The VTT Wars

So I am late to the party with VTTs, enjoying playing solo or in person. I logged into Roll20 and made a serious effort to learn the platform. When you look at the number of games on these platforms, something deceptive is happening.

5E is the default choice since everything is ready to go. This is the "use an iPad as my computer" answer to the "Which game are we playing" question. It is about the most straightforward system to get going, all the integration features are there, and everything is done for you.

But damn, 5E is NOT designed for VTT play. If they are redesigning 5E for VTTs, the game's design needs to change dramatically to avoid all of the ritualistic "okay, do X, Y, and Z" to get a surprise round complete and the first round of combat. It is clunky and requires specialized knowledge, a rule book open, and multiple opening and closing character sheets and dice rolls to figure out what is happening.

5E's surprise round and the first round of combat remind me of old-school Car Wars in that game's slowness, ease of messing up, and complexity. It makes card-based initiative systems like Savage Worlds look amazing by comparison.

That first turn of combat is the most important. It "builds the shared universe" that defines the critical experience that is VTT play. There are so many rituals and procedures to follow; if you got a room of Apple engineers in there and said, "Simplify this and deliver a better experience," they would have a field day.

The entire game is like that, open a sheet, click on something, get the roll, and continue play. It is 90% set up, which makes it the default choice.

But what is really the default choice here?

It is not 5E.

It is the Roll20 platform.

5E is in the position the Java programming language was in a few years ago. The default choice for corporate people to build business applications in (and still the default for many organizations), but with many different flavors and vendors supporting the common language. There are other languages, but you use Java to play in the corporate sphere.

And there are as many different flavors of 5E as there is Java. Amazon, IBM, and many other companies make a version of Java to use. The default is the official Oracle version, but it is a weaker standard, and companies sometimes choose other versions. In 5E, we have Esper Genesis, Tales of the Valiant, numerous OSR variants, Low Fantasy Gaming, Advanced 5E, and many other flavors.

One of the substantial strategic weaknesses of Wizards 5E is it is fantasy only. They open the doors for competitors to play in every other genre, and other games own those spaces. Wizards should focus on 5E as a generic system, with officially supported modules for every game genre. A 5.5E wastes time, especially when the strategic goal is control of the VTT space. This is probably one of their critical mistakes with 5.5E, on the "Windows Phone" level, that people will look back on and say they blew it right here.

What happens when players want to play Cthulhu, modern, weird west, superhero, horror, or sci-fi? They play other games, some are 5E, and many are not. They use other VTTs with supported systems. You can't monopolize the VTT market by catering to one genre.

Properties Hasbro owns are using other systems! What is going on over there?

Wizards has an engine they could turn into any game genre and then control the platform that runs them all. It should be simple to see, build, implement, and support. They have the designers, IP, and know-how to do this.

But instead, they are blowing it by putting all their eggs in the D&D basket.

They should be putting their eggs in the 5E basket.

Roll20 is positioning itself as Linux, the system all games are run on. They do that by supporting all games across many genres. This is where Wizards should be, but they can't see it.

Mail Room: Rules Cyclopedia

I remember I saw this in Waldenbooks in a mall in 1991.

I skipped buying it, then.

Something felt strange about not buying it like I shouldn't take the plunge.

D&D was dead to us, and we moved on to better games. I had no use for it, and there were many other better games to play: Shadowrun, Battletech, Vampire, Rifts, GURPS, Twilight: 2000, and many other incredible experiences. Even the D&D alternatives, such as Runequest, Rolemaster, and Warhammer FRP, were far better than D&D.

Besides, D&D was being heavily censored back then, and anything offensive was removed from the game with this massive "mass market sanitization purge." The edgy games with the warnings on the covers, like Vampire? That is where we ended up.

D&D wasn't cool anymore.

A few years later, Magic the Gathering would drop and kill off tabletop roleplaying for that generation.

Thirty years later?

D&D is being sanitized again to not upset anyone, and I feel demons and the concept of Hell will be purged from the game soon as "troubling Christian beliefs." We have returned to the era of AD&D 2nd Edition, and instead of the Satanic Panic, political correctness drives the sanitization.

And the nefarious "put yourself in the game" identity marketing they do today, that games in the 1990s warned us NOT to do because it was mentally unsafe and potentially dangerous for some.

Who cares? We need to increase attachment and make this a lifestyle game.

D&D is dead. These forces are driven by Wall Street monetization, and the game will never recover. In fact, any edition they put out between now and when they turn this into a heavily monetized card game with scarcity and paid character customization is a waste of time. You know it is coming. Just do it and get it over with. The VTT that still needs dungeon masters is a waste of time.

Yes, the VTT may be cool, but the fatal flaw is that my imagination is far more than a few maps released monthly. The same town, the same halls, the same inn, the same boat - incredible for the first few months, then it drops off dramatically. Buy more!

Some other platforms will come along with AI-generated 3d environments and character models and blow their static asset store away. That technology is just one or two years off. And the platform that does that will destroy a static Unreal Engine VTT and be the "hot cool thing."

The game needs a revolution in play, digital asset collection, and resale, not an evolution with a few rules tweaks and new higher-priced books. This feels like a half-step to what is coming anyways, the failed point-five version of the game that didn't sell as well and was forgotten when the online experience came out.

We are waiting.

It may be excellent, as Diablo IV is a terrific way to waste money. Let people have fun, and they can decide how to spend their money. I don't buy into it (often) because I am not a fan of predatory business practices.

But having the Rules Cyclopedia now as a PoD book brings back memories. It is a lovely book, a solid resource for other, better OSR games I like better than the originals. Why not play the originals? We have people out here pouring their hearts into their dreams. Why should I support older versions of the games when there are people making new things for the new games and communities enjoying them?

It is still a cool book, and in the back, it even admits it is an inferior game to AD&D 2nd Edition. TSR was out there trying to bankrupt itself by releasing games that had you read and get excited for a few hundred pages before telling you that the game was a waste of time.

And it brings back those same feelings today's version of D&D is dead, attempts to revise are a waste of time, and we are waiting for a true revolution.

Grimdark vs. Modern Style

There is something to say about a game that inspires you to create great things. I don't get the same feeling with Warhammer FRP either. Low magic, rare monsters, sparse healing, and the ever-present force of corruption twisting souls and changing the land. Anytime I open the Zweihander book, I am in this game. The mood is there. It inspires me in a way very few games do.

It is a great death metal album that transports you to another world.

Warhammer FRP is well-made, but it has a different feel for me. The game feels silly in parts, and it panders to the self-insert crowd a little too much. The danger of "seeing yourself in the game" always leads the game down a path of player protection, since no one wants to see their alternate identity avatar die. We were warned against "putting ourselves in the game" in the 1980s, and that logic has not changed. It is dangerous, especially for those who need an excellent grasp of the difference between fantasy and reality.

Player protection is easy healing, abundant magic, and fast resource recovery. There is also an emphasis on "fun combat," like a video game, where the players are meant to win every fight. Once you get player protection, you get the strangely cute player races since no one wants to see their Pokemon-humanoid talking animal hybrid PC die.

And the entire game slips into this planar haze of the multiverse, and nothing is relatable or means anything anymore. Nothing seems grounded in reality. The game is a snarky young-adult cartoon, safe for everyone, and doesn't reflect anything relatable in reality.

You get JJ MacGuffin plots like, "The Planar Stone is missing!"

Who knows what it does, and who cares?

In ten years, all this cute-multiverse cartoon stuff will look dated, just like all the rule-of-cool stuff they made years ago looks dated. Time to rebuy a new edition.

The classics will always look in style. Dark elves will always be extraordinary. Dwarves will always be themselves. High elves reflect a part of who we are. Halflings are always great. Evil humanoids are a symbol of hatred and violence. I don't need an alien fantasy race to express relatable traits; I have them all with the four or five classic fantasy staples - and the standard types of monsters.

The classics reflect our nature.

You can't escape that, no matter how cartoonish the facade becomes.

In fact, once you start embracing the cartoonish, the tremendous variety of human ancestries becomes less critical. In a way, the cartoonish erases cultural diversity. We no longer need to deal with human cultural differences with all these funny animal masks and pastel-skinned planar character options.

It is too easy to pick a cartoon and ignore something based on who we are as people.

I am moving away from the silly and into a more realistic and darker base for my creations. I don't want theme park worlds. I don't wish to equate magic with technology. A campaign world saves me no time if I don't use it. And I don't want cute and cartoony; there is almost too much of it nowadays.

With Zweihander, I don't have a campaign world; I make it all up myself. The world I like best? It is an everyday world with average run-of-the-mill places. Really an Anytown with little danger around.

One of the incredible suggestions in this game is to have corruption spread in the game world as it is accumulated by the PCs and NPCs of the game. In this world, no monsters exist. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and others live in harmony.

But as different areas of the world gather corruption, evil crawls out of the depths of the earth. Goblins begin coming out of caves. More corruptive forces and dark cults emerge. Animals are twisted into horrible beasts. Even more and an army of orcs builds a fort. Elves fall to darkness and become dark elves. Where did they all come from? Do I need a map saying, "Orcs here, elves there?" No. They come from corruption and nightmares.

Fight the corruption, and you can stop the scourge before it consumes the land. You have a chance of saving a land falling to corruption, but it will take work, and sacrifices need to be made. Fail, and your game world has a new evil kingdom on the borders of others.

I only need some of this Warhammer FRP lore - it is excellent stuff, but I like making my own stories and worlds. Too many times, I will buy giant sandbox campaign worlds and have everything laid out, and I never use them. They feel static and set in stone. Everything has a place and can never really change (until the next edition, please buy so you can keep up).

Zweihander is DIY dark fantasy cool that keeps you on a low-power base. It is not a premade world and setting, it is an incredible set of rules used to craft your own worlds.

Castles & Crusades: Dark Fantasy?

One of my favorite lines when GM-ing Cypher System is, "It's all flavor!" Do you want a comedy game? You don't need humorous rules; you just enforce the flavor of humor through the storytelling, GM intrusions, and other non-mechanical aspects of the game.

Do you want horror? Same rules; just make horror the feeling and use your rulings to enforce a horror flavor. Pulp? Same thing. Comic book? Same method. Hard science fiction? Same exact thing. A gritty post-apocalyptic game? Same thing.

It is all flavor.

This is one of those things to remember whenever someone tries to sell you "a new game" that does horror better, old-school better, pulp action better, gritty better, or any other buzzword. Your current game does it fine. 

Except if you are playing 5E, since that trends towards overpowered builds and superheroic fantasy in the spirit of an MMO. I really have to make that caveat since 5E puts a lot of assumptions on the table regarding resting, resource recovery, and multiclass build optimization that break many of the above genres.

If you are playing dark fantasy, and your mind is on the next one-level dip so you can optimize your character build and DPS, you are not playing anything other than 5E. If you are taking short rests to magically recover from grievous wounds, you are not playing dark fantasy; you are playing 5E.

There are many games I could easily make a few flavor changes and have a great dark fantasy game. With 5E, I need to return to the SRD and start doing significant operations and rules overhauls to get the concept to work correctly. The base underlying dicing and numerical systems will work, but you need to throw out all the classes, spells, feats, and resource replenishment rules to get what you want the way you want it. At that point, a new game is easier to learn than 5E is easier to unlearn.

I get the same feeling when I try to use any superhero game to play fantasy.

5E is a superhero game.

The saying "everything is flavor" applies better if the game has a neutral base. GURPS, Cypher System, Savage Worlds, and any other generic game fit the idea perfectly - the rules have a very generic flavor, and they do not assume a superheroic power level, so you must bring everything to the table. And since the power levels are more baseline human, the recovery times are more in line with reality, with tweaks to lethality available; you can tweak the dials and make the system work for anything.

Flavor? You need to add that. This is one of the nice things about generic rule systems; you can tweak and flavor them to your heart's content.

With Castles & Crusades, I see how you can play this as a dark fantasy game. Throw an insanity, fear, and corruption system on there (all ability save-based, with CL on the strength of hazard), along with a spell failure/corruption/divine anger chance (even just a crit fail on a natural one) and you have it. The rules are a toolbox and a starting point; it is your game to mod.

One of the best parts about this system is no new spells or systems to learn. I love the Zweihander game, but it isn't the "dark fantasy plus dungeon" game I want for a particular game world I am working on. I must mod that game's spell lists to make healing and recovery easier. I could still make it happen, and the professions there are perfect, but again, the rules matter less than flavor and getting to the desired result faster.

That is not so easy to mod in with 5E, and many rules and assumptions are made that fight you. Some of the better dark fantasy versions of 5E (Low Fantasy Gaming) ended up rewriting the game rules entirely to get the correct result and feel.

5E: Kleenex and White Bread

Is it me, or does the term 5E mean anything these days? I see so many crowdfunded projects coming out for this "generic 5E framework," which could mean anything from official rules to a clone to any system based on 5E that is numerically compatible.

5E has become a word like Kleenex, Xerox, or Aspirin.

It is the white bread and facial tissues of roleplaying.

Loosely anything with +1 to +6 bounded accuracy, 2d20 advantage/disadvantage, the same hit point scale, damage output, skills, feats, and multiclassing could be called 5E. There are only a handful of common factors that make something 5E.

You could take the new Swords & Wizardry, double the hit point scale, toss a skill and feat system in there, up damage output as you level by a scaled factor, and you would have 5E.

Quick OSR to 5E Chart:

• Levels 1-3: Base damage
• Levels 4-6: 2x damage and monster hp
• Levels 7-9: 3x damage and monster hp
• ...etc, all the way to 6x damage and monster hp at 20

The damage scaling has been here since D&D 3.0 and it is no secret. This is the biggest difference between OSR games and post-2000 games. Oh, look how much damage I am doing now! Well, look at the monster hit points. it all evens out, and this is why OSR hit-point scales are better. There isn't arbitrary scaling, and the numbers are more manageable.

It just feels better as a fighter to be doing 6d8+12 at the 20th level, versus a guaranteed 1d8+2.

Look how much power I have!

Honestly, that multiplier is an illusion and slows the game down. More math and bigger numbers do not make a "high-powered game" if your character falls behind the curve - which you do, or even entire classes do.

Also, some versions of the game unlinked the damage output to a hit-point scale, like D&D 4E, and hit points soared to unmanageable levels where every opponent felt like a bullet sponge.

You have 5E clones coming out at a rate I have never seen before. All the crowdfunded 5E products are rushing to release early, before the official 5.5E releases. But I get this feeling for many people, "anything 5E will do."

Wizards have lost 5E to the community.

Mail Room: Zweihander Starter Set

What is not to love about the era of jam-packed starter sets? Thirty dollars (on sale now for 25 over on Amazon) for a complete starter set for the excellent Zweihander game?

I am glad I took the plunge.

What is in here is not just a beginner version of the game; this is like a "version 1.5" with a vastly improved layout and presentation. More capable characters, ancestries, rules improvements, cleaned-up examples, and system streamlining - all 100% backward compatible with the main book. They even have sections describing the differences and how to "backport" the rules improvements into the main text, making the differences minor but significant in play and flow.

The content and tone are improved as well.

Oh, and that 3 AP system that Pathfinder 2 uses? Done here first, and in a grim-fantasy d100 game. I like the presentation of this one better since it is easier to grasp without knowing special symbols.

Moving On

And this game is moving away from its Warhammer inspiration with the new ancestries and becoming its own thing. That is a significant improvement; the game is starting to mature into its identity. This is not "that other game you can play Warhammer with" - it is beginning to have its unique identity.

That is cool. I support that. Go in your own direction, and I am all on board.

Early OSR games are often content with emulation. When they start doing things differently, they finally grow up and develop their personality. This happened between OSE Basic and OSE Advanced, and I loved their additions to the game. Adding many non-human ancestries is another positive step for the gamers more used to that variety in 5E, and the option to use a more human-centric world is still there.

Also, while Warhammer is a fun universe - let me make my own. I don't want my efforts and creativity judged or measured against official releases and not have that thing in the back of players' minds saying, "Fun, but definitely not canon."

I do not want to compete against a shelf full of beautiful and very official books.

Presentation

And for those who disliked the lovable-Grognard presentation of the original book? This layout is as good as you would get in any 5E or best-in-class OSR game. All the rules are easily presented, with larger text and plenty of white space to make each page readable. You could easily use this as the "main rulebook" and the original giant tome as the expansion book. I am all in if they do a 2nd edition that looks like this. I heard via their discord they were working on a "reforged" rulebook (cleaned up and presented like this) which will be the standard going forward but doesn't invalidate the original tome.

General Audience Efforts

Also, the game seems to be taking on some of the original edition's criticisms with much "edgy" content in the original tome. They are cleaning up the topics and language that tend to upset the more mainstream audience and supporting the first book for those who want an uncut game. I get it; while part of me likes the original "no limits" tone, I get trying to market this game to a more general audience and address those criticisms. They continue to support the original book, which gives the more grindhouse horror fans what they like and then are building a solid base moving forward.

This feels like an AD&D 1e to 2e move, but I get why - they need to appeal to a larger audience and younger players too. VTTs may have content guidelines that need to be met. Bills need to be paid, artists need to be compensated, printing costs a lot, and crafting books is costly.

Some may get angry, and some may hold the original game's grindhouse content against them. They are trying to move in a positive direction (while keeping that olive branch for the hardcore fans), and that is a tricky tightrope to walk - but they deserve praise for the effort - and another chance from their detractors.

Please, support positive efforts to make a change. We all benefit!

More Capable

The characters in this set are more capable and have rules to use the new generation methods with the main book. These are more "dungeon-ready" characters at a low level, and I feel the change is good. Some say this makes the higher-level play too easy, but when the reforged edition comes out, this will be addressed, or you can just up the challenges at a high level and balance things yourself.

Healing is still slow and rare, and dungeon crawling and the 5E and Pathfinder brand of "combat entertainment" relies on cheap and easy healing and resource recovery. And while a lot of people derided D&D 4E as an MMO, I see 5E and Pathfinder 2 are even more MMO since it isn't character structure that defines MMO-like gaming; it is that health and mana bar that returns to 100% between combats, just like a video game.

You do this when you give up on balancing fights for a game that relied on resource tracking and dwindling resources and the "go back to town after every fight" crowd Wizards fostered in 3E. Actual D&D? What you have on your character sheet is what you have for the whole adventure, fireball wisely. That is how the adventures were often designed, especially the tournament ones.

Could you mod in better healing into Zweihander? Yes, it is easy. Just make the "Lay on Hands" spell a resurrect, and create a "Healing Touch" generalist divine spell that all divine casters can use (using the original Lay on Hands spell as the template). Remove the once-per-day limitation (or make it increase the casting difficulty by one step per time when used on the same target per day), and you are done. Easy healing achieved. You could build a whole generalist divine list based on the common cleric tropes out of dungeon games and be fine.

The game says, "House rule this game!"

So house rule.

A Solid Basic Set

What don't you get? The higher-level spells and professions are one, and the monster selection is thin. All of this is solved by having the core book on hand, which is 100% compatible. Again, use this as the primary rulebook and the large book as the expansion. The big book has more monsters, spells, gear, professions, etc.

I am guessing the new reforged set will fill in the blanks and form a complete game, but the original book plus expansion is a complete game "plus." I like the more straightforward presentation in the starter set, which clearly presents rules and concepts. The original book is sometimes hard to follow, and the starter set "opens the door" to understanding. This is relatively easy from your standard OSR game.

OSR Style

And it isn't Warhammer, which is done in the OSR style. Use what you want, change things, mod the game, create your own world, and do what you want. Warhammer is a great game and setting, but change too much, and you will run afoul of the lore-sensitive types. I do not feel I have as much freedom there as  I do here. That freedom also allows me to surprise players with something wholly new and unexpected.

Hacker Friendly

I am a hacker and a modder, and a world builder. The rules here are simple, without too many bolted-on subsystems. The fortune point system is improved, and there are fate points as well. The core is extremely simple: percentages, tens-modifiers for each ability, and some leveled-wounding systems (for body and mind) that depend on hitting threshold numbers. Armor raises the threshold number.

I don't want a shelf full of books selling me options - while nice to have - are is not something that comes from my imagination. Fewer books, more freedom, a more open and hackable game - that is what I want. Can I do a hex crawl with Warhammer? Yes. Does a game where you build your own world do it better? Of course, this is one of the classic OSR play styles.

Zweihander is progressing, improving, sharpening its presentation, and upping its game.

It is an incredible time to be a fan.

Off the Shelf: Zweihander

I still like this game. The setting-agnostic, unhinged, OSR Warhammer-like game is free from the Games Workshop Old World setting. It isn't Warhammer, and the 4th Edition of Warhammer is a beautiful game - if you are playing in the official world.

This game has mature concepts, so it is only for some. It delves deeper into horror concepts like a 1980s movie, making magic more difficult and wounds more deadly. It does not seem as clean as the new Warhammer version, designed to not upset a general audience. Yes, you can put whatever you want in your game, but I am an adult and not triggered by much.

I don't want to be sanitized in Grimdark, just like I don't want to watch sanitized in a horror movie. I get the game is a little upsetting to general audiences, and I hear this is being addressed in future releases. I don't hold this against them, this was an artistic choice when the book was made. Was this a good choice? Probably not in today's sensitive climate and the demands of retailing. But I give them credit for sticking to their dream, and then adjusting course later.

Change isn't easy, and we all need to recognize that and be accepting.

Also, I have played in the Warhammer world for decades and am tired of it. It is a beautiful and tragic place, but there isn't a spot in that world my group hasn't been to. The new version of WHFRP trades highly on nostalgia, and it is time for me to make my own interpretation of that world. It is a beautiful and incredibly high-production value game, but I have seen it for years, and the entire collection seems enormous. This feels like a set of books I would collect and never play.

I also have a few problems with the 4th Edition Warhammer FRP art. Most of it is excellent, but the characters sometimes have this smug, happy, and relatively modern 'too cool with attitude' facial expression. That smirk is cancer on fantasy art these days, especially for a "grim and perilous" fantasy game like Warhammer. We see it all the time in 5E and many other games.

Nobody should be happy to be in a grimdark world. I sound like a spoilsport or petty, but it makes a big difference that some professions look like a Planar 5E character dropped into the game. This is that messy Western modern fantasy style, and I like games that break from those safe conventions. Yes, some pieces do something different (some are humorous), but they all do something different, and the consistency and gritty feeling are lost.

Zweihander does a better job with a generic setting and darker world mood. Crafting a horror series is much like creating great horror movies. I want everything to feel connected. I like the book to follow a common thread and theme. I want an eerily familiar human-centric world where magic is superstition, the unfamiliar is the norm, nothing is cute, no easy magic, and everything seems grimly normal.

Sometimes, if I play Warhammer, everything feels known and expected. I can make new things up in a more generic system, omit large parts of the book, or run a game against a chaos monster like John Carpenter's The Thing without anyone screaming about Warhammer canon.

I also love to house-rule, and Zweihander supports that much better.

That said, Warhammer FRP is still a fantastic game. Art-wise, it is all over the place for a game that needs a consistent presentation. Everything else is an A+ game and presentation. I just need more freedom, a single book, and no default setting.

I want the freedom to craft horror and not play to nostalgia or the familiar.

Everything looks normal.

And then things start to go sideways.

The suspicion and paranoia are high.

Like classic horror movies, pure evil's twisted and brutal nature shows its face, warps, and twists ordinary people into madness and hideous creatures of darkness.