To Tweak or Not to Tweak? Capturing the Era

Do you tweak your games? It depends on how important it is to you that you are playing "exactly what was played" in the 1980s, down to the last class ability and numeric value. You are not tweaking the OSE fighter to make it more them, just rolling with what you got. After all, the class was designed like this; it worked back then, and why change it?

I have a few good reasons to bump OSE fighters' attack bonus by 2 across the board at every level, but is that the original game? No, it wasn't. And yes, it was. We did tweak and make adjustments back in the 1980's, too; very few of us played rules-as-written unless we were playing AD&D in a hobby store or other organized setting.

D&D was the home of the houseruled game.

AD&D, we tended to obey Gary's wishes and keep it as it was when we played with new people. Those were the "organized play rules," but even then, houseruled home games of AD&D were a huge thing.

We tend to put older games on pedestals and preserve them exactly as they were, trying to recapture the moment by not changing a thing and sticking to every letter printed on the page. We have a false sense of the past in which sticking to only what was written on that day was "official," and we artificially elevate its value.

Objects in the mirror may appear more important than they were.

It is important to have perspective and not silence the work of creators of third-party zines and others who turn OSE and BX into a living, breathing game open to discussion and expansion. To them, the game is a modern platform, worthy of support and expansion, and new and fresh ideas are the way forward. They take the base game, written in today's era, and move it forward, as if we had the same open license and freedom we could have had back in the 1980s, had TSR not been so closed-shop and litigious.

If you see OSE as a modern platform, you will, of course, tweak and mod it.

If you see OSE as a 1980s rules-simulator, you will be less likely to mod it.

If you are more into the rules-simulation side of the hobby and do not want to mod the game, then games like Swords & Wizardry and its 1970s simulation of the game's state during that time will appeal to you more. Also, there are some who absolutely do not want to list a page of houserules to a new group, and that can scare people away faster than anything you ever understand.

I have had a group of new players never begin a 5E game since I had a page of houserules, and I wanted to use the 2014 game (since that meant a few players did not have to buy new books). The group never started. They all found other things to do. The game died before it even began.

Why do we need all these houserules?

Is the game broken?

I don't want to buy a new game that is broken and needs all these house rules I will never understand!

Houserules can scare off new players, since they see a list of things they don't understand, have to mesh with a new game, and figure out the "how and why" of how it all works before a die is even rolled. Most will just quit and go do something else that doesn't need houserules. There is great value in saying, "This is what we are playing." You can point to one book, and the discussion is over. The contract is set; learn that book. This is the game we all agreed to, and we can play.

I am not against house rules, but I know how hard they can make it for some new players. For a group comfortable with each other and the game, houserules are great.

And games like Swords & Wizardry, which replicate the 1970s state of the game, the rulings, the common assumptions of the meanings, and laying out exactly where the clear and vague parts were, while trying to present the commonly agreed-upon interpretations, are also invaluable, even from the perspective of historical simulation.

If Dungeon Crawl Classics is a reinterpretation of "1970s play" through a modern game design lens, rooted in 3.5E-era sensibilities, then Swords & Wizardry is the actual game we played in the late 1970s. The games offer two views of the same era: DCC is more focused on random tables, imagination, and fun, while S&W presents the game as it was at that moment in time.

The pain of Vietnam was dulling; the gas lines and inflation of the 1970s were still in the discussion; the hippies had all gotten jobs; condo-living was a thing; disco was dying; arena rock was resurgent; and the era of over-the-air TV was being replaced by cable. The Cold War still raged on. The Reagan era was just over the horizon.

And we did not have AD&D yet. We pieced together rules from the original books and did our best to figure everything out. When BX came along, it was a restatement and clarification, the game coming into focus.

And the AD&D books took a few years to release! In 1977, it was the Monster Manual, followed in 1978 by the PHB, and in 1979 by the DMG. Imagine taking two years to release a game today, book by book. There was a whole year with just the original books and the Monster Manual; none of us knew what to do, what rules to use, and what was coming. The Monster Manual dropped into the middle of this discussion, and many pulled it into their existing games as-is.

By the time 1979 rolled around, it was all AD&D, and the 1970s and the original chaotic game we embraced were over. We had our official "organized play rules," and that was that. But those five years from 1974 to 1979? Those were the days of zero edition, and what DCC tries to replicate, along with the game Swords & Wizardry presents and reframes so well.

OSE is both a simulation and a modern platform, depending on your wants. It is best for new players of the game, and it will get better in the new edition with more examples of play and additional features to help new players. You can play this as a recreation, or use it as a platform to support gaming moving forward, just like a 5E.

The original BX games are exactly what they are, without the new presentation or reframing. They are locked in time, cannot be written for (outside of OSE), and will not change. They are more valuable as "the actual thing" and a historical record, and weaker as a platform. They were both released in 1980 and reflect the newer era. Remember, the red and blue books were released the year after the DMG came out, and reflected the "for kids" easier version of the game.

Many of us chose to stick with AD&D and ignored these books, though they had a certain charm.

I feel the same way about S&W as I do BX, in that S&W is the easier version of AD&D, streamlined and stripped down to the best parts, and all the slow, heavy, and excess rules out of the picture. If I want AD&D today, I have OSRIC 3.0. Communities and open licenses are more important than nostalgia. The platform for creativity comes first.

S&W recaptures the lighting-in-a-bottle of the 1974 to 1979 period, along with all the common assumptions, interpretations, and the original "hippies in a van and black felt neon paint posters" sort of feeling that era had. This could be seen as a "modern platform" too, and the expansion books treat it exactly that way. It is also an "easier" version of AD&D, before the huge rulebooks came out and clarified every little vague area of the rules and inconsistencies.

AD&D Started This Mess, and I Love that Game

I love AD&D.

But I also understand that it started many of the problems we have with D&D today. Race-plus-class, the proficiency system eventually turning into a full skill system, overloaded classes with tiers of power, ability unlocks at certain levels, hit point inflation, multiclassing, and so many other issues started here. We started to see power creep, and 5E is defined by power creep.

When there was very little wrong with BX to begin with, and that game is the essence and heart of D&D. I am hesitant to use "D&D" since the current game isn't even D&D anymore, it is 5E, and BX is a truer statement of what the genre really is, and what makes it special.

A bunch of the problems that AD&D introduced were later ham-fistedly fixed in every edition that followed, and they still never fully fixed the issues it introduced. The Wizards team keeps trying to make a broken game fun, even though the original BX implementation was never broken. They will keep "fixing" D&D in edition after edition, when, like Monopoly, the original BX-based game is fun, isn't broken, and doesn't need to be changed.

AD&D is what I remember and love, but it is flawed, and those flaws get us to where we are today. It is still so much better than 5E, and it is the ultimate fantasy role-playing game. An amazing amount of depth, options, and it retains the classic, old-school experience? AD&D is the true fantasy role-playing game. But is it the best version of D&D?

But there is still something about BX that remains the gold standard. Where AD&D added special cases and rules for things that rarely come up, and tried to be the "de facto" convention ruleset, BX is still more flexible, easier for worldbuilding, and captures the essence of D&D with a much more straightforward framework.

BX is the far superior worldbuilder to AD&D.

AD&D is the best generic fantasy game.

But if I want to live in the world of D&D, BX is the truest expression of the ideas. The tropes are built into the classes. The classes build the world. Even if you do "race plus class" BX, it is a stronger expression of the original D&D idea, since stat and hit point inflation are under control. There is less to track and manage. The game is more about the story than the characters or the acquisition of power.

Doing "race plus class" confuses worldbuilding. Before, humans and halflings were the sneaky, stealthy, thieving types. This is their nature. Elves were the magic and battle types. Drarves didn't do the thieving stuff; it wasn't in their nature. Yes, this is a simple view of the world, but it is valid. Even DCC does the classic race-as-class designs, and these are valid and very thematic. So they are used in modern games, and even ACKS does amazing race-as-class options.

If you want a dwarven "tomb robber," make a race-as-class and give them abilities unique to both dwarves and tomb robbers. This will not be a thief and is unlikely to backstab. It will have unique abilities that enhance its core role in the game. Maybe they will have a bonus for fighting undead? This is how BX works: you create a race-specific role, and you design an amazing class that fills a niche and worldbuilds the race it belongs to.

Every BX class does heavy lifting in worldbuilding. Paladins? Human only, this is what humans do with crusades and holy knights. No other race gets involved with this. Bards? Human, again, and the entire concept of an elven or dwarven bard would be an entirely different thing. Dwarven Loremaster and Elven Spellweavers come to mind, and those would be much more thematic and do amazing worldbuilding.

AD&D classes give up, and while that gives the referee more options in creating the world, everything becomes more generic. There are "allowed race and class combinations," but we are one step away from "allowing anyone to be anything," and here we are in D&D 3E and further.

But, for generic fantasy, race-plus-class is fine and needed. In this world, we have Drow paladins. Fine. This is a choice. But allowing race-plus-class makes a LOT of choices you may not want made. You may not want Drow paladins. That may confuse your world's core conflicts. This may give the player too much narrative control. In a Dark Sun world with no Drow and no paladins, both are choices the world does not support.

Plus, allowing a Drow paladin all of a sudden shifts the game's narrative focus almost exclusively on that player and the conflict with the evil Drow. Some character stories will hijack the campaign and allow little room for other players to take part, or even for the referee to tell a standard fantasy story (especially if Drow are distrusted on the surface world, and the entire focus of the campaign shifts to that one character trying to prove themselves).

The original BX sidesteps all of that by strictly limiting race-as-class options. The game is easier to worldbuild and run stories in, since the stories write themselves and the conflicts stay out of the way of the dungeon crawl and adventure.

Old School Essentials also allows "anyone to be anything" with their optional rules, and those are useful for one-off classes and special PCs and NPCs. The Drow assassin comes to mind, along with the Dwarven cleric. I still love the race-as-class options, and they are very thematic and support worldbuilding like no other game.

5E gets everything wrong by allowing anyone to be anything and making all the races the same. It is magnitudes more difficult to worldbuild and play because of this.

AD&D started us down this road, and they did have strict race and class level limits to try to fix the problems that arose. But this is our first fix, one in a long line of many that lead to today.

As much as I love AD&D and 1E as a generic fantasy experience, BX is the purest form of the dungeon game.

AD&D 2nd Edition vs. For Gold & Glory

There is a good portion of the community moving to AD&D 2nd Edition as their old-school game. This is a solid choice, but for many reasons I would still base my games and creative work around For Gold & Glory rather than the AD&D 2nd Edition reprints.

The best reason is the open license. If you create material or adventures for FG&G, you can share and sell them. You are not allowed to do this for the AD&D 2nd Edition game. Just in supporting a community of creators and players, it is always better to form ranks with the open gaming movement. Do you have an adventure or campaign you have written? Have  you created new character options, spells, or monsters? You can sell and share it here!

The PDF of For Gold & Glory is free, and there is a nice all-in-one hardcover option. A free PDF will help me immeasurably at getting new players into the game. There is nothing to buy! Let's play. I can also just give the PDF out for free, the license says I can just share this with my friends and pass it along.

REDISTRIBUTING For Gold & Glory™
This entire, unmodified book can be redistributed either as a free pdf or as an at-cost print on demand. If you offer a print option, you are forbidden from making any profit from the sale. - For Gold & Glory, page 367.

Few games let you do that. I want to hand this out to a friend to get them started? The license allows redistribution, as long as it is for free.

Yes, the AD&D 2e PDFs are 9.99 each, and you can get soft covers. Who knows how long these will be around, and the monster books are the best buys for the few monsters outside FG&G's generous selection. For the money, ability to share, and value, FG&G beats the reprints, hands-down.

The only thing the reprints have at the product-identity monsters and spells. Get the 2nd Edition Monster Manual if you want them. But again, the art, while nice to have, is all that comic-book style. Also note that demons and devils have been erased from this edition due to the Satanic Panic. You need to buy a few more books to have these, and they are the silly renamed versions.

You can always pull them in from any AD&D 1e or first-edition source, too, and this is where the excellent Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary is highly useful. ADAD is an S-Tier game, but it is huge and has a lot of add-on content. I can see wanting to stick with a 2nd Edition subset of stuff to keep the game and world simple. This is going to be a go-to resource book, though.

 

The art in the FG&G book is far better than the reprints. I love the choices of classical art, and FG&G seems like a much more mature, serious, and impactful game than the often comical and garishly colored AD&D 2nd Edition books, and some of the pieces in the TSR books are so bad they hurt my eyes to look at. Some of the pieces in AD&D 2nd you can clearly see the artist went out of their way to avoid drawing faces. Some of the pieces are classic reprints, but they are very hit and miss. Compare that with the piece above, by a true classical artist, and FG&G stands shoulders above the amateur-looking TSR books.

The layout and clarity of the rules is also far better in FG&G. The fonts are better, the use of color is better, and the book is cleanly presented and easy to reference. It is a beautiful book, without any of the silly, kids-cartoon races of modern D&D, which I feel distract from the story and game.

The FG&G art is awesome in every way, evocative of a realistic medieval world, and it is not pushing talking houseplants or puppet PCs in my face. I am seriously starting to dislike the "goofball" new fantasy backgrounds, which are childish and lack seriousness. This is a game without Tieflings, as having the blood of Satan in you instantly turns you chaotic evil and makes you a monster. Dragonborn would be of the blood of dragons, and the allies of those serpent beasts - not player characters. It feels like a classic all-or-nothing here, without the constant cosplay and pretend-ism, and that is a welcome change.

You could have them in your game, but if you are playing second edition, you never really did. For nostalgia's sake, leave the special backgrounds to the Wizard's editions.

The AD&D 2nd Edition books are way overdone, too fancy for their own good, with strange font choices, giant curly title fonts that are hard to read, too much color on the page, and distracting, red and black, double-bordered tables with too light of a font typeset. Some of the longer paragraphs are unreadable due to the sans-serif nearly hairline-thin fonts.

I love the serious tone of FG&G, and it does not feel like a lightweight game. Your characters are these actual wizards, knights, rogues, and witches of old. The game looks and feels like a classical bible, and in every ways sets a more serious and grounded tone than modern games, which tend to be goofy and more like Cartoon Network than a tale feeling based upon a realistic world.

I love that wizard. He is so cool. That would be my character. He has a stars and moons robe with zodiac symbols all over it, and a suspicious look in his eye like, "Get away from me!" He should, he only has a d4 hit die.

Where AD&D 2nd Edition has that goofy cartoon style, FG&G feels grounded and realistic, and it has the clearly superior license. The second edition is what many remember fondly, and it is nice to have an OSR game in this space, especially one so generous.

FG&G is the better game, one that gives me a serious feeling and weighty presence to it. It is much like ACKS II in this respect, and that mature and grounded tone brings my games to another level.

Even though the rules are mostly the same, presentation matters a great deal here. 

ADAD vs. OSRIC

OSRIC vs. ADAD?

What is the difference?

Game-engine-wise, there is not that much of a difference. There may be a few things around armor vs. weapon types, initiative, classes, spells, numbers, and other fiddly bits - but the core game engines are the same. 

There is a minor difference in the combat engine being more streamlined in ADAD vs. OSRIC, and I prefer ADAD's streamlined combat which integrates weapon speed much better. The fact weapon speed it directly tired into initiative means the system Gygax wanted us to have (with speed factor) has been implemented in a way that does not seem like a penalty, and it is easy to manage and use. I would use ADAD's combat system with OSRIC, most likely.

The modules work the same, monsters work the same, spells work the same, and they are 99% compatible. Either OSRIC or ADAD is a solid choice.

The significant differences are in options, and the most considerable differences are in the new skill system and the classes available. To begin, OSRIC's class list is as follows:

• Assassin
• Cleric
• Druid
• Fighter
• Illusionist
• Magic User
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Thief

ADAD has all of those, plus:

• Bard
• Jester
• Skald
• Cavalier
• Blackguard
• Vates
• Mystic
• Barbarian
• Savant
• Acrobat
• Mountebank

The ADAD Darker Path expansions add:

• Witch
• Necromancer
• Demonolater

What sells me on ADAD over OSRIC is having a first-edition bard and barbarian class, plus many more to explore and play with. If you don't need those, keep your life simple and play OSRIC. If you have 5E players wanting more class options and choices, then ADAD is the better game.

ADAD is the "more stuff" game, reflecting the first edition at the end of its lifecycle when it was expanded and fully matured. OSRIC was the game when it started, with just the first three books.

Me? I will go for the "more stuff" since I played AD&D back in the day, and I have campaigns that will use those new classes. The only thing missing is new race selections and more modern designs, but I can create these with Grok 3 and beta them myself.

ADAD typically expands every area it explores, from spells, equipment, strongholds, and weapons—it is all more and expanded. Is "more" better? You need to answer that for yourself.

For those wanting an easier and more streamlined game, playing OSRIC will be the better choice since the options and choices are just the classic selections. Both are on my shelves. ADAD is the apparent "more stuff" game, so it keeps me busy exploring new options. OSRIC will always be my "Old School Essentials" version of the first edition.

ADAD has a skill system where you "pay XP" to get non-combat profession-like skills for your character. This is a more in-depth roleplaying style character improvement than OSRIC. Again, this falls into the "more stuff" theme of the game, and if you don't want that extra system, stick to OSRIC.

There is an OSRIC argument for "keeping it simple" and only focusing on the original first-edition content. From this point, you could expand the game and keep your core experience as streamlined and narrowly focused as possible.

Myself?

Both games are on my shelf, alongside my first-edition books. They all support each other.

ADAD does things the best, for me.

A Survival Game versus the Forces of Hell

I described first-edition AD&D to my players as "a survival game versus the forces of Hell," they instantly got the vibe. This is the old-school school, almost like the original Diablo I game, where your best hope is to survive long enough to give the next heroes a chance to push back the forces of Hell, which keep corrupting and overrunning the land.

Tribes of monsters are almost certainly demon and devil worshippers, out for blood, pillaging and tearing down any place of good or civilization, sacrificing villages, and just out to destroy everything as a tribute to evil. Trigger warning: These are not good, happy, cute, or misunderstood monsters. Even the dragons are some of the worst, taking advantage of the chaos, burning down cities, and leaning into the wars to fill their treasure hordes.

I had a few paragraphs about 5E here. I am phasing that commentary out because high-level play is boring, broken, and slow. The 5E boat has left the dock. The only real "Wizards D&D" is 3.5E. The only real D&D is AD&D first edition.

The best "tabletop dungeon tactical game" is Pathfinder 2 Remastered.

I can't play the game in my mind with anything else except the first edition, and even then, OSRIC is my reference of choice, the best-written technical manual on a perfect game. The original books are for inspiration only. Gary's words can't be erased or replaced; this game and the worlds it built kindled almost every game, video game, movie, and book that came after it.

To tear the man down is blasphemy.

Everyone has flaws, but we celebrate greatness and accomplishments. Wizards, you have lost your way. I hope you can return to the fold. Even Hollywood is moving on from the 2010s, and the whole era looks more like disco every day. Otherwise, we must carry on.

We do that by devoting ourselves to that original ideal.

I love the rawness of the first edition. You are not supposed to survive. You aren't given "nap times" or "free cantrips" to carry you through to the subsequent encounter. Death is possible. To even think of the game as encounters, like some pen-and-paper ARPG, means you need help understanding the game. I tell my players that playing the first edition requires spatial thinking, causal analysis, critical thinking, math skills, resource management, bravery, tenacity, and the will to survive and do the impossible.

A dungeon is a problem space you need to solve. It can be a dynamic, changing environment, with time working against you. You can use parts of the environment to your advantage, just like battle space planning in the military. It is part fluid, part static, and those parts can interact. It all starts out as an unknown. Solutions to that problem are built into the game, but they must be told to you.

Even how to run the game is also a mastery, a wizardry, and a science.

After this one, every version of the game took a step away from perfection.

The game isn't a game; it is a riddle you need to solve by looking inside yourself. Once you understand how to "win," you will be set for life; very little in life can stand in your way.

We circle back to the premise, "a survival game versus the forces of Hell." In a way, this may sound like your life, and it should. The impossible task is in front of you, and every day seems like stemming the tide, trying to lose less and survive the day, and getting pushed back to a safe place you realize isn't so safe the next day, so you are on the move again. Watching suffering and despair. Watching what was once good get razed and burned to the ground.

What good are you? You have one spell, and you are done for the day? Your skills could be better. You can't fight. You die easy. You don't get "quest XP for good deeds." You need to kill and steal every experience point, cash it in, and get better with every outing.

Before long, you are Merlin or picking up Excalibur.

The tide turns.

The bastions of evil fall. They thought they were safe there. They were wrong.

You will find the end of this story. It is out there, waiting to be discovered. In some ways, the journey is essential, too. And there will be losses along the way. Only some people who start this tale will be there at the end. There may be new heroes along the way who pick up the swords of the fallen.

There may be a total party kill.

The legend of that moment may inspire new heroes to try to do what the others failed to do.

You will all get to play that story, too.

It is your choice.

OSRIC & D&D 3.5E

If you want to play the best version of D&D, I recommend the first-edition AD&D. I use the OSRIC index as a guide and to simplify the rules, much like the OSE books do. If there is something outside these books, the original three books can fill in the missing spots, but I do not miss them.

Also, the first edition is the best-balanced version of the rules. You are not getting all the bells and whistles of the Wizards' implementations, but you do not need them. This is the game Gary Gygax designed, poured his heart into, and perfected. OSRIC has all the patches, clarifications, and fixes. A few parts were eliminated (bards, psionics, monks), but these were for the better.

Also, with OSRIC, I get to play the OSRIC+ game incorporating the BRW Games books. The old ADAD game was terrific, and it is nice that we still have the "added parts" in these books to enjoy and expand our game. You can find the bard in this book; it is a better version.

I don't recommend AD&D 2nd Edition. This is TSR forcing Gary out and bending the knee to the Satanic Panic. It feels like a censored game without the epic battle between gods and demons. It is much more slick and polished, but I feel it loses its heart and soul. If you love this, great, but it feels like so much is lost here. Even though they brought the renamed demons back later, the game embraces escapism rather than feeling like a test of a player's humanity and morals.

I like OSRIC and the BRW books the best. AD&D 2nd is up there (and a worthy choice), but it can never top the original experience of the late seventies to late eighties. The original rules have a raw, primal, gritty feeling, and Gary's writing makes the experience magical, almost spiritual.

OSRIC for the rules.

Original AD&D books for inspirational reading.

Gary's words will inspire you to play something greater than yourself.

The best version of "Wizards D&D" is D&D 3.5E, without Pathfinder 1e's improvements. Staying true keeps Hero Lab compatibility, and it keeps prestige classes as the focus of the game. This version has massive problems; there are broken builds all over the place, cheese tactics, and a considerable margin between optimized and unoptimized characters. Minions can ruin the game. Casters rapidly outpace martial classes. Skill modifiers can become outrageous.

But this is the best of the West Coast designs. Granted, Wizards can never design a game that works past level ten, but having Monte Cook and other legendary designers doing the game design here more than makes up for the MtG-inspired mess that Wizards brings into the fold.

I am not considering Pathfinder 1e since it is a tonal shift away from the D&D design ethos. Pathfinder 1e is more of a game built for adventure paths, and it has a strong Golarion focus and feeling. With D&D 3.5E, campaign sourcebooks, and prestige classes are built for these worlds. If you are playing in Eberron or the Forgotten Realms, play the game supported by the sourcebooks. D&D 3.5E skills feel more "dungeon-focused" than Pathfinder 1e's generic skill list.

D&D 3.5E beats 5E, hands down. The builds are better, the rules are old-school, and the prestige classes give us things to work toward. It is more complicated, but not by much, considering the slog D&D 5E's high-level combat has devolved into, with all the multiple action types, double-casts, resting rules, and general interconnected mess of relationships and rules interrupts.

D&D 3.5E feels more straightforward to play than 5E. So what do we lose, "advantage and disadvantage?" Are we back to modifiers? So? No significant loss, and the A/D system feels so overused these days that it gets tiring. The A/D system is also a hammer for all problems when it is too blunt, a tool that lacks nuance and ways to finesse and modify a roll.

Both of these games are my "peak D&D."

AD&D Alternatives

If you want to play AD&D for the street cred, play OSRIC instead. This is a better place, full of community support, and the game is better organized and laid out. People write indie adventures for this game, and while this game is still in the OGL shadow, that storm seems to have passed, and we are back to where we were in that uneasy peace between the open-source community and Wizards.

This game is the closest you can get to AD&D without the books.

If you are spending time in a game and community, supporting one where people can independently make a living from what they love is better. You will be another player in this circle, add buzz and excitement, and support people who share the same passions. AD&D is not an open game - OSRIC is.

Regarding open games, Swords & Wizardry is another incredible option for the AD&D-like space. This has been completely rebuilt for the Creative Commons license, meaning the game will continue forever with zero legal worries. Conceptually, S&W is the more accessible game of the two, with far fewer tables, less page count, and roughly the same experience - minus the AD&D complexities.

If you like the AD&D fiddly bits, especially the "you go on segment X" flipped initiative system in OSRIC (where your party rolls 1d6 for the other side), damage versus size, and the delayed casting times - go with OSRIC; you will be happy.

If you want instant casting, one saving throw number, one damage rating per weapon, fewer tables, and want to mod and hack the game - go with S&W; you will be happy.

Of the two, OSRIC limits magic power with segmented casting and makes casters more vulnerable when standing there frantically waving their arms and trying to make a spell happen. In S&W, spells happen when melee does, so there isn't that waiting game. OSRIC also preserves material components, verbal and somatic (but many entries lack the specifics, forcing you to make those up).

Both have essential AD&D-isms, like magic resistance, the progression of spells and powers, and the character choices. S&W will be the more accessible game, whereas OSRIC will be closer to the AD&D metal (but with more reference).

And speaking of AD&D-style games, there is another...

Castles & Crusades is my go-to for a modern, 2.5E-style AD&D-like game. Some spells take rounds to cast, the three components are preserved - and the material components are given for each magic spell. So, C&C, if played by the rules, is a more challenging game for casters since a spell such as consecrate takes 3 combat rounds to cast.

C&C removes even more tables than S&W, and I can play this game from a character sheet the size of a 3x5 index card. Saving throws are built into the ability score system. As-played, The game feels a lot like AD&D and is insanely hackable. I added a very generous one-per-two-level feat system (called advantages) to this game, and it felt just like 5E with those overpowered characters.

I can swap out the character races for 5E races out of a book like Tales of Arcana. As long as all of them come from this book (use the elves, dwarves, and humans from here), they work just fine with C&C. The ability score modifiers apply, racial special abilities can be noted, AC mods work well, and things like cantrips can be easily added in. The feat/advantage system in the C&C Castle Keeper's Guide needs to be used but set a per-level rate, and you are good to go.

C&C plus this book? All the wild 5E races you could ever imagine: Dragonborn, skeletons, demons, tieflings, giants, orcs, goblins, and so many others.

Any extraordinary power you want to add? It is a feat; even 5E feats convert well, like 5E feat guides. The above race book plus the feat book? This is 90% of my interest in 5E hacked into C&C. Fun ancestries plus superpowered characters? That is the 5E secret sauce, done easier and with far more options. C&C plus these two books? This is a far better 5E 'power fantasy' experience, and it feels like AD&D if I want it to. It can easily play any OSR or classic module - no 5E version is needed.

Multi-classing in C&C is fantastic, and while it is not a 'cherry pick' system like 5E, you craft a multiclass combo for your character during character creation and level with that. I can create class designs and unique combos that are impossible in 5E. The multiclass system in C&C beats 5E's limited 'what we give you' subclass system in the 5E game easily.

Class-and-a-half illusionist-bard? Dual-class barbarian-cleric? Multiclass paladin-ranger? An assassin-druid? Of any of hundreds of races? Yes, please, all of the above!

5E's subclass system is a bad design (and only exists to enable specific multiclass builds and sell books). C&C's multiclassing gets you way more mileage than a 5E subclass pick.

C&C's multiclassing is fantastic and puts 5E to shame.

Sometimes, I feel the 5e 'secret sauce' exists to keep papermills and toxic ink factories for 400-page low-content books running. Three thousand pages of 5E books still don't do what C&C (or GURPS, for that matter) can do with far fewer pages. 5E is turning consumerist and predatory. Every week, it is another 400-page Kickstarter to make the game do things other games do with one core book. With Wizards, it is a giant, expensive adventure expansion with fewer new character options than I have fingers on a hand. Companies trying to enter the 5E market just want in on the revenue model.

C&C can be played to feel like AD&D or 5E; given a few mods and options, the game can go either way. That is an incredible range and expressiveness. It is a game that kills both Pathfinder 2 and 5E for me, along with replacing the need for other OSR games.

Would I still play S&W or OSRIC? Yes! Do I need to? No, not really.

The answer doesn't feel the same with 5E and Pathfinder 1e and 2e. Would I still play them? No, not really. Do I need them?

No.

Old Modules, Conversions, and Feel

You have old modules, you want to replay them with newer systems, and inevitably you run into the "bulk encounter" trope that was so overused in these older modules. You even see this mentioned in conversion notes for Savage Pathfinder, where the game's designers cut down dungeons and larger encounters to get the best "flavor" of the adventure rather than a 1-for-1 exact replication.

The old modules were content to throw 10 goblins with short bows at a party as an encounter and let you throw a sleep or other AoE spell at them to resolve the situation. You try and simulate this in other games, and you are either "grouping them up as one foe" (Savage Worlds), cutting them down to fewer combatants (GURPS), or leaving them as-is for games that still have that bulk-encounter resolution mechanic (C&C and B/X).

But these encounters feel overly "wargame" to me, and one of the best examples is Keep on the Borderlands. You will have rooms in this adventure with 20-30 enemies frequently, and I tried playing this with Pathfinder 1e, and it was a complete game-slowing slog and slaughter simulator.

Warning, spoilers ahead for N5: Under Illefarn.

One exciting project I am doing is replaying the old Forgotten Realms setting with GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy to see if I can get that original "feeling" the world had when we first played it. I wanted less of a focus on monsters and more on roleplaying, skill use, and deadly and gritty combat. This is a low fantasy world (to us), and I was looking for modules set in the Forgotten Realms to try to convert.

Enter N5: Under Illefarn.

The scale of the Sword Coast is vast, and right off, the scale of this adventure is way too large. The map has this scale where the secondary adventure areas are two to three hundred miles from the town. Interstate 80 in Nebraska is 300 miles long, and you are supposed to chase someone 300 miles at one point in the adventure. By horse. Without roads. The beginning swamp is 200 miles away and uses tribes of lizardmen who never are used again. The final part of the adventure requires that 300-mile trip. I would have been happy with the 30-mile area around the town. The adventure feels like TSR gave the designer a map and said, "please fill this out."

Are there dinosaurs here too? Yes, there are, and it feels wrong for the Realms.

There is a point where a fantastic "honor duel" is short-circuited by 10 goblins firing bows into the situation, and I was sitting there with that old familiar "TSR pulls the rug out from under you" feeling again. What would have been an excellent roleplaying encounter was thrown away because AD&D's rules only do swordplay and honor duels in a generic "AC and to-hit sense" with no options or style.

I sit here with my GURPS books and say, "Daminit, I can do that honor duel easily in this system!"

I would have liked the adventure to focus on the town and the surrounding area rather than being so travel-heavy. The first encounters with the lizardmen feel like throw-away compared to the end of the adventure, where you are split between three factions in a dungeon trying to repair a water source contaminating 300 miles of river (that the dwarf faction should know how to do). Seriously, the town's farm and sewage runoff will contaminate the river more than a few green slimes 300 miles away.

The adventure does not need a "trigger warning" for sensitivity issues; it needs a trigger warning because it lacks environmental impact knowledge.

Fixing N5

I would cut the swamp and lizardmen out of the adventure. The "bad guys" attacking the village should be one of the factions in the final dungeon, either the orcs or the necromancers. Thus, you solve the dungeon and destroy the bad guys, and help the town. Simple. No more goblin drop-in encounters for cheap combats; this isn't Starfinder. I kid, but even Starfinder's early adventures suffer from too many random goblin encounters.

Keep the kidnap plot and honor duel. Maybe flesh out the bad guy in this arc's hometown and craft a rescue scenario at a "forced wedding" party the idiot put together. That would be a lot of fun, and add a few options for sneaking in, even disguising yourself as the party catering. You need to have silly and fun parts to the adventure, and this is a great moment to do that.

Strengthen the factions in the end dungeon, and involve them in the town. The dwarves should be in town, asking for help early and warning people about the evil factions. The town should ignore them, setting up the "I told you so" part later. Make the evil factions more active in town, either orc raids or necromancers digging up graves, and have these as "set piece" battles or investigation parts of the adventure.

After a while, everyone realizes, "All roads of trouble lead to the dungeon."

The end of the adventure should be the faction dungeon (placed closer to town) and involve helping the dwarves complete a series of tasks to repair the water source. Help the dwarves raid an orc stronghold in the dungeon. Seal off a passage the zombies sent by the necromancers are using. Destroy the orc's supplies outside the dungeon and weaken the force there. Destroy a power source used by the necromancers. Have the dwarves develop exciting missions involving the party with adventures from war movies.

And then one big final battle.

N5, as written, feels unfocused and railroads players into situations.

This design feels like a story and novel and is a much better experience overall.

Magic Resistance

Castles & Crusades (C&C) system preserves the original magic resistance mechanic from AD&D, which is a much-needed check on caster power and a big buff for martial classes. Many games forget this or throw it out, but this feels like a critical balance, and quality of life improvement Gygax made with AD&D that not many games implement, want to admit exists, or even recognize.

Yes, it is a pain for your spell to fizzle, but some highly-magical monsters should be that way, so that fighter in your party has a vital role. But magic resistance was one of the first real advancements made to the D&D game when it went to AD&D, at least for us. And yes, we hated it when it happened too, but we realized why since unlimited magic all but destroyed our earlier campaigns.

Magic that always works and never fails does many terrible things. It blows out the game balance at high levels in favor of casters, making the game not fun for many classes and players. It creates an entitled caster syndrome where expectations on what spells can do get unchecked, and when enemies use these, it gets equally frustrating for enemies to do all and be-all. And it makes the game boring for martial classes as they sit in the back of the party and do nothing while the party's mages carry most of the burden, and you inevitably get the 15-minute adventuring day creeping back into the game.

We need to rest and recharge our spells!

And the fighter is sitting there with an unused bag of heal potions and wondering why.

And worst of all, magic that always works is not magic. It is a superpower. The mystery is gone. The uncertainty is gone. The nature of some things being "more magic" and resistant to this power is gone. While I love spell failure, unexpected failure results, and corruption systems - magic resistance is the other side of the coin.

And worst of all, unchecked magic marginalizes your boss monsters. Do you get a demon lord or Timiat showing up? If you are a caster, you will know not many of your spells will even work, and you get afraid. Even a ghost at lower levels is like that. Suddenly, you need that dwarf fighter with a magic sword and shield to hold the line, and you hope your next spell does not bounce off. Martial damage is always the great equalizer.

Many AD&D-like B/X games get this horribly wrong by using save mechanics or ignoring magic resistance entirely as "too much of a hassle." While Labyrinth Lord and Old School Essentials have that mixed AD&D and D&D feeling, I feel they miss the mark regarding the magic resistance game. A simple saving throw or save versus magic bonus is not enough. When a mage one-shot-kills the demon lord Orcus with a powerful spell or uses a wish to send him away - the referee will have to fudge why it doesn't work or allow it - and the game feels broken.

A game with magic resistance? The reason why that spell fails is written into the game. You accept that price for being a mage with near-unlimited power. Creatures "like you" with a high level of magic gain an innate resistance to your abilities. There is uncertainty here. This is why we have parties and martial characters. This is why you make friends. Does it feel bad for your epic, movie-climax, game-changing spell to fail? Yes. So bad many players move to other games where magic becomes never-fail superpowers.

And this is a problem I have with a lot of the newer D&D-style games, and it is a problem with D&D 4E. Magic is a superpower to give classes all sorts of remarkable abilities at zero cost. They just work. Everyone has magic superpowers. Spells always hit and deliver damage. Any attack can be enhanced by magic. Monsters have zero chance (beyond an average save in most games) to resist spell effects, and saves typically do not apply to magic-enhanced attack damage.

Everything feels like a superhero MMO after a while. The mystery is gone. The uncertainty is gone.  The danger is gone. Spellcasters become gods, and martial classes must be buffed to be viable. Your class build gets rated on damage per turn. At this point, just play a video game because there is little difference.

But for a game to be like AD&D, I feel you need that Gygaxian magic resistance mechanic and check on unlimited caster power. As a martial character, I need to know there will be a time when the casters need me when everything else fails.

Other games besides Castles & Crusades that recognize this are the great Adventures Dark & Deep (ADaD), OSRIC, Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS), and For Gold & Glory (FG&G). I like Castles & Crusades for being the easiest to play and most accessible out of this group, and the most like the generic AD&D experience I grew up with. ACKS feels tied to a specific type of world and campaign setting but is also a simpler alternative. FG&G is a 2nd edition retro-clone but has the magic resistance mechanic. OSRIC and ADaD are the full-complex 1e clones that give you that total hit.

Castles & Crusades keeps things simple like a B/X but preserves the great AD&D mechanics I like in a game delivering a classic experience. This is the game out of all of these, which requires the slightest reference, simplifies all the extra class features and skills away, and supports a core mechanic that works very well on the table for a wide variety of situations that come up during play. It also feels like 5E and has instant familiarity and a modern feel while staying true to retro roots and design mechanics.

D3: Vault of the Drow - Now in Print!

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17043/D3-Vault-of-the-Drow-1e

Some big news for POD module collectors today, D3 Vault of the Drow is now in POD. A whole lot of people have been waiting for this one since all of the other books in the series had printed options. You can finally have the entire GDQ series in print, and it is a happy day.

Good stuff.

If there are other books you are waiting for, post a comment, and let them know.

Classic Adventures: B1-9 In Search of Adventure

The classic D&D adventures are a part of my childhood, and I still love these tales of adventure. It is a shame with all that Wizards does these days; they are not making "the new classics" in any way or form. These days, the best we have in classic adventures and stories come from Paizo with the adventure path, Goodman Games with Dungeon Crawl Classics, the Old School Essentials books, or the larger B/X community over on Drive Thru RPG with all sorts of classic throwback adventures.

We will never see a new Tomb of Horrors or Ravenloft-style experience, but we will repeatedly see endless recreations and reboots of the same adventure. It is the corporate recycling machine, often with the "it's a classic" reboots; frankly, if I want the original, I will just go get it. Or I already have it.

I get the feeling as time goes on that Wizards equals Disney, and they are becoming a machine only designed to reboot franchises. It is sad because I want them to be a platform for today's storytellers to create new classic stories and adventures. Paizo still does that, and putting money and releasing schedules on new stories and creators is extremely brave and cool, so I support them.

Also, minor spoiler alerts for B2, Caves of Chaos coming up...

Flaws are Many

One thing uniquely strange about most classic modules is how poorly they translate into modern rules systems and how much tweaking you need to do with them. We tried to play with these with some of the newer editions of D&D. They came out as disasters, as the older editions rely on this "Gauntlet the videogame" style of play where a crowd of foes descends on the party. You are struggling to reduce their numbers before you start taking damage from lucky hits and need to burn heals.

Later modules got better as designers got experience with the system, and we got stories, puzzles, devious traps, and experience to let writers design real combat challenges. There are moments where you see the "massive overpull" designed to eat the party's fireball spell in many modules.

The rules are simple, and that is why we love B/X. But this also creates strange issues with module design where you have this quantity over quality design philosophy in some of the older adventures. One room in the Caves of Chaos module with 40 kobolds (with 8 noncombatants) jammed into it. The first guard room has six. And in the same area, there are 18 giant rats in a nearby room. Eight kobolds wait outside the entrance.

In the first six rooms, there are nearly 80 monsters.

Move out, kobolds! Start a village somewhere on the map! Maybe do some farming and raise sheep! Leave! You can find better for yourselves elsewhere! Take the rats with you and raise them too!

This is funny since this is the first room we entered as D&D players back in the day, and I recently replayed this with Pathfinder 1e, and it turned into this strange hallway slaughter between areas 1 and 6 that just dragged on. If I played this in D&D 5E, the bounded accuracy thing would kick in, and they would be killing level 10 characters through lucky hits and that "massed fire" thing. With D&D 4E, level 10 heroes could literally sleep in the room, and the kobolds would not be able to hit them. I kid, but the to-hits were bad once levels got four or higher than the enemies' level.

Logic and Tone

The tone of some of these adventures only makes sense on a "hack and slash" videogame level of logic. Every time I play this, I feel more and more sorry for the kobolds. And it makes me feel worse and worse about the supposed heroes who trounce in here to kill families of kobolds in their homes just to grab their loot. Who are the bad guys again?

And if I were to play this with a hyper-realistic set of rules such as Dungeon Fantasy, it would be even worse. The combat slog with dozens of repetitive creatures would feel pointless after a while, and I would be sitting there wondering, "Where is the story?"

It works better as a backdrop where you have to go in and negotiate with the tribe as part of a story. But then again, I would put half of them in a small makeshift village out front of the cave and then do the same for the other tribes, and then what would happen next is they would fight each other for control of the valley and the orcs would probably win and use the others as servants.

Just put an orc encampment in the middle of the valley and leave the caves as storerooms, sealed-off tombs, or abandoned areas. The less you think about it, and the more you treat this as a videogame, the better it works.

Deadly Realism

The more I think about using hyper-realistic rules for this, the worse it gets. But then again, the worse it gets, the more I like it.

I bet some adventurers would go happy tossing flasks of oil into the giant rats in the room filled with trash and start a massive trash fire in area 2 that would fill the entire complex with smoke and carbon monoxide and kill all the kobolds in some sort of mine disaster.

Even oil flasks (or fire spells) tossed into area 6, the living quarters would have the same deadly effect. These are kobolds, and nothing in a shared room living area is made out of modern fire-retardant materials, with no fire marshals or safety standards, so they are probably sleeping on hay and bundles of flammable wool. In D&D, especially when we were kids, we were really stupid about this stuff. A flask of oil (Moldvay Basic) does 1d8 area damage and goes out in 2 turns, right? Cool!

And smoke would be pouring out of this place, and the other monsters would be standing on the hillside watching the tragedy, wondering, "Hey, what caused the huge fire in Area A?"

But this sort of logic is very OSR. Think before you act. Sure, the rules say, "thrown flasks of oil work this way!" And this is what players expect, a little videogame animation of a circle of fire going out and damaging enemies, and then it is over. Right? Players who play more modern games that train that "videogame mentality" may be shocked when that massive trash fire erupts. What?! That can't happen! You are being unfair! How could you rule that when it is nowhere in the rules?

This is the danger of too many rules. D&D 4E had it, and I feel Pathfinder 2E could suffer from the same sort of logical disconnect, but we will see. GURPS may have a lot of rules, but it is still an old-school game that gives the referee 100% leeway in handling situations.

The D&D Reality Distortion Field

I love these adventures, but replaying them with rules other than D&D highlights some strange reality-bending with D&D, valid for every edition of the game. With D&D or AD&D, this plays more like a videogame.

With D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder 1e, this takes on a Saving Private Ryan sort of massive battle feeling as you mow down hordes of charging kobolds. With 4E, these are mostly all 1 hit-point minions and die quickly. With 5E, this turns deadly again as massed attacks by low-level creatures change things some.

It is challenging to play with any system beyond AD&D since combats are typically slower and more focused on conditions and cool moves and combat options built into the classes.

And in hyper-realism systems, and I use Dungeon Fantasy, but you could quickly put Runequest, Rolemaster, or any other favorite here; this gets more over the top and crazy. There are so many kobolds the systems begin to show strain and breaking, and the GM needs to pull out story fiat and summarize, or the game bogs down. This is honestly when I feel when you begin shortcutting and just telling the players what happened instead of playing it out.

Savage Worlds ...Works?

Savage Worlds could do this a little easier since you would split kobolds into groups of extras and throw a couple wounds on each to simulate the group's ability to take damage (I would probably throw 2-3 wounds for groups of 6-10 on there for half hit-die kobolds). One initiative card and action per group per turn, and you are all set and handling this efficiently. It is a pulp adventure and not a simulation; things are different here, like in a movie.

And it is extraordinary Savage Worlds is the only game I regularly play that handles this module that easily.

Then again, Savage Worlds has a lot of "design tricks" in its bag of toys, and the game feels like it was designed by many long-term role players, and they know those moments where they say, "Oh, no, not this again." Easy systems handle chases, confusing initiative orders, mass battles, groups of extras, and lots more. Once you learn them and fit them in your head, doing anything in Savage Worlds becomes simple - even complicated stuff that would break many other systems.

Savage Worlds is one of those "thought zeitgeist" games like an Index Card RPG that will change how you play tabletop games. Also, Index Card RPG would handle this module quite nicely, so a shout out to another one of my favorite games.

The Future is in the Indies

Yes, I like the classic modules. But I feel that the only people who will carry on their legacy are the indie creators, companies like Goodman Games, and the OSR. I want storytellers and designers who understand why we loved these classic adventures. I want new experiences in the traditional style.

As much as I love the Goodman Game's classic reprints of the classic AD&D modules (Slave Lords and GDQ would be amazing), I want the PDFs, and those are not happening likely due to Wizards and contractual issues. It does make me happy to see new directions for this line like this:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/devillich/original-adventures-reincarnated-7-the-dark-tower

Modules not from TSR getting this treatment, and full DCC and 5E versions available in print and PDF. Finally. I will be supporting the DCC version of this project, and it is great to see them doing adventures where they can finally support their own incredible game - and release PDFs as well.

Since I never played this adventure it is new to me and they support DCC, and this is the best of both worlds.