Off the Shelf: OSRIC

OSRIC is best for playing "AD&D" or a first-edition game. This game flies under so many people's radars. Yet, it is available, supports indie communities and adventure writers, and is a legal way to expand upon and sell your own works within that framework.

Yet, year after year, we get new OSR games that claim to offer "authentic 1e" gaming. This is 1e gaming, a masterwork reference work that is the OSE of AD&D. It was the reference guide before the AD&D books were print-on-demand (and the DTRPG books are full of errors, such as transposed 7s and 1s).

OSRIC offers a unique gaming experience, distinct from the original AD&D. It is a carefully crafted reference work that has been altered just enough to be its own game. This distinctiveness, coupled with its depth in areas the original AD&D does not cover, is what makes OSRIC so appealing to players seeking a fresh and thrilling gaming experience.

My AD&D books are cherished collector's items, a testament to the game's legacy. However, a game thrives with a vibrant community and platforms for creators to share and profit from their ideas. OSRIC embodies the spirit of first-edition gaming, a game that has withstood the test of time, with enthusiasts still developing modules for it. This strong sense of community transforms OSRIC from a tabletop game into a shared experience among players.

As a reference guide, it is the best-in-class, easily equaling Old School Essentials in organization, clarity, and presentation. It is not the "facing pages" layout of OSE, but for a first-edition game, this does a better job of the original and is only missing the Gygaxian prose.

OSRIC is not just a playable game but also a comprehensive reference guide. I currently use it as an expansion for Dungeon Crawl Classics, filling in the gaps in that game as the Appendix R section in DCC explicitly allows. Using OSRIC as a rule expansion and a reference for DCC aligns with the spirit of both games and the OSR. It's about creating unique gaming experiences at our tables, distinct from anyone else's.

Most 5E players don't get this; every group was a "game designer," and every table was different. There was no "one way to play," and the "latest official version" of the rules meant nothing. The people "playing by the book" were wargamers and Magic: The Gathering players, and role-players were a special breed of "hacker, storyteller, and game crafter."

And I find it hilarious that all these people on social media are trying to play AD&D "exactly by the rules" to have the "full 1980s experience." They are missing the point. It was never like that.

We hacked. We mixed. We put it all in a blender and pressed 10.

Nobody told us what to do.

We did not feel obliged to "buy the latest books the company puts out" just to have "street cred." This was the 1980s, and nobody in my neighborhood had the money to buy all the books. It is like today.

If you want to capture the era and spirit of the game, the authentic way of playing DCC (or OSRIC, S&W, or any other OSR game) is to hack it into an unrecognizable mess and make it your own.

OSRIC offers the missing treasure and magic items tables that DCC needs. The monsters can primarily be used as-is with DCC, doing the AC conversion (20 - AC), setting a base saving throw formula (HD / 2, modified up or down for Fort/Ref/Will), and adjusting the hit die based on monster size (d6 to d12). OSRIC offers retainers, wilderness travel rules, equipment lists, encumbrance rules, and many other parts that DCC leaves up to you.

What I love about the DCC-OSRIC combination is the feeling. The world feels like classic, down-to-earth AD&D, that gritty medieval feeling I crave. The DCC parts add the fantastic and unexpected. Not everyone is a potential DCC "god among men," so it feels special when the weird and strange happen. NPCs? They can use OSRIC classes, like monsters, and avoid the special rules in DCC. The players are the superheroes here, and not every fighter is a DCC fighter.

In this combination, DCC serves as the "superhero rule system." In contrast, OSRIC serves as the "normal world simulation" that runs in the background but can be just as deadly and dangerous as the characters can be. The game takes on a Grand Theft Auto feel, with an ordinary world using the OSRIC rules in the background and the characters one step larger than life as they cause chaos through the setting.

OSRIC is also playable by itself and is a great stand-alone game! In this case, everyone is grounded, realistic, and doing their best to survive. OSRIC is not just a reference guide but can be a game enjoyed for decades. Don't sleep on OSRIC; this is first-edition fun at its best, all while supporting an amazing community of first-edition creators. I love my DCC dice too much to ignore DCC, though these sets see S&W and OSRIC occasionally, so they don't feel left out.

AD&D is a tremendous dead game, but due to time and communities, it will never be supported and will never be a dynamic place for creators again. OSRIC is a living game, and I support that since people are out here pouring their hearts into this version.

New games come and go. There will always be another Kickstarter for the next colossal throwback game. Looking around, everything you need is already here without all the consumerist noise.

OSRIC is here to stay.

Swords & Wizardry: Designer Notes

I love this game.

Swords & Wizardry Revised stands out with its unique 'designer notes' boxes scattered throughout the book. These notes delve into various house rules, options, unclear parts of the original game rules, and other hacking information, providing a deeper understanding of the game's mechanics.

One notable aspect of Swords & Wizardry Revised is the absence of 'thieves' tools' in the equipment list, a feature also present in the original game. This absence significantly empowers thieves, making them more dangerous and tricky. They can now pick a lock with whatever they have at hand, like a chicken bone found on the floor of a cell. A thief always has a lockpick hidden somewhere or can quickly fabricate one, and they don't need to haul around a toolbox filled with picks, hammers, spikes, and a pry bar.

Part of the game introduced later institutionalized tropes we live with today, and those were not always part of the original design, ever considered, or seen as a "must-have" for play. Are you telling me to use a class feature, and I need to buy and possess gear? Can it be taken away from me?

Again, just like giving only fighters a STR damage bonus to attacks, removing thieves' tools from the equipment list improved the thief class. Sometimes, what you remove from a game makes it superior, and these sacred cows must be done away with.

Also, the game talks about crits and how automatically assuming "double damage" is far too powerful and suggests a +1 damage instead. The game's hit point scale is far lower than modern games, and doubling damage on crits would make fights into "spamming attacks for crits." The only class that has a doubling damage mechanic is the thief on a backstab, and that is it. Do you want to double your damage rolls? Play a thief.

Even Shadowdark removes the CON bonus to hit points after level one because hit-point inflation is real. That game realizes "what you take away" makes the game better.

At some point in D&D's history, they became too generous and started handing out the same bonuses and class features to everybody. This was likely when the D&D game was being marketed for children, so they started standardizing every bonus, and similar house rules made it into the game, where "everybody got everything." Suddenly, mages were rolling a 20 and doing double damage with a quarter-staff hit. They got a STR bonus for that damage, too.

Nobody asked why.

Nobody thought this pushed up hit points and made the dice less meaningful.

After a while, a goblin in D&D 4E had 30 hit points, whereas in B/X, they had about 3, and in 5E, they had 7. A dragon in the game's first version averaged 30-50 hit points; in 5E, they have 200-600; in 4E, dragon hit points went into the thousands.

Daggers in all these games still do 1d4 damage.

Newer versions of D&D use multi-attacks, huge modifiers, and doubling and tripling mechanics to mitigate the scaling through class features. All they do is write more and more rules to solve the problem they introduced into the game when they put this artificial scaling in the first place, all the way back in D&D 3.0. The game takes longer to play, requires more reference, classes are orders of magnitude more complicated, and the game is this artificial slog to play when it does not have to be.

Factor out damage scaling, and all those rules will go away. But they won't have anything to sell you.

I would prefer to use that dagger in Swords & Wizardry than in any modern implementation of D&D made by Wizards.

My 5E Collection is Indie

I am happy my 5E books are Wizards-free. All of them are small-press and indie books. My primary go-to system is Tales of the Valiant, though Level Up Advanced 5E is still a solid choice; why ToV? For precisely the same reason people dumped on this system when they announced it, it is a near-perfect 5E core system clone. Since they could not clone the D&D classes note-for-note, they reimagined and rewrote them to be fun to play. All my expansion books with subclasses and 3rd party stuff work with this system seamlessly (which is only sometimes true of Level Up).

The core collections are Kobold Press books, such as the Deep Magic guides and all the Tome of Beasts books. There is enough here to play for 20+ years of gaming. The books are high quality, the art is fantastic, and the rules are solid. I really don't have much more to ask for. All I want now are subclasses and character options, and, of course, more in the Hero Lab online character builder for ToV, which I feel is being neglected since we have had nothing new to buy or that many updates in months.

Many people buy D & D to complain about it. My YouTube channels are about 70% complaints and clickbait on 5E, and it feels like the conversations are mostly complainers these days, with any "love of the game" gone out the window.

The indie 5E game coverage is mostly positive and happy, and that is what I choose to watch instead of people moaning that someone's favorite 2024 class was nerfed and now sucks. Who cares? Play another game if you are that unhappy. But, no, clicks are money, and money is clicks, so the D&D outrage train keeps rolling and spewing the black, coal-fired smoke of discontent and negativity.

At least the indie 5E games, like ToV and A5E, were created with significant community input, so there is less to complain about in these spaces. This is probably why the games get less coverage: There is less to be angry about, and there are no changes coming down from "up high" from the gilded West Coast game designer royalty. I am not being pushed into subscription services to play a game, and all that does is creates more anger and negativity.

Like many popular franchises, D&D is turning out to be a complete loss for me. I have no interest in it, and the community is overwhelmingly negative. Even after I un-subbed to many of the clickbait channels, the D&D angst and bitching still pop up in my YouTube feed constantly.

In the few free hours I have in a day, I would rather be imagining and adventuring than watching some idiot on YouTube complaining the rogue sucks worse now, and the ranger always sucked and will suck forever. My gods, people. Play another game. Or is it just the clicks you are farming? Forget AI killing D&D, YouTube will do it years before that ever comes around.

Tales of the Valiant is my current "happy place" with 5E, and I have zero plans to give any money to the VTT scheme of Wall Street. If I want a VTT, I have Roll20, and that supports the games I play well enough. If I want a 3d VTT, I will just play World of Warcraft and have so much more to collect and work towards, plus the "solo and small group questing without a DM" that is a golden idol for these companies. AI content is coming far sooner to World of Warcraft (or other MMOs) than many people know, if that is your thing, and it will be far better than a VTT chat-bot DM.

This is really a Pathfinder 1e moment for me. D&D 4E failed, and the standard bearer of the hobby isn't D&D anymore, it is a cloned system supported by a better company that listens to the fans.

Swords & Wizardry: Great Design

The more I read Swords & Wizardry Revised, the more I like it. There is this fascinating use of "negative space" in some ways modifiers are applied, in that not everyone gets every modifier. D&D and B/X have been too generous with ability score modifiers for too long, and the inflation of hit points, character stats, and the overall numeric range of the game has suffered.

It is like someone making a mod for Monopoly and giving the car a +2 movement to all dice rolls. Okay, fine, as long as the other pieces have equal benefits. Well, in the game's next version, that bonus is the car rolling 3d6 for movement instead of 2d6, and, well, since dogs can be fast, the dog gets the +2 movement modifier. After a few game versions, all the pieces roll 6d6 for movement, different properties have different "movement point" costs for various pieces, and people still wonder why the game takes so long to play and why movement phases are terrible.

This didn't improve the game at all. This was a "shell game" with the math, which worsened the game.

In Swords & Wizardry, the to-hit and damage bonuses from a high STR score are exclusive to the fighter class, maintaining a balance in the game. All classes get a missile-fire to-hit bonus from a high DEX, which further stacks with the STR bonus for fighters. This means the only positive to-hit modifier for every other class comes from leveling, ensuring a fair playing field. You mostly roll an unmodified d20 versus AC for all to-hits, except for magic weapons and attacks from behind (or elevation, which can give up to another +/-2 for to-hits, p41).

The modifiers in Swords & Wizardry are straightforward and not universal, split into different categories. The highest to-hit modifier for STR is a +2 (17-18), and for DEX, it is a +1 (13+). An 18 STR gives a +3 damage modifier. CON modifiers to hit points are capped at a +1 per HD for a 13+.

The modifiers are far less than B/X, AD&D, 3.5E, and 5E.

AD&D started the "ability score stat inflation" by making ability score bonuses too good, and the 4d6 and drop the lowest ability score generation method. B/X and BECMI simplified modifiers to appeal to a younger market and simplify math. They gave bonuses to everyone since that was "fair," and that was a mistake.

In other words, zero-edition had "bounded accuracy" long before 5E did, and using the term "bounded accuracy" is just a polite way of saying, "We got the math wrong since 3rd Edition, and we still can't get it right." The original math was perfect. There was no reason to change it in AD&D other than to break compatibility for royalties, and it has been downhill ever since.

If you keep overall to-hit modifiers low, there is little reason for AC values to surpass 20. Suddenly, all armors work better now! Also, the to-hit bonuses from leveling and magic items mean much more. Letting fighters have this massive buff makes them the "lords of battle," which is how it should be.

If damage modifiers are kept low, a d4 damage dagger still means something. When 5E characters do d4+4 damage, there is little point in keeping that die around. A die roll modifier equal to or larger than the die means your design is broken, and the point where it reaches half the die is a warning sign.

Will players complain about rolling flat d20 versus AC to hit? This is how it will be for most classes until level three, when the first +1 kicks in. Yes. This is a more demanding game. Just because you are getting a +5 to-hit in 5E versus that AC 15 goblin does not mean you are getting that modifier in S&W, which is a +0 versus AC 13.

Notice the goblin's AC bump in 5E? Remember the Monopoly example?

The ancient red dragon in 5E has an AC of 22. In S&W, it is 17.

There is a curve in S&W where a 20th-level fighter gets a +13 to-hit, so assuming an STR bonus of +2 and a +2 magic weapon, this is a total +17 to-hit versus that dragon. You are not doing multi-attacks, and your highest damage modifier possible with that +2 weapon is a +5, so your damage will not be in the hundreds of hit points per turn, it will average ten points of damage per hit. 5E, we will probably have a +12 to +14 to hit modifier, so they are on par with each other, but the AC values in S&W are lower.

This is how it was in the older editions. The low levels are tricky. But the higher levels start getting better and better. Damage output in 5E is artificially scaled, with high hit points and a flat to-hit curve, combined with a logarithmic damage curve. In S&W, damage output stays flat, but your ability to hit increases, thus increasing damage output.

The difference is that a d4 dagger versus an adult red dragon with 44 hit points in S&W is still a threat. In 5E, there are 256 hit points for that adult red dragon. Who cares about a dagger? You need a +8 damage modifier and multi-attacks to even be noticed. More die rolls, rules references, attacks, long turns, and certain classes limited to smaller weapons become worthless. Lower hit points mean the weapons and attacks you make stay powerful and mean something, and the original die shapes hold value longer. Higher hit points only mean more time spent in the rules (and during your turn) figuring out how to nullify Wizard's hit point scaling.

Remember the Monopoly example?

I would rather be a thief in S&W backstabbing that dragon than a thief in 5E doing the same thing. Even if I am "doing more damage in 5E," the amount of character building, rules references, stacking bonuses, and special subclass powers needed to get there means I spent "more time in the rules" than the S&W thief.

The S&W character, by comparison, is more powerful.

And players spend far less time in the rules.

Off the Shelf: Basic Fantasy

The Basic Fantasy RPG, a standout open-source RPG project, offers free PDFs and books printed at cost, making it accessible to players worldwide. Its simplicity, far from being underwhelming, is a comforting feature that makes it a hacker's game, the Linux of pen-and-paper gaming. This democratization of roleplaying, with no profit motive and a spirit of sharing, sets it apart.

For a mere eight dollars, you can access the core rulebook of the Basic Fantasy RPG on Amazon, a stark contrast to the typical eighty-dollar price tag of other games' core rulebooks.

But don't be misled by the low cost; the Basic Fantasy RPG is anything but ordinary. The community's unwavering dedication is palpable in the 4th Edition, a testament to their unity and the power of a shared passion for roleplaying.

Basic Fantasy RPG offers a wealth of adventures published, surpassing many other games. With rules, class, race, equipment, and other expansions available, the game is a canvas for your imagination. Want special conditions, rules, abilities, or anything else to apply to a PC? Just say it happens and make a ruling. This level of customization is what makes this game truly unique.

Did a PC touch a magic statue and gain a 2-in-6 chance to speak to animals? Just say it happened, add it to the character sheet, and keep playing. It is a one-off, a magic effect that will never happen again, unique to your game, and only affects balance in your game (but so what?). I can hear 5E players screaming; make it use a feat slot! Replace a subclass ability! This must be balanced, or it will break all of 5E for the community! One of the huge problems in 5E is people feel like the game needs to be constantly balanced, like developing a computer program.

In the old days, we didn't care. If a unique character had a special ability, they had it.

What I love about this game is the community, that spirit of sharing for the love of the game, and keeping the game accessible for everybody. You can play this by the rules or hack it to do anything.

The adventures keep me coming back. Other campaign settings and adventure series feel too big, ambitious, and unusable due to the size and amount of information presented, while these keep things simple. They are that ideal "town plus dungeon" in many cases, the perfect starting point for any campaign, and they let you take things in any direction you can dream of. I love these "micro settings" very much, and you often don't need a campaign world to start in.

In fact, starting with a campaign world book can be very intimidating and cause you to never begin playing since every choice on where to start is wrong. Each one of these adventures is a perfect start to an entire world.

Why not Old School Essentials? OSE has a lot in it, many more options and choices, but the game is more expensive and more challenging to get your hands on. BFRPG works on the lowest level; it is the most accessible, has the least cost to entry, and has free PDFs for everyone. OSE is still on OGL (last I checked), while the BFRPG community pulled together and eliminated that license dependency.

BFRPG has more, all PDFs are free, there are low-cost physical copies, and everyone can play and create to their heart's delight.

Great Exploration Rules

One problem with complaining that a game doesn't have "great exploration rules" is the blind men and an elephant problem. Nobody can define exploration rules, and opinions on what makes them "great" change constantly.

The hex-crawl system, a versatile approach that covers survival, random encounters, weather, terrain, movement, mapping, points of interest, supplies, fatigue, and the thrill of getting lost, is a comprehensive system that draws inspiration from the Avalon Hill Outdoor Survival game, as seen in the Kobold Press Book of Hexcrawl. Its character-threatening nature adds an element of excitement. I'm eagerly anticipating the completion and compilation of this series into a hardcover, and this book is also great for games other than 5E.

I have watched others on YouTube say exploration is a system for creating "random memorable moments" in a story context. This is 100% the opposite of the above system and feels more like a narrative game interpretation of exploration - but in that creator's mind, this is what exploration brings to their games.

Others don't want space wasted in the book for exploration rules since they DIY or use an external book to run the exploration game. This is the Tales of the Valiant game's modular development model, where the base game is just that, and you add systems onto the game as you need them.

And the options are plentiful! With a wide array of books available, you can always find a system that suits your preferences, even if it's different from what one might consider as having 'great exploration rules.' You can make up the rest of the game, which has basic survival rules for supply, survival, and resting.

Some versions of 5E are woefully inadequate in survival rules, so you may need to expand your game to fit your needs. The 5.1 SRD (under Adventuring, The Environment) and ToV (p220, Players Guide) have basic food and water requirements. Also, note that the description of what the survival skill does in the SRD and in ToV is very brief. If I were playing, I would require a survival skill roll (and supplies, disadvantage without) to prepare a camp for long rests. Otherwise, you will need an inn or other safe place.

Think about it if it were you. Could you "long rest" by walking in the middle of the woods and sitting in one place for eight hours? Would you want a tent and a sleeping bag? A fire? Food and water? Snacks? A lantern? Something to keep the bugs off you? A chair? A book to read or a game to play? Medical supplies for bug bites and minor cuts? Clothes for sleeping? A pillow or blanket? A tarp to keep the rain off you and the fire, or for sitting on?

Now, imagine this being a dangerous world filled with monsters and magic.

These "real-world rulings" are critical to bringing "exploration" to your game. Rules as written, 5E leaves a lot up to the referee, and most groups ignore these common-sense rulings and assume "if it is not written in the game, it doesn't apply to us" - which is wrong.

Too many people equate the 5E rules with rules for games like "Magic: The Gathering" and say, "If it is not mentioned in the book, I don't need it, and it doesn't apply to me!" They "go stupid" and ignore reality.

And remember, the 5E character heals like the comic book character Wolverine. In eight hours, they can recover all hit points from an ax blow to the head, massive burns all over the body, broken legs and arms, and a deep sword thrust to the gut! As a referee, getting this "long rest heroic benefit" should come with a heavy price, and disallowing it because the ranger blew their survival skill roll making a camp because nobody remembered to buy camping gear is a good enough reason for me.

Hexcrawl generators are not automatically survival rules.

Tracking supplies, especially food and water, is critical.

And common-sense and real-world rulings can fill in many of the gaps.

If you want a plug-in book covering 5E survival, the Cinematic Environs: Survival book is one of the best-in-class books on the subject, covering the topic in fantastic detail. This one is highly recommended if you want gritty, realistic survival in your game. Since ToV is modular and keeps the core rules simple, this makes an excellent set of rules options for a "hardcore survival game" for 5E, with a few different "realism levels" for survival and healing.

D&D tends to "print books" and then "require you to have them all," so the game and design are not modular. While you can plug in a book like the above, it gets harder and harder the more books you are required to have. Eventually, it becomes impossible to sort everything out (and they ship a new edition).

If ToV had rules like this, it would be an incredibly detailed, gritty, and realistic game. But it doesn't need to since the base, core rules are modular and do not make assumptions like this - letting you pick survival-focused rules add-ons or just making rulings as you see fit for your group's preferences.

You will always be able to find hex-crawl generators, and they even come in hardcovers. Some are short and generic, but this is all you need and want sometimes. The Sandbox Generator is a small book, but the tables are handy, allowing you to make the most of it, with the charts providing guidance.

They range from the simple to the complex. Some are hundreds of pages long, which some groups will enjoy immensely; this is simply too much detail for others. The Hexcrawl Toolkit will tell you everything about a hex, down to the smallest detail. Combining this with a solo-questing book creates a procedural world with random quests and dungeons appearing anywhere.

What is overkill for one group is suitable for another, which is why the modular approach works best.

To play to the strengths of 5E, you need to begin with a core, modular rule system. Many OSR games tend to overdo it and provide every system in one book. With 5E, with the core rules, you can find the books that fit the needs of your group and choose add-on books to craft your campaign.

Some in the community feel that 5E is "too easy" and "you can't die," but this is more a problem of monolithic D&D, a less modular system, than Tales of the Valiant, a modular game where you can pull in any extra systems you want.

The trick is that you don't need them for every game.

Tales of the Valiant: More Backgrounds!

Tales of the Valiant is a hungry game, and I need more lineages and heritages. It comes with a great "basic set" of standards, but I always need more. In the base book, we get:

• Beastkin (Animal-kin)
• Dwarf
• Elf
• Human
• Kobold
• Orc
• Syderean (Tiefling & Aasimaar)
• Smallfolk (Halfling & Gnome)

What a great list we have, but you know what? I'm hungry for more! Let's expand the world of Tales of the Valiant with even more lineages and heritages!

We got one "official" supplement with many more, which is good to see. We got the following in this book:

• Dhampir
• Dryad
• Eonic
• Gnoll
• Goblin
• Lizardfolk

I am surprised the Gearforged are nowhere in ToV or the first lineage supplement. These are Midgard-specific, so many of them are coming in a Midgard-focused ToV book soon.

Also note, no dragonkin or eladrin.

But we need more! We need to start raiding Kobold Press' older race guides for other lineages and heritages. When we convert these in, remember to drop all ability score modifiers! Tales of the Valiant does not use racial stat mods, just the special abilities since stat mods are factored into ability score creation.

The next stop is the Midgard Heroes Handbook, and we must be careful to avoid repeating some of the topics already covered or ones covered by options in the ToV lineages. This book includes bearfolk, ratfolk, ravenfolk (all are covered by beastkin). We see repeats here like gnomes, dwarves, and elves - so we can ignore those. The ones worth using here are:

• Centaurs
• Gearforged
• Minotaurs
• Trollkin

The Unlikely Heroes book has a few more and a few more repeats. Some of these are more suited for the Southlands part of Midgard. Worth keeping from this book are the following:

• Derro
• Jinnborn
• Kijani
• Lamia
• Sahuagin

The Kobold Press Southlands Players Guide has more, again, focused on the Southlands area.

• Catfolk
• Tosculi
• Subek

The Tales of the Margreve Players guide has three suited for this area:

• Alseid (deerfolk centaurs)
• Erina (hedgehog folk)
• Piney (trenatfolk)

We can go underground and find the Underworld Players Guide for some classics (plus another dhampir, which is in almost every book):

• Darakul (ghoulfolk)
• Dark Trollkin
• Drow
• Mushroomfolk
• Satarre
• Shade

That is a lot of lineages! And we have not even left Kobold Press books. Converting anything else is as easy as dropping the racial stat modifiers and only using the special powers.

Tome of Heroes is up next, and this is an excellent book since you also get class options. There are a lot of practical backgrounds, many of which are repeated in other books, but this is a one-stop shop of the best, plus it comes in a hardcover. This book is the best source of "extra subclasses" you can buy for ToV now, and you get a lot. Highly recommended if you feel ToV needs more character options.

The Tales of Arcana 5E Race Guide is also an excellent inspirational source of lineages. Be forewarned; there are many goofy ones here, but there are also some real gems. Some of the races include a +4 ability score modifier here, and I would knock that down to a +2 if you use it at all. If it is a +2 or lower, ignore it. Also, some of the races here are very OP, so adjust them if you feel they will blow out your game. Some of these are professions or classes. All that said, this is an excellent book for inspiration and unique NPCs. Some good ones (among many) found here are:

• Android, Cyborg
• Angel, Demon, Devil, Devilkin, Icari, Imp, Painbringer
• Behemoth
• Cthuul
• Djinn, Efreet
• Draconic, Demidragon
• Elementals
• Fairy, Leprechaun, Satyr, Seelie
• Flora
• Gargoyle
• Ghost, Skeleton, Vampire, Zombie
• Giant, Ogre. Porg, Troll
• Golems
• Griffin, Manticore
• Hoyhnhnm
• Pandnaros
• Tortan
• Vashnai
• Walrusk

And it is easy enough to pull in any other 5E lineage from any book you own.

Also, don't forget the Roll for Combat books! Many of these have progression paths in your lineage, and give you far more in terms of improvement and development, and customization than any of the other books here.