D&D 5 vs. OSR Games

There is a harshness to OSR (old school revolution) games such as Basic Fantasy and Labyrinth Lord that appeals to me. I am a fighter, beside me stands a cleric, behind us is a magic user, and around here somewhere our thief lurks in the shadows.

We enter a room with four goblins, and it's on.

Yes, math and numbers matter, but I am the same as every other level 2 fighter, but with only slight differences in ability scores and hit points. My gear is probably the same, a shield, a long-sword, and plate armor. Magic gear? Gravy.

I don't have a character build, the 'story arc' does not matter, there is no way to 'interrupt' game rules, and my personality traits also mean nothing. This is a game of Monopoly, where the dice are cruel and my strategy of mitigating risk versus reward is the "play" of the game.

It's easy in game design to Homer Simpson in "wouldn't it be cool" rules and systems, spells and feats, powers and character classes until you have a game that isn't fun for anyone. The true spirit of the OSR for me embodies the opposite, the harsh but basic side of the hobby, where my character is a playing piece, and that playing piece loses when it dies. You laugh at your stupid luck, chalk it up to the danger of the game, and roll up a new PC if your group gets back to town alive.

In OSR games, it is probably best if you use a colored 'bowling pin' pawn for yourself than a detailed miniature, because you're not really supposed to be that attached to your character in the first place. Lose five PCs in a module? It's fine, really, it was just a dangerous place. Laugh, have fun, and chalk it up to dying multiple times in a game like Counterstrike. It's not a big deal.

If you go back to AD&D, you only got XP for gold pieces earned. The game did not care where you got them from either, there were no story awards, thieves could earn them in town by stealing from anyone, and splitting the loot at the end of the game meant splitting the XP as well. In short, your sole motivation was pretty clear.

Monster XP and "Challenge Rating" did not determine experience points earned. Fighting a strong ogre expended critical resources, and it was better to have the thief sneak in there and grab the bag of loot. XP for monsters feels like it was a "fairness rule" adopted from video gaming.

Avoiding a fight and getting the loot and XP? Priceless. And very old-school.

Now, story games, such as D&D 5. While D&D 5 wears the clothes of the OSR, there is a heavy emphasis on story here that makes this a different game. My character has a special "background" that gives skills and other mechanical benefits. My character has "characteristics" in four mental categories that determine how I should roleplay. Uh-oh, my good-natured aunt can't know that I am a thief and steal to make a living. My fighter is in love with the princess. I have a blind hatred for my enemies. I take what I want. I am a sage and feel I should protect my students.

None of that matters to my OSR "red fighter pawn" guy. While your D&D 5 fighter is thinking about how that expensive necklace will impress the princess, my OSR guy is sitting there staring at 500 GP and 500 XP for walking away with it. That's enough for level 3, and me staying alive down here a little longer. It is risk vs. reward in its purest sense, and it is also the attraction of true OSR games.

Oh, and the Pathfinder fighter is smiling at the money too to contribute to his +2 sword fund, but wondering if the Challenge Rating of the fight would make it worth his time to fight the ogre or not.

But see how a story game requires more 'death protection' for characters than an OSR game? See how your base motivations have changed? This is important stuff, like changing the goals and motivations for on-board Monopoly play. You are growing more attached to your playing piece, which is okay, but it changes the focus of the game from "game playing" to a "story sim." It should be harder for your playing piece to die in a story based game because the death of a major hero would invalidate the story arc. You get the 'action movie effect' in story driven games because you need to keep characters alive to further the narrative of the module.

This happened back in AD&D 2nd Edition, where a lot of modules inspired by the NYT bestseller fiction series felt like they were railroading you, and a lot of them did. It is why we may be seeing a return to those here in D&D 5 when I see criticisms of modules railroading you along a designer's preset story arc. In 1st Edition AD&D? Most of those modules were sandboxes, monster X with treasure Y, and you figure out how to separate them. They were simple, yes, but there was an old-school charm to those, and they also supported the simple XP for GP motivation built into the game.

With D&D 5, a lot of modules feel like they are making the AD&D 2nd Edition mistakes. Yes, story is important and the focus of the game, but it's not the module writer's story that should matter. The module's narrative should support the characters' stories. With D&D 5's generic and random character motivations, it's hard for a general purpose module to fill specific character motivations, so a lot of dungeon master interference is needed to create opportunities for those situations to mean things to specific character motivations.

I feel this is why our experience with the Starter Set fell flat, nobody realized that this on-the-fly DM story to character interpretation and 'interface layer' was needed, so the story and roleplaying parts fell flat for us. The motivations for each character never really came into play, and they were ignored for the action parts. Coming from D&D 3 and D&D 4, we were expecting to be blown away by the mechanics, but we weren't - since that isn't where the focus is now. I'm feeling for D&D 5 modules to be great adventures, they may need pre-gens with a set of story-friendly character motivations to use with them, and these motivations will have an impact during the module's story.

Story is much more important with this game. This needs to be highlighted in the rules and in the modules they publish. This is probably one of the disadvantages of having the DMG come out so late, it is hard to know how they want you to run this game for maximum enjoyment, so there is a lot of guesswork and going by previous editions. A lot of these assumptions are wrong.

None of this should be taken as one game is better than another, but it is a great study of the hidden motivations built into the games we play, and realizing that will help you find the game that matches your expectations of what fantasy gaming should be.

D&D 4, 5, and Pathfinder: Mechanics vs. Story

D&D 4 and Pathfinder are more concerned with mechanics than they are story.

D&D 5 is more concerned with story than mechanics.

Of course, speaking generally. It is something I noticed while playing around with D&D 5 this weekend, and it has something to do with the at-table play of the games. This has to do with the "table play" mechanics of these three games, and the era they were designed in. This is the "what players do" at the table, if their focus is on the rules portions of the game or the DM presented story portions.

To be fair, all of them have a DM-focused part of the game, where a story is presented and the players react. What happens after this point is the flavor of the game, and determines if the game is more story focused or mechanics focused.

D&D 4 has to be the most mechanics focused of the group. I found in many of my D&D 4 games the story just sets up the fun tactical based encounters and then the players go to town battling it out with all sorts if interlocking rules, battle powers, and map-based play.

Pathfinder falls in the middle, and it still has a strong map-based component if you so choose to play it that way. It is still very mechanics focused, and I need to call this game out as having a second mechanics-based piece of the game with character design. It is just as fun to play around with Hero Lab and come up with a character design, and this is a game in and of itself unique to Pathfinder.

With D&D 5, everything feels turned around. Just like with the OSR (old school revolution) games such as Labyrinth Lord and Basic Fantasy, the game is more story based, and less mechanics based. The players don't worry too much about builds, maps, or tactics, and there is a heavy focus of narrative on the referee. There is a tight focus on "story and react" going on here, and it produces unique challenges for referees.

There is a key difference here between OSR games and D&D 5 that we will get into later.

You better have a great module and story going on. With D&D 4, let's face it, it didn't really matter if the module's story sucked. If the combats were great and memorable, who really cares about story? D&D 4 is like "Battle Chess" and if the tight tactical battle was cool and you combo-ed your way to victory against an unstoppable force, that was a great time at the gaming table. Story was just the glue between the combat maps.

With Pathfinder, story matters a little more. Some referees I've spoken to over the years have had trouble "getting players interested" in adventure paths, and this highlights a difference between play styles in the Pathfinder community. Some play heavy tactical, like D&D 4, and others play story like OSR games. Still, on the turn-to-turn action, players are checking feats, dishing out mega-damage with special builds, and the turn-to-turn mechanics to play ratio is very high in this game. It's a game where your design choices matter, and even the small ones can make a big difference. Story matters, but mechanics often have a direct role in determining the outcome of that story.

With D&D 5 story matters more than mechanics. Stories are built-in to your character via backgrounds, and also through an "inspiration" die-roll bonus when using a character's characteristics (personality, ideal, bond, and flaw). It is an interesting choice because instead of creating mathematical and "rules interrupt" mechanics for on-board play, they created soft "story mechanics" for roleplaying.

There is a lot to say on this topic, especially compared to OSR games which did not need these "story mechanics". To say D&D 5 is like the OSR games is probably not entirely correct, while it similar to the OSR games in complexity, it does have a lot in common with the more modern narrativist and story-based games out there. There is also a hard mathematical live-or-die edge to the OSR game that does not exist in D&D 5. I could write another article on this and I probably will.

While D&D 5 does have 'builds' and 'mechanics' the focus of the game is different. In games where mechanics matter more, you are building for outcomes and situations on the tabletop. His figure is here, so my X bonus gives me Y. In story-style games, you are building more for the outcomes and situations in the referee's mind. My character is "principled" so he does not take the "bribe offered" by the NPC sort of thing, bang, inspiration point awarded for good roleplaying, and the next mental challenge is presented to the group.

There still is crossover in all of these games, as there could be map-based bonuses given to D&D 5 characters, or good roleplaying bonuses given in D&D 4 or Pathfinder. But the games are built differently, to highlight one core gameplay flow as the central model of play, and these "workflows" matter and make a difference. A game's workflow determines a bunch of things, how you play it for maximum fun, what types of rules supplements add to the experience, how modules should be written for the game, and a lot of other practical concerns.

Why is any of this important? Well, once you understand they why of games, you can make practical judgments like this:

"That old-school AD&D module is going to need a lot more story and ways NPCs and situations interact with character backgrounds to make it a fun D&D 5 adventure." 

"The maps in this adventure are too big and uninteresting for D&D 4 combats." 

"This module needs more ways for Pathfinder character builds to matter in its encounters and story."

Once you understand how a game plays and what makes that fun for you, you can begin to understand what you play it for and how to maximize your enjoyment of the game for you and your group.

D&D 5: Players Handbook, First Impressions

This is a well put-together book. I am not reviewing the rules here, and those will rise and fall on their own, but I just wanted to capture some of my feelings on opening it and skimming through the book for the first 10 minutes.

I like the consolidated lists of deities in the back of the book, including the pantheons of all the major D&D worlds (Eberron, Dragonlance, Faerun, Krynn, etc), plus the DDG deities of Earth from Norse, Greek, Celtic, and Egyptian pantheons. It feels like an answer to the single world-centric flavors of D&D3 and D&D4, and it is a very good thing to not paint the PHB into the corner of one world with a default set of deities to choose from. Wizards deserves major kudos for taking this step.

Bonus points for mentioning Mystara in the book. Minus points for not mentioning Nerrath and the Points of Light 4E setting, or at least I have not found it yet. Has Nerrath been destroyed? What happened to the Great Wheel? Wow, they sort of mixed 4E's fractured and decentralized cosmology with the traditional AD&D wheel. It feels very strange.

It is also interesting Wizards has circled the wagons and even included Birthright in its official settings list. They seem to be saying, 'if you want to play in our worlds with our IP, you play by our rules.' It's probably long-overdue, and it is good to see the older settings mentioned and celebrated again. It is a long way from the freewheeling 'you make it up' settings of 4E, here, the Wizard's IPs are taking center stage, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

There's no mentions of timelines? Wow, you mean the 4E changes can be rolled back, and you can play in classic Faerun again? Here's a big thank you from me, and it is about freaking time. Please, continue the 'play in the classic setting' feeling here. I have always felt the settings of D&D should be rolled back and rebooted, like they do from time to time with Batman, and allow a new generation to experience the classic Realms and other settings without all the heavy historical spellplague, shatterings, and other BS that was layered on by new versions of the game. Timelines suck for new players, I'd rather my new players have the experience of dealing with that bastard Elminster themselves, and have the entire set of classic Faerun NPCs to play with every time I start a new campaign there.

Wizards, please, from now on, treat your settings like comic book franchises and reboot them from time to time, or at least support players who want to start fresh with the stock setting. Support "day one" play in all your settings! But as for rolling things back in every setting and supporting the concept of day one play?

Thank you thank you thank you.

Where are the magic items? I still haven't found them.

That monster list in the back seems really weak, I would have thought twice about spending pages on it. I know some of those are for spells or class features, but it does seem like something that I would have liked to have in a web-extra. I guess they need to be included, but as a world's monster list they are not, unless this is a really, really basic world where the big bads are first level skeletons and zombies, and maybe some wild animals. And of course, other NPCs with classes.

I may play it this way until the Monster Manual comes out and drive players crazy.

The combat chapter is short, minuscule in fact. I remember the days where this took up most of the book in many roleplaying games. To flip through a D&D book and not have an illustration of a combat map showing line-of-sight examples feels strange.

I get a feeling this game is closer in spirit and feel to Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy than it is Pathfinder. Pathfinder clearly feels like the AD&D of our age with its complexity and rules for everything, and D&D 5 feels like the old "red box" Basic D&D. It's interesting things feel like they went this way, and I think there's room for both to be played and celebrated.

The game feels like it is narrowed down and has a tight focus on just the highlights of D&D. It is not very deep, but it is very broad. I get this feeling this edition is the 'rules light' sort of 'board game rules' of D&D, like a universal Monopoly rules set to be followed by every version of Monopoly.

Now the rules, we shall see about the rules. My group had a terrible experience with them with the Starter Set, and I found that product difficult to use. With the Players Handbook, I am not seeing where the criticism of some reviews is coming from saying this book is disorganized. It looks more organized than the Starter Set by far. We shall see during play, of course.

What, no PDF to buy for the Players Handbook on launch day? Are you serious or have I not found it yet? My tablet with my complete library of Pathfinder books curses you, my friend. How am I supposed to play this outside my house, by carrying my actual books to the hobby store? You, my good friend, must be out of your mind. Books are for collecting, and PDFs are for playing. I can't wipe the Cheetos stains from my book, but I can disinfect my old 'pass around' tablet from my grubby player's filthy hands. I don't care if you have to get Paizo to do the PDF download for you, just get it done Wizards.

You think it was 1980 or something where we actually had to use real books. Please.

Overall, I am more positive about my first impressions with this book than I expected. I am also strangely reassured that Pathfinder will also be secure at my table, because the two games are so different. Step back and take a look beyond the two games, and the false competition some people are trying to foist on us to create silly arguments. Pathfinder and D&D 5 are really two very different games, a Risk to a Monopoly in fact, and both can be enjoyed by the same group at the same table. They both fill different play styles, and they both have their own 'tabletop game' appeal to me.

Pathfinder is without competition in the character building and 'what was that' monster encounter sheer terror and you cannot expect what is in the next room sort of game play. For players that enjoy tactical challenge and taking down an encounter by the numbers, Pathfinder's refinement and sheer weight of options can not be beat. There is also a great world story and incredible art that you are missing out on if you are not a fan, not to mention the inspiration of adventure paths and the story of that world is just captivating.

D&D 5 feels like a 'greatest hits' album of a band you love, but overall feels simplified and a 'basic rules' sort of version of the game you would find in a box set somewhere. It is a tight rules set, pared down after years of exploits and problems with the rules, so you aren't going to get the 'Wild West' feel of the older games, and some may miss that, like the old World of Darkness versus the new. We have Pathfinder for that Wild West zany do-anything feel, so we are covered. With D&D 5, it feels like the older retro-clone systems came back and changed the narrative of what D&D should be, and there is a place for that game at my table.

Both can exist and be enjoyed? Heresy, I know. Well, count me in the heretics column then, I appreciate them both.

As for actual enjoyment and the rules? Again, it is too early to tell for me. These are just my first impressions from my first 10 minutes of the book, so take them how you will. We will not have a complete view of the game until the end of November, when the last piece to the puzzle is released, the Dungeon Master's Guide. We still have a long road to go, games to play, and characters to design, and adventures to be had. I am still skeptical of the tight focus of the system, my experience with games with tight math is that they are more prone to power-gaming and exploits than in systems where the rules are looser. We shall see, and we won't know more about balance until the complete Monster Manual comes out here in a couple weeks.

Overall? Slightly weak on content, very simplified, but a good feeling of support of the classics. I'm more positive than I expected to be, but I still have concerns on balance, options, and the fun factor for my groups. I'm happy this is a different game than Pathfinder though, and the two don't need to compete at my tabletop.

Points of Light vs. Evil PCs

One of the most interesting concepts codified in D&D 4 was the concept of world narrative. This is the whole idea of the "points of light" narrative of the world's situation. Put simply, the world is full of evil, and only a few outposts of good remain as the last holdouts of goodness in the world.

There were a number of assumptions that went with the Points of Light concept, including:

• Good does not fight Good
• Evil does not fight Evil
• Monsters are everywhere
• Most good races get along with each other
• The world is dangerous!

Okay, granted, this makes for a default fun and action-oriented world. It is a lot like an MMO in fact, where if you step outside of the towns, all bets are off. Keeping the races friendly makes it easy for everybody to find groups and to pair up Drow and Dragonborn - if the Dark Elves are fighting the demonic Orcs too, why not team up?

Now look at the above and think, what does the Points of Light model do? For the most part, good gets along with good, and evil gets along with evil. The world is a battleground, and heroes are needed, especially the good guys. There is a built-in bias to the world that presupposes a giant good vs. evil fight.

It feels difficult to play a neutral or evil PC in this world model. It is like an MMO, it assumes you are good guy. It feels like attempting to roleplay an "evil PC" on an online game with two factions that can't intermingle, you can stand around saying you're evil all you want, but the world isn't setup to support being evil at all. In fact, an evil PC in a points of light game is more a monster and disruptive to play in a party full of people trying to save the world.

Mind you, I still love points of light, it is an 'instant action' and classic world model, but it does have some interesting quirks that I'd like to explore. Also, place aside the problems of playing an evil PC for a while, I just want to think about the question, "Does the world model support diverse play styles?"

Take a normal, typical non Points of Light world. This place has your typical Medieval Europe farms and hamlets scattered about, rolling hills, dark forests, and snow-capped mountains painted in the background. Monsters are not the norm, they are the exception. This is not Points of Light, it is more a "Farms and Hamlets" setup, where the average piece of countryside is safe and normally Dark Ages. You may have a bandit or two lurking out there, or the occasional war between kingdoms, but on the average, nothing happens out there in the vast wilderness.

It feels like the world Paizo is building for Pathfinder. This may not be how every referee runs Pathfinder, but when I see maps with scattered farms and small hamlets in some kingdoms, I am going to assume there aren't a lot of wandering monsters out there in the countryside to gnaw on peasants. There are some dangerous places, but it feels like many of the kingdoms are by default mirror their inspirations, if a place is based on Medieval France, it is just like Medieval France. For some areas of the world, demon scars and vampire lands, this probably does not apply, but there are "safe zones" in the world.

If feels easier to play an evil PC in a normal or semi-normal world, since there is no default assumption of how the world expects you to act. There are more opportunities to choose evil or choose good in a world that isn't under siege, and thus more player freedom. In a way, Paizo's adventure paths typically leave it up to the group for how their characters get along, and I have never really had a problem running evil PCs through them - everyone has their own motivations to participate, and even "personal gain" is an evil-friendly and acceptable motivation for participation in an adventure path, even with a group of good characters.

I haven't got my D&D 5 PHB or DMG yet, so the jury is still out on the default world assumptions. With the lower power levels of the game, it could go either way in my eyes. Low-level monsters are still dangerous to high-level PCs, so this may make the world a more dangerous place. But, a mass of low level villagers can beat off high-level monsters, so the mass of people may push the world towards a more normal place. I need to read the default assumptions about the world to make up my mind about it, and see what view of the world they adopted for the game.

Open Licenses and Electronic Gaming

I miss the OGL.

D&D 4's GSL didn't feel like a real 3rd party license to me, and some said it limited 3rd party support of D&D 4 with its restrictive nature. I didn't see too many great 3rd party products for D&D 4, and the character builder data being limited to D&D Insider hurt 3rd party class and power add-on books. I did not like that license much for that fact.

D&D 5 needs a great community publishing license, and this feels like a huge missed opportunity at launch. We used to help organize product launches for a company, and making sure community and 3rd party support was strong on day #1 was a key part of a product launch's success. I would have loved to had all three D&D 5 books out on launch day, plus a great community license for 3rd party support - and plenty of 3rd party books launching on day #1.

You go big or go home in product launches, and organizing a great launch day with plenty of things to buy creates a hype and level of success all in itself.

D&D 5's 3rd party license is promised to be next year, and I am hopeful for an open publishing model like the OGL. I know there is always that desire to control things, but systems flourish and thrive the more you let others play with them. D&D 3.x proved that, and Pathfinder continues that trend.

Pathfinder, of course, is the king of 3rd party support right now, and I just love this model, It supports the free flow of ideas, and I can buy class and power books, and programs from 3rd party companies like Hero Lab can add those data sets to their program, and we can have a wonderful world of options and different ideas available for our choosing. Modules, game worlds, powers, classes - you can go to town and buy everything and have years worth of gaming and options in the Pathfinder/Paizo marketplace, and I love it.

Electronic game support could be better, it has always been a sore spot with the OGL. I would love for Paizo to break with the OGL, write a new set of rules, and open up support for electronic 3rd party publishing and other options with a new and freer license. I think they could do it, and if there ever is a Pathfinder 2.0, I would love for them to revolutionize the open gaming movement and take things a step further with community licensed video gaming with a new set of rules.

So in a way, the OGL is the way to go, but it needs to be replaced. The thinking needs to be along the same lines of "the more people play with our rules the more successful we are" - and this needs to cross into the electronic realm. Imagine if every fantasy game on every phone, laptop, and tablet were an advertisement for your game rules, with a non-onerous 'license required' splash screen and hotlink to your store built into every game. People should be buying electronic games, MMOs, cell phone games, character designers, and other entertainment software because it all follows the rules set they love.

This is possibly one of the largest 'missed opportunities' in RPG publishing these days, and I hope it changes soon.

D&D: Tolkien vs. World of Warcraft

It's striking the ebbs and flows popular culture take, and it affects our fantasy gaming. Popular culture defines game design, as role-playing gaming is a direct form of fantasy fulfillment. Since fantasies are defined by the culture we live in, games that adapt and meet the fantasy rise in popularity because people have an avenue for expressing the fantasy de-jour in a tabletop context.

Take for example D&D 4, created during the heyday of MMO culture, and really, the game does play like an MMO. D&D 4's Essentials reboot kind of throttled that feeling down, and that was an experiment for D&D 5's return to a different inspiration. People still like the World of Warcraft over-the-top tone and feeling to D&D 4, and some don't.

This is not about what's bad or right, or what's new and what's old - this is about providing games to fill the demands of the marketplace.

There still is a demand for tabletop MMO style gaming, people are fans of it, have a blast playing it, and it still will be played far, far into the future. New games may rise and take the MMO-style throne from D&D 4. MMOs are waning a little in popularity, and MMO-tabletop gaming is as well, but that force and demand in the marketplace will never go away - MMOs are here to stay, thus the fantasy fulfillment of "playing someone like that" in a pen-and-paper game will always be there.

D&D 5 has shifted the game back towards its Tolkien roots, and away from MMO culture. The LoTR and Hobbit movies are back in the spotlight at least for a while, and the demand for that down-to-earth non-fantastic fantasy is high again. When some people think of fantasy, those Tolkien-esque images are what they see. Again, this is perfectly fine, this is one segment of the marketplace, and people are fans and should have wonderful games to play.

However, it is wrong to say either style is bad. People like MMOs and people like Tolkien, your opinion is never going to change that, so find the game you like to play and find players that like to play it. Some people like multiple genres too, and that may surprise some in our 'one game to rule them all' age. We need to be a little more inclusive and a little more understanding.

Pathfinder is a different beast, and its inspirations come our of D&D 3's Magic the Gathering roots. Pathfinder is a "deck builder" character-centric game just like D&D 3, and that appeals to another crowd of competitive fantasy gamer. It's roots lie in combining MMO and magic card-style fantasy artwork with the heavy character optimization and building gaming. In Pathfinder, building your character as you level is a big part of playing the game, and that appeals to a different crowd. It's all good, and those gamers are welcome under the big "fantasy gaming" tent as well.

I still love Pathfinder mechanically for its builds and customization. I also love the other games for their feeling and design to support those play-styles.

To be fair, any of these games could be used to simulate any of these styles of play and feelings. However, mechanically each game is close to its roots and design inspiration, so you are often better off playing games that support your idea of fantasy in mechanics because you'll have a better time and enjoy the experience more fully.

To pick a "favorite" game, you first need to know where your inspirations lie. It's hard sometimes because there's a lot of noise out there, and every publisher wants their game to be everything. It's also not fair to attack a game because it isn't what you like, but understanding a game for what it is helps you understand those who are fans better. But understanding where a game "comes from" also helps you understand what you like, and lets you be in a game that lets you express your fantasies and heroic dreams with a system built to support your idea of what "fantasy gaming" means to you.

Horde of the Dragon Queen Review on tenfootpole.org

There's a great review of the D&D 5 module Horde of the Dragon Queen over on tenfootpole.org - check it out.

What is fun about this review is that it is critical, but very constructive and imaginative. Kudos to Mr. Bryce for writing this, it highlights great (and not so great) adventure design, and player motivation.

It also highlights some important differences between 5E, OSR games, 4E, and even Pathfinder in terms of character power and advancement. It is a great "thinkers" piece just in comparison of everything out there, and it does get you thinking about where your personal fantasy gaming preference lies.

It is an excellent read for anyone interested in adventure design and critical thinking about your preferred playing style. Check it out!