How Much Game Do I Need?

I got a shipping confirmation for the new Kobold Press crowdfunding book for ToV, and my 5E books are heading into the garage. I like ToV; this is the best version of 5E out there, but 5E is far too much game for me. I will keep it, but it is heading into the garage once it arrives.

I hate that feeling.

Sometimes I feel like selling all my 5E books would make me the happiest, and I will just stick with OSRIC and OSE and have just enough "fantasy game" for me. I don't need all the 5E structure; it is too much. The entire 5E industry overwrites and doesn't care one bit about efficiency, conciseness, or compactness; the 5E market is the "bigger SUV" market of gas-guzzlers and shelf-eaters.

For a "power-based game," a superhero game gives me much more. Sometimes I look at D&D 5E and compare it to something like Champions, and the latter is the better choice. Why am I messing around with games that sell me prebuilt superheroes (powers on a level track) who talk like they're at Ren Faire? The designers prebuild these builds at level 20 and then slowly hand you the powers over 20 levels. They make money by selling you new ones once you get bored of the old ones.

It is the difference between a deep-fried fish sandwich at a fast-food place versus knowing how to fish and prepare your own food. The fast food is worse for your health, more expensive, and never what you want. Yes, learning to cook takes longer and isn't as easy, but it is far healthier, more rewarding, and cheaper to feed yourself with all-natural shelf staples and healthy foods.

And nobody in a superhero game is redefining terms, controlling the language, or telling me where my powers come from. I do that. I swear some of these games care more about thought control than about shipping fun games. Give me a generic framework, please, and I will tell players what these things are. Or games like Vampire, where some factions have these powers and others have those powers. Thematically, yes, cool, okay, but in the end you are all superheroes with different shapes and themes. Vampire stuff affects you, werewolf stuff affects others, and we are done; please pick your superpowers now.

Are you a mage? Oh, then you have to deal with the mage disadvantages. A demon? Then holy stuff hurts you. Same powers, different shell. We are done here, and nobody is buying predesigned packages that drip powers out one at a time with an illusion of choice.

My Champions stuff fits in one box, and it is in the garage.

My 5E books are nearly 20 crates of the same size.

That one box does far more than the twenty.

And most of the power comes from one book.

The More I Learn OSRIC...

...the worse 5E gets.

There is an element of timing attacks, delays, spell disruption, and weapon specialization that OSRIC (1E, or AD&D) does in the base combat turn that renders most D&D 5E level 1 to 5 fighter abilities useless. The more I learned about OSRIC and its massively cleaned-up AD&D combat turn, the more Gary Gygax's genius shone through in a way that shocked me.

This is seriously good stuff. The original "advanced" game beats 5E by a mile, and my first-level fighter with a longsword specialization is making two attacks every other turn, starting with the first. So, an AD&D fighter has a permanent "action surge" every other turn?

Lethality is way down from Old School Essentials and most BX "death at zero" games. Because death happens at -10 hit points and "aid" isn't a roll, I have rarely had any outright deaths at level one. Even if my party is completely defeated, rarely, they go as low as -10, and as a game master, I can rule that the PCs are captured and ransomed, or that they need to attempt a breakout a week later from a cell.

AD&D is less deadly than BX?

What? This is not what D&D YouTube is telling me.

INT casters have a "max spells remembered" that is separate from Vancian magic slots, and they fill those slots from this "max pool," which they need to swap out and relearn from their spellbooks. Magic users are powerful, yes, but they are treated with far more respect and have more interesting learning and memorization mechanics here than "member a million spells' games. Magic users are cool and need to think ahead about the challenges they'll face.

Casting time and phased combat balanced caster power.

As I force myself to learn the system, the wisdom comes through. And future editions begin to fade. We really did have the best game back then. What 5E tried to do with special powers, 1E originally handled through structure and attack timing. We had all that before they tore it out of the turn structure and forced you to write it down as "subclass options" and powers they give as you level. They removed all the built-in options the turn structure gave us and turned them into record-keeping on the character sheets.

And a lot of new games live on assumptions and fallacies from older games, push some new designer trick, and call the old games clunky and too complicated. Design-wise, many crowdfunded games can't hold a candle to 1E. 5E breaks at high level; 1E doesn't, and it took us that many editions to figure out the company running D&D ships broken editions every time they bump up the version number.

1E doesn't break, and if you learn the system, it offers greater tactical options and a deeper caster game.

A few thousand monsters and spells, along with hundreds of subclasses, don't make a good game. It makes a worse one.

Video: The Fatal Flaw in 5e's Math

A good video from Mike Mearls today.

Wizards barely tested high-level 5E play. I do have a lot to say about this, but frankly, it is not his fault. When you work for a company that refuses to give you the resources you need, you do your best. I've been there many times. It all comes down on your back. You take it on yourself. You get the gray hairs. You go home every night feeling like you are heroically trying to hold it all together. 

Mike did his best here, and I thank him for being honest. We need more of this in our hobby, and we need to elevate moments like this. Honestly, from one creator to another, thank you.

It is not the person; it is the company that barely tested high-level D&D 3, 4, or 5 play.

And now they want to sell us Universes Beyond.

And possibly 6E.

I'm done. If Gary didn't touch it, I don't want it.

The Last Decade of Living Inside the Bubble

Most full-stack 5E games promise that greater character complexity will produce richer play. In practice, the heavy inward-focused sheet enhances neither the dungeon crawl nor the social and exploration pillars. Shadowdark and GURPS sit at opposite poles that actually deliver on their investments: one by keeping characters simple, the other by making complexity external and relational. The middle is mostly wasted effort.

Does the six-page character sheet actually improve the core dungeon-crawling experience? In most 5E implementations, the answer is no. The design is painfully inward: a dense collection of personal powers, tricks, and options that mostly resolve inside the character or, at best, inside the tiny party bubble. Very little of that complexity reaches outward into the environment, the dungeon’s pressure, or the decisions that actually matter in a crawl. Even less of the internal character design reaches out into the world and matters in terms of social or exploration play. Shadowdark (and the broader OSR) demonstrates the opposite approach: keep the characters simple so the procedures, scarcity, and danger can stay in the foreground. The long 5E-style sheet does not enhance the crawl; it often functions as sand in the gears, adding extra cognitive load and decision friction that slow down the very experience the table showed up for.

GURPS sits at the other pole. You can build an almost purely external character (150 points of social advantages and disadvantages, minimal skills, no attribute increases) and the design still works. The character may be mechanically fragile, but the sheet is packed with hooks that force interaction with the world: Reputation, Duty, Enemy, Ally, Code of Honor, Social Stigma, Dependents. Those traits generate ongoing narrative pressure and shape what the character can and cannot do in the setting. GURPS is every bit as complex as modern 5E, yet the complexity (in this case) is pointed outward, and it can be as balanced as I want it to be. It is not trapped inside the character or the party bubble. That is the difference: 5E mostly sells internal options, while GURPS can sell external consequences.

Level Up A5E is the main attempt inside the 5E family to escape the inward trap. Character creation is even heavier than in standard 5E or Tales of the Valiant, yet more of that complexity is pointed outward. Heritage, culture, background, and destiny options are designed to situate the character in the world rather than simply stacking more personal powers. The system also gives real mechanical support to the social and exploration pillars instead of treating them as afterthoughts. It is still built on the 5E chassis, so the sheet remains long and the cognitive load is high, but at least the extra investment is trying to buy external pressure and world interaction rather than more internal options. In that sense, A5E is the closest the 5E ecosystem comes to the GURPS approach, even if it never fully reaches it.

I play full-stack 5E games, and they make a clear promise: a deeply complex mechanical character will reward you with better story and a better dungeon-crawling experience. They do not. Shadowdark proves you can strip almost everything off the chassis and still end up with the best dungeon-crawling 5E-derived game written. With D&D and Tales of the Valiant, I often feel I am wasting a great deal of time just to arrive at the same place. My interest and excitement do not live inside the character- and party-centric bubble. Level Up A5E steps outside that bubble to a meaningful degree by giving real support to all three pillars of play and pulling more of the surrounding world into the design. In that sense, it does some of the same work GURPS does: the focus shifts toward a worldview instead of remaining trapped inside the party.

In the end it comes down to return on investment. If the table wants a pure dungeon crawl, the extra pages of inward-facing powers buy very little and often get in the way. If the table wants genuine narrative pressure and world interaction, that complexity needs to point outward the way GURPS (and to a lesser extent A5E) allows. Most full-stack 5E games ask for the cost of complexity without delivering either benefit. Once you see the two poles clearly, the middle starts to look like a lot of work for not much gain.

How much internal design work is actually needed for a satisfying dungeon crawl? The OSR answered that question decades ago. After ten years of hyper-focus on the party and on character-internal dynamics, it is worth asking whether that investment still delivers the core promise and the entertainment people show up for. The market is already moving. Shadowdark and the broader OSR are defining the pure dungeon-crawling experience with far less internal complexity, while games like Daggerheart pull narrative-focused players in the opposite direction. Staying inside the party-focused bubble makes it harder to see what comes next.

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.

Off the Shelf: Ultramodern 5

I don't know why I like this version of 5E, I just do.

It is quirky, strange, cool, different, and it mechanically breaks down the 5E design into a series of interconnected modules. This is a vertical slice of 5E; instead of doing the traditional class-and-subclass thing, they tear the game's internals apart while keeping it at the same level of power and balance as the original. As a result, you get this interesting mix-and-match system where many of the subclass choices exist outside of the class, and it is a really ingenious design that reduced the typical 5E bloat we see from expansive listings of subclass powers (most of which we never use). I would love to see a fantasy version of this game, since the character building is on a step above most 5E implementations, with cross-class archetypes being used instead of subclasses.

Modern weapon damage is also kept under control, with class abilities providing the damage boosts rather than overpowered modern weapons. It seems counterintuitive, but the entire 5E design hinges upon class abilities being the force multiplier, so it makes sense. Less skilled people will not be able to use modern firepower to its full effect, and what matters is the warrior, not the weapon. If you want a modern gun simulation, play GURPS.

Many 5E science fiction designs tend to fail to land for me, being oddly specific, one-note, or just feel like "D&D in space." This has more of a Shadowrun meets Moebius vibe going, and it can sort of be generic "Heavy Metal" science fiction anywhere you put it. It has a default setting, but really, you can throw this at any homebrew "futurepunk" setting mixed with fantastic races and have it work. It works with realistic races and with fantasy races in a science fiction setting. If you wanted to use this with a "Starfinder" type setup where the game's initial promise was "fantasy races in space," this would do that just fine.

This delivers "D&D in space" while maintaining its own unique, gritty, dirty, and broken future aesthetic, whereas many other games are too "Mass Effect"- clean and sterile. That "plastic future" aesthetic is the bane of many games and TV shows, covering up a great moment of societal change with plastic wall panels and slick-looking Hollywood laser rifles in bright white molded plastic shells. That "plas-fi" future is the state selling you hard on giving up basic human rights for the honor of living in a future where everything is covered up in a slick plastic shell and veneer of social order.

Dirty science fiction leaves room for individuality and personal freedom, and even early Star Wars knew this. The future is dirty and mostly broken down, but you can find honest people among the mass of criminals and downtrodden. The white plastic stormtroopers are state symbols of fascist control. Massive defense projects promising world domination are inherently evil. If you never knew New York or LA in the 1970s, right after the Vietnam War, you don't know science fiction.

In this light, Mass Effect-style science fiction that is overly militaristic and clean comes off as some defense contractor hype video for a multi-billion-dollar weapons program for corporate welfare. Modern Star Trek almost always falls into "plas-fi," and it does not know what it wants to be. Like many IPs, including modern Star Wars, it has no place in today's world since it speaks to no one.

There is no message or pain; the false future sold to us by the architects of the Vietnam War, the promise that military force would solve everything, was a lie that got millions killed. Is that message resonating today, or has the machine taken over the messaging? Modern Hollywood is the machine; it can no longer make science fiction or compelling dramas that speak to the human spirit. Hollywood is a generation waiting to die, destroying the world on its way out the door. You can't speak to the future through an aging group of bitter creators dragging you into their graves.

This is why YouTubers' movies are decimating Hollywood, and there will be a science-fiction answer, likely soon. When you fail to speak to people, they will find ways to speak to each other on their own, and your IPs and properties will be excluded from the conversation. This is also why Marvel, DC, and Star Wars are failing. The original sin that created them is fading from memory.

I hate to speak like that, in such dark and broad-brush terms, but you need to understand the underpinnings of Star Wars, and most of the science fiction IPs came from a world that promised us floating cities, flying cars, and daily rockets to Mars in the 1950s, which ended up in the Vietnam War of the 1970s and the failure of the Dream State. That is a 20-year promise of tomorrow, well within a lifetime, sold hard, and it crashed and burned.

Reality set in.

And Hollywood is echoing those same promises of the rockets to Mars and flying cars, and the pen-and-paper industry writes games to echo that failure. Fantasy in this context isn't escapism; it is morphine meant to dull the massive pain of living in today's world. This is where D&D 5.5E is right now, removing any sense of hardship, pain, or triggering content to purify the numbing hit of painting its players as false gods. D&D 5.5E and the world it presents is a painkiller, safe, and corporate-friendly, and it won't upset Wall Street.

The cyclops are fortune tellers. The lizardfolk are eco-defenders. Orcs are character options. Any mention of people enslaving or slaughtering others is wiped clean. Any semblance of playing in a harsh and bitter, Conan-like world is gone. Death and failure are near impossible. D&D as a fantasy game feels dead and numb.

Modern D&D is a fantasy painkiller without a prescription. It is acetamino-fantasy.

Ultramodern 5E is still very much a "dirty" game, science fiction that smells like burnt oil, lived in, unclean, and broken. It manages to restructure and rebuild 5E into a unique, subclass-specific free framework that delivers on the 5E build process. A lot of 5E compatible games either deliver the traditional "dozen page long" heavy class designs full of subclass options. Here is a paladin, and here are 32 pages of paladin subclasses bloating the game to infinity and beyond, most of which you will never use.

D&D 5.5E is a distraction by design.

Ultramodern was designed in an age of system hacking 5E, and of trying new approaches to that monolithic framework, trying to tear it down and make it a better system for science fiction, diverse occupations, and character types. The dream of hacking and remixing 5E died around 2020 when the streamers took over, and the system has been design-stagnant until Shadowdark rolled around.

There is no starship combat; instead, a mecha system gives the heavy-metal vehicle a combat hit. It is a lot like the original Star Frontiers in this regard; it is just a "ground pounding" science fiction game that focuses on personal action, and you could conceivably use "any science fiction naval wargame" as your ship combat system. Frankly, this is a better option, as many science fiction RPGs fail horribly at delivering ship combat. The only exception to that is Stars Without Number, which does a good job of delivering the ship combat goods while keeping the system light and approachable.

The game also has its own magic system, combining all sources into one, and delivering a "spell point" style system that works well for universes that mix magic and "space magic." It avoids the tropes of the D&D 5E spell list and delivers a good selection of powers that build on the system's strengths while remaining simple and usable.

If you ever wanted a 5E spell, put it in a one-shot artifact or scroll, and be done with it.

Ultramodern 5E is a different design ethos from a different time, when 5E was still much more of a "currently hacked" system, constantly remixed with homebrew. In late-stage 5E, 5.5E set in rigor mortis, cementing many of the design expectations, with massive subclass collections and monolithic class designs. 90% of the subclass options in 5E you will never use. Ultramodern opens them all up to you while keeping the base-class designs focused and simple.

For a science fiction 5E game, that works for me, reducing complexity and the number of pages read while opening up the character design system to a box of Legos I can assemble any way I want. This is the version of 5E where I could take a random "fantasy race guide" and throw them all into a science fiction setting, delivering on the promise of "magic and tech" that many games failed to deliver in the past. From Dragonstar to Starfinder, a lot of games have tried, but very few have endured, Starfinder being one, and on the 5E side, Ultramodern 5E feels like the answer to that system.

Perhaps that is why I still like this game; it approaches the massive problem of 5E's class complexity in a novel way, and remixes the rules into a framework that handles the dirty, post-fantasy-world sci-fi that I like.

The Challenge of ...Challenge Rating

Do CR and balanced encounters hurt 5E? Is the game better played without taking encounter balance into account, and just running "the world as it is"? This topic sort of sucks to cover, since I need to go back to the rulebooks and check exactly what they say to be fair and ensure the game's intent is upheld.

Creating a Combat Encounter

When creating a combat encounter, let your imagination run wild and build something your players will enjoy. Once you have the details figured out, use this section to adjust the difficulty of the encounter.

D&D 2014, Dungeon Master's Guide, pg 81

To me, "use this section to adjust the difficulty" sounds like a subtle nudge towards a requirement to balance encounters. I don't have the 2024 books because I don't want to spend money on them, nor do I have space for books I won't use. Also, 2014 is the more popular version of the game, so that is what I go by.

So, for 2014 D&D, it is "let your imagination run wild" and then "use this section."

There seems to be this huge assumption that we must balance encounters. I suppose the weight of thousands of "how do I balance 5E encounters" videos on YouTube has made the entire subject something we no longer question. What is more confusing is that most say it is just a tool, and many books say it isn't even a sure thing.

BUILDING COMBAT ENCOUNTERS

If you are running a pre-written adventure, combat encounters have likely already been designed for you— with groups of enemies already put together in a way appropriate for the level of the adventure and the events of the story. However, when creating your own adventures or spicing up published material, you may need to create your own combat encounters.

Tales of the Valiant, Monster Vault, Page 7

In ToV? There seems to be a requirement to balance encounters, right in the first pages of the Monster Vault. On page 8, they give three examples of how to create encounters: story-based,  lore-based, and encounter-type. The first two seem like you are not using the tables in the chapter, while the last one strongly implies it. ToV does seem to feel like encounter building is a requirement for running a game, since the section is huge, detailed, and full of advice on building encounters.

In TOV, it is, "When creating your own adventures, you may need to create your own combat encounters." There is a tonal difference here, almost sounding like "Just buy published adventures from Kobold Press." The tools are very detailed, better than D&D 2014, and they feel like a more complete system.

A note here: at least there is recognition that "story-based" encounters are in the game, and this will be expanded upon in the next version of 5E we take a look at. Story-based encounters are unbalanced, "it is what it is" encounters with monsters and wandering monsters, and these are NOT rated on CR, nor are they balanced against a daily budget.

Oddly, these are called "story-based" since that implies the story was prewritten. In most of these cases, they are either wandering monsters or "monsters that are just there," and not part of the traditional, pre-written, balanced, story-style adventures.

Combat Encounters

There are two main ways to build a combat scene: 

Challenge-Based Encounter. The Narrator may set out to prepare a fun, challenging combat encounter and choose opponents accordingly. A set-piece battle in an important dungeon room or the climactic battle in a story arc are often built to challenge the adventurers. 

Story-Based Encounter. Often, the story and player actions determine the nature of a conflict. If adventurers antagonize the city watch they may have to fight guards, and if they anger an archmage they may be forced to battle the archmage. There’s no guarantee that a fight is winnable: the party must deal with the consequences of their choices.

In either case, the Narrator will want to know whether a fight is likely to be trivial, unwinnable, or somewhere in between. In a challenge-based encounter, the Narrator wants to aim for a middle ground of difficulty. In a story-based encounter, the Narrator may want to signal to the adventurers when they’re about to bite off more than they can chew. It’s rarely fun when a crushing defeat or an easy victory is a surprise to everyone (including the Narrator). 

Level Up: Advanced 5E, Trials & Treasures, page 40

Level Up A5E does the best job of clarifying when you should use the CR system. If something is "challenge-based," you use the CR. If the encounter is "story-based," you do not use the CR system; it is what it is. This is more of an old-school interpretation, where a traditional "story-based" module was not written with CR in mind, the entire layout of the dungeon "was what it was," and the players went in there and did their own resource management and judged encounter difficulty themselves.

Walk into a room filled with 40 kobolds?

"The party must deal with the consequences of their actions."

This also implies you can play A5E completely like you would a BX game, throwing out CR, just keying a dungeon, and letting players wander around in there and figure out difficulty and how far they can go by themselves. This is the one thing that was so dangerous about the old Goodman Games 5E versions of the classic TSR adventures: they were presented as-is with 5E stats, and while the B1 recreation does go over encounter balance, the entire B2 adventure is presented as a faithful recreation of B2, and they will happily throw 40 kobolds in a room as a 5E encounter, in a first-level adventure, as an encounter first-level players could run into by the third room they enter.

By A5E's definitions, all of the GG TSR module recreations are "story-based encounters" and meant to be run as-is, without consulting a CR chart or trying to balance anything. That makes sense, and players need to think on their feet again, manage resources, and judge challenges instead of the referee doing it for them.

Ever since Wizards took over D&D, they have been obsessed with balancing encounters and forcing the referee to be the final say. You need to buy the next adventure if you found that too challenging. In previous versions, there was very little balance other than "the monsters in this adventure are suitable for this level range." When we ran the game, we guessed, and most of the time it worked out fine. We knew how things went after a few dozen sessions, and balanced things on the fly.

The overemphasis on encounter balance makes the game harder to referee, for some, trying to perfect and obsess about an imperfect tool, which is only a ballpark estimate with a huge margin of error.

The "party balances content" also applies to all the 5E recreations of the Labyrinth Lord modules, such as Barrowmaze. These all exist in this strange alternate universe where nobody playing 5E used the CR ratings, balanced encounters, or spent all this time worrying about a system that was only made to be a "suggestion" for how to balance encounters, that somehow became rules-as-written, and the only way to create an encounter, or your players will revolt and call you a terrible dungeon master.

Encounter balance is probably one of the things most misunderstood between modern 5E players, "playing by the rules," and the old-school crowd, "calling them as they see them." You will see endless YouTube videos on how to balance encounters, and OSR players sit there wondering why any of this is needed.

Back in the day, it was the players who "balanced encounters" by getting out of there when things seemed too dire, and the resources were nearly all gone. We prayed we would not encounter a wandering monster on the way out or on the way back to town. The referee balanced nothing.

Mail Room: Compendium of Dungeon Crawls (Volume One)

I can almost hear the people asking Goodman Games this, "I love your adventures, but our group plays 5E. I wish you made old-school-style adventures for 5E!"

So, they did.

These are actually kind of cool. If I am considering playing Level Up: Advanced 5E again, I don't want the Wizards' adventures and worlds. I am looking to get away from them and do new stuff, rather than retreading Ravenloft for the third time in 5E. Nostalgia only goes so far before I get sick of it all.

And while I love the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, they feel so overused to me, known, cosmopolitan, and done with after playing in them since 1980. The Realms especially feels so overdone and overblown; every time I look at it, it feels like walking around Manhattan, and it's too much to grasp and comprehend.

I play in the Realms, and it is "what about the Harpers, this group, that group, or the video game characters?" I don't want a world like that; it is too busy, too pop, too hard to grasp the lore, and I would rather make my own world than be forced to deal with a stream of canon and adventures 40+ years in.

Even Greyhawk feels too much like nostalgia bait to me. If I accept Greyhawk, that gives Wizards the license to re-release every AD&D module in that world, and I am doomed to never see anything new. I played all those adventures when they came out. I still have them. I am not interested in them.

I want Wizards to prove that they can write an all-new, all-time classic like The Tomb of Horrors. They have a few out, but they come from the early days of 5E. I have not seen too many absolute bangers from Wizards lately, and it all feels like nostalgia.

These are very creative and inventive adventures, written a lot like the all-time classics of the Original Adventures Reincarnated series, which I am blessed to have a complete collection of on my shelf. If you loved those and want adventures in the old-school style written just like these, then the 5E Goodman Games releases are a perfect continuation of that theme and series.

If you loved those, you will love this.

Oh, and these get a pass on nostalgia from me since these are amazing, faithful, and incredible recreations. I have these. I would love to see Goodman do more of these, but they will likely never revisit this line, and the reprint licenses have expired. This is the best nostalgia, since it includes history, interviews, the original adventures and maps, and is a complete history of the moment.

Nostalgia, the original adventure, plus history and interviews? Yes, please. This is preservation of the hobby and creating a historical document. This is not a remaster or rewrite.

Would I play them? Maybe, maybe not. I appreciate that they are not CR-balanced and they "are what they are." Playing without balancing and letting the players balance things without the referee needing to worry about it is how I play 5E. You set up a dungeon, stock it, let the players roam around it, and the players will figure out when they need to stop or if they can take a fight. This is the OSR way.

The adventures in the Compendium of Dungeon Crawls feel like they were balanced with the CR tools. I can live with that, since I am free to expand these as I wish. Having them balanced is good for groups who play that way, but I can always create my own themed dungeons as add-on areas to these. Plus, if I want adventures not CR-balanced and "as it is," I always have my 5E megadungeon adventures.

And really, they are a perfect fit for a more old-school themed version of 5E, such as Level Up A5E. This version of 5E supports the exploration pillar of play, which makes it unique and matches the old-school feeling of these adventures. This is a peanut-butter and chocolate combination; having exploration play supported and written into the rules makes A5E play like an old-school game, but with 5E rules and builds. The social pillar, fully supported by the rules, helps, too, and it makes my social characters shine more than they do in either D&D or ToV.

A5E is a unique mix of 5E, 4E, and old-school gaming. The danger is here. Pop-up healing and other exploits are fixed. The martial classes rock. There are rare spells to collect. The three pillars of play are supported in the rules. The exploration game is real and supported by class features. Multiclassing is expanded upon and fully supported. The characters are more complicated than straight 5E or ToV characters, but the details are appreciated and needed for the new rules systems.

Yes, you are doing extra work on the characters to support the new subsystems, but that extra work matters. Paired with adventures written in the old-school way and keeping the library pared down, perhaps this fixes everything.

A generally innocent and fun series from Goodman for 5E, and it shows the system can take on a different complexion and feeling with the right adventures, and a system written in that style.

Is There Hope for 5E?

No.

The audience is aging, and the format lacks that broad market appeal. The next generation is so addicted to their phones that it is hard to pull them away from a screen to sit down and enjoy a game like we once did.

The only way D&D survives is as a name on a mobile phone game.

5E survives, but not as a live-service game. Wizards will keep putting out new versions of D&D, such as the upcoming 6E, and quite likely 7E, and 5E support will be sunsetted since a live-service model has "end of life" support built into the game as a feature. They will not pay to keep 5E support going once they need you to "move on."

5E will be well supported by third parties and the community, which is why Tales of the Valiant remains relevant. That will continue past the official support of D&D 5E and 5.5E and be "the only 5E" outside of finding books and playing it by hand, or on a VTT that still supports it, but even they will be pressured to move on.

Tales of the Valiant will likely be the last major and supported version of 5E ever written. It is a solid game, I still like it, but I have no room on my shelves for it. I do not play it as much as my other fantasy tentpoles, like BX, C&C, GURPS Fantasy, and DCC. It still has a massive problem with character sheet length, which slows play and hurts the game. I doubt any version of 5E, outside of Nimble, fixes this core flaw in the system.

If it takes me 3-5 minutes to flip through my character sheet to decide what I am going to do on a turn, that is a massive problem with the game. Some people take as long as 30 minutes. Character sheet length and choice paralysis will be what kills 5E, and what 6E will be "marketed" as solving, before, of course, they break it again because they now have "room to expand the game" and "we have returned tactical player choice to 6.5E."

And sort of the weak reaction to ToV and other major 5E variants means D&D will be the gold standard, and that also seals the fate of the game when live service support is eventually dropped. More should get on the ToV train and support this game, as it means the 5E rules will have a life past the D&D 6E launch day, and the loud din of voices tells us to "upgrade or be left behind."

Old School Essentials is the hot game right now, taking the torch of BX support and standardization across the hobby. This is compatible with everything: light, fast, simple, and fun. This, plus games in the Without Number series of books, can last you a lifetime of fun across any genre you can imagine.

GURPS, once you know the system, plays faster than 5E. That one-second turn does not allow much wiggle room. The character sheets are easier, too.

DCC is the more fun game, with each class constructed to provide fun choices during a turn, with all the junk cut off and tossed out.

Shadowdark, I don't consider 5E, as it is more of a tweener game between 5E and OSE. It is closer to OSE and BX in feel, and while it uses 5E mechanics, it is an OSR-variant game.

C&C is the closest thing I have to a 5E replacement, in the modern rules and 3.5E variant play, with broad compatibility with every BX and 1E adventure.

D&D will be the thing that kills 5E when they move on to 6E, and the announcement of that feels really close. The best hope is to support the community games and continue that legacy and Open 5E rules support. The real light here is Open 5E, and the community ultimately supported the game. I do see potential for an OSE-style version of 5E that simplifies the game while staying math-compatible, streamlines character sheets, and provides a simple experience that remains compatible with 5E adventures. Nimble is the first game of its kind in this genre, and there will be others.

There will be a major OSR-style game that is 5E compatible, keeps the 5E math, yet feels and plays like a traditional OSR game. Shadowdark is close, but not entirely there. There is nothing in this niche now, and it will come. This is probably one of the best hopes for 5E going forward: an OSR system that adopts the math but simplifies play.

My money is on ToV, since they have the best support and community model. As for the other alternative, Level Up A5E, I am still a fan, but it is a niche game that needs an update. The character creation support is also lacking, and doing a character by hand takes me 90 minutes, which is unforgivable when I just want to play. A5E is still a solid, well-built system, but it is an older game that not many know about.

Level Up A5E is the type of game that will sit around in a box in my garage for years, and I will end up sticking with it in the end, since this is the one I always liked the best out of all of them. Design matters. Fixing the inherent problems of 5E matters more than compatibility. Making the game lethal and serious gives the game teeth. While ToV has more books and stuff, Level Up is a smaller game (a bonus) and has far better design. They were not afraid to break compatibility to solve the system's problems.

Level Up A5E may win the "who survives 5E" question for me, after all is said and done. While ToV has the best compatibility among all versions of Open 5E, I have to ask: Is compatibility with a system that offers me little more than a patched 2014 version what I want? Or is a redesigned version of the core game built around the core pillars of play a better deal in the long term?

A5E is still the better game than D&D 2014 (which it directly fixes), ToV (which is a patched 2014), and even D&D 2024 (which A5E eliminates the need for). Design-wise, A5E is still far ahead of the others, since it rebuilds the core to fix the system's flaws. Yes, it is the oldest Open 5E game, but 5E's problems were known a decade ago, and this game fixes almost all of them.

So, to answer the question again?

Yes.

5E does have a future.

The answer depends on your perspective, needs, and whether you are bought into the live-service model of play. It also depends on your willingness to try new things.

Shadowdark vs. OSE

Shadowdark is an amazing game, and I love the table dynamics and timer-based play. This is one of the best dungeon-style board games, instantly playable and quick to jump in and get started. I love this game, though I feel the third-party books got a bit bloated, and many of the early releases water down the game or add too many options. I desperately need to clean out my library. I have too many books for this game; when it should be a light game, I now have a shelf of okay books.

What keeps me coming back to OSE? Well, for one, there is no torch timer. In a real-world span of 5 minutes, I can say two torches (hours) of time burn down as the players excavate a collapsed tomb. You can do that in Shadowdark, but the game is more comfortable with the live timer and the tension that it brings to the table.

I have far more control over time in OSE, and the time tracking and management are not real-time. It is just a checklist, and it proceeds rapidly. In OSE, you can cover far more ground since the game is not played in a "tactical, on-map" mode all the time. Part of Shadowdark's appeal is that tightness and small-map appeal, where you are not exploring a 100-room megadungeon, and the scenarios are tight and tactical.

Shadowdark is more of a board game, and I love it for that.

OSE is more of a traditional pen-and-paper RPG, with a dungeon turn, mapping, a caller, and marching order, and I love it for that.

Another area where I prefer OSE is in mapping. Shadowdark is more "played on the actual map," where in OSE, the players do the mapping. There is zero chance of getting lost on an official map displayed on a VTT, and the player's map will never be wrong, lost, burned by a fireball, eaten by green slime, or unable to be read in the pitch dark. Players can make mistakes mapping, and this is the classic gameplay loop taken from real-life cave explorers and their accounts in the 1960s and 70s.

In early computer games, you had to "map a map" by hand next to the computer. You got graph paper, and you mapped out what the computer described to you. Your mapping skills and ability to take notes were factors in your success.

Shadowdark is more like the old Dungeon board game in many ways, and is today's version of that classic. This is one of the best table-based, tense, teamwork-required, and timed games ever written. But OSE brings a different type of fun to the table. OSE does campaign play, near-infinite options, the old-school gameplay loop, and the best resource management in gaming.

When you consider the resources you manage in OSE, it is not just the number of torches, but also time, spells, health, rations, equipment, and the chance of getting completely lost. The classic reaction roll and morale rules are baked into the OSE dungeon turn, meaning not every encounter will be a fight. This rule is in Shadowdark for random encounters. Did you encounter orcs? Are they friendly? Would you trade with them if you needed rations or torches? Do you attack or backstab them? In OSE, you need to make that choice. In most 5E games, the choice is made for you.

And OSE carries forward BX's wilderness exploration rules, where it is also possible to get lost and find yourself fighting to figure out where you are, how you will survive, and how to get back home alive. OSE also has dominion play, so it has a complete beginning, middle, and endgame.

Shadowdark is still a favorite; this is a tight, focused, "experience game" that extends 5E into tabletop dungeon play. Like Nimble 5e, it is a second-generation 5E game that drills down on a specific experience with a laser-like focus. It does fast, jump-in, time-limited table-top games better than most other games out there, even 5E. Where in D&D you are struggling to finish one combat in four hours, you have finished six fights and an entire dungeon in Shadowdark in half the time.

D&D has a massive time-to-play problem. It is killing the game for many and cutting it off at the knees at the high level for most players. Most do not want to play past the 7th level. D&D is failing us, and the D&D-like games are not doing much better. All of them have the same problems. Some are presented better, others have neat mechanics, others balance for math, but they all fall short past the 8th level.

Shadowdark is the best-in-class for timed, tight, focused, pressure-cooker, and forced teamwork play. You either learn how to be efficient and work as a group, or you run out of torches and everyone dies. Nothing puts a random group of people at a convention together and forces them to work as a team like this game. It is a genius idea, best with others, and a time-limited run. The perfect convention game has been written.

OSE is a second-to-none campaign experience, and it beats 5E in character sheet complexity, the dungeon turn gameplay loop, and mid and high-level play. Where 5E has you running dungeons to level 20, OSE has you running dungeons, exploring the wilderness, and running domains all the way to level 14. For me, the ease of running multiple characters makes this a snap to solo-play. For me, OSE offers simple play, a classic gameplay loop, and varied play-styles that all work together.

They are not the same game. One cannot entirely do the other's job.

You play Shadowdark, you are on the clock, uncovering a known map, watching your torch, and trying to complete objectives before time runs out. You are moving extra carefully, working together as a group, and not wasting time. All while trying to survive.

You play OSE, and you are in the classic gameplay loop, mapping, using time and resources wisely, surviving, and trying to explore the unknown, however big that unknown may be. OSE can go massive in scope and scale, even to the wilderness and world level. And OSE goes micro, down to the next ten feet of hallway and that ten-foot pole.

They are different games, both best-in-class, and they beat D&D in those respective areas.

Add Nimble to the mix, and you have little reason to have D&D at all.

Nimble 5e Thoughts

Nimble is 5E, but it is small, dicey, and fast-playing. It is a quick, action-focused, and play-oriented system. The best way to describe it is Nimble is like 5E and Savage Worlds having a baby, and Nimble could be described as "the Savage Worlds of 5E."

The game started as a 5E mod, grew into a few books as a new way to play 5E, and is now becoming its own standalone game. The Monsters & More book is a watershed moment for the game, sort of where it went from being "alternate 5E playstyle" to "full 5E-based game." The monsters in this book have this amazing "D&D 4E" quality to them, where they are a mix of rules and special actions that impart a lot of flavor on each creature, and affect how they work in combat.

And this is still 5E, so you are meant to fight everything; the reaction roll does not exist, and drive interactions like it does in the OSR. That is one of the largest differences between 5E and the OSR. In 5E, it is generally assumed you will fight every encounter presented. In the OSR, 50% of all the encounters will be neutral or positive towards you (unless they are mindless oozes or undead). Roleplaying and negotiation are built into OSR gaming, and morale provides a way out of conflict. 5E does tend to assume every monster is there to fight, a combat-forward game, like this is a tabletop version of Diablo. Keeping this in mind will make you a better 5E referee, and adopting OSR reaction and morale rolls will improve your game and how you referee.

Since Nimble does away with D&D's atrocious, broken action economy and adopts a clean, industry-standard 3-action method, the speed of play increases dramatically. D&D wrote the game into a ditch by adopting all these special action types, and many of the rules now revolve around "what you can and can't do with different action types." The exploits are typically around abusing action types and descriptions to get away with cheese combos. If you keep the action economy simple and straightforward, you eliminate a few hundred pages of rules and infinite paragraphs of special "can and can't do" rules in every subclass ability and power.

D&D players are spending 10 minutes re-reading their character sheets every turn to check to see if the actions they chose this turn are allowed by the rules! Why is this in the game, again? Why are we forcing players to slow the game to a glacial pace just to see if a combo is viable? Why not just fix the rules, adopt an industry standard for actions, and get rid of all these problems and the flipping through pages of character sheets and rulebooks at every turn?

Nimble 5e fixes D&D's problems.

And it fixes them for good.

Even the resting system is fixed here, along with the constant revival and coming back from death that plagues 5E. The resurrection spell is a "secret spell" and insanely rare, and it makes death a motivating factor again. All of 5E's annoyances are addressed, and you are not getting a full rest in a dungeon closet anymore. You can't even fully rest while camping in the wilderness.

Finally, sanity comes back to D&D.

I don't mind the superheroic qualities of 5E as long as they are balanced with a realistic fear of death and balanced resting mechanics. Superheroes I can manage, superheroes with rules written in the game to prevent them from suffering any consequence, death, or needing to manage resources? I'm out; this superhero game sucks.

Even the death system is fixed, while keeping the zero hit points as a dying condition. There are no "death saves" in the game; if you gain a wound, you enter the dying condition, and someone must help you out, or you can drink a healing potion. You accumulate 6 wounds, and you are dead, and these only heal on a safe rest. Getting damaged, attacking, or casting a spell while in the dying state causes extra wounds. It is a clean, simple, elegant system that puts a real cost on zero hit points, and keeps resting and recovery important.

Healing potions are assumed to be standard equipment, so the default world is a little video game-like. Again, this contrasts with the OSR, where potions are in the realm of magic items rather than something you can buy at a shop. In a high-magic 5E world, I do not mind this as much as long as the death and wound mechanics are solid, which they are here. Go to zero hit points too many times, and the character is still dead, and there is no easy way back from that state.

This is one of the best death and recovery systems in 5E, and it beats my old favorite, Level Up A5E, in balancing costs and recovery. We have the heroic comebacks that 5E players love, balanced with the fear of permanent death. Resurrection is only possible in once-in-a-lifetime situations, and it is not something players can rely on - even at high levels.

Your level 17 thief can go out in a blaze of glory and die a hero. If they managed to save the day, then the legend is written in the annals of history; you accept the outcome and have a chance to start again as a fresh-faced character with a new story once again.

This is perfect.

This is what I wanted 5E to be. These are the "fixes" that I wanted in Tales of the Valiant, and only half-got in Level Up A5E. I wanted something fair but bold, allowing for heroic recovery while also carrying real and lasting consequences. The state of death remains a final truth for every character.

Now, how will you live your life?

Nimble 5e looks like "rules light 5E," but it's actually "fixed 5E." Who knew that fixing D&D involved removing 95% of the rules and adopting industry-standard frameworks and sensible rulings that fit the theme of the game? Oh, that's right, Shadowdark did that, too. While in Shadowdark, they set the theme to "dark and deadly," in Nimble, they set it to "heroic and legendary."

With the terrible parts of D&D fixed, what do we have left? Just the archetypal 5E adventure parts. The monster fights. The skill checks. The roleplaying. The epic hero feels. A rest-and-recovery system that does not create an invincible party. The flashy powers. Managing resources. Meaningful death. OSR-like play if you enforce it. A straightforward action economy. All the best parts of D&D, without any of the parts that make me want to pull my hair out.

While 5E started out well enough, by later books, it got so bad that I stopped playing.

Nimble 5e is a reset button for D&D. It is not "broken" anymore.

And Nimble 5e works very well.

How GURPS Killed 5E for Me

I still enjoy 5E for what it tried to do, and I still have my Tales of the Valiant books. But if I am playing one game at that complexity level, and simplifying my gaming life to the games I enjoy the absolute most, there is only room in my gaming life for one massive game, and that game is GURPS.

I get more out of GURPS per minute spent with it than I do from 5E.

If the old solo-play adage "everything is playing" is true, then when I am designing a GURPS character, optimizing their points, fine-tuning their advantage and disadvantage list, picking their armor, carefully loading them out as to not over-encumber them, and finely crafting them to fit a role in my game - then GURPS gives me a constant stream of enjoyment at every minute I spend in a character designer.

In 5E, it is just "making big choices" and having the designers and web programmers add another huge list of junk to my character sheet. I make a few big choices, and they keep throwing things I don't want into my shopping cart. I get to decide very little, and all the choices I make are these aggregated, huge ones that feel less like character design and more like picking items off an à la carte menu and ending up with too much food on the table.

And if I want more choices?

In GURPS? The game comes with them all. I have an infinite number of choices at my fingertips. Batteries are included here. With just the core books, I get it all.

In 5E? I need to buy the next book or crowdfunding project to have more choices. I need to pray that they support those choices in the VTT of my choice. I need to constantly spend money to have new choices.

I love ToV, but I am always buying the next crowdfunding book to "have more."

With GURPS, I have it all in two books. Yes, you need to learn the system to make it work well, but it is better than paying $100-200 every 3 months for another 5E book. I learn the system, and save the money.

And GURPS works exactly the way I want it to. Do I want clerics to be like "fantasy superheroes?" Fune, give them a healing power that costs fatigue points, and let them heal whenever they want. Do I want them to use magic and spells? Okay, healing works that way in that framework. I am not dealing with "spell slots" or a class description a dozen pages long with subpaths that I am forced to pick.

Is it more work than being "told what to do?" Yes.

Does it work exactly how I want it to? Yes.

But I get it, some people don't want to do all the work and have "things to choose from." I am like that too, but 5E has grown beyond my ability to support it, since it tries to take over my entire gaming life and library. For those times, I will just play a game like Old School Essentials and a BX system, where everything is chosen for me, and all I need to do is play my role. It is far easier and cheaper than supporting a 5E habit, and I do not need the weight and complexity of 5E to enjoy a game of focused, limited choices.

And guess what? In OSE, you get 90% of anything you would want to play, and a handful of zines fills in some of the missing parts. I can fit more choices and options on a quarter shelf of OSE books than on eight shelves of 5E books. My OSE collection is small, but very expressive and expansive. Sure, every choice isn't as "deep" as a 5E class, but they do 90% of the same thing anyway in play, and the game is more focused on the dungeon turn, exploration, and the classic gameplay loop.

And 5E wants to be a narrative game, not a dungeon crawler. For narrative games where character-focused choices and narrative tools are more important on "damage per turn", GURPS will absolutely be the best choice. GURPS has far more tools for a narrative game than 5E ever will, with self-control rolls, advantages, disadvantages, and a whole host of roleplaying choices I can buy with character points.

What am I losing? Fantasy superheroes. I am a bit tired of that genre, and I prefer the classic, old-school dungeon turn and gameplay loop to that style of play. Also, if I play fantasy superheroes and want a tactical battle game, Pathfinder is a better choice than 5E, and it is balanced all the way to level 20. Draw Steel is another great tactical game. Nimble 5e does the entire genre fast and rules-light.

If I want to "support" 5E, I have Nimble: one small box that contains the entire 5E experience. The fantasy superheroes genre does not have to be a game that eats shelves. Nimble 5E takes the sting out of dropping full 5E, and it lets me keep 5E support on my shelves without a massive library or a huge time investment. It is a small game, like OSE, and it does everything.

Nimble makes putting 5E into legacy support so easy. I am not losing a thing. The game is tiny. It does fantasy superheroes well. It can sit on my OSE shelf and happily support 5E adventures and gameplay without all the books. Nimble does enough fantasy superheroes well enough that I do not miss a thing about 5E. This is also getting an expansion soon, and we will have more to play with.

And unlike 5E, Nimble plays fast. You get to feel more like a hero and less like someone who scans a character sheet, trying to figure out what to do during a turn. Why am I reading my character sheet multiple times during a combat? It feels like trying to drive a car, with the user manual open on the dashboard and flipping to the page for the left turn signal as you roll up to the intersection. And before you make the left turn, you need to have the DMV book open on the seat next to you so you can review the rules for making a left turn.

Is that a free action or a bonus action? Am I allowed to make a left turn on a bonus action? Oops, sorry, left turns are full-round actions. Please watch for oncoming traffic and turn when it is safe to do so. Where is that left turn signal again? Please give me the other book. Why is this car manual 400 pages long? Why do the rules for left turns go on for 12 pages?

And with an easier 5E, I have the time to focus and balance the games I love, meaning I have more time and shelf space for GURPS and OSE. Nimble sits happily alongside my big two games, offering me 5E if I want it. Nimble avoids cluttering my game shelves by being tiny yet feature-packed. It commits no sins and happily lives alongside my best games.

GURPS?

Yes, it is my last, best "big game."

I get more out of GURPS per minute spent with it than I do from a few thousand pages of 5E rules. At most, it is three shelves of amazing books, with only two core books mattering. GURPS gives me narrative "oomph" and power, and outshines 5E in story-based, narrative games. GURPS does social roleplay far better than 5E does, because what I choose during character creation matters. It is not all "classes and powers" in GURPS; my character's "physical and mental profile" is fully designed, whereas in 5E it is just assumed and scribbled in (if at all) in the notes section of the character sheet.

5E cares more about a button on a VTT character sheet you can press to roll a d20 plus skill modifier. I still like 5E, but we have gotten so lost in the woods with this system and VTT support that it no longer feels like the game we were promised in 2014. It is all gimmicks, tools, and power gaming in a JavaScript interface. The game isn't even dungeon-crawling anymore, and it feels like we are just pretending it does.

OSE is defined by the dungeon exploration turn.

Nimble gives me the heart of 5E without the complexity.

And GURPS cares more about the character than the character sheet.

My life feels better with just my best games on my shelf, and the ones I can support.

Blizzardification

The Bilzzardification of D&D began with D&D 3.5E and roared into full swing with D&D 4E. By the time we got to D&D 5E, this trend had become the norm, and barely anyone noticed.

The game has too many races, classes, and subclass options, along with pointless choices that carry no thematic weight or story consequences.

Like World of Warcraft, we get another half-dozen elf shapes with no real meaning in the broader story, some mechagnomes because the character editor just couldn't do that with normal gnomes, and all sorts of other "why did they add this" character options.

There comes a point when so many silly shapes run through my mind that it shuts down, the story becomes trash and meaningless, and the world's original charm is gone. This isn't about diversity; this is about storytelling and "less is more." The story never needed dozens of race options, especially if the core conflicts are watered down to the point where nothing matters.

More is more! And we get yet another thing to buy and try to fit into a world that stopped making sense a decade ago. I don't even know what World of Warcraft is anymore, other than "Fantasy Second Life" full of silly shapes and random things that never fit together thematically.

Same thing with classes, in World of Warcraft, we have a few different types of fighters now, and they all need to have class roles, niche protection, and enough differences to make choosing one over the other a viable choice. I miss the days of "fighter was it," and even the paladin class was a main tank trade-off with slippery aggro.

And in D&D, too many fighter classes created with a thesaurus not only make the original class boring and unappealing, but also force the designers to create "role protection" and "self-healing options" for every fighter to make them viable solo classes. There are too many similar fighter classes. It makes the original fighter a joke. Why do I play a fighter again?

Boring choice. Play a swordmaster. A battlerager. A shieldmaster. An arcane combatant. A jumping lancer. Don't mind the fact that some of these classes feel like multiclassed characters, such as the arcane combatant being a multiclass fighter/magic-user; they just are a "thing" now, and world builders are now forced to shove them into every world somehow.

Even multiclassing is being attacked by the thesaurus class designers, and making "better options" with a new class that makes the entire charm of multiclassing the weaker choice. Worse yet, you can multiclass the multiclassed replacement.

What are you even doing anymore?

These "tack on and add on" games give me a headache.

If you come out with a game and can't even preserve and support the original game's solid class choices, and you can't help yourself and replace them with every book you release, you are a garbage game designer. You can't even support the original game anymore without making the choice in it obsolete with your "new power gaming stuff" released in every book. Ultimately, it ends with the players all getting sick of it, everyone quitting, and you being "forced" to release a new edition to clean it all up.

Look at how much better 6E is now and all the problems it solves!

We had those problems fixed when 5E was released, and you broke the game since then.

And the ranger and rogue were broken on release, and still are. They will be broken in 6E, too.

This is why basic BX is so appealing to me. It does not change unless I want it to, and I can control everything that comes into the game. I have strict control of worldbuilding. No one is coming along and making a thesaurus "archer" class and replacing a subset of fighters on me. I don't need to fit the new garbage into my world. There are no silly circus-like planes to factor into my worldbuilding.

If I say "an archer is just a fighter that uses a bow," then the fighter class covers it. The gladiator is just a "fighter who fights in an arena." Seriously, one secondary skill could cover the entire class and be used for all the "optional flavor abilities." We don't need to invent game mechanics and track pool points for "crowd support" or "archery focus." Who cares? It is a fighter. Stop making new fighters!

Put the thesaurus down.

You aren't being innovative or smart by trying to replace the wheel. You are just making slightly worse wheels that are only usable in specific situations.

If I only want "the core four" races of human, dwarf, elf, and halfling - that is all that is in the book and all that I will support in my worldbuilding. Orcs are orcs, not something someone on social media said they were; so, outside people, unconnected to classic myth and disconnected from reality, can ruin my game and world-building. The list of "monsters as player options" gets worse and worse every year, and I expect mind flayers. displacer beasts, and beholders to be player options in 6E. And I will be forced to add them, along with every other silly thing they put in the game's art.

Game designers. Stop it. You have a problem. Get some help.

Less is more.

The Sandbox

Every game presents its own unique sandbox. You get a base set of classes, races, magic, monsters, gear, and ideas to use to create your stories. Part of the reason I love Old School Essentials is that it is one of the ultimate sandboxes in gaming, classic, iconic, defined, and limited in scope to just the best of the best in dungeon adventuring.

I am sort of hesitant to use the words 'old school' dungeon adventuring since I really have no idea what modern adventuring is these days, other than 'a contrived plot leads you to a sequence of battle map-like areas.' We have not progressed beyond D&D 4E's 'series of combat encounters' in nearly 20 years, and 5E is still very much aligned to map and grid tactical encounter play.

4E used to have that sandbox, too. Early on, before the game became an MMO, where the classic worlds were "starting zones," and everyone was forced to adventure in the planes, starting at level 10. That model still exists in D&D today, and it is the death of the sandbox in D&D. This assumption killed the classic fantasy worlds of D&D, and it turned into "Plane Hoppers: the RPG."

5E never really felt like it had the sandbox to me, since the planar model was baked in. 5E always felt too big, too massive, like a fantasy universe simulator more than a sandbox fantasy game. I get this feeling from ToV and Level Up A5E, too. They are less focused on sandbox games than they feel like a "d20 version of fantasy GURPS." And 5E gets worse the more you add to it. It already starts off way too massive, and it just keeps getting bigger.

4E felt like it had a defined sandbox world, and it worked consistently and logically.

5E felt too generic and planar in scope. I get overwhelmed. There is too much in the game. And 2024 makes it worse since there are four subclasses per class. I might as well be playing GURPS if I am expected to design that hard. Yes, it is just four choices over a billion, but comparing 20 levels of four subclasses to plan out what I want and what I would be happy with? Give me a point-buy system and set me free to get what I want, since the designers will never make me happy.

OSE has one book or two books, maybe the Zines, and that is it. OSE is very "wrap your head around able," and I can memorize everything and run the game like a micro operating system in my head. With 5E, I can't store it all in my head, none of it becomes second nature, and I am forever tied to looking things up in those darned books.

With OSRIC 3.0, and especially Adventures Dark & Deep, I feel myself slipping again. OSRIC 3.0 I do a little better with, since it is so similar to OSE, but there are so many more rules to remember.

OSE has a few "planar spells," but it never goes beyond that. The entire game feels rooted in one world, without dragging the massive planar framework like a junky piece of furniture tangled with cords, dust, and some random strings wrapped around everything. You can "do planes," but for the most part, they are never brought up, and the game feels rooted in one world with very little, if any, planar travel. OSE does not even have the gate spell.

Sanity.

Finally.

A fantasy adventure game that just focuses on one sandbox world, manages that self-contained framework, and doesn't pull in 1001 garbage ideas and genre-breaking science fiction and weird fantasy elements. I am sick of "the planes" and "planar campaigns," and I am ready to return to smaller, more sandbox, manageable, and simulation-like standalone worlds. I don't need all my fantasy worlds in some multiverse where characters can jump between them in an instant, reducing them to background images and VFX in some trash-science-fiction movie.

It reminds me of that scene in the new Star Wars sequels where they used hyperspace to "jump between" iconic worlds, with no world mattering, them only existing as nostalgia backdrops, and them never being forced to interact with any of them. In the end, they were there to say "remember this," and they each meant nothing, and the entire sequence diminished every world and cheapened the entire universe in a very short sequence of film.

The modern theory and design concept of "the multiverse" is complete and utter garbage.

Bringing it into D&D destroys every classic game word, if it hasn't already.

Why, as a creator, do I have to accept a concept that diminishes my work? So, my world must be in your "planar framework?" Or your "labyrinth?" Or your "thousand worlds?"

I begin to think that those who push these concepts are either lazy, jealous, or anti-imagination. There is another class in that group that plagiarizes, too, claiming the work of greats as their own, even though they will never be anything close to them. To them, the multiverse exists so they can put mediocre work next to the creations of legends and have greatness prop up their weak, derivative, and trite ideas.

If I want "the planes," it means I must play with OSRIC 3.0, Adventures Dark & Deep, or other 1E games. These games have full support for that campaign model, with more planar monsters (demons and devils, at least, at the moment), the high-level planar spells, and support for the framework.

I can play "The Planes" in OSE, but it is my choice.

With 1E, that is baked in, and I accept its presence, but the nature of the planes is still entirely up to me, or if they are even survivable. I remember when we first did a planar exploration game in 1E, I had zero structure or reason for the planes; it was almost Lovecraftian, and some of them were not even survivable or breathable. Some had alien geometry where, if you walked down a mile-long tunnel and turned around, you would be facing a solid wall of rock. Turn around again, and the walls shifted and moved like you were in some bad video game with strange bugs.

The entire nature of these places drove my players mad.

They fled back to their home world as soon as they finished what they needed to do.

Those gates stayed closed, or my players actively hunted gates down and closed them themselves.

Nothing good comes from the planes.

But those are the planes. They aren't a utopia or socio-economic paradise, happy pastel-colored places full of frog people, massive cities, or what have you. They are often alien and incomprehensible. Most of them are unsurvivable. Many of them will drive a human unprepared to experience them insane. Most will not see "life as we know it" as anything worth consideration for survival, and you will be crushed like an ant, poisoned, enslaved, killed, abused, or swatted like a pest if you set foot in these places.

Lesser creators, again, will use a planar model to foist their dumb ideas into an official setting and force you to accept their world-breaking garbage because "it is an official book." Many of the Magic: the Gathering-based books in the D&D line are like this, terrible, lesser ideas forced into the D&D multiverse, with no real weight, fiction, or creative chops behind them, and they are garbage "me too" ideas which end up diminishing the greats: The Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, and others.

But those great settings are no longer great, anymore.

Years of mismanagement and abuse have left the classic D&D fantasy worlds in a ruined, corrupted, and unappealing state. They don't even have great novels in these places anymore. There is nothing special about them, and the fiction is mostly dead. While I have fond memories of these places, they exist as ghosts today.

OSE gives me a fresh start, two small, self-contained books that simulate "the classic fantasy world." Every OSE world could be "The Realms" or "Greyhawk" in the early days. Every time I start a world with OSE, it feels like starting a new Minecraft world, fresh, interesting, boundless, but using a limited palette of possibilities combined in infinite ways. The logical mechanics are consistent. The options are limited, yet expansive.

And I absolutely do not need the infinite character options 5E gives me; they hurt the story of the world and characters more than they help it. Too much focus is put on the characters. With my BX thief, sure, he may be a simple character, but that does not bother me at all in Minecraft. I am who I make myself in the sandbox, and my story and adventures matter more than a treed character build that takes a few dozen pages of character sheets to figure out.

If I am a complicated mess of choices and 5E build options, I am largely self-contained with powers and a massive 20-level entitlement syndrome baked into my build. I cease caring about the world. It is always about me. No matter what I do in the sandbox, I can always count on those powers being handed to me by the rules.

No wonder so many players of 5E don't understand the appeal of sandbox worlds. They are never forced to interact with one to engage and thrive inside it. Everything is given to them by the "mommy rule book" and "daddy game designer." They already have the next 20 levels of power, so they never need to build soft power or interact with a sandbox world. Every adventure is a pre-chewed story meant to drive progression along a set of rails.

If I am a simple BX character, I need to engage with a sandbox world to thrive in it. How I engage with the world, my stories, and the relationships within it will define my character's power. This "soft power" of my interactions and relations in the sandbox is often greater than any "hard power" the rules give to me. Who I am, the people I know, the gear I found, and what I built matter more than my character sheet.

That farm I struggled to build in Minecraft with the enchanting room to make magic weapons and armor? That took a long time to put together and set up. It took me numerous sessions and adventures to build. That gives me real character power. And none of it exists on my character sheet.