Freedom is Imagination

One of the best examples of "freedom is imagination" is in Dungeon Crawl Classics. Let's say your level 4 rogue goes to an alien world and finds a green energy flamethrower that does 3d6 in cone or 6d6 to a single target, with a low roll, meaning bouncing the flame back into your face, hitting allies, bringing down the roof, setting the whole room on fire, or it breaking down.

I made that weapon up. It is a silly one-shot fantastic piece of alien tech I made up in my head.

And it is not in the rules, which is the critical point.

DCC encourages you to use your imagination and makeup magic treasure, monsters, traps, settings, weapons, NPCs, and adventures - and just go wild making everything up! They give you a few sample monsters and magic items, and if you read the modules, you will get flooded by custom monsters, magic items, gear, environmental conditions, NPCs, spells, patrons, and all sorts of strange and wonderful stuff. No module honestly re-uses monsters.

My green flamethrower weapon? Same idea. It is something I made up and is probably the rogue's new favorite weapon and toy, and will probably serve the rogue well as long as he or she still is alive to use the weapon.

Does it unbalance the game?

Yes!

But think about this, in the next game, that weapon doesn't exist.

So I do not really care.

When you play a new module, everything in the other modules doesn't exist (unless a character survived one and carried something from it forward). Anything in those modules that breaks the campaign does not break the base game.

The base game is untouched by all the silly ideas you or module writers can come up with. The reset button gets pressed, and the next group of heroes goes into the world and finds all sorts of crazy loot while that may be "campaign-breaking" stuff, it won't last beyond that game, and the base rules will still be untouched for the next time.

But a lot of games have this assumption, "if it is in one module or adventure, it is canon!"

With DCC and MCC, really only the base books are canon - if you can call them that. They are starting points, and they both make a point of only including a few examples of monsters, magic items, technological devices, and other items - and while they give you a lot, the entire focus of the game is the DIY craziness of your own imagination. If what you create is unbalanced, it won't affect the next game, and you are free to use GM Fiat to break it, make it run out of charges, make low rolls hurt, or have it fall down an infinitely bottomless pit of doom. Most of the time, just leave it be and live with it.

So you broke your game, so what?

That is the amount the freedom the game gives you.

5E

Compare this to 5E.

Don't you dare break Wizard's game!

I exaggerate a little, but you get the point. There is this fear and feeling anything that goes into 5E must be balanced, and it must be put on some "equipment list" for use in the future and anyone else's game. If it is a 3rd party "thing," then some players won't even add it to their game - only official books, please! Please don't mess up my game!

This feels like the complete opposite tone and feeling of DCC and MCC. You are supposed to play "game designer" in these games and make most everything up. You should invent crazy skull-headed laser wands with death rays that can bounce around corners and back into the wielder's face. Mind control helmets. Rings of acid skin. Monsters that are giant tongues with legs. Floating eyeballs with freeze rays. Insta death traps. Is it balanced? Who cares?

The less exhaustive lists and giant bestiaries a game gives you, the more freedom you have. There is a sweet spot of including enough types of different things to give you rough parameters, but there is a point where a game stops being a game, and it becomes a "game of lists" that shackles your creativity.

In B/X or D&D, why do I need to imagine a custom "magic aegis of bird control" sword when that "sword, +2" on the magic item list will do just fine? Lists can also turn your game into a buffet of bland choices and remove any creative input you would have had into the game.

Huge lists? Less freedom.

Since I only play OGL versions of 5E, this feeling affects me a lot less since everything in my game is fantastic. There are players who do not play with anything 3rd party, so there is that feeling in the community.

Low Fantasy Gaming

Low Fantasy Gaming does a little of this DIY stuff with the "every 3 levels" class features where players can invent class powers, and also in the "exploit system" where a damaging hit can add a special effect the player gets to invent. It does all this in the 5E framework, which is frankly astonishing, and it also maintains numeric compatibility with the base game.

LFG also tosses out a bunch of 5E rules the game does not need and tells you to make it up if the rule doesn't exist. It puts trust and "game designer hats" on the referee and players. It is less crazy and gonzo than DCC or MCC, so it sticks closer to realism and believability.

Low Fantasy also does not feel brave enough in "dark and dangerous magic," with most magical corruption effects having a duration and permanent effects being terrible rolls. It feels like a "stater game" when it comes to permanently changing player characters, where DCC and MCC are thrilled to have a wizard grow horns and his skin turn green - permanently. There still is that 5E style of "player protection" in LFG, compared to the "it is okay to toss your character sheet in the shredder" DCC and MCC games.

Having a game go out of its way to protect players is also a loss of freedom.

That aside, I still feel LFG is the most interesting 5E clone out there, and I like it slightly better than Level Up 5E since this game makes an effort to bring OSR concepts into a 5E framework. One could argue that OSR concepts do not need all these "minigame frameworks," and that is a valid point, but the amount of 5E rules tossed in the bin by LFG gives me a new perspective on the 5E engine and how good it could be if stripped down and fine-tuned.

You are Not Your Character

This is also why "seeing yourself in the game" and "playing a version of yourself" is dangerous, and back in the day, we were always warned not to do this. These days, I feel companies are pushing games with identity marketing and making it impossible for a character to die - because I feel they are very irresponsibly pushing the idea that "the players are the characters." Back in the day, we were told this was damaging psychologically, and in a game where bad things could happen to characters, this was something you did not do.

Players should never be characters or self-insert into the game, ever.

And yes, a game that encourages you to "be in the game" also reduces your freedom since there will be "safety rails" built into the rules, and your character options and choices will be limited or more focused on either human or pop-culture-centered lineage choices. And I feel this is also a very irresponsible method of retention and marketing that (in my feeling) could damage players' mental health.

Games of Imagination

Going back to Dungeon Crawl Classics (and also MCC), I have a soft spot for this game. This isn't D&D fantasy, nor is it an "early 1980s D&D simulator." There was this specific subgenre for roleplaying in the late 1970s and 1980s that embraced the culture of black-light felt paintings, painted vans, disco sucks 1970s rock culture, the drug subculture, underground 1970s comix, the hippie culture, adult comedy records like Richard Pryor and George Carlin, CB culture, and a lot of the significant underground subcultures of the 1970s that found their way into roleplaying games.

The culture was a middle finger to big corporations, the military-industrial complex, government, organized religion, the sycophant media, and popular entertainment - TV, radio, mainstream comics, and movie studios (Disney too, who were notoriously litigant against underground comics). Pop culture and pop music was trash. Video games were not a huge cultural thing. If you don't know anything about this culture, take some time and learn about it - this was a fantastic period of culture that brought us so many of the classic songs, movies, and TV shows we love today.

People that made these comix and underground culture were arrested, sued, and jailed.

And the stories and tales - the actual Appendix N stuff - were freaky, out there, and wild, man! This wasn't even like today's anime which, for the most part, has high artistic merit and technical skill - but is still primarily either corporate or a higher form of art. I love anime, but it was nothing like Appendix N source material and the "Hippy and Freak Culture" of the 1970s. The underground was very anti-authoritarian, and yes, this would also be anti-big publisher games from billion-dollar companies.

And this culture emphasizes the individual and creativity.

A lot of the social conformity of this era would be frowned upon.

You are you.

And you - that cool, fun, unique person in the mirror, however you choose to be - are remarkable. And a massive part of this is "making stuff up." Because the stuff you dream up is just as cool too.

Unlike other games where you feel looked down upon for adding your creativity, DCC and MCC require your creativity, celebrate it, encourage it, and make it a part of the game. Players get to imagine, too, as creative and imaginative play is critical for success and pushing those dice up the chain.

Creativity is not storytelling in a tightly-controlled rules system, as 5E would have you believe. Creativity is opening the door to you - the players and referee - to create rules, monsters, magic items, spells, worlds, classes, weapons, and anything else you can imagine in your game.

You get to put on the game designer's hat, too.

And the game doesn't handcuff you by giving you giant lists of "stuff" to clog up your imagination and subconsciously tell you "the game's designers are better than you." Again, I exaggerate, but the feeling is there when a game gives you "too much." You will never use everything in the book, so why should you create anything of your own? The characters are simple, so players are not staring at their skill lists with tunnel vision.

Does the game you play discourage you from adding your creativity to the game? Are your contributions seen as "homebrew" or "house rules?" Do you feel to have fun, you need to follow the rules exactly as written?

Or do you want a game that opens that book of creativity in your mind and tells you to "think outside the book?"

False Choices and Why We Play

My exploration of 5E and the OSR alternatives has been fascinating. Along the way, I found solid OGL alternatives to the 5E game, such as Level Up Advanced 5E, and I have also found attractive OSR-style alternatives, such as Low Fantasy Gaming. Low Fantasy Gaming is a fascinating game since they attempt to inject into the game the one thing that 5E tries so hard to remove:

Freedom.

Yes, you have freedom of action - but that is not the freedom to modify the rules, characters, builds, and experience. You get the feeling if you "mod the rules," you will break everything, and this is very true in games like Pathfinder 2. D&D 5 seems the same, and with One D&D making rules for many more actions, I get the feeling these "clarifications" will end up handcuffing players and dungeon masters into handling every situation the same way.

And you will get more "freedom" in designing characters, in that those min-max ability score bonuses can be put where you want, but what is the point of even having them when they feel required? I feel more freedom in character design in One D&D will lead to less since min-max-ing will become the norm, and there will be no choice except the best ones.

An over-reliance on ability score modifiers for classes hurts the game. If they are "required" to play a class, factor them out and focus on classes only. Or eliminate their bonus effects and put all characters in that class on the same level. If a fighter is "required" to have an 18 STR by the min-max character creation system, give all fighters STR 18. If they start with a 16, give them a 16 and increase that as they level. Just don't give me a "choice" when it is a false one.

And I feel the few freedoms players have are being taken away. As the game stands, multiclass exploits are the most fun part of the game for many. How do I create an effective build? How do I twist the rules? Part of me feels that Level Up 5E isn't as popular as it should be, is because the exploits were patched out. What fun is playing a "fixed" 5E?

Is there any fun in a fixed 5E?

I know, story and adventures - but some PC games that are patched and balanced see rapid player declines because "what was fun isn't anymore." Do not discount the power and sway of the serious optimizers, and as influencers, they can make or break your game. I can have fun with stories and characters - and most people do - but for stories and characters, I have far better games to play that handle those things better (and easier) than 5E.

The rules of 5E are not fun by themselves. They do not stay out of the way, and most games feel like taking advantage of them through builds. Like 4E, the rules of 5E "are" the game.

Even in the One D&D playtest documents, you see the designers “rolling back” fundamental freedoms – such as moving roleplaying interactions from the Dungeon Masters Guide to the Player’s Handbook and writing a rule for them. This is likely a reaction to the success of Pathfinder 2, a game that has so many rules for everything that it would not surprise me if there weren’t a breathing action somewhere in there as a free action.

Rules, rules, rules.

The more rules we have, the better!

Right?

Not Exactly

5E Started as a fantastic, OSR-style, throwback game – especially in comparison to D&D 4E. As time went on and the game got popular, they shoveled on the rules. The game does not feel as “free” as it once did. Some of the playtest rules seem like they roll back the role of the dungeon master back to that horrid “DM as DVD player” role they had in 4E – shut up, your power is severely limited, put the figures on the map, run the combats, and say the lines we give you in the “read this to players” boxes. One D&D feels like it is “less fun to DM” than 5E, which is a huge problem. It may be easier, but it will not be as fun.

I get the feeling Wizards knows their most significant problem is attracting dungeon masters and keeping them. I do not feel One D&D addresses that problem, and in some ways, it makes it worse. Taking away crits from dungeon masters felt wrong and played into that "DM is a DVD player" feeling. I also feel if Wizards could find a way to do away with the DM role, they would.

Like dungeon masters, the hardcore optimizers are also players who drive excitement and retention. That group is not getting too much beyond the min-max-y ability score modifiers but is also having a lot of exploits taken away. Exploits they rely on and enjoy.

Revisions to a game are bizarre things. Logically - fix the exploits! But there are times when a revised game does not set the world on fire, and what made the game fun gets fixed.

Mixed Genres: Renaissance & Middle Ages

The more I read ACKS and realize how much this game is like an "OSR Runequest," and the more I learn about the Middle Ages, and the more I contrast this with the Renaissance and the game Lamentations of the Flame Princess, the more I realize what a freaking mess D&D made of the fantasy genre.

Granted, Runequest is "Bronze Age," and ACKS is "Middle Ages," but the parallels are there. What are we used to? Renaissance fantasy. What are we getting? The age before, without as many world-changing technologies, without the modern tropes, and with a lower, more primal technology level and set of survival-oriented concepts and kingdom-building stories. So much of B/X thrusts you into already divided-up and settled Europe-like worlds, and you feel nothing is left to explore - with only politics and "threats to civilization" as your driving campaign forces.

In the Middle Ages, you are in the ruins of empires, discovering and settling the land.

The D&D fantasy genre isn't in the fantasy genre anymore; it is "science fantasy," with magic replacing science. This is as bad as people thinking all science fiction is Star Wars or every space adventure should be Guardians of the Galaxy. By default, the D&D genre is Renaissance-flavored with "magic Star Wars technology" thrown on top. Everyone is a Jedi Knight/caster class.

100% Recycled Fantasy Content

And we could be in a better place. Fantasy feels stuck in D&D, and while this started with Tolkien and the Appendix N greats, the genre now is just recycled tropes and stereotypes done over and over. We have always stayed in the typical D&D fantasy style, and we can always escape its generic gravitational pull. Today's D&D fantasy style is like when people complained about "corporate rock" in the 1980s; it sounds like it was made for radio play, please, no guitar solos, and keep it ear-friendly and non-controversial. And corporate rock really had no artistic or musical merit.

It sold well, and it sounded good, but what was it?

And these days, we are stuck in this horrible generic "corporate fantasy," and you know it when you see it. It whitewashes any injustice or conflict inherent in the genre, ignores history, and the world is essentially a modern world dressed up in Renfaire clothing full of cosplayers and cartoonish tropes.

It does not even feel like fantasy; it feels like a "dress-up action battle game" where you are meant to win, and the same generic tropes enable these almost "Power Rangers" style fights where violence as conflict resolution is encouraged. The consequences of using violence are ignored. Using magic to kill enemies and blades to hack living things apart is "okay" and "fun."

And these tropes and almost ignorant simplification of the world become a part of the modern-fantasy genre, and you see this recycled again and again. To escape it, we either need to do new and different things or go back to the past and rebuild the genre entirely.

The Renaissance

You look at the actual Renaissance, and you have the origins of:

• Colonialism
• Slavery
• The Killing of Native Populations
• The Modern Banking System
• The Wealth Gap
• The Founding of Nations
• The Rise of Science and Modern Knowledge
• International Trade
• Modern Religion
• Climate Change
• Environmental Destruction
• Wars as Commerce
• Gunpowder, Coal, and Oil and the Printing Press
• And the beginning of the Industrial Revolution

Yes, there is a reason I prefer Lamentations as my Renaissance game and not D&D because a horror game better fits the era and all the destruction and damage that we are still living with to this day. Renaissance societies were lavish and wealthy because they went around the world killing native populations, enslaving them, and stealing their resources. The characters in a Lamentations game are as guilty as characters in a horror movie and meet the same ends due to their sins and greed.

But my D&D world is a fantasy world, not that! In the real world, the empires used gunpowder and science to subjugate native populations; in D&D, it would just be magic. Look at the magic in a D&D game and figure out how today's corporations and governments would use it. Yeah. It isn't good. it almost is a Robocop-level of corporate greed bad.

D&D characters with their ultimate powers thematically feel like the "have it all" western society.

They have that "savior complex" built in. Granted, the hero has the same thematic arc - but a hero typically has to fight against the odds, going from zero to hero. D&D characters start as entitled and get more entitled. And they reach the ultimate epic levels of entitlement, where they are too entitled to even face death. D&D characters feel too invulnerable, especially at higher levels, and that is a problem for basic storytelling.

They are all Superman.

The Middle Ages

And a setting change to the Middle Ages would not help since that would not fix broken rules. Also, the Middle Ages were not so squeaky clean either, and you have:

• The Fall of the Roman Empire
• Nation Building
• The Crusades
• The Silk Road
• Vikings and Marauders
• Mongol Invasions
• The Dominance of Religion over Society
• Religious Wars
• Inquisitions and Religious Persecution
• The Rise of the World's Major Religions
• Peasantry and Serfdom
• Religion's Persecution of Science
• The Destruction of the Old Faiths and Gods
• And, of course, let's end it all with the Black Death

If the Renaissance is Star Wars, the Middle Ages is "hard sci-fi" Traveller. And there is a clear difference between the genres and times. My lists are a bit loose and have a lot of overlap, but in gaming, there are some things more Renaissance than Middle Ages, and I see the concepts and themes mixed all the time. And it drives me crazy.

I like the Middle Ages as a fantasy setting. It strips away a lot of the more-modern themes in a Renaissance game, and brings the entire Conan-like "ancient culture" decline into sharp focus, and pits that "old ways of magic" against the "new religion" and of course, the seeds of state power. It gives us the typical "destroyed empire" to explore and rebuild in, and many lost cities and places of ancient power. The fight between the old ways and the new is happening now, and by the Renaissance, that battle has been already won and the fleets of empires are out sailing the world and killing off native populations. The Middle Ages does have a very 4X "survival horror" feeling.

The modern D&D genre is this strange recycled reality built off Tolkien. Then it goes through a series of game world transformations - Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, the D&D 4 and 5 planar cosmology, and pop culture rebranding. It gets mixed with the MCU and anime, and it just is this own reused and regurgitated set of assumptions and standards that feels "D&D" to us. It is very much like recycled cardboard, endlessly derivative of itself and repetitive. Even the art style feels "D&D" after a while, and you can tell immediately.

The easiest way to resolve it is by saying D&D is not in the fantasy genre anymore.

D&D is its own genre, like Star Wars is its own genre (and not sci-fi).

While D&D is Renaissance-flavored, it isn't really that time. This is science-fantasy. They play on the Renaissance tropes, though, sometimes to their detriment (Spelljammer's art comes to mind). Instead of hiring and cultivating visionaries, they rely on the past 50 years of fantasy gaming as their genre. They endlessly recycle, borrow, appropriate, and copy, and I feel they suffer for it.

Just like Hollywood.

Not Real, Recycled

I have a bit of D&D fatigue, like Star Wars fatigue. I go back to my real history books, and I read, and I get this feeling the recycled modern D&D genre is just too corporate and clean. It feels sterile. It feels overly safe. There does not feel like there is any conflict built into the setting, nor is there much danger. Play a high-level campaign, and you realize that all the danger is manufactured, death is impossible, and failure is infrequent. The entire game feels like a video game in "easy mode," you are meant to win, and you get the option to skip challenging sections. And you can jet off to other planes and live in utopias if you want.

I crave the real these days.

I crave enlightenment, not entertainment that repeats ideas from the last 50 years only, like some sort of Hollywood nostalgia time loop. I feel stuck in the D&D genre, and I can't break free. Even now, the way I think about fantasy feels stuck wearing the D&D rose-colored glasses. To get away from this, I need to play OSR games.

I need my history.

I need lower fantasy and OSR games that give me that "real" feeling. I don't want magic to be the answer to every problem (another D&D trope) and for every class to have magic. If most of the classes are casters, magic isn't special anymore. One D&D is making more classes full casters - thinking magic will fix a broken class design. It won't. You will have D&D 4 all over again. Everyone is a caster, and nothing feels special.

Magic is Not Technology

We also have the pitfall of "magic is technology" in the modern fantasy genre, and you end up giving it to every class thinking technology solves all your problems. It can create more problems than it fixes.

And thematically, magic in history was never technology. It was always heritage and culture, peoples' beliefs, and that faith created temples, great cities, and pyramids. To say magic is a metaphor for technology is to colonize magic with the Western ideal. It is not that, nor was it ever. Magic as technology was never a thing, and I bet it was made up by 1950s advertisers trying to sell toasters.

But most of all, the nature of magic created the universal set of myths we all live with - and we are born with. Magic is metaphorically myth, and myth is rooted in culture and heritage.

Why does that ship sail through the stars, and the city float on an island in space? Is it because you need a cheap science-fantasy excuse to make that happen? Or are those concepts part of a culture and part of their beliefs and ancestry? If you say it is the former, you take away the latter.

If magic is an essential part of a culture, you give power to the people of the world and cultures.

If magic is technology, you worship and cede power to the corporation.

Magic has no resource cost! You can regain spells and cast them as much as you want! Magic is progress! And you replace magic with the climate-destructive consumer culture, and you begin to see why modern fantasy is so "corporate-friendly" with these concepts. You make people ignore the costs of progress and power, and you can continue to siphon money from them by playing on that belief that all progress comes without a cost.

Savage Pathfinder: Meatier Enemies

I was doing some test plays with Savage Pathfinder, and wow, the enemies are "meatier" than your typical B/X enemies. They display quite a degree of toughness and resilience, and even though most foes are "extras" in SW and get incapacitated on just one wound, getting them to that point is a lot tougher in a one-on-one fight.

It comes down to getting an extra into the shaken condition, winning initiative on the next turn, and shaking them again (with damage, not a condition). It is far easier with a 2-on-1 situation, but I had this test fight between my barbarian character and a gnoll, and there was a long back and forth where the gnoll would get shaken and throw the condition off on the next turn.

And the toughness values ensure you need an excellent damage roll to inflict a shaken condition, which is more challenging than it first seems. And the game adds the "resilient" and "very resilient" monster special abilities that allow you to throw one or two extra wounds onto an extra (not wild cards) onto extra to simulate higher hit point monsters.

The Savage Pathfinder Bestiary was created by some really talented monster designers who know the Savage Worlds rules inside and out, and the designs are a masterclass in taking a 3.5E style monster and translating the difficulty and challenge of that creature into a new rules system and keeping the experience intact while working within the rules of the new game.

But meatier monsters mean you need less of them, and you get a lot of B/X adventures and classic D&D and AD&D monsters that equate challenge with quantity. Many classic D&D modules will think nothing of throwing 6-10 goblins in a room as the "guard post." If you are trying to convert this into a Savage Pathfinder adventure, you would probably reduce the numbers in the encounter and always remember to group them up into groups of at least three, so they can get the +2 "gang up" bonus to their fighting rolls when they attack (and also remember, this can be canceled out by a similar number of defenders on the other side).

Also, Savage Worlds has the option of "one roll per group" for skill rolls - but in combat, the rules assume "one roll per group member." Savage Pathfinder, page 133, emphasis mine:

If three goblins attack a single hero, for example, each of the three goblins add +2 to their Fighting rolls.

B/X and C&C can handle large combats pretty well, with a single d20 vs. AC roll plus hp damage, and the AD&D game has its origins in a wargame, so there is that "mass battle lineage" in the rules. Savage Worlds is a much more cinematic game, and it does better with those "one on one" battles and fights with a fewer number of more formidable enemies and the tense back-and-forth swings of combat. You can do mass battles with Savage Worlds, but to avoid each combat from turning into a night-long slog, I would reduce the number of enemies, give the flavor of the challenge, and keep the story going faster.

If you halve the number of goblins in a room, you can always throw those extra ones in or have them run in as reinforcements if the encounter is a complete blowout in favor of the players. Or have them as a hall encounter if you feel things are moving too quickly.

Again, Savage Worlds is a game that simulates a "movie reality" instead of a "reality simulator" like a GURPS or a Champions. Focus on the pace and beats of the story instead of worrying about the encounter challenges, and adjust on the fly as you referee the group of players and gauge their combat power. Forcing the players to "burn resources" in non-story encounters is the goal since that heightens the tension and raises the stakes of end-boss fights.

5E: Precalculated

I did more YouTube D&D watching, and I found a few having an issue with how everything in D&D is precalculated and complaining about the minimal choice in building characters or selecting weapons and armor.

Single-handed weapons? Pick one that does a d8, and go for martial weapons if you can.

Two-handed weapons? Ignore damage, and always go for reach.

Dual wielding? Go for the d6, and your damage output will equal a two-hander.

Armor? There is really one best pick, and that depends on your DEX.

And as you level, all the choices you make feel like they were run through a computer thousands of times, and the damage outputs and effects really don't matter much beyond "the best choice you should make." Either that or the statistics majors have gotten to them and found the absolute best choice.

And the martial-caster damage gap gets worse at every level, so no choice you can make as a martial character matters. Even defenses get better for casters.

So, just play a caster.

Wizards have always made overpowered casters in D&D; every version they made of the game was superheroic-magic and, frankly, overpowered the casters to an insane degree. And they can't maintain a version and keep the game stable for more than 5 years before the overpowered options creep in, and we need a new edition again. Yes, the game is insanely popular, but design-wise they have not done the best job.

The game they were given with AD&D 2nd edition worked fine. The OSR proves that easily.

Every edition of D&D since Wizards has taken over has been another significant change.

Part of me feels they change things to sell books, as this is the Magic the Gathering sales method. And I get the feeling for the last 20 years, the game hasn't really been in the best of hands. They refuse to support their world settings. The lore past 3.5 feels dead and unsupported. They embraced the World of Warcraft-style default setting, and the fiction and excitement around their "worlds of adventure" feel long gone.

Given D&D 4's mess of a design, the damage gap between martial and caster characters was not that high. D&D 5 went back to the "glass cannon" caster design philosophy, and then, later on, they just went and added equivalent defenses for casters anyways. Because I suppose casters complain the loudest. And there are designers at Wizards who have no clue what some of these changes do to the game.

I am still reading Level Up Advanced 5E and seeing what they did to address this problem. Part of me feels like the obvious answer for 5E is "more rules," but the game is already heavy enough with rules, so why would I need more to patch issues? Fighters and martial characters are very cool in Level Up - I give them a lot of credit for making them enjoyable again.

I honestly get the feeling trying to patch 5E's flaws is like taping together a shelf, so it keeps standing up. At some point, just get a better shelf.

Low Fantasy Gaming does many cool things, too - primarily by throwing out 5E rules and replacing them with "fun play" systems like exploits. Exploits in LFG solve many of 5E's problems and add that "Savage Worlds" flair to the game. Out of all my 5E clones, LFG is hands-down the best and one I would play to get my investment out of the 5E third-party books on my shelf.

But it does this not by writing more rules but by throwing them out and replacing them with thematic systems. The exploit system, the resting system, arcane dark & dangerous magic, the faith & favor system, the escape & evasion system, the supply system, the skill system - seriously, read this book and check out all the fun "minigames" they added to 5E and realize all the heavy rules they replaced. They didn't patch and tape; they did some fascinating game design to enhance OSR-style play but abstract a lot of the bookkeeping away.

LFG is honestly a genius design.

But it also has a lot of baggage in the base system to deal with, including Wizards' habit of overwriting and over-connecting every rule to each other and introducing complexity where there should be clarity and simplicity.

The 50% (or more) Price Increase

This is how the world works. 

https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-reports-third-quarter-financial-results

And Hasbro wants to increase profits by 50%  - or more - over the next 5 years. I expect the prices of books, and the number of them to buy, to go up dramatically for One D&D. And it will probably be the only game you can afford to play since companies these days have this way of making you feel left out if you don't give them your entire gaming budget.

This is the world you live in with "influencer brands" and the revolving money wheel between Wall Street companies, advertisers, and YouTube influencers who honestly give more than they get (and very few there earn a living wage).

So here comes One D&D and more ways for you - the customer - to spend money.

And there goes D&D YouTube; if they want a part of the sweet ad money, they will start creating buzz. Remember that most YouTube performers work for free and give billion-dollar companies free labor.

And yes, you will be expected to pay more and buy more to "be on the hype train!"

And here comes the nostalgia to help lubricate the sales push! It would not surprise me if they started to roll out One D&D Campaign setting updates for every TSR property and mostly cut and paste while inserting a few controversies here and there to create B&O - buzz and outrage.

What did they do to Elminster!!!? This makes me so mad!

I never used that character, and I have the power to say he doesn't exist, but the controversy!!!

And most people will be suckered in by B&O because it works so well.

This is also why those who play the influencer brand game dislike the OSR. I can buy (or get the game for free) and be completely free from having my entertainment budget drained by influencers and the corporations who support and create those parasitic brands and experiences. Some games I play are decades old. Others have stayed the same and only done printings to keep things fresh.

I am not being pressured to spend money with the OSR. I can play many games for free. And I do not have to create a budget for my fun and feel "left out" if I can't afford a book or online service.

I love 5E, but I feel the marketing and sales of the game feel predatory. It does not feel like the game I started with nor the one the original creators worked on. I push OSR alternatives, even for 5E, because some still love the framework and feeling.

I can love and support the game without loving and supporting the business practices behind it, and some of the social media influencers feel like levels in a pyramid scheme of marketing and buzz.

You know, if you don't buy the thing I am talking about today, you will feel left out!

You wouldn't want that, would you?

We spend so much time together!

Friend.

One D&D Needs Simplicity

When I first got into Magic the Gathering with my brother, I bought a starter set, and the one thing I learned is rulebooks - the size of a playing card - that are hundreds of pages long - for a card game - in 6-point type so small you can't read - are one of the dumbest things the company ever did. You would think that for a card game, you could figure things out with the information on the card.

But no.

And this "writing too many rules" bloat and waste have stayed with the company ever since.

Even the D&D 5 Basic set is around 180 pages of rules.

Many TSR games in the 1980s were under 64 pages for a complete game.

Stars Without Number has one page of rules summary that covers 95% of the game.

I think Wizards needs to learn how to write fewer rules, be concise, brief, and to the point, and simplify a set of rules. They write way too much, and worse, they have little self-control when making one-off rule changes and modifications because a designer wants a power or feat to work a certain way. They write too much, toss in exceptional cases whenever they feel like it, and keep piling on extra books, overpowered options, and complexity when they need to meet their monthly sales numbers.

One D&D should exist as a core set of rules in under 8 pages of text, and that is very generous since many other games can do a complete system in less. A description for a class should be under two pages per class. Everything should be pared down and simplified to the least information possible.

Old School Essentials does an incredible job of simplifying and presenting the information. What I want out of One D&D is this book, but for 5E, and just as tight and organized. No fluff, overwriting, no going on and on, and no making exceptions everywhere. And this game proves you don't need to overdo it, just do it very well, and you will become the de-facto market leader in a genre of gaming.

5E is an excellent set of rules, but it needs an OSE level of simplification and rewriting. I can only imagine how great the game would be if someone turned 5E into a "New School Essentials" book.

And I feel Wizards is incapable of creating a set of simple rules because that level of organization, self-control, and discipline is not in their company DNA. Is this part of why I like them? Yes. It is a huge problem? That can also be a yes.

And keeping backward compatibility may make writing a book like this impossible. They may run into the "Win32" problem that Microsoft and Windows suffer with, in that the company can never get rid of an outdated and insecure API. Backward compatibility with 5E may drag down the entire company and prevent them from revolutionizing the game.