The Age of Distillation

We are entering the Age of Distillation.

The “big iron” systems of the last two decades- multi-book, thousand-page engines like Pathfinder 1E and the various iterations of D&D are no longer the only way to deliver their own fantasies. A growing body of design work is taking those dense rule sets and re-expressing them as lean, fast, highly accessible games. The goal is the same: keep the fantasy, dump the friction.

Just as the iPhone was initially mocked for stripping away the complexity of earlier smartphones, these distilled games deliberately remove the mechanical overhead that once felt necessary. Shadowdark took the core appeal of modern D&D-style play and condensed it into a tight, elegant, torch-lit framework. Shadowfinder does the same for the 3.5E/Pathfinder 1E tradition: it is a Shadowdark-adjacent reimplementation that preserves the class fantasy, the option density, and the sense of a complete campaign toolkit while running on a far lighter chassis.

Old-School Essentials performed a similar act of clarification for B/X.

OSE took the complete rules of the 1981 Basic and Expert sets and re-presented them in a ruthlessly clear, modular, and quickly referenceable format. Strictly speaking, it is more of a definitive rules reference than a mechanical redesign. The underlying procedures stayed very close to the original. What changed was the presentation: ambiguous wording was resolved, scattered rules were gathered, and the entire system became instantly legible.

The practical result, however, was the same as distillation. Players and referees could find any rule in seconds instead of flipping between books, interpreting unclear language, or simply missing procedures that had been poorly organized in the originals. A game that had been written as a teaching text for a new hobby was transformed into a fast, reliable reference that removed most of the friction of actually using it at the table.

Shadowfinder takes the next step. Where OSE primarily clarified and organized an existing ruleset, Shadowfinder actively rewrites the 3.5E/Pathfinder 1E tradition into an entirely different chassis, Shadowdark’s lean, lethal, real-time framework, while deliberately preserving the fantasy, option density, and campaign-scale toolkit that made the original appealing.

Distillation is not replacing the big systems. It is not coming for OSR, D&D 5.5E, or either edition of Pathfinder.

What it offers is a parallel path for players and GMs who no longer have the time, focus, or bandwidth that denser games demand. In an attention-scarce world, many people still want the fantasy those systems deliver; they simply cannot (or will not) invest the cognitive and temporal overhead the original rules require. Distilled games give them a way to stay at the table.

You will hear people say they “moved from D&D to Shadowdark.” Some of them prefer the leaner rules on pure design grounds. Many others made the shift because they no longer have the sustained attention that 5E (or Pathfinder) asks for. Keeping those players inside the hobby through a distilled experience is better than watching them drift toward video games or other entertainments.

This is additive, not zero-sum. The existence of Shadowdark and Shadowfinder does not diminish anyone’s preferred ruleset. It simply widens the door so more people can keep playing.

One of the clearest “missing the mark” moments in the current industry is that neither Wizards of the Coast nor Paizo appears to recognize this movement.

Both companies still treat their dense, multi-book systems as the primary (and essentially only) way to experience their respective fantasy brands. They have no serious product answer for the growing audience that wants the D&D or Pathfinder feeling but no longer has the time, focus, or bandwidth those systems demand.

Just as TikTok distilled the time and attention required to consume video, a significant portion of the tabletop audience is looking for a distilled version of the big fantasy RPGs. The major publishers have so far offered none. Instead, they continue chasing live-service and subscription models for their digital platforms. This approach increasingly resembles the same failed live-service strategies currently damaging many AAA video game publishers.

While third-party designers are busy creating lean, playable expressions of the very fantasies WotC and Paizo own, the companies themselves remain focused on heavier systems and ongoing monetization layers. The gap is real, and the distilled games are filling it.

Yet the absence of an official response does not mean the demand is going unanswered.

Shadowfinder currently stands as one of the clearest and most successful examples of what distillation can achieve. It takes the broad fantasy, character options, and campaign-scale ambition of Pathfinder 1E and re-expresses them inside Shadowdark’s fast, lethal, and highly usable framework. The result is not a stripped-down novelty. It is a complete game that can support the kind of sprawling, multi-region campaigns many Pathfinder fans originally fell in love with, without the mechanical weight that made those campaigns increasingly difficult to sustain.

For players who still want the class fantasy of the magus, the alchemist, the gunslinger, the specialized wizard, or the unusual ancestry, Shadowfinder delivers those options in a form that actually reaches the table. The same is true of the wider toolkit: meaningful gear and materials, alchemy, travel and mounts, downtime systems, richer character advancement, and a bestiary drawn from the full span of the Pathfinder 1E monster books. Where core Shadowdark intentionally focuses on the dungeon crawl, Shadowfinder expands the same engine into something that can carry a full campaign without feeling incomplete.

In doing so, it elevates the Shadowdark experience for a specific and underserved audience. Pathfinder 1E fans who bounced off the denser rules of later editions (or simply no longer have the bandwidth for them) are given a way to reclaim the open, slightly savage, high-option fantasy they enjoyed, now running on a system that respects their time and attention. The fantasy remains. The friction is largely gone.

This is distillation working as it should: not as a lesser substitute, but as a parallel avenue that keeps more people playing the kind of games they actually want.

When some OSR and 5E fans dismiss Shadowdark as “nothing new,” they are missing the actual point.

A growing number of modern OSR systems have themselves become mechanically deep, especially once high-level play enters the picture. In practice, they can demand as much rules mastery and table time as contemporary D&D. The people turning to distillation are often not looking for novelty for its own sake. They are looking for a way back into the fantasy after real life stripped them of the time and attention the heavier systems require.

I have been that player. Games I once loved now sit in crates in the garage, unused and unloved, because I no longer have the bandwidth to support a multi-shelf library of books and the cognitive load that comes with them. The disappointment is real. The promise of those systems eventually collides with the limits of available time and focus.

A distilled version of the same fantasy changes the equation. It lets me return to the world I cared about without the same drain on my days. The campaign can exist again. The characters can exist again. The sense of possibility returns, but it no longer requires the same costly monopoly on attention.

Whether the density of the “big iron” games is intentional or simply the result of decades of accretion, the practical effect is the same for many of us: the system becomes too expensive in time to sustain. Distillation offers a way to keep the dream without accepting that cost.

The Age of Distillation is not a rejection of the games that came before. It is a recognition that the fantasy itself is more important than the particular weight of the rules that once delivered it. For those of us who still want to live in those worlds but can no longer carry the full library, these leaner expressions are not lesser. They are what allow the dream to continue.

D&D's Problem is Combat

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

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

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

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

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

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

Star Wars is Not Dead

One side says, "Star Wars is dead, stick a fork in it."

This is the media, be forewarned, this is the same media that shilled every Star Wars project, good to terrible, for the last ten years. Keep that in mind.

The other side says, "Look at the media saying Star Wars is dead! Affirmation!"

No, you got it wrong: the media is throwing in the towel on being the ones burdened with selling terrible Star Wars for the last 10 years. If terrible Star Wars was somehow a success, they would be cheering for this. The media is basically going "sour grapes" on all of Star Wars and giving up trying to shill for the latest pet project, and they collectively know what is coming.

We are going to get what is in their eyes, populist Star Wars, consumerist, "please the audience", simple, back-to-basics entertainment. There will be no message in the next Star Wars, since the company can't afford it, and the people with other agendas trying to sell "using Star Wars" will be told to find another franchise to ruin.

The media is not on your side.

In fact, I can see the same sort of thing coming for D&D. The moment D&D goes "old school" with a revamped AD&D 2nd Edition, the media will pile on it, saying it's a "tone deaf" release, meant for "grognards and old men." It "doesn't speak to an audience who wants narrative storytelling." They will tell people to pile onto Daggerheart and other similar narrative games. 

If the media doesn't get what they want, they will tell people to "stick a fork in it."

This is the consequence of letting the media and social media sell your product. You live by them, and you will die by them. The moment they feel they will lose their "power" over the brand, they will turn on you with a vengeance.

And just like D&D, the company will come crawling back to the old-school crowd, asking for forgiveness and asking us to get hyped once again for "a product made for true fans." And we will always be the first ones shown the door when it gets popular, since the media and message crowd will flood in again, if the new version takes off. We are always too "toxic" and "not the younger audience they need."

Yet the true fans are the "hype engine" the brand needs to take that first step toward legitimacy.

It is a cycle as old as the tides at this point, and if you can't see this, go stand next to the ocean for a while and touch sand.

Well, I have my Star Wars games right here. I have decades of solid lore to draw on when writing stories, and Disney did me the favor of invalidating it all by branding it "Legends" content, which means it is set in stone and can never change. Remarkably, there are no warning labels on these books and games, unlike the history of D&D, which the parent company has deemed toxic.

Star Wars Legends lore will not change, is rock solid, and a consistent storyline for me to use to base my own stories on. What a gift to gamers this is. Thank you, Disney!

DIY Star Wars will be the best Star Wars for the next few years.

I arguably have a greater and more stable source of lore and canon to draw upon than anything in D&D, as the Forgotten Realms has always been a world of shifting geopolitics where the map and gods change at the whims of the next edition. Demons and devils come and go, and eventually become character options. New races are dropped into the world without history or lore to support them. The lore changes with every edition of D&D to "sell the product." It is a multiversal planar mess right now that needs to be brought back to basics and untangled.

BX does that perfectly, by the way.

And I am happy to say Disney CAN make a good Star Wars movie or series. Andor, Mando 1 & 2, and Rogue One are proof. They haven't been able to make the magic work recently, but I have faith. They will return to the true fans one day. We just have to have more of a backbone than the media, who give up on a franchise because they don't get what they want.

Did Disney have many huge misses? Oh, for certain, I did not enjoy much of what I watched over the last few years. But I need to have faith that "the audience has spoken" and that they will course-correct. This is what the media is trying to prevent by calling Star Wars "dead." "Sticking a fork in it" is the metaphorical equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet, and the media saying, "prove us wrong." The media wants more and more "bad Star Wars" to continue. And they are throwing a tantrum unless they get it, and they all probably know what is coming down the pipeline.

If anything, their saying "Star Wars is dead" is probably the best sign of hope we have ever had. Something wonderful is coming. If it doesn't, well, I can wait a little longer. If Disney wants me as a fan, they know who to call and what types of stories to tell. I will be there for them should they make magic happen.

I will be telling my Star Wars stories over here on my game table, and I will be patient, waiting, and in the long run, I will be right.

I will remain a true fan.

I'm not giving up.

I shall build upon the rock, while others build upon sand.

I got four decades of the best storytelling and universe creation backing me up. Yes, the new stuff is hit-or-miss, but we have decades more good than bad here, and I am not letting a few tone-deaf mistakes tarnish my childhood memories and love for these stories.

The media, at this point, is an AI-written website that will be gone in a few years.

Mine is the better bet. DIY Star Wars "is the way."

Trust the Force.

The D&D Community Advisory Group

So, D&D put together a "D&D Community Advisory Group" for what I guess is work on the next edition of the game. They did this to "discuss early product concepts and D&D Beyond tools" and likely as a sounding board for the work on the next edition.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/2180-introducing-the-d-d-community-advisory-group

They are about who I expect, with a few too many who seem to be "tone police" on the group, and not enough "old schoolers." It really doesn't mean much, except as a hype machine, which is why the D&D YouTubers were chosen. D&D YouTube needs a lot of help, ever since Google told a lot of them to stop making D&D content and move on to new content.

The algorithm no longer wants D&D, and I don't know how they can fight it.

I doubt forking money over to Google would help.

Still, the group is likely handling both D&D and D&D Beyond feedback, so even if there is a new edition, don't expect it to magically eliminate the complicated characters that require a live-service support model. I do not have much hope that the complexity issue that drove me from D&D 5E will ever be fixed, if they ever will, and my hopes for D&D 6E are nearly nonexistent.

BX is my game.

5E blew up for me in a live-service support model, a mess of digital DLC, and books I could not own the PDFs of. Even the games that let me do that blew up under live-service conditions due to character-sheet complexity issues. I doubt I am keeping many of the books. The game is too bloated and obese to survive.

And BX is now open-licensed and free of interference and threats. The future is bright for BX, and that is where my support is these days. BX will never need a live service model, nor will it ever disappoint me.

Still, I wish them well, and I hope they are listened to. They are not really a group I would pick for the job, but they are going to pick people they feel will help them with whatever direction they go in. Based on the group, it is not really a direction I am interested in. I am more neutral toward them than negative, but I am not seeing too many in that group that I follow regularly. Of the few YouTubers they have on there, I never watch more than the first few minutes of any, and I avoid a few.

I am over D&D YouTube, mainly because of the constant negativity there, and it no longer gets suggested to me. The algorithm has seen my choices, and it no longer delivers D&D to me much, and I do not mind. Also, bringing in a constant source of terrible D&D advice from the YouTube crowd seems like a huge mistake of committee-based design, and many terrible ideas will be added to the game.

There is a difference between a masterful, crafted, unified, and elegant design and a game-by-committee.

Still, the 5.5E playtest packets were more hype than they were for gathering feedback, so the track record of D&D and community feedback is pretty sad. 5.5E was an in-house game, and the playtest packets (I felt) were just used to bait-and-switch D&D YouTubers into giving it coverage. I do not have too much faith in the community feedback process.

In a way, D&D is too big to be cool, too big to survive, and too big to ever be compelling and a must-play game ever again. We are in the maintenance phase of D&D, where the MMO still has a huge player base to milk, but it will never be as big as it once was. Like World of Warcraft, we are post-prime and looking for new ways to monetize a shrinking crowd.

The committee will generate YouTube buzz, but YMMV, especially with YouTube being uninterested in the game. They have an uphill battle just to sustain interest in D&D Beyond, to keep the player base from slipping away further as people move on to games like BX, Daggerheart, Nimble, Pathfinder, Dragonbane, Shadowdark, Draw Steel, DC 20, and others.

While it is tough to be positive, I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

I hope they do a good job there.

But I don't have much hope.

BX Makes You Immune to Bad 5E Advice

If you follow the dungeon turn, everything will work, the universe shall keep its logical order, resources will tick down naturally, wandering monster rolls shall be made, and you will not need to endlessly listen to bad YouTube advice for 5E. The more of these 5E "advice" videos from YouTube creators that I watch, the less I want to play:

• How to Roleplay
• How to Write a Backstory
• Speeding Up Combat
• Don't Use Alignment to Roleplay
• Quick Dungeon Prep in Under 4 Hours

Just looking at the titles makes me want to poke D&D with a 10-foot pole and set the trap off from a distance. Some of them mention mechanics removed from 5.5E and present themselves as current topics. All of them are a terrible waste of time that makes me dislike 5E more than I should. They make 5E sound like the worst game ever written, since it seems like so much help is needed to play it correctly.

Terrible advice videos spread negativity and confusion for the game.

I now block, unsub, or steer far away from these videos in my suggestions.

D&D YouTube is infamous for spreading negativity and confusion for views. The vast majority of people hate-watch the negative coverage of the Wizards, just like the majority of Star Wars viewers hate-watch to see the franchise crash and burn. I stay away from most of the negativity since it is addictive like booze; you can get drunk on hate, and you need to abstain from it just to have a clear head and enjoy life again.

All of it hurts D&D, even the older editions. And the confusion and horrible advice drive people from the hobby.

How do you play the game?

By playing the game.

Back in the day, roleplaying was optional! You were not forced to, nor did you have to, come up with a backstory, declare a character goal and motivation, or layer a weak narrative inspiration-dicing system on top of the game. Due to the inspiration system, you are now forced to roleplay to gain a mechanical advantage in combat.

In BX, you do not need to engage with roleplaying to play the game, and many did not even start gaming with backstories or psychological profiles. The game gives you no benefit from roleplaying.

If you just wanted to play "dwarf," you picked "dwarf" and played "dwarf."

That was your "playing piece," like the shoe or dog in Monopoly.

If "dwarf" survived, maybe you gave him a name. Maybe you gave him some background. It was not required, nor did it give you a mechanical benefit. We usually figured it out by level 3, sometimes 5. Until then, it was just "dwarf."

In fact, that "feature" let us get new people into the game more easily, since it reduced the pain of losing a character and the number of decisions needed before play began.

Want to play with us? Want to play an "elf"? Sure!

You did not need to think about roleplay to play BX D&D.

You just "played."

And prep? The modules were typically 16 pages long, shorter than a single high-level character sheet, and you could read them during lunch break. This 6-hour fallacy for session prep is alien and not D&D. Most games needed no prep. Flub a room description or miss something? Most of the time, it didn't matter, and we put whatever was missed in the next room. The dungeons were meant to be expanded, so you could always make a new room and put it in there.

I get the feeling mixing D&D with a narrative game was a mistake. Writing "roleplay rules" into the game complicates play, creates a barrier for new players, and makes the game less accessible. Giving mechanical advantage to an out-of-game roleplaying reward cheapens storytelling and investment. Are you really playing your paladin as chivalrous, or are you just trying to gain inspiration for a combat benefit?

BX was a clean, simple, and straightforward game.

Let the narrative games be narrative games.

Mixing the game with a storytelling system was a misstep, and it ended up hurting our ability to tell stories with the game, since it linked mechanical benefits to something done naturally and for no benefit.

OSR Buyer's Guide Page Updated

https://sbrpg20.blogspot.com/p/osr-buyers-guide.html

I updated the OSR Buyers Guide page to cover BX, and here are my best suggestions for getting started with various editions in the hobby. Today, information, links, and discussions of BX are laid out, with my picks for the best in the genre, both in inspirational material and rock-solid books for play.

Gone are the discussions of alternate editions and versions (Labyrinth Lord, Dragonslayer, etc.), and a page will likely be added later to discuss them. Times change, and those need to be updated.

BX and Star Wars

The original Edge of the Empire game was released in 2012, and it is still an amazing experience. This is one of the most lore-dense games I have encountered in this universe, and it continues the tradition of the roleplaying community carrying the Star Wars fandom and keeping the torch lit when hope seems lost and the light is dimming.

I get that this seems like a modern game, but it really feels like something from the late 1980s that carries into the 1990s. Technically, the West End Games' Star Wars system is the 1980's version of the game, but this is what we have today, and it works well enough to take me back.

If we can have Classic Pizza Hut back in 2026, we can have Classic Star Wars, too.

The same thing applies to Old School Essentials; this is my 1980s throwback game. While yes, we have the original BX books in PoD these days, there is no guarantee those will be around forever, and OSE is the path forward. The original BX books are the better game for learning to play, but Basic Fantasy also does a wonderful job teaching the game. For me, OSE is a fast-playing, more-optioned, easier-to-use, streamlined set of rules that disappears into the background and lets me focus on the dungeon turn, the story, and being the referee.

Keep your BX books close for inspiration and for that positive karma. For me, OSE is BX D&D, the game that brought it back to the mainstream and became the de facto standard for creators and adventure writers. There is no way you can publish for BX anymore except through the OSE license, and that is getting free of the OGL next year. The BX books are teaching games only until the rules are released under a Creative Commons license. If Wizards could put out as much as possible under the CC, for every edition, that would be a huge gift to gaming and go a long way to winning me back.

Given the sad state of both 5E and Star Wars, I am ready to go back to the 1980s and forget today, and relive those times. Yes, that is not possible without d6 Star Wars (you can still get the d6 Space system in PoD), but the Edge Studio games are fine and in print rotation. I am supporting this game while it is still out there, and I hope it continues.

Do I hope Disney can turn it around? Yes! Wishing for failure is just evil. I want good Star Wars again. Until I can get it, I will go back to the last, best Star Wars we had. There is an argument for Rogue One, Andor, Mando Seasons 1 & 2, and The Force Awakens being glimmers of light in the darkness - so the current state of things is not a total loss. We have fallen off, post-Pandemic, and we need a turnaround.

TFA had potential. It could have gone so many places. Even that seems like something that could have started off rough but gotten better over time. If I ever play in the sequel universe, it will be with TFA as the starting point, and nothing that comes afterward will count.

Poe would be a hero, assembling a team of Resistance fighters under Leia's guidance.

Finn would be a Jedi and lead the new Jedi Order through Luke.

Ben Solo would need to find redemption through sacrifice, just like Vader, through Han.

And Rey would fall to the dark side, betraying them all, and becoming the new Emperor.

Look at that poster, that is the story it tells me. Where the characters are, the lightsabers they are holding, Rey crossing the red saber towards the darkness, and Finn holding the blue. Subliminally, this is the story we were promised but never given.

The game lets me tell that story, fulfill the dreams I had of that place in my universe, and finish the trilogy in my head the right way. Yes, it is fan fiction, but it is better than what we got. One of the most beautiful things about gaming is being able to finish one story and begin another. And to take the huge box of action figures and vehicles, this big box of toys, and play pretend.

TFA, as a starting point, could be salvaged.

The Edge of the Empire and sister games are GOOD Star Wars games, full of nostalgia and memories, written by people who love the EU and the source material. I hope these continue and are even expanded upon. I want PDFs and VTT support!

But I know this may not happen, so I will hold onto my library tight.

It is really all I have, unless someone makes a "clone game" of BX Star Wars in a like universe. There is White Star, and that is getting a new edition from those who brought us OSRIC 3.0, which is great news. I need more drop-in replacements for some of the "SW-like" items and to make parallel, BX-based play in this universe easier.

There is room in the BX and OSR communities to make a parallel science-fantasy game that delivers a Star Wars-type experience well while leaving the door open for us to write our own stories. This is likely one of the next steps to take in the hobby, just to keep the stories alive if the licensed game were ever to fall.

Until then, I will be back here in the 1980s, enjoying myself, with classic BX and the EU books and games. I will keep an eye on the new stuff and hope it shows promise, but I know where I will be happy.

Here.

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.

D&D 6E = 2E?

The latest rumors are that D&D is going back to AD&D 2E for D&D 6E.

They trained their audience to hate the game's creators, to laugh at THAC0 the clown, and to mock the old-school crowd.

D&D 5E is a death-free narrative game of "whack a mole" monster bashing, overpowered characters laughing at the feeble DM. There is no resource management or time management, and you can sleep off getting your face crushed flat by a warhammer.

The art and themes of the game are so far removed from the AD&D feeling that it has become another game entirely. The old settings are dead and abandoned, there is no fiction in these worlds worth reading, and the magic is gone.

If there is one "lost its way" franchise I can best equate D&D to, it is Disney Star Wars.

And they will never give up locking people into D&D Beyond with character sheets that are dozens of pages long and require tens of thousands of lines of JavaScript to function properly.

If they want to re-release AD&D 2E without messing it up? Great, thank you, please stop writing new editions and support the ones you have. Get out of the "new edition" business, please, and love and support the 50 years of games you have, rather than writing yet another Wizards edition of the game that will be replaced in 5-10 years.

We have had D&D 3E, 3.5E, 4E, 4E Essentials, 5E, and now 5.5E in just about 26 years. Three major and three minor versions of the game just for Wizards alone. That is re-buying the game every 4 years.

Stop making new editions and revisions. You can never get it right like they had back in the TSR days.

If they want to support, print, and preserve AD&D 2E? And open the AD&D 2E license and rules under a Creative Commons license? And begin to bring back the expansion AD&D 2E content under the same license? Maybe even reprint and support the AD&D 2E campaign settings?

Then, we are talking and making sense here.

Oh hell yes!

That would make me support Wizards of the Coast again and be a huge step in the right direction.

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.

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.

There's No "Saving" D&D - It Is What It Is

Modern D&D has become a "platform" like Steam or Xbox; there is no going back to "what it was." Any attempt to do so will force platform customers to another product, the also-ran versions of 5E like Level Up, Nimble, Shadowdark, and Tales of the Valiant. It would not surprise me if Goodman Games isn't making its own version of Zocchi-dice 5E they can support, while also remaining compatible with "platform 5E."

At this point, everyone is making 5E. Give a company enough time and a catalog of adventures they need to support and sell, and they will make their own version of 5E. This is "Kobold's Law," and it is an accepted fact. I eagerly await DCC 5E and can't wait to see what they come up with.

Long live 5E.

D&D is just a name, but 5E is the platform.

The platform is more important than the game.

Wizards going on a nostalgia tour with Luke Gygax is the equivalent of an 80s hair metal band touring with an aging line-up. Yes, I love the artist and the skill, but D&D was replaced by 5E a long time ago, and people have moved on. Even if your books still say "D&D," it does not really matter; you could be playing any other 5E and still be in the 5E market.

Whenever D&D gets in trouble, they roll out Greyhawk and eventually replace it with the Realms a few years later. I can sing these oldies by memory at this point, guys.

Not to mention the OSR holding the ground of every previous edition. I have my "vision of D&D" over there, made by amazing creators who don't answer to shareholders who only care about stock price; they answer to players who choose their game out of love of the hobby and appreciation for the support.

Castles & Crusades.

Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Old School Essentials.

Swords & Wizardry.

OSRIC 3.0.

Adventures Dark & Deep.

Those are more D&D to me than D&D.

The last group of D&D creators built D&D 5.5E, a house that fell in on itself. Few bought, and most still play 5E. Creating a 6E is just going to create "another version Wizards has to support" and not solve the problem of the company being out of touch with the market. Wizards should have gotten out of the "edition creation game" long ago, and any more work splitting the market is going to bog the company down even more.

We do not need a 6E.

If they were honest, they would reprint AD&D, word-for-word, no sensitivity readers involved, no warning stickers like the game was a pack of cigarettes, and let the best game ever written stay in print. AD&D is like Tolkien now, please accept reality.

Stop making new editions in an era where few have the money to buy new books.

AD&D is 6E.

5E is your consumerist D&D platform, with or without you.

The market supports it.

This is where the game is now.

Sorry D&D, no, I'm Not Interested

I'm sorry, D&D, but I have moved on. Like any abusive relationship, I decided to end things on my terms, find other games, and enjoy my time gaming. I know you are cozying up to the old-school crowd, putting a coat of polish on Grayhawk, but I am just not all that interested in you anymore.

You are happy with your modern influencers, the endless D&D news sites (that will turn on you, give it time), and D&D YouTube, who seem to see this new outreach to the OSR crowd as a second coming of 2020. The endless hype and courting of us old-school players feels hollow.

The warnings are still on those books on the DriveThru site. The art in your books makes my eyes bleed. Your Fortnite-level of pandering with "nobody dies," "weapons do nothing here," and "identity gaming" makes my stomach turn. That "history of the game" book that accuses the original founders of being terrible people still is for sale. Orcs and humanoid monsters have still been removed from the Monster Manual.

You haven't changed.

Nor can you have it both ways.

I have found better games from people who want to be in a "gaming relationship" with me. They have given me endless enjoyment, have been "stable partners" for years now, and I am happy with them. Unlike you, which will change again and again based on the whims of your parent company, venture capital firms, and the gaming media, these companies need to focus on making me happy to survive.

The games I found "work hard at making this relationship work" for both of us. And I do my work too, support them, and make them a part of my "gaming life" so we can be "happy together."

The gaming media will turn on you, the bile and hate will come your way from the other side that hates the old-schoolers, and they will accuse you of being a terrible person, too. You don't want to "associate with us" because the people you hang out with these days have hated us, and they will always hate us because hate is the only thing they have in their empty lives.

Us? We have games and happiness in their lives, and maybe that is what they hate. You chose to hang out with that crowd, not us, and all your "new friends" are going to turn on you hard very soon. Expect headlines of "how D&D is embracing its problematic past" to land very soon from the people who used to be your friends.

Some of these companies are as progressive as you, but they know how to balance what they say with what appeals to everybody. You just went off the deep end, hoping your new friends would support you. They didn't, most moved on to other games, and you discovered that they were not really your friends, you thought they were. All they wanted was for you to say the things they wanted to hear, and they never really enjoyed being with you, only that you were popular.

And they found new friends to play with in Daggerheart and many other games.

That new audience has walked away, and here you are coming back to me?

It isn't 1980, 1990, 2000, or 2020 anymore!

Things "can't be like they were."

Even that time in 2010 when you tried to hang out with World of Warcraft players didn't work out so well, either, huh?

But 2030 will be different this time!

Sorry.

That ship has sailed. I only have a few more decades to play games, and I have better ones that make me happy and cater to what I like. Seeing you change like a chameleon again is not what I am interested in. I know you have money and can pay for nostalgia bait, but that is not writing a game that I like to play, nor does it make up for the hurt you caused with things like the OGL.

I'm not stupid like most of the D&D YouTube channels that will "forget about it all" just for a few views. "D&D is back!" they will scream, and I will casually scroll by, choosing the next video since I am just not interested in any of that anymore, just like I have given up on 5E Kickstarters and other wastes of time.

Even if I wanted to play 5E, I'd rather play something better. ToV, Level Up, and Shadowdark have orcs in the monster lists. You don't. You can't "write a Greyhawk book" and ignore that. Ald ToV and Level Up are far better balanced than modern 5E, written by people who played the game and know the pain of D&D 2014, and worked hard at making things fun again at the table.

Nimble exists, too. It gives me everything 5E does, but in far fewer pages and with far less complexity.

And we are not interested in DLC sold to us as power creep; that sales tactic just leads to the next edition dropping sooner rather than later. I hate splatbooks that are better than the original game, invalidate my original books, and introduce a new high-damage meta and baseline of play.

I've been through that time and time again with you, D&D, and I am not falling for it again.

We can't help you anymore, since most of us have already moved on to better things. We are over here enjoying our games and playing them, having fun with all the new relationships we worked hard to make. We have better games now. I am not giving them up to come running back to you.

And there are games written far better than the bloated mess D&D has become. Even if I wanted you back, there are far better presented and written games that "do the same thing" but are far easier to play, travel with, and carry around than the library you force me to maintain. I can throw Shadowdark in a laptop bag and have a complete game on the go. D&D? Sorry, I am not carrying a shelf full of books or maintaining a subscription to read my PDFs. It is thousands of pages to do the same thing Shadowdark does in tens.

And Shadowdark does a better "Greyhawk experience" than D&D, and I don't need to buy another book to "make 5E play like an old school game." I don't need to "mod the 2024 rules" with another digital purchase to "play like it is 1980 again." It is another book, hundreds of pages of rules, on top of a game already over 1,000 pages long. Only to see someone drop in with a DLC build meant to break the game with power creep, and all of a sudden, my "authentic Greyhawk game" is broken by your digital sales department.

I have games that understand the original experience and are written to provide just that.

And they are easier to manage and play.

And I am over you.

D&D's "Digital First" Strategy

I heard today that Wizards is embracing a "digital first" strategy for D&D.

I am not interested. This is something that drives me away from the game, since it forces customers to D&D Beyond for exclusive releases, digital-only DLC, and other money-making schemes that remove the game from the tabletop and turn it into an "online only" game.

D&D 5E already has a massive "digital problem": you need to buy the physical books, then a digital version elsewhere just to play the game, and you are locked into a VTT platform. I have even seen this with games like Tales of the Valiant, where I am locked into the Shard VTT for that game.

Forget playing on a tabletop with your friends, maps, and miniatures.

I can still play Nimble and Shadowdark around a table with friends, and these are the 5E versions I support. Other than that, it is either an OSR game or Castles & Crusades that fits the fantasy tabletop gameplay style the best.

Digital first means players last, and heralds the death of the game.

You will never compete with mobile gaming in the digital market.