The Gen Con Announcements

From what I hear, EDGE Studios is not losing the Star Wars license, but Wizards will still produce 5E Star Wars books. Wizards is also releasing a handful of D&D and World of Warcraft books.

I do not yet know how deep these two product lines will be, or whether they will be one-off books with little follow-up support. These two IPs alone deserve libraries of material: bestiaries, race and culture books, era sourcebooks (not just a couple of quick releases). If they turn out to be limited, self-contained products, I am far less interested. What I want is a full, complete game experience that can sustain years of play.

The announced World of Warcraft book includes 50+ monsters. That does not even begin to cover the depth of WoW’s creatures, which could easily fill multiple bestiaries. Every major race deserves its own lore, history, and background treatment.

At the same time, Dark Sun is returning, along with Dragonlance and Greyhawk. In some ways it feels like the 1990s again, when too many settings helped push TSR toward bankruptcy. We will also see the D&D engine power G.I. Joe, Transformers, Power Rangers, and other licensed games in the coming years, further splitting attention. Traveller 5E is on the way. Many other publishers are announcing 5E-compatible versions of their own games.

We are watching partners brought on board to share financial risk, and other companies spending time and resources on D&D books when that energy could go into their own systems and releases.

Does flooding the channel with 5E-compatible versions of every popular IP, and every classic D&D setting, risk the same kind of consumer fatigue that hit the video-game industry in 1983 and TSR in the 1990s?

This is not a question of popularity. It is a question of volume without focus.

Is D&D Only Good for D&D Stories?

When the first version of AD&D 2nd Edition came out, it looked more like a generic game than D&D. The art was all over the place, but it included historical imagery that felt more like a simulation of Greek myths and stories. It still had plenty of generic fantasy art and pieces from noted TSR artists, but the entire game felt more setting-neutral than many editions. The revised edition shifted back into the D&D norms, but it still had that generic feeling, and that game could be used as a generic fantasy game.

TSR felt pressure from GURPS in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so it is understandable they shifted away from the "D&D lore" and more into generic fantasy tropes and imagery. AD&D 2E is peak D&D for the kind of flexible fantasy play I’m talking about; it does not have the Gygaxian prose, but it does have the modern tropes, including the bard. The best Open 2E version is For Gold & Glory, and one of the best alternatives to Wizards' D&D out there; it is a better game for generic fantasy than AD&D 2E since it removes the D&D tropes, and the art is fantastic and deeply thematic. If you go in expecting D&D tropes or demons and devils, note those have been removed, but the game itself is very strong.

When D&D 4E came around, Wizards went full "World of Warcraft," and we now had the official D&D setting, planes, and worlds firmly set in stone as the default setting. We never left this model of world delivery, and D&D 5E still feels like it is set in the "official" D&D universe.

The subclass design does not help things; they are designed for a specific world model and idea. These drag in a lot of D&D-isms, mixed with the high-and-flashy magic spells, and you are doing more work to remove things than enjoy a game with a neutral base. The cosmology, planar travel, and monsters all feel like a "World of Warcraft world, but D&D" and far out of the realm of generic fantasy. They drag their assumptions with them. Even the “simple” Fighter and Rogue have gotten more layered with subclass features that often feel anachronistic or tonally off for a grounded historical-fantasy game.

The Open 5E clones still feel like "different flavor D&D worlds" rather than generic fantasy, with Level Up A5E feeling the most generic of the three, compared to the heavily Midgard-ized Tales of the Valiant. Even then, Level Up A5E makes specific assumptions about races like Orcs, and still crafts its own setting in the rules.

Treasure, magic items, and gear round out the assumed pseudo-Victorian post-Renaissance setting, and once you introduce guns, all bets are off. Modern D&D is all over the place in terms of technology levels. Even the manner of dress has morphed into "trenchcoats and pauldrons" steampunk fantasy. In many modern games, the equipment lists help define the world.

Granted, with enough work, D&D can be used for historical fantasy, but I get the feeling it is a lot more work to do it, or you need a "5E compatible" game specifically designed for that setting and time period, usually a crowdfunding buy-in whenever it rolls around. The costs for supporting 5E are typically higher than other games.

The game has spent the last decade doubling down on its own identity rather than staying a neutral chassis. The D&D identity is popular and commercially successful, but it does make the system less transparent when you try to use it for something outside its preferred aesthetic.

While I play GURPS for these types of games, there are drawbacks. The rules weight and character creation times of GURPS prevent quick adoption, and many groups bounce off the system in the first 20 minutes, never to return. There is also a lot more referee work up front.

GURPS is better at supporting any setting without fighting you. Whether it is the better game for a given group depends on how much they value setting fidelity versus ease of play, speed of character creation, and built-in high-fantasy energy. GURPS is not low-prep or fast-starting; I would play Shadowdark for that type of "pick up fantasy game."

Shadowdark is a legitimate middle option, and it sits in an interesting spot between modern 5E and something like GURPS. It is deliberately lighter on baked-in setting and cosmology than current D&D. The core game gives you four classes (Fighter, Priest, Thief, Wizard), a short spell list, a focus on torch-and-resource pressure, and a tone that leans classic pulp fantasy rather than the high-magic, multiplanar, subclass-heavy world of 5E. Because so much of the “D&D-ness” has been stripped out or made optional, it is easier to tilt toward other flavors without constant subtraction.

I can do a classic Greek or Roman game in Shadowdark easily. But Shadowdark is not a blank slate. It is still a class-and-level, hit-point, armor-class, dungeon-crawling fantasy game at its core. Shadowdark wants to be dangerous, resource-aware, and slightly pulp. That is a feature if you like that feel. It is a mild constraint if you want something closer to pure historical drama or very low-fantasy mythic storytelling.

Shadowdark will not hand you a perfect classical or Norse game out of the box, but the amount of material you have to remove or rewrite is noticeably smaller than in current D&D. You are also not having to create everything yourself or leverage sourcebooks like you are in GURPS, though the GURPS sourcebooks are excellent. On the plus side, Shadowdark is far easier for new players to get used to, and the "flavor" of the campaign is "classic Greek" or "classic Roman," and the existing classes work as-is.

How much setting and tone does the system assume?

With 5E, you have a strictly defined world.

With GURPS, you have everything and nothing, and it is all DIY.

Shadowdark sits in the perfect center of this discussion: light, fast, and familiar - it hits the D&D notes. It is also far easier to mod and flavor than full D&D. It is far easier to start new players with than GURPS. Magic is already constrained and dangerous. The system can be modded into any setting with minimal effort.

D&D 5E: Centrally Planned Fantasy

They put your ideas into a box, define all your powers and abilities, and allow you to think that the few choices they give you are complete freedom and customization. D&D's class-based system has always tried to define your role narrowly to make the game easily approachable, but at the expense of constantly offering ways to break out of the small boxes it puts you in.

And these days, if you multiclass at all, you never get your 20th-level power. So we are back to punishing those who seek freedom and customization. The punishment is a lie, since almost no campaigns ever reach 20th-level play, but the threat is there. Disobey the centrally planned single-class paradigm, or the game-designer-as-state shall punish you for self-expression.

We had all this figured out in the 1980s when all of us AD&D players dropped D&D for GURPS. This happened, and it was partly responsible for the end of AD&D 1E. These pre-Battletech days were brutal, and AD&D declined in the late 1980s as other games took over. Magic: The Gathering in the mid-1990s was the nail in the coffin.

But we all wanted more character customization, which is why most hardcore groups went to GURPS and never looked back. The "central planning committee" of game designers at TSR could not contain our ideas, and we needed games that could do it all. Some went to Champions, and many flocked to GURPS. The only really strong class-based game to survive the 1990s was Rifts, which was greatly helped by the TMNT franchise.

And GURPS doesn't tell you that you can't have a power because you multiclassed. There are no classes.

These days, it is the crowdfunding grift crowd keeping 5E alive, and even this model is crumbling. We have far too many options in a game that can't support them; the character designers with a few dozen books have UI dropdowns to pick classes, feats, and powers that extend for a few screens and a few hundred selections, and the choices we were promised become shackles and confusing, messy, junk-filled lists to sort through. There are times in 5E character design when I feel I am digging through a garbage can of smelly, disorganized trash to find the one thing I am looking for.

GURPS? All options are equal; there are no class or level requirements, and they are all in one chapter. Buy them if you can afford them. They aren't scattered across six classes, with vaguely similar options with different names here and there, and only found in some "digital purchase" that took someone weeks to piece together in a database program and you paid forty-dollars to have the right to access.

D&D is a centrally planned game, but with a deeply capitalistic and exploitative sales model. There is always something new to buy, and another brand-new platform to buy it again on. Yet, you get these shill gaming sites calling D&D a "deeply socialist game," yet that is a deeply dishonest lie, and everyone can see how the digital sales model flies in the face of that statement. Are you kidding me? Even with the Open 5E clones, I am buying multiple digital copies of the same thing so the character designer can work on the latest site to support it.

GURPS, with its "buy what you want" character design system, feels like a game that leverages capital and the buying power of character points, has zero crowdfunding grift, and is far, far, far less exploitative since if you own the core two books, you own the entire game with zero digital add-ons needed to create any character. In GURPS, you "own the means of production" of all your characters, and these powers aren't given to you by the game designers far away, piece by piece, always for another buck for a new option, always something new the next quarter.

To be fair, you also "own the means of production" in the OSR, too, for all your characters. So this concept is a universal selling point for most old-school games. Modern games? Mostly live-service models, and mostly forgettable. They will all go away when the websites go offline, and we will be expected to buy the next thing.

A universal, open, no-character-class point-design character-creation system solves all of D&D 5E's problems. You don't need to keep watching YouTube videos on how to fix the game. You don't need to keep buying books to fix the game. You don't need to invest in more and more DM advice books on prep and adventure design. When you realize all of D&D's scaffolding is there to entice you into a buyer's market and collector's FOMO mentality, it all becomes clear.

Also, if it is printed in a physical book, and the character creation system works offline, it is a real game. Many of these modern games trick you into thinking the "first few levels are fine," but by the time you hit level five, the software requirement to manage complexity hits hard and you are forced to open your wallet.

And the surrounding D&D 5E market feeds off that buyer's market; the YouTubers and add-on book sellers are all fighting for a piece of the shrinking pie, and the parent company will start cutting off markets and keeping them for itself. Of that crowd "willing to spend big for a game," everyone is fighting to get that money. Even the media sites surrounding this market have been compromised by this cash flow.

We had all this figured out in the 1980s.

Most of the kids we played with were so poor they were lucky to own one or two gaming books. A live-service model game back then? You're kidding, right? None of us had the money to buy imagination, nor go into debt for a game. We picked games that gave us the most flexibility for the money we had. We dropped AD&D 1E for GURPS and never looked back.

These days, with AD&D 1E making a comeback for nostalgia, I play it again and am right back in the 1980s. Wanting to switch to GURPS.

The Downfalls of Story Gaming

"The game doesn't provide any tools to help players engage with my world, have meaningful relationships with my NPCs, engage in my storylines, or support my villains if they should be defeated too early."

I heard that said recently about D&D 5.5E.

My, my, my ...how far we have fallen.

The biggest mistake here is the very pretentious overuse of the word "my" over and over again. People come into D&D thinking they can become a dungeon master and force-feed any random group of players their theater slop, and players have to accept it because it is brand-name D&D, or any other of these story games that promise to solve the golden calf problem of "what game can I play that the players must interact with my story?" 

Some games use narrative tokens and storytelling rewards, milestone leveling, and other tools to carrot-and-stick players down the dungeon master's preset narrative arc. In a sense, yes, you are a dungeon master in this case because this is a form of torture.

In "real D&D," players can kill all your meaningful NPCs, walk away from the villain and not care, ignore your world, blow off your storylines, and not care about your never-published novel, and that is okay. This is D&D; let them kill monsters and take the loot. Focus on running the combats well, and you will be fine.

Some story games are great and help me tell wonderful solo-play stories. But on the flip side, I could never imagine using those narrative tools against a group of players trying to do their own thing. Use them together with the players to collaboratively tell a story and reward story beats? That is okay, but what are you doing? We can tell a story together without all this story-game scaffolding.

Why am I giving bennies or narrative points to players for accomplishing story beats? I feel this is like treating your players like dogs and giving them a biscuit and saying "good boy!" Why do we need all these metacurrencies and out-of-game point systems? Too often, they can be used for negative reinforcement rather than the positive reinforcement the game pretends people will use them for.

And I don't need to drop out of the game and pat players on the head for doing something narratively important. They should know that in their heart and feel it. But, no, here are some story point rewards, and a narrative token for you. Good job; have a gold star too.

This is the difference between a DM coming in and expecting to be the director of a play, with the players their "hired actors," versus the DM coming in and being the neutral arbiter in the world who merely decides "what logically comes next."

Give me a strong simulation of a fantasy world and its characters, and my players can do all the rest. My NPCs have the stories, not me as the referee; talk to them if you are interested. They also have all the information about the world; if you are interested, go talk to them. Not me, the referee; I have nothing to do with this at all. I just run combats and make rulings.

Talk to the NPCs.

They are not even "my" NPCs, either; they are the world's NPCs.

If you don't and want to do your own thing, that's cool, too. Just don't expect the NPCs to react a certain way to your tomfoolery, and they will be fine. They may even be interested in what you are up to as well! You never know, and the dice will decide that.

If you can't understand the invisible wall that a DM needs to have between the world and the referee, that this is not "your world" or "your NPCs" or "your story" - that all this belongs to the world, then you will never understand what it means to be a referee. Kill the king? Fine, I don't care. But the world will, and you will find that out. That invisible wall protects you, gives you necessary distance, and maintains your impartiality.

Like the referee in a sports game, you are not here to make one team win over the other. You are here to do a good and fair job where the players can say you handled their interactions between them and the world fairly, and you helped make the world's stories and NPCs come to life.

The players will tell their own stories, and the ultimate story is their rise to power or fall to tragedy.

The Perception Check

Something feels wrong about the perception check.

This is a "screw the players" mechanic that forces players to roll to learn secret information. In the old days, there was no perception check. The referee carefully described the environment, and players pushed, poked, looked, searched, and prodded the environment to find its hidden secrets. Even spotting an ambush did not force a roll; the referee described an environment, perhaps laid a few hints in there, and then the players could react accordingly.

The tracks stop right before they reach the pass.

If they look closer, then, yes, someone attempted to cover up the tracks.

And those tracks lead towards each side of the pass.

I am not forcing a Perception check for that. The players need to figure out if there is an ambush there on their own, using common sense and good judgment. Granted, those two things are in short supply these days, and with everyone a phone addict, many do not know how to interact with a natural environment or spot trouble like this.

"Why would people who hid in the bushes cover their tracks? I don't know! Hello?! Why are you hiding in there? Can you come out and explain why you covered your tracks?"

There is no rule to cover it in older games; it was what it was. The referee described the environment, the players were not on their phones, and they paid attention. Some skill-based games of the time did have perception-like skill mechanics, but D&D never did. Then again, the old D&D way of doing it was superior, and we only used those perception mechanics in edge cases and for situations where things weren't that clear.

These days, the entire passive perception "industry" and the "roll to see everything" sort of design slows the game down, and it sucks. It feels like the characters are looking through the world through tiny holes in cardboard boxes and rolling or having to check a number to see anything in the environment. Perception isn't a skill anymore; it is a set of blinders to view the world through.

In older games, we never needed the entire perception dongle.

Describe and let them react.

No rules. No numbers. No checking character sheets. No rolling the dice.

Player skill, listening, and using your head instead of your character sheet matter. The referee's descriptions matter. The skill on both sides heightens the experience.

Yet the perception trope seems overused, and this one mechanic defines 2/3rds of the interaction with adventures and the game. It is too important, too overused, and anything this prevalent should be designed out of the game. Otherwise, the game feels like it relies too much on one mechanic.

Imagine if every turn, you needed to "roll to move." Fail your movement roll, and you can't move. Fail your perception check, and you can't see or hear. The perception check is every character's eyes and ears into the world. Granted, it is only for situations where there is uncertainty involved in "if you see it," but the entire mechanic is far, far too overused, slows down play, and eliminates player skill.

The perception check is a terrible design.

Also, Wisdom should cover perception. This also falls into the category of having a "lift heavy objects" skill to replace the STR check. We have skills that duplicate ability score checks, and that is another sign of a terrible design. I don't know how you fix this other than admitting it is a flaw in the D&D 5E design and designing around these "rules bottlenecks" in the next edition.

When it started, it felt innocent and cool. These days, it acts as the default eyes and ears of every character in the game.

The End of Edition Blues

D&D is fading. We have other games replacing it, and there are a few very strong contenders. We will be in this mode for a while longer, at least until D&D 6 is announced and the hype machine begins again. This is how it goes with D&D: in the end-of-edition era, it is always this decline and malaise, and other games step up and steal the thunder.

D&D 5.5E did not live up to expectations. The rules update itself wasn't horrible, but the monsters were such an insult, a politically correct reimagining of classic creatures and foes; all they did was drive people into the OSR, or back into the 2014 Monster Manual. They leaned so hard into making every humanoid a fay, elemental, or other magical reimagination that they lost the world's gritty, grounded nature entirely.

People go to Shadowdark to get that gritty, hardcore hit these days.

People go to Daggerheart to do the modern cosplay streaming show roleplay. What D&D tries to do, Daggerheart does, and it speaks to that audience much better and in a clearer voice.

People play the OSR to get the original thing.

People will play gonzo games like DCC to experience the thrill of the unknown, in adventures, characters, and monsters. Through Deathbringer in with the mixed gonzo-plus-gritty audience, and we are in a bountiful era of gaming.

If I want hardcore reality simulation as fantasy gaming, I will just play GURPS and have it all.

But the larger problem is D&D is trying to be everything to everybody, and it doesn't really do it all that well. And here in the end-of-edition phase, we have lackluster 2024 books, and people sort of mix and match what they agree with. A few of us are playing Open 5E clones just to clean up the experience, with games like Level Up A5E or Tales of the Valiant. ToV works for me, and I do have a soft spot for A5E.

The only way D&D can fix this is by abandoning 5.5E and announcing 6E. Like Hollywood and the inevitable next Avengers movie, here we go again, and it is trying to capture lightning in a bottle another time. What we loved, that first time we did it, is forever gone, and the new team has no clue what makes D&D special and fun, especially if the 2024 Monster Manual is any guide. The changes they made to monster lore are embarrassing and invalidate every classic adventure and campaign setting.

Again, if I wanted this much fundamental change, I would have just played Daggerheart, Nimble, DC 20, or even Draw Steel. Not D&D. D&D at this point is McDonald's; please don't change the Big Mac and just give me what I am used to. Tales of the Valiant delivers the classic "meal" I am used to from 2014, so that has the best flavor of D&D for me at the moment. Sure, I could stumble along with 2014 books, but I prefer to have a 3-book game that works without patching and fixes, and a clean implementation of 5E with the classic look and feel.

6E? We have 5E and ten years of books. Why, other than trying to own the market again?

I got all I want or need here, and I doubt Wizards knows what D&D is anymore in order to deliver an experience that most people want. That middle ground today doesn't really exist anymore.

Too Much Magic

There is too much magic in modern fantasy gaming. It is everywhere, in most subclasses; some classes are entirely magic, and it is magic, magic, magic everywhere and all day long.

It gets tedious. Nobody can be skilled at anything anymore. You need the magic crack to do anything.

AD&D 1E featured anti-magic fields, creatures, weapons, and even planes. Put any modern D&D 5 characters there, and they will be helpless. There is too much magic in the game, setting, and universe. It isn’t high fantasy anymore; it's ultra-fantasy and magic overload.

Some of the old modules had lists of spells that were not allowed to be used in certain dungeons, and too much magic was a problem back in the early days of D&D, too. There were dungeons where a simple passwall spell would ruin the whole thing, the Tomb of Horrors being one of them.

I doubt there are many 5.5E classes that aren’t magic-touched anymore. Look long enough, and every class has to have overpowered magic options, which begs the question: Are you anything without magic? Do skill and non-magical training matter?

Magic in D&D is like sex on the Internet: it's everywhere, there is too much of it, and I am tired of it all.

In Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy, four of the seven classes were non-magical. In Advanced Fantasy, eleven of the twenty-two classes are non-magical. That is about half or more of the classes have no magic whatsoever. While there are magic items, half of the classes themselves are entirely non-magical. The game is set in a low-magic world, which is the norm.

I could easily play OSE without magic; you can do the same with both BX and 1E. It wasn't a problem, and the game had enough to it that removing magic would not feel like you were losing too much.

There is so much magic in fantasy these days that it does not feel like "magic" at all; it feels like power entitlement and magic being used to prop up weak class designs and lackluster combat options. The amateur game designer uses magic as a crutch. If your game works without magic and is exciting and engaging, you've got me.

The default setting for fantasy should be a low-magic world. This keeps the game grounded and believable. This is also the reason humans should be the default choice for races, since they are the most diverse and familiar race to which we are accustomed. I find that in a game where everyone is forced to play humans (ACKS II being the best example of this), we get a wonderful diversity of cultures, whereas in fantasy games that allow the typical fantasy race selections, the diversity of the average tiefling, dragonborn, or dwarf is actually quite low, and they fall into stereotypes and parody way too often for my tastes.

In GURPS, I have the freedom to create campaigns without one bit of magic at all. I can play a historical game without being weighed down by magic, witchcraft, divine magic, nature magic, or planar interference. Not all humanoids are magical, elemental, or fay, as they are in D&D 5.5E. I can create a compelling fantasy game with not one iota of magic in it. I can craft authentic fantasy campaigns based on real historical settings.

I don't have to default to a multiverse planar setting at all.

I can play a pirate game in the Age of Sail and not worry about a mage flinging fireballs at the other vessel. Use the cannons, please, you aren't a cannon yourself. I know, that's not fun, but in a game where I expect my scurrvy dogs to be able to learn how cannonry works, what is the point if half the party can fling equal death from their fingertips? Use the cannons like a pirate and stop complaining, or you are walking the plank.

Better yet, without magic, players have to drill down and focus on melee weapons, how to fight, archery, thrown weapons, special attacks, advantages that give them the edge in combat, weapon reach, defenses, and attack and defense actions. The flow of combat becomes the "magic" in the game and the key to victory. Knowing how to fight, stacking the odds in your favor, and never giving the enemy a chance are your "spells," and there is no easy solution to a fight.

Players need to pay attention to the combat system and rules to do well, and they can't lean on spells or special powers to save them. Thank you, finally, sanity is in my game. Immerse yourself in the world and realistic fighting techniques and tactics, and you will find a much greater satisfaction in mastery there than you will in casting an infinite-use cantrip every turn and being bored with your choices.

Too common magic isn't magical.

It is the mundane and the everyday.

There is no mystery or unknown.

And it becomes boring.

Self-Destruction as Marketing

This happened to me in D&D 3.5E: players came in, bragged about broken builds, and wanted to play them in my game.

I said no. I knew the build. I knew the site he got it from. What is the point of this exercise? For you to come in, find something online, and use it to wreck my game so you can get a few laughs? To ruin the game for everyone else who makes time every week to come to the game?

I said no.

Not in my game.

We are entering "late phase 5E," and what I see coming out of D&D Beyond are horribly broken player options. This is, again, the corporate gaming playbook. At the end of an edition's lifecycle, they purposefully make more and more outrageous and broken builds just to keep player attention and make the game "fun again," and it ends up wrecking the game to the point where people are screaming for a new edition. In a game with declining interest, the only way they can attract interest is through shipping broken mechanics and options to generate buzz and excitement.

Everyone "still hot on 5E" is having the edition slowly ruined for them, and they don't even know it.

Players will seek out groups to try the "next broken thing" and laugh as the abuse is enabled from up top, and another table's game is ruined by stupid ideas coming from corporate.

I saw this same thing at the end of every edition: the company hits the self-destruct button and wrecks the game with OP, power-gaming, and completely broken player options.

If you are a 5E purist and can play with a limited set of books, fine, you will probably never see this happening at your table. The players are there for the stories and heroism, and that's great. If you limit your options to the classic choices or play a 5E version that cares about balance and game integrity, wonderful. The small fish in the industry, like EN World and Kobold Press, don't have much of an incentive to ruin their games with powergaming options, since they can't create a new edition out of thin air.

If a player is on D&D Beyond and has access to broken expansion material, and is all excited to play, that is a red flag to me. I know the type. The power gamer is too interested in wrecking games and looking cool, rather than in everyone else's enjoyment at my table.

No.

Not in my game.

D&D's Problem is Combat

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

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

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

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

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

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

The End of Physical Media

If it is not in a printed book, it isn't real, and it does not exist.

Those of us who have been through D&D 4E know this one, and it is not rocket science. Once this edition drops support, what do you think will happen to all that "digital DLC content" on D&D Beyond? All the "D&D Drops" I see D&D YouTube gushing about weekly for clicks and views?

It is gone forever; it is like it never existed.

When D&D 5.5E finally "drops" support, and it isn't printed in a book? Gaming loses those things forever. Sure, people will remember them, some of them may get cloned somewhere and renamed, but those things not printed in physical, hardcopy books will be lost media.

This is the same as PlayStation dropping physical disc support.

Level Up A5E? Tales of the Valiant? Even Daggerheart or Draw Steel? The entire OSR? Previous versions of the game? Most every other game out there, from Traveler to Call of Cthulhu? Pathfinder 2?

It is all in print. Every option is in print.

Fifty years from now, all these books will still exist. Two hundred years from now? It will still exist. If you care about this hobby and its legacy, it should matter to you. If this material is later compiled and sold in a book? Not a problem. This is an easy problem to fix, and it supports game preservation.

Also, printed books are pro-consumer; I can sell my library, pick up used copies, and give them love and attention. People in the future will be able to enjoy the things we enjoyed. The used book and media market is part of how Earth's culture is preserved and passed on to the next generation.

Otherwise, the digital conversion of gaming is more of the same, and it pushes this hobby into becoming a more manipulative, exploitative, and worse pastime.

D&D 5.5E: It Is Not the Classes...

It is the monsters.

The class designs in D&D 5.5E? Fine, they work.

The rules of D&D 5.5E are also fine.

The art is very hit-and-miss.

The DMG is also fine.

The game could be more beginner-friendly. There are too many subclasses in the Player's Handbook, which water down each class and make the game worse for new players. Tales of the Valiant got roasted for only delivering two subclass options for each class, but it was the right move.

As a new player, I only want two iconic choices for my subclass pick, A or B.

Leave all of the esoteric and specialized choices to the expansion books, please.

Shipping four, often very specific and narrowly-focused options, like the D&D 5.5E bard (dance, glamour, lore, and valor), feels like a step back, and it also limits player choice. The decision matrix for a new player, comparing four classes up to level 20, is too much. Plus, thematically, glamour and dance feel far too closely related to be distinct choices. It also tells players, "You can dance or have special effects, but not both."

In ToV? I got lore and victory as my choices (similar to lore and valor), and whether I want to dance or create flashy effects is up to me. By the time we get to ToV Player's Guide 2, we get allure, mockery, and sound, which again don't limit options by putting all the dancing bards in one box, but they stay on the thematic side and avoid putting dancers and flashy effects in boxes, which all subclasses should be able to do.

The class designs of D&D 5.5E are fine. I prefer Tales of the Valiant as a set of optimized, clean 2014-style class designs. 

Sadly, class designs are mostly all that D&D YouTubers focus on.

But it is not the classes that are the key difference here; it is the monsters. When I saw Cthulhu in the new Ravenloft book doing 27 damage on a claw attack, and 6d6 on a tentacle attack (not even level 3 fireball damage), I knew D&D was dead. There is a huge problem in the core design ethos of D&D if the game is more afraid of the players than the players are afraid of the game.

This is a problem that does not have an easy fix.

D&D has gone soft.

ToV's monsters? Yeah, my ancient red dragon is spitting a 105-point fire breath and has a roar that makes everyone who fails the save vulnerable to fire damage, potentially doubling the damage of that attack. D&D 5.5E? 91 damage, save for half. The difference in damage is nearly fourfold, from the worst to the best possible result.

The ToV dragon has fewer hit points, too, so the message is clear: kill the dragon quick, or everyone dies. With D&D, low damage, nearly double the health at 600 hit points, and a slog of low damage, repeated, boring attacks, and a combat that drags on for hours.

This is not a fantasy adventure game with a sense of danger and excitement, where the chance of losing a character is real. Where a referee could rule that when the dragon's breath vaporizes you with a 210-point inferno, no resurrection or wish spell could make you return to the mortal realm. You were hit by a force of primal energy from the world's creation. There is no coming back from that.

A tomb created by a lich with access to god-like necromancy? Yeah, death in this tomb is permanent, and all death saves are made at a disadvantage. Players should be scared for their characters because that is the heart of the game.

This is why Shadowdark is so popular: there is real danger, and players are afraid of what is in that book. Even the environment design of Shadowdark is designed to kill characters. This is a game that knows horror far, far better than D&D will ever hope to. D&D's horror is a plastic sheet of wood veneer Contact Paper, compared to the hardwood panels of Shadowdark.

They are built differently.

And the whole myth of 5E being so easy, with invincible characters who do not die, does not come from any other 5E systems, such as Tales of the Valiant or Level Up A5E. This fatal flaw is placed squarely upon D&D's doorstep. They own this. Not any of the other games. Reading the PHB and DMG for 2024 does not even give you a hint of this problem, either. It is only when you crack open the Monster Manual that you begin to see what is happening here.

This is why I prefer ToV and Shadowdark: the monsters can and will kick your butt, kill your characters, and end your campaign if you don't put them down quickly.

I also have the freedom to rule that a character's death is final. The campaign can be softer in the mid-levels, but by the time you are saving the world, the stakes should be raised.

It is good storytelling.

Tales of the Valiant: Northlands Hardcovers

I got the Northlands hardcovers from Kobold Press's crowdfunding this week, and I like them a lot. It feels like a new direction for ToV in how the game is presented and in their approach to the system. The game feels like it has hit its comfort zone, and the designers are now focusing on providing curated experiences rather than more generic base-class content.

Once Player's Guide 2 came out, we were mostly done with generic base-class options, those sort of "fill in the gaps" books for a system that add popular niche options. Now, we are adding thematic content that fills gaps in those areas, while also providing enough supporting material for these thematic options so that, when you use them, they aren't "fish out of water" experiences.

It is like a game providing a generic "valkyrie" class option, but no setting to use it in, no lore to support it, and no real reason to use it other than a cosplay option. It is a weak game design trope, as fantasy games are much stronger if you give me something to work with, a collection of "specific yet generic" content built around a theme, and a reason that this class should be in the world.

Shadowdark has this problem with its third-party material. I got dozens of "did this first" classes that don't really belong in the world, other than to have the Shadowdark version of a class, and it is weaker overall since it never fits into a dungeon crawl, doesn't support the theme, nor does it have supporting material to make it a necessary or even useful choice.

With the Northlands books, we get a combination of a gazeteer and character options book, then an adventure book, and I have everything I need to tell thematic stories in this Norse-like sandbox. I have a campaign, character options, and adventures, and I am set for years playing here.

Also, if I am off playing generic fantasy, I can put these add-on books away and narrow down my options to just a core-book experience. I don't need them, but I have them.

Tales of the Valiant is hitting its stride as a popular Open 5E alternative, and I like the design far better than the run-on sentence of D&D 2024, which fixed almost every problem except combat lengths and lethality. To be honest, D&D's biggest problem right now is too-long combats and lethality, and this is an issue that Tales of the Valiant solves by reducing monster hit points and making monsters hit much harder, so players start losing resources at a faster rate. This also dramatically increases lethality, and with a handful of houserules on top of the default 5E lethality, the problem is solved.

"Ideally, you and your players would have established the potential for PC death and the way it would be handled at the start of the campaign."

Tales of the Valiant, Gamemaster's Guide, page 30

All the YouTubers who say "it is impossible to die" in D&D 5E are making me want to challenge this assumption. The ToV GM's Guide mentions "the potential for PC death" in the rulebook, so this means the rules in this area, like any of the rules in the game, can be changed to make the game more lethal. Perhaps you make a "three strikes, and you are out" rule, stating your character may only drop to zero hit points three times in their entire life, total, before they meet their final fate on the fourth, and no magic will be able to bring them back to the mortal coil.

"Impossible to die in 5E" means two things when I hear it: a creator is trying to sell you a new game, or the group you are with is too inflexible to consider houseruling and fixing the issue in a manner appropriate to their table. If you have the energy to complain about it, you have the energy to fix the problem and agree to a solution; then there is no need to buy another game to fix it.

I swear, this is what we did as kids in the 1980s. Mom didn't have the money to keep buying us new games to fix the problems with the old ones, so we worked out solutions ourselves with the game we were lucky to have. Besides, buying new games means buying new problems.

ToV is just a better fit for me since combat runs faster and the game is more lethal, which is a tuning that I prefer to all other versions of 5E. From there, I can houserule-fix any problems 5E has and get to a comfortable spot with the system. D&D has a massive problem with making high-level foes do almost no damage on a successful hit, like the new Ravenloft version of Cthulhu, doing 27 damage on a claw attack and having 385 hit points. The only horror we will experience fighting that monster is wondering why the fight was so easy, and why we aren't playing a Chaosium game instead.

D&D is so easy; it is like playing a video game on the easiest difficulty level and then complaining that you can't die, that the game is too easy, and that nothing is a challenge. YouTubers repeat this endlessly. I get tired of hearing it, and I solved the problem by switching to a game that raises the challenge level, speeds up combat, and makes monsters hit way harder. I also make a few houserules, and the game is as lethal as Shadowdark.

ToV is a great game that fixes structural problems that cannot be fixed within D&D.

The Northlands books continue the string of hits that ToV is having.

It is a better game, tuned perfectly to a speed and lethality I prefer, and it is just the far better choice. If you are sleeping on ToV, you are missing out.

The Post-Star Wars Era

"Yeah, they killed our Star Wars, dude."

Star Wars is dead, long live Star Wars. Like many, I don't even want to hear about new Star Wars projects until the creators can get their house in order. I am sick of them stealing from the Expanded Universe, and all it proves is that the EU was a better universe that today's lesser creators will constantly steal from and remix.

It sucks.

It is just like my feelings about D&D: the current creative team at Wizards will never create anything as iconic as The Tomb of Horrors. Tyranny of Dragons is the closest thing to a masterpiece that the current Wizards have made, but it was created under the direction of the 2014 team and by the Kobold Press team. So this part of D&D's magnum opus and current greats was written by the crew that later wrote Tales of the Valiant.

Which, in itself, is telling. This is Kobold Press' Paizo moment. They proved they can make better D&D than D&D, and they know the secret sauce that makes 5E fun and engaging. This book was, in my opinion, the passing of the torch for 5E.

Wizards sort of went their own way after this, following the path of the "lifestyle game."

Kobold Press stuck to the original ideas and inspiration of D&D. Keep your head down, axe to the grindstone, and keep pumping out classic worlds and adventures.

But I don't have faith that the current D&D team could make anything as great as the original run of Greyhawk adventures. The creative team lives in fear of social media; anything that could be triggering or controversial would be whitewashed and banned. Vault of the Drow would be presented from both sides, with options for heroic drow, and a good faction added. In a way, this adventure forces high-level characters into a "fish out of water" situation with an epic underground campaign they can't muscle their way through, and the ending is most likely death for most involved.

The Tomb of Horrors would include all sorts of warnings about horror, and possibly softened to "make it all a dream," and nothing in there could ever permanently kill a high-level character. Gary Gygax wrote this to put the egos of high-level characters in check, and to dispel the notion of invincibility. He succeeded, and this was sorely needed back then - like it is sorely needed today.

And with Star Wars, it is the same story. I get the feeling that if George Lucas were to ever make a new Star Wars project, he would have none of the original characters, worlds, races, ships, or anything from the original trilogy or sequels. He would likely do something entirely brand new, with new characters, new lore, and things we have never seen before. People would reject it and hate it, saying they wanted more of the original. But, in the end, he would be right, and whatever he made would be the "new canon" that would be repeated, expanded upon, and used over and over again in the future.

Certain "greater source" creators can generate new "stem cells" of ideas for entertainment. These are the births of franchises and worlds. These creators do not come along every day, nor can they ever be created by AI. George Lucas was one, Gary Gygax was another. There are a few out there in the gaming industry, too, but not as many as you would think.

We live in an era where the fan is placed before the creator.

Other "lesser source" creators lack the imagination to create anything new. They can only remix, retcon, expand, and repeat. They are doomed to copy and recycle ideas as lesser creators forever. The world is filled with lesser creators, as common as the everyday person on the street. These are often the "super fans," like the people running Star Wars these days and the current D&D team. They are great fans of the original material, but they are not talented creators who can bring life and worlds into existence out of nothing.

They don't have "the touch."

As long as Star Wars is "run by super fans," it will always suck. You will never get any "fresh source DNA" or new ideas. The franchise will remix and recycle endlessly until the paper fibers in the cardboard break down, and the pulp material is too weak and frail to ever be used to build things from again. You can't recycle forever before you require new base material.

Yet, nobody wants new things. This is the paradox of Star Wars. We have been trained to see "old as good" and "new as bad" - but to be honest, most of the new stuff we were given was bad. None of it was made by a greater source-level creator. No new DNA was introduced. No new "stem cells" were added as the genesis of life and fandom.

You read the original D&D adventures - these are the source DNA. We badly need new life here. D&D 5.5E was written to placate social media outrage, but made some long-needed rules revisions. It is a weaker edition overall and a failure. It is meant to keep the ship sailing until 6E comes out. Tyranny of Dragons was a glimpse of the future D&D could have had, and that future now lives on in the Kobold Press world, with lots of "new DNA" being introduced with their books and adventures.

You look at Star Wars, and we are in a worse position. The best Star Wars will be the stories you tell. Even if all you do is remix and recycle, it will be better than any of the new stuff. This is why I have hope for the Star Wars RPG: it is a tool to keep the dream alive.

I sort of see Tales of the Valiant the same way. It is a tool to keep the D&D dream alive, just as the original Pathfinder 1e was a tool many years ago. There are times when we need to keep what we had to preserve what we loved, as a tool for creating the new.

D&D 5.5E Overexposed?

With Vampire 5.5E coming, along with GI Joe, Transformers, and Power Rangers, now I am starting to get a little worried. D&D 5.5E may become overexposed, with a glut of games on the market, and it may implode in a huge market crash. Don't forget Traveller 5E, either.

Will there be a "tipping point" for "too much 5.5E?"

Pretty soon, we will probably see a glut of classic gaming titles rewriting themselves for 5.5E. I could pick any of them, such as TORG, Paranoia, Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and many others. Okay, I take one of those back, Shadowrun 5.5E, I would actually buy, since it would be nice to have standardized rules that were 5E compatible. Then again, I have Ultramodern 5 for that, and that version of 5E is very cool. UM5 is Shadowrun 5E to me, just add fantasy races and monsters, and you are there, plus some.

Then again, UM5.5E would be nice to see. Why not jump in? Sales are sales. Then again, the market here is niche, and unless you are releasing on D&D Beyond, just leave it be. UM5 is so heavily modded that nothing may change for a 5.5E update.

But I foresee a point where the 5.5E gets wildly overexposed, and then, at that moment, Wizards announces 6E, and the entire industry is stuck a version behind the market leader. Nobody wants to rebuy it all again, and the market crashes.

This is another reason to avoid 5.5E and the New Coke edition and stick with what works. I am happy with ToV and my 10-year shelf of 5E books. At best, 5.5E is the "rules update" that you use with your D&D 2014 monster manual. The rule changes are minor. If you can't doublecast? Yeah, you are in a 5.5E game.

You know, third-party bestiary writers... rewriting the D&D 2014 Monster Manual for the 2024 rules with 5.5E design goals, and representing the classic monsters as they were - would be a very compelling thing. Enhance that with special versions of orcs, lizardfolk, and other classics, and you would have a great book on your hands. The "Old School Monster Manual" would likely sell very well and go a long way to removing the New Coke aftertaste of this edition. Just saying.

But with so many 5.5E books coming out, I feel we are heading into a market glut. The crowdfunding projects will overwhelm us with a tidal wave of 5.5E recreations. And we will be left with shelves of books, and no time to play with them. Then, the market will crash.

I do get the feeling that too many eggs are in one basket, but if 90% of the market won't play anything else, what else can you do?

DIY Star Wars is the Best

Do-it-yourself Star Wars is going to be the best Star Wars we will be able to get for a while.

This is outside the Legacy books, comics, and movies, which are fun to revisit, but my heart craves new stories and excitement. For that, the role-playing game by Edge Studios fills the void perfectly for me, and it is not too complicated, and the oracle-like dice provide enough narrative unpredictability that it makes the solo player in me happy.

A small exception can be made for the SWTOR MMO. There are good stories there, too, and many have not experienced them. Check that out if you want a little less freedom, excellent voice acting, and a lot more grinding to the maximum level. It is fun, but you need to be an MMO fan and have lots of free time.

I can tell infinite Star Wars stories, without AI? Sounds like a deal. Sure, I could sit in my own world and use AI to tell myself stories that eventually go into strange states of repetition, like the machine has cognitive dysfunction and can't tell a coherent story without repeating itself or ripping off other writers for who knows what. If I want something "from me" and "with a deeper meaning than a randomizer," then I will tell my own stories.

AI often presents very little resistance to your ideas, whereas a game has characters, challenges, and things you can and can not do. An AI chatbot can "go stupid" on you and refuse to go along with any idea, or it can get far too submissive to a train of thought and swing stupid in the other direction with no nuance, second thoughts, or hesitation. They are sort of "yeah yeah yeah" or "no no no" players, and you know when they go broken on you.

Still, I get the feeling AI stories will someday become better than anything Hollywood can put out. The one truth about AI is that if you think "it can't do that," it is only a matter of "yet." Would I take AI Star Wars over Hollywood Star Wars?

Yes and no.

Yes, AI is a better writer than Hollywood, and no, I have ethics. But some of the AI-generated Star Wars lore videos made by fans are orders of magnitude better than most of what we got from Disney over the last few years, jankiness aside. The fans will express themselves using the tools they have. Before this, it was 3D art; now it is AI films.

I would rather play the game, deal with the rules, tell the stories, have things not go my way, and try again like a roguelike game. To me, this is the sweet spot. This isn't as "okay, here's anything, bruh" as AI, and it gives me plenty of limitations and walls to have fun within.

AI does have this annoying tendency to glaze you, call you the smartest, best person ever, and then tell you what it thinks you want to hear. It leads to positive feedback loops that become unrealistic, as it thinks you want to "be the hero" in an old-school dungeon, and then it proceeds to make you immune to every danger, "giving the fans what they want."

I will sidestep the entire AI question and DIY all my own stories, thank you. For one, they will mean something more to me than a randomizer. Second, they will have to follow a preset and agreed-upon set of rules. Both AI and Hollywood Star Wars fail this test by constantly breaking lore and canon, like how the sequels turned hyperspace into Marvel multiverse teleportation, and the "science" part of Star Wars became complete and utter "make it up as you go along" garbage.

The original Star Wars had rules based on science. Remember how the Death Star had to move around a planet to fire? How a broken hyperspace drive became a major plot point? They needed to take down a shield generator to attack the second Death Star. The examples go on and on, and there are some strange mistakes in the original movies, but for the most part, there is a solid foundation of science there.

Not as much as classic Star Trek, though. If I want a hardcore science game, I play Genesys and use the Star Trek universe. For now, Star Wars is enough, and it gives me a broader universe with far more possible character types. I swear, "science in Star Wars" feels like an oxymoron. Is there even science and scientists in this universe? It feels like "space dark ages" to me.

AI and Hollywood will fail the "make it up as you go along" test every time. A set of role-playing rules needs to follow the rules. You just can't say a Y-Wing is faster and more agile than an A-Wing in the rules, just because it would be easier in the story to have it be that way. Nope. The rules are the rules, and the ships' stats are right there on the page.

A lousy writer or a machine that knows nothing can't ruin my immersion in the universe. The TV shows and movies Disney makes couldn't care less about the rules of the setting. They will make it up to make the writer's jobs easier, and it shows a fundamental lack of care and craftsmanship. Yes, lore and canon matter. This is why we pay the streaming service subscription fees. If you can't ask your writers to put in a little effort, I am not watching or subscribing. Hire better creatives who are into the lore.

The game has rules that must be followed for everyone's enjoyment. The shows and movies couldn't care less. This is the biggest difference between official Star Wars and DIY Star Wars using a role-playing game.

One has rules, the other doesn't.

So I will tell my own stories. They will be fun. They will be Star Wars, and some of what I bring to the table. I am looking forward to this. I will treat this as a roguelike, and if a cast member dies, then that is the end of their arc. Time for a new story. D&D makes character death near impossible because they are more worried about D&D Beyond retention. If you put in that much work into that complicated a character, you would rather quit when they die than create a new character.

Ask any Rolemaster player; nobody wants to spin up a new character.

Also, when Wizards of the Coast pushes "identifying as your character," of course, they will make it impossible to die, since that is a huge negative feedback loop. Even if they bring back AD&D 2nd Edition as 6E, you know they are going to make it impossible to die in that game since corporate doesn't want people becoming discouraged or seeing a virtual avatar of themselves die in-game.

I like characters who are different from me, in all shades of gray, black, and white. Aliens and those of different genders, Rebels, Imperials, and those in between. The story is what matters, not "me identifying as my character" or living out some "power fantasy" as an idealized version of myself.

A huge part of old-school roleplaying is being able to step into the shoes of someone entirely different from yourself. This was "the way" back in the 1980s.

And I can play as Imperials or Sith, just like the MMO, and have a "bad guy" campaign. Since this is Star Wars, redemption and defection to the other side are always possibilities, and that is always a fun part of playing a bad-guy campaign: discovering "I really had no friends over here" and throwing it all away for a new life on the other side.

That happens? Can someone on the bad-guy side be redeemed and turn to the good?

I know, this is 2026, and it seems impossible, but it is true and part of the lore of Star Wars.

DIY Star Wars sounds exciting to me. I am also making this a hobby and making my own tokens, and I will share those soon. I need my characters in the game, so I got a 1" circle paper cutter, some 1" blank cardboard tokens, rubber cement, and my color printer working, so I can craft my own tokens! They came out very nice, and this extends the life of my tokens and maps and lets me have more stuff for my game. So this is also a craft-type hobby, and I get to make cool, tangible, "not VTT", realistic things here in the real world, not the fake one.

If I had a 3D printer, I would be making my own miniatures, gluing them on bases, and painting them, and perhaps that is where I will go with this.

In this age of "digital first," we forget the craft side of our hobby. Painting miniatures, making tokens, using real maps, and playing face-to-face on the tabletop. I get tired of VTTs and their constant attempts to sell you stuff. I would rather craft my own game tokens and use my map collection from Pathfinder and Starfinder in my games.

A digital-first game will deny you the craft side of the hobby, and that is a terrible thing.

And if I can make my own stuff, that fits in with the DIY Star Wars narrative of feeling dissatisfied with what others give us, and taking it into our own hands to create the things we enjoy and remember.

Instead of being negative and never having anything you like, try creating things that you do like and can pour love and creativity into. You will get so much more out of it.

And that is the DIY spirit.

To Be a Fan Again...

I heard that line on YouTube, where an older OSR YouTuber pushed aside a swath of negative comments in chat, and said he didn't want to be angry anymore, that he just wanted to be a fan again.

That is what I am trying. To be a fan again.

It doesn't mean I ignore stupidity or give myself a free pass to be a gullible fool; I know the hobby too well. There are still games that are way too hostile to fans and get silly or political. I want something fun that respects the audience.

I can sum it up by the old saying, "Give the fans what they want."

I only want games that do that, or show such a high level of understanding and design that they are undeniable. Level Up: Advanced 5E falls into that category. This was the Open 5E version I enjoyed most, designed for old-school players and addressing hundreds of criticisms of the game. Level Up A5E is solid, and I can be a fan of it if I cut my 5E library way down.

Why go back into 5E? Why not stay in BX? It is a good question. Well, before I sell off 95% of my 5E books, I need to see if the best version I played still holds up. You get one last chance, 5E, and  Level Up A5E is the strongest version of the game. I guess we will see.

I will give 5.5E a chance. I will pull out ToV.

Let's figure this out.

Also, if I want a "detailed fantasy character builder," I have two options: 5E or GURPS. BX will not do the layered, detailed, multipart fantasy builds that 5E does. GURPS will do it, but the result will be a realistic and gritty game. 5E is the only game in town when it comes to the "Dialbo-style" character build system, and A5E supports that and improves upon the concept nicely.

Also, 5E has the "MMO-style" play that defines the modern era, with shooty powers and epic combos. A5E does the 5E better by including martial classes in on the fun, where other versions of 5E will give martial classes a Charlie Brown "bag of rocks" when it comes to fun at the table. You, too, martial classes, can have epic choices, massive combos, and resource management just like the mages, but not feel like mages at all. A5E's martial classes are a genius-level design.

If 5E survives at my table, it will be A5E.

But I need to give them all another chance before I decide.

And that includes 5.5E, despite what YouTube is saying about it.

Star Wars, I am doing it in spite. The "franchise" is dead, but the classic universe and stories are not. I can still enjoy the stories I loved as a kid and bring them into today through role-playing. This is really good stuff. The feeling I am ignoring the current, tragic state of the stories and just doing my own thing again. The storytelling and craft in the current Star Wars have fallen to an insanely low level. This isn't even about messaging anymore; the writers have forgotten how to write, none of them could be bothered to learn about canon, and it is just plain, bad Star Wars.

I need good Star Wars. I need stories that treat canon with respect. I want personal struggles and tales of epic heroism and tragic villainy. I know I am not getting that anywhere else but my own stories these days. So be it. I can tell stories, and the good Star Wars is at my table every night. How cool is that?

All I want is good Star Wars.

Genesys? A fun game. Special fun dice. It creates narrative situations at the macro level. It is like Star Wars, but not Star Wars. It is cool. I can stay in the same narrative dice mindset and play other things. An underrated classic that eliminates the need for many of the newer narrative games, and it does everything so much more simply than many efforts.

BX? A classic, it is like playing games in DOS again. Simple, portable, expandable, and fast to run, with a definite dungeon-and-wilderness turn structure that manages play and keeps the game moving. BX is programmed into my DNA at this point; it is impossible to not be a fan.

A side series of games here are the excellent Without Number games by Kevin Crawford, BX-compatible "do it all and every genre" games that take BX to a whole new level. These stay right by my OSE books and promise play across infinite universes, and Stars Without Number is my "designated survivor" game for Star Wars should EDGE Studio ever lose the Star Wars license. If you want "BX Star Wars," start with Stars Without Number and mod from there to craft an incredible universe.

GURPS? Like The Who's song Long Live Rock, GURPS is dead, they say, and Long Live GURPS! It is that good for those who know. This game has survived, was the game that killed AD&D 1E for most in the 1980s, and it still rocks on to this day, still killing AD&D 1E campaigns and replacing the rules with a flat-out better system. Narrative support, the best character builds in gaming, and a combat system that puts Rolemaster to shame. This is seriously good pure 1980s and 1990s greatness.

GURPS set up D&D's death so Magic: The Gathering could take over. GURPS, Battletech, Vampire the Masquerade, d6 Star Wars, Warhammer Fantasy, and Rifts were the sinister six games that killed D&D. I was there, in college at the time, so I know. There is a smaller case for Runequest and Rolemaster, but they were not as big as these games. 

GURPS was the first game to put a dent in D&D's dominance in the late 1980s, and the rest came along later. The Stranger Things kids should have been playing GURPS in the last season to be more period-accurate. Or Car Wars. Both of those games would have given us a better final season of the show.

I don't even question whether I am a fan of GURPS; of course, I am.

If you learn the game, you are a fan for life.

This is where I am. I am trying to be a fan again. YouTuber channels that bemoan the current terrible state of D&D, Star Wars, Marvel, comics, role-playing, and everything else in the hobby become tired and one-note whine sessions. I agree with a lot of what they have to say, but after the hundredth time of hearing it, I have had enough already.

Yes, what Wizards did with the OGL was terrible. Their calling the original creators of the games, all those terrible things, hurts the memories of my childhood and all the fun we had with these beloved games. They showed they were not worthy of upholding the idea's legacy, just like the current crop of Star Wars creators, so we will have to wait a little longer for better days.

While I am waiting, I will be creating things I love over here by myself.

And sharing what I do.

And being the positive force in gaming that I crave.

But not surrendering to being blind and stupid, as many of these brain-dead influencers do.