Off the Shelf: ...Without Number Games

...I pulled out all my "...Without Worlds" recently, including:

• Worlds Without Number
• Stars Without Number
• Cities Without Number
• Other Dust (soon to be an expanded edition Ashes Without Number)

Kevin Crawford is a genius in the gaming world, keeping the games simple and universal while delivering generation systems many other games struggle to reproduce. The games are written with the attitude of "play this game with the book's rules, or just use whatever rules you like."

The books are the best idea and setting generation books ever written and are also worthy games. They are White Box-style masterpieces of creativity and imagination.

I am searching for a great science fiction game, and there is no really getting any better than Stars Without Number. What I love about these games is how they borrow from B/X games, and the author says, "Go ahead; every B/X game you own is content for this game!" You can borrow monsters, magic items, races, spells, and even classes and powers.

Stars Without Number is also very easy to reskin. I can instantly transform it into Star Wars or Star Trek by changing a few weapon names and seasoning it with lore and flavor. This is much like the Cyber System's universality: it can be genre-neutral, X, Y, Z, or anything you want. This game could also easily create "game universes" like Traveller or Star Frontiers and any science fiction movie, TV series, or B&W serial.

SWN is also killing the new Traveller for me. I don't have the time to devote to a massive library of books, and for my needs, a simple, skinnable, d20 science fiction game that works with all my B/X books fits much better with my time and play preferences.

SWN is the Shadowdark of science fiction gaming, at least for me. This is my Star Trek, Star Wars, Starfinder, and anything else I need it to be.

I like the d20 vs. AC combat and 2d6 skill check systems. Some want "all systems on one die," but there is no reason. The skills feel different than "just another d20 combat roll" and give me that great-feeling 2d6 Traveller vibe while keeping the standard d20 combat system many are used to. Given their vast scopes and world-building tools, this uses the best parts of many classic games and mixes them into a game that is easier to manage.

All three of these games are the perfect jumping-off point into other genres from Shadowdark. You will get that "Shadowdark feeling" here, with a simple base system, level progression, parallel skill system, and straightforward gameplay. It is not 5E, but it is close enough you probably won't notice. If you like advantages and disadvantages, there is no reason not to use them. On a 2d6 roll, the A/D mechanic will roll 3d6 and then drop the highest or lowest die.

Oh, and all the "Without Number" games have free versions, so anyone can jump in and play without needing to buy a book. They have fewer tools (mostly gamemaster stuff) but are 100% rules-complete and playable. The free versions here are far more generous than Shadowdark's Basic Set, and the rules can be printed out on a two-page summary sheet players can print out and use during play.

Cities Without Number does Cyberpunk or Shadowrun-style games effortlessly and can put you more on a "street level" than either. The mission-generation system puts many other games in the genre to shame, and just one "gem in the rough" result from any of these charts can create a signature location, NPC, enemy faction, gang, or other element your campaign can latch onto for an entire campaign.

CWN introduces a "trauma" mechanic that makes gunplay dangerous and is a general advancement in the system for more gritty, realistic gameplay. If you want, you can back-port this to SWN and WWN; they will guide you through the process.

To do Shadowrun, just create a focus for your "fantasy race" and use the magic system in the book, one from another Without Number game or any from a B/X game. Equip your favorite B/X bestiary with monsters with body armor, implants, cyber-tech, and machine guns, and you are good to go for a cyber-fantasy game. Hit points and AC? Use them as-is.

Unique races are a focus pick. Still, I like how these games stick to a human base and let you interpret if there are fantasy races in your world at all. It is up to you. You don't need to accept a game that gives you a billion race choices and forces the game master to understand how the world works with all these cultures and kin. I just can't play some games because all the variety turns the game into a "junk soup" of everything in the pantry, cupboards, and fridge thrown into a pot.

Humans are incredibly wonderful and diverse—just look at our planet. Just humans in a setting are an excellent, diverse, player-engaging, and utterly representative game world.

If I want one or two unique backgrounds, they will be a part of the game's world, history, story, and factions. They will be "done right" and not just tossed in there because someone wants to cosplay a Tiefling dragon-born half-vampire again. I am done with the constant cosplay in some games; it distracts from the game, pushes out new players, encourages 'play as myself' behavior, and enables too many terrible player habits.

These games are the glue for building a million worlds.

Worlds Without Number is the game I feel the furthest from in the series since I already have a lot of fantastic fantasy games on my shelves. Still, there is no reason the toolboxes here could not be used to create worlds for Shadowdark, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, Dungeon Fantasy, Old School Essentials, or any of my other go-to fantasy games.

The magic system in Worlds is a bit "movie-like" and not as mechanical and "sell list-centered" as I would like. Of all my fantasy games, the ones that "hit" on my ideas of what magic and classes are Swords & Wizardry or Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Magic use in this game is compelling but also very limited in scope and "casts per day," with most low-level mages only being able to fire off one or two significant spells daily. It is more "Conan" style magic, focusing on the melee and expert characters. There is an "art" system for lesser-magic spells that can be cast repeatedly, drawing from an "effort" pool that recharges daily. It is an interesting two-tier system that splits "big" spells (ones you see in the movie trailer) from the lesser spells (like throwing a magic bolt at an enemy).

If you want a "magic missile" spell, simply create art from it since it is minor. Make it create one 1d4 missile per level of caster, give it a range of 20' per caster level, and make it auto-hit.

Want a more high-magic game? Double the effort pool, or make a mana-potion resource to restore it. As it is, the game makes magic powerful but limits the number of uses to a few, which buffs the expert and melee classes. Too often in game design these days, casters take over the game, and those without magic are "why bother" classes that suffer because companies want to sell books full of spells and powers.

There are also options to create or borrow spells from other games. You either borrow profusely or use another game's class and magic system; it doesn't matter what you do if you keep consistent. I bet you could feel like a mysterious and powerful mage in this game if you put the time in to learn the system and how it works; as it is, the magic system in the game feels different and strange, which is a good thing.

You can't ignore your warrior and expert friends, which is good. Again, many 5E games and their clones put casters on a god-tier level of power, and the game goes superhero and never comes back. They feel like a waste of time, putting you in a "fake world" of "freely given power," and they divorce you from reality and any sense of challenge or "real world feeling." If you are doing things that make no sense in a realistic world, feel the rules protect you from what should happen, ignore your friends constantly, and live within a framework of magic powers instead of a realistic simulation - you are likely playing 5E.

Ashes Without Number is coming soon, too. It is a love letter to post-apocalyptic gaming, including Gamma World, Aftermath, Mad Max, gonzo-fantasy settings, and many others.

These are all some of the best genre games out there. They have super-generous free versions. They are straightforward games that are easy to play. These games are like Shadowdark; I can pick up and play with anyone at the drop of a hat.

If the industry sees a "Shadowdarkification" of gaming, that is a great thing since it means many more people will be able to pick up and play games with anyone else. Games like D&D, Pathfinder 2, and other complicated "cathedral gaming" heavy, multiple-shelf-spanning systems create "gaming cultures and cliques," which hurt the hobby. I don't want subscription websites or characters that must be made on computers. That isn't gaming that can be played with anyone, anywhere.

Complex games promote the lie that "I have more options. Thus, this is a good thing for me."

It is a selfish choice.

And yes, if this means my love of GURPS is a guilty pleasure, it means I accept that. I can't push GURPS on people who won't like it, be such a total fan that I can't enjoy anything else, or create pick-up games with others using systems everyone can join in on.

Shadowdark and games like it tell us, "It is more important to be able to play with everyone."

Off the Shelf: Stars Without Number

When you are done with the stale and over-exposed Star Wars, tired of the endlessly morphing Star Trek, out of steam with Traveller, not finding excitement for Starfinder, and done with science fiction as a genre, there is only one game left.

Stars Without Number.

And it even has a nearly complete free version. Like Shadowdark, having a free version is key to getting others to try the game.

Stars Without Number is this generation's Space Opera. It is complete enough to cover everything you would ever want, and if you wished to have "IP flavor," then all you need to do is rename the starship and personal weapons.

The cruiser-class "Spinal Beam Cannon?" Star Wars: Ion Cannon. Star Trek: Phaser Bank. Star Frontiers: Disruptor Cannon.

Spike drive? Star Wars: Hyperspace Drive. Star Trek: Warp Drive. Star Frontiers: Jump Drive.

We're done. You can now play whatever IP you want.

You don't need to spend money on licensed games or get ripped off when the IP moves to another company, or they release a new version far too quickly.

And this game could use every Starfinder pawn you have if you bought into those. It can also mix "magic and science fiction" with rules for importing spells from other OSR games and having spellcasting classes. They have a generalist "Arcanist" and a single-school "Magister" framework for these caster classes, and you can also use the magic systems from Worlds Without Number if you want.

The game includes a sample spell list but requires you to import ones from other OSR games or the other Without Number games. Importing magic from other games, monsters, treasures, and other OSR content is trivially easy.

Alien PCs are easy, too. You can pick two foci and combine them or create your own. Any alien species is easy to make. Games with many aliens, such as Space Opera, Starfinder, or Star Wars, are straightforward to support. The dralasite of Star Frontiers? Shapeshifter plus a custom "lie detection" ability.

Done.

Playing Star Frontiers with this game gives you a better experience and lets you focus more on the story, worlds, factions, and exploring strange planets than the original game. The random tables will fill out every unexplained planet on the game's included map, and every planet beyond.

This game makes it easy to port in any science fiction universe, videogame, movie, TV show, or idea.

This kills Traveller and Starfinder from my most-played shelves, and everything is in one book. I still like this game, but SWN replaces the need to have two shelves of books out with this many options. SWN does more than Traveller; it is faster in any universe, has familiar mechanics, and has a small investment.

The random tables and space combat are also better than both of those games. They use a straightforward B/X-style combat system that supports starship crew actions (with command points) so everyone can be involved. There is a ship design system, and it is easy.

Like Shadowdark, this game is so easy that I could explain and play it with anyone in minutes. The game has a more expansive free edition than Shadowdark, so anyone could play a nearly complete game for free. The tables and generation systems fill out universes. The game is easy for a player and game master. By default, this game will win in the most important "playing with others" category every time.

This is another "stealth game" that I keep trying to ignore, but how easy it is to support anything and play with anyone will win out in the end.

Do We Need New Games?

I get the feeling all the games I will ever play have already been written.

I have skipped the last few Kickstarter launches I was interested in and focused on what I already have.

I am happier for it.

I gave up on 5E, and it turned into the "junk videogame console" at its end of life. Crowdfunding projects were coming one after the other, promising to make an admittedly narrowly focused "power fantasy" game do things it could not handle. Books tried to turn it into gothic horror, pulp fantasy, science fiction, low fantasy, and so many other genres - and almost all of them succeeded for 3-4 levels or failed entirely.

The best thing that came out of 5E was Shadowdark. This is a game I dismissed as too simple for my time, but every time I pick it up, I play with others instantly. I don't need to "sell" people on a thousand-page investment, Wizards' website, understanding dozens of class options, endlessly sifting through books to get started, dealing with errata, or anything else.

We can just play right now, instantly.

One book and done.

My only other fantasy game is Dungeon Crawl Classics, but that is more for ideas and inspiration. Like Shadowdark, it is a self-contained, 10-level, one-and-done book experience. This is a harder sell for people in my gaming groups, but it is still imaginative and fun, and when I play it, I feel my mind expanding with all the adventures and possibilities.

Again, one book and done.

And 5E is dead for me since it got too fat and bloated to survive. Am I realistically going to be able to sell a dozen people I barely know on an alternate version of 5E, such as ToV or Level Up, complete with that getting started investment and "trust they will stick around," or am I going to be happier with a one-book game that players can just download a free starter set for, and be able to play with that to the highest level if one person has the complete book?

While Shadowdark doesn't have "all the options," give me five minutes, and I can modify the game to have whatever I want. There are excellent mods for this game, "like Skyrim" or "like Dark Sun," and more, including one-book games, are coming.

As long as the game does not contain AI content, I am done with the "Shadowdark plus AI" category for good and don't even bother releasing the game. AI is corporate censorship, the loss of real-world skills, the dumbing down of society, and the control of creative works by a few billionaires and their companies' terms of service. If you use AI art, you put artists out of jobs, hurting the entire hobby with a loss of talent. If AI were around in the 1970s, I doubt D&D would have been written or illustrated how it was.

Pre-AI games are treasures and reflect real human imagination and the human spirit.

These are my keeper games. If I want anything more complicated, I have GURPS for that. GURPS is a putty that can "fill the urge" for many genres, and I don't need to be out shopping for games that do a narrow genre that GURPS can honestly already do efficiently.

The last Kickstarter campaign I participated in was Tales of Argosa since this is Low Fantasy Gaming's 2.0 release, a game I liked. The game is random and table-heavy, so as a gaming resource, this looks interesting. However, my interest in other Kickstarter campaigns, especially 5E ones, has fallen. this one has the potential to be on the level of a Dragonbane for me, but we shall see.

Science fiction gaming is challenging because companies try to sell you on "their ideas" of what science fiction is rather than empower your ideas. The only game I have seen that breaks this mold is Stars Without Number. This is the game that replaces Traveller, at least for me. The game is whatever you want it to be, from Star Wars to Star Trek to Star Frontiers. This can do Battlestar Galactica, Flash Gordon, or Buck Rogers. It could be Starfinder, Battletech, or even Traveller. It could be a little of everything, and it captures that classic Space Opera style of not telling you what the galaxy is but showing you how you could do it and giving you a toolbox to build with.

One book and done.

Stars Without Number is sort of the "Shadowdark for sci-fi," but since the genre is so vast, what a game needs to do also needs that width of genre coverage. The rules are a single page, and everything else is an option.

To be a game I am interested in, it has a far higher bar to cross today.

Everything else is being boxed and put in the garage to sell.

The RPG as Social Glue

Shadowdark captures the original D&D aesthetic just like how the original Traveller Book captured the 2d6 science fiction spark of imagination. Do these self-contained tomes have every option, provide the most detailed combat systems, or give your billions of combinations of options?

No.

Doing any of those things would ruin what these games are, and the possibilities they offer.

Forget today's encyclopedic games which are shelf fodder for the collector's market, and not games which can be easily played with others. The best game is one small rulebook and infinite possibilities. Very few games capture this. Even the new Traveller has dipped into the collector's market a bit too deeply, and that game is a hard sell for me to anyone interested in science fiction.

With D&D, you are talking nearly $200 in books to get started, a subscription service, reading hundreds of pages of rules and options, learning a VTT, and becoming familiar with action types, turns, and all sorts of special conditions, spells, powers, and abilities. The D&D Starter Set is probably the best edition of the game, and you should ignore the rest. Very few people play past the levels given in the Starter Set, and the game at high levels is horribly broken.

Just selling someone on "hey, play this with me!" is an impossible task unless they are already deeply invested in the D&D market. Most average people, when I go up to them and offer to play a RPG with them?

Forget it. D&D is too big to even suggest. Too big of a cost, time investment, purchase, reading requirement, and commitment for any average person to make. I bring D&D up to people outside the gaming market, and I get blank stares and a feeling I should "go play with people who already know the game." D&D as "social glue" only works on those already sold on the game.

Shadowdark is different. I can start up a Shadowdark game with those outside the D&D sphere, they say "what is this" and they see how easy it is, and they are instantly interested and know "I can have fun playing this!" Me, as someone who runs the game, has a "social value" to others as a "person who plays a fun game."

And I can get anyone playing the "full version" of Shadowdark with just the Starter Set, and me owning a book. The character sheets are so simple, and what you need to read and learn can be easily passed on in one minute of showing someone how things work. The game plays like the classic Hero Quest or Dungeon boardgames, where it is just "move your piece and do something" every turn.

Shadowdark is this generation's "Basic D&D." This is the game Wizards should be selling for the hobby, and D&D has turned into a grognard-like mess of rules, options, special actions, bloated options, and an almost "Advanced Squad Leader" feeling to the entire heavy and book-heavy framework.

I can't sell people on D&D anymore.

The 2014 books were an easier sell, honestly.

These days? It is a non-starter with thousands of backward-compatible options confusing the market, and the game depending on online character creation tools. I have to sell people on a game, time commitment, huge purchase, website, subscription service, microtransactions, and a huge buy-in to get started. There is even a social commitment (orcs, drow, half-races) you need to make to align yourself with the designer's vision of the game that feels like it overreaches into your imagination.

Shadowdark is my "social glue" for fantasy these days. I can play it with someone in a heartbeat, introduce it in a minute, show them a zero-cost point of entry, and get them in game with me without them needing to buy a book or sign up for a subscription service. Sorry, Wizards, I am not selling D&D Beyond to other people to play games with me. I am not doing your sales pitches anymore.

Shadowdark works because everything is kept dirt simple.

And once people play, they are hooked, and can join in the fun for free.

I tried putting Shadowdark in storage many times and walking away from the game. To me, it was too simple and did not fill my grognard need of rules, realism, and options. I loved the respect it paid to the classic hobby, and the art and how the game is designed pays a lot of respect to the old ways. I loved the presentation, but felt the game was too simple to hold my interest.

To be honest, I feel Dragonbane fits in this equation somewhere, as the power-fantasy game many play alongside Shadowdark. Where in Shadowdark you need to play carefully, Dragonbane feels like the "charge in, slashing swords and casting spells" style of fantasy many prefer (minus the D&D commitment and bulk).

But every time I gave Shadowdark a chance with others, outside the hobby, I made new friends who were interested. I know, after a while, someone will try to sell them on D&D, but they will likely end up disappointed and leaving the hobby because for them, D&D is too big to play. D&D is the wrong game for them. They will get in, make the purchases, and feel ripped off because they don't have the time in their lives to get involved with a hobby that demands a majority of your time and attention.

Shadowdark?

I can pick this game up and put it down like a boxed set of Monopoly. For others, that is the same level of understanding and commitment they need to invest. Want to play Shadowdark? Yes! Cool! And there we are, zero time and prep needed, hand out a few simple character sheets, and we are playing a game together.

The "social glue" of Shadowdark works, and it works well.

Shadowdark Wins Again: Instant Play

I had a friend who played MMOs with those who also played D&D but wanted to play pen-and-paper games together, "inside" the MMO as the characters. So, she pulled out her copy of Shadowdark and started "just playing" inside the in-game MMO chat window - by the rules, minus a map and torch timers, but 100% doing this by the rules.

It took her zero time to "start playing" - no session zero, just the sample characters from the free starter set, and there were no long pauses to figure out what happened during a turn. One move, one action - next character in the initiative order. The tables in the book covered even the "after combat" stuff like treasure rolls and other random events.

The player (on the other side of the MMO chat window) did not need anything, just a passing knowledge of 5E. If the player had the free starter set, that is all they need to play with someone who owns the whole book or PDF. Most of the time, the referee is the only one who needs to own a book.

The concepts and language used were all very straightforward, and no knowledge of special actions or rules was needed. The D&D game has become like the Blackberry keyboard phone of the 2000s versus Shadowdark's iPhone. Shadowdark is the D&D that Wizards should be selling as D&D.

If this were D&D, let's log into D&D Beyond, create characters, buy books, and set a date and time to learn a VTT. Realistically, with people's schedules and budgets these days, it would take a week and lots of hard-to-commit-to, out-of-game commitments. This game would likely fall apart and never happen if this were D&D.

With Shadowdark, this was the difference between "playing something right now" versus "selling someone on D&D plus the D&D Beyond subscription, learning a VTT, not owning books, setting up a time, lengthy character creation, and reading through and understanding hundreds of pages of rules and character options, and so much other "pre-game" stuff that it makes "instant play" impossible.

She just started playing after one or two setup sentences.

Everything was very easily grasped and understood.

The numbers were under control and smaller.

The game played fast, with full "stunting" support to allow for various player actions.

She "added spice" in her descriptions like a great old-school game master, so the attacks, action, and tension were compelling. The "spice" mattered, too, so if a monster got hit in the arm, it could drop its weapon. No rules are needed for that; this is the "spice" that matters and affects the game.

The game can also be modded quickly and can support different settings, classes, and races.

I keep a torch lit for the more complicated games, but her experience "playing right now" inside an MMO chat window, with self-apparent rules and the action happening right now, makes all the difference in the world. This sort of "ultra-low commitment" and "play can start anytime" is enormous, and it also mirrors people's time, commitment level, and hesitancy to join a game in the real world. Shadowdark is killing many of my more complicated games, even though I see those games as "better" and more complete experiences.

I can't beat this "instant play" capability. Her experience validates it.

D&D does not have "instant play."

The MMO chat window is a terrible way to play a game, but Shadowdark does it quickly. The game can be played well, by the rules, with instant action, or in the one of the worst ways (second only to playing in IMs), and it provides a high level of enjoyment and satisfaction—with nearly zero buy-in.

Shadowdark is far easier to play with others than any other game. The gameplay is instant and viral. You just want to keep playing. This is crushing D&D and Pathfinder 2 for me, because the game is insanely easy to play with others, and play with those who have a high resistance to trying something new. And it can be played in a heartbeat, and using the worst ways to play.

Big Gaming?

I feel that "big gaming" is dying, and my interest in these "shelf games" has fallen off a cliff. I have no longer interest in supporting a shelf of games, and if I do, it will be the best. I also feel that those buying the 2024 collector's items books are buying for the collector's value.

Any game that relies on a collection strategy isn't playable. I have been down that road with Pathfinder 1e, and even Paizo did studies on how many actually play versus collect and read. Most were to collect the books and read; as I recall, most buyers were not those who played the game.

All of 5E is in my garage. Pathfinder 2 is in boxes waiting for a space. Pathfinder 1e is in my closet. All my "library games" are going the way of the dodo. I am out of space. That's it. No more buying and collecting "just to have."

If a game can't be done in one or two books, my interest level falls off a cliff. I am serious about learning to be concise and efficient with words and publishers. These vast, bloated, overly padded, long essays on "what a fighter does" that go on for a full-sized book's two-page spread are such a waste, and nobody needs them nor reads them. They don't affect play or worth much as "flavor."

They are wasting time passing out the book to make it appear you are "getting more."

And all the AI art and text can't save some of these books. More is less.

Old School Essentials, Shadowdark, and any of these small-book games do more with less. Even Traveller, the game that was the essence of small-book gaming, has exploded into a library. I don't like the new version of Traveller as much as I do the old one. It has drifted into the collector's market, which makes them money, but it contributes to my unhappiness with gaming.

The old Traveller Book has that one-book magic to it. This one book lasts decades of gaming. The new books are a shelf-clogging mess of information, more like a set of science fiction encyclopedias. This is also a problem with the latest books; it is more work to look up a piece of information than it is just to "make it up in your head." The original Traveller book is still a fantastic game; you could play any modern Traveller adventure with it.

Is there "less here?" Yes, but that is its beauty. The game does not need much to do a lot. Two six-sided dice and a 160-page book can unlock a universe.

Cepheus Deluxe (and the Enhanced Edition) also captures that "one-book magic" I like in a game. This is the community version of Traveller, minus the official setting, and it still has a lot of great rules and improvements over the source game.

You can add any of the "Without Number" games to that list, too. These are fantastic games, and why they don't get more attention and love is one of the biggest mysteries in gaming. These are games you can disappear into and get lost for years. They also have one-page rules summaries, and they are not difficult in any way.

Shadowdark is my last version of 5E. One book and go. OSE is still on my shelves.

I currently have a shelf for D&D 3.5E alongside my Dungeon Crawl Classics books. Both are relatively small games, with DCC being one book (the adventures are fun and imaginative) and 3.5E being 3/4 of a shelf, plus PDFs. If you like modern D&D, but don't like its direction, just play D&D 3.5E and forget everything past 4th Edition ever existed.

On the plus side, you will have complete sourcebook support for every significant setting in the rules, which is something 5E can't say for itself. D&D "stopped development" at D&D 3.5E, and everything past that was either a mistake or making up for one and never regaining the glory days.

D&D 3.5E, either in the original game or DCC's version of the system, is a worthy, playable game. Even though you can fill four shelves with DCC adventures, it is still a one-book game. The balance of DCC is closer to D&D 3.5E than B/X. You could use the D&D 3.5E Monster Manual as-is for this game, ignoring some of the 3.5E-isms, and be fine.

I have three shelves for my best game, which is GURPS. Arguably, the game is just two books, and everything else is just a setting guide or genre expansion. The base game is small, and you can get away with running GURPS Lite for 90% of your session.

GURPS will be the last multi-shelf game I support.

And the often repeated line "GURPS is math-heavy and complicated" is a lie. It is no more complicated than 5E and more straightforward to grasp since there is one core 3d6 rule driving everything and no plethora of action types to spend 30 minutes figuring out what to do with during your turn. Get yourself a good electronic character sheet (GURPS Character Assistant or GURPS Character Sheet), and you will have everything you need, and the characters will be easy.

Everything else is 3d6 and roll lower.

The only hard part of GURPS is the first learning curve and grasping how to create characters. Play with pre-gens at first; it is all 3d6. Roll under, and design characters later. And unlike 5E, 90% of the rules are optional. This is why everyone misunderstands GURPS.

I swear, people hear the name GURPS and instantly recoil. Among the general public, the instant reaction is "not for me," and I get the feeling the game is a lot like Blender's 3D program. "Not for me" at first, and then "How did I live without this" after the learning curve is over.

That is where I am going. I am done with many games and am just using GURPS for them.

The last "big game" I played was Pathfinder 1e. These days, I am just as happy playing GURPS or Shadowdark on Roll20 and using maps and hex grids online, even as a solo player. I don't have time for a big game, and tighter games with fewer books are more enjoyable.

But in my experience, Pathfinder 1e was "too big to quit," - which is why I suspect many of these companies flood the market with books. What does this do? If you are unhappy with the game, you will buy more to fix it. You will continue to be disappointed, and you will keep buying. You will extend your time with a game that makes you unhappy for years or even decades and ignore simpler games you would have enjoyed.

I still like the system, but it is a behemoth.

I was like this with Pathfinder 1e versus D&D 3.5E, a game I dismissed as being "less" because Pathfinder 1e has so much "more." Later on, I went back and rediscovered a classic. The size of my library forced me to ignore a game with merit and style.

Beware of "big gaming"—these libraries will prevent you from playing other games, take up all your time and money, and lead you into an "unhappy relationship" with a system just because of the sunk-cost feeling you have with it.

Big games are less.

Et Tu, Orcs?

So, did D&D 2024 drop the orc as a monster?

Thank you.

I give them points for being honest and telling customers who enjoy movies like Lord of the Rings and old-school gaming to stay away from their game. The current books look like a joke designed by people who are bitter and angry at the hobby. The 2024 books aren't D&D.

And if 5E is still your thing?

Tales of the Valiant has orcs. They are also a socially conscious company that makes a good game.

Level Up Advanced 5E has orcs. EN World is very socially conscious.

Shadowdark has orcs. Another progressive group here and a disciplined team.

Outside of 5E? OSRIC has orcs. Along with every other OSR game I can think of.

Pathfinder 2 Remaster has orcs, and this is Paizo, a very progressive company. I wish they could stay on message, and I hope their current bad press blows over. Wizards may have just saved Pathfinder again by doing something more stupid that will take the headlines off of them.

People at Paizo are probably cheering this news right now.

Want an even more progressive company that makes an excellent game? Cypher System has orcs on page 347. You can have progressive companies with their heads screwed on straight and who make great stuff. They know certain things are part of the hobby; they try to appeal to the traditional gaming customers and don't let their HR departments write their games.

The D&D owners and designers did this to make people angry and get in the news. It is the same old sad "outrage marketing" where "you are either with us or against us." They want to paint all these other games in a bad light, which is wrong, hurts the hobby, and divides us. Go away, clickbait anger marketing. Go away, like the entire Internet era that fostered you.

Social media killed the hobby.

Good.

We can return to being a niche group of friends playing games we like.