Shadowdark, What's Next?

As much as I like Shadowdark, there is only a little 3rd party support for this beyond a handful of choices. Admittedly, people have just started to get physical copies of the game, but I expected a little more support for a game that made such a huge splash.

I am on an expansion Kickstarter and looking forward to that.

I have found excellent, expanded character options, backgrounds, equipment, and many other options that take the game from a simple dungeon crawl experience simulator to a fully supported OSR 5E game.

We are in a doldrum here of support, and the game came strong out of the gate with its first release, so there is a lot to do when the books come. I would like more of the fun 'zines' that came with the game and want to see more 6x9" books.

Is it an OSR replacement? Is it a 5E replacement?

No, since OSR and 5E implementations tend to be heavier games. Shadowdark is rules-light, which puts it in that class of games. Rules-light games can be unique and fun, so it takes nothing away.

Does Shadowdark have staying power for campaigns?

I don't know. This game reminds me of a quick, zero-to-hero game - but since the level 1-10 run is 90% of 5E games, why can't it be a campaign game? It is 300 pages, complete, and with good support. Using Shadowdark for many games eliminates many of 5E's superpower magic messes and puts characters and stories first. This is an excellent option for many groups running low-magic games (which 5E does not support, and the low-magic concept disappears when characters reach level 6+).

Low-magic games are more challenging to create than high-magic ones, since removing magic and eliminating magic-using classes from being "the chosen ones" forces you to pay attention to martial play balance. How do you make a game fun without magic? Many designers can't do it, and certainly not those who work for Wizards.

Shadowdark presents classes with random progression paths, which forces players out of "the optimization box" and into problem-solving and roleplay. This is the perfect primer for old-school play since that 5E trap of relying on build optimization to solve problems leads into boring "math gaming" where DPS and insane power combos are all you need to solve any adventure - brains turned off, dice ready to roll.

Tales of Argosa (Low Fantasy Gaming 2) is the same genre, a low-fantasy, OSR-style game, and the sphere is getting competitive. This feels more like a traditional game in the breadth of character options and campaign structure. Where Shadowdark puts a magnifying glass on the dungeon crawling experience, ToA steps back a level and focuses on the campaign game. ToA also has traditional progression with a few choices up the level path, so there is no random progression here.

OSR fans are sitting here saying, our games do this already. I know! But the 5E OSR blends are popular and gateways into the hobby's traditional roots for many. Shadowdark goes a long way to "untraining" many 5E players who don't know the fun of thinking for themselves and solving problems creatively.

This is a good thing, no matter what side of gaming you are on.

But Low Fantasy Gaming (ToA's version 1.0 origin) is a fantastic game, and I still see this having legs even after ToA's release. LFG had many adventures released, and it does a lot of OSR stuff blended with 5E.

I like Shadowdark.

As a one-book "5E dungeon minigame," it is excellent with plenty of random table support (maybe too much). Other games do more, but there is an elegance to a minimalist set of rules that proves you don't need 1000+ pages to communicate a game to a group.

You wonder, with all the "crust" that D&D established as "part of 5E," - how much of it is really needed? How much of those rarely-used rules are needed to recreate the experience?

Shadowdark asks what is more critical, legacy rules people associate with the experience? Or the experience itself?

This is a good game; it has just been quiet, and I want more.

Tales of Argosa Public Playtest

FREE Playtest PDF: 

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/465681/tales-of-argosa-public-playtest

Kickstarter Link (Feb 2024):

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lowfantasygaming/tales-of-argosa

Wow, this one took me by surprise. The Low Fantasy Gaming team is rewriting LFG into Tales of Argosa and rebuilding the concept around a Shadowdark-like experience with a unique art style, presentation, and gritty theme.

How is this different from Shadowdark? LFG was always closer to a 5E-like experience than OSR, though it takes a lot of inspiration from the OSR. This is more Warhammer FRPG and Conan than old-school D&D, and there is cinematic flare here, where Shadowdark is more square-by-square grim-and-gritty. ToA also pulls in ideas from Dungeon Crawl Classics, like dangerous magic, and revamps the martial-caster power divide.

They also may go Creative Commons with this version, breaking away from the OGL and standing on their own. More games need to do this, embrace that Shadowdark energy, express their creativity, and go their own way from B/X, the OSR, and D&D - and make something more than someone else's stuff.

It is great seeing this team spread their wings and fly, taking inspiration from Shadowdark, but keeping most of what made Low Fantasy Gaming fantastic. There are tons of minor, mechanical tweaks in here to refine the experience from the first version and to pare down the cheese and exploits.

And the Kickstarter is next month.

This is another I am all in on.

I'm Not Selling These 5E Books

All my Wizards' 5E books are being sold, and I don't care about 'maintaining the 2014 rules' nonsense. People who tell you to keep playing 2014 5E, play 4E, play 3.5E are just trying to keep you in the Wizards ecosystem, and the longer Wizards' exists, the more the 'tales of woe' about the stupid things they say or mass layoffs of the little people just trying to make a living at a hobby they love will continue.

I am done with the 5E drama squad on YouTube. It has turned into senseless clickbait. I feel suckered into watching every time I click on one of those videos.

But what did they do to the druid in the playtest??? OMG! Watch this!!!

This time, the entire Wizards company is doomed! OMG! What now???

As long as Wall Street money pours into this cesspool, the clickbait and horrible news will never stop. And 5E YouTube will happily wave the smell over at you.

Sometimes, the community around something has turned so toxic you must walk away.

And back in the day, if a class was hosed, we fixed it ourselves and homebrewed the darn thing. The idea of 'needing professional game designers' to work out apparent rules' shortcomings is stupid and makes you dependent. And it encourages companies to ship broken designs and patch them later in more books to buy.

Wizards' game of selling you the fixes sucks and will never end unless people stop supporting them.

The Level Up Advanced 5E game is the 5E I am keeping. People laughed at them for trying to create an open version of the rules while introducing balance patches, death fixes, class improvements, and support for the three pillars of play. But we have 5E! This is what everyone plays! Why are you using that emulated version of the game! Why should we care about implementing the game not tied to the company that sells it? 

These are the same stupid things people said about desktop Linux users years ago, and the Linux users were proven right. Just ask any cloud deployment IT person. Linux is where it is at. Granted, LUA5E is sold by a company. Still, it is a much more open and accessible community than the secret temples of Wizards, who deliver 'rules from on high' with little community input.

And "being able to find a game" isn't a good enough reason. It's like eating fast food every night and telling yourself you do it "so we can all find food."

And fast food is expensive these days, just like 5E books.

And people laughed at the A5E team, and the A5E team was proven right. Everyone is rushing around trying to create 5E alternatives, and we already have one of the best implementations. There is a great post here on "Why play A5E?"

https://homebrewandhacking.com/2023/07/12/so-why-would-i-want-to-play-a5e/

And I agree with the class changes in LUA5E. They are all very well thought out. They bring back the warlord-style class from 4E, so everyone telling you to 'just play 4E' can pound sand. If you like 4E, you have two options: wait for MCDM RPG (1-2 years) or play LUA5E today. Many of the best ideas of 4E were improved here, especially the support for environmental aspects of encounters.

4E I loved, but it was another horribly broken typical Wizards' mess past the 10th level. At the 18th level, the game was pure, poorly play-tested garbage, and we quit. Monsters with thousands of hit points and endless combats where it was just subtracting X from that massive hit-point pile and doing this for 30+ turns (while you kept knocking the boss down and stunning them while pouring on dozens of fiddly tracked short-duration conditions). This took hours; nobody felt like they were doing anything but spamming the same at-will powers, and every turn was the same.

4E at high levels feels like an endless game of rolling the dice. All you do is roll dice and flip conditions. Even the battle chess movement game breaks down. After a while, everyone gives up and stands in one spot. Players in our games were begging the boss monsters to "please die."

And your best powers, useable once per day, could miss their target. Thanks for playing! Hope you like spamming at-wills for the next 20+ turns!

The magic items were trash, too. Meaningless, broken, and mostly weak +1 to +6 versions of everything. The book tells each player to make a "wish list" of magic items they want for their build and for the DM to hand those out on a schedule. And you needed the gear upgrade like an MMO to keep up, toss out the old, and pay millions of gold pieces for the new. Or demand the DM give it to you.

We have gone from magical treasures being unique and rare to pantry goods on an Amazon wish list.

4E was a pen-and-paper MMO. World of Warcraft is thousands of times better than this.

Don't waste your time and money with 4E; people telling you to play 4E are just setting you up for disappointment and will next year be saying, "Play 2024 instead!" They aim to keep you in the Wizards ecosystem so their YouTube channels will retain views - they don't care about your game, time, or money. And they likely only played 4E at the 8th level. Keep playing a version of D&D, and stay tuned for more Wizards clickbait!

Escape the cave.

LUA5E has some of the best parts of 4E baked in.

And it improves on every part of 5E.

You don't need these other games. Nor do you need the 2024 books, which, with backward compatibility, will be just as broken and a mess as the current edition is once you factor in Tasha's and all the others.

And again, if you disagree with a change that LUA5E made - homebrew it. There is an origin feature in the cosmopolitan option that gives you an expertise die for checks made to conceal a weapon (discreetly armed). This usually means an extra d4 of these checks. I homebrew this all the time and allow players to swap it out for expertise die on any urban-related activity, such as wine-tasting, street culture, street navigation, negotiation, haggling, finding information, shopping, local festivals and holidays - or any other city-task a player may want to specialize in other than hiding weapons.

Try characters by hand, homebrew 5E, and toss those electronic apps. It is an entirely different game. One I enjoy far better than paying software developers hard-earned money just so they can limit my options and sourcebooks. Oh, and in many electronic apps, you must pay for the same stuff again to use what you already own there.

It's a scam.

You aren't using electronic character sheets, so feel free to change anything. This is the one huge problem I have with games that require character creation software: you become too dependent on official rules, and your ability to use homebrew or 3rd party content is eliminated. Also, the game and character sheet complexity increases exponentially when designers are allowed to say, "Well, everyone uses software and VTTs anyways," and we get games like Pathfinder 2.

In LUA5E, I do it all by hand. I can run 4 characters myself and not have a massive issue with the paperwork. If I want 3rd party content, my pencil and paper are ready. Granted, if I were running 30 characters? I would play Castles & Crusades.

The exploration and social pillars are well-supported in LUA5E and also nod to the old-school sensibilities I love. Death means something here. The balance is much more finely tuned, making your decisions matter, and fights are much more brutal and rewarding. That fine-tuning and re-factoring of the math keep me from selling these books; you feel the actual effort was made here to make the numbers work. They tightened every loose screw and nut here. The exploits are gone. The monsters are dangerous again. The challenge is there.

A goal system is built into the inspiration system, and it isn't tossed out for a gimmicky, another math thing to track, luck mechanic (and something I could house-rule in). Pure genius and it stays more faithful to 2014 than many of the alternatives. The only thing tossed out here is a company that lays people off before the holidays.

And people who like their 5E exploits and power gaming builds are the ones who complain the loudest about a tightened-up set of rules that fixes more than it breaks. Then again, if you like that, house rule it in. The 2024 books will break your exploits, too, while introducing new ones.

This is an excellent version of 5E, and it doesn't feel like playing 5E at all - not in the sense that 5E has turned into a broken, too-easy version, player entitlement, tacked-on rules, ruined by expansions, and high-magic mess.

The only other 5E books I am not selling are the excellent Low Fantasy Gaming books, which give me a nice, low magic, gritty, Warhammer-like version of 5E. If I want low magic and gritty, I got it.

With LUA5E, if I want the high-magic romp that maintains challenge, 3rd party compatibility, and old-school pillars of play, I got it.

What about the official 2014 and 2024 versions of Wizards' rules? D&D Beyond? Endless Kickstarter 5E variants? And 5E YouTube? The toxic clickbait drama that comes with all these games?

Goodbye.

The Slow Decline of 5E

I have a pretty sizable investment in 3rd party 5E books. The game would be fun with the later stages and 3rd party content, especially given some of the excellent alternate implementations of 5E, such as Level Up Advanced 5E and Low Fantasy Gaming.

Most of it turned out to be a huge disappointment. 5E books are notoriously filler-filled and have low-content fluff. The writing feels 'paid by the word' and is often overwritten and too long. Many feel written to sell another book or crowd-funded effort, promising a lot but delivering little.

For someone used to tight OSR rulesets, 5E feels like wading through oceans of paper to find one or two things interesting. 5E is designed to sell you book after book, and the game is highly consumerist in design.

Most of the 3rd party material follows that model, too.

The "alt-5E" games like LFG are sound investments and fun games. A5E is the functionally sound version of 5E, with the balance rebuilt and the pillars of gameplay fully supported. LFG is a fantastic rebuild of 5E to be more like a cross between OSR, Warhammer, and Norse mythology. I wish LFG rebuilt the spells. The renamed versions here are okay, but the game needs new spells with new names, not the 5E standards with a fresh coat of paint.

Seriously, designers, ditch the old ways and be confident in your creations.

A lack of confidence hurts any artistic endeavor.

They are both still 5E, and Wizards and 'that game' hang over their heads. An 'alt 5E' game always lives in the shadow of Wizards. And 5E is not great. Chronic balance issues, expansions throwing attacks in as bonus actions, and a mess of 'watch out for this' issues appear once you allow third-party content in your game. LFG and A5E are better games alone than they are with any expansion content, and a considerable part of 5E's problems are the expansions.

And D&D YouTube is no better. They either live off of hyping up the latest book from Wizards or complaining about the latest stupid thing that Wizards did or said. I am done with them. There is too much negativity or blind obedience, and it feels like people making money off an abusive customer relationship.

This is an honest 'toss everything out but the core books' moment for me. And it kills the fun of 5E and that promise of 3rd party content. I get excited about 3rd party content, build a character with it, watch it break my game, and then it is another item to add to the ban list. 5E is more about what you don't allow into the game than anything in the game itself.

I have had stories and characters ruined by 3rd party content.

And I head the Wizards stuff, Tasha's and beyond, are the same balance-breaking story. Every one of these consumerist game publishers does that at the end of an old edition; they break the game with overpowered add-ons to force you to buy the new edition - this has been how things have been done since the 3rd edition. Third parties blow out the balance to sell books.

Everyone does it, but no one admits it.

But I still have this feeling that 5E is dying. Even with the playtests, the door is open for many to walk away, and many are. While many will return once the 6th Edition releases, that version only has a 3-year shelf life according to Wizards' statements, and there isn't a plan for after that. The game will not become a billion-dollar brand in 3 years after losing half or more of the player base after the pandemic. No amount of hype that YouTubers, let's play channels, or paid influencers will even get them close.

Politics and current-day issues are working their way into the game and settings. This sort of laziness will date a lot of these books terribly. Then again, a for-profit company wants books to 'die' faster since they can sell you the same thing in five years with a few more modern references that will date the writing all over again.

All my pre-2000 TSR books are mostly timeless.

During the pandemic, 5E D&D was a fad during a perfect storm moment. These days, the existence of Baldur's Gate 3 and the mod community will take a considerable amount of mainstream attention away from an already thinning player base. A modern VTT for a game requiring a lot of attention and effort - plus DM support already at crisis levels - will not be enough.

D&D Beyond for DMs? It should be free. Their entire business model depends on a scarce resource. This is like World of Warcraft needing a live player online for every 4-5 player group to reset dungeons,  spawn monsters, activate quests, and restock treasure chests.

5E as a stand-alone game without 3rd party content? It depends on the version and how good the core books are. A5E and LFG are my core 5E books. Like other retro games, I support alternatives and other communities. I games where you can write and sell adventures without going through an approval process or portal from a Wall Street company.

Otherwise, you perpetuate what you do not support.

But for me, other games feel more compelling than anything 5E and even throwback games like AD&D feel lessened. I would rather play OSRIC and support that community than play AD&D and be stuck in a game you can't write and share for. It is always better to support free and open gaming communities, and I have no interest in using the fact that 'I play the AD&D game' as some sort of 'in-crowd street cred.'

I would be there for the rules and gameplay, not the cred. Social media is the best thing to happen to pen-and-paper and the worst. People say they play games like middle-school kids wear rock band t-shirts and expect to be popular. Sorry, OSRIC is the game I play. People write, sell, and share adventures for that and form communities to build and create new things, which I support. AD&D? I love it, but it is a dead-end owned by Wall Street.

Greyhawk? Planescape? Forgotten Realms? Spelljammer?

All dead ends. Let them go. There is nothing but tears and angry voices when they get reimagined and sold to you again to pump quarterly numbers. Support indie creators or create your own and be free.

Outside of the niche versions, 5E is a mess.

They will try to sell us 6E as a solution.

But given the track record here, I am not buying it.

Freedom is Imagination

One of the best examples of "freedom is imagination" is in Dungeon Crawl Classics. Let's say your level 4 rogue goes to an alien world and finds a green energy flamethrower that does 3d6 in cone or 6d6 to a single target, with a low roll, meaning bouncing the flame back into your face, hitting allies, bringing down the roof, setting the whole room on fire, or it breaking down.

I made that weapon up. It is a silly one-shot fantastic piece of alien tech I made up in my head.

And it is not in the rules, which is the critical point.

DCC encourages you to use your imagination and makeup magic treasure, monsters, traps, settings, weapons, NPCs, and adventures - and just go wild making everything up! They give you a few sample monsters and magic items, and if you read the modules, you will get flooded by custom monsters, magic items, gear, environmental conditions, NPCs, spells, patrons, and all sorts of strange and wonderful stuff. No module honestly re-uses monsters.

My green flamethrower weapon? Same idea. It is something I made up and is probably the rogue's new favorite weapon and toy, and will probably serve the rogue well as long as he or she still is alive to use the weapon.

Does it unbalance the game?

Yes!

But think about this, in the next game, that weapon doesn't exist.

So I do not really care.

When you play a new module, everything in the other modules doesn't exist (unless a character survived one and carried something from it forward). Anything in those modules that breaks the campaign does not break the base game.

The base game is untouched by all the silly ideas you or module writers can come up with. The reset button gets pressed, and the next group of heroes goes into the world and finds all sorts of crazy loot while that may be "campaign-breaking" stuff, it won't last beyond that game, and the base rules will still be untouched for the next time.

But a lot of games have this assumption, "if it is in one module or adventure, it is canon!"

With DCC and MCC, really only the base books are canon - if you can call them that. They are starting points, and they both make a point of only including a few examples of monsters, magic items, technological devices, and other items - and while they give you a lot, the entire focus of the game is the DIY craziness of your own imagination. If what you create is unbalanced, it won't affect the next game, and you are free to use GM Fiat to break it, make it run out of charges, make low rolls hurt, or have it fall down an infinitely bottomless pit of doom. Most of the time, just leave it be and live with it.

So you broke your game, so what?

That is the amount the freedom the game gives you.

5E

Compare this to 5E.

Don't you dare break Wizard's game!

I exaggerate a little, but you get the point. There is this fear and feeling anything that goes into 5E must be balanced, and it must be put on some "equipment list" for use in the future and anyone else's game. If it is a 3rd party "thing," then some players won't even add it to their game - only official books, please! Please don't mess up my game!

This feels like the complete opposite tone and feeling of DCC and MCC. You are supposed to play "game designer" in these games and make most everything up. You should invent crazy skull-headed laser wands with death rays that can bounce around corners and back into the wielder's face. Mind control helmets. Rings of acid skin. Monsters that are giant tongues with legs. Floating eyeballs with freeze rays. Insta death traps. Is it balanced? Who cares?

The less exhaustive lists and giant bestiaries a game gives you, the more freedom you have. There is a sweet spot of including enough types of different things to give you rough parameters, but there is a point where a game stops being a game, and it becomes a "game of lists" that shackles your creativity.

In B/X or D&D, why do I need to imagine a custom "magic aegis of bird control" sword when that "sword, +2" on the magic item list will do just fine? Lists can also turn your game into a buffet of bland choices and remove any creative input you would have had into the game.

Huge lists? Less freedom.

Since I only play OGL versions of 5E, this feeling affects me a lot less since everything in my game is fantastic. There are players who do not play with anything 3rd party, so there is that feeling in the community.

Low Fantasy Gaming

Low Fantasy Gaming does a little of this DIY stuff with the "every 3 levels" class features where players can invent class powers, and also in the "exploit system" where a damaging hit can add a special effect the player gets to invent. It does all this in the 5E framework, which is frankly astonishing, and it also maintains numeric compatibility with the base game.

LFG also tosses out a bunch of 5E rules the game does not need and tells you to make it up if the rule doesn't exist. It puts trust and "game designer hats" on the referee and players. It is less crazy and gonzo than DCC or MCC, so it sticks closer to realism and believability.

Low Fantasy also does not feel brave enough in "dark and dangerous magic," with most magical corruption effects having a duration and permanent effects being terrible rolls. It feels like a "stater game" when it comes to permanently changing player characters, where DCC and MCC are thrilled to have a wizard grow horns and his skin turn green - permanently. There still is that 5E style of "player protection" in LFG, compared to the "it is okay to toss your character sheet in the shredder" DCC and MCC games.

Having a game go out of its way to protect players is also a loss of freedom.

That aside, I still feel LFG is the most interesting 5E clone out there, and I like it slightly better than Level Up 5E since this game makes an effort to bring OSR concepts into a 5E framework. One could argue that OSR concepts do not need all these "minigame frameworks," and that is a valid point, but the amount of 5E rules tossed in the bin by LFG gives me a new perspective on the 5E engine and how good it could be if stripped down and fine-tuned.

You are Not Your Character

This is also why "seeing yourself in the game" and "playing a version of yourself" is dangerous, and back in the day, we were always warned not to do this. These days, I feel companies are pushing games with identity marketing and making it impossible for a character to die - because I feel they are very irresponsibly pushing the idea that "the players are the characters." Back in the day, we were told this was damaging psychologically, and in a game where bad things could happen to characters, this was something you did not do.

Players should never be characters or self-insert into the game, ever.

And yes, a game that encourages you to "be in the game" also reduces your freedom since there will be "safety rails" built into the rules, and your character options and choices will be limited or more focused on either human or pop-culture-centered lineage choices. And I feel this is also a very irresponsible method of retention and marketing that (in my feeling) could damage players' mental health.

Games of Imagination

Going back to Dungeon Crawl Classics (and also MCC), I have a soft spot for this game. This isn't D&D fantasy, nor is it an "early 1980s D&D simulator." There was this specific subgenre for roleplaying in the late 1970s and 1980s that embraced the culture of black-light felt paintings, painted vans, disco sucks 1970s rock culture, the drug subculture, underground 1970s comix, the hippie culture, adult comedy records like Richard Pryor and George Carlin, CB culture, and a lot of the significant underground subcultures of the 1970s that found their way into roleplaying games.

The culture was a middle finger to big corporations, the military-industrial complex, government, organized religion, the sycophant media, and popular entertainment - TV, radio, mainstream comics, and movie studios (Disney too, who were notoriously litigant against underground comics). Pop culture and pop music was trash. Video games were not a huge cultural thing. If you don't know anything about this culture, take some time and learn about it - this was a fantastic period of culture that brought us so many of the classic songs, movies, and TV shows we love today.

People that made these comix and underground culture were arrested, sued, and jailed.

And the stories and tales - the actual Appendix N stuff - were freaky, out there, and wild, man! This wasn't even like today's anime which, for the most part, has high artistic merit and technical skill - but is still primarily either corporate or a higher form of art. I love anime, but it was nothing like Appendix N source material and the "Hippy and Freak Culture" of the 1970s. The underground was very anti-authoritarian, and yes, this would also be anti-big publisher games from billion-dollar companies.

And this culture emphasizes the individual and creativity.

A lot of the social conformity of this era would be frowned upon.

You are you.

And you - that cool, fun, unique person in the mirror, however you choose to be - are remarkable. And a massive part of this is "making stuff up." Because the stuff you dream up is just as cool too.

Unlike other games where you feel looked down upon for adding your creativity, DCC and MCC require your creativity, celebrate it, encourage it, and make it a part of the game. Players get to imagine, too, as creative and imaginative play is critical for success and pushing those dice up the chain.

Creativity is not storytelling in a tightly-controlled rules system, as 5E would have you believe. Creativity is opening the door to you - the players and referee - to create rules, monsters, magic items, spells, worlds, classes, weapons, and anything else you can imagine in your game.

You get to put on the game designer's hat, too.

And the game doesn't handcuff you by giving you giant lists of "stuff" to clog up your imagination and subconsciously tell you "the game's designers are better than you." Again, I exaggerate, but the feeling is there when a game gives you "too much." You will never use everything in the book, so why should you create anything of your own? The characters are simple, so players are not staring at their skill lists with tunnel vision.

Does the game you play discourage you from adding your creativity to the game? Are your contributions seen as "homebrew" or "house rules?" Do you feel to have fun, you need to follow the rules exactly as written?

Or do you want a game that opens that book of creativity in your mind and tells you to "think outside the book?"

5E: Precalculated

I did more YouTube D&D watching, and I found a few having an issue with how everything in D&D is precalculated and complaining about the minimal choice in building characters or selecting weapons and armor.

Single-handed weapons? Pick one that does a d8, and go for martial weapons if you can.

Two-handed weapons? Ignore damage, and always go for reach.

Dual wielding? Go for the d6, and your damage output will equal a two-hander.

Armor? There is really one best pick, and that depends on your DEX.

And as you level, all the choices you make feel like they were run through a computer thousands of times, and the damage outputs and effects really don't matter much beyond "the best choice you should make." Either that or the statistics majors have gotten to them and found the absolute best choice.

And the martial-caster damage gap gets worse at every level, so no choice you can make as a martial character matters. Even defenses get better for casters.

So, just play a caster.

Wizards have always made overpowered casters in D&D; every version they made of the game was superheroic-magic and, frankly, overpowered the casters to an insane degree. And they can't maintain a version and keep the game stable for more than 5 years before the overpowered options creep in, and we need a new edition again. Yes, the game is insanely popular, but design-wise they have not done the best job.

The game they were given with AD&D 2nd edition worked fine. The OSR proves that easily.

Every edition of D&D since Wizards has taken over has been another significant change.

Part of me feels they change things to sell books, as this is the Magic the Gathering sales method. And I get the feeling for the last 20 years, the game hasn't really been in the best of hands. They refuse to support their world settings. The lore past 3.5 feels dead and unsupported. They embraced the World of Warcraft-style default setting, and the fiction and excitement around their "worlds of adventure" feel long gone.

Given D&D 4's mess of a design, the damage gap between martial and caster characters was not that high. D&D 5 went back to the "glass cannon" caster design philosophy, and then, later on, they just went and added equivalent defenses for casters anyways. Because I suppose casters complain the loudest. And there are designers at Wizards who have no clue what some of these changes do to the game.

I am still reading Level Up Advanced 5E and seeing what they did to address this problem. Part of me feels like the obvious answer for 5E is "more rules," but the game is already heavy enough with rules, so why would I need more to patch issues? Fighters and martial characters are very cool in Level Up - I give them a lot of credit for making them enjoyable again.

I honestly get the feeling trying to patch 5E's flaws is like taping together a shelf, so it keeps standing up. At some point, just get a better shelf.

Low Fantasy Gaming does many cool things, too - primarily by throwing out 5E rules and replacing them with "fun play" systems like exploits. Exploits in LFG solve many of 5E's problems and add that "Savage Worlds" flair to the game. Out of all my 5E clones, LFG is hands-down the best and one I would play to get my investment out of the 5E third-party books on my shelf.

But it does this not by writing more rules but by throwing them out and replacing them with thematic systems. The exploit system, the resting system, arcane dark & dangerous magic, the faith & favor system, the escape & evasion system, the supply system, the skill system - seriously, read this book and check out all the fun "minigames" they added to 5E and realize all the heavy rules they replaced. They didn't patch and tape; they did some fascinating game design to enhance OSR-style play but abstract a lot of the bookkeeping away.

LFG is honestly a genius design.

But it also has a lot of baggage in the base system to deal with, including Wizards' habit of overwriting and over-connecting every rule to each other and introducing complexity where there should be clarity and simplicity.

Low Fantasy Gaming: Rolling Back Rules

Looking at Low Fantasy Gaming (LFG), a lot of what I see spends time rolling back well-intended but thematically incorrect 5E rules meant to speed up play but ended up making the game way too easy. You can see the whiteboard in the Wizards' office with the words "problems with D&D!"

• Characters die too quickly!
• Encounters are hard to balance!
• Constant searching and interaction skill rolls slow down play!
• Long downtimes will slow down play!

And we get the well-intentioned rules like the long and short rest system allowing the party to quickly reset resources to "level set" before an encounter. We get passive skills to eliminate constant "search rolls" and "sense motive" checks. We bring healing skills and healer kits that can act as instant CPR devices in combat to revive party members. A long rest will heal any wound.

5E only models a videogame or MMO-style reality these days, such as a World of Warcraft. This is the hidden legacy of 4E in the game. You stand still for a moment, and you regain all health and mana. And I feel this will get even easier to do in One D&D.

At times I feel D&D 5E has moved out of the roleplaying game realm and more into the board or video game realm. The systems are heavily abstracted, and compared to the OSR, the game is very different. The streamlining and optimizations removed a lot of what the OSR enshrines as the core of the game.

The OSR has a deep interpersonal interaction, the act of one person describing a room and the players describing how they search it - all without rules. Exploration, interaction, and parts of combat are all this interpersonal storytelling game that does not require rules. The only thing which requires combat rules is hit points and AC, along with spells and a few other things.

Where D&D 4 went wrong is they tried to optimize out too much, to the point D&D became a wargame. They rolled back a lot with D&D 5E, but still, they left many of these optimizations in or changed them slightly to fit this new concept of play.

And many of the rules that a 5E implementation uses run counter to the OSR.

Resting

https://5thsrd.org/adventuring/resting/

From an OSR perspective, the 5E resting rules are overly generous. Being able to take a short rest, 1 hour, and heal hit points equal to hit dice (plus CON modifier) up to your level in hit dice is letting the party have too much innate healing. And this is often done "in dungeons" in the middle of adventures, and this is also one thing you see a lot of published adventures try to roll back to increase tension and challenge.

With long rests, you heal all hit points and regain half of the spent hit dice.

Low Fantasy Gaming rolls back short rests to only three times per day (a few minutes each), where one to three WIL rolls (you get a one, two, and three roll rest each day) are made to recover:

• Half of the character's lost hit points
• One class ability use
• One reroll pool die

Long rests in LFG take 1d6 days (1d4 in a restful location, such as an inn), which restores most all lost pools and abilities, half +1d4 + CON bonus hit points, and the long rest restores 1 point of luck. A character who loses almost all their hit points will be out a week on average. Luck, which is used as a direct-use luck ability and as all of the character's saving throws, comes back even slower. A total of 10 points of luck lost will take about a month to recover, and luck is incredibly easy to spend.

Old School Resting

Old School Essentials sets healing at 1d3 hit points a day. The Castles & Crusades game sets the healing rate at 1 hit point a day for the first week, 1 + CON bonus for the second week, double that on the third, and 3X that on the fourth - and can be adjusted by the referee. If you do not have magical healing, you are out for a while in any OSR game. Any disruption discards healing for the day.

Resting as a Game

Part of me feels the LFG rules are "gamey" because they need to replace the generous 5E resting rules and create a "rests" resource to track. They introduce a roll to recover a resource, so while resting is short, it is not guaranteed. LFG resting is still very generous compared to the OSR and ties in with the pool recovery mechanics.

In the OSR, you need magical healing, healing potions, or some other resource to heal. Or you need a lot of downtime and a safe place. Time and resource management is a massive part of the OSR and an excellent skill to learn in real life.

I know why the 5E designers did this; no one likes "interrupting the adventure" and having to go back to town and rest a week on behalf of one character taking a lot of damage. 5E is heavily borrowing on board game mechanics here, and this is a lot like what they did in 4E to "keep players on the board" - just that in this case, there could be no board, but there is no reason to interrupt the adventure because someone needs to heal.

What We Lose

But on the downside, we lose a lot. We lose a lot of the simulation and interpersonal aspects we love. The storytelling. The poking and prodding of strange frescos and statues in alcoves. Character death. The feeling of danger and the tension of ever-decreasing time, health, and resources. The fear of touching a trap or stepping into the abyss.

I like the OSR because it leans into danger and embraces it as the genre. Some 5E players said when they tried the OSR, it felt like a horror game - that is cool. Your eyes are opened. You feel alive. Choices matter. Exploration matters. Thinking and experimenting are essential.

LFG walks a line between the genres, keeping modern mechanics but game-ifying many OSR concepts and presenting them in a more modern-rules format and style.

Board Game Mechanics

As a result, 5E feels more like a board game than a roleplaying game. You get nearly free "resets" between encounters, which keeps players around the table engaged, makes encounters easier to balance, and quickens the pace of play. The game became more popular because of these "soft factors" that made the game more accessible. I think the direction that D&D is going in (if they are smart) is to keep this accessibility moving forward and enhance the experience.

I like that LFG leans into the game aspects of 5E and extends them. The OSR is one thing, a game that simulates the OSR concepts is another. This is a sort of "OSR the Game" presented in 5E-like rules, and while yes, that is not really OSR, the concepts are being introduced in a game-like format, and that is both a great thing to players new to the OSR, and 5E players looking for a more rules-framework-like version of OSR gaming.

5E: Too Much

Back in the late 4E days, when there were so many books to read, the game died on us under its own weight. This is where I am at with 5E and also a few entertainment properties, such as the MCU. They are too big; we are expected to consume them all. To "play" or talk about the world, you have to be up on everything, and you have to take everything they give you and make sense of it in their model world and setting.

The game becomes less about your stories and creations - and more about theirs.

The game feels bloated, like a buffet plate overloaded with pounds of low to average-quality food that will likely never be eaten and thrown away. Even with core books (the two gift sets), D&D 5E is a 6-book set with a lot to mix into the default "plane hopper" campaign multiverse. I really dislike multiverse writing, and I feel it is lazy where you can constantly retcon mistakes, come up with a new world, and constantly pull the rug out from under players with a new "thing" or another way for the same old villain to get away with something or reappear next time.

After a while, nothing means anything in an infinite universe.

You can't even be heroes because nothing matters on such a colossal scale.

Multiverses are where good writing goes to die.

I mean this because when you look at the medium of writing, there is a limit - the number of words in a paragraph, page, and ultimately - a book. We have a set limit to work with to tell a story. A campaign world should mirror this model; you have a set place - with a size and scope - and a setting to tell a story. The best thing you can do for any game is to define a limited sandbox and close the doors on it from the story-killing multiverse.

State right out, planar travel is not possible in this setting. There is no contact, no gates, and travelers from other worlds do not come here. If there are associated parallel planes, such as a heaven or a hell, those are in this bubble as well. Then pare down your core book options to a tight subset of choices for heritages, classes, and options. Maybe your world is just orcs and dwarves. Even in a base book 5E game, that sounds cool.

I cut off the multiverse with my Pathfinder 1E game, and this was an excellent, exciting setting for my players. Multiverses are typically horrible settings and very difficult to run, especially for new game masters. And I could never run them right. They are fun for the first few months, and then multiverse games get confused and die.

Get Away to Get Away

This is also why I prefer the reimagined 5E games, such as Level Up Advanced Fantasy. This has a great core set of 5E classes and backgrounds but does not come with forced choices in the expansion books or an assumed multiverse. I can set creative limits and craft a world without starships flying in or gates opening to the next floating planar paradise. I can have them if I want them, but they are not a part of the core rules, so they need to be converted and are entirely optional content.

My game has a built-in firewall, and that is nice.

Still, some of the things 5E does - the game spends a lot of time and effort to do simple things. There are subsystems the game does not even need, and it layers rules on top of those to justify them. The skill list takes over the game. GURPS is a more straightforward system with a unified mechanic, and it still manages to make base attributes essential while keeping the skill system under control. While there are many skills in GURPS, they don't take over the game and limit player choice.

I wish One D&D emphasized this modular design and allowed us to limit everything - even down to rules options and modules such as the skill system. It is like getting a new computer and having 500 pre-installed programs you will never use. If One D&D can simulate a base system such as B/X or the OSR and make the rest of the system optional, that would be a wonderful thing.

Low Fantasy = Fun Fantasy

Even better yet are curated versions of 5E, such as Low Fantasy Gaming. This is a complete stand-alone game, written in a 5E-style, but pared down to tell a specific story for a unique setting. This is almost like a "Fantasy Novel: The Game" written for 5E, and it does one thing incredibly well.

It also tosses out tons of 5E rules and replaces them with fun resource games or "make it up yourself" class additions and exploits. Low Fantasy Gaming is the opposite of Level Up 5E; instead of trying to fix a pile of broken rules and make them fun, this game tosses out the tedium and junk rules and replaces them with fun - in an OSR style of game. This really is remarkable, and it is becoming my 5E game of choice.

I love these "setting-specific" curated stand-alone 5E games since they are a lot like a book that invites you to join the cast and have your own adventures. You get a very focused and immersive experience, and you are not in that generic or planar fantasy setting where anything goes. They do not do everything like a base 5E game, but wow, they provide a fun and unique experience in the sandbox they create and define.

Or the OSR...

The one thing about the OSR is you can find games limited in scope and setting quickly. They play about the same, and there is much less to worry about integrating and putting pieces together. And OSR games are typically about 10% of the complexity of 5E, especially as you level and the interrupt and interlocking mechanics kick in (which are impossible to balance). Then you toss in the tacked-on rules of the expansions, and you have yourself a game that is popular and cool - but playing "rules as written" feels like a chore, and there feels like too much of everything.

It is funny; with core 5E, I feel like I am going to a buffet and getting a little of everything - a lot of low-quality food that just feels like filler. With many OSR games and curated 5E experiences, I am getting a focused meal where I do not have as many options - but everything is of higher quality.

Sandboxed 5E

I can run a sandboxed game using the base three D&D 5E books. However, these days that is a tall order. The game has moved on; people have favorite builds in newer books from Wizards, rules have changed since the original books were released, and people expect the more recent features.

This is a lot like late phase Pathfinder 1e for me - I didn't want to play with anything else than an entire shelf of books. There is so much cool stuff to play with! Why just play with the core books? Are you crazy? Rogues suck!

In the PF 1e book, they fixed rogues, but this highlights the problem; as in D&D 5E, the base-book ranger sucks as well (so I hear). So I play with quite a few things broken and live with it.

This is also the appeal of One D&D, three base books with fixed classes. We must wait two years for that if the Earth lasts that long. Well, what to do in the meantime?

Go 5E, Blue Pill

One option is to collect tons of 5E books from Wizards and jump in. There is a lot of fluff and stuff I won't use, and the quality level of the builds and classes feels low overall - outside of the few rules in each book. Still, this doesn't address a lot of the issues the base game has; just sort of patches over them. Rangers, warlocks, and a bunch of other classes have a lot of issues and require multiclassing to be interesting.

Still, I am a little turned off by the crowd of hardcore optimizers out there who have created the optimal builds for everything to win the game, and a part of me feels 5E has been "beaten" and not really worth learning or starting this late in the game's lifecycle.

I built a party of 5E characters, and they feel uninspired and plain.

OSR, Red Pill

The obvious option is the OSR; let's get that out here. Castles & Crusades is so attractive when I compare it to any version of 5E. I look at 5E character sheets and see the same bloat many modern games have. The character sheets are long, with particular special abilities that apply to things that come up rarely or combat abilities that fit into particular places into the combat system, and need a paragraph of rules per ability on the character sheet.

I have seen entire sets of rules shorter than a printed mid-level 5E character sheet. Seriously 5E players and game creators, has no one noticed your character sheets are worse than Rolemaster or Palladium in terms of complexity? Love the game, but hate the bloat. I am leaving the tax forms of Pathfinder 2e out of this discussion too. Love that game too, but appalled they think of players as computers that can fill out excel spreadsheets and branch conditions in their heads.

Some games are just made to sell digital character sheet subscriptions to online services. Very little thought is put into simplifying rules because it would hurt profitability and retention.

And some games resemble a pen-and-paper computer game way too much.

With Castles & Crusades, I get everything on one 4x6 card that covers an entire character with the same depth and cool factor as a 5E character. It is easier than a typical OSR game, too; no lists of thief abilities, turning charts, attack numbers vs. AC, skills, proficiencies, or saving throws are needed on my character sheet. No huge paragraphs of rules printed on 4-6 sheets of double-sided paper for a single character.

Castles & Crusades is the game that sits in the back of your head, saying, "I can do that easier, faster, and with less record keeping than what you are playing now. And you can focus on story, not rules."

It even says that when I am playing other OSR games, "Why are you writing down thief skill percentages and all those specific saving throws? When did you ever save versus wands?"

Yes, C&C is annoying, but I love it and cannot live without it.

Yes, C&C is one of those games once you understand how much cruft it throws out, everything else feels clumsy and antiquated. Part of Wizards' 5E problem is that the game was designed across many books by many writers, and it kept sticking things on the giant sticky ball of rules with each new release. Again, 6E is a reset, but I do not want to wait.

5E Clone, Purple Pill

My final option is to play a sandboxed version of 5E. There is no sticky ball of rules spread across multiple books because the games are stand-alone complete versions of the game.

Low Fantasy Gaming, Into the Unknown, 5 Torches Deep, and Level Up Advanced 5E are perfect 5E clones that act as sandbox worlds insulated against outside changes from the official Wizards books. These are all great ways to still play 5E but play in a sandboxed environment where you can focus on a few books and have a clean and focused experience.

I like Level Up Advanced 5E a lot, and it is a wholly cloned version of 5E with tons of improvements. The game is just three books, created with the latest changes to the core 5E rules in mind. Tool proficiencies and other changes are in here, and this is a core set of rules I would like to learn. I know base 5E is more straightforward, but this game feels like it will preserve the 5E mechanics as played in 2014 to 2022, just like Pathfinder 1e preserved D&D 3.5 mechanics and still does.

Game preservation is essential! People grew up playing 5E, and we should keep the game around as-is for future generations to enjoy. I know, for 5E players, this sounds strange; just keep going with 6E and One D&D, and then Two D&D, right...?

Welcome to the OSR, 5E.

We preserve experiences for future generations to enjoy here.

We are a living museum of gaming.

One of the strange parts about being in this museum is your game needs to be "open source" and OGL and not really under the stewardship of Wall Street or other companies that want to "lock down" the game, hence why the 5E clones are so crucial to preservation. And the words "One D&D" have a double meaning in that Wizards only wants one D&D to exist. The one they control.

I want everyone to play, to be able to create a 5E game, and for what people love to be preserved.

Level Up is essential because it is the most complete and similar to how people play the 5E version of the game we have in the OGL community.

Low Fantasy Gaming is a fantastic set of rules with pulp-action and dedicated resource management mechanics. This, to me, feels the most like OSR, but also with some excellent 5E-style design and thought put into resource management. Where Into the Unknown and 5TD do "5E-like" sims of OSR games, LFG takes OSR concepts and codifies them into game rules.

This game also introduces several great "hardcore" rules that fit right into a modded hard mode 5E game.

That is the most "5E" way of doing things, strip mechanics you do not need and give players new mechanics to enhance and enforce flavor and genre.

Low Fantasy Gaming: 5E or OSR?

I used the free pre-gen characters and ran a few battles between them, and wow, Low Fantasy Gaming is a great system. My first feelings were mixed, like what is the difference between this and Castles & Crusades?

Castles & Crusades:

• Simpler character sheets (3x5 card)
• B/X style combat
• Simple AC vs. hit points
• OSR stunting
• Classic resource management (hit points, spells, torches, supplies)
• Classic classes, magic, monsters, spells, and races
• B/X compatible game
• A pure OSR experience with modern gameplay improvements
• It feels, sounds, and plays exactly like B/X

Low Fantasy Gaming:

• Moderately complex character sheets (8.5x11 paper)
• Pulp-action gritty B/X combat
• AC vs. hit points
• Minor, Major & Rescue Exploits
• Class abilities matter
• Rerolls & Luck saves
• Enhanced resource management
• Classic (hit points, spells, torches, supplies)
• Character (luck, rests, rerolls, class abilities)
• Reimagined classes, magic, monsters, spells, and races
• 5E compatible game
• A 5E implementation of the OSR
• It feels like B/X, but plays like than 5E

Luck Saves to Dodge?

One of my biggest mistakes was allowing luck rolls to dodge blows. The rules are not clear on if this can be done, and seeing how this one change slowed the game down considerably, I would not allow it. Once I stopped doing this, the game flowed and played much better. These were my first few combats, and I was a little confused about how things work, so it is understandable.

Luck Saves to Avoid Killing Blows?

For non-boss monsters and random NPCs, I would never allow luck saves to avoid a killing blow. The example in the rules on page 6 where a PC throws a spear at an enemy NPC on a rooftop did not have any mention of the NPC making a luck roll to avoid a deathblow, and this is the only example I could find but sets a good example for me to follow.

For boss monsters, essential NPCs, or player characters, I would probably allow a luck roll to avoid a killing blow. For level one characters, the end of my fights would often end in this tense series of potential killing blows and luck rolls to dodge them, with luck decreasing all the time until one failed and the combat ended. The rules on page 12 for luck checks are a little vague:

A Luck check or save may be modified by an attribute bonus or penalty, depending on the nature of the attack or hazard. For example, an adventurer’s DEX modifier applies to dodging out of the way of a Lightning Bolt spell. In such a case, the notation would be a Luck (DEX) save. 

"Attack or hazard" cloud be interpreted as death blows by enemies, but I am guessing they mean monster attacks requiring saves. This will make your game less deadly and more pulp, but the more reasons to burn luck, the better, I suppose. It does lengthen combat, but we are talking just the end of a fight, and if player characters are heroic figures, then I would say yes, allow unmodified luck saves to avoid death.

I use unmodified luck saves for deathblow saves because once you link it to an ability score modifier, the bonus becomes too important. There is an argument for almost every ability score to modify this roll (dodge with DEX, survive with CON, see the blow coming with PER, continue living with WIL, etc.). And remember, each luck save reduces luck by a point, so every round you make a deathblow save, that luck goes down by a point until it recovers (which takes a while).

This rule adds a lot of tension to the end of fights and is admittedly more pulp-action than a straight OSR system. When I did this, the game felt very Savage Worlds, with lots of close luck rolls meaning the character could live another round to fight and turn things around. This gave low hit points and softer characters (rogue, magic users) a chance against the armored and high damage dealers (fighters, barbarians). My fights between a rogue and a fighter in plate felt much better once the thief had a chance to avoid a 12-damage deathblow, pull a major exploit, and turn the tide of battle.

But this rule does lengthen battles considerably.

But those ends to fights are fun as the characters made saves, and pulling off lucky turnarounds is incredibly satisfying.

What it sometimes avoids is the "sudden death" hit that comes in out of nowhere and kills a character with a full-luck pool, and that feels unfair in a more heroic game.

Deathblow Save, Barbarian Conflict

Note the above rule conflicts with the barbarian Rage ability, which allows a Luck (con) roll while raging to avoid a deathblow and be reduced to 1 hit point. So the "luck to avoid deathblow" rule I made is most likely an optional rule for more heroic-pulp games. It would require the barbarian ability to be changed to match the "complete avoidance" of the blow landing but give a con ability modifier bonus just for the barbarian class.

I would likely (just for the barbarian) add a free instant counterattack if the roll is made while raging. That would feel cool and fit my barbarian ideas.

Then again, the designers said, make up your own rulings, so this rule is actually in-line with how the game is designed, and the OSR plays. Go ahead, mod the game as it is yours.

Class Abilities Matter

All characters have special class abilities, and these matter a great deal. Some are always-on with no use limits (backstab), and others have uses per level, so make a note of this on your character sheet.

My rogue has a Tricks & Techniques ability, and this is a one-use per level ability. Within this pool of techniques is the "hidden blade" technique she can use, which allows her to reroll a failed melee attack. This gives her a second reroll that she can use whenever she expends a use. This ability got used frequently during my test combats once I knew what it did and how to use it, and it gave her the edge to turn a loss into a win.

The Difference: Pools & Mechanics

From 5E, LFG takes the class combat abilities that the classes give you every so often, putting many of them on a "use per adventure" pool that is recovered possibly during a short rest and entirely during a long rest (1d6 or 1d4 days of downtime).

This differs from D&D 5E, which has fewer "fun things to do" in combat, and your pools and rerolls matter greatly. Your resource management in LFG is more mechanical and rules-based than a regular OSR game. This makes it way different than either 5E or OSR and puts the game in a place of its own with a fun, almost euro-game, abstract pool of abilities to burn to use during your adventure. As a result (and with my accidental misinterpretation of the Luck/deathblow mechanics that made endgame fights incredible), the game took on this almost Savage Worlds style pulp-feeling with a nice layer of dark fantasy.

Exploits

Major and minor exploits are fantastic, giving the game that OSR feeling where you can say, "I swing on the chandelier and kick them off the table!" If you hit and do damage, you can try for an extra effect (once you fail an exploit against a target, you can't do another for the combat unless things change, such as an ally joining the fight or the target becoming staggered at half hit points.

This is a massive change from 5E and OSR combat and adds to that Savage Worlds feeling.

During my test combats, my rogue tried to disarm the fighter, kick dirt in the eyes, and do all sorts of nasty tricks just to avoid that colossal blow she knew was coming. She forced the fighter to fight with his dagger a few times. The fighter also used these to knock the rogue to the ground, stunning her, or otherwise set her up for that substantial d12+2 damage wallop to her 8 hit points.

The combats are a touch slower than B/X or C&C fights, but they have a lot of excellent mechanical depth and resource management that is even better than a 5E or C&C experience. It does come close to a Savage Worlds feeling, but instead of bennies, you are using pools in your character and class mechanics to pull off specific tricks and moves.

Combat in LFG is much more fun and interactive than either 5E or C&C but at the cost of complexity and resource tracking. For those players who like their character to have "a bag of tricks to pull from" and think on their feet with exploits and cool moves, this is a better game for them to play than either 5E, C&C, or B/X.

5E or OSR?

This game is honestly both 5E and OSR. But since the 5E OGL license requires significant changes to make a 5E-like game, the designers went all out and added a ton of "fun mechanics" to their system and did their own thing while keeping the numbers compatible with 5E material and abandoning the 13+ level out of control damage output game.

The result is a dark-fantasy game that plays a lot better than stock 5E, but it has the OSR feel. The resource management is tight, mechanically satisfying, and adds to the game's fun and creates tension.

I love C&C as my OSR game of choice, and it has all of the hallmarks and recognizable bits that I want from a B/X experience. You have the classic number range, the spells you know and love, and the experience that the OSR brings to the table.

With LFG, I can use 5E monsters and 3rd party books and play in this world without the overpowered and impossible-to-kill characters that 5E typically has and get my OSR feeling of danger. I also get better character mechanics than 5E, with some excellent resource management of character abilities. It is not as superpowered as the base 5E game, plus expansions where very few limits are placed on character power and stacking abilities ruin the game's balance.

LFG is a balanced, fun, great, and mechanically interesting 5E-like OSR-inspired game that does its own thing. You can play a 5E-style game without the official books and play in that classic OSR style without changing much of what you are used to.

Low Fantasy Gaming

This is seriously a good game.

I can play an OSR-style experience and collect high-quality 3rd-party 5E books, and stay 100% away from Wizards' content? Now, you may think I say that because I have a dislike for Wizards' D&D books, I don't really; what I have a severe aversion to is the library of books needed to play, the power-creep expansion book builds, and just the creeping complexity of how the D&D game changed since it was released. Also, the mainline D&D 5E game feels too cartoony, just like Pathfinder 2e.

Don't take it as dislike; I want a fresh start - not a by-the-books official game.

Yes, I could play with the original 3 books, but being a fan of the OSR, I like the OSR themes and the difficulty they enshrine in Low Fantasy Gaming was better than the stock easy-mode 5E with the three base books.

Better OSR-Style Systems

The resource management in Low Fantasy Gaming feels better than the base 5E game, with ever-depleting rest, reroll, and luck pools. You have to be careful which type of resting you choose. Your luck keeps depleting. Resources become scarce. You play the resource management game here in a 5E experience, with some game mechanics providing tension, which is fantastic.

The combat system slays D&D 5E and makes the base game feel boring. There is a lot to love here, from fighters switching up styles to expendable rerolls, fighting styles, and martial exploits that let you trip, push back, and otherwise gain an advantage on your foes. Exploits are separated into minor and major, with major requiring a luck roll and expenditure, and you could outright slay a weaker opponent in one hit. Combat here is expressive, pulp-action, and uses the resource system - very cool.

The magic system has corruption and divine favor, which is not a sure thing. Mages can gain corruption effects, suffer spell failure, and magic is a strange and dangerous thing. Cultists (clerics) have to be active speakers and practitioners of the word to gain favor, or they risk angering their gods. Divine magic also does not have spell lists, but they have a blessing type that simulates a spell, so I am sure if you really wanted a spell from a 5E divine list, you could make it happen through that mechanic.

Everything else is primarily compatible with base 5E rules, except classes and characters. You can use 5E monsters, treasures, spells, and adventures quickly with the system without much conversion.

This is the only 5E game that catches my eye away from Castles & Crusades. Granted, C&C is a much easier game to run and manage, with way better OSR compatibility. The LFG characters are that complex, large character sheet, 5E-style, that I tend to avoid. But still, this game has a very Savage Worlds feeling to me like the extra complexity is worth the effort.

A Wizards-Free 5E Game

What I love is the system insulates me from the beast D&D 5E has grown into, with all the min-maxers, power-gamers, S-tier builds, and all the changes introduced down the line (and still being introduced) to the game. I can play a fun, OSR-like, sandbox 5E-style game and be walled away from all the noise of the official books. I can roll exclusively with this book and a few 3rd party books and have a Wizards-free 5E game.

That is cool.

Not that I dislike Wizards, but it is a remarkable design achievement to have a standalone game. And, I have a limited sandbox with 5E mechanics to play in, plus OSR-style play.

Some games still need the base three books, and I do not like it when that happens since the base books are this "siren's call" to come back. I only play standalone 5E clones since much more effort was put into these, and they are immune from base-game changes. That will matter in a few years when the "requires the base 5E book games" have to upgrade to One D&D or rely on the used book market.

Low Fantasy Gaming can continue on for years as it is and never have to change the rules.

Right now, this is as close to a "White Box" style 5E clone as I can get, but with the added attraction of pulp-action combat mechanics to spice up battles, along with resource management to increase the tension as the dungeon crawl goes on and on. Would I love a pure White-Box 5E clone? I have one possibly coming in the mail, and we will see. But yes, the game that resets 5E and creates a pure base game that addresses balance issues and creates an OSR evergreen 5E game - while ignoring the expansion nonsense - is my unicorn game right now.

Low Fantasy Gaming is really good, and it is nearly a bullseye in my quest. The beauty here is that the things it does change; it does for a good reason and to emulate a genre that I love - dark fantasy gaming.

5E Alternatives: Low Fantasy Gaming

I usually stay in the OSR for most of my gaming, but if I wanted that 5E feeling (and good compatibility with many great 5E sourcebooks), the excellent Low Fantasy Gaming (LFG) would be my game. The game is this perfect mix of 5E, dark fantasy, and a reimagined setting in the "points of light" style of D&D 4E that drew us into that game heavily.

Why go with LFG and not stock 5E? Well, for one, I am insulated against Wizards and their random rule changes and splat-book power creep. It is not changing in two years. Having a baseline set of classes means I can predict power level and damage output, making the game easier to referee. Also, this game feels OSR while still being 5E-like, which is pure awesomeness. The monsters, spells, and magic items are compatible between 5E and LFG. The magic system rocks hard.

This is the best 5E-like game out there and one I would make my 5E home.

Magic

Magic is greatly simplified, with magic users being the only ones with access to spell lists. Magic users suffer "dark and dangerous magic" (DDM), which is a rolling number that increases 1 per spell cast. Rolling under this number triggers a corruption-like effect and resets the counter to one. This is a very Dungeon Crawl Classics style mechanic and puts a heavy price on magic that I like.

Note, that magic item use also triggers DDM.

Cultists (clerics) have blessings and start the game knowing a number of them equal to their WIL modifier, and these are like the traditional cleric spells (but a smaller list). They get one use of a blessing per level, so a level 5 cultist would have 5 blessings available. In addition, if a cleric has favor, they can expend that to cast a blessing without using a charge. Otherwise, a WIL check is required to make the blessing manifest (and could fail and invoke a divine rebuke).

On the plus side, the favor system has cultists always finding a roleplaying way to gain it again, so this is a very strong roleplaying mixed with a game rules mechanic that I love. Your faith-based characters are doing their jobs, finally, and not being a heal bot.

Yes, this is good. Very good.

And magic-users and cultists are the only magic classes in the game, and their magic is different and dangerous in unique ways. I absolutely love this mechanic, and this makes the game different than most any other OSR game out there (except DCC) and makes LFG stand apart from even games like Old School Essentials or Castles & Crusades.

I like dark and dangerous magic, and I like fewer classes having magic. If everyone has "easy magic," then there is nothing unique, fun, or interesting about it at all. Magic is supposed to be fun and unpredictable, rare and always dangerous to cast. The spells are renamed like the old ones were lost, changed, and the spell names that once were are never used these days. It feels thematic and cool.

The magic system here is why I would play this game.

Balance and Compatibility

There was a post calculating average damage per round of the various classes on Reddit that is fascinating and illustrates the damage scaling present in games past D&D 3E. For 5E, it is generally:

• Level 1-5: 10 damage per round
• Level 6-10: 30 damage per round
• Level 11-15: 50 damage per round
• Leve 16-20: 100 damage per round

These can swing +/-50% for various classes, with some coming ahead and others falling behind but providing utility benefits. And I know the martial-caster damage disparity exists hardcore in 5E, these are averages, and I bet casters are skewing these numbers way-way up. No wonder most people quit before level 10, and the balance and damage numbers feel wrong past level 10.

Is high-level 5E play really ten times the damage of level one? I guess with casters it is.

Low Fantasy Damage Scaling

The maximum level in LFG is 12, though there is an option to break the cap. The monsters do not have a level cap, so the higher-level creatures become these "boss monsters," which require larger parties (raids) to fight, and that is an interesting design choice. Damage per turn in LFG feels lower, though 2-weapon fighting does allow two attacks per turn (the second at a disadvantage), and some classes get 2 attacks (when a reroll is spent). Critical hits do maximum damage plus half-level, so a level 12 great sword hit by an 18 STR fighter would do 12 + 3 + 6, or 21 points of damage.

I am betting the average level 10 damage is a solid 2 hits from a d8 weapon plus STR mod, and add another 2 points on there for other factors, so let's call it 20 points a turn average martial damage at level 10 for burst damage, and 10 points damage otherwise. That is in the 5E ballpark, so it feels right, and the numbers do not feel like they get out of control.

Rogues at level 12 do 1d4+STR+2d8 with backstab damage and can reroll with an expenditure of a reroll die. That is, like, roughly 15 damage per turn, which is where I feel they should be.

I feel damage per round is around half that of 5E, which I do not mind since this makes monsters more challenging (use less of them), and it sets up a Dark Souls style of experience during battles. I love the max 12th level of characters, which means some monsters will out-level the characters, and they are the instant boss monsters that take an entire party with teamwork to defeat.

Also, this sets up MMO-style "raids" where 8-12 characters are required to take down an ultra-high-level monster, with likely a high mortality rate, but I have faith that the "massed attacks" benefit of 5E will come into play and make the fight easier just by numbers.

Monster Balance

As for monsters, I picked a random one out of the book (basilisk), and the stats were very similar to the 5E version. D&D 5E monsters have skills with levels, and in LFG, skills do not have levels and are the straight roll-under ability check style. It converts nicely if you drop the D&D 5E skill levels and just make the monsters roll under (with a reroll if needed).

Also, note that attack bonuses and damages may need to be recalculated, as LFG is a flat +1 per HD for monster attack bonuses (and a cap of +15), with non-fighter classes getting 3/4ths of the total bonus. For the most part, the damages and to-hits seem fine, but do some quick math before the encounter to double-check. Also, do not put human-class level characters higher than level 12 in the game without a good reason. and don't fret about monster abilities changing or some things feeling like they have extra powers - not every monster in the world is the same or should be.

So monsters feel 90% compatible, especially in the statistic, AC, unique ability, to-hit, and hit point areas - which is all I care about anyways. If Wizards ever "invalidates your 5E books," they will find a home with this system quite nicely. Granted, this is not a high-fantasy setting, so the plethora of magic items and ultra-fantasy magic will be reduced substantially, but if you want it in your game, it is still an option.

Also, remember since this game does not go beyond level 12, your max caster damage will be 12d6 for direct damage spells, and martial classes will be around 10-20 per turn. Monsters above 10 HD will be very dangerous foes, especially with the lower overall damage.

Character Options, Not Compatible

The only thing incompatible will likely be classes and races, and I would recommend sticking with the LFG ones just for that tighter balance and design. You do not want classes with that higher base-game damage output slipping into a Dark Souls-style game like LFG. I would prefer to drop a +2 sword into LFG than a level 1 D&D 5E fighter from the D&D Player's Handbook.

Overall, a Great Mix of OSR and 5E

I like this game a lot. It lets me play a sort of OSR-like version of 5E and that is cool. Why not just stay in the OSR? Rules and adventure support is way better there?

I admit, staying in my C&C and S&W mega-mix is a very cool place and gives me tons of adventures to play. The library I have for these two games is years of fun and it beats what LFG and 5E have to offer my a huge margin.

I do like 5E conceptually, and I want to see if there is anything to salvage here now that the edition is fading and I can take a look at the things I missed. A lot of what I missed I was happy to walk right by, since I am not into that science-fantasy thing that is all the rage for both D&D 5 and PF 2e at the moment (more planar in D&D 5, more steampunk in PF 2e). One of the best things about the OSR is they have taken the traditional fantasy space by storm, and if you want that classic "no tech, no planes" classic fantasy experience the OSR is the best place to get it.

Wizards & Paizo seem to be living in a bubble in Seattle where they think D&D = Guardians of the Galaxy anything goes science fantasy. They have abandoned any historical elements of the game. Honestly, any classic fantasy pretenses the game feels like it starts with serves as the MMO starting zone before your planar adventures begin. They kept this structure from D&D 4, and we felt it ruined every world the game touched.

And they left the entire classic fantasy genre to the OSR.

It is fun to see a game like Low Fantasy Gaming come and try to make a place for the genre I like in the 5E world. One world, historically based, less fantastic, dark fantasy, and cool.