the 2026 rule changes on a half-sheet of paper or in a Carcass Crawler Zine, keep that as a houserule sheet, and play by the new books with the old.

Mail Room: Old School Essentials Boxed Sets

Get these before you possibly can't.

I got the two boxed sets for the OSR version of Old School Essentials, and my first reaction was, "I like the all-in-one books better; having all these small books makes the game harder to play."

And then I saw the end pages in each book, each set different, and each set insanely useful, helping you learn the game's structure and gameplay. You can hand the characters' book to the players and have them just exist in that world, with no distractions or knowledge of what lies ahead. You can keep them to just Classic, and keep the advanced Characters book to the side, not introducing those options again until later.

The magic book sits apart from the characters and remains a mystery.

The adventures book is the referee's guide with all the rules in one place.

The monsters and treasure books are separate, each a reference guide that can be opened and consulted.

And the advanced books isolate and encapsulate the advanced options, still there if you want to use them, but also split off so they remain even more mysterious and special. Yes, you will have two monster books, treasure books, character books, and magic books - but they are divided on purpose.

One reflects the basic set, and the other reflects an expert set.

And the single adventures book is the master key that unlocks them all.

But those end pages are what make the magic happen, as each set is tailored to the most important tables of the book they bracket. Reading these, you will understand the gameplay and structure of the entire book, all the most important parts, and things to remember, all here in clearly laid out tables, beautifully concise and clear.

These feel like the classic 8-bit RPGs.

Simple. Direct. Clean. Limited yet boundless. Inspiring.

And starting with just the basics gives you a new appreciation for this retro classic.

This is even better than the original BX guides, as legendary as they are; these boxed sets are just amazing and special.

So simple.

But so infinite in the smallest form.

The End of Physical Media

If it is not in a printed book, it isn't real, and it does not exist.

Those of us who have been through D&D 4E know this one, and it is not rocket science. Once this edition drops support, what do you think will happen to all that "digital DLC content" on D&D Beyond? All the "D&D Drops" I see D&D YouTube gushing about weekly for clicks and views?

It is gone forever; it is like it never existed.

When D&D 5.5E finally "drops" support, and it isn't printed in a book? Gaming loses those things forever. Sure, people will remember them, some of them may get cloned somewhere and renamed, but those things not printed in physical, hardcopy books will be lost media.

This is the same as PlayStation dropping physical disc support.

Level Up A5E? Tales of the Valiant? Even Daggerheart or Draw Steel? The entire OSR? Previous versions of the game? Most every other game out there, from Traveler to Call of Cthulhu? Pathfinder 2?

It is all in print. Every option is in print.

Fifty years from now, all these books will still exist. Two hundred years from now? It will still exist. If you care about this hobby and its legacy, it should matter to you. If this material is later compiled and sold in a book? Not a problem. This is an easy problem to fix, and it supports game preservation.

Also, printed books are pro-consumer; I can sell my library, pick up used copies, and give them love and attention. People in the future will be able to enjoy the things we enjoyed. The used book and media market is part of how Earth's culture is preserved and passed on to the next generation.

Otherwise, the digital conversion of gaming is more of the same, and it pushes this hobby into becoming a more manipulative, exploitative, and worse pastime.

Mail Room: Traveller: The New Era

One of the most polarizing games ever released from GDW, doubling down on Megatraveller, and destroying the universe to make Traveller more accessible to new players.

And this failed, spectacularly.

So hard that it took down GDW.

But, wow, what a great science fiction game this is.

It uses the same d20 system of Twilight: 2000 v2, and I sort of like that as a unique twist to this game. As a game that needs gritty combat and survival mechanics, this works. Some say they halve the hits across the board to make combat more deadly, and that is probably a good idea. Still, I like a science fiction game based on the Twilight rules, with elements of hardcore survival and combat realism as factors.

A 2d6 game is too broad and abstract to capture the need for that can of beans to live another day on a sub-zero Arctic world as the cyborgs are trying to hunt you down. The micro-battles become the macro.

I like that this game can go from trading 100 tons of pharmaceuticals and bulk plastics as a free trader to a gritty survival scenario with random encounters in a war-torn region. The characters scrounge for supplies, steal a sailboat, and are forced to contend with river pirates. Very few science fiction games get you thinking this way, but due to the Twilight: 2000 DNA, you think that way in this game, and it has the rules to support it.

And you can pull in anything from Twilight: 2000 v2.2, and it can be used as-is.

A massive, self-aware, artificially intelligent computer virus destroys the Traveler universe, controls planets and fleets with self-aware life forms, and slowly seeks to take over a universe destroyed by this new, communications-based, technological enemy. The entire universe is in ruins, with the entire map outside charted space left up to you, and the constant threat of AI-powered fleets with humans and other biological entities under its control slowly working to wipe out any resistance to the machine.

Some control is absolute, with combat warbots cracking the whip to make populations slaves to the machine empire. Other control is passive, with a planet relying on computers and systems it doesn't know are infected, and thinking "everything is normal" while supporting the AI War. Other planets have surrendered to the machine in exchange for limited freedoms, gladly embracing the AI to help it achieve its aims, all while under the constant eye of the hidden oppressor.

Natural resources and beautiful planets are stripped bare to support the AI War effort. As the AI (vampires in name only) increases its control over the galaxy, it starts melding with life, creating cyborgs and crafting androids and synthetics to replace life with robotics and artificial beings. The next evolution of life begins to take hold of the Traveller universe.

Old gear, unhardened from the threat, could be shut down in your hands, unless it is really primitive. Safeguards, such as inserting humans into communications systems and fire control, reduce the risk of AI infecting critical systems but increase the manpower needed to keep the universe running. Technology moves backward in some areas, like entertainment and communications, just to keep the threat of systemwide infection out. There is a mix of high technology and analog hardwiring in this universe that is unlike any other.

The rest of the universe fights losing battles to survive the onslaught or seeks to rebuild after the firewalls are built to keep the enemy out. You can run any type of campaign from rebuilding after the threat passes to a full-on AI War One.

In this universe, AI goes full "German World War II" on the universe.

This is seriously one of the best ideas to come out in science fiction in the last 50 years.

I get why Traveller players hate this. Megatraveller was already a bad mistake (one that I liked), and basing an alternate future on it, where everything is destroyed, tries to fix a bad decision with a worse one. I like the concept here, though. As an alternate Traveller universe, this works. I need to ask myself, what was the appeal of the OG Traveller Imperium? Was it just a "space road map" with well-defined factions and places to go? People run into the library of material you need to understand and own just to even make sense of the history, and there is a new barrier to entry for new players.

The destruction of the OG Imperium, multiple times, kicked off the nostalgia movement for Traveller. We sort of seem stuck in that moment, unable to move forward, since every time it has been tried has been disastrous.

Right idea, wrong universe, but then again, at this point in the Traveller universe, things had to change. Nobody was buying. These were pre-nostalgia days, before GURPS Traveller. AD&D was dying. Magic: The Gathering was taking over the world, along with 40K. Nobody wanted to play role-playing games. And here this game comes out, trashing the Imperium, and asking, what if?

What if AI tries to take over the universe?

...

Um, guys?

...

Guys?

...

Okay, now I am convinced that an AI model from 2026 went back in time 30 years and made this game fail. Our world is quite likely a handful of months away from the same fate. AI superintelligence is right around the corner. And the Traveller fandom still hates this game? I get it, they destroyed my favorite universe, but what they created is a universe outside of anything we have ever seen in science fiction, and only Battlestar Galactica comes close.

And we are facing this same threat today, if not right around the corner of tomorrow.

Like all great science fiction, this one predicted the future with chilling accuracy.

...

Wake up before it is too late.

TNE-301 Survival Margin, page 66

HAPPY 40th GURPS!

 I went back and checked a few sources, and to the best of my knowledge, this is GURPS' 40th anniversary. This is backed up by SJG, with Origins 1986, July 3-6, being the first release of GURPS:

https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/2026-07-03

40 years of great gaming, and only 4 editions, with the 4th lasting more than half of that time?

GURPS is more than just a legendary game; it is an icon and milestone in gaming. They rolled a crit when they developed GURPS.

40 years of amazing gaming, and here is to many, many, many more!

Happy GURPS Day to you!

Traveller 5E

I am in on this one.

Despite having enough versions of Traveller for several lifetimes, I decided to jump in as a late backer. I was negative about this since 5E and science fiction rarely work well enough to last for me, but I want to see what they did. I do worry about long-term support and expansions, but I have enough of those, too, to last several lifetimes.

I have Ultramodern 5, Espeer Genesis, and the Level Up A5E science fiction game, and those work well.

I have too many 2d6 games to count.

One issue 5E science fiction has is that it becomes incompatible with other 5E elements due to the unique hacks and tweaks it requires.

I am interested enough to jump in, so there is a curious factor at play here.

D&D 5.5E: It Is Not the Classes...

It is the monsters.

The class designs in D&D 5.5E? Fine, they work.

The rules of D&D 5.5E are also fine.

The art is very hit-and-miss.

The DMG is also fine.

The game could be more beginner-friendly. There are too many subclasses in the Player's Handbook, which water down each class and make the game worse for new players. Tales of the Valiant got roasted for only delivering two subclass options for each class, but it was the right move.

As a new player, I only want two iconic choices for my subclass pick, A or B.

Leave all of the esoteric and specialized choices to the expansion books, please.

Shipping four, often very specific and narrowly-focused options, like the D&D 5.5E bard (dance, glamour, lore, and valor), feels like a step back, and it also limits player choice. The decision matrix for a new player, comparing four classes up to level 20, is too much. Plus, thematically, glamour and dance feel far too closely related to be distinct choices. It also tells players, "You can dance or have special effects, but not both."

In ToV? I got lore and victory as my choices (similar to lore and valor), and whether I want to dance or create flashy effects is up to me. By the time we get to ToV Player's Guide 2, we get allure, mockery, and sound, which again don't limit options by putting all the dancing bards in one box, but they stay on the thematic side and avoid putting dancers and flashy effects in boxes, which all subclasses should be able to do.

The class designs of D&D 5.5E are fine. I prefer Tales of the Valiant as a set of optimized, clean 2014-style class designs. 

Sadly, class designs are mostly all that D&D YouTubers focus on.

But it is not the classes that are the key difference here; it is the monsters. When I saw Cthulhu in the new Ravenloft book doing 27 damage on a claw attack, and 6d6 on a tentacle attack (not even level 3 fireball damage), I knew D&D was dead. There is a huge problem in the core design ethos of D&D if the game is more afraid of the players than the players are afraid of the game.

This is a problem that does not have an easy fix.

D&D has gone soft.

ToV's monsters? Yeah, my ancient red dragon is spitting a 105-point fire breath and has a roar that makes everyone who fails the save vulnerable to fire damage, potentially doubling the damage of that attack. D&D 5.5E? 91 damage, save for half. The difference in damage is nearly fourfold, from the worst to the best possible result.

The ToV dragon has fewer hit points, too, so the message is clear: kill the dragon quick, or everyone dies. With D&D, low damage, nearly double the health at 600 hit points, and a slog of low damage, repeated, boring attacks, and a combat that drags on for hours.

This is not a fantasy adventure game with a sense of danger and excitement, where the chance of losing a character is real. Where a referee could rule that when the dragon's breath vaporizes you with a 210-point inferno, no resurrection or wish spell could make you return to the mortal realm. You were hit by a force of primal energy from the world's creation. There is no coming back from that.

A tomb created by a lich with access to god-like necromancy? Yeah, death in this tomb is permanent, and all death saves are made at a disadvantage. Players should be scared for their characters because that is the heart of the game.

This is why Shadowdark is so popular: there is real danger, and players are afraid of what is in that book. Even the environment design of Shadowdark is designed to kill characters. This is a game that knows horror far, far better than D&D will ever hope to. D&D's horror is a plastic sheet of wood veneer Contact Paper, compared to the hardwood panels of Shadowdark.

They are built differently.

And the whole myth of 5E being so easy, with invincible characters who do not die, does not come from any other 5E systems, such as Tales of the Valiant or Level Up A5E. This fatal flaw is placed squarely upon D&D's doorstep. They own this. Not any of the other games. Reading the PHB and DMG for 2024 does not even give you a hint of this problem, either. It is only when you crack open the Monster Manual that you begin to see what is happening here.

This is why I prefer ToV and Shadowdark: the monsters can and will kick your butt, kill your characters, and end your campaign if you don't put them down quickly.

I also have the freedom to rule that a character's death is final. The campaign can be softer in the mid-levels, but by the time you are saving the world, the stakes should be raised.

It is good storytelling.

Mail Room: Twilight: 2000 v2.2

We were huge Twilight: 2000 gamers in college and ran an entire campaign. We just loved this game, the ethos, the alternate history, and the gritty feeling of survival and getting to play with all types of military hardware. We were big Aftermath gamers in the early 1980s, and this game in the 1990s picked up the torch and let you play with all of the cool toys. It is an amazing game, easily a peak GDW game, and reflects some of the best times we had in 1990s gaming.

I wish this game had a larger following today and better community support.

I know Free League has an updated version of the game that uses special dice and a level of abstraction that makes it easier to play and solo. The art is also amazing in the new version. But the immersion into the universe is here: you create a character. Each step is methodical but not hard; you create a unique soldier with a history and abilities, and you are thrust into a world gone mad.

This is very much a simulation game where your character has a lifepath, picks up skills along the way, and is then dropped into the world as-is. Adventures? How about survival? If you are a trained special forces survivor, then we are talking about the daring commando missions and raids, knocking off warlords, and taking the war to the Soviets.

Yes, these are Soviets, and they are the movie Soviets, very capable, deadly, efficient, and they are a formidable enemy. This isn't really historically accurate, given current events, but these were the cool Soviets that scared us during the Cold War, and, oh yeah, their gear mostly works as advertised here, which is another surprise.

And there are no drones to speak of! I know, what is this, science fiction?

No, no drones, this is an alternate timeline where drone technology does not exist. You want recon? You climb a tree or dare to climb the ruins of a teetering building, and use binoculars. Or you send someone on foot, and pray they don't get spotted.

The revision uses a d20 roll-under mechanic with a simple skill-plus-ability score system, and difficulty levels modify the success chance. A level 4 skill with an attribute of 5 is added together to form an "asset" number, 9 in this case, and a simple multiplier is applied: 4X for easy, 2X for average, 1X for difficult, 1/2X for formidable, and 1/4X for impossible. It is a clean, easy, simple system that is also shared by Traveller the New Era.

Strangely enough, this game uses the same d20, d10, and d6 dice as White Box.

The game is dense, with rules for just about everything. Just like Aftermath, you can find a rule for everything in this book, and plenty of basic math is used in calculations and formulas. It isn't that hard, and a simple hand calculator (which was a thing back in the 1990s) makes it quick. I love how complete this set of rules is, and it would make a great fantasy game.

I love the huge Version 2.2 on the cover. It looks tacky and like a cereal box, but the game went through three versions: the first using a d10 resolution mechanic, an unpatched 2.1 with the d20 mechanic and a bunch of bugs, and a final 2.2 where all the errata was incorporated and the final version solidified with some input from the team that made Traveller TNE with these rules.

Oh, and this seems like the first game to use the "roll 10 or less/greater for critical failure/success" rule that Pathfinder 2 resurrected many decades later. Twilight did it first, and it has a connection to Paizo's rules in this regard, and a fun fact.

You do have a huge selection of military hardware to play with, and how available anything is depends on an availability rating and the referee's judgment call. You could play this with brand new tanks and plenty of ammo lying around if you wanted, or practically nothing, where improvised weapons are the way people fight, and town militias are armed with bows, crossbows, and single-shot muskets. They have a baseline starting setup and order of battle in the book, with example military units and how many tanks they have left, so you can go from there.

The world is very much a blasted and apocalyptic wasteland, with most of the world knocked out of the technological age, and the ruins of nuked cities and military targets dotting the wasteland. Radiation and disease are real enemies, along with exposure and starvation. It is a grim, bleak, hard existence, and the whole book needs a trigger warning for many 5E players, since the worst parts of human nature turn the wicked among us into "monsters" of the "Monster Manual." And nothing is rewritten or retconned to make the world an easier, happier, or safer space for players.

Slavers exist here, and they are the reason your ex-Navy SEAL keeps finding easy targets. Humanity is both those you are trying to save and vanquish here, depending on how much they have fallen into barbarism and the worst nature of sin. While the cover may look a little cartoony and gung-ho, the game very much reflects the darker side of human nature.

As for those Soviets? How you handle them is up to you. There could be good ones who reject the war and just want to begin rebuilding and go home. There could be the hardcore communist types who run internment camps, enslave the locals, and seek to conquer surrounding lands and peoples for their evil ways. You could all be survivors, struggling together, united by a common cause of good. Or you could all be opportunists, looking to "get yours" and take advantage of a bad situation. You could be gung-ho types, looking to rally the troops and finish the war.

Or you could be trying to just get home, to a home that doesn't exist anymore.

A solid, throwback, alternate past, Cold War-inspired game of apocalyptic madness and military-grade bang-bang. Highest recommendation.

Tales of the Valiant: Northlands Hardcovers

I got the Northlands hardcovers from Kobold Press's crowdfunding this week, and I like them a lot. It feels like a new direction for ToV in how the game is presented and in their approach to the system. The game feels like it has hit its comfort zone, and the designers are now focusing on providing curated experiences rather than more generic base-class content.

Once Player's Guide 2 came out, we were mostly done with generic base-class options, those sort of "fill in the gaps" books for a system that add popular niche options. Now, we are adding thematic content that fills gaps in those areas, while also providing enough supporting material for these thematic options so that, when you use them, they aren't "fish out of water" experiences.

It is like a game providing a generic "valkyrie" class option, but no setting to use it in, no lore to support it, and no real reason to use it other than a cosplay option. It is a weak game design trope, as fantasy games are much stronger if you give me something to work with, a collection of "specific yet generic" content built around a theme, and a reason that this class should be in the world.

Shadowdark has this problem with its third-party material. I got dozens of "did this first" classes that don't really belong in the world, other than to have the Shadowdark version of a class, and it is weaker overall since it never fits into a dungeon crawl, doesn't support the theme, nor does it have supporting material to make it a necessary or even useful choice.

With the Northlands books, we get a combination of a gazeteer and character options book, then an adventure book, and I have everything I need to tell thematic stories in this Norse-like sandbox. I have a campaign, character options, and adventures, and I am set for years playing here.

Also, if I am off playing generic fantasy, I can put these add-on books away and narrow down my options to just a core-book experience. I don't need them, but I have them.

Tales of the Valiant is hitting its stride as a popular Open 5E alternative, and I like the design far better than the run-on sentence of D&D 2024, which fixed almost every problem except combat lengths and lethality. To be honest, D&D's biggest problem right now is too-long combats and lethality, and this is an issue that Tales of the Valiant solves by reducing monster hit points and making monsters hit much harder, so players start losing resources at a faster rate. This also dramatically increases lethality, and with a handful of houserules on top of the default 5E lethality, the problem is solved.

"Ideally, you and your players would have established the potential for PC death and the way it would be handled at the start of the campaign."

Tales of the Valiant, Gamemaster's Guide, page 30

All the YouTubers who say "it is impossible to die" in D&D 5E are making me want to challenge this assumption. The ToV GM's Guide mentions "the potential for PC death" in the rulebook, so this means the rules in this area, like any of the rules in the game, can be changed to make the game more lethal. Perhaps you make a "three strikes, and you are out" rule, stating your character may only drop to zero hit points three times in their entire life, total, before they meet their final fate on the fourth, and no magic will be able to bring them back to the mortal coil.

"Impossible to die in 5E" means two things when I hear it: a creator is trying to sell you a new game, or the group you are with is too inflexible to consider houseruling and fixing the issue in a manner appropriate to their table. If you have the energy to complain about it, you have the energy to fix the problem and agree to a solution; then there is no need to buy another game to fix it.

I swear, this is what we did as kids in the 1980s. Mom didn't have the money to keep buying us new games to fix the problems with the old ones, so we worked out solutions ourselves with the game we were lucky to have. Besides, buying new games means buying new problems.

ToV is just a better fit for me since combat runs faster and the game is more lethal, which is a tuning that I prefer to all other versions of 5E. From there, I can houserule-fix any problems 5E has and get to a comfortable spot with the system. D&D has a massive problem with making high-level foes do almost no damage on a successful hit, like the new Ravenloft version of Cthulhu, doing 27 damage on a claw attack and having 385 hit points. The only horror we will experience fighting that monster is wondering why the fight was so easy, and why we aren't playing a Chaosium game instead.

D&D is so easy; it is like playing a video game on the easiest difficulty level and then complaining that you can't die, that the game is too easy, and that nothing is a challenge. YouTubers repeat this endlessly. I get tired of hearing it, and I solved the problem by switching to a game that raises the challenge level, speeds up combat, and makes monsters hit way harder. I also make a few houserules, and the game is as lethal as Shadowdark.

ToV is a great game that fixes structural problems that cannot be fixed within D&D.

The Northlands books continue the string of hits that ToV is having.

It is a better game, tuned perfectly to a speed and lethality I prefer, and it is just the far better choice. If you are sleeping on ToV, you are missing out.