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.

Resolved: Paizo & The Archives of Nethys

It is nice to hear that the issues between the Archives of Nethys and Paizo are resolved. This should never have gotten to the level it did, and it feels like a lack of communication on all sides. Our community sites are special places, and they help share and promote the games we love. I bounced off Pathfinder 2, as it is better for groups than solo play, but I still like the system.

It's good to hear that this part of gaming's current woes is resolved in these horrible times for everyone.

Are Modern Games Doomed?

https://www.archivesofnethys.com/agreement.html

Some terrible news for open gaming today, as Paizo ends its partnership with the Archives of Nethys, the free online rules resource for everything Pathfinder and Starfinder.

At this point, if you invest in digital, ot support games that live behind paywalls, you need to ask yourself some hard questions. Many games are guilty too, such as 5E versions, where the SRD is free, but what you actually need to play (subclasses and character options) are locked behind book or PDF purchases.

When the major VTTs shut down and all those digital books are lost, nobody will get anything back. If D&D Beyond ever folds or is sold to a group that shuts it down, all of that is gone.

I also get why Paizo would go this way. Who would ever buy digital copies of Pathfinder 2 rulebooks with Nethys out there providing the more popular and free alternative? Major VTTs don't see any money from supporting Paizo games, nor will most people buy VTT books for something they can get for free, better supported elsewhere.

At this point, why wouldn't I only support games like Basic Fantasy or OSRIC? Kevin Crawford put a few of his core rule sets under a public domain CC license. The excellent 2E clone game For Gold & Glory, you can distribute the PDF for free as long as you aren't selling access to it; you can share it freely and post it on a website. Basic Fantasy's PDF is free, and the books are printed at cost.

We have far better alternatives.

When does modern gaming get to be too much?

If this were the world of open-source software, Pathfinder would be forked and cloned, and the free version would start development. It took far less for OpenOffice to be forked into LibreOffice. This is how the real world works.

But this isn't how the silly world of gaming works.

One group would attack the other for "hurting the game," and nothing that people swear they believe in, open and free gaming for everyone, would ever get done. People who complain that capitalism is ruining gaming will not support games owned and run by the community, and will go out of their way to attack those communities as they keep playing games printed by Wall Street. They won't consider free and open alternatives.

I will miss the old Nethys site.

It is the end of an era.

The 3.5E Era

The D&D 3.5E era inspired many fantastic games. In addition to D&D's "last best" version, we have a collection from that era and are still keeping tables playing some incredible games.

The most obvious is up first, Pathfinder 1e. This is still an S-Tier game, but I have learned to appreciate the original D&D 3.5E rules. The two are the same game, but their focus is entirely different. D&D 3.5E is purely a dungeon-crawler, whereas Pathfinder 1e is a fantasy story path game. This seems like splitting hairs, but once you look at the skill list of each game, plus the GM guides, you will see the differences clearly.

D&D 3.5E is still the best version Wizards of the Coast has released. The fully supported campaign guides seal the deal for me. If I want to play in Eberron, with Eberron-specific character options, 3.5E is the only way to go. The same applies to the Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, and the other settings supported during this era. In comparison, 5E is a generic fantasy game. At best, it does rules-light emulation of these settings, though rules-light seems arguable these days.

I can't play the original TSR settings with Pathfinder 1e; the game feels too Golarion-focused, and the unique character setting-specific options are manual imports and unsupported in Hero Lab. I would rather play the OG settings with the OG 3.5E books.

OG Golarion, as it existed in 2010, was still awesome before the PC changes came in. However, the world has been on a downhill path ever since, becoming more steampunk, cute, and too modern for my tastes.

If there were any setting I would play, it would be D&D 3.5E Eberron. I can't get all the special classes, toys, tech, options, and flavor as the original game running the original sourcebooks.

Another game from this era is Castles & Crusades, which is still going strong. This is my 5E-style "simplified emulation" game, but it feels throwback and retro in its style and vibe. C&C feels like old-school AD&D, but it is far easier with near-zero charts to reference during play. This game can be hacked to feel like 5E or an AD&D-style game. The characters are balanced, and you must play with old-school sensibilities.

This was the last game Gary Gygax played and was involved with, so it has his approval. It makes sense, especially for older players who have little time. C&C lets you have a full dungeon-crawl and character-building experience without needing online character sheets, complex rules, action types, or books full of charts. It just "does what it says" without too much fuss.

Any game where I can run characters off 4x6 index cards is a winner. The above is my current design, and I laser print these and have hundreds in a file box, ready to go. If I wanted to emulate a classic setting, such as Forgotten Realms, Castles & Crusades would be my go-to game. The characters are d20, while the rules emphasize simplicity and pulp-action.

Why take all the scaffolding of 5E, the action types, the heavy characters, the strange resting mechanics, the invincible characters, and all these MMO-inspired rules?

C&C does all the d20 I need.

Also, Amazing Adventures is built off this game engine, and it is an entertaining pulp-style modern d20 adventure game. This game needs more attention; it could play any TSR boxed set games (Top Secret, Gangbusters, Star Frontiers, Boot Hill) from back then and still feel like an authentic d20-type game in those genres.

AA is a new game that was published this year, too. So, the 3.5E Era games are still alive and well, and a new version of C&C is on the way, too, devoid of the OGL. AA seems like the beta test for C&C minus the OGL, and the next version looks promising.

OGL-free 3.5E Era games are incredible.

Mutants & Masterminds (3rd Edition) is another game from this era. A d20-based superhero game? This works well and is supported by an excellent line of books and Hero Lab support. M&M is the superhero game everyone forgets. Did you hear about that new Marvel game? The latest DC game? Every few years, the license for "licensed IP" heroes jumps again, and we still have Champions and M&M to use for super-powered gaming.

The superhero genre as a pop-culture phenomenon is stuck in a vast rut these days, as the IP is farmed, and 90% of what Hollywood makes for movies and TV is worthless as a source of inspiration. I suggest buying a few graphic novel collections from your favorite superhero eras, using those as your "team books," and creating the characters yourself. 

Don't look for other people's interpretations of heroes; start small. Choose street-level heroes to start, make them just starting out, pick your favorite two or three characters, choose one villain, and begin there. Also, you don't need to follow a comic story or quickly assemble an entire team. Let them pick the powers they want, and don't follow the official character guides for their builds.

Perhaps in your world, Batman and Captain America reluctantly team up, and the Justice League, Shield, the X-Men, or the Avengers will never be groups. Ban existing groups, factions, and teams, but use the characters and let them find each other, fight, team up, or never meet. Treat the characters as "players who log into a superhero MMO" and let them develop characters and form teams organically. Bad guys may not be bad guys; the books have yet to be written here.

You can write your own stories and comic books with a "new world and cold start," you will have more fun being creative with hero pairings and villains. Use your own heroes, licensed IP ones, or an entertaining mix. Drop everyone into "today's world" a few at a time, with nobody knowing what is going on, and begin the game fresh.

I pick up any "superhero encyclopedia" and instantly get overwhelmed. I am lucky to have the pre-Disney Marvel one, the last one they did as Marvel before the sale in 2009. While these are a good source of heroes' powers, the amount of plots, groups, and stories will overwhelm you.

Another fun 3.5E-aligned game is Dungeon Crawl Classics. This game leaned more towards the B/X and zero-edition style of play, but the Fort/Ref/Will saves give this game away. This is a 3.5E derivative game and goes hard on the gonzo, unpredictable, crazy, and mind-blowing style of fantasy where nothing is familiar, the world is on its head, and characters are larger than life.

DCC feels more like classic Greyhawk than any of these other games, especially the S-series modules, in which characters navigate deadly deathtraps built by liches, a mad wizard's volcano labyrinth, or the inside of an alien spaceship. Many of today's fantasy games have gotten too stale and predictable, with characters feeling set in stone and the same old product-identity monsters occupying differently shaped rooms. Magic has become MMO DPS in 5E, which is also far too predictable and reliable.

DCC is strange; the dice are bizarre, the game is a collection of random charts, and you have no clue what comes next. Even using this to play through 3.5E modules is a fun experience, and the entire "zero to hero" path for a collection of random no-names is like nothing in gaming. No "pet characters" exist here; this is chaos and emergent storytelling.

Mutant Crawl Classics and several other sister games fill out the line and give you a bunch of settings and base characters to choose from, all compatible. You have post-apocalyptic, science fiction, combat sports, superheroes, westerns, and many other "zine games" supported by this system that gives you near-infinite options.

And there are many other 3.5E games out there, including the Conan-inspired Hyperborea, a Traveller 20 clone, and others. You don't need to leave the 3.5E era to have a fantastic library of D&D classics, Pathfinder 1e, Gonzo Fantasy, Traditional Fantasy, Pulp Adventure, Science Fiction, and many others.

The 3.5E Era, and all the games derived from it, are the heart of gaming. There is a sphere of B/X-aligned games in the OSR, but when you just look at 3.5E, there is a lifetime of fun to be had here, both with classic and new systems, all having their roots in that early 2000s era of gaming, and the last, best-supported version of D&D ever published.

D&D 3.5E vs. Pathfinder 1e

I read a few posts comparing the games, and the overall feeling is Pathfinder 1e is a more streamlined version of D&D 3.5E, with a higher power level, smoothed out leveling, no dead levels, higher hit dice (no more d4 hit die classes), and enhanced low-end power.

A lot of people say both games aren't worth playing these days, since they take too much to learn, too much attention to detail, and players these days aren't patient enough to work through them to get enjoyment from the complex system. Other say skills are horribly unbalanced, with modifiers that can go up into the +50 range.

Some say the Pathfinder monsters are easier, and others say some of the 3.5E monsters are horribly broken and overly deadly.

Most have just given up and play Pathfinder 2E and 5E.

It is strange to see D&D 3.5E have the GURPS problem. We saw this as a simple game back in the day, and something like Rolemaster was challenging.

What I like specifically about D&D 3.5E is the prestige class system. In Pathfinder, they moved away from this concept, and either added prestige classes as subclass powers or invented entirely new classes that filled those subclass roles. It is easier to balance a class in isolation than it is a prestige class where you need to work into it, taking it anywhere from level 4 to 20, and potentially causing all sorts of unintended consequences.

But I really like the idea of starting off a fighter, and then working your way up into a prestige class, such as a divine crusader. Once you have 20-40 base classes, the only way you can create a "prestige class" is to multiclass and come up with a freakish combination. It doesn't even have a name or role in the world, just another "warlock-rogue-paladin" that can use eldritch whip, smite and backstab with it all in one attack. What even is that? I don't know, it just does something cool.

That level of character customization, where you are free to buy feats, put points into skills, and collect prerequisite powers and classes to get to a prestige class is cool. Ultimately, the system breaks apart when skills reach the +30 level, with a DC 40 of "near impossible" that is happening on a 50-50 chance. I remember DC escalation in this version, and seeing DCs from 30 to 50 was not uncommon in the D&D 3.5E rulebook.

Getting a "hostile" monster to the "helpful" attitude level, basically, an ally of the party, was a DC 50 diplomacy check. Given a +40 diplomacy skill, getting them indifferent (DC 25) or friendly (DC 35) was a given.

You can hate this as complete idiocy, or love this as ultra-high fantasy.

The D&D 3.5E Epic Level Handbook leans into this notion very hard. A bard can use performance skill, pass a DC 170 skill check, and turn a crowd of hostile monsters into fanatical supporters, willing to die for the character for any reason. That fort full of stone giants? Let's rock, and I will have them headbanging and causing a small earthquake. You do NOT get this level of hijinks and insanity in Pathfinder 1e, but you could see this in a game like Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Yes, this book was horribly broken. Modifiers over +100 mean nothing on a d20 roll. You begin to lose your mind and wonder, what the heck am I playing? This is the sort of game that makes you crave low fantasy again.

Personally, I think it is cool. For all the myths of "high level characters being more powerful than gods" - this book delivers on the promise. This was our version of Greyhawk back in the day. NPCs hanging out in Greyhawk city were literal gods, bored with the universe and spending their time in bars as they sought out things which could challenge them. They were the "bored superheroes" and always fun for my players to pick on and steal things from.

But name me a game that does zero to infinite power like this? Outside a superhero game that infinitely scales, I can't really name one.

Is D&D 3.5E better than Pathfinder 1e?

Okay, here we go. Prepare for impact.

I love Pathfinder 1e, one of my all-time legendary games. No question the entire game is a masterpiece. It fixes many of the 3.5E problems. The design is solid. The expansions are legendary. The volume of work, to this day, beats any edition of the game.

I love Pathfinder 1e.

Is it an S-Tier game.

Hands down.

But the game has problems, in fact, it inherits all the 3.5E ones and adds its own. There are a lot of "gimme" powers, like the force missile (and other similar 3 + INT mod per day) shootee-powers that all wizard schools got, which were the precursors of today's cantrips. In 3.5E, the wizard is closer to the AD&D 2e wizard, and you get no "laser pistol" like you do in Pathfinder or 5E - your memorized spells are it.

Yes, that means in 3.5E, wizards are back to slings, hand crossbows, or buying wands of magic missiles, but that is spending money and thinking cleverly at the low levels. This is old-school and cool; it isn't a problem. Also, you are spending money, which is good. Too many modern games have nothing to do with money, and it is useless as a concept.

The hit dice are too high in Pathfinder 1e. I like the classes with the d4 hit die, and that feels like D&D to me. Damages are higher in Pathfinder 1e than in D&D 3.5E.

Pathfinder 1e also has the Golarion new-car scent all over the game, and it is hard to break it apart. It heavily leans into the imagery of Golarion, with the football-headed goblins and Paizo tropes, and I can't get away from that flavor. Pathfinder makes the same mistakes D&D 4 did, as it heavily leans into product identity and owned IP. Pathfinder and D&D 4E do not feel like generic fantasy games.

Some of the cutesy tropes in Pathfinder changed the world. Goblins are not enemies anymore since they are so iconic to the world and setting. You make the art appealing and endearing, and the entire game slides down into relativism, making every monster your best buddy and pal. Evil doesn't want its own space, and any land given will be used as a base to attack others. They want to sack, desecrate, and burn down everything that doesn't worship the horned devil.

Why?

The horned devil says so.

The line between good and evil was obvious in D&D 3.5E. There were no "story game" mechanics tracking corruption (Rise of the Runelords, later, Pathfinder Horror Adventures) that gave you an excuse for why your character did something evil. In D&D 3.5E, if your character did something evil, it was 100% player choice, and you lived with the consequences. I was shocked when I realized how stark the choices are in D&D 3.5E versus Pathfinder "padding" your choices with "uh-oh!" style rules.

In Pathfinder, the line between good and evil is blurred, and in Pathfinder 2E, there is no line. the evolution of tieflings from being half-demon blooded dhampirs who fought against demonic urges to pastel-skinned cosplay costume horn and tail options to use with a Russian accent - and this tells you everything you need to know about modern performative, influencer-friendly gaming.

Today's games are Fortnite-inspired dress-up pop-culture tripe. We left story gaming a while ago; it is all cosplay adventures. It might as well be the "banana guy" in the dungeon.

D&D 3.5E felt more generic and usable for any fantasy world.

Pathfinder 1e was written for Golarion.

The classic D&D 3.0 Deities and Demigods book had 40 pages devoted to the D&D pantheon. Another 100 pages were devoted to classic pantheons, such as the Greeks, Egyptians, and Asgardians. Most of today's DDG-style books focus exclusively on the "Licensed IP" deities, and Pathfinder does that, too.

Generic fantasy gaming feels like it died with D&D 3.5. Past this point, you either had to go to the OSR, or ignore huge parts of Pathfinder, D&D 4, and D&D 5 just to get what we had back then.

A nice 3.5E SRD can serve as a generic set of fantasy rules for any world, and it makes consistent sense while preserving a lot of the old-school assumptions of magic, classes, and how a fantasy world works. A 3.5 SRD does not have the "owned IP" of Wizards and Paizo and feels genre-neutral.

We need a Creative Commons 3.5E SRD, and that would go the next step into fixing the damage done to the community. I hope this happens, and I am ready to mend those bridges.

Besides, if I were running Wizards, there would be a drop down of "what edition do you want to play" on D&D Beyond, and it would be an inclusive, for every fan place - zero-edition all the way to 5.5E. The company needs to get out of "owning rules" and deeply into the "social network" part of the hobby, and this is where there is money to be made. Same maps and figures, same micro-transactions, the rules are just the backend parts you swap out for your favorite version.

Wizards, please, Creative Commons all your edition SRDs. This is the only way to force yourself to move forward. Holding onto these will force you into "old think" and keep you from realizing the dream of creating a space where everyone can play, no matter what edition they prefer.

You won't make money selling books.

You will make money being the place to play them.

D&D 3.5E feels closer to AD&D than it does 4E or 5E. Pathfinder 1e feels closer to D&D 4E and 5E. There was a point there in the 2010s where things moved away from the old-school, and embraced the Internet and social networking. The games embraced identity. The old-school assumptions were cast aside. You saw this even in the creation of the OSR at this time, D&D 3.5E could hold its own against the OSR, and you didn't need older editions. When Pathfinder 1e came along, the same rules felt and played like something modern and slick. This was the fork in the road that created the split between modern gaming and the OSR.

D&D 3.5E is the last of the old-school games. I still criticize it for the scaling-hit points, but that trend started in AD&D 2nd Edition. It is also heavily inspired by MtG, but not to the point where character builds take over the game. Since you don't get "heaps of special abilities" when you multiclass, it isn't as beneficial as in Pathfinder or D&D 5.

If you do multiclass, you are likely working towards a prestige class, which was mostly done away with for the most part in Pathfinder and all versions of D&D after this. Prestige classes are fantastic, and they give you something to work towards. I miss these. In new games, they constantly make "new classes," and you have nothing to work toward. The prestige classes in 3.5E are still amazing; you have a laundry list of prerequisites to fill, and once you do, you can start leveling up a new excellent class.

Parts of 3.5E are hilariously anarchistic and silly, like the "use rope" skill (that had a synergy with the climb skill) or how there is no "acrobatics" skill, and it is split into "jump, tumble, and balance." But these quirks make the game endearing. Skills have synergies! There is no penalty for unskilled use; it just defaults to your ability modifier. Some skills disallow unskilled use. You get a lot of skill points and can customize deeply.

In fact, these skills are very narrowly defined and apply to specific dungeon situations. I could see a wizard buying a few points of the balance skill (not a class skill for them), especially if dungeons have parts like shimmying along cliffs or narrow ledges. I can't see a wizard in modern games buying "acrobatics," a terrible skill with an awful name. Acrobatics sounds like my character will jump through flaming hoops in a circus. Pathfinder 1e adopted the acrobatics skill and piled jump, balance, and tumble under it - and it was a terrible decision.

D&D 3.5E skills were designed with the dungeon in mind.

Pathfinder 1e was designed as a generic RPG ruleset.

Skills' quirky and clunky nature is a charm of the system, not a problem that needs to be fixed and streamlined. Sometimes I feel the "acrobat" skill in newer games gets ignored, whereas here, having three different parts to improve means you will use them - or decide a few parts aren't for you, so you will pass on them. Plus, "use rope" is so stupidly nerdy and geeky that it has a charm of its own.

Pathfinder 1e was designed to sell "adventure paths," which were the beginning of "story gaming." Thus, the skills had to be more like a generic game to cover all the situations in the paths. D&D 3.5E was designed as a tabletop miniatures game, with skills and abilities that laser-focus on dungeon crawling. In D&D 3.5E, the story was equally the reasoning for the dungeon and the stories the players wrote through play. In Pathfinder, the story was primarily a sales vehicle for adventures.

I can play D&D 3.5E without a story and just as a dungeon crawler. Oh, you need to make a balance check for these squares to pass! D&D 3.5E was designed for a younger audience as a board game.

With Pathfinder, I can, too, but the game is designed for story gaming and leaned into mature themes to sell itself as such (and, in many cases, pulled them back from 3.5E).

Pathfinder 2E, ironically, abandoned the mature themes and returned to being a board game.

Story gaming is not dungeon crawling. I can play story gaming with any rules-light game and have a better time. True dungeon crawling is a board game.

Pathfinder has a lot of flashy, beautiful art. This was the game to play in the 2010s. It did a lot of things right. But it changes a lot, and it introduces a lot of modern mechanics. The game exists because Wizards made mistakes and abandoned a good thing. Pathfinder and D&D 5 feel closer to ARPGs and MMOs than the tabletop gaming I grew up with. Pathfinder 2 went its own way.

Pathfinder 2 also has this corporate aesthetic, a definite look and feel, and it is warping into an extreme style today, almost entirely stylized and overly careful and in some ways, oddly pedestrian with a softer feel. Pathfinder 1e had an edge to it.

D&D 3.5E has a unique style, stylized but classic in some ways. I liked the "lost tomes of knowledge" feeling, like the books were a part of the world you were playing in. Parts of the art were sketchy, like the books were created by adventurers or wizards, and informing you on how to survive in this world.

But more than presentation, playing D&D 3.5E felt like you were navigating through rules, class progression, levels, stories, and the world. When you got to a prestige class, it was the feeling of arriving to a new land after a long voyage. The books as tomes of knowledge helped reinforce the concept, and they were a part of the game.

No, it isn't better. Both games are products of their times. But D&D 3.5E is completely different than Pathfinder 1e. Calling Pathfinder 1e "D&D 3.75E" is a false statement, since Pathfinder embraces modern design theories, which you see advanced in Pathfinder 2E.

Also, D&D 3.5E feels more like Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms to me than D&D 4 or 5E ever will, or for that matter, Pathfinder 1e. This is the world's "home system," and this is when all the new content for these worlds stopped. The world books, gazetteers, and guides all stopped here - and there is a reason for that. Modern designs need to do specific worlds better, while 3.5E's design, especially with prestige classes, could see you working towards taking a particular job or role in the world as part of your progression. I can buy a book covering a part of the world and find new prestige classes in there.

In 5E? Every character multi-classes and combos these generic base classes, and you don't work towards anything except more damage and greater power.

But 3.5E exists as a system that was "taken away from us."

Pathfinder 1e was a reimagining with a modern style and art, and it was not the same thing. A lot of the rules were SRD clones, but going back and reading 3.5E again, I can say PF was a different game entirely built out of the same parts with a few upgrades and designed for a specific setting and story gaming.

We have never had anything like 3.5E since.

While D&D 3.5E and Pathfinder 1e are almost the same game, there are two key areas of difference.

Design and tone.

One is a story game that sells a world and adventure paths and begins the slide into identity gaming.

The other is a dungeon game meant to be played with miniatures, which preserves the old-school tone.

Goodbye, Pathfinder 1e

My Pathfinder 1e books are in storage now.

I tried running a GURPS campaign, but meh. I was fighting the world more than I was having fun. With this much work, I would create an original world and have fun there instead. Dungeon Fantasy needs its own world and setting, which I have and will talk about soon.

Theme park worlds were excellent in the 2010s. Today, it is a cultural appropriation city. I would rather have a dedicated Egypt setting and Fantasy Africa than this. Everywhere you go, a Fantasyland, Adventureland, or other Disney-like little theme park area sits there and says, "Not Ravenloft, not Egypt, not Vikings, not science-fantasy, but close enough!"

Dedicated settings where it is one world, all Norse, with races and cultures that fit in that world, are far more immersive than this messy mix of everything, every culture, every race, and every culture. They end up being buffets of low-quality food but with great choices. At the end of the meal, you end up feeling sick.

Theme park worlds are also a source of the rot within the hobby, inviting in endless expansion books, grift opportunities, and encouraging every player to pick an "alien" background and nothing fits together; no one has to be a part of the culture of the world, and everyone is a special something or another. Pathfinder 1e was going there with the Advanced Race Guide, and there were far too many player races in the game by the end of the edition.

I would rather play in a Norse-themed world, where I have to read about the cultures, understand the diverse peoples, and make some hard choices on who my character is in this world. You play D&D or Pathfinder 2, and you will get the person at the table wanting to be a talking plant or Muppet and be the goofball when everyone else is trying to play seriously.

Theme park worlds invite everyone to be "the outsider," and they just feel touristy. Once you get the tourist, the planar crowd is not far behind, and then everyone is a particular "someone from somewhere else," at that point, I don't care about their characters since the players are not showing any effort to care about the world I am running.

One of the most toxic trends in modern gaming is escapist identity marketing; the game has to support being an anything tourist, and everyone that plays wanders through a theme park.

At this point, most locals look at the PCs like the locals look at tourists who wander through, destroy things, and take all the parking places.

Runequest's Glorantha killed the Pathfinder Golarion theme park for me. There are "elder races" here, but most of the backgrounds are a variety of diverse humans and mixes in between. There is much diversity here; you must read and care about the world to unlock it.

The world has a few themed areas that aren't blatantly "theme parky" like other worlds. These cultures may mirror some on Earth, but they are ultimately their own, with history and plenty of detail and flavor. And there is a ton of history to read. Runequest describes the world in one book, and there is a unique two-volume set if you want to dive deeper.

The Great Wheel and Pathfinder's Golarion have become far too cartoony and childish for my taste. I outgrew them. They are turning into this mass market; look at the cute things, smug heroes with attitudes, and mass market experiences that any 3D Hollywood animated movie for kids is these days. Both feel like Pixar or Dreamworks animated movie games; the worlds are bland, too much steampunk, and uninteresting. Some of the worlds rely too much on the old guard remembering them, and they are currently unsupported and left to decay.

Pathfinder 1e was visually appealing because of the "rule of cool" art. All of that has been erased and feels like a hangover in the setting today, a party the company wants to forget happened. The art can't carry a campaign setting alone, though. It is also dated and a little silly, and I prefer stylistic realism with a more serious tone. Even the remastered art tries too hard, feeling strangely surreal and unrealistic. Final Fantasy swords larger than a body belong in video games for kids. This is fantasy, but I outgrew that style when I gave up my PlayStation 1.

Give me a serious-toned world with history and a defined set of cultures and backgrounds, and let me enjoy digging in deep and being rewarded for my research.

And I was a super fan of Pathfinder 1e, and it all fell apart. I realized I had outgrown it, and there were better things to spend time with. The whole theme park thing made me cringe. I don't want to play in a rip-off of ancient Egypt, and Castles & Crusades has a Fantasy Egypt campaign guide where you can play in the actual setting in a fantasy context. There is far better out there, and a dedicated setting will make players invest in the setting with their background choices rather than play "another Dragonborn."

I am not selling the PF 1e books, but they are stored away and out of my mind.

Class Structure

Staying with 5E, even the Open 5E versions, is hard. However, it is easier for groups to play class-based games since roles are easier to define. You are the mage, rogue, fighter, and healer. These roles are iconic and easily adopted. You can pick a class and play.

Class and level games are better for groups.

I play solo.

The 5E game structure gets in the way. I still like A5E and ToV and will keep and support them, but I need to see myself playing them regularly since I have better. Even with ToV's pillars of play support, I have games designed decades ago that do far better overland survival and social encounters.

New games are not always better.

I am slowly switching to GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy for my fantasy gaming, and I could not be happier. A more deadly system with fewer hit points, more combat options, and better character customization than anything I could ever get in 5E, no matter how much money I spend. I control how much magic is in the world, not the game designers.

The big difference here is that the rules aren't meant to be exploited but intended to be used. Sometimes I feel D&D has gotten too "Magic: The Gathering," where every class, subclass, multiclass combo, and option can be exploited and abused for maximum winning potential. The game is defined by the abuse of the rules.

I am also looking at Runequest. The BRP system does not have classes either.

Can GURPS be abused and exploited? Yes, but the exploit and abuse culture isn't ingrained here. A group can say build cheese and ban it, or pare it down to a level that works, doesn't blow out the game, and makes it unfun for everyone. Put a cap on Dodge and Parry. If someone is getting too many attacks, reduce them. Or you can play blown out, and every group will have a different feeling on how they like things to work. Put a cap on character points and disadvantages. This game has many ways to limit character power and complexity, and it isn't hard to recognize builds that exploit an area of the rules.

Then again, one-trick ponies in GURPS who put all their points into one combo usually die quickly once they realize a balanced character is better for survival. One freak ice storm will promptly sort out the cheese builds, so natural selection will care for characters who abuse the rules.

I am doing a GURPS Pathfinder game because I have all of the pawns for PF 1e and like that set. This is in the original world; the 3.75E rules never happened, and we are in the early days of the world. The world isn't 3.75E at all; it is more the classic Dungeon Fantasy and GURPS magic systems, where magic is still a mystery and strange to the world. It isn't low magic, more like medium magic. Magic isn't typical or every day, but some practice and are known - and feared.

One thing D&D gets wrong about magic is "free" arcane magic. Cleric magic can anger the gods, and you get turned off, so you may have to do quests to keep in good favor. Wizards and sorcerers are free spigots of magic power, and it leads to abuse. While I like DCC's costs to magic, the actual cost of magic should be societal, and reaction modifiers to magic should be based on the cultures and suspicion levels. Demons should offer "free spells" and "free character points" - just take this slight disadvantage, and more power can be yours! That should be enough to make the general population mistrust casters, and those seen playing with "evil magic" like necromancy could be run out of town or killed.

I hate the D&D and Pathfinder neutrality towards evil magic. My character is a necromancer and proudly proclaims it! I am a warlock who serves the elder gods of madness! What do you mean the town is trying to lynch us? Even druids could be seen with suspicion, and that has historical precedent. Witches? There is a lot there to unpack. Good towns will not see their characters as welcome, and they could even be hunted as enemies.

But you are punishing players by taking away options!

I'm sorry, but the town does not like you. They don't want you raising dead grandpa to use as a minion.

Too often, modern fantasy games put your mind in a state of the "MMO stupid zone" and force you to treat every option as equal and acceptable to all cultures. But it is fantasy! That is not a blanket excuse since fantasy can mean so many things - to put one definition on the word is highly rude to others who may have other points of view. Fantasy is what the group says it is, and it can be anything.

So, players need to be careful about how they build their characters. Even a thief with a kleptomaniac disadvantage could cause serious trouble for a party. Certain disadvantages are minor, while entire power systems and character types may have the peasants getting out the pitchforks and torches.

This also opens up evil campaigns if you look at it another way. Go to the World Wound and join the forces of evil. Start your beginner adventures there, spreading corruption and darkness. The rules do not "default to a heroic reality." If you play an evil demonologist, go live that life and get stabbed in the back—maybe. Stab them in the back first and prove your worth; this is evil.

This is another problem with 5E rulesets, the default hero mentality. Even the art is overly happy and heroic. The game isn't a simulation of anything; it is that typical "heroes doing dungeons" thing. GURPS doesn't have alignment; it has social and mental disadvantages. The world will react to your actions accordingly.

When you remove the Pathfinder 1e rules (or 5E, for that matter) and really think about how this world could be, your mind opens, and you realize there is much more depth here than that heroic party of level-one adventurers killing rats and goblins.

Dungeon Fantasy & GURPS

I was redesigning some of the Pathfinder 1e iconic characters using Dungeon Fantasy, and I had this moment. The iconic Pathfinder characters are perfect in GURPS; they're shockingly good.

I am slowly getting system mastery over characters in this area, and I can express a lot of different weapon combos and fighting styles, along with quick draw options, special attacks, amped skills, advantages to support special combat moves, and armor training to increase protection.

I look at Pathfinder 1e, B/X, 5E, or even Pathfinder 2E. Why?

I feel like a computer programmer going back and being asked to use a "toy" programming language to complete a task. What do you want me to do, roll ability scores, pick a class, and roll hit points?

Why?

I can't do anything with this.

Merisiel was a good example; her bio says, "She isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer." But she solves all her problems with her knives. High DX, drop IQ for skills and abilities. Her IQ thief skills suffer, but her DX ones are great. Her sleight of hand, traps, concealment, and other IQ skills are below average. Her stealth, climbing, and escape skills are all 18-20. Her knife skills are equally high, giving her options for special attacks.

I don't get that in Pathfinder 1e; maybe she has fewer skill points. So what? Well, um, some of the DEX skills she could have bought with those skill points from INT, she can't buy - so she could be better at them. Sorry! INT gatekeeps DEX skills in this version! In GURPS, she buys points in skills linked to DEX. If her IQ is low, so are her IQ skills.

I can work on those and improve them or lean into DX and combat abilities. She may need to do social things. Perhaps she will learn magic? Does she go more dodgy or more armor-skills? I don't know.

The campaign will determine how she progresses.

And every campaign will be different.

She could progress a million ways depending on the story she goes through.

I am not looking at a thief progression chart and planning it all out. I don't know what's coming for her. She could get corruption and a disadvantage and gain dark shadow magic powers. She may lean more into thief IQ skills and need to disarm traps and do all sorts of smarts-thief stuff.

For solo play, this is super high motivation. Her starting character sheet is just that, a starting point. I will probably copy this starting character and use a duplicate for her first campaign. It is a good design that meshes with her gear, skills, and backstory. If I learn things, I can tweak her starting build.

She can go infinite ways, depending on the story's needs and how I will take her.

I look at 5E and B/X, see those build paths and skill progression charts, and sigh. There it is. It is all planned out for me. No imagination, story, or future experiences are needed. Follow the charts or the best build paths on some forum somewhere or multiclass away - you will be fine. You will have high DPS. Your passive perception will spot all traps. That old list of thief skills will always be 50% since modules scale in difficulty anyway.

I am not interested in soloing along a preset path.

I can't do anything with this.

I get this sad feeling that today's players think they know what roleplaying and character-building are. They think multiclassing, some broken class combo the play-testers never found, is "good character building." They don't even know 1% of the joy of building a character and not having a path to follow. The freedom of making your own build. Yes, there are broken things in GURPS, too, but once you find those, you can avoid them for the game's good. Or only dip into them a little and not lean so hard it breaks. But there are a million other ways every character can go.

In level-based games, my fighter will get 5 levels of roleplaying and story XP and somehow be better able to fight and kill. It doesn't even make sense. How did that happen?

If you don't have a say in your character builds, I can't say you are truly roleplaying.

You are just pushing a build along a level track predetermined for you.

And very little that happens to you matters anyway, since your character doesn't reflect those experiences.

Dungeon Fantasy vs. Pathfinder 1e

 

The two fantasy games I have fighting it out on my most-played shelves are Pathfinder 1e and Dungeon Fantasy. 5E is off to the side, and I am waiting for Tales of the Valiant to drop. Unsurprisingly, the final two on my shelf are the games that give me the best character-building options.

Pathfinder 1e has a decade of options and choices.

Dungeon Fantasy has infinite choices.

A traditional class framework is where I begin in Dungeon Fantasy, a 250-point build that gives me the equivalent of a level 5-8 Pathfinder 1e character - the established hero. In Dungeon Fantasy, you aren't starting out as a level-one cannon fodder newbie. This leads to the game being less new-player friendly, but you start off pretty capable and the baseline established hero.

The excellent Delvers to Grow series of books for Dungeon Fantasy solves the complexity problem by creating lower-point starting builds. These are way less capable and will have a higher mortality rate, but the complexity is lower, and the things you start with are much less, so you can grasp game rules better without choice paralysis.

Pathfinder? I like the build system, and I loved the original 1e world before it turned into a modern steampunk setting, an overly safe and non-triggering space. The new world feels far too contemporary for me; the age of adventure is over, and we have moved into the 20th century. The 2010s version of Golarion is far superior to the 2020s, and it still feels like Conan - it is epic, whereas the Pathfinder 2E world feels like a tourist attraction with Harry Potter vibes. The new team just can't recapture the spark of the classic world, and they changed it so much that it lost the feeling of classic 1970s fantasy.

The 2E rules are better than 1e. They are just not my thing.

The 2E world is a YA novel.

I am slowly getting the feeling that what I will be doing is a GURPS-Finder campaign.

I like the rules I enjoy, and the character builds in Pathfinder 1e are good; in a GURPS-like system, they are great. My starting builds are just that, starting points. I can take them in any direction I want from there. If I wish my wizard's following 250 points to be all fighter abilities, so be it.

This is the "taking a character in a new direction" thing, which is why I love GURPS. With d20 level-based games, my story is done at level one - at least in progress. I can read the book, plan my path, and then go through the required number of dungeons to start up the level chart. I know where this character is going; it is a matter of time before the boxes are checked, and I have a level 9 sorcerer.

With GURPS, my sorcerer could get involved in a ton of roleplaying and court intrigue, and all of a sudden, I am spending my following 40 points on social abilities. And I am not "looking for a bard to do it" - I need to improve my character's abilities in those areas. This makes it much more solo-friendly since my character morphs into a set of powers, skills, and abilities I will need for what is happening now and whatever I encounter.

My character's advancement path is their history of adventure.

It's not some book's pre-planned path for me.

It is tough; I have a lot of Pathfinder 1e books, and I like to feel like I am using them. But I greatly appreciate the OG Golarion setting more than the Pathfinder 1e rules. Recolored through a GURPS lens, OG Golarion would rock. You don't have these level 20 superheroes running around sneezing on goblins and killing them without a worry. The artificial power inflation is gone, and everyone exists on a flatter power scale.

But these days, games with pre-planned character progression tracks are lame. This is the same feeling I had in the late 1980s when GURPS 3e killed AD&D and the heavily censored AD&D 2nd Edition. Everyone was playing GURPS after AD&D died.

GURPS, Battletech, and Vampire were three reasons TSR filed for bankruptcy.

The biggest was Magic: The Gathering.

You can also put Rifts and Shadowrun in that group somewhere.

D&D is not immune, nor was it ever.

The arguments against level systems and pre-planned level-based advancement are the same today as they were then. Today, people have given up on being creative and wanting to create their own characters and are content with "gaming the systems" that other people design for them.

Today's gamers? Breaking a game with an exploit is good character design.

Using GURPS to run Golarion is like "Pathfinder: The Movie" or an HBO series set in that world. A producer or director will first tamp the power level to make it realistic and believable. Those who play the game will sit in the theater and wonder where the teleport and wish spells went, and those would have never been even in the script since they would have ruined the movie. Magic will work differently, the fights will be more realistic, and everything will feel "off" to people watching the movie.

Game worlds and movie worlds are night and day.

GURPS is the game every setting ends up with. After everything goes out of print or is pulled from the shelves for licensing issues, GURPS will give the world a system to call home.

Pathfinder 1e: Timelines

Can't you just play the old world with the new rules?

I suspect after reading this, most people will - it is easy, the books are readily available, and for most, it will be straightforward to just do a tone change, get group signoff, and play with the old lore instead of Lost Omens - easy-peasy.

Lost Omens feels off, like the TikTok version of Golarion. The tone is all wrong; it goes hard on that: Burning Man, Day of the Dead, Harry Potter, Starbucks, music festival, and neon-pastel aesthetic that culturally appropriates from everywhere and turns it into millennial selfie bucket-list tourism for Instagram. To be honest, many Wizards releases go here as well.

Stop it, please.

There was a time when everyone overused the Day of the Dead festival in every product, and I sat here shaking my head, wondering when they would quit and stop saying 'Us too!' It was cringeworthy and kept happening whenever a cultural festival went 'pop' on social media. At best, it feels like a desperate plea for attention; at worst, it is borrowing another culture's traditions to sell your books.

Where the game's original creators borrowed from every fantasy novel in sight to create the game in the 1970s, today's creators borrow every bucket list fad from social media to sell it.

I know, every Wall Street company does it!

Can't we be better than them? Can't we have creator visions and creations, things we have never seen before? Or are we doomed to culturally appropriate every pop festival and fad on social media as our fantasy worlds?

The rules are great, but the new world is too damn safe, colorful, modern, and happy.

It feels like a fantasy world for people who hate fantasy worlds.

Golarion went from a theme-park world to selfies at theme parks.

Nothing stops me from using 2E to recreate the OG world, and the world is of my making. Most people play in their own worlds and must remember the official setting, which means nothing. If I were playing in my game world, Pathfinder 2E would be a better setup since the core books feel more setting-agnostic than the Pathfinder 1e game.

However, Pathfinder 1e worked hard on blending the rules, setting, supplements, and splat books into the game. I can get a guide detailing one part of the world or organization and get talents, spells, and powers unique to that group.

Does 1e become a slog at high levels where it is easy to break the game? Yes, but this is true about most games, even 5E. But I am not cross-referencing tags for every item, power, feat, and ability. Once you learn the 2E system, it becomes second nature and easier than 5E since the rulings are clear, but having played 3E and 3.5E, my heart is still in Pathfinder 1e. Granted, they still do the hit-point scaling that Wizards introduced to make high levels seem more powerful (multi-attacks and the like), and that slows down the gamer compared to any OSR game.

The Wizard's changes to D&D (3E and on) to damage and AC scaling ruined the game's balance.

The B/X original AC, damage, and hit point scales are D&D.

Of the Wizards scaling, 3.5E is the best (low levels are similar), 4E is the worst (3X), and 5E falls in the middle but is still wrong (2X).

One of the things that makes Pathfinder 1e so amazing is Hero Lab. I bought into this, collecting the books in the system and real life for over 10 years, and the amount of depth and data here amaze me. I usually dislike computerized character creation systems, but this one is complete, especially with community content. The online version of PF 1e is also near-complete (but with no community content), and you can also buy into PF 2 and Starfinder (online only, $25/year). Also, Tales of the Valiant is coming.

Supporting other games is the best of all worlds.

But the new world isn't the same as the old. It is hard to put into words, but it feels empty as I flip through the Lost Omens 2E books. The art is pretty but rarely gives a sense of danger or impending threats. Some entries talk about "tourist economies" of places like the world has mass transit and airports. Many pieces of art float on a page, showing a figure, but they need places where they live.

It all falls flat to me.

Pathfinder 1e: The Drow, Part 1

In the core rulebook, drows are mentioned in an art and fiction piece at the beginning of the character's chapter, in languages, there is a poison named after them, and they are mentioned as being a possible starting race in the bestiary. So they are lore in 1e, and the pictures at the beginning of chapter 2 paint them as wicked, blueish-skinned dark elves. There is also a nice illustration of the city as well, and it is very evocative and striking.

With a small army of merciless dark elf warriors fast on their heels, escape from the drow city seemed unlikely. While the human Sajan and gnome Lini might survive as slaves, Seltyiel knew the drow would only keep him, a half-elf, alive long enough to boast over while they tortured him.

Cursing his mixed blood again, he sneered and turned abruptly, instantly summoning to mind the words of his most devastating arcane fire.

“Come on, you fungus-eating freaks!” he shouted at the relentless drow. “Let me show you how elves from the surface world dance!”

-Pathfinder 1e Core Rulebook, page 19

We next meet them in the Bestiary, where they do not have HD and use character class levels.

Although related to the elves, the drow are a vile and evil cousin at best. Sometimes called dark elves, these cunning creatures prowl the caves and tunnels of the world below, ruling vast subterranean cities through fear and might. Worshiping demons and enslaving most races they encounter, the drow are among the underworld’s most feared and hated denizens. 

-Pathfinder Bestiary, page 114

Also, in this entry, it is said, "one of the many demon gods to whom the drow offer worship," so it is left vague. A "spider queen" could be in there, but it isn't laid out explicitly. It also says they are chaotic evil, so it would be demons they worship and not lawful evil devils. So, if we don't want to do a "Great Value renamed spider queen," what are our choices for who they worship?

This leads us to the Lords of Chaos book, and our drow will diverge from their D&D brethren. Let's say no spider queen, and we need to use the choices from this book. The choices we pick here will define our not-D&D drow in ways we might not expect and put a little more thought into who they could have been if Lolth-envy hadn't dominated the lore for them in Golarion.

I know, what? No spider queen?

Who runs drow like that?

First, we need to exclude demons that their enemies could follow, environments they don't like, and concepts where they don't have a frame of reference. Dagon, a demon lord of the sea, is an obvious example. Any demon that serpent-folk, frogs, troglodytes, or other natural enemies are out. Nurgal (deserts and sun), Shivaska (clocks and aberrations), Pazuzu (the sky), and Jezelda (the moon) are all out.

Who are the best ones left? I need to include entries where drow are specifically called out as worshippers. My top twelve are:

• Abraxas = forbidden lore, magic, and snakes
• Andirifkhu = illusions, traps, and knives
• Areshkagal = greed, magical and mundane portals, and riddles
• Cyth-V’sug’s = disease, fungus, and parasites
• Flauros = fire, salamanders, volcanoes
• Haagenti = alchemy, invention, transformation (drow flesh warping mentioned)
• Jubilex = ooze monsters, poison, sloth
• Mazmezz = bindings, driders, and vermin (spiders too, but not the same)
• Nocticula = assassins, darkness, lust
• Shax = envy, lies, murder
• Socothbenoth = perversion, pride, and taboos
• Zura = blood, cannibalism, and vampires

That is quite a rogue's gallery of demons and paints them as very dark and twisted kin. Seeing this list makes me sad that more effort was not put into them in 1e, and the team spent a little time creating their own drow flavor that had nothing to do with the archetypical "spider queen" of D&D.

I would put a few of these above others, but I would not discount some strange ones. Snake-themed drow and fire drow sound very cool. Vampire drow cults sound amazing.

Notice no Orcus and no undead except for vampires. So out is the drow who summons the dead. Other significant omissions are the four major evil gods of the setting, including Lamashtu. So, no drow that breeds monsters. No Baphomet so no minotaur allies. No werewolves. No hags. No winged creatures. No storms. No gargoyles. No troglodytes. We can start to see enemies appearing.

In the book that covers devils, drow is never mentioned as worshippers, so get that lawful evil drow society out of your head.

In fact, if you look at this list and put a little effort into it, they come out much better than D&D's dark elves. The mess of temples and beliefs in drow society is something akin to a horror movie of nightmares and sadism. These cults and vile sects of darkness elevate them as better dark elves than the monotheistic ones of Greyhawk, and the softer ones in the Forgotten Realms.

Drow priestesses that wield fire? Drow alchemists? A god of illusions and another of riddles? Drow vampires? Fungus and ooze clerics? Inventions? Flesh warpers?

We are coming out way ahead on exciting and varied drow here. These old-school dark elf baddies are amazingly diverse and can throw plenty of wicked magic at you - not just your typical spider magic. D&D drow? Webs, spiders, poison, assassins, stealth, and magic. These drow? Some may summon spore clouds to choke you with, while others throw poison gas, some are vampires, some are inventors, others summon insects, some can summon snakes, others throw fire, some oozes, etc.

By the time Pathfinder 2E rolls around, drow is as they were but renamed "cavern elves" in some lame way to include them without calling them out. They are monsters in the PF2 Bestiary called drow (a strange lack of consistency) and have turned blue-white. They weren't presented as character options in the base game, so you can tell they are already being pushed out the door here and deemphasized.

By the time the remaster rolls around, they get erased.

People like to paint this as "people angry they lost Drizzt."

If you know your lore, we lost so much more.

The drow are in the 5.1 SRD in the Creative Commons, so they are not owned by anyone.

Still, are the drow a "junk ancestry" if they can never be split from D&D, Drizzt, Lolth, and matriarchal spider worship? If the general public can' unsee this connection and view them in a new light, it may be time to step away. You get characters in comics like this (a few notable examples in the Batman mythos), where they just get so overused, sell-out, corporate, and tired that you can never get away from their toxicity.

Are the drow the Harley Quinn of roleplaying? Once incredible and iconic but leaned on so hard for profit, she became a sell-out Bart Simpson corporate counterculture character. Give her a rest and reboot 5 years from now. Honestly, give me a Joker without her.

Part of me feels D&D because they see Drow as 'product identity' - will always have them be one way, and they will never really change. But then again, they put them in the Creative Commons. Everyone owns them now.

Me? The dark elves are not overused. I can split the profit-minded corporate crap from the diamonds. The original Pathfinder 1e drow ancestry is fantastic, as long as you never use the spider queen. Lolth and the Spider Queen are tired and overused tropes. Give them a rest, too.

She never existed, or the demons saw how she ruined the drow. They killed her before she ever ascended. The drow ended up worshipping who's here.

And they turned out so much better once free.

Ironically, this backstory enables the goody-goody drow if you want. What inevitably happens, though, is the drow morph into "elves," and there is no real difference and no reason to keep them around.

The list of demons they worship, the inability of gamers to disassociate them from D&D, and people wanting to play them, yet every time they are mentioned, they are creatures from horror movies in the setting, created a toxic soup where Paizo probably thought it best to bin them altogether. Also, that list of demons is a laundry list of themes they want to remove from the game, so in addition to being highly messy to re-integrate into the lore, just putting the work needed to make them an essential part of the setting would have taken too much focus and effort.

But the Pathfinder 1e drow was cursed in the best possible way as the ultimate subterranean evil. You put a little effort into thinking how they could exist in Golarion, and you end up with something far better than the dusty cobweb worshippers of D&D.

Every time I do a little reading and research, I find another fantastic thing we lost with Pathfinder 2E. I still like 2E, but things like this make it difficult to leave the wonderful world of possibilities that Pathfinder 1e created.

3.75E is still a solid game and very playable. The designers on it are among the all-time greats.

Also, knowing all the above could help you integrate these ideas into a 2E game - but it is sad this all lives in history. At least we can still have the PDFs, and Paizo deserves praise for these earlier works. After all, they created the original world and maintained the books as PDFs for sale. At least history can be preserved, learned from, and recognized. I may disagree with the current direction of the 2E game, but the system is solid and fun. I thank them for all their beautiful creations and support.

Thank you.

It is essential that this article isn't all vinegar, and the ideas here can be used to craft a 2E game that uses the old lore with the new rules. However, all divorces are painful and have loss, hurt feelings, self-blame, and pain. Turning those feelings into a positive makes us human - and good people. Me? A lot has already been done in the old game, and it is still worth playing and exploring for ideas like this.

Otherwise, no one will ever know.

I can't blame Paizo for the censorship either; if they kept going with the triggering, edgy, 2010s content, they would be forced out of business by Twitter trolls. They do their best given the sad time we live in. I am a classic liberal. Artists should be free to create without fear.

The 2010s were one of the best eras of gaming, and Paizo was the reason why.

Today, we live in that era's shadow with all the fear, outrage, and censorship.

And we lost so much.