The Flood, Glut, and Crash

It feels strange to be bombarded by this many crowdfunding projects, and every day over on Facebook, it feels like a new game, with hardcovers hundreds of pages long, is coming out and being announced. The game glut has started, and AI tools are accelerating us toward a tipping point for gaming.

I get the feeling a 1982-style Atari-level extinction-event crash is coming in gaming.

The market can't support all these narrative, cozy, specific niche, and boutique games. Especially with multiple versions of "5E something" coming out all at the same time. Universes Beyond doesn't help; it only piles on to the sea of mediocrity and glut of things to distract us from fantasy gaming and fracture the market worse than it did when TSR went bankrupt. They will most likely be one-shot games, with no product line or future. Another option, another universe, and we will all end up playing something different.

The glut will come, 5E will be oversaturated, and the only way out will be 6E.

It feels like planned obsolescence, the end of an era, the final last gasp of the 5E market.

I have had enough of the 5E rules, and I am battening down the hatches and supporting only one edition. Right now, the current leader is the D&D 4E-like Level Up A5E, which brings back memories of my 4E days and a better time in gaming, when things didn't suck. Mind you, 4E sucked, but gaming was still cool. Those days, 2008-2014, were good times.

The books I have will be it for 5E.

A5E and its smaller library feel supportable for me, and the design is solid.

I am circling the wagons, standardizing on my favorite version of 5E as my "long-term support" version, and going back to games that I loved before the 5E mess happened. Palladium. Rifts. FATE. Maybe Rolemaster. Aftermath. Space Opera. Cepheus Engine. GURPS. BX in some version or another, but not going back to the TSR books. I'm also trying a few other games I haven't paid much attention to, like Blades in the Dark. DCC still had a few shelves, and I love the vibe around that game. Shadowdark is still a good game: small and focused, with strong support.

I'm heading toward a flight to quality and memories.

These days, gaming is a cold and jaded place, where designers use games as a platform to exclude others and push tribalism. Burn it all down. There isn't much left anyway. Take it; I have my memories. The new stuff isn't worth the hassle, or trying to fight a system to get an old-school style out of a game that refuses the concept.

Going back to older games that I loved feels right for me. There is also a glut of these cozy, narrative heartbreakers coming out, and they typically come on strong and fade quickly. It is easy to get excited and spend money, but often that is all there is. What I seek is not new games, but older memories. I want games that take me back. I know that, for those coming into the market, these will be the days, and you can never really get back what you lost.

But there are games where I open the book, and it all comes back.

I open books to remember, smile, and enjoy the yellowed, hazy, faded memories of an autumn season of gaming.

Off the Shelf: Lamentations of the Flame Princess

Lamentations of the Flame Princess has a specific job. It hands you a tight B/X kit — characters, gear, magic, combat, the usual action rules — and then it gets out of the way. The adventures do the rest. They supply the rooms you should not have entered, the things that do not belong in a Monster Manual, and the treasures that might save you or end you. The adventures do the rest. There is no bestiary. Those belong to the adventure writer’s twisted imagination, and they stay there on purpose. If the players could study the opposition in advance, this would be a different game.

I keep that game on one shelf. Rules & Magic sits at the end. Everything else is a night or a place: Carcosa, the Virginia Disastrum books, A Red & Pleasant Land, Frostbitten & Mutilated, Broodmother Skyfortress, the anthologies, Blood in the Chocolate, World of the Lost, Earth Incubation Crisis. The Swords & Wizardry box on the same board is just storage. OSRIC is only there if something needs a number before it eats someone. The shelf's identity is the modules.

It is a stack of horror films that happen to use dice.

The 18+ contract is not a sticker on the wrap. This is Lamentations of the Flame Princess. You know what you sat down for. Taking the character sheet is pressing play on Terrifier, Friday the 13th, Hellraiser, or Event Horizon. The film does not stop to ask if you are comfortable. Neither does this kit. If the game pre-defines the envelope of the horror, it sands down the thing you came for. It tempers the worst thing the module is willing to put in the room. If that is too much, get up and walk away. That is allowed. The game is not designed to run a comfort layer on top of the night. That runs counter to the horror this shelf is for.

What I love about this game is the default stage. Not generic medieval. Seventeenth-century Europe. The dawn of the colonization push: Pilgrim ships, trade empires stuffing holds and calling it God’s work. For a horror game with Puritan bones — all sinners shall be punished — that is ripe territory. The people writing ledgers and raising forts in the New World are the campers. The woods, the coast, the thing in the chapel, and the cargo that should not have been opened are the movie. The point is to inflict that on the expedition. You do not need orcs in a hole. You need a world that still believes in damnation and has just enough maps to walk into it. That is why the Virginia books on the shelf matter more than another dungeon pamphlet. 1633 is not flavor text. It is the year the contract is set.

How does a night run? The players sit there with character sheets and no frame of reference. No known bestiary. No magic-item list to drool over. No “fair encounter” math to hide behind. The referee puts a strange, unsettling situation on the table — a chapel that smells wrong, a hold that should not be that cold, a town that will not look at you — and the players react. There are no feat lists, subclass powers, death saves, or short rests to save you. What you see is what is there. Very little stands between you and a horrific fate except what you do, or what you fail to do.

The kit is small on purpose, and it does the job a B/X kit is supposed to do: it defines the niches and then protects them. The Fighter is the only one who gets better at hitting things. The Specialist is the skill kit. Magic is a loaded gun that might be pointed at the room. Nobody at the table is a toolbox of feats. You are your role, and the situation does not care.

As a referee, you have to love horror and be willing to let the night go where it goes. This is not a game for fudging dice so player narratives survive. Think Night of the Living Dead. They may fall one by one. They may all go in one ugly TPK. You can run the old tricks: peel one of them off, let the woods lie to them, make every sound a question. Like The Thing, they may stop trusting the person across the table because something in the room might already be wearing that face. You are Stephen King or John Carpenter. Part of the fun is the ride — the characters, and the terrible fates that may happen to them.

The still-unpublished Referee’s Guide puts a warning in front of all of this, and it is worth hearing in plain language. Enjoying a vicious movie is not the same as acting one out with other people in the room. LotFP art is flavor. It is there to tell you this is not the other fantasy game. It is not a shot list you are required to stage.

Know who sat down. Talk outside the game. Find the line before the night starts. The job is not to shock, scare, or scandalize the actual human across from you. If you truly offend them, they will not come back, and you will have earned that. Respect for the person comes before the idea you had for the scene. That is not a comfort layer bolted onto Friday the 13th. That is how you get a table that will press play at all.

The game has a reputation it really doesn't deserve, and the above could be considered one of the first "safety tools" printed in an OSR game. The game is an interactive horror movie. A lot of people cannot handle that. The people who can love this game like nothing else. But, as the game reminds you, talk to each other about it.

Depending on my mood, the first spine off the board is A True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum 1633, Volume I. I love history, and I love horror, and this is the peanut-butter-and-chocolate moment. The punishment is not a speech. It is the colony. They have arrived in a land they do not understand, with ledgers, sermons, and a fence that will not help them. There is the settlement they think they are building. Something else is out there, too.

The fun is watching the characters take roles in that new place and then turning the screws the way Blair Witch turns them. A problem. A mystery. Someone who does not come back. Sounds in the woods that the colony's charter does not cover. Do not dump the truth on page one. Let the settlement invent explanations.

The beat I cannot resist: one or more of them are Magic-Users, locked in the stocks for witchcraft, while the colony manager has to stand in the mud and plead for their help. The sky is wrong. The woods are wrong. Everyone else is sure it is Satan. Nobody in charge understands it, and the only people who might are the ones they already chained up. That is the night. That is why this book comes off the shelf first.

Carcosa, Broodmother, the anthologies — those are not a punchline. They are the other situation. Virginia casts the player characters as colonists. The rest of the shelf casts them as stereotypical adventurers: swords, packs, a map, the old hunger for the next room. Same original sin. They opened the door. They unlocked the box. They walked into a place that was not theirs and expected the universe to grade on a curve. It does not. A pulp frame like Carcosa can still terrify an adventurer as badly as 1633 terrifies a colonist. The clothes change. The bill does not.

That is also when the OSRIC book on the end of the shelf earns its keep. In a night where “adventurer” is the default costume, you can let the table think they recognize the furniture. That looks like an owlbear. That looks like a +1 shield. No, it is not. The familiar stat line is bait. The module’s thing is what is actually in the room. OSRIC hands you the lie. LotFP is the punch that follows.

When I want the movie I actually described, I start in Virginia. The shelf stays because nothing else I own does this mix: 1633, Puritan panic, pulp nights that still punish the expedition, and a kit that will not let the Monster Manual save you.

D&D 4E and Level Up

 My brother and I collected 4E, and we loved it. That was a rough stretch, and the game got us out of the house and off the floor for the week. Most people hated the edition. It did not matter. We had figures, a battle map, and those tight dungeon fights that felt like chess you could bleed on. We were there for a tabletop-first game. We were not there to win an argument about whether it counted.

It held for the first ten levels. After that, the edges came apart. Monsters carried so many hit points that the fight became hours that dragged on forever. We started looking at each other like nobody had run this game at a table before they printed it.

It got so bad that our monsters wished out loud for it to be over, too.

I get why a 5E referee stops tracking the number. The game feels like it is coming apart in your hands. You can fake a fight that still feels like a night, or you can play it honest and watch people check out because high level is too easy. We did our version of that in 4E. Cut the monster’s hit points in half, doubled the damage- anything to make the mess end. By the end, we could not stand what that edition had turned into. With 5E, if a DM doesn't prep right or doesn't know their players' power, the end boss can turn into tissue paper and the whole night is ruined.

There was a D&D YouTube video recently about how lying to players like this and faking fights is terrible. But if the game is that broken, I don't blame DMs who cheat the system to make things feel more exciting. Especially if your players won't play anything else. What are you supposed to do? At that point, it is either lie to your players or quit a game you can't stand anymore.

At least if you lie, you are all playing together.

That is where we ended up with D&D 4E. In the end, it came down to lying to each other and rolling the dice.

But still, D&D 4E sits in a special place. The last good long campaign I played with my brother. At the start, it felt like it could go on forever. That part of my life still feels that way when I think about the maps, the minis, and the two of us at the table.

We walked to the bookstore to buy the books.

We spent those Saturdays together.

We would play with the new books all Sunday.

Leveling up to 10 in D&D 4E was fun. After that, it was a slow, long letdown.

That is why I hold A5E so tightly, even though Tales of the Valiant is the better-supported game and has more of everything. Level Up feels like a 5E that remembered 4E without asking me to play a broken game. A fighter with a tradition. A road that can go wrong. The commander class returns. Nerrath is still a place you can walk toward. The math is dry and scales well to level 20. It plays like a fixed 4E should feel, without being 4E.

Today’s 5E is at the end of the edition, casters having all the fun while the rest of the table watches. A5E is the last flicker of that 4E candle. I cannot put A5E away. It stays on the shelves I actually play from. I have better games. The memories are stronger than today’s promises.

Off the Shelf: FATE

I still love this game, mostly because of the dice. This is also still a better pick-up-and-play narrative package that is far easier to get into than many of today's overly complicated narrative swamp games that end up coming off like 5E with pools and special dice tacked on. I could have to sort through 400-500 pages of a full-sized game with multiple volumes and a few hundred pages of who-cares character options, or play an easy-to-teach single-book narrative powerhouse game like FATE.

I know Accelerated is out there, but I like Core better, even with the streamlining and improvements of the latter. I feel too much was taken out of Accelerated, and I prefer the classic, expansive, full-featured game toolkit over the Lite framework version. I can do more with Core; it slots into any setting quickly, and it gets the job done. Yes, it is an older game, but that doesn't make it any less powerful or flexible.

Accelerated stripped too much out, and I appreciate Core's "game building" toolkit approach. This works, and I don't need the changes in the smaller book. Sure, Accelerated is a tiny book and very easy to hand out to new players, but the OG Core book is my jam and the one I started with. Plus, I like Core's traditional Skills approach over Accelerated's generic (and too easy to cheese) Approaches system.

In Accelerated, I can pick a high "Flashy" and "Flashy" the entire adventure by overusing the Approach. In Core, I am using traditional skills (the book's list or my own list), and "what can be done with what" is far better defined and clearer. New players will "lean on Flashy" in Accelerated far too much, but they will understand the uses for Core's Stealth and Lore skills easily. Defined choices with clear uses are easier for me, and the players I play with, than catch-all approaches.

Core is the book for me.

Accelerated is too simple and vague, to the point of being the harder game to play.

One thing my brother and I did with this game was binge a TV show and play through the episodes with FATE. We didn't need the fully realized, hour-plus character designs of GURPS, the pool-based power frameworks of Cypher, or any other generic system. FATE described any television show character quickly and cleanly, and you could start playing in five minutes.

Best of all, you could turn any "episode situation" into an aspect for the game, such as "Sienfield gets an important package for another apartment," and run with it. Kramer could have a "winning lottery ticket he is always losing," and that plays into the episode, too. The game is a collection of dice rolls, creating aspects, invoking them, managing your fate points, and laughing your way through a situation. We laughed for hours playing this, and it got sillier and sillier as the night went on. This does everything from Seinfeld, Scooby-Doo, Baywatch, Looney Tunes, CHIPs, A-Team, or any other episodic situation  TV show quickly and cleanly, with minimal fuss.

FATE has a wide dramatic range, too, from slapstick silly to gritty and serious. It can get deadly and grim, like The Walking Dead. It can do romantic comedies better than any system I've seen, and it isn't even a "romance game" filled with that typical heartsy AI art you see in many 5E crowdfunding books these days. You could run "Anchorman: The Roleplaying Game" with this system more easily than with any generic system, and the rules work and create chaos on their own. You could even do something as silly as "KISS: The RPG" and simulate your favorite 80s rock band through medieval adventures, doing things no other game could easily manage.

FATE does superheroes, too. Video games. Lara Croft. Ratchet and Clank. Sonic. Mario. Link. Double Dragon or Streets of Rage. TMNT or Thundercats. Transformers or GI JOE. All with minimal fuss and effort. And if you know the characters or have a guide, anything converts easily, and you don't need a huge character guide to convert a character into the system.

Even classic movies are easily played with FATE. The Maltese Falcon. American Graffiti. Star Wars. Jaws. ET. Indiana Jones. The Thing. Star Trek. Blade Runner. Books, too. Dune. LotR. John Carter. Conan. For some of these films and novels, FATE does a better job, faster, and easier than the "official RPG" for the game. For movies and books without a game, FATE does them very well.

While the collector in me would love a "Jaws 5E" game with a few hundred pages of authentic 1970s New England oil-painting art, what am I doing here? Why am I wasting my money? Just to have something I will likely never play? Why do I need a hundred pages of subclass options for sheriffs, marine biologists, and fishermen again? Honestly? I would rather have the New England art book and no dated and little-tested 5E rules that will likely never be used at a table.

Oh, and martial classes in Jaws 5E still suck; play a caster.

In FATE, you write down aspects, which combine character concept, trouble, and history. You pick skills. You pick a few signature stunts. If you know your characters, like a GI JOE character, then this stuff is trivially easy. It is less of a character sheet and more of a description and collection of signature style moves and phrases. Snake Eyes? Silent but Deadly. There we go, no need for an expensive VTT character creation tool or looking up the feat in a 600-page rulebook, or waiting for the inevitable hundred-dollar minimum crowdfunding expansion to get the character you want.

You just have it.

A one-book game.

Four dice.

GURPS forces you to design the power or know the skill and advantage lists. Cypher forces you to search the archetypes. In 5E, you need to read a few hundred pages of subclasses to see if the designers gave you something you can use, or wait like a good consumer for the next book. In FATE? You just say it and write it down. I'm done with this designer hubris junk! I can do better, and FATE gives me the tools if I have an imagination to use them.

Sometimes I am in the mood for that level of depth. If I am digging in and savoring a simulation-heavy, survive-this-system, it is going to be GURPS. But for a one-book toolkit game? Something pick-up-and-play with cool dice?

FATE still has it.

Magic is Not the Answer to Every Game Design Problem

I am on the 2024 fighter page again. Level three. Four names. Two of them cast. The rogue book is the same habit in a leather jerkin: if the class feels thin, somebody opens the spell chapter and bolts a few slots onto the sheet, and that's where the fun went.

I keep looking at that and thinking they did not write the job. They wrote the thing they already had.

DCC does not do that with the warrior. Mighty Deeds is one die. You say you are kicking the lantern, pinning the spear, putting the shield in someone’s teeth, and the judge answers you. That is the whole engine. No pamphlet. No list you have to finish before you are allowed to be interesting. The move can be stupid and it can still be the fighter’s move.

A5E is sitting on the other shelf, and it is not the same answer, which is the point. Combat maneuvers, traditions, exertion you actually spend. You train the thing. You pick it. It costs you. It is not a cantrip with extra steps, and it is not a tag hanging off the longsword that you swap after a long rest. They built a little machine for people who hit things, and it does not pretend to be Vancian magic with a better armor class.

2024 still wanders off into the subclass pamphlet, or it shrugs and makes them a caster. Weapon tricks, a rider on the steel, a recommendation thread that points at the Eldritch Knight because at least that one has verbs with names. The Deed die and the maneuver tradition sit there. Different tools. Neither one needed the spell list to make the turn belong to somebody.

The spell chapter is the chapter every game comes with and never answers the question.

It is not D&D, the art, or the worlds that really bug me about D&D these days. It is the pedestrian habit of answering the hole in a class by adding a spell list and calling it a day.

Mail Room: Blades in the Dark

This was the go-to narrative game about 5-6 years ago, and I held off because I already had a few other narrative games and my plate was full. The Cypher System was my favorite for a while, but I have cooled off a bit with the new edition; the art and layout are a bit too busy and distracting for my eyes. Blades in the Dark is also one of the games many new games copy from and borrow ideas from; one is Daggerheart, which is commonly mentioned as downstream from Blades in many concepts.

So, here I am, back again, taking a look. People compare it to FATE, but Blades is far more structured and procedural, which keeps the game from the narrative softness of either FATE or Cypher. Narrative games do rely on "out-of-game" structure, but Blades keeps the narrative action closer to the metal and avoids many of the "head jumps" that turn people off narrative gaming.

For example, in FATE, you need to jump out of character, consider what action type you are taking, apply out-of-character mechanics, and roll. You also consider various aspects and other OOC considerations, then need to "jump back into the head of the character" to keep the narrative flowing. This is why many prefer D&D to narrative gaming: there is very little head-jumping out of character, but even 5E begins to fray at the seams when you start managing its sloppy action economy.

The OSR is almost no head-jumping, and you stay in character constantly. The goblin runs up; you hit it with a sword. You see a lock; the thief picks it. You search for a trap; you find one. X does Y, and you follow the constant stream of decisions all the way to the goal.

Blades keeps you in headspace and narrative for most of the action, which feels nice for a narrative game. The only downside is the constant "yes, but..." of the 4-5 partial-success rolls, and the fatigue that comes from deciding what a "yes, but..." means on almost every roll. This is the same issue that Genesys or Daggerheart have, or any narrative game that incorporates partial success mechanics. This is the sort of thing that strikes some initially as "the best thing since sliced bread," but it can go stale just as quickly if you overuse it or make it too important, and you are "yes, butting..." every roll with bigger and bigger stakes.

People end up back in d20, and "X does Y" feels refreshing because failure is pass/fail and doesn't require interpretation. There is no interpretative fatigue. You fail. You see the next thing. You do the next thing. You succeed. And so on.

But like Genesys, the answer is almost always to reduce the importance of "yes, but..." and turn it into a quick ruling or next-turn modifier, then move on as quickly as possible. Save the big "yes, but..." for the most important moments, and don't drag the game through the mud by over-interpreting every roll.

Make a quick judgment and move on. Tick a clock. Raise the stakes. Remove a die. Break an item. Introduce a twist. Or add a wrinkle to the scene, like a crowd gathering, that is neither good nor bad, but could potentially complicate matters. A smart player could use the crowd as an asset to blend in and get away. A not-so-smart player now has a group of witnesses.

The "yes, but..." doesn't always mean "quantifiable negate game mechanic penalty measured by a number," as it does in an "X does Y" game. If you are trying to account for every point and level of negative effect, you are probably overthinking it, and that is leading to burnout.

If it takes you more than 30 seconds to think of the consequence, just pick something at random and keep playing. The first thing that comes to mind. Or ignore it because you are stuck in the narrative weeds. If it is not clear and apparent, it isn't that important, so drop it and move on.

Sometimes a "yes, but..." is just a normal success, and you don't need to overthink it. The whole thing could be a "yes, but you feel terrible about doing it that way," and move on. Let the player decide what to do with that. Make it up to the contact who took the brunt of the negative effect later? Your choice.

Blades in the Dark is a milestone game that changed a lot, and it still has plenty of fans at the table. I am looking forward to digging into this one.

The Best AD&D Style Games

Old-School Essentials put out the 2026 revision, and I have been sitting with the two core books longer than I meant to. Creative Commons instead of the OGL; the rules they actually needed to tidy; a pile of examples the earlier printings were thin on; and Advanced Fantasy is the only game they support these days. I like those books. I am just not sure they have decided which game they are playing.

Classic OSE was a restatement of BX: smaller hit dice, a short class list, race-as-class as the default shape of a person, spells that stop where Expert stops, and a level cap at 14. Advanced Fantasy was always the other product. Same procedures, extra classes, a race-and-class split, and a stack of AD&D features turned down so it wouldn't conflict with BX. It always reminded me of a cleaned-up version of the classic Labyrinth Lord game, or a BX+.

The revision brings first edition back into the game with optional d10 fighters sitting next to the old hit dice. Race-and-class sits next to race-as-class. High-level play is a DIY chapter that tells you to borrow from somewhere else if you want spells past what Expert printed. The publisher is clear about the cap: 14, and nothing BECMI is in the box.

So the question is no longer “is this a pretty BX book?” It is “is this BX, or is this AD&D Lite?” Once you ask that, you need to compare OSE Advanced to the other AD&D-like games on the shelf.

If you want AD&D-Lite: Swords & Wizardry

Swords & Wizardry Complete is my AD&D-Lite game. It is an OD&D zero-edition that gobbled up a bunch of expansion books and parts of AD&D, but refused to leave the 1970s and stuck with the little-book feeling. Assassin, monk, druid, paladin, ranger, one saving throw, 9th-level spells, characters that do not bounce off a wall at name level, and a monster list with magic resistance. That is what “lite” has to mean if the word is going to do any work. A demon can shrug a spell, and casters are not the masters of the universe anymore. We get the high-level spells and abilities here!

The high-level game is in the book.

OSE Advanced gives you the names. Paladin, ranger, illusionist, split race and class, and now the optional bigger hit dice. What it will not give you is the rest of that 1e machine, such as magic resistance, high-level play, and classes with a bit more depth. I still love the S&W fighter better than any other BX or 1E clone; this is peak OSR gaming. The single saving throw number is genius and erases pages of saving throw tables from the game.

S&W has a couple of expansion books that bring in barbarians, bards, illusionists, warlocks, and more monsters. If I want the "AD&D-isms" and don't want the full AD&D weight, Swords & Wizardry wins every time and comes with me in my travel bag.

If you want AD&D: OSRIC

If I actually want first edition, I play first edition, or I play the clone that exists so people can keep writing modules for it without the messy "for the first edition of the world's most popular role-playing game" prose. OSRIC was never trying to be the pretty book on the coffee table. It was a legal, usable AD&D clone so the community could ship adventures and say the name out loud. I am not waiting for it to become a lifestyle brand, and the game is already done, loved, and this is how we play 1E these days.

We had a major revision with OSRIC 3.0, and this is the new 1E standard-bearer. I know we can get the PoD books of the originals (with misprint errors), but I want the definitive source that opens the door for third-party publishers. I support OSRIC 3.0 with its new CC-based license. The originals are fine if it is "just me," but once we start playing with others and wanting new adventures and material, OSRIC will win every time.

OSE does not do that work. It will eat a mountain of BX and a lot of 1e content if I am willing to convert by feel, which I usually am, but that is not the same as sitting down with the 1e stack. I do not grab OSE Advanced because I want segments, weapon speed, magic resistance, and a spell list that treats 9th-level spells as optional. I grab it for BX procedures and a few extra toys. Oh, and the books are smaller and easier to travel with. OSE wins if I am on vacation and need a travel game.

When I want AD&D, OSRIC is the living clone. The revised OSE books are doing something else.

If you want AD&D-Plus: Adventures Dark & Deep

Joseph Bloch’s pitch has always been the continuation question I keep coming back to: what if Gygax had stayed and kept developing first edition instead of walking out of TSR in 1985? Adventures Dark & Deep starts from 1e and from the public hints about where that game was supposed to go next: new classes, a rebuilt bestiary, cleaned-up combat, and the whole thing treated like a product line that kept moving. This started as a what-if AD&D if Gary had stayed, and became a love letter to 1E with a few modern twists and treats.

I love this game but do not have the time to play it. This is my "ultimate AD&D" fanservice game. The combat is cleaned up, and weapon speed actually works. The skill system is genius. There is a Lite version that strips the game down to a playable core set of options, yet still is a remarkably complete game for the levels people actually play.

What OSE Advanced still is

I am not boxing the revision up. Leaving the OGL for Creative Commons is the right long-term move. The examples of play are what previous OSE printings were thin on, and one purchase path instead of five overlapping cores is easier for a new referee. I can still carve a Classic game out of the new books; they include a Basic Play section.

The old books are still fine. I can not upgrade, keep playing for decades, and house-rule in whatever I want. This is BX, not 5E. Factor in the Carcass Crawler zines, and I have more character races than any of the other three games on this table, including the new favorites people keep asking for. Those races will sit at a S&W table or an OSRIC table just as easily. The B/X world is still the more open room that way, and I am not locked to whatever a VTT character builder decided to support.

None of that fixes the focus problem. BX is a low-resolution game. AD&D is a high-resolution game. Put them side by side, and the BX picture gets blurry. Optional bigger hit dice, a parallel character-creation method, and a high-level chapter that admits I will have to loot another book for spell lists; that is two games sharing a spine, with the extra material not in the box.

If they later print a high-level book, a love-letter to BECMI, the conversation changes. One page of optional rules for high-level play does not turn OSE into an AD&D-clone, and so much is missing that this should have been left to another expansion.

OSE Classic, the discontinued Tome, the thing that made the line matter, was the best-in-class BX restatement. The revised Advanced books are a very good catalog of BX procedures plus selected 1e toys, scaled to Expert. As a BX game with extra hats, I will use them. As AD&D lite, they don't beat Swords & Wizardry Complete. As AD&D, they do not beat OSRIC. As the next step past an expanded first edition, they aren't even in the same room as Adventures Dark & Deep.

I try to know which feeling I am feeding before I take a book off the shelf. The new OSE will feed the BX one if I turn off half the options. For the other three, I buy the game built for them. For 90% of the cases, Swords & Wizardry is just right for me.

We just have so many good AD&D options these days that it is hard to see OSE plus one page of optional high-level play rules as real competition for any of them. The new OSE books should have left this out, or did a BECMI-like expansion later.

There Is More Here

I keep hoping A5E is the 5E I can still live in.

Not the brand, not the argument about who owns the shape of the game. The nights. I have sat through too many of those 5E evenings where the fighter is holding a turn and watching the spell list do the interesting work, and everybody knows it, and we still call it a party. The woods are a skill check you talk past so you can get to the room that was balanced. You write a personality in the margin, and the math never looks at it again. Short rest, next slot, next level. Then the page is blank, and you are supposed to care about a new subclass that arrived in a book you did not ask for.

A5E is the first time in a while the jobs felt like jobs again. Exertion and traditions give a martial character something to spend. I remember the first session I ran it, and the fighter was actually deciding things, not waiting for the wizard to be done. Exploration has parts. You can lose the afternoon on the way to the door. Weather, a hunt, a stretch of road that costs hit points before anyone draws. That used to be the part of the hobby I liked before everything became an encounter budget.

Even sleep is not free. A long rest wants a haven. Somewhere you can eat and sleep without a reasonable chance the night tries to kill you. An inn will do. A camp where somebody has to stay awake on watch usually will not. A ranger who knows how to knock together a small shelter in the trees can make one out there. A few spells and class features do the same. You can lie down in the open and get some of it back, but the worst fatigue and strife hang on until you make it somewhere that counts and you have supplies to eat. I have had 5E tables treat eight hours on a dungeon floor like a reset button. The journey keeps a receipt in A5E, and in other versions of 5E, resting feels like MMO hit-point regeneration.

I am sick of the MMO-isms in 5E. Somebody wash the bad taste out of my mouth.

Destiny is the piece I did not know I was missing. It points the character at something that will not wrap in three sessions. D&D and ToV let you say you want revenge, a crown, or to go home, and then the sheet treats that as flavor. Here the long hook sits next to the numbers. I have had characters in other 5Es who were very well built, and I could not have told you, two months later, what they were walking toward. That started to bother me more than the math arguments.

Multiclassing is usually a cheat or a lecture. You either stack the broken pair, or you sit there explaining why the table is not doing that. Synergy feats treat the mix as a build, which is a small thing until you have spent years policing 5E combinations and you are tired of being the hall monitor. Rare spells scratch a different itch. You hunt them. They are not the same list everybody already knows from the basic book, the one you have seen on every sheet since 2014.

That's not what a clone is for. A clone reprints the shape and settles a few arguments so you can keep your old adventures. I already have that. What I wanted was the language of 5E with a longer memory than the next game session. You do not come all the way back from the woods until you have a haven, whether that is a room in town or a shelter somebody knew how to raise before dark.

I do not know if that saves 5E for me. I know it is the version I pull when I still want that language in my mouth and I want the night to be about more than a room that was pointed at the party’s level. A tradition. A road that costs you. Sleep that means more if you earned the place you are sleeping. A destiny that keeps walking after the short rest. A reason to mix classes without feeling dirty. A spell I had to find instead of picking off a menu. I am running that and seeing if the hope holds, which is as honest as I can get about it right now.

Mail Room: Gate Pass Gazetteer 2025 (A5E)

Level Up A5E is the last 5E version I have on my display shelves.

The annual showed up in the mail, and I had to find a gap on the A5E shelf for it. There is a gap. That is part of why the shelf is still there.

Level Up is the last 5E I keep on display. Not the last 5E I own. The last one that gets to sit with the games I actually look at when I walk past. Gate Pass Gazetteer 2025 goes up with the official books, the ones written for this framework, the other yearly bricks. Everything else that used to lean on “it’s compatible” is in a closet. I stopped supporting that pile. It was too much. You can feel a game go sloppy when the characters feel like they come from different universes and the books get lost in a crowd.

This was the first 5E that worked for me in a way that still felt like a challenge. The numbers sat still. Hits meant something. Dying is not a coffee break. They kept bits from 3rd and 4th that I liked, and they left the danger in. They rewrote the SRD from the ground up so they did not have to live on the OGL, which at the time felt like homework and later felt like the reason the game could stay itself. Fighters had a job. That part still matters when I pull the book.

It is a niche version of 5E. I don’t need this to be a popular game. At this point, it doesn’t matter. Support is thin, and I have stopped feeling that was a problem. What they did print is solid throughout, and there is not so much of it that I need a second set of rules for what belongs on the table. Official sources only, and I have more than a campaign. Exploration that can actually go wrong in the woods. Social classes that do something besides talk while the martial character holds a weapon and waits. Martial classes that spend exertion on a tradition the way a wizard spends slots.

Those jobs are in the books. I do not have to handwave them into existence, or spend more on crowdfunding books to fix a version of 5E that will never be fixed.

The Gazetteer is the right kind of new spine for a shelf like that. A year of the magazine in one hardcover. More heritages, more archetypes, a couple of prestige classes, two combat traditions, challenges, junk items, a pile of monsters. It feeds the same game. It does not ask me to invent a second 5E, so the first one looks supported. I already know what that looks like. It is behind a door.

I am not making a case that A5E should have been bigger. I am looking at a lean official shelf that still covers the night, putting this year’s book in the space I have left, and leaving the closet shut.

The Save You Make...

I still remember the quiet when the referee said save.

Not a death save. That language wasn’t in the room yet. It was just a save, and everyone knew the empty space after it meant needle or gaze or something in a chest that did not care how long you had been walking around in the character. One number. You watched the die, and if it came up wrong, you were already reaching for a fresh sheet instead of a spell slot.

I am not dressing those nights up, and a lot of them were clumsy. The dungeon was the ordinary kind of unfair: too many doors, a pit with no speech attached, a monster that had not been told what level you were, and you brought extra character sheets because a room was allowed to finish someone. Save-or-die was only the blunt version of that. The book was not going to catch you.

Now I open a current-day adventure, and I can feel the courtesy before the first boxed text. The basilisk is still a basilisk; only petrified is a problem with a clock on it, and poison is damage plus a condition you can spend the next ten minutes fixing. The old fear is still sitting in the names, but the write-up has already decided the session should continue. Three failures, a word from across the map, a revival that costs less than the dinner you bought on the way over, and nobody is shoveling dirt on the character sheet.

The modules are built the same way. The numbers have been sliced so the party is supposed to walk out, the rest sits where you would expect to catch your breath, and the boss has enough hit points to feel like work without enough permission to actually end the night. “Balanced so you win” is treated as good manners, and I understand the manners, because nobody drove across town to watch a paladin become a garden decoration in the second room. I still notice that the fear left with the old save.

Video games stopped pretending about this a long time ago. Story mode, the painted line on the floor, a prompt you can skip if your hands are tired. You paid for the ending, so the ending stays available. Tabletop kept the dice and borrowed the courtesy. You still pick up the d20. The dungeon just isn’t supposed to mean it.

I still play this way. I like knowing the next page is waiting. I miss that second before the save, when the adventure module might actually kill your character. Lethal dungeons were not a philosophy. They were just rooms nobody had already sized for a listed level.

These days I look at a monster stat block or room description, and I can already see how the party leaves. That used to not be so certain.

Off the Shelf: Rifts

It was one of those moments when I feared I had lost them all.

A water leak in an adjacent room meant I could not get to my Rifts books, and I feared the worst. So they sat on a shelf while the carpets dried. I was worried about warped paper and ruined books.

All of them were fine. Not one warped page. Not one water-damaged cover. What are these things, indestructible? I have seen people's play copies of Rifts, yellowed pages, all the corners bent, a cover with more creases and bends than California fault lines, and yet still loved and used the day they were bought 30 or more years ago.

When Rifts comes around, people will still be playing Rifts with these same books.

So back in my room, on my premier game shelves, I put the copies right next to my SDC games. I do not care about the MDC thing; that is how we describe standing in front of a cruise missile in this world these days, or staring down the barrel of a tank. We have MDC weapons in this world; get used to it. Bombs, anti-ship missiles, hypersonic ballistic missiles, thousand-pound bombs, 30mm anti-tank cannons, and the other big things that go boom are circa 2026 MDC firepower. Even shoulder-fired anti-tank rockets dropped from drones with shaped charges count.

Does Rifts sit as a display game, or do I play it? I get the feeling that this time, I play. It slaps around the D&D multiverse by a good mile, making those worlds look soft and silly. These are true planar terrors, walking tanks that could crush you flat with a cough, or your skin falls off due to their bad breath. Rifts has always been over the top in all the best ways a game could be. The Rifts multiverse is the endgame of all games, including all games, superior to them all, more overpowered than them all, and giving back by making anything magic that stumbles into an MDC creature with MDC power. Even superheroes.

You get MDC! And you get MDC! Here's a six-shooter; even you get MDC!

Powergaming? Books full of OP items? Unbalanced OCCs that could crush some normal human OCC fool who stumbles through a rift from the 1880s? The whole "do we start a bar fight with MDC weapons?" problem. It is all here. Use what you want. Play a small, one- or two-book campaign. Do a one-shot, but it's likely MDC and will end the campaign with a successful hit. Import your favorite characters and kit them out with power armor. Drop your favorite superhero team in and make this world their new home. Everything has a place here. It's all good.

Back in the early 1990s, compared with the 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms, Vampire: The Masquerade, BattleTech, Cyberpunk, Dark Sun, a dead Greyhawk, Megatraveller, Twilight:2000, and the other settings of the day, Rifts was better than them all, with maybe Cyberpunk's Night City coming close to the cool factor. D&D and TSR were dying.

People were tired of all the settings we put on pedestals today. I remember the time the "first OSR" died and took TSR with it. Even in fantasy games, we had Palladium, GURPS, Rolemaster, RuneQuest, MERP, and a few others that "did D&D better." AD&D 2nd Edition got heavily sanitized, politically correct, safe for every audience, and nobody cared. The game blew up with splat books. The Vampire subculture started, and continues to this day, with the people angry at VTM 6th. They realize people base their lives around these Kindreds and identities, right? Don't mess with people's goth identities; they are sacred, just like My Chemical Romance is a religious experience.

The hardest part of playing and enjoying Rifts is letting go of other people's negative opinions. In that sense, it is just like GURPS. These games don't deserve the repeated nonsense that people endlessly adopt as false lived experience.

We had an AD&D 2nd Edition game going back in the 1990s, and it was fun, but Rifts was always the one we waited to play. Nothing compared to blowing everything up and laughing about it. You both got to live in utter fear and wield weapons that could level city blocks. The game was pure power fantasy. Did you feel weak with the last character? Ask your referee about playing something overpowered next time for a massive revenge kick. Play an MDC Dragon or Godling if you want. The Coalition will hunt you, but since when did they ever NOT deserve it?

Rifts was awesome and full of character. Any god could drop in, hop off their MDC motorcycle with the nova cannon and missile racks, and offer a mission. If you remember Image Comics and Wildstorm, yeah, that was Rifts. I use my MDC cyber-claws to tear the front of the building off. Roll an attack, give me damage; all right, the building has no front wall, bricks are all over the street, and the bad guys inside are surprised.

Today's games are far too careful and afraid of their own shadows.

Today's players are lost, believing they don't deserve to have it all. A carefully balanced game is good enough for me.

Why aren't you living life?

Why aren't you experiencing something awesome? Another balanced 5E book won't fix your boredom with the game. You will just be complaining about broken this or broken that. Sure, the majority of Rifts is broken, but it still works fine that way.

Why are you so afraid?

If you fear giving characters power, you will run from this game screaming. If you embrace the anime-inspired overpowered attacks and weapons that can slice a hillside in half, you will be right at home here. If all you know in life is carefully balanced D&D 5.5E, I feel sorry for you. That's not true power. Even at level 20, where you are single-turn nova-blasting encounters, that is nothing compared to this. You are still relatively weak on the cosmic scale of things, and your carefully planned alpha attack will bounce off a tank, and your character sheet and identity-gaming avatar will be literal red mist.

And no, this isn't the end-of-edition D&D 5.5E overpowered characters, which are only meant to break the game so everyone begs for D&D 6E to come along and save us from the end-of-edition OP subclass options. They have done this to every edition of D&D they printed; they blow out the edition in a fire sale of OP releases, people "have fun for a little while" but "eventually grow tired of all the powergaming," and then "please release 6E and fix this!" Planned obsolescence means breaking your own game and riding off the YouTube hype to sell the last few books before you replace them all.

We broke the old game; please buy the fixed one.

Is Rifts broken? Mostly. Do I care? No. Is it being so all over the place part of the fun? Sure, why not? I am a roleplayer; I could make a ham sandwich work as a rule system. I can have fun with anything. Part of the challenge is making it all work together. The characters are so cool I don't even care. And the game wasn't intentionally broken to get you to buy the next one. It is a big box of stuff you pick and choose from; most of it works together, some pieces are wildly overpowered, and you learn how to become a better Rifts GM by playing, and not by copying YouTube streaming shows.

Rifts is a game I keep walking away from but can never truly leave.

Rifts will still be here. Just like my books, the game is a survivor.

Just like you deserve to be, too.

Games I Love, Part One

These are games close to my heart, the ones I can dig into and lose myself in. You see my favorites in a few of my blogs, where I drop science daily and let loose a stream of consciousness that few other blogs can unleash. SBRPG is my central home, a jack-of-all-trades blog where anything goes. But a few of my more game-focused blogs go deeper, and that level of consciousness is so rewarding.

GURPS is one, a game I can endlessly dig into and lose myself in. The character design system is the best in gaming, beating the sequined faux-plate mail pants off of 5th Edition any day of the week. Is it retro? Do you need software? Is it deadly and realistic? Is the combat system slow and a bit of a throwback? Yes to all of the above.

Is it so rewarding and deep that I don't even care? GURPS is the end-all, be-all of games. Two books do it all. I do not need thousands of dollars of crowdfunded 5E books selling me slightly altered variants of what I already have. The sourcebooks are some of the best overviews of anything you can imagine ever written.

GURPS was also written in the era of games "beating AD&D at their own game," so it had something to prove. A lot of the games I love today come from this same era and attitude. It is funny how nostalgia and pop culture can't seem to stop kneeling at the altar of nostalgia, and the faux-nostalgia that D&D 5.5E presents as some sort of AAA Gaming Fortnite remake. The OSR worships games I gave up on in the 1980s so I could play these games.

But what if I want to play gritty fantasy or hard science fiction? A realistic western? Ancient Rome? Any historical game? GURPS will go there, and it likely already has sourcebook support. If I want to play in a setting that isn't published anymore, or want better rules for the chassis? GURPS will do all that easily. Do I want to create my own world and develop my own magic systems? GURPS was built for that. I am not forced to take the 5.5E pile of planar stuff, cosplay art, and throwback Vancian magic bolted onto an infinite-cast MMO magic system with video game rest mechanics.

GURPS will let me design my own magic system.

Instead of writing a 14-page backstory, let's design a binder-sized world story with a unique backstory, history, and magic power system. GURPS gives you the tools to DIY. D&D asks you to wait to buy the next book.

Here's another "we gave up AD&D for this" game. Palladium. A game so stuck in the 1980s and 1990s that it brings back the sweet memories of the era. Please never change. I will play in a Ninjas and Superspies game set in the 1980s to a Miami Vice soundtrack forever. No internet and no drones, and cell phones were an oddity the size of a loaf of bread that only worked in a few major cities? Yes, take me back; I got the soundtrack right here.

Palladium Fantasy is another "nah, sorry AD&D, we got better over here" game that answered the armor-damage debate. It came with a fantasy world Wizards of the Coast never repeatedly ruined. The OCCs in this game are unique; they are all specialists, none of them are balanced against each other, and each one feels like "the best in what they do," and that is on purpose.

D&D 5.5E will take a job, such as a chef, and proceed to give them a 1-to-20 rack of combat, utility, healing, crowd control, and adventuring powers to make them a useful party addition to sell you the MMO lie. Palladium will make them a world-class chef and let them die in a dungeon holding a baguette.

Not every job needs to be the same, or have the same level of utility when it comes to killing things. Some have spells with a casting time of days, but nobody else can do this stuff. People call them "trap classes" because new players pick them because they sound cool, then referees throw them into a dungeon (the AD&D mindset on the other side of the screen), and they die. Here's a thought: run Palladium like Palladium, and give those OCCs things they can do. If you want a combat-focused game, pick combat-focused OCCs.

Again, you started to see the lie be crafted in AD&D Second Edition, where they elevated the bard to a full party role. Palladium lives in an era that says, no, some roles will not be artificially inflated to be dungeoning classes. This is MMO design theory: "we have to make any choice a viable one," and the D&D 4E issue of "everything feeling samey" comes up again and again. D&D 5.5E is already starting to feel this way again, but with the added benefit of martials getting the shaft again.

If I play a bard in Palladium, I will be having all sorts of social adventures, and I will never be a door-kicker. That is fine for me, and I can enjoy a game that runs at a different pace. I will never have the raw killing power of a mercenary fighter, nor the defensive nut of a knight, but neither of them will be as good as I am when singing a song and engaging in social hijinks. The game takes on an entirely different character; the OCC creates its own "world inside of a world" it operates in, and while combat works the same, I am not living in a dungeon crawler and pretending to be a social roleplayer.

Every time I play 5E and want to do social roleplaying, my character sheet screams at me to get in the dungeon and stop wasting my time. Palladium fixes that problem by narrowing the focus of OCCs and letting them play in their own sandbox and sphere of influence.

Why not use GURPS? Palladium is faster, uses d20s and 1d100, uses an AC-like AR armor system with "armor hit points", and feels more like an AD&D-style game. One simple core system, the same combat engine, multiple game worlds, TNMT (and back in the day, Robotech) on the side, and you have it all. I get to use all of my dice. I can get a group of AD&D players into Palladium pretty easily since 90% of the concepts are the same or product-improved versions of systems they already know, whereas GURPS will take longer to learn and get used to.

Don't get me started on Rifts. That is another "ultimate game" that I loved. Rifts, GURPS, and Vampire helped kill TSR when Magic: The Gathering sucked the life out of the hobby. Rifts is sort of like Americanized Robotech, and it fills that headspace completely when Robotech went away. We want power armor and weapons that can flatten city blocks, punch through bridge pilings, and few other games (even today) do that as easily as Rifts.

Rifts was the game that your mom bought you if "your mom was cool." This was the 1990s, so it exists in the decade after AD&D died, and brings back a whole other set of memories for me. If you don't understand the games that "killed the original OSR" back in the TSR days, you will never understand the OSR and will instead put it on a pedestal, along with its flaws, which these games directly addressed. Oh, and the end of Stranger Things should have ended with the kids either playing GURPS or Rifts, if they wanted to be historically accurate.

Don't get me started on power armor design systems in other games that require spreadsheets and graphing calculators. Non-starter. Be cool like your mom wants you to be. Play Rifts.

More games in this series are coming. These two were on my mind today.

High Fashion Fantasy Demigods

If a decorative plate pauldron and a purple trench coat count as full plate mail for Armor Class, and the character refuses a metal helm so they can show off a Supercuts fade with undercut and dyed tips, the art is already telling you something important. It is telling you the game does not take physical reality, violence, or consequence very seriously.

And once the pictures send that message, the players at the table will eventually receive it too.

That is the core problem with the current house style in Dungeons & Dragons 5.5E. The art does not depict people who live in a dangerous world. It depicts fashion avatars who happen to be holding weapons. The armor is sculptural and incomplete—single pauldrons, open chests, impractical silhouettes that would fail the first solid hit. The hair is contemporary salon work, carefully styled and colored so the face remains fully visible and marketable. Helmets are treated as optional accessories rather than the most important piece of protective gear a warrior owns. The overall effect is closer to a Fortnite skin or an Overwatch character select screen than to anyone who expects to survive a fight in the mud.

This is not a minor aesthetic preference. Visual language shapes how players understand the fiction. When every illustration prioritizes “cool silhouette under dramatic lighting” over weight, coverage, and wear, the game quietly trains its audience to treat combat as performance rather than risk. The armor does not need to function because the character is never really in danger of being hurt in a permanent way. The face must stay uncovered because the real product being sold is the character’s look, not their survival. Once that logic is baked into the official art, it becomes harder for a table to maintain any sense that the world has teeth.

I reached the point where I could no longer look at the books.

The pages felt like visual noise—too stylized, too glamorous, too divorced from the physical logic that makes fantasy feel solid. So I put them away. That decision was not about nostalgia or gatekeeping. It was about immersion. When the pictures stop supporting the idea that the world is real and dangerous, the game itself starts to feel like a costume party with dice.

I do not play D&D to simulate high-fashion demigods who just stepped off a runway and whose primary goal is leveling up their aura. The current official art pushes exactly that fantasy: characters who look like they were designed for a cosmetics campaign first and a dangerous world second. Everything is polished, stylized, and deliberately incomplete in ways that prioritize visual flash over function. It feels like the game has jumped the shark straight into its Ziggy Stardust glam-rock phase—all glitter, dramatic poses, and carefully curated spectacle.

My own sense of the genre sits closer to Nirvana and Guns N’ Roses. I want the dirt under the fingernails, the frayed edges, beer on the carpet, the sense that these people have been living hard in a world that can actually hurt them. I want armor that looks like it has stopped a blade, faces that show weather and decisions, and clothing that belongs to a time and place rather than a mood board. When the default visual language becomes pure glam, the grounded, slightly ragged energy that made fantasy feel real to me gets crowded out. The books start to feel like they are selling a different game than the one I sat down to play.

The books no longer feel like anything solid. They feel like a window into a fake Wonderland of fantasy identity wish-fulfillment—bright, weightless, and carefully arranged so nothing permanent can touch the characters. When the official art refuses to take the physical dangers of its own world seriously, it becomes harder for me to take the game seriously either.

The pictures are not depicting adventurers. They depict dungeon tourists: people dressed for the aesthetic of danger rather than its reality.

That is the poser problem running through a lot of modern fantasy gaming. The characters are shown in gear and armor that would get them killed in the first hallway of the Tomb of Horrors. Open chests, decorative pauldrons, uncovered heads, flowing coats that would snag on the first trap trigger—all of it prioritizes looking cool in a promotional still over surviving contact with an actual dungeon. The art sells the idea of the adventurer without accepting the costs that used to come with the job. Once that attitude is baked into the visual language, the game starts to feel like costume play with hit points instead of a world that can push back.

As a result, players end up in one of two positions. Either they stop taking the game seriously and lean into the costume-party energy the art encourages, or they try to run a grounded, high-stakes campaign while constantly fighting the visual and tonal signals the books are sending. “I can run a serious game with this” becomes the battle cry. But why should anyone have to fight their own rulebooks just to maintain atmosphere? When the official presentation works against the tone you want, the extra labor falls entirely on the GM and the table.

That is a tax most of us eventually get tired of paying.

Other games already deliver the tonal seriousness and visual consistency I actually want. I do not even have to leave the broader 5E orbit to find them. Shadowdark has done the job cleanly: the art, the presentation, and the rules all point in the same direction. Characters look like they belong in dangerous places. The illustrations carry weight and consequence. Nothing about the book feels like it is trying to sell me a fashion line or an aura. It simply takes the premise of dungeon crawling seriously, and that single decision makes the entire experience more coherent.

When a game’s visual language and its claimed tone are aligned, the table does not have to waste energy correcting the pictures. That alone is worth more than another volume of high-gloss demigod portraiture.

One Book on the Table

I did not feel like sorting the collection today.

That is usually how these weekends start. I walk past the shelves, think about pulling three books “just in case,” and then I am an hour in before anyone has a character. I have been there with 5E. I have been there with DCC, when the zines and modules piled up so high I didn't even have room for the dice. I still like all of that stuff. I just do not always want to negotiate with it on a Sunday.

What I wanted today was one book that would stay out and do the whole job.

I get why people drift toward those one-book games. Dragonslayer was the example I used last year, but it is the same feeling with a lot of the older cores. You can make someone in a few minutes, put them in a place that already has a problem, and if they don't make it, the next one doesn't take the rest of the afternoon. The big libraries are still here. Pathfinder 1e was the last one that really worked as a library for me. The 5E cousins are either in storage, on a drive, or down to the one version I still enjoy sitting with. GURPS never left. Palladium is coming back out in pieces because I missed having it in the room. DCC takes a wall now, and I am fine with that wall because most of it is places to go, not a second Player’s Handbook I have to flip through before we start.

None of that needed a decision today.

Today I left one complete game on the table and used it. Character, fight, magic, implied world, all in the same spine. I did not rebuild anything. I did not compare two versions of the same class. I did not open a VTT because the sheet was being difficult. I made a person, gave them a door, and wrote a few lines when we stopped.

I still buy the rest. I still like the rest. I just do not owe the rest every free afternoon. When a game gets larger than I can use in one sitting, I stop playing it for a while, even if I love it. That is not a review of the hobby. That is just how my table works.

The other books can wait on the shelf. They are not going anywhere.

Game Pitch: Gaslamps & Lessers

Look at the cover. Nobody is wearing a helmet. Nobody is wearing a full set of anything. There is a corset, a top hat, a trench coat that has never met mud, and a sword held like a cigarette. This is not a warband. This is a photoshoot that escaped the studio and demanded hit points.

Newer games have decided that “adventurer” means Victorian cosplay with better lighting. The party is a row of haute-tote Betters who refuse head protection because it would ruin the silhouette. Armor is a fashion faux pas. A breastplate is what the help wears. You are here to be seen descending the club steps, not to be seen taking a morningstar to the temple.

Gaslamps & Lessers is the game those covers already think they are playing. You do start at 1st level. Of course you do. Someone has to stand in the rain. First through nineteenth are the years in trade: dungeons, marching order, people who still own helmets. The club does not take your coat until 20th. That is not the end of the campaign. That is arrival. Level 20 is when your name is in the book. Everything before it is the servants’ entrance — and you are walking it on purpose, in the outfit, daring the world to notice.

The Lessers are everyone who never gets the coat. Provincial knights. Parties that pack rope. Anyone who thinks a +3 weapon is a personality. You will be them for a long time. Then you will send a card.

Optional rule: the Privilege Die

At the start of any encounter, social scene, or declared combat, the player of the highest-level character present rolls 1d20 in the open.

If the result is lower than that character’s level, the scene does not happen. It is resolved offstage, in the party’s favor. Constables, cousins, groundskeepers, or “a man who owes the family a favor” finish it before the tea cools. When even that would be gauche, magic itself kneels. The spell, the curse, the haunted stair — it steps in and resolves the issue so as not to inconvenience them. Reality would rather tidy itself than ask a Better to draw steel.

That player may then talk down to the encounter and, if they wish, to everyone else at the table who still had their miniature in a fighting stance. One remark. Then the next invitation.

If the result is equal to or higher than the character’s level, you actually have to play. No speech. The coat failed. A natural 20 always plays. Even a duke is occasionally forced to look at a thing. Even magic sometimes forgets its manners.

At 1st level, the die almost never saves you. You are the Lesser. At 10th, half the street moves. At 20th, nineteen scenes in twenty never reach the foyer. You do not earn experience for work the household — or the weave — already completed. Privilege is insulation, not practice.

This is why the art dropped the helmet. If the die is working, nothing will hit you in the head. Society is the armor. When society is late, the universe puts on the apron. The trench coat is not protection. It is a statement that protection would be vulgar. Full plate is what you put on the footman you send into the cellar. The Betters stay in the foyer and explain, at length, why this was never going to be their problem.

“Have the groundskeeper put it with the others.”
“We don’t do cellars.”
“If it had been important, it would have written first.”
“The ward can see itself out.”

When the die fails, the lowest-level character at the table goes downstairs. The coat stays on the peg. That is the entire class system. The cover already told you who was going to stay pretty. You just have to survive nineteen levels of looking like that before the world agrees.

Modern design treats 20th level like a victory lap and a second binder of options. Gaslamps & Lessers treats it like a membership card you spend the whole game earning while dressed for the portrait. The dungeon is still under the parish. Early on, you go. Later, you simply stop. The owlbear can wait. Someone in a helmet will take care of it. If not, the magic will.

It knows better than to keep you waiting.

Game Pitch: Grimdark Cozy

The gnomes decided they had enough.

Not enough grain. Not enough tithe. Enough of the story that said the Cozy Lands were a place you lived. Dark magic took the warrens first — not as a thunderclap, but as a ledger that started balancing in blood. They took the Chaos Gods the way a miller takes a better stone: because the old gods paid in seasons and the new ones paid in endings. Black hoods. Black iron. A theology with no harvest festival left in it. They did not conquer the meadows so much as close the book on them.

They rule the Cozy Lands with an iron fist. Every mouse-kin, mole-kin, sparrow-kin, and hedgehog with a sewing-needle spear lives in that shadow. The cottages still look like the picture books. The smoke still smells like bread. That is the joke the gnomes allow. Cute is a costume the parish leaves on the livestock so the livestock keep reporting to market.

You play an animal-kin of your choosing. Fighter is the one who gets better at hitting. Specialist is the skill kit. Magic is a loaded acorn — someone will regret the season it was planted. You are small, armed like a folk tale, and visible. The gnomes are not a class. They are the state. They watch the holes, the fords, the chapel steps, the path that used to be a picnic. A pass for the road. A fine for unlicensed burrowing. Stocks for a word said wrong in the square. Witchcraft charges for anyone who found a ring and was foolish enough to wear it.

The wolves are not a random encounter. They are the forest’s tax collectors, and they do not take coin. When an animal-kin vanishes between the hedge and the burrow, the gnomes write it down as weather. When the gnomes want a lesson, they do not need wolves. They have wood, iron, and a crowd that would rather see a stranger in the stocks than a cousin.

This is not a game about saving the Cozy Lands. The Cozy Lands already lost and kept the paint. You are what still moves underneath the postcard — hungry, armed, and one bad night from the parish deciding you were never people.

The night does not start with a tavern speech. It starts like a crime scene that still has bunting on it.

Thistleford looks like a stitch-sampler. Round doors. Window-boxes. A painted sign of a smiling hare holding a pie. Lanterns the color of butterscotch. If you only saw the square at noon, you would swear the world had kept its promise. Night takes the same square and turns the lanterns into interrogation lamps. The pie on the sign is still there. So are the stocks. Someone small is in them. Dew on the wood. A little coat hangs on the post so it won't get mud on the embroidery. Something else wearing it could be hanging in the town square.

The gnomes do not raise their voices. That is the noir of it. A reeve in a black hood, iron polished like a church shoe, reads from a board as if he were announcing a bake sale. Tithe-cart late. Chapel bell since Tuesday. Volunteer required. Paws small enough for the grate. He smiles when he says, volunteer. The smile is the worst object in the square.

You are already in the picture. Animal-kin in travel cloaks that would be darling in a catalog. A hedgehog’s spear no longer than a knitting needle. A sparrow-kin counting seeds in a matchbox like they were rounds. Across the green, a window still has a paper heart stuck to the glass. Behind it, someone closes the shutter. Cute is what the parish leaves in the frame so the ledger can work in peace.

How the night actually begins is a choice the table makes with their feet, not their backstory.

If you go to the stocks, you get a face and a whisper and a reason that will not survive contact with a gnome court. If you go to the ford, you get the cart: painted mushrooms on the side-boards, chains under the canvas, a smell that is not jam. If you go to the chapel, you get the bell, which is still ringing, and a nave full of tiny pews, and a grate that was built for things the hymnals do not mention. If you do nothing, the square keeps being pretty, and the pretty becomes a witness statement against you by morning.

The wolves stay offstage. You may smell them on the path. The gnomes will still call it weather. The postcard will not include that part.

Noir rule for the referee: never let the cute be flavor. Let it be evidence. The ribbon on the stocks is a clue. The smiling hare on the sign is an alibi. The butterscotch lantern is how they see your hands. Every darling thing in Thistleford is either a lure, a record, or a lid. When the animal-kin pick it up, they leave prints.

You do not get a bestiary page. You get a situation that will not hold still. The gnomes watch from the steps with the patience of people who already know how the story is classified. Compliance is the dark order’s only sacrament. Curiosity is how the parish fills the next set of holes in the wood.

That is the start. Not “you all meet in a burrow.” You all meet in a crime that still thinks it is a village fete. The paint is dry. The bell is not. Someone has to move, and the moment they do, the Cozy Lands remember what the gnomes decided they had enough of.

The cottages were always going to be this sharp. We just agreed not to look at the stocks.

Solo, and Still Surprised

I play Dungeon Crawl Classics solo, and it is an amazing game. It has just enough crunch, table-induced madness, and randomness to make me happy, and the emergent play that randomness creates keeps it from becoming a boring exercise in running something solo, going through the motions, and never being surprised.

That last part is the whole argument. Solo play dies when you already know what the next ten minutes will feel like. You open the binder, push the party down the hall, narrate the obvious success, and mark the box. DCC refuses to let the box stay marked. A Mighty Deed is not a feat paragraph you pre-solved at chargen. A wizard does not fire a known payload. Occupations hand you a weaver and a pair of scissors and call it a character. Luck sits on the sheet like a second Judge. The tables are not garnish. They are how the game talks back.

I do not need the book to be thin for that to work. The core is a fat book. A lot of those pages are results: crits, fumbles, mercurial magic, corruption, disapproval, patrons, the long weird tail of a spell that actually happens. That is a different kind of page than a catalog of who you get to be. I am not flipping six volumes to see whether this subclass interaction still functions. I am rolling to find out what the universe just did to a peasant who was a gong farmer yesterday.

Solo makes that louder. There is no table to perform for and no Judge to paper over a dull room. If the system is only a resolution engine, you will feel yourself acting both parts and get bored. DCC was already halfway to an oracle. The funnel is the cleanest version of the trick. You do not design a protagonist. You generate a village, you walk them into a hole, and the campaign is whoever crawls out. The deaths are plot. The survivors are premise. I do not have to protect a precious concept I spent a Sunday building. The dice already spent that Sunday without me.

A sixteen-peasant funnel looks like bookkeeping. In practice it collapses. You do not need a novel for every name. You need a line: occupation, the one stat that matters, hit points, what they are holding. When the herd thins, the game gets quieter and stranger, which is the opposite of most solo loops, where the sheet only ever gets louder. If the mob is too much on a given night, the culture around the game already knows how to shrink it. The point is not the headcount. The point is that the first level you play is a level you did not choose.

I have two and a half shelves of Dungeon Crawl Classics, and I do not feel shelf-obese. Most of that wood is adventures, megadungeons, and places. When the game puts on a different jacket — XCrawl, Mutant Crawl Classics — it is still one book talking. Some of the games live in zines that riff the main rulebook instead of replacing it. StarCrawl does not ask me to learn a second language. Some of the spines are settings. Some are art books and odd covers. The dice sit in clear boxes because looking at them is part of owning them. That shelf is not a problem I have to solve. It is the hobby, visible.

A hobby shelf is a map. A rules shelf is a filing cabinet. DCC keeps stacking rooms onto one conversation. The book on the table is still the game. The rest is more dungeon, more weather, more Appendix N texture. That is why the physical pile does not argue with the solo night. I am not maintaining a rules stack so the next session can resolve an edge case. I am surrounding an engine that still generates pressure.

It is not a complete solo product out of the box, and pretending otherwise would turn this into a review with a shopping list. Modules assume a Judge who can smell stalling. Spell tables want flipping, or a companion app, or patience. A lone wizard at level two is a different animal than a funnel mob. When the book shrugs I ask a cheap yes or no, I spend luck, I let two stray lines from some dog-eared fantasy paperback color the room. The game does not vanish if I do that. It was built to be interrupted by results.

What DCC thinks a character is: a person the tables have not finished with. Occupation before class. Luck as a resource and a tell. Magic as a negotiation you can lose. A first level that had to be earned by not dying in someone else’s story. That is why playing one of them alone still feels like discovery. The pages describe what the dice just did to you. They do not spend themselves describing you in advance.

I can admire the shelf and then take one book to the table and still be surprised. That is the hobby I actually wanted.