Level Up: Advanced 5E Starter Box

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/enworld/a5e-starter-box

They seem to be leaning on the 5E books for rule support, but I would be much happier if they leaned on the 5.1 SRD instead since compatibility between whatever Wizards does in the next version and this set is not set in stone. It is a minor point since the official A5E books are stand-alone, and this starter set is targeted at "players with 2014 versions of 5E books that are looking for a new thing."

I would love an A5E SRD standalone rulebook for product development.

Would I like this to be a stand-alone? Honestly, yes, break with the past and go your own direction. The core A5E game does precisely that, rewriting everything to create a new product. But as this stands, it is an excellent product I will support.

But why A5E? I am back to hand-creating character sheets, and it takes me 30 minutes to assemble a character. I dislike the character generator programs out there - they limit your options, often don't have the 3rd party books you love in them, and they force you to play the game one way. If I hand-roll a character, that character is mine, and I can tweak and customize them any way I want.

A5E is also a fantastic departure from 5E. The system is tuned and tightened, and if all One D&D is going to be is a balance patch - I would instead break from Wizards and go with community-balanced and developed games rather than the Wall Street overlords at Wizards.

If A5E needs tweaks, I am free to make those.

In D&D, I feel you won't be able to because anything outside of the VTT will be homebrew and looked down upon. After all, if people are paying to play the game that way, what value does 'unofficial 3rd party content' have?

If I do things by hand, I still own my game.

If I play something not made by Wizards and not tied to an official VTT, I own it even more.

And A5 E is the most OSR-style and 4E-like version of 5E out there, with the math highly tuned, so it is my 5E of choice.

5E: Stop it with the Darkvision Please

5E and its darkvision problem are almost a joke now.

I was reading through the race selections of Esper Genesis, and seven of the nine races have darkvision or a variant of it. One of the races that doesn't can get it as an option, though. For some, it does not make any sense.

Stop it. You might also list torches, lanterns, flashlights, night vision gear, and other light sources as "human vision assistance." If I play this game, the races are getting a massive redesign. I see one or two having it out of the nine. They have an aquatic race with tentacle hair, and I expected them to have another enhanced sense, like vibration sense (or even hearing), but no, it is darkvision again.

What is the problem with 5E? Would enhanced senses ruin every module Wizards ever published? Does sensitive hearing or smell cause so many arguments designers banned it from the game?

If a race has darkvision, it will get swapped with another enhanced sense. I am done with darkvision unless it is granted by equipment. Yes, even the cat people. After a thousand years of being in space, they are accustomed to normal light but retain their heightened senses of smell.

And sadly, 5E puts too much emphasis on vision. Senses like the enhanced sense of smell, heightened hearing, vibration sense, enhanced taste, empathy, heat sense, distance vision, and so many other great senses are there to design with - yet this darkness dungeon map line of sight mentality rules 5E designs.

There is no such thing as a dark and spooky starship wreck if every race in the party can see through the darkness. To be fair, it isn't just Esper Genesis; many 5E games have this reflexive, "give them darkvision," thing going on - even the D&D expansion books have darkvision like the plague.

No wonder Shadowdark is taking off; 5E designers just can't get enough of the darkvision, and people are sick of it. If people ask me why I play other games, I can usually say, "darkvision," and they instantly know why. What's worse, some players will pressure people who pick non-darkvision races in a party to change their minds and align the party to the god of dark-vision.

It is like playing Resident Evil but with full-bright environments. Hello, zombies in the back corner of the room! Hello, zombie dog waiting to ambush me outside the window! What is the point of a dungeon anymore? It is just walls now.

Describing a dark spaceship corridor and having characters shine a flashlight down there to check it out is ruined. Are the designers more concerned about how the game plays with other 5E material, ease of play on battlemats, or immersion?

For sci-fi, I am choosing immersion every time.

Off the Shelf: Esper Genesis

 

I like this game despite its chronically out-of-print referee's book, the glossy page presentation, and the feeling of "5E Mass Effect" drawing me in. The fact that the referee's book is only PDF hurts, and I wish I had a hard copy. I may order a B&W spiral-bound copy.

And Ultramodern 5 is a much more complete and expansive game for 5E sci-fi and far more popular. UM5 feels cyber-punk and magic-oriented and reminds me a lot of Shadowrun. It is an excellent 5E system for sci-fi and is well-supported.

Esper Genesis cuts closer to the base 5E rules, making it easier to mod and play with other 5E games, such as Level Up Advanced 5E. So, if I wanted to swap out the rule engine for A5E, that would be easier with EG than UM5.

Esper Genesis has fantastic classes and powers, all tech-based, and they feel very Mass Effect to me. The default setting is exciting and moldable, and you could play everything from a 5E version of Star Frontiers to anything imaginable. I can see this powering a simpler version of Starfinder quickly.

One strange drawback is the weapon tech, which assumes a default projectile-weapon universe. There are guidelines for swapping out damage types to "hack in" a laser pistol, but no laser pistols in the game. I would edit the weapon list to suit my game (and make more guns high velocity to up the damage to unarmored targets). I would add lasers, blasters, and other sci-fi favorites.

Laser pistol: 1d6 radiant damage, 60/300 range, 2 lbs., high velocity, 20 shots, 500 cr. If you wanted the Star Frontiers 'varying power levels' just give it three settings: 1d6, 2d6, and 3d6 damage. Make ammo consumption: 1, 3, and 5 shots to account for diminishing returns. Make a natural 1 an overheating result for the two higher power levels (like a jam), and the weapon needs to cool down for a combat turn (or two for setting 3) before it is used again.

Game design is fun! Play games that let you do this.

There is also that thing in sci-fi RPGs of "too many weapons, who cares, only use one." We played the original Space Opera and had characters who only had a blaster pistol and never used another weapon.

I found it strange the weapons did less damage than the ones in the DMG. Still, they have weapon properties that double damage targets with no natural armor (this term is crucial once you open the monster book), so they try to balance lethality with playability. Less damage is a more intelligent choice, especially with a party of four all blasting away. As usual, the warriors get action surges and extra attacks, so DPS should scale along 5E levels.

I would rather have the weapons doing 1d6 to 1d12 damage instead of the 3d6 sci-fi weapon damage in the old DMG and keep turn damage predictable along 5E levels; otherwise, that party of four is doing 12d6 damage a turn (plus ability modifiers) if they all hit and will vaporize anything in front of them below ten hit dice. Tell yourself, "It is all cinematic damage," and it will be fine.

EG is a game that deserves love, attention, and a second edition. What we have today is impressive and a solid sci-fi game that presents the basics and does not try to do too much. UM5 does everything, and I find that book easy to get lost in. EG does a Mass Effect-style game perfectly, and it has room to mod in plenty of custom ideas.

Level Up: Advanced 5E - Staying Power

I put this game aside for a while, and I ended up missing it. 

A 5E-based game does not do that to me. Why? I don't really like 5E; it is just a collection of combat abilities and powers. Out of combat, 5E sucks and has very little depth. You will typically have the charisma class do all the talking while everyone else stands around and waits. The highest passive perception party member spots the traps and hidden items like a radar system. The ranger is there as the 'checkbox that we don't get lost' and avoids wasting the players' time with a GM sidetrack or encounters on the way to the dungeon.

5E has this video game mentality: "If it is not in the officially published module, you are wasting your player's time." It actively fights against GM creativity with passive skill checks. Unlike the OSR, where you have to search that chest before you open it, the passive system kicks in and makes players lazy - well, I should have spotted it! Is a goblin hidden around a corner? Well, I should have seen him!

5E goes out of its way to trivialize out-of-combat abilities and to minimize GM creativity. You play a game like Call of Cthulhu or Traveller, and suddenly, those characters seem deep and complex. Those games have a focus on non-combat abilities as their primary design goal.

5E also trivializes death and danger to the point where a great sword could cut your character in half multiple times in a day, be brought back with a healing word, and be fine - 100% healthy - with infinite bisections. It is the worst part of the game and even worse than the 4E MMO-isms it brought in.

So why did I miss A5E?

Well, it gives characters a considerable amount of non-combat abilities and bonuses, many of them dealing with the other 2 pillars of play - social and exploration. The game supports all three modes of play through character creation and advancement. Exploration, navigation, and survival are essential! Where you rest matters. Your social abilities matter.

You can't recover from death an infinite number of times.

This game was created by 5E fans who had problems with many parts of the game, and they did the hard work and fixed them. They kept inspiration as well but merged the concept with a destiny system. Where Tales of the Valiant seems more like "a compatible 5E mod," - A5E seems more like a complete rebuild.

If the original Warhammer FRP was the UK's answer to D&D, Level Up A5E is the UK's answer to 5E.

It also shares a little of Warhammer's grim and gritty DNA, but it retains the play and feeling of 5E. You will not 'get away with' ignoring overland travel. You will not ignore food, water, and even light. You will not marginalize social encounters, and everyone at the table will have tools to bring to a social encounter. You will carefully consider where and how you rest. You will not get away with the party hiding in a small closet in the middle of a deadly dungeon and taking a long rest next to the entrance.

Martial classes are fun and have options. Casters aren't nerfed. You feel powerful, but you also have vulnerabilities. You track resources. Your party stamina matters. You can't just 'close your eyes and push through to the boss battle' like you can in a videogame.

I can hear UK players calling old 5E out, laughing at the stupidity of what the game forces players to do, calling parts of the old 5E design rubbish and lazy, and then fixing it in their own version.

"We are in the Tomb of Horrors, right? Well, let's all climb into this closet and take a short rest!"

That sort of statement should be met with stares of disbelief followed by laughter. You are in a horror module. If this were Dungeon Crawl Classics, I would have the closet be a giant mouth, the door grows teeth, and you are all swallowed alive; please roll new characters. Save-or-die if I am feeling generous. Even in old D&D, that is six 1-in-6 (or 2-in-6) wandering monster rolls for that hour of downtime. Prepare to be surprised and run an extra combat without the benefits of the rest.

Try putting away your old 5E books and forcing yourself to just play with this. Don't say, "I wish they would have made this an add-on for 5E," because that argument marginalizes their hard work here.

5E is reductive and brings everything down to the combat lowest denominator. Combat power - by the numbers - is all that matters. This is a very American perspective on fantasy and roleplaying, and it isn't always correct. Frankly, it gets tiring after a while, and One D&D is leaning more into this numbers-based mobile game theory.

A5E was designed in a different mindset, where there is much more to being an adventurer than where your position on a hypothetical damage spreadsheet puts you. Your character is twice as deep as Tales of the Valiant (which borrows some ideas from A5E) but ten times deeper than a base 5E character. When I design a base 5E character, I think about combat power first. When I design an A5E character, I am forced to consider abilities and powers out of combat - and how these would help my party.

If you play A5E by itself, you see the system in an entirely new light. What it could be.

Off the Shelf: Dungeon Crawl Classics

The more I played 5E, the more I appreciated the classics.

What turned me off to the 2023 version of 5E is the rampant power gaming and cheating (and a lot of official 5E content does this) of expansion books. Games like Level Up A5E do an excellent job of establishing a sane baseline, but once you bring in any legacy book, the balance gets thrown out the window.

5E is to D&D what Modern Star Wars is to Star Wars. It is a 'Homer's Car' version of the original game, with so many great ideas piled on the game that it is an unrecognizable mess. The more books you add to get it playing how you want it to, the worse it gets, and the more books you need to fix the problems introduced in the books you added.

You are soon forced to baseline by returning to the original 3 books or a new version like Level Up A5E or Tales of the Valiant. Still, even going back to these as baselines put a band-aid on the problem; once you add expansion books, you are back in the same boat. The best way this works is to throw out expansion books and start fresh.

5E isn't a game but a kitchen junk drawer of ideas people call a game.

Many of the ideas they introduced in 5E (bounded accuracy) cause more problems than they solve, and they aren't as huge of improvements as people make them out to be. Even advantage/disadvantage isn't that revolutionary a mechanic since it is only +/- 3. Rolling one die and adding or subtracting three is faster and simpler than rolling two dice; this is grade school math. The A/D system prevents you from using a -6 or lower modifier for complex challenges and ends up being a one-size-fits-all solution for problems that require nuance and judgment.

So I returned to Dungeon Crawl Classics and rediscovered that Appendix N goodness.

I needed to clean the palette, rediscover fantasy gaming, and get out of this "gimme something every level" slot-machine addiction feedback loop of modern game design. 5E is designed like a mobile game;  it gives me something at every level, and it shows. Even feedback from 5E players I see online who play other games (like DCC or C&C) get that instant dopamine withdrawal symptom when they play other games, "This game doesn't give me things at every level like they do in 5E!"

75% of the time, how you make 5E players happy when switching to other games is to implement a feat system at level one and every odd level after. They will be happy even if you "let them make the feats up" or adapt 5E or 3.5E feats. C&C has a feat system (called advantages), and DCC even mentions implementing a feat system in the game if you want to (page 447). You can buy books of 5E feats or PDFs of all the 3.5E feats that are free online - use those for inspiration for both feats and subclass abilities.

If you allow advantage/disadvantage, all that is left are subclasses. I could mod subclasses into DCC or any OSR game by starting them at 2nd level and allowing players to invent a subclass and gain a feature every even level. Make it a 15% benefit at one thing, and you are fine. I am a life order cleric; I get +1 per die of healing. If it is a 30% benefit, give it a duration or number of times a day equal to the level limitation. And subclass features can stack and double up if you don't want too many of them. DCC makes things easy by allowing a shift up the die chain for some abilities.

Most players can imagine a minor subclass benefit they would like to have and be able to balance it themselves. If it is broken, adjust it. If it is broken and can't be fixed, that character is a one-of-a-kind, and never allow it again. If it is too weak at higher levels, give it a buff.

Feats can be taken by anyone and are more general. Subclass features are limited to classes and often focus on improving the class abilities. Want to replace a feat with a "race or background ability feat?" Go ahead if your character would qualify.

This is precisely the "game design" that Gary Gygax and everyone else did around the table as they developed the game. We did this in the 1980s! Designing the game as you play to be "your game" is just as Appendix N as anything in a rulebook.

There. That is the imitation secret sauce of 5E. A feat at every odd level. Gain one subclass feature every even level. Every 4 levels, raise two ability scores by a point. People rarely play above level 12, so the number of "things to track" won't be very high.

Most importantly, everyone is a game designer.

This is my problem with 5E. I could play with five shelves of broken, low-content, consumerist game books and waste most of my time searching for the one or two options I want. Or, I could use a simple game 'built to mod' like a DCC or C&C, and play that while modding it to precisely what I want. With the 5E imitation secret sauce, any of these can play like 5E and give that dopamine hit.

Most importantly, I trust myself to balance and create options far more than the designers at Wizards or a dozen 3rd party companies interested in selling books built for power gamers.

YouTube

I can tell when YouTube channels struggle; instead of providing exciting content, they start sniping at each other, white knighting, arguing, and fighting. Worse, they start making 'lists' of other YouTubers like they were in middle school and begin fighting over them.

Psst, I heard Tommy put you on his 'dorks' list. You better go over there and force him to take you off it!

If you take a Twitter fight onto your channel, I do not care. I am turning you both off.

My side! Your side!

I have no tolerance for this; I don't care who it is or how much I liked them before; I unsubscribe immediately. I am there for people who love the game and can bring people together to enjoy something we all love.

Apparently, these creators love things outside the game more than they love the game, and this is always a red flag. Then, they use the game to gatekeep. In other cases, they start fighting for no good reason and feel 'drama is content' - again, like some childish middle school idiocy.

Anger channels, too, in general, I am done with them. Sarcasm channels, your days are numbered, too; I tire of sarcasm as smug inside knowledge. Anger-content creators always end up making up reasons to be angry at something that doesn't deserve it just to keep the shtick going. But it is humor! Right. No. And they inevitably get 'angry' at other creators, and here we go again.

YouTube, your platform sucks. It forces creators to use anger, drama, smugness, and hate as content, and Google pushes and promotes that for ad money - no wonder the culture sucks, and people hate each other. The algorithms pit one against the other in dog fights. To win these fights, "user gangs" are forced to gatekeep and de-platform. Creators use the games to push outside agendas, and you recommend those channels to me constantly.

Garbage in, garbage out.

YouTube, take a long, hard look at yourself and your ethics.

Advertisers take note: you fund this.

As a viewer, I am making better choices and turning YouTube off.

I will play a game I love instead.

Mail Room: Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion (2023)

 

Look what I found propped against my front door (and likely sitting there all night). I joined the Kickstarter for this and got the book and a few sets of cards. I am also in both Savage Pathfinder Kickstarters (and have yet to receive the second). Thoughts?

I like Savage Pathfinder, but I get overwhelmed every time I try to play the game. The characters have too many edges, and the class edges feel too much for me to pull apart. I know this is just Savage Worlds, really? Also, the Paizo iconic characters - I love the art and style - feel too overwhelming, and this is their game, not mine. It is a strange feeling, but it is like playing a superhero game, picking a vigilante character option, and seeing Batman on the page as iconic.

Now, I am forever going to compare my hero to Batman.

Most people probably did not have a problem with this. But somehow, I did. Strangely enough, I don't feel 5E has the iconic character problem, and there feels like room for my characters to "be" the iconic character in that class. The OSR certainly doesn't have this problem; the characters there are generic 3d6 dead meat and try to survive. Savage Worlds does not have an issue with iconic characters.

At times, the Paizo flavor of fantasy leans too heavily on their IP, and the game doesn't have room for my ideas. This is even more prominent in the remaster of Pathfinder 2, where the iconic spells, monsters, and creatures are being memory-holed for non-OGL replacement content. Yes, I am harsh, but seriously, replacing drow with reptile people and saying previous dark elf content was "fake news" is peak 2023. The drow monster entry is in the Creative Commons; nobody owns them now. I will check out the new replacements, but they are not in my history, and Golarion 2.1 feels alien to me now.

D&D and Pathfinder 2 are not in the same fantasy genre as most OSR games or even old D&D. While they can be used to play something like the OSR, they are either too planar or too specific to emulate the older generic fantasy game worlds.

Paizo IP feeling dominant is not a bad problem! This signifies solid branding, theming, and tight product management. The game has a definite identity, which is excellent - but it hurts using the system elsewhere.

Still, if you are playing Golarion and love the old-style art and flavor, play Savage Pathfinder 100%, or play the original 3.5E version. You can have your red dragons and magic missiles, and it feels like 2010 again. I love my copy of Savage Pathfinder, and it stays on my most-played shelves. Despite what Paizo does in the future, my version of Golarion is the original.

Some history: I ran a short Savage Fantasy (2012) game in the Pathfinder version of Primeval Thule, a sort of "Conan plus Cthulhu plus D&D fantasy" mish-mash of a setting, and it was a fun swords & sorcery romp. The thing I love about the original fantasy companion was it was a "stuff book" for the main Savage Worlds book, and things still worked essentially the same as the main book plus this.

I tried running it with Savage Pathfinder, and it fell apart. WTF?

It felt like Pathfinder. The characters in my game were not limited by class edges and had all the options open to them. I could have a bard with rage. Whatever - you are surviving in a messed-up world, let your characters progress naturally. If your bard has a reason to pick something "disallowed," then do so. I know you can do this in Savage Pathfinder, but the game felt wrong, and I had a lot of extra information in lists of "can't pick" X, Y, and Z that I would end up ignoring.

Great if this is Pathfinder, but this wasn't. If I can return to superheroes, it is like playing a Marvel RPG with rules meant for a DC Universe. It did not feel right; the goblins were the football-headed ones, I felt the presence of the iconics, and it was like biting into a hamburger where you knew you would only take one bite.

I wanted Conan plus D&D flavor.

I was getting Paizo flavor.

The game was better with the Savage Worlds book, plus the 2012 Fantasy Companion.

Now, I have a revised 2023 Savage Fantasy Companion. The game is a generic fantasy sandbox simulator. The races are a catch-all of everything. Nothing is assumed for me. The art is excellent, and the setting is agnostic. Characters can progress organically.

Most importantly, no world flavor or theme is forced on me. Thule can be Thule. If I played in any other setting, the flavor there would be dominant. Savage Worlds plus the 2023 Fantasy Companion would fade into the background - like they should.

A great generic game fades away and lets flavor take over. Cyhper System does this well. GURPS does it. Many OSR fantasy games do this. Pathfinder 1e does it better than 2e (even with the iconic characters). Savage Pathfinder does not feel generic enough to me to run anything other than Golarion. Likely, it is heavily themed towards "fulfilling the fantasy" - which is excellent for running Pathfinder.

It doesn't do it for other fantasy settings, not as well as a generic fantasy toolbox that keeps complexity down and strips out the flavor and setting limitations meant to emulate a genre.

Savage Pathfinder is great; it is one of the best Pathfinder experiences I could ever imagine.

The new Fantasy Companion has infinite potential outside of that area.