Tag Archives: D&D

Gaming Articles, Role-Player Game Reviews

GM Theory: Running A Good Game

In the last 30+ years, I have experienced a wide range of role-playing games both from the perspective of the GM and the perspective of a player. Many were successful, but quite a few were not while some only marginally so.

Today I’m going to talk about what I think separates a great campaign from a mediocre one, the pitfalls and traps that lead to failed campaigns, and perhaps most importantly what a good GM should be doing to ensure their campaign starts and ends on good footing.

Now I will admit that I have a very unique take on running role-playing games, it definitely does not fall into the “normal” advice category. I would imagine in fact that the instinct of most GM’s as they read this article will be to disagree and that is fine, it’s just an opinion in a sea of opinions. More advice is better than less advice, so I humbly submit my take on the subject, do with it what you will.

Role-playing games are not about story

We start with the most controversial but in my opinion, most objectively true thing about role-playing games and the universally hardest truth to bare for GM’s. Good role-playing games are never about good stories. They are always about gaming systems.

So here is the thing, if you ask any player why they want to play a role-playing game almost all will tell you “for the story” and in large part, I would imagine it’s also why most DM’s would claim they want to run a role-playing game. It’s the greatest lie always told, but it is always pure, unadulterated, utter and complete bullshit.

The test is quite simple, pick a system a player or group doesn’t like and see if they still want to play. They won’t want to play that game and even if they do, the game will fail no matter how good the story is. Why? If the game is about a story, why would what system you pick matter or cause your campaign to fail if you have done a great job on the story? Why do so many people choose D&D and not GURPS? Why do people pick complex systems like Pathfinder 2e, rather than simple systems like 1st Edition Basic?

If role-playing games were truly just about the story, systems like Pathfinder 2nd edition could simply never find success. There is absolutely no reason anyone chasing an RPG for story would ever need a 650 page rulebook to tell it. Any pathfinder player who tells you they play RPG’s for story is completetly full shit.

The answer is simple, system is everything. Role-playing games are first and foremost games, it’s the systems that get people to sit at the table, it’s what is exciting about the gaming experience and hobby that is role-playing. If I propose running 1st edition Basic to a 5e group, they will reject that game and likely viciously attack me for even suggesting that their precious 5th edition D&D could be replaced by another system. Vice versus, if I walk into an OSR group of old school gamers and suggest that we play Pathfinder 2e their would be absolutely no chance. They would simply rather burn all of their books and never play a role-playing game for the rest of their lives again, than play in a modern gaming system. System matters a lot to people, its not just a game often times, its practically an ID card, your identity as a role-player. People don’t just have strong opinions about what systems and playstyles they like, they are irredemably loyal to them.

Why? I’m a great DM, I have been running games for my gaming group that they themselves without any prompting from me called “the greatest role-playing experience of their lives”. Why would my group with so much faith in my ability to run a great role-playing experience outright reject a game I want to run based on the system I’ve chosen if the game is in fact about story?

The reality is that story is a byproduct, an important albeit side benefit of playing a role-paying game. We all love story, I do not question that, it’s very much a core desire/outcome of the game and why we are drawn to the game, even so far as to stretch the truth and claim it to be the main reason for wanting to play to begin with. The harsh reality is that RPG hobbyists are gamers first and foremost and the game mechanic is a central component of what creates the experience at the table. The story lives as a layer that becomes the output/outcome of the experience, but no one can ever be excited about entering into a gaming social contract without a system they are excited to execute it with. The story will never save your game, a good system always will.

Realistically if story was the most important element of RPG’s to everyone, GURPS would be the worlds only RPG. It has the simplest and most consistent core mechanic of any game in existance, its completetly scalable and functions with all genres. You buy one book and you can write and play any story, any setting, anything you can imagine forever.

Why is this important knowledge for any GM? It’s very simple. Never, under any circumstance convince yourself that the system you want to run is going to create a good role-playing experience for your players unless they are excited about the system as well. Your players have to choose the system, they have to be excited about it, and they have to love it and bare its torch. If a group has even the most minor complain about the system you have chosen, your campaign is already dead and you will never be able to do resolve that. It’s the single most important decision you will make that will define whether your campaign will find success or failure. The system matters that much, more than any other choice you make.

System and setting are often synonymous in RPG’s because most RPG’s are designed for a specific setting, but the same rules apply. If a group isn’t excited and in love with the setting, nothing will save your game. Run a Star Trek Adventures for a group of trekkies and its magic, talk a group of non-trekkies into playing it and neither the system or the story will save the game. A hard lesson I learned first hand. No matter how good of a GM you think you are, no one is that good.

Remember that, accept it, and embrace it. You can write a shitty, linear story in a system your players love and it will be a booming success, alternatively, you can write a masterpiece for a system your players hate and the game will fail miserably. Never forget that, it’s the best advice I can offer after 30+ years of running games. There is no fix for this and the reality is that most games that fail, fail because of this one reason. Don’t let it happen to you.

The busier the system, the shorter the campaign

Most GM’s, when they sit down to create a campaign for their players imagine playing it for years, spinning an epic tale that puts the players on a journey of discovery with twists and turns, exciting reveals, epic battles, shocking events and so on. We all dream about running that Lord of the Rings epic for the ages.

The issue is that the overwhelming majority of systems out there are very specifically designed not to allow that and the reason is quite simple, there is no money in it.

To give an example, I ran a nearly 3 year Vampire The Masquerade campaign for which all I ever purchased was a core rulebook and a setting book. That was it, that’s all white-wolf managed to get out of me for what amounted to hundreds of hours of entertainment. If a gaming group of 5 only buy 1 or 2 books every three to four years, all role-playing publishers become completely unsustainable, and even if they are set up for a low volume, they are not getting rich doing it.

As such, most modern systems are setup to be complex, with tons of design space to create “options” and that is the name of the game for modern RPG’s. Selling option books requires you to be constantly re-starting new campaigns, so you can create new characters and buy new adventure books and so on, all so that you have a desire for more options. It’s a cycle.

Wizards of the Coast and TSR with D&D are probobly the most famous examples of companies that produce a game designed to make sure campaigns fail and have to start over so that they can sell more books. No version of D&D has ever produced a game in which characters of 10th level or more were sustainable in a campaign. The shelf life of a typical D&D campaign is extremely short.

The reality is that complex systems with tons of options will usually result in what I like to call “dead system stops”. This means the system kills your campaign because it lacks the stamina and structure to survive a long campaign as power advancement is at the center of the core mechanic. This is particularly true for most class/level systems that become unwieldy and unbalanced as you rise in level. It is particularly a problem with these systems not just because the increases in level creates unbalance, but because the players have an expectation to constantly level up. They effectively push for the inevitable power creep that will end the campaign early. Play D&D for three months without leveling up and your players are going to start complaining.

The best systems are those that have progression without major impact and are simple so that the character sheet is just a “log” of your character, rather than an elaboration of what your character is and isn’t, or what they can and can’t do. What I mean by that is that if your players are constantly looking at their character sheet to see “what they can do” they are also finding a list of things “they can’t do”. You are playing in a busy system that is designed to create options for players so that they can do stuff, out-level the game and start over.

Original D&D probobly could not have predicted how leveling up, the class structure and focus on experience points would years later become the reason long campaigns would become unsustainable for D&D. In big part it was because these older versions of D&D had a high mortality rate and the high levels where more a carrot than anything anyone had any expectation to actually achieve. In short, high level campaigns were never supposed to be a thing.

A good role-playing system is not going to be about what the system does or doesn’t let your character do, it should be about what your players want their characters to do. It’s not about action economy, but about telling a story, taking “actions” should not be a mechanic in a role-playing system. What characters do should be a story definition, a conscious thought of a player imagining a scene and doing what comes naturally to them with any mechanical elements being customizable and reactive rather than something governed by strict (you can and can’t) rules.

Such systems are becoming rarer and rarer these days, people simply don’t make them that much anymore, which is why we have the OSR because there was a time in the hobbies history when all RPG’s were designed to be free-flowing and free-form story games. The character sheet was an outline of the player’s imagined avatar and it did not define them in any certain terms, it was just a sort of categorization, a layer upon which a player would create their character’s story and what actions they took had nothing to do with the system.

You picked “Fighter” and that could be anything from a Samurai to a Swashbuckler. You did not pick background, you created backgrounds through direct writing or through gameplay. You didn’t select feats and fighting styles, you imagined those things and brought them to the table through the narrative of your character’s interaction with the world. What your character could do was as much an invention of the story as the plot created by the GM. We talk about players always claiming to want the game to be about story, yet, they often choose systems that deny them the opportunity to be creative.

A system like that has no beginning or end, your character is the person you imagine and create and while they will have subtle growth in such a system, it will not offer much in the way of unlocking powers, actions or other gaming gymnastics. Your character is your avatar in such games, the one you created at the start and their progression is their story in the world they occupy, not the mechanical power level they achieve.

In such a system, your campaign can theoretically run forever.

While most players want D&D to be the never ending campaign game, the truth is that D&D is the absolute worst of the dead stop games, in fact, even as early as 1st edition AD&D, the concept of a “long campaign” was dead in the water and impossible under the system. The closes you would ever actually get was 1st edition BECMI, its power progression and advancement was so slow that campaigns could go on for a decade before things got out of hand.

My suggestion is that if you want to run a long campaign that stays healthy no matter how long you run it, stay away from systems that see character progression as a “power” element. That is usually the sign of a busy game not made for longevity, if advancement = power, the game has a definitive beginning and end and the faster that power creep is, the shorter the campaign will be.

At the very least you should asses the system and calculate how much life it will have, at what point you reach the dead stop so that you can plan for the campaign’s inevitable end.

Meta Gaming Is Where Good Stories Come From

As a long-time GM, one of the oddest gaming culture developments that has taken place over the last 30 years is player and GM attitudes towards meta-gaming.

For posterity, we should define what Meta-Gaming is, as there are quite a few definitions and variations of the term. To me, meta-gaming is the act of the players using player information to influence results in the game world. Meaning, the player knows what a typical Orcs AC is and they use that information to their advantage to illustrate the most basic of examples. More commonly the use of meta-gaming is less about the game mechanic and more about the game’s story. For example, a player knows that the prince is secretly a vampire, but their character doesn’t, however, they use their player knowledge to expose him as a vampire breaking the continuity of the game world. Their character is behaving as if they have information that they don’t, because the player does. A more complex example, but typically more along the lines of what people mean when they say meta-gaming.

The modern attitude and culture towards meta-gaming is that it is associated with a really negative result. Meaning, people get pissed about it and the insinuation is that it’s akin to cheating at role-playing.

I’m here to tell you that meta-gaming is the most positive thing you can add to your game and here is why.

The object of a role-playing game is to tell a cool story, but cool stories can’t be told consistently out of a vacuum or through random dice outcomes. Cool stories come from our imagination and that requires a certain level of control. Meaning if you want to make cool things happen, you simply need to decide that they do and this is the collaboration that should take place at the table between players and between players and the GM.

There is a very natural resistance by both players and GM’s to simply side with the system, despite any insistence that the story comes first. Often players and GM’s alike want to side with the dice results or with realism (what would really happen in a situation) or worse of all, with the intent to control the path of the story so as not to derail the pre-ordained set of events. In this struggle, gaming culture has vilified meta-gaming as a negative, but it’s meta-game information that actually allows cool things to happen.

The meta game argument is really old, I was 10 years old and watching this cartoon the first time I had it and I’m 50 now and it still comes up at my tables all the time.

What’s more interesting, a player having to pretend and act intentionally ignorant to the fact that the prince is actually a vampire, or a cool scene where the character appears to be a brilliant investigator and makes the discovery creating a feel-good and heroic moment? Who or what is hurt by the latter?

I don’t know about you, but I love feel-good moments. I want the players to succeed, to do unexpected and fun things that create unique story’s and outcomes. I want large story progressions with each session, I don’t want to delay or make players impatiently wait session after session, sitting on information they have as players because things haven’t worked out for them as characters or worse yet make them feel like they are being punished for being or acting foolish in an RPG.

There is hidden meaning in this quote, but basically what he is saying is that role-playing games aren’t really games, they are storytelling tools. Rules I think are important and so did Gary, but they just don’t apply to GM’s who has the burden of making sure the story is fun.

This also ties into the concept of “yes” GMing. Meaning, creating a game in which the players, no matter how silly and outrageous the things they do are, let them progress, succeed, and move forward, let things work. I don’t want to punish players for doing something stupid, I want everything to appear to be smart, I want everything to be a “Han Solo” plan, something so crazy and outrageous that it works, no matter how unrealistic it is, no matter what the dice say. I want the characters to be the stars of the show, not the victims of circumstance.

My point is that meta-gaming is THE best tool that the GM and players have in their tool bag for creating a great story. Let the story happen and not just that, but push it to happen, resolve the story in such a way so that it’s always a feel-good moment. That doesn’t mean everything that happens is positive, but that the story feels good, like that feeling you get when you just watched a great movie, whether it’s Lord of the Rings or Shindlers List. You want that great storytelling impact at every session, in every scene. It should be happening all the time and meta-gaming is a fantastic tool that allows the players to help you on collaboration of creating that effect at the table.

The Game Has To Feel Threatening

Fear of losing your character has to be foremost on everyone’s mind, you have to make that fear real but you should rarely ever execute anyone. Make an example to prove the point if needed, but remember that the game is all smoke and mirrors,

This last point is short and sweet and self-evident, the question I think that needs to be answered is why I think this is critical enough to put on the list of advice.

Before I answer however, I will say that this advice lands in the “style of play” preference category more than the rest which I consider “general good practices and advice”. Still, I’m quite convinced that my preference here stems from my experience of trying all the different methods and landing on this one by default of it being the most optimal and practical for any RPG.

The other thing to note is that this is not a system thing, it’s not about “choosing” a deadly system, quite to the contrary, I would advise against using that as a crutch, this is more about perception which can be created with any mechanic. It’s a conscious choice as a GM to create an environment of high risk, not a gameplay thing, this danger should not be decided by dice.

Ok enough disclosures, why do I think players should fear for their character’s lives. The answer is actually quite simple, it creates tension and drama at the table that exists in the minds of the players. By creating an environment where the players have a legitimate reason to fear losing their character at the hands of their enemy every time they fight or face other dangers, these things become a tough, dramatic choice that comes with potentially the ultimate consequences and this tension rises up the longer the campaign goes on. The more attached the players are to their characters, the greater the drama.

More than that though, players will steer their characters very differently with such high stakes at the table and this draws the game that much closer to a role-playing environment instead of a mechanical one. Further still, when fights break out in a high-risk game, players will have the natural tendency, as will you as a GM, to elaborate on the events of the fight. You are going to want to squeeze out that last ounce of story when you know that the story of your character may very well end right then and there. You are going to want to make every in that fight a scene of deliberate and player-driven (rather than mechanic-driven) actions. It’s how you make fights less a miniature combat game and more of a role-playing scene, even if the system itself is a very tactically oriented one.

Setting Specific Games Are Better

The final piece of advice which I know most people will hate hearing, but systems made as generic genre games like D&D is for fantasy are never even close to as good as specific games with mechanics designed specifically to a setting, for example what The One Ring is to the middle-earth setting.

The reasons are many but it boils down to the fact that a setting-specific game only needs to think about how the rules apply to that one world, theme and atmosphere. Generic systems need to have this broad coverage and you always end up with an overcooked system which despite being overcooked is missing a lot of stuff you may need once you choose the specific setting you will use in your campaign. Its the default problem that systems like D&D have.

Setting specific systems have such an overwhelming advantage over generic systems in the design space that even a really shitty system made for a specific setting is going to be overwhelmingly superior to the best generic system. When a system is actually good and for a specific setting like Alien RPG here, its pure fucking magic.

This is particularly true if you are using a setting that is pre-defined. For example lets say you want to run a campaign in Westeros, using the story of Game of Thrones as your backdrop. Now you have a lot of detail that whatever system you choose needs to cover. Could you run D&D for example using the Westeros setting? Sure, but there are no fireballs in Westeros, in fact, very little magic at all. How do you handle running your own house? Mass combat? You get the idea. The robust and complex system you picked, suddenly has massive gaps in the infrastructure you will need to run your setting and story.

A game designed to serve a specific setting is always going to give you much better results and what you will find is that most systems, even when they are in the generic category, serve a specific styleof play best. D&D for example is great for high fantasy adventure games, it is, its bread and butter.

My advice is always to do this. Figure out what world/setting and style of game you want and then pick the system that supports that, don’t try to squeeze shit into systems that are clearly not designed to support what your looking for. This advice is very much in turn with the opening advice for this article but this is a bit more specific.

Gaming Articles, Role-Player Game Reviews

D&D Theory: Making the 5e CR system work

One of the chief complaints about 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons is the CR (Challenge Rating) system which is used to balance combat encounters for the game.

The specific complaint is that the CR system doesn’t really work to create balanced encounters and using the system as designed results in weak and underpowered encounters. An additional issue is that the CR system assumes multiple encounters per day which is an unrealistic expectation for a standard D&D campaign.

Today we are going to talk about the CR system, specifically the design space, some of its math, the theory behind its design and how and what can be adapted to get different results.

The High Powered Fantasy Is Core

One important concept to embrace about 5th edition as a game design is that all of the architecture is built around the game being a high-powered fantasy RPG. The characters in the game are high-octane heroes with very powerful abilities that grow in power exponentially and its assumed as a design that the heroes always win, essentially. To use a metaphor, they are the Avengers, superheroes that always prevail and only suffer setbacks but are expected to come out victorious in a dramatic fashion.

This is important to understand when working with the CR system as designed as the core design of the game directly affects how the CR is designed to work out mathematically and as a practical application in the game.

The fact that D&D 5th edition is a high-powered fantasy is not a problem, it is a feature and should only be addressed if you actually feel the game lacks challenge in your group. If you find yourself wishing the game was more challenging, there are many approaches, but keeping the adjustments simple, and using a minimalist approach that has maximum impact is key.

In short, the CR math is setup to ensure that the players always feel like high-powered fantasy heroes. The complaint that the CR math results in weak encounters even when they are set to hard or epic is valid, but this is by design and working as intended. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Gauging Expectations

Given the acceptance of the above, the question is what are the expectations? I think it’s fair to assume that some, perhaps many players want there to be more of a tactical challenge, and more risk involved in the outcome of combat encounters, meaning that while they enjoy the high fantasy as a narrative premise, some at least may feel the game should be more challenging as a whole, in particular in the area of combat encounters.

I think this is fair, while certainly if you want the high-powered fantasy, the CR system and the base out-of-the-box setup for the game has you covered, but for those that wish it produced more challenging encounters, the question is what can be done?

From here, we will assume that players and DM’s want a more challenging tactical experience.

Now one thing you could clearly do is simply toss out the CR system or alter its math but the math behind this system is actually quite good in my opinion and I believe that it can still be applied as is while getting the result we want, a more challenging game, by altering the conditions of the game itself.

I believe the conditions of the game is where the correction should be, not an adaptation of the CR system itself.

The reason for this is monster design. All of the monsters have been quite carefully tailored to their CR rating, there was a lot of attention paid to the math of bound accuracy and the leveling of monster powers vs. character levels and all the mechanical layers of class design.

Mess with the CR math and you mess with a far wider design space of the game’s core. This will and does as many have discovered really mess with the balance of the game in very unexpected ways where some classes remain impossibly strong, while others really struggle, some monsters suddenly become super powerful, while others actually become weaker still. It may seem strange that this happens when you mess with the CR math until you realize that at the heart of the game’s very intricate balance is this system.

In a word adapting the CR system math comes with many unexpected complexities which I won’t get into in this post, instead, I will show you a much easier way.

Adjusting difficulty so the CR math becomes challenging

The best way to adapt D&D in any edition of the game which includes this one is to adjust the core of the games pillars. There are three of them.

Ability Scores, Hit Points and what I call The Alpha Strike empowerment. Reduce these and regardless of class or level, the entire framework of power is reduced and the difficulty of the game increases.

Adjusting ability scores

Ability scores are one of the pillars of D&D, high scores make characters much more powerful and reliable, lower scores make them less so, but if you really push the envelope here and allow characters to have exceptionally poor scores, the games challenge increase dramatically.

The default system uses one of two options. 4d6 drop the lowest and place scores to preference or the point buy system.

In these systems, the average score is going to be 12-13 and you are very likely to have scores of 15-17.

While this character probably didn’t start out quite this strong at the start of the campaign, the benefits of starting with high ability scores and the increases earned through levels end up creating flawless high-octane characters that have no trouble dealing with that pesky CR systems math.

Since you are able to place the scores wherever you like, the end result is that you will have bonus modifiers where it count for your character. For example, a fighter will have good modifiers for strength and constitution ensuring they have it where it counts, accuracy of hitting, bonus to damage and extra hit points.

More importantly, you are unlikely to have scores with negative modifiers, they will at least be few and far between.

By lowering the potential for abilities scores and the control over ability score placement you can dramatically reduce the effectiveness of characters globally across all classes.

If you use 3d6 rolled down the chain with no rerolls, and no control over the scores you reduce the average score to a 10 which results in no modifier and you are almost guaranteed that each character will have 1, 2 or even potentially 3 scores that are in the negative space. Having 1 or 2 scores with a bonus modifier is considered lucky and you are unlikely to have scores as high as 16-18, these will be far and few in-between.

This is the first step of bringing the CR system into alignment as it will not only force hard decisions and create imperfect characters but result in a global reduction of power the players will be able to exert individually and as a team.

Adjusting hit points

Next we address the issue with hit points. 1st level characters start with maximum hit points, plus their constitution modifier. The lowest score possible here is 6 which is quite low, but it’s possible to reach scores of 16 with some classes and a high constitution score.

What you want to do is make the early game a very dangerous proposition, but also ensure that the games hit points always remain a relatively low average.

Start by rolling hit points at 1st level as you would normally do during level-up instead of starting with max hit points.

More importantly, do not create any house rules for re-rolls or exceptions for when players roll low. Let the statistical averages play out.

Players will feel the sting and if you stick to your guns and remain firm on 1 roll no exceptions, characters will always feel squishy and in danger, no matter what level they attain as the average hit points of characters will remain very low.

Adjusting Alpha Strike

The final step is to address the Alpha Strike problem. Lets first describe it.

The Alpha Strike problem is that with all of the combined potential might the players can execute, if they are certain that they don’t have to preserve resources, their power level is always equal to their most powerful abilities in every fight. As such the balance of the game has no swings or averages, they are always at their best.

Now you don’t want to have to make adaptions to the adventure, or create resource drains or force multiple combats in order to tax the players to ensure they can’t do this which is the usual advice given by most.

I personally find this a very meta and unnatural way to approach a solution to this balance issue, in fact, even the CR system itself assumes six to eight fights per day to ensure there is a balance to this core problem but I think there is a much better and more systematic way to do this that does not require you do anything special with the adventures that you run.

The added bonus here is that this is actually an official alternative rule in the game.

It’s called the Gritty Realism rule. This rule essentially changes the definition of a short rest to 8 hours of rest and a long rest to 7 days of rest.

This rule ensures that character resources are finite and they must carefully pick and choose with each encounter what resources they will expend.

Oddly it also supports the premise of how the CR system is balanced across multiple encounters because over the course of 7 in-game days, it’s far more likely that adventures will have the assumed six to eight encounters a day, which in the case of gritty realism is actually 7 adventuring days.

This all but eliminates the concept of the alpha strike, in fact, such things will still happen but only during important and dramatic moments when the players face powerful foes (aka boss fights). The rest of the time they are going to always be conserving their resources, covetting them and only expanding them when it really matters.

Conclusion

With the implementation of this architecture what you will discover is that the CR math suddenly works. Average encounters will feel average, hard encounters will feel hard and deadly encounters will almost certainly kill characters. This balance will remain from 1st level all the way to 20th level, it will never falter, the CR system math will simply work.

Not only this but there are many other side benefits of using this approach as many old-school gamers will attest.

Fear of fights and the danger of fighting becomes real to the players as they will naturally recognize that they are no longer super-powered high fantasy heroes but very much mortal. Other dangers like traps become more vivid, and social encounters in which players seek help from NPC’s will become far more important.

Combat will become more tactical where players will be encouraged to maximize every inch of their character’s benefits, min-maxing their powers in any way they. The premise of the character build can be given free rein, letting players build their super weapons and manipulate the system to their heart’s content without fear of breaking the balance of the game.

You can be more generous with magic items, let them find stuff that empowers them and you will find that they not only appreciate discoveries of fine treasures far more but they become quite precious to the players. Every potion, every scroll, every ring, every magic sword will be a real treasure.

Even with the implementation of this architecture for your game, characters will still become powerful and they will still eventually face dragons and epic monsters, but the journey will hopefully be fraught with real feelings of danger and excitement, so when they do face that dragon, it’s going to be the epic experience it should be.

When D&D is a challenging experience, the heart and soul of everything players do from role-playing to battles with enemies become more meaningful, they will feel like they earn every inch of their success, where the rewards for hard-fought battles and completion of quests are well deserved and leveling up feels like a real treat.

You will also find that the published adventures for 5th edition that feel far too easy become real challenges where players can actually fail. This will inspire you as a DM and make you feel like you are doing your job without having to constantly try to figure out how to make the game more interesting and challenging. Let the architecture of the game do it for you.

Good luck in your adventures!

Best of List, Role-Player Game Reviews

D&D Theory: List of 10 Games that can replace 5th edition D&D

I thought the timing for writing an article about potential RPG’s you could get into to replace 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons is quite perfect. Lots of people are upset with Wizards of the Coast after their completely disastrous handling of the franchise in the recent year and recent weeks in particular. I think a lot of people are looking around to see what else is out there and while I already have plenty of lists and information about other RPG’s on this site, I wanted to make one specifically for 5e players looking for alternatives.

Now one consideration for this list includes “logic” for the replacement of 5th edition. What I mean is that I don’t think “I’m mad at Wizards of the Coast” is really a reason someone might stop playing 5th edition, but I do think there is a wide array of logical reasons why a group, DM or individual player might. As such this list isn’t just about games that replicate 5th edition as a replacement but includes other RPG’s that do certain elements of the tabletop experience in a more focused and better way than 5th edition. As such I have included a “If you don’t like….” logic section for each game that describes an element of 5th edition you might not like and how the listed game does that particular element better. Hopefully, this helps to make the list more focused.

Enjoy the list and good luck in your hunt for a replacement for 5th edition D&D. Note that while this is a top 10 list, I have not put them in order of quality or anything like that. These are all great games for different reasons so it’s just a list of 10 games rather than a top 10 list of games to replace 5th edition D&D.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition

If you don’t like….

If you don’t like a game that has poor rules coverage and constantly asks you to make rulings where you wish there was rules coverage, I think Pathfinder 2nd edition is a great choice.

I think if you’re talking about replacing 5th edition Dungeon and Dragons, the most common, rightfully so, piece of advice you will get is to switch to Pathfinder 2nd edition. I think this is more of a competitor driven advice than necessarily good advice, which is not to say its bad advice. It really depends on what aspects of 5th edition you enjoy as to whether or not this will be the right choice for you.

Be warned that while Pathfinder 2nd edition does a lot of elements a lot better than 5th edition, it is a very focused game with a very specific style of play built into it that is not terribly flexible if you want to focus on other elements and styles of play outside of its focus.

Pathfinder first and foremost is an incredibly robust and option-rich game with an extremely focused effort on balance and mechanization of gameplay. What that really means is that this game has massive rules coverage, has very heavy character optimization which results in a focus on the execution of rules rather than rulings premise. 5th edition D&D is quite a bit different in this regard, many of 5th edition rules assumed a lot of D&D intervention and hand waving of rules in favor of narrative storytelling.

This is an adventure game in which any action you take has a rule associated with it and character options that can improve that effort. Now this does not mean you always execute every rule in the game when you do something, it just means you have the coverage, the option as a DM, to include some sort of execution when players do anything. Hand waving is certainly a part of the game, but unlike 5th edition, hand waving is rarely done out of necessity because of an absence of rules, it’s done as a preference. The rules always have your back in Pathfinder 2nd edition and this is one of the really distinct differences between the two games.

There is a firm consistency in how actions and execution work in PF2nd, rules are very explicit and clear and there is little left to interpretation. The consistency of the rules is such that once you get used to the system, you can pretty much always guess how an element works and be correct, so despite a 600+ core rulebook, most of the rules work exactly as you expect based on the precedence of the standardization of rules and the purpose of outlining each one is for unique circumstances and cases of specific action to ensure you are rarely put in a situation where you must rule something yourself.

This however is only a small part of Pathfinder 2nd edition despite it being a core feature and while the ruleset is incredibly consistent, balanced and easy to use, the best part of Pathfinder is that it comes with an incredibly detailed fantasy setting with a rich history and total support for it via its mechanics. Every class, race as well as unique fantasy trope, like spell sources, magic items etc.. are built into the world and have an explanation in terms of where in this world that thing comes from.

Its a wonderfully satisfying thing for a DM when a player picks Goblin as an ancestry for example and you can look up where goblins come from, what is there culture like, what are some of the unique aspects that feed into and bring to the table, the narrative of that race. It’s so well fleshed out, and well written and there are so many fantasy/story rabbit holes to crawl into it’s amazing. It all brings Pathfinders Golarion setting to life and makes it feel real. You have this really firm basis on which the game is set and while of course, you have the option of using homebrew or other settings with Pathfinder, Golarion is so well done, so perfectly matched up with the content of this system you are likely to discover that you won’t want to do this extra work. It’s a fantastic setup.

Finally and probably most importantly there is absolutely no question in my mind that Pathfinder Adventure Paths (adventures written for Pathfinder) are absolutely top-notch quality. Paizo is an absolute legend when it comes to creating adventures and campaigns for their game and for this reason alone it’s worth making the switch in my opinion.

One great example is Kingmaker, one of Pathfinder’s premiere adventure paths that have players not only going on a grand adventure of exploration but establishing their own kingdom. This one was so popular it got its own video game, arguably one of the best CRPG’s to come out since the Baulders Gate series.

One additional sort of bonus with Paizo and Pathfinder 2nd edition is that they achieved a long time ago the communities desired inclusivity of the game and developed the game with a modern morale compass that has escaped Wizards of the Coast for so long. Paizo is in a word, a prime example of what a modern company’s political stance should be, which is simply to do the right thing without being asked to and without making it a political stance constantly brought up as a marketing ploy. They simply just act right without all the morale signaling and politics unlike Wizards of the Coasts that is not only constantly shoving politics in your face, but also constantly screwing it up and releasing racist and sexist crap in their books despite any messaging.

Pathfinder 2nd edition is a great game and Paizo is a fantastic company that stands with the player community. They understand their audience, they understand their community and they know how to support their game. Pathfinder 2nd edition is without question the most well-supported game in the market today.

Castles & Crusades

If you don’t like….

The idea of switching systems and having it impact your style of play as a 5e player or DM, Castles & Crusades is the perfect system for you. It is very much in the same style & vein of play as 5th edition with an incredibly robust and flexible game system that allows for a very easy transition from 5e.

While the 5th edition community may not necessarily be up to speed on the evolutions of the game since the original 1st edition AD&D, it is a fact that D&D branched off into different directions since those early days. I think most might not be aware that the true descendant of the original AD&D game is Castles & Crusades. In fact, Gary Gygax himself played Castles & Crusades and it is actually the true successor to Dungeons and Dragons, not 2nd or 3rd edition D&D which evolved the game into the modern 5th edition game you are familiar with. Still, while the mechanics certainly differ, the core premise is the same.

In fact, in an alternative timeline where the franchise was not bought out by Wizards of the Coast, today everyone would know Castles & Crusades simply as D&D.

Upon opening the player’s handbook the first thing that will strike you about the game is how familiar and very D&Dish it is. This is a game that stuck to the classic tropes of the game but don’t mistake it as an OSR game because it most certainly is not part of the OSR even though many will claim it to be. This is a modernly designed game, that takes into account all of the evolutions of D&D and the RPG hobby as a whole in its design. In its 8th printing, this game has continued to be supported since 2004 and though it too has evolved over time, it has also remained consistent and compatible with all material that has ever been printed for it as Troll Lord Games is dedicated to creating a stable and consistent gaming environment for its fans long term.

Castles & Crusades plays as you probably already imagine D&D to be, its going to be oddly familiar if you have played 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th edition D&D and this is because much of the evolution of the hobby has been hit and miss with the Wizards of the Coast versions of the game, while Castles & Crusades has hand-picked the things that have been established to work well and fine-tuned those elements over decades of focused testing.

Like Paizo’s Pathfinder, Castles & Crusades has a default built-in setting called Aihrde, but unlike Pathfinder this setting is sort of intentionally designed to be a bit of a generic D&D world to allow players a tremendous amount of customization. Castles & Crusades is incredibly flexible, in fact, you can take any classic D&D setting and use C&C as a rule system with little if any additions or changes to be made to make it fit. It is very organically designed to be D&D and as such, all of the core races and classes you are accustomed to are there as you would expect.

More than that though Castles & Crusades via expanded books has continually made sure that those elements in official D&D settings that are created for those settings are also released in expansion books for C&C. Meaning there are books like the Crusader Companion which are available for free that give you races like Dragonborn, classes like Berserker and concepts like Multi-Classing. Castles & Crusades has kept up with all of the modern fantasy tropes and though they do not include these in the base game, ensuring D&D has a clear and very classic starting point, these expansions allow the game to be expanded easily to include any sort of fantasy you want to run. Everything I wished Wizards of the Coast would do with D&D.

Castles & Crusades is also a very open-source game, meaning the licensing of the game is designed to support the community and 3rd party efforts and this aspect of the game is fully leveraged making this an extremely well-supported game both officially and unofficially. Whatever you are looking for, whether it be rules on mass combat, kingdom management, expanded spell systems, alternative combat systems, conversions of classic adventures, system conversions… whatever it is, you name it and Castles & Crusades has your back. What makes the C&C community so great is that most of this material is available for free, which includes the Players Handbook itself. For example, there is a 5th edition conversion guide if you wish to take your 5e game and convert it to Castles and Crusades available for free.

I think the thing that makes Castles & Crusades really special in the market is the high level of quality of the books and the content itself. This is not a company that just splashes source books willy nilly and while the library is large at this point, this is because the game has been in operation under the same, stable and consistent system for over 2 decades. The result is consistently high-quality content that you can rely on.

Castles & Crusades is without question one of the premier systems and comes with the highest of recommendations to 5e players looking for an alternative mainly because switching from 5e to Castles and Crusades is not going to ask you to change your style of play.

Forbidden Lands

If you don’t like….

If you are finding D&D adventure modules and running pre-made stories that tend to rely on rails for the players to stay on a bit dull and you like your game to be gritty and tough, Forbidden Lands is a great choice.

I have talked about the award-winning Forbidden Lands many times on this blog and there is a very solid reason for it. It is a hidden gem in the rough waters that often accompany the OSR.

Let’s be honest here for a minute. The issue with the OSR is that, in part at least, it’s about playing old-school editions of the game and while that may strike a note with many, for 5e players, going back to playing B/X or AD&D isn’t exactly what they are looking for. 5e players like modernization and that is not only ok, but arguably it’s to be encouraged. Not everyone shares in the nostalgia of playing the classics as they were, much of the D&D community is forward-looking and Forbidden Lands is one of the few OSR games that says “hey we like old school gaming, we just don’t like old school rules”.

Forbidden Lands however is more than just a throwback to the classic play style with modern rules, it is a uniquely focused game that targets a very specific sub-genre of D&D play. Namely, the concept of the hex-crawl and survival D&D built are the premise of emergent gameplay.

In Forbidden Lands, you and your players are living in a kind of post-apocalyptic area and era of this world. The dust of the tumultuous past has settled and you are asked to venture out into the unknown and forgotten lands to make your own way.

In this game you explore the world that is dynamically generated by the DM using a very clever set of rules which generate what I would call emergent gameplay. Meaning that even the DM doesn’t fully know what is going to happen and since this is very much an open-world game by design, everything that happens is entirely driven by the players own motivations. What do they want to do in this wild open space? Whatever that is, the execution of that becomes the story of the game and everything about the game is designed to support that endeavor.

Now Forbidden Lands itself does have a back story so in a sense, eventually, you uncover enough information about the world around you to pursue what is effectively a “main campaign” of the game itself. So while the whole place is a dynamically generated playground for the players to pursue any endeavors they like, the games story does have a resolution and all of the dynamic content of the game that is generated in the course of play is tied into this piece of the game.

While the game is not a d20 system that 5e players might be familiar with, it does boast Free League Games premiere custom mechanic on which many other great games are based like my personal favorite, Aliens RPG. It’s a simple, very abstract system that will be a snap to learn and yet is incredibly entertaining as it relies on more than simply pass-fail states.

All and all I think Forbidden Lands is one of those games you must experience to appreciate fully but for the DM’s out there looking for something interesting to run, this game is as much fun to run as it is to play. The story writing here is absolutely amazing and the setting itself, dark, ominous and full of mystery, is everything you want in a great RPG experience.

One of my favorite games to come out this side of the century.

The One Ring

If you don’t like….

If you have grown tired of the generic, anything-goes fantasy that 5e has grown into and want something with a classic fantasy feel that is focused on role-playing, The One Ring, based on Tolkien’s middle-earth is going to get you there!

The One Ring is simply, Lord of the Rings the RPG, but it’s so much more than that simply because it’s a game that understands on what it is based and mechanically aligns itself to ensure your adventures play out like the Lord of the Rings books and movies.

This game has an incredible focus on making sure that middle-earth in all its epic glory comes to life at the table, not only by having a very strong game mechanic that really pushes for this to be true but because The One Ring has some of the best writers in the business working on it.

Ruins of The Lost Realms is a taste of what I mean here, we are talking about work that fits the term literature in my opinion, setting you up to have adventures that players don’t even realize are possible in an RPG. You are going to feel things as The One Ring focuses very heavily on the premise of RP with the G taking a bit of a back seat.

The hallmark of a great RPG is that it’s supported by well-written adventure modules and Ruins Of The Lost Realm is sooooo much more than just a great adventure module, it is so well-written, it deserves a place right next to The Silmarillion.

In short, The One Ring, as you would hope it would be, is focused squarely on storytelling and on personal relationships all with a backdrop of epic, world-shaking, questing that makes the players feel like they are a character in the Fellowship of The Ring. It does this organically, in a way where even players that are ordinarily not the story-focused kind will find themselves sucked into this one, not unlike what happens when you binge-watch the latest hit from Netflix.

To me the One Ring is the definition of what an RPG should be, it puts you right in the middle of one of the greatest fantasy stories ever told and hands you the reigns. Easily the single best RPG to come out 2022, I dare say no RPG fan should miss this one, especially a Lord of the Rings fan. Grab that starter box and check it out!

A Song of Ice and Fire

If you don’t like….

If you are finding D&D to be a bit unrealistic, with too much focus on adventures and not enough focus on the premise of believable characterization and wish to play something more gritty, A Song of Ice and Fire is for you.

Let’s be a little frank about D&D. The premise of the game is that you are a supposed “adventurer”, a bit of a do-gooder, that goes around exploring dungeons, fighting monsters and generally doing things no actual person, even in a fantasy setting is likely to volunteer to do. It sort of requires a level of suspension of disbelief in the context of a fantasy that I think is very often a bit of a stretch, almost cartoony.

Modern fantasy writing like the Game of Thrones saga is a good example of what happens when you look at a fantasy world from a more realistic perspective and use human nature as a guide to creating a world in which people act more like you might expect them to.

Based on George R.R. Martin’s modern classic world, A Song of Ice and Fire is dark, gritty, violent and sometimes a bit too real, but for fans, despite the need to sometimes look away, we love it and Song of Ice and Fire the RPG brings all of that to the table.

In what I can only describe as one of the most unique setups in RPG’s today, in Song of Ice and Fire you and your friends not only create characters all belonging to one of the houses in the story, but part of the game is creating and managing that house yourself.

This is a game that puts you in the driver’s seat in the political struggles in the Game of Thrones story where you try to raise your house to prominence by participating in the cutthroat Game of Thrones where you win or you die.

Beautifully designed to suit the gritty nature of the game world, this is a game where fighting is absolutely lethal and a last resort, while simultaneously the political stories are not much refuge as they are equally brutal. It’s a game in which you are either a wolf or a sheep, but of course the game encourages you to be a wolf and so you struggle against an endless barrage of political maneuvering, some of your own creation, others thrust upon you.

There is never a dull moment in this game as it provides the DM with so much ammunition to keep the stories going, not only that, you can do all of it in the backdrop of the story of the unfolding setting itself, changing events and creating your own version of the Game of Thrones story.

My friends and I played this one a few years back and to this day we talk about the politics, people and events of that game. This game just has a way of imprinting on you as it plays out in such a vivid and believable fashion.

Absolutely adore this one, I would only caution players and DM’s that this is definitely a far cry from an “adventuring” game. It’s a political thriller, the kick-down-doors and kill-everything approach simply does not work here. It’s a game where finesse, political strategy and calculated moves must be executed with surgical precision, its a game for planners. It’s wonderful and painful at the same time, but this game creates stories you will not soon forget.

Alternity RPG

If you don’t like…

Many D&D players that are currently looking around for an alternative, may be doing so simply because they have grown tired of the fantasy genre as a whole and a natural switch is to check out science fiction. If that describes you, let me tell you about the greatest science-fiction game ever made, Alternity!

Before I do that, however, let’s get on the same page. Fantasy and Science-Fiction are very related genres, in fact, to a point, they are the same. Both genres were born from the same place, arguably, the first science-fiction-fantasy book ever written was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and for a long time after that, the difference between what is fantasy and what is science fiction was a murky construct that would only be split decades later.

Now with that said I bring you Alternity, a game that not only is the precursor to the entire d20 system but may in fact, despite decades of D20-based games, be the best example of the system done right. This well-oiled machine was designed by TSR and Wizards of the Coast alumni Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker and is without question in my mind one of the best science-fiction RPG’s ever published and remains so to this day.

It is designed to allow a GM to create every kind of science-fiction setting from the ground up from post-apocalyptic wastelands to space operas, from Blade Runner-style future earth to X-File style horror-mystery science-fiction. It is all-inclusive and does it with such elegance and style it pains me that this final TSR release which in my opinion is one of the best RPG’s to come out of TSR ever, which includes all versions of D&D, went under most people’s radars.

This game is mechanically a fusion of a skill-based and class-based system allowing for maximum customization and it boasts clear rules for all of the major science-fiction tropes from Cybergear, Mutations, Hacking, Space Combat, Space Exploration, Virtual Reality and even Magic.

There is literally nothing you can think of in the vein of science-fiction or fantasy that cannot be done with this system and it can go from high end super powered science-fiction to gritty reality with only the most minor adaptation, all work done for you and laid out in the Gamemasters Guide.

Not only is Alternity the unquestionable king of science-fiction in RPG’s, it also has two of the best non-franchise science-fiction settings ever written made just for it. Darkmatter, an X-Files-style alien conspiracy setting and Stardrive, a massive, Star Wars-level space opera that is based on very gritty and believable predictions about the future.

Stardrive, in my humble opinion, remains one of the best settings ever written for any RPG. How this is not a movie at this point I don’t know, it’s a masterpiece.

I love this game and have been using it for the better part of 2 decades and while there are many fantastic science-fiction offerings out there today like the amazing Aliens RPG (more on that later) and the highly thematic Star Wars Edge of the Empire, to me Alternity is the best of the best, the king of kings, the ultimate and only RPG true science-fiction fans should even be considering if you are going to consider sci-fi as an alternative to 5th edition D&D.

Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea

If you don’t like…

If you have grown tired of your games feeling like easy walk-throughs for your players and you want to present them with a tough and gritty challenge there are actually quite a few RPG’s to pick from that do this, in fact, it could be a list of its own. The reason I think Hyperborea stands out when assuming 5th edition players is that this game is what a fantasy RPG might look like if a modern gamer tried to create a classic D&D clone with one exception (I will get to that in a minute).

Technically Hyperborea falls into the OSR space as, at its core, this is a B/X based game, but unlike B/X there are some adjustments made to the setting to make some of the B/X concepts that might offend modern gamers a bit more palatable and better suited. More importantly, it’s a bit crunchier and feels much more complete than B/X ever did.

For example, this is a game where you simply choose a class, no race selection (same as B/X rules) but it’s because this is a human-centric world and while other “things” exist in the world, as players, you play only humans. Now there are different cultures of humans so you can select your race in the sense of choosing a unique human culture like Amazon, Kelts or Vikings for example, but you aren’t picking Elves, Dwarves or Halflings.

You get a very wide selection of classes and sub-classes to pick from with a good level of crunch, 22 in total, each with a unique set of abilities that will ensure every character is unique and each class is built into the context of the setting which itself is a kind of almost post-apocalyptic medieval fantasy with some science-fiction elements in the backdrop.

What makes this a great transition game for 5e players is that it takes into account the sort of focal preferences that modern gamers enjoy. It’s a simple-to-learn, easy to get into game and It focuses on rulings over rules, while offering the brevity of crunchy mechanics so that you have something to lean on. I would describe it as having the exact same amount of crunch as 5e.

Personally for me, what I love about it and really what I ultimately love about most RPG’s is that it takes a story-first sort of approach and does so by leading by great example with the setting. That is the sort of game that speaks to me. Hyperborea, the default setting for this game, just hits so many unique fantasy tropes, approaches fantasy a bit out of the box and has some really fantastic presentation so all of the material is easy to absorb and make your own.

It’s what I would call for 5e players, a really great rut buster. Like if your finding your 5e games are becoming uninspired if you are seeing patterns emerging and you want to do something different, switching to a setting that really re-writes fantasy as you know it is a really great way to break that cycle and Hyperborea not only does that, but provides you with what I think 5e players will find is a very familiar yet fun new system to learn that produces this very gritty reality. This IS D&D, don’t doubt it, but it’s got a bit of an edge to it.

Now I should mention one of the drawbacks here and that is by default, Hyperborea uses THAC0 (combat matrix) as its primary combat resolution system with descending armor class. I don’t know why the publisher chose this method over the much simpler attack bonus, ascending armor class structure, it’s a mistake and they shouldn’t have done it. Not that this is a deal breaker for me and frankly, it’s not that difficult to flip the math yourself but, if you think THAC0 is stupid and I agree with you, you have to decide for yourself if this is going to be a deal breaker or not. It is what I would call a chink in the armor of what is otherwise a fantastic game.

On the plus side, the system is used to great effect and Hyperborea really captures the gritty battle sequence with perfection. It’s a unique combat system that is based on B/X but expanded upon to try to bring some realism to the fight with some welcome cinematic bits. Melee combat in this game is vicious and it will create that much-needed stress and sense of danger that 5e is so often missing with consistency.

In my book Hyberborea is a real gem in the rough, it’s definitely a bit edgy and will require some know-how by the GM to make good use of the system, so there is a learning curve here, but it’s got a crunch in all the right places and has really good coverage for elements of fantasy adventure you really need including more expansive topics like Naval Battles, Mass Combat and Sieges, so you can play this game in different scales at different times. Just a really well-written, well-thought-out system that really brings gritty fantasy to life.

GURPS (Generic Universal Roleplaying System)

If you don’t like..

If you wish Dungeons and Dragons fantasy had a bit more realism in it, GURPS is undoubtedly the master of bringing the simulation of reality to life in a fantasy RPG and has been for decades.

I know that for many D&D players and DM’s the draw to D&D is the abstraction, the cinematic world in which fantasy exists quite a ways outside of the premise of realistic world and functions more like a cinematic movie with CGI-infused action… but… For some players, they want to create some gritty reality and though I would still recommend Hyperborea for most, for those that really want to get into the nuts and bolts of reality to a point of simulation, for that GURPS is one of the most robust, most flexible and without question one of the most expansive systems in existence.

Not only does GURPS have every conceivable element of fantasy covered, in truth, GURPS really lives up to the name universal because you can effectively run pretty much anything you can think of using this system.

This is a skill and skill point buy system, so character creation here redefines the word expansive. You could take a million players and ask them all to make a Fighter and you are going to have a million unique Fighters. This is a game that does not repeat and two characters are never going to be alike.

The simulation element here is very detailed and as such, execution of most mechanics like combat is going to be slow. This is a game that zooms in on every slash and parry, you track things like location of your hits, damage to your armor, cuts and bruises and everything in-between.

It’s extremely visceral and definitely a big departure from the abstraction of Dungeons and Dragons, but I would be remiss not to include it in this list as GURPS ability to create a truly unique gaming experience is unmatched. I can’t think of any game systems on the market, past or present that produces the sort of focused gaming experience that GURPS is capable of.

For me, GURPS is often my game of choice when I want to do something extremely specific when it comes to a campaign using elements of play normally not covered by other systems. For example, a few years back I wanted to run a western and I wanted to have a really great, very detailed mechanic for gun fights that was realistic to the real west, not the one you see in movies. GURPS performed wonderfully bringing that surprising reality of gunfights of the old west to the table.

When it comes to fantasy, the nice thing about GURPS is that the level of detail you want to include in your campaign is up to you. This is because everything in GURPS is very modular and almost all the rules are optional. At the core of GURPS is an extremely simple system and you simply add layers of rules like legos to get that perfect amount of detail you’re looking for.

If nothing else, for DM’s it’s a great read as simply exposing yourself to this system, will plant ideas into your head you probably would never have considered before. It’s a gold mine of inspiration, both mechanical and narrative which, even if you never play the system is worth reading.

Great system, and definitely a worthy addition to this list.

Old School Essentials

If you don’t like..

If you wonder what D&D was like back in the 80’s and what to try something super classic, Old School Essentials has you covered.

Ok so I know I plug Old School Essentials quite a bit and so do a lot of nostalgic D&D fans who love the old days, but I’m also painfully aware how difficult reading and coming to grips with the old D&D books can be. Basic/Expert D&D and Advanced D&D 1st edition are not the most approachable games, in particular, if you are a 5th edition player and accustomed to a certain level of organization.

I think this is what makes Old School Essentials and it’s expanded book, Advanced Genre Fantasy Rules such a great core system. It gives you the old-school game, but with a measure of modernization that 5e players will understand and expect.

This is an amazing re-edit of the classic 1st edition D&D game (both basic and advanced) and delivers that old-school gaming experience minus a few of unwanted warts like THAC0!

I have been running Old School Essentials for nearly two years now with a gaming crew and we have had an absolute blast with this one. It’s simple and straight to the point and while very structured, delivers a great space for some amazing storytelling.

This game is, in a nutshell, everything that old-school gaming is about so if you’re looking to give that classic D&D experience a try, this is the game you want to do it with.

What makes old-school D&D so much fun. Watch stranger things.. its that.

Alien RPG

If you don’t like..

If you are unsure what to do about the whole Wizards of the Coast-D&D fiasco and you just need a break but don’t want to commit to anything long-term but still want to run something fun for your gaming group while you decide, Alien RPG is the KING of One-Shots.

Ok so it’s science-fiction and not fantasy and I get maybe this is a bit of a stretch for this list, but Alien RPG, voted #4 of Best RPGS in 2023 by GamersRadar to the surprise of no one, is without question in my mind, one of the most fun one shots I have ever run.

With Alien RPG there are two modes of play. Campaign mode, which is your standard way of running RPG’s where you run an episodic… campaign as the name suggests and Cinematic mode which is a mode designed to give you that Alien movie feel, perfect for one-shots or short mini-series campaigns.

What you get with Alien RPG is a gritty, yet easy-to-run system similar to the one used in Forbidden Lands (already mentioned) but you get to horse around in the Alien universe.

Horror, suspense and action wrapped up in what I believe to be one of the best franchises in existence.

Now I will admit, being a super fan, I’m a bit biased here, but the popularity of this game is not a fad, there is real substance here as the writing and design for this game is absolutely top-notch. You have never seen a gaming book this gorgeous in your life if all you know is D&D. They spared no expense anywhere, it’s so well supported, so beautifully designed and illustrated, the writing just melts off the page.

I love this game, it’s without question the game I grab if someone comes to me and says “let’s run a one-shot”. This game delivers on all pistons, it is pitch-perfect in bringing an exciting one-shot experience.

News

D&D Theory: Dungeons & Dragons Over The Years: Part III Of III – CANCELED

As I was putting the finishing touches on what would have been an entire post dedicated to the history of D&D editions in the Wizards of the Coast era from 3rd edition to One D&D… this happened (The OGL 1.1 by Wizards of the Coast).

Now if you are a D&D fan as I am and you understand the importance and critical role the OGL license published with 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons (the first Wizards of the Coast edition of the game after the TSR era ended) is, you know how vital to the health of the game this license is.

As a part-time content creator for D&D, the leaked OGL 1.1 and the follow-up response from Wizards of the Coast regarding the upcoming OGL was so jarring, such a betrayal, and such a greedy, lie-filled and despicable move by Wizards of the Coast that I can’t in good in conscious promote Wizard of the Game products anymore.

From this point forward 5th edition and any Wizards of the Coast products will no longer be mentioned, promoted or reviewed on this site. This is a permanent boycott of Wizards of the Coast and its parent company Hasbro by Gamersdungeon.net.

I encourage you to go to https://www.opendnd.games/#open-letter and support the tireless and selfless content creators that have made Dungeons and Dragons such a success and join me in boycotting Wizards of the Coast content!

Gaming Articles, Role-Player Game Reviews

D&D Theory: Dungeons & Dragons Over The Years: Part II Of III

We continue where we left off in part I of our article series where I talk about past editions of Dungeons & Dragons and why you may consider playing them even today. In today’s article, I will cover my take on 1st edition BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master & Immortal) rules and 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons.

Enjoy the article!

1st edition BECMI D&D Rules

I will say here and now that to me BECMI was and still is a revelation, hands down one of the best systems with the best style and theme for D&D in existance. That said, its really part of the B/X line of games and I kind of see it as an expanded part of the same thing.

In our first article, we talked about 1st edition Basic & Expert, a rule system that was intentionally easy to learn and run, designed for new players, but there was a wrinkle in the plan. Despite its design goal of being an introduction to D&D and an entry point to Advanced D&D rules, the B/X system took on a life of its own. Not only because it gained its own following but because despite any effort to make it new player friendly, the game was obscenely difficult to be successful in as players with some of the toughest challenges and heavy-handed death rules to exist in any version of D&D (0 HP = Dead).

The game was ultimately adopted by a community that went from newbies trying to learn the game to seasoned gamers who preferred Basic & Expert to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and didn’t want to switch. Instead what they wanted were more robust rules sub-systems that offered more coverage within the framework (B/X) they were accustomed to.

There were other reasons for B/X to be continued and expanded on which related to legal matters in TSR that involved the franchise name, who controls it, and who collects royalties on the D&D name, but we are not here for a history lesson, rather we are here to talk about the game itself.

With this growing community of Basic/Expert rules players wanting something more robust, but unwilling to switch to the AD&D game space, TSR started producing more advanced rules for the B/X system, in a sense creating advanced Basic/Expert D&D. TSR in the 80’s was a confusing time.

Between 1977 to 1944 there were quite a few different versions of the 1st edition Basic game and this makes going back today trying to figuire out what’s what kind of confusing as it was back then. To be clear, BECMI is based on the 1st edition Mentzer Basic edition of the game released in 1983. Depicted here is the 1991 release known as “The Black Box” which is not the same thing as one example.

There was a total of 3 additional supplements that expanded the game starting with the Companion set, then moving to the Master and Immortal sets. Each new set added new rules complexity as well as addressed the required adjustment needed for previous sets to accommodate higher-level play (longer character progressions). By the time they finished releasing these 3 new supplementary rule sets, the maximum level for characters was a whopping 36th level!

All five sets (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master & Immortal) were later released in a single-volume book called The Dungeons & Dragons Cyclopedia and this earned the system which was seen as separate from both B/X and AD&D the name BECMI.

The Rules Cyclopedia is the final and most complete version of the BECMI system and I think few would argue that there is any reason beyond nostalgic collection to chase after the 5 box set volumes if you wish to play BECMI. It’s all here and it’s all you need and more.

BECMI was in a lot of ways very similar to the 1st edition B/X rules but unlike B/X it was actually a much closer match to AD&D itself in terms of rules coverage. It was a bit of both but it was modular which meant that unlike AD&D it was designed specifically so that you could use some or all of the companion rules, picking and choosing the mechanics that you liked or were relevant to your campaign and excluding those that weren’t.

While there were several very notable subsystems that were added to the basic and expert rules, BECMI ran and played very much like the standard B/X system.

The Companion Set added rules for elements like unarmed combat, the creation and management of strongholds (Dominion Rules) which coincided with the increased levels of character classes possible, capping off at 25th level. This of course meant that spell-casting characters had access to higher-level spells which are also included in the companion set, as well as all the amenities needed to accommodate higher-level play (hit points, saving throws, etc..)

One important addition of the companion set was the addition of new sub-classes which for the 5th edition crowd should sound familiar. You might think 5e invented this concept, but the truth is that sub-classes is actually a 1st edition D&D concept, arriving with the companion set.

Clerics that reached 9th level could choose to become a Druid sub-class which came with its own benefits including new spell lists for the Druid class.

This wasn’t the only new sub-class option included as each class after reaching 9th level had some sub-class options, though when the companion came out it was only the druid that was identifiable as a fully-fledged sub-class.

Finally, the companion set gave us mass combat which worked with the dominion rules and the henchmen, hirelings & follower rules of the base sets. It also expanded a great deal the types of adventures that were created for the system, notably some of my all-time favorites like Test of the Warlords which made full use of the companion set rules.

The Companion Set was supported by the Companion Module series which kicked off with Test of the Warlords showing off its kindom management and mass combat rules. It was a great adventure that really was a self contained campaign set in the remote region of Norwarld in the Mystara setting. For modern games this was the Pathfinder Kingmaker of its time.

The Master set was perhaps the most important addition to the increasingly more complex format that became BECMI. Aside from more growth for all classes, capping out at 36th level, the master rules brought quite a few new optional and expanded rules that in many ways made this a more advanced game than advanced D&D.

Weapon Mastery was probably the most widely appreciated element of the Master rules, though equally the most complex set of rules. It created what is even to this day one of the most robust melee and ranged combat systems for warrior classes available for D&D, in a sense fixing all of the complaints about the power levels of late game fighter and melee classes in general. It allowed characters to acquire unique fighting styles and moves, improve the damage with the weapons they used and allow them to be quite competitive with classes like the Magic-User and Cleric on the power scale.

Additionally, we got rules for Siege Equipment and running sieges, a natural extension of the mass combat and dominion management rules found in the companion set and much appreciated for those of us that didn’t shy away from the expansive kingdom management content available for the game by this time.

The Master box set was probobly one of the least frequently used sets simply because really high level play was quite rare. That said, I think BECMI had a really great approach to high level play and it was quite viable, just not often done.

There was lots of good stuff in the Master rules, in fact, of all the things added to the basic/expert rules, this was it was the Master rules that really filled in the finishing touches on gaps typically found in D&D games. Things we often ran across like players wanting to raise armies, build castles and conquer lands that just weren’t in any other D&D system at the time.

The final set, The Immortal rules in essence did two things. It explained where gods come from and it defined the concept of ascending to a higher plane of existence as a player, aka, becoming a god yourself.

It was an interesting read but to be honest I have never met anyone who played a D&D campaign so long that they achieved 36th level let alone having a need for rules on how to become a god. It’s a cool concept but really lacked purpose in your typical D&D campaign.

There were very few immortal level modules made to support this level of play and I don’t know anyone who ever actually ran or played in them, but actually they were really well done. In particular The Immortal Storm was very clever.

One cool thing in the Immortal set was descriptions of various immortal gods and this lore I always found to be quite useful for inspiration. From Orcus to Demogorgon, the Immortals book gave you some really great lore for your fantasy campaign.

The final book, The Rules Cyclopedia was mostly known to be a consolidation of the rules found in the BECMI sets, but under closer inspection, there are quite a few things that were unique to this book not found in the other companions.

Several sub-classes were added including the Mystic, a sort of Monk as well as variations on the fighter like Paladins and Rangers. At the time I don’t think anyone really considered these missing elements of the game as AD&D was fully compatible with BECMI so if you wanted to play a Ranger for example you could just use the one in AD&D as written. Still it was nice to have all the classes available in BECMI consolidated in one book.

The book also included a lot of corrections and frankly, it was much appreciated as there were quite a few quality issues and conflicting rules in the original BECMI companion books which are corrected here. Most notably the Rules Cyclopedia gave explanations and maps for The Known World, officially named Mystara at this point further solidifying BECMI’s rule system as a foundation for the setting. This was later further expanded on by the Mystara Gazetteers, a book series that dove into the details of the setting, notably including several new classes and character options for players with each book.

While the compilation of BECMI rules into a single book was the point of the Rules Cyclopedia, the best thing to come out of it really was the establishment of Mystara as a full setting that would later see unmatched support in the D&D Gazetteers that followed.

The Rules Cyclopedia to me is a foundation book for D&D in general as many of the rules sub-systems like Mass Combat, Sieges, Dominion Rules, and Weapon Mastery system are completely system agnostic. As such, there is a lot in this book that can be used with any D&D system, past and present and despite the age of these rules, they are still the most applicable and thorough rules on these subjects, far more expansive, detailed, and usable at the table than any others that came before or since. The Rules Cyclopedia is only second to the 1st edition AD&D DMG as far as D&D resource books go in my opinion.

Collectively what made BECMI a premier version of D&D was how well it covered every aspect of D&D play. No matter what your players wanted to do, this system had your back with clever mechanics, clear rules and though quirky at times, great system-agnostic sub-systems that have really stood the test of time. Like AD&D, taken as a whole it’s quite robust but unlike AD&D, it is a very modular system so you can start out with Basic rules and simply add supplements as your campaign matures and you have new requirements.

Why Play It Today?

I’m biased, but I have to say it, why wouldn’t you play it today? BECMI to me, no matter what aspect of D&D play you look at is one of the most effective. flexible and straight-to-the-point D&D systems available today. It eases you into the game one step at a time, and grows in both complexity and depth as you proceed into higher tiers of play, while remaining very easy to balance and extremely playable even at really high levels.

If you are like me and you want to run a D&D campaign as a lifestyle game, one that goes on for years and years, most D&D systems really can’t do that well while keeping character progression as a constant in the game. In particular in modern systems, but even AD&D, once you reach a certain level, usually around 6-10+, the game becomes unwieldy. Characters become too powerful and trying to create balanced gameplay becomes impossible. With BECMI your characters can be 25th level and they can still die at the hands of a Goblin horde, the game never ceases to be dangerous or challenging.

Now I will grant you 36th level is kind of overkill, I can’t even imagine how long of a campaign you would need to run to reach such heights, but the sweet spot, unlike most D&D games, isn’t between 1 to 9th levels. This system continues to be extremely useful while remaining challenging even at the highest tiers of play. I have personally run campaigns for BECMI that reached as high as 25th level and the game remained every bit as good as it was at 1st level.

The thing however I find most people enjoy about the game is that it is so universally applicable and adaptable as a fantasy adventure platform for RPG’s. While at its core is a setting, Mystara, the troupes found in this system are extremely flexible and modular. It really doesn’t take much effort to come to conclusions on how one might adapt this system to other settings and because it is compatible with 1st and 2nd edition AD&D as written, by association you have most of the major D&D settings compatibility built in.

This has been my system of choice for D&D fantasy adventure for decades, its harshness and focus on resource management as well as its presentation is a great foundation for Dungeons & Dragons. I have played all of the D&D systems pretty extensively and I enjoyed those games, but whenever I think about running D&D, this is the one system that really speaks to me. To me this is real D&D.

Now the question isn’t why would I play the game, the question is why would you. I think the best sales pitch for this game is that its universally agnostic and modular. You can take this system as a DM and mold it in any way you want, including adding rules from other D&D systems, and without changing a word use those systems without issue. In a sense, BECMI is universally compatible with all D&D editions that came after it with perhaps the only exception being 4e.

Hands down the best version of D&D in my opinion… period.. no discussion.

2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Just like 1st edition AD&D, 2nd edition AD&D was reprinted in collectors edition a few years back.

2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons had some pretty big shoes to fill after the explosive success of 1st edition, but it also had to contend with some of the fallout of the satanic panic and the many complaints from the player base about the inconsistency and quirkiness of the 1st edition AD&D rules. It was a game born out of the need for correcting the past.

1st edition AD&D was really complex and 2nd edition AD&D really entered the scene with an attitude that while it would be backward compatible, which I think it very much was, it was also going to be considerably easier. TSR I think wanted the game to be a bit less Advanced and perhaps this was because they wanted to consolidate the two forms of D&D that existed at the time BECMI and AD&D under one roof. It would also be the first edition of the game that would be created without Gary Gygax’s influence for better or for worse.

With that as a framework 2nd edition AD&D I think was very successful in what it wanted to achieve but not particularly successful as a product. A lot of the issue with this version of the game had to do with the declining quality control at TSR which was starting to flounder as a company. By the end of the 2nd edition run, TSR was basically bankrupt. I would argue however it was not the fault of the game system so much as the company running it.

2nd edition AD&D also had a starter box for new players, arguably the quality control on this thing was pretty terrible. Unlike all the starter sets that came before that are still admired today and considered “classic”, this is a relic no one bought then, nor is it a collectors thing today. It was just really terrible.

AD&D 2nd edition had three core elements that actually made it an evolutionary step up from its successor.

For one, it was considerably easier to run. The rules were more digestible, easier to understand and far more consistent. It was still a system that relied heavily on adjudication with rules still having that “up to interpretation” style of writing more often than I think it should have but it was still a very broad system with great coverage and far fewer restrictions. Unlike 1st edition you really could run 2nd edition AD&D RAW, there were many rules and many moving parts as such you would not typically use the system in its entirety but thankfully the system made a clear distinction between rules that were core rules and those that were optional. This modularity was an important feature of the game.

In fact, it’s modularity that really defined 2e AD&D, a concept of the system that would be regrettably abandoned in future editions to the detriment of the game. At this point, D&D had established itself as a game that could be run in a wide range of styles with a really wide range of player preferences, so having a huge chunk of the rules be optional was a really great aspect of the game that allowed all of these styles to live harmoniously under one system. Less fuel for table arguments, it was understood that the DM would decide which optional rules to or not to use.

The great thing about 2e was that it used blue boxes to identify optional rules and it used the space to explain why you might want to use the optional rule and how it could affect the game. This was extremely useful and made the system feel really well constructed.

The second thing that made 2nd edition really great was the “Complete X” book collection which brought in a concept called Kits that allowed for really far-reaching character customization. These books were largely theme-based class option books and there was one book for each class which made 2nd edition AD&D a game system with a much bigger broader character creation element than we had ever seen before with a bigger focus on the narrative of the character rather than strictly mechanics, even though it was actually quite mechanical nonetheless.

These kits not only gave you many examples of the unique handling of different classes but gave you the tools you needed as a DM to create your own custom kits to serve whatever setting or story you were working on. Now I will say these kits often had poor balance, there were clear winners and losers here, but D&D at this point was still very much an “up to the DM” focused game so it was natural for DM’s to see any mechanics in these books as “here is a cool idea, use it if you like it, change it if you don’t”.

The Complete Handbooks were in my opinion one of the greatest things to happen to D&D as it allowed players to create really unique backstory elements and align them with their mechanical characters. You could be an investigator, bounty hunter or smuggler rather than just the very plain Thief. These books also included really specific narrative constructs, for example in the Complete Thieves handbook thieves guilds were explained in great detail as well as really detailed rules for how to use thief skills and much more.

This principle continued in other rules expansion books like the Tome of Magic, Player Options: Skills & Powers and Player Options: Combat & Tactics. These books were actually poorly received which should have been a warning sign to future editions as much of what would become 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons were based on these books.

Personally, I always liked these books, in the same way I like the Complete X collection, they were inspirational and optional rules that with a bit of DM intervention formed some great core mechanics that allowed the creation of many unique styles of play.

While all of the options books had clear balance issues and suffered from quality control problems, with some DM intervention they offered increadible expansion to the game for those players who wanted more mechanical gears to pull on.

The final thing that made 2e AD&D really quite special was the fact that the game for the first time in the history of D&D considered magic-users and magic, in general, an intrinsic part of the game. It was clear from previous editions that Gary Gygax did not like Magic-Users or magic in his game and it really showed in how he treated them. With 2e AD&D, TSR made magic & magic-users fun, versatile and diverse. You could play specialist mages like Necromancers and Enchanters, the spell system and spells themselves had far broader effects with a lot of narrative flare and perhaps most importantly you had more diversity in spell-casting classes.

Magic was further supported by the Complete of Books which included specialization books like the Complete Necromancer. This was an amazing level of detail that would set a new standard for how players viewed and what could be done with their magic-user class.

I have always felt that 2e AD&D was a clear and much-needed fix for 1st edition AD&D. Today, without question if I was going to run AD&D in any form, it would be 2nd edition. In fact, I would argue that objectively, even though I prefer B/X and BECMI, 2e AD&D was the best of the TSR versions of D&D. It’s a very robust, very modular and very flexible system. It got a pretty bad wrap largely because of terrible mismanagement of TSR and probably could have been a much better system if quality control was a bit more stringent but it was the last system that we would see that was actually backward compatible with classic D&D content and so for many, it is the final version of true and real D&D.

The D&D franchise would be purchased by Wizards of the Coast after 2nd edition and through this act, the classic era of D&D was over.

Why Play It Today?

For me personally 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons is a great system because it’s quite easy to run, has fairly clear rules while retaining that classic D&D feel. Now like all the classic versions of D&D that came out of TSR it is a mechanically flawed system, there is no disputing that, but its philosophy, its concept, its spirit as a D&D game is beyond reproach. It is D&D as it was meant to played, as it was designed to be experienced.

To me everything that followed starting with 3rd edition was an improvement on how D&D works mechanically, but in those mechanical evolutions a hole was punctured in the spirit of the game and it would turn out to be a major over correction where mechanics became favored over philosophy and concepts of the game missing the point of the many expanded concept introduced in 2nd edition AD&D. The soul of D&D would soon be diminished and by 4th edition D&D totally abandoned.

I say this here because 2nd edition was probobly the best game mechanically that TSR came up with, meaning, it had the cleanest gameplay, it was the best mechanical version of D&D that still retained the spirit of the game.

For modern gamers this is the edition I would actually recommend if your curious about what people mean by “Classic D&D”. Sure you will find some of the mechanics a bit quirky but it will be familiar, it will make sense, you will know how to play intrinsicly if you have played modern versions of the game. Mechanically its all here, even as flawed as it may appear to you (because it actually is flawed), but you will get to experience the classic nature of the game, that gritty D&D spirit that really doesn’t exist in modern editions of the game.