There is a move away from D&D and d20. I even feel this. I'll explore various d20 games, including 5E, OSE, an AD&D clone, Shadowdark, OSRIC, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Pathfinder, and Swords & Wizardry, all of which share the same problem.
All of d20 is the same game.
d20 games rely on a sterile combat system: d20 versus AC and hit point damage.
To give it any feeling, you need to embellish the heck out of it. At a point, I lost interest and wanted the d20 vs. d20 monotonous rolling to end, and the "hit point battle" to be over with. Rest up, heal to maximum, and get on with the subsequent encounter, please.
In 5E, it gets worse. To "fix the problem," they turn each class and subclass into an ivory tower —a hyper-complicated, specialized, and unique white elephant that requires learning an entire rules subsystem that exists in no other class. It drives me up a wall, like the designers think they can "write games inside of classes" to shadow-puppet and pretend the game has depth.
Some of these class designs are more complicated than the entire game of Shadowdark.
Yet, the base combat rules for everyone else are just as plain, tasteless, and boring as they always are. Everyone else gets to whittle around with basic attacks.
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| MS Paint FTW. -Hak |
And in almost every classic adventure module, they will throw a few dozen monsters in a room, and I just don't care. The age of slogging through the slop fights of a party of eight versus two dozen monsters makes my eyes water, and I just want to walk away. Yes, d20 is easy and abstract. But it is boring.
A one-on-one fight with GURPS, Rolemaster, HARP, or Mythras is far more engaging and enjoyable. Give me a system where I genuinely care about my actions and the impact on my character. Give me a system where combat is deadly, and I have to think hard about whether I want to go that route.
Oh, and some of these other games have minion rules, so you don't need to track everything (GURPS, B417; Mythras, p111). Large cinematic fights are possible. Minions are a popular house rule for D&D 5E, but this is a holdover from D&D 4E, which was designed for those rules, and some of the class designs were built to be "minion mops."
And don't make the system so hard that it takes hours or a computer to figure out a character sheet. A computer sucks the life out of "pen and paper" games, when they should be on "pen and paper." I love GURPS, but I only use the character creation software. Any version of 5E has transitioned into a subscription and digital sales model, making it too expensive to play. I don't want pen-and-paper gaming to be "only for the rich" like most of entertainment is these days. Don't laugh, live sports of any kind are getting to be very expensive.
GURPS has the advantage of two very usable and supported computer systems: a paid-for system and a donor-supported system.
Mythras is a fantastic mix between a d100 system and B/X D&D, and we don't need any software.
Mythras Classic Fantasy strikes a balance between the d100 Mythras rules and simulating a classic fantasy experience with them. The technology level between the Bronze-age Mythras game and this isn't as wide as you think; plate armor and crossbows exist in each, and you get more tinkered "repeating crossbows" and other gadget-based gear in Classic Fantasy than you do Mythras.
The difference lies in the "classes" which act like a GURPS template out of Dungeon Fantasy, and the magic systems, which are closer to a B/X game. The power level in Classic Fantasy is higher, but at low levels, it is comparable to core Mythras.
Like GURPS's Dungeon Fantasy, Classic Fantasy "simulates" classes in the d100 system, where base Mythras is more "like GURPS" in that you get skills, and you do whatever you want. Classic Fantasy also simulates divine and arcane magic. A part of me finds Mythras' five magic systems fascinating, and I could build far more character types around them. A "thief" in basic Mythras could learn Mysticism and have monk-like powers to run up walls and deflect projectiles. That is cool.
In Classic Fantasy, you would need a monk to do all that cool stuff, whereas we can have a "magic thief" in Mythras. Oh, and in GURPS, too, we can do that there easily, just find powers that do that and spend the points. In Classic Fantasy, your thief would need to "learn" the Mysticism skill in-game and take that path of magic. This is possible after you start the game and are willing to make some adjustments later.
Mythras and Classic Fantasy are very compatible, and you could mix character types and magic systems. The magic in Classic Fantasy scales to a higher power level, but I need to test that.
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| My MS Paint Art. Not AI. -Hak |
Another interesting fact about Mythras is that every "combat special move" is open to all characters, and none of them are locked behind a class. You are living in a world where the only way to defend yourself is to stick a blade in someone else, stick arrows in their body and make them bleed, or crush their skull with a club. It is reasonable to assume that most people in this world who fight can trip someone, attack a piece of armor, attempt a disarm, bash, bypass armor, force a bleed, or impale a target.
This stuffy, "only my class can shield bash" sort of "King's Rules of Warfare" that D&D and most d20 games assume is sterile, boring, and unrealistic. Please, the only thing you are allowed to do on a turn is reduce the goblin's hit points and end your turn, no more, no less. Please refrain from attempting to "break the system" or being unrealistic by attacking the goblin's head. What are you, some sort of barbarian? We have rules, here, good sir!
D&D was made for kids, and it shows. There is only so long I can eat food and entertainment made for the youth before I want something more sophisticated and mature. Even today, the brutality of D&D is hidden behind "the hit points," and the game turns a blind eye to what is really going on. You "touch someone" with a "metal stick" and they "fall down."
In the real world, fighting with blades and bludgeons is a very messy and serious business to be involved with. The "happy idiots" in the D&D 2024 art do not do the genre any justice, instead making the game seem sterile and boring.
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| More MS Paint Art. No AI needed. -Hak |
Yes, I know, let people stunt in d20 games, and then be as descriptive as you want. But stunting is a house rule, and other games have better rules for this. I can target an unarmored location in GURPS, and get a combat special in Mythras that lets me do the same thing. My cleric is bringing my mace straight down on the goblin's unarmored head. Just like all the other characters in the art of D&D books, who never wear a helmet and think a dyed Supercuts hairstyle or a pair of cosplay Tiefling horns will protect them from a brain injury.
I am done with D&D's style over substance.
And games that give me the experience I want are out there, and do all this work for me.
The whole "flashy era" of D&D from 2014 to 2024 was garish, cartoonish, and unrealistic. This was the worst era of modern D&D by far, and it introduced the walled gardens, cringe lifestyle marketing, and paywalls. D&D 3.5E was the best version of D&D that Wizards ever put out, hands down, but it was horribly broken when compared to AD&D.
And even the OSR has inherited many of these problems, if not with the flashyness, but the boring, stale, d20 combat rules that are just number games disguised as roleplaying rules.
There comes a point where I look so hard to replace 5E, that I end up replacing all of d20 as the solution. GURPS is one answer, and Myrthras is the other.
