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In Theory: Why 2nd Edition AD&D?

Over the past few months, I’ve been dropping not-so-subtle hints about my affection for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition across this blog. But my Top 10 Versions of Dungeons & Dragons article back in February didn’t just hint, it basically proposed marriage; it was my number 1 pick.

While I don’t think this is a big reveal, I have in the past kind of avoided simply stating it outright because that tends to draw… attention.

As expected, a few loyal readers have (politely) raised an eyebrow and asked me to explain myself. Now, I don’t usually feel the need to justify my tastes, this isn’t a courtroom, and I’m not on trial for “liking THAC0 unironically.” But the questions seem to come from genuine curiosity rather than thinly veiled judgment… mostly.

So the question is simple: what is it about 2nd edition AD&D that clicks for me? Why, out of all the editions of Dungeons & Dragons, would I pick one that, aside from the occasionally misunderstood Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, is often labeled as one of the least popular?

Now, I’m not entirely convinced that’s true. In fact, I’d argue 2nd edition is one of the more popular versions of the game. Do I have hard data to support that claim? Absolutely not. But in the grand tradition of internet discourse, I’m comfortable asserting it confidently anyway, and besides, no one else seems to have the numbers to contradict that claim either.

I suspect this “unpopular” reputation comes from the timing. 2nd edition was around when TSR, the company behind D&D, was heading straight toward financial ruin. Naturally, people connect the dots and assume the game must have been the problem, and in fact, it’s often blamed for TSR’s demise.

TSR’s demise is one of the great tragic stories in the legacy of D&D, with many characters, plots, and crazy events that have fascinated gamers for years. Several books have been written on the subject.

But if you actually dig into the history of TSR’s downfall, you’ll find something surprising: it had very little to do with the game itself and everything to do with spectacularly questionable management decisions. We’re talking the kind of business strategy that makes you double-check if it was actually real or a parody. Entire books have been written on this subject as an illustration of what not to do as a corporation.

But I’m wandering off into history-lesson territory, and that’s not why we’re here.

I came to answer a question.

And answer it I shall.

The Origins Of Ethos In Dungeons and Dragons

I touched on the “ethos” of Dungeons & Dragons in my last article, specifically in relation to D&D’s latest incarnation, D&D 5.5, but I feel the need to circle back and give it the attention it truly deserves in the context of 2nd edition AD&D. Because if early editions invented the ethos of D&D, then Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition took that rough idea, wrote it into stone as commandments, and formed the official religion. Everything we consider to be THE ethos of D&D largely comes from 2nd edition AD&D, even in modern versions of the game.

A big part of that comes down to one thing: 2nd edition AD&D is absurdly verbose, and I mean that as the highest compliment.

Pick up just about any 2nd edition book, and you’ll quickly realize something important, especially compared to other versions of the game: this game was created by writers, not designers, people who gave far more importance to the narrative weight of the game rather than its mechanics.

Until the 2nd edition AD&D Monster Manual, the concept of the monster book was about some basic information, a nice picture, and a clean monster stat block. Useful, yes, but inspiring? 2nd edition AD&D monster descriptions took up 1 or 2 pages, describing them in excessive detail. It was the first time monsters were more than just “things to kill”, there was a story behind every creature. Unfortunately, in modern D&D monster books, we have reverted to making monster entries stat blocks.

And it shows, mechanically, 2nd edition sometimes leaves a lot to be desired, which might hint at why many D&D players frown at its presence or mention, and I get that. There are balance issues, odd design choices, and plenty of “did anyone actually playtest this?” moments scattered across spells, monsters, and adventures alike. It’s the kind of system where you occasionally squint at a rule and just decide, as a group, to emotionally move past it because there is just no way to justify its existence.

I do believe when the 2nd edition was being designed, it was forced to work under certain constraints, namely backwards compatibility with the 1st edition, so I do believe part of the design problem stems from that, but for the most part, as a design, 2nd edition AD&D is just kind of meh… but with moments of brilliance that in my opinion make it THE best version of the game. We will get to that in a minute.

But the writing is phenomenal, of that there is no question. D&D is a game about stories, and writing trumps rules in my humble opinion. It’s the creative center of D&D, it’s where lore and mechanics converge to create the ethos, and it’s why, in my humble opinion, 2nd edition AD&D becomes such a critical part of franchise history.

Between the pages, you can feel the beating heart of D&D lore coming alive in a way it never did before or since. Not hinted at. Not loosely suggested. Fully realized and fully committed to Sword and Sorcery in all of its glory.

Spells don’t just tell you what they do, they invite you to imagine what they could do. Monsters aren’t just stat blocks; they’re given histories, ecologies, and so much more than you could ever ask for. You don’t just learn what an orc is, you learn how it lives, what it fears, and probably what it argues about over dinner.

And the sheer volume of it all is astonishing. The “Complete” series, the endless player and DM option books, the sprawling settings, the amazing monster books, 2nd edition didn’t believe in giving you just enough. It believed in giving you everything, plus a few extra pages just in case you were getting comfortable.

There is no question that the Complete book series for 2nd edition AD&D is, pun intended, complete overkill. It’s actually common to refer to this expanded content as “bloat”, but I find that to be an insane concept. It’s only bloat if you try to use everything at the same time, which there is literally no reason to ever do. These books are about inspiration, and 90% of the content in each book is narratively focused. These books are story juice!

These books were wildly creative. Deeply flavorful. Occasionally unhinged in the best possible way. There’s a richness to the writing that makes D&D feel distinct, lived-in, creating a deeply ingrained ethos in your soul. For me personally, 2nd edition AD&D defined what D&D is forever.

I, however, was not the only person who garnered such affection from the writing behind 2nd edition AD&D. This game inspired an entire generation of designers who created some of the most memorable D&D video games ever made, not to mention the volumes of books written with 2e as a backdrop. From the Baldur’s Gate series to the Neverwinter Nights games, from Planescape Torment to the Gold Box Era games. From the Forgotten Realms saga’s to the Dragonlance epics. Ask anyone what their favorite D&D PC or video D&D game adaptation is or their favorite D&D book, and I will show you how 2nd edition AD&D writing was the primary influence.

What 2nd edition really did was bring the core ideas and growing ethos of the game into sharp focus. Things that felt a bit blurry in earlier editions suddenly became established constructs of the game. The identity of D&D, its tone, its style, its voice, was no longer implied. It was spelled out for you, in loving, excessive detail.

Later editions leaned heavily into the idea that “D&D can be whatever you want it to be.” And to be fair, that’s a perfectly valid philosophy. The game has always relied on DMs and players to shape it into something personal, even in the 1e days, perhaps specifically in the 1e D&D days.

But 2nd edition took a different approach. It didn’t just hand you a toolbox, it handed you a fully furnished house and said, “You can redecorate if you want… but you really don’t have to.” More than that, it anticipated player desires and offered solutions to some of the deepest and often most convoluted questions. It was, in a word, excessively thorough.

In my view, that’s where 2nd edition truly defines the ethos of Dungeons & Dragons. It answers the question: What is D&D? in no uncertain terms. Where modern D&D would say “Here is what D&D could be, it’s up to you though, don’t take my word for it, I just want to make you happy, I don’t want to tell you what to do, in fact, never mind, do what you want, any D&D at your table is real D&D, we don’t actually have an opinion.” I don’t want to say that the alternative approach is wrong, it’s not, but if you want to play D&D within its core ethos, explicitly defined and gloriously written, 2nd edition AD&D is the only version of the game that comes even close to doing that. By comparison, everything else is intentionally vague at best.

This is 100% complete information in 5.5 D&D regarding what a Dwarf is. This is it. Three paragraphs describing a Dwarf in the most static, inconsequential way possible. If you didn’t already know what a Dwarf was before reading this, it would be utterly useless. As it stands, the core information is brave people who sometimes have beards who live in the mountains. The text doesn’t even commit to them being short out of fear of offending someone. At best, I would describe this as ZERO effort from a writing perspective.

2nd edition D&D was not just a set of rules, but a culture. A tone. A shared understanding. A very real “thing” that you can recognize instantly, and even people who weren’t fans of the edition would ultimately be influenced by its existence.

When you hear a 2nd edition AD&D player describe D&D, it will always be with confidence, arrogance even, but this stems from the simple fact that they didn’t invent it, it’s not some version in their head or homebrew, they read it, straight from the horse’s mouth in exceedingly, almost painful detail.

Mode Switching and Execution Complexity

Two of my biggest gripes with Dungeons & Dragons, both before and after Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, are what I call mode switching and execution complexity. And yes, I realize those sound like terms stolen from a software engineering meeting, but stay with me.

Let’s define them before we wander too far into the dungeon.

Mode switching is that very obvious shift in playstyle when the game goes from “we are telling a story” to “everyone grab a miniature and roll initiative.” Combat happens a lot in D&D, but to me, a fight is still part of the story. It’s the climax, the tension release, the cinematic payoff. It shouldn’t feel like you’ve paused the movie to boot up an entirely different video game.

But that’s often exactly what happens in all versions of D&D after 2nd edition.

A fight breaks out, and suddenly the roleplay screeches to a halt. Outcome the miniatures, the grids, the measuring tools, and we transition, sometimes dramatically, into what is essentially a tactical combat mini-game with its own rules, pacing, and logic. It’s like switching from a novel to a board game mid-sentence.

There is no question that a beautiful tactical board in full color and mini’s is a fun experience, and I don’t think it’s hard to understand why people like tactical combat. The problem is that the rest of the game takes place in our imagination, and the switch alters the perception of what the game is. Story mode and combat mode are two very different things, often in direct opposition to each other.

Closely tied to this is the execution complexity is the moment combat begins, time compresses into 6–10 second chunks, movement becomes squares, and actions start to feel like selecting abilities from a hotbar. Attacks, spells, effects, they’re no longer described; they’re executed. Press the button, resolve outcome, next turn. The rules stuffed into these systems are complex and intertwined with exceptions and sub-sections. Even in a well-designed game its a coma-inducing experience with the pace of continental drift, hardly the stuff of cinematic combat.

Now, I get why this exists. There’s a certain appeal to tight, tactical combat systems. But for me? That level of depth and mechanical layering pulls me out of the story rather than deeper into it. It’s the antithesis of role-playing. I expect to do that when playing Warhammer 40k, but not D&D.

And this is where 2nd edition AD&D quietly does something brilliant mechanically. I can’t say if it was intentional or not; we don’t know that much about the design thinking behind 2nd editin AD&D, other than being a derivative of 1st edition AD&D, but it nails it just the same.

It sidesteps all of this, not by removing tactics, but by embedding them inside the narrative.

Combat in 2nd edition is fast, brutal, and dangerous, but it never stops being part of the story. It doesn’t switch modes. It just intensifies the cinematics; it asks for more adjectives, not less.

First, a combat round is about one minute long. That alone changes everything about the dynamics of battles in the game. Suddenly, there’s room for description, for dialogue, for actual acting. Your character isn’t just swinging a sword or executing power X, they’re circling, shouting, reacting, and making choices that feel like part of a living scene.

Second, and this is the real magic, all combat actions are declared before they are resolved, and before initiative is rolled. This is a crucial dynamic shift, it’s the key design decision that transforms 2nd edition AD&D combat from a tactical mini game to a strategic narrative game. It switches the game from a sport to an actual battle.

  • The DM describes what the monsters and NPCs are doing.
  • The players describe what their characters intend to do.
  • THEN the initiative is rolled, and actions are resolved in that order with narrative adaptations made on the fly.

That sequence fundamentally changes how combat feels. Instead of reacting to a mechanical order of turns, players are asked a much more interesting question:

“Here’s what’s happening, what do you do over the next minute?”

It’s proactive, not reactive. Narrative first, mechanics second.

While describe then execute is a strange concept in modern D&D, largely due to the nature of how tactical combat systems must be executed, in the overwhelming majority of RPG’s, especially those that don’t directly try to emulate D&D, this is the standard. The normal way is the way 2nd edition AD&D does it, initiative tactical combat, is the outlier in RPG mechanics.

Even initiative itself, while technically a simple d10 roll, is influenced by real in-world factors, weapon speed, number of attacks, whether you’re using ranged weapons, what armor you’re wearing, and so on. It’s not just a number generator; it’s a loose simulation of physical reality, stuffed in one place, yet defined by the decisions players made in how they equipped themselves and their style/approach to combat. All of the realism and factors are bundled up into a single mechanism that gets out of the way of the narrative play right after it’s executed, but has a tremendous impact on how combat ultimately resolves.

There’s enough granularity to keep things tactically interesting, but not so much that it strangles the flow of the story. The system isn’t obsessed with rigid operational execution; it’s trying to interpret what’s happening in a believable way in a story about a battle, rather than being a mini-battle game.

Compare that to earlier editions, like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, which aimed for something similar but got buried under mechanical weight and was overall focused on Dungeon survival as a core feature of the game. Or later editions, 3rd, Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, and 5th, which lean heavily into structured, tactical execution. Those systems work well if what you want is a combat-focused miniatures game, but they undeniably shift the experience into a different gear.

I want to be clear on this point, in my mind, the 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master Guide by Gary Gygax is a masterpiece, it is the definitive work that breaks down the work of a DM. This is an important book, but it does very little to inspire writing, narrative creativity or the premise of creating adventures. It’s really a book that is more about problems and solutions of being a DM and how to referee the game. That is a critical part of running D&D, but when you sit down to create an adventure, this book offers very little to the creative process; it more helps you understand the conceptual principles.

And just to be clear, I’m not saying that’s bad. Plenty of people love that style, and I don’t fault them for it, but to me, it’s actually always kind of a fresh hell. It trips up the narrative in incalculable ways and resolves stories in an almost silly mockery of reality, dirtying the waters of storytelling. I just don’t like tactical combat in my RPG’s, any RPG’s, least of all my beloved Dungeons and Dragons.

What I love about 2nd edition is how seamlessly it connects combat to the rest of the game. The act of saying “this is what I do” is the same whether you’re negotiating with a king or fighting for your life. The way it plays out, how the story shakes out, is pretty much the same. Some dice rolls to determine success and failure, and an attached collaborative narrative to those results.

That consistency matters to me a great deal. It’s really why I play RPG’s in the first place. I want it to be a movie in my head, not a game that I try to win at the table.

It also gives real meaning to choices that might otherwise feel purely mechanical. Weapon selection isn’t just about damage; it’s about speed and timing. Armor isn’t just protection; it affects how you move and act. Spells aren’t just “strong” or “weak”, they’re fast, slow, risky, or reliable.

It adds an extra dimension without adding unnecessary friction.

The result is a system that feels tactical within a narrative framework, rather than replacing the narrative with tactics. Combat becomes a vivid, flowing scene instead of a start-and-stop simulation.

And perhaps most importantly, it’s actually simple to run, it gives players and DM’s room to be creative, dynamic, to adapt as they go, and combat is described, rather than executed. The one main difference between 1st and 2nd edition AD&D is the rules weight associated with bringing these dynamics to the table.

There’s a rhythm to it. A cadence. Describe, declare, resolve. Repeat.

It just… works, and no wonder, as this is the core rhythm of role-playing in general. This is how most RPG’s work today, that tactical depth and mode switching is largely a product of modern D&D, not really of modern RPG’s. Modern RPG’s function actually function as 2nd edition AD&D, which oddly makes 2nd edition AD&D the most modern version, from a design perspective, ever made.

Storywriting and DM Inspiration

I’ve already sung the praises of the writing in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, but there’s an important side effect worth calling out: what it actually does to the people sitting at the table, especially the DM.

Because inspiration isn’t just a “nice to have” in Dungeons & Dragons, it’s the fuel the entire game runs on.

For DMs in particular, inspiration is everything. Your first duty isn’t to the rules, or balance, or whether that goblin encounter is “appropriately tuned.” Your first duty is to the story and to the world the player characters inhabit. You’re building something that needs to feel alive, believable, and flexible enough that players can meaningfully interact with it (and, inevitably, derail it).

And here’s the thing, when you’re given rich, detailed, and thoughtfully written material to work with, that job becomes less of a burden and more of a joy.

2nd edition AD&D is, quite frankly, a goldmine for inspiration.

You can crack open the Player’s Handbook, the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the Options books, or, perhaps most dangerously, the Monster Manual, and within minutes you’re spiraling into ideas. Not “oh, that’s neat” ideas, but full-on campaign arc ideas.

I’m not exaggerating when I say you can open the Monster Manual to a random page and accidentally invent a three-month campaign before you’ve finished your coffee.

The level of detail is sometimes overwhelming, sure, but it’s purposeful. There’s intent behind the words, a sense that someone really sat down and thought, “How do I make this creature feel like it actually exists and make it a worthy addition to a narrative game?” And that effort shows. We haven’t seen such dedication in D&D books in a long time. Modern D&D books, have fallen out of this habit.

It feeds the creative monster in your brain. Constantly.

With 2nd edition, I never feel like I’m running out of ideas; I feel like I’m trying to keep up with them.

And honestly, I can’t say that about most other editions of D&D.

You could make a case for 3rd edition; it had its moments, no question, but when I look at later editions, like Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition and 5th, I personally find them… lacking in this department. Not bad, necessarily, just flat.. vague. The writing feels cleaner, more structured, more “accessible”… and somehow far less inspiring. It’s like the difference between reading a rulebook and reading a story.

Everything works. Everything is clear.

But nothing grabs you by the imagination and refuses to let go.

Now, to be fair, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition had flashes of brilliance. I have often spoken about the mystic nature of that game. Especially buried deep within its Dungeon Master’s Guide. There are sections in that book that are still among the most inspiring things ever written for a DM.

But they’re exceptions, not the rule, and AD&D 1st edition, I think, is a very difficult game to run unless you ignore most of the rules.

Overall, 1st edition often feels more concerned with telling you how to run a game, how to manage players, enforce rules, and maintain control. Useful, yes. Inspiring? Less so. It can feel a bit like being handed a manual for operating heavy machinery when all you wanted was to tell a story.

2nd edition strikes a different balance. I think at the time it was written, there was a general understanding that role-playing was more than Dungeon Crawls and rules management.

It gives you structure, but not shackles. Guidance, but not micromanagement. And layered on top of that is this constant stream of evocative, flavorful writing that makes you want to create.

It doesn’t just support storytelling. It encourages it.

And that’s not something you can easily design into a system… but somehow, 2nd edition AD&D pulled it off.

The Perfect Game For Me

If I were to describe my ideal version of Dungeons & Dragons in abstract terms, it would come down to four core ideas: Sword and Sorcery, narrative combat, fantasy realism, and a wide but grounded range of character customization, though each comes with some caveats. That probably sounds straightforward, but, as with most things in D&D, the devil is in the details.

Sword and Sorcery

When it comes to general preferences as to the type of fantasy I want, Sword and Sorcery is the clear winner. I want more Baldur’s Gate grittiness than Final Fantasy power fantasy. I want a sword to be a dangerous weapon, a monster to be a legitimate threat, and I want the life of an adventurer to be hard.

I want rarity to matter, spells to be special, and magic weapons to have character. I want the world and the rules to support each other, rather than support the wacky ideas of an anything-goes fantasy. I want being a Dwarf to mean something, not just a “shorter human”.

Sword and Sorcery is based on classic fantasy, and while I can appreciate modern high and power fantasy from a distance, I find it excruciatingly boring. Most of all however, I don’t want to run or play in a game that favors the players; I want the zero to hero story, I want the game to have stakes and not through a veil of pretend stakes where everything is engineered to give you the illusion of danger, but is balanced for your level, but real, objectively, and observable stakes.

Sword and Sorcery is a different type of fantasy. It’s really kind of about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances that become extraordinary people as a result of the experience. In a Sword and Sorcery fantasy, the story is about how the adventures go from zero’s to hero’s. Once they achieve that legendary status, the game is over. They retire.

In a game of Sword and Sorcery, when a fight breaks out, I want the players to feel their characters are in imminent danger and the decisions they make over the next few minutes to be life or death.

Narrative Combat

I’ve already talked about this at length, but it really is the cornerstone for me, so it’s worth revisiting in this context. Combat needs to feel gritty, dangerous, and just a little bit terrifying. Not in an over-the-top, grimdark noir sense, but in a way that makes players stop and think before they draw steel. In my ideal game, combat is not the default activity; it’s a consequence with potentially terrible risk. It’s something that happens when plans fail, negotiations break down, or risks are taken too far, and at best, a part of a well-laid plan. It should never feel routine; players should always fear that this time, their character might die.

That danger feeds directly into the narrative and tension of the sort of fantasy I want to create at the table. When combat is lethal, every decision carries weight. That wizard with a single Sleep spell suddenly isn’t underpowered; he’s the reason the party survives the encounter. Victory stops being an expectation and becomes something earned, something the players feel at the table. That sense of “we barely made it” is, to me, one of the purest expressions of what D&D is supposed to be narratively.

At the same time, I don’t want combat to bog the game down. This is where things get a bit paradoxical. I want it to be fast and simple to execute, but still rich with meaningful choices. Not so simple that it becomes a repetitive dice exercise, but not so complex that players have to pause the scene to decode their character sheet. The decisions should come naturally from the situation, from the character, from the story, not from scanning a list of abilities for the “correct” option. This is all about syncing the activities in the game as a matter of practical execution with the narrative of the story.

Class and equipment play a huge role in this. A fighter shouldn’t just deal more damage; they should feel different in how they approach a fight. The same goes for equipment; what you carry should reflect how you fight, not just how much damage you can output. A lightly armored duelist and a heavily armored warrior shouldn’t just have different numbers; they should create different moments at the table.

More importantly, I don’t care about balance. An Amazon with no armor and a spear should be weaker than a knight in full plate mail. I don’t believe in the equalization of power. Your character choices should not be driven by trying to be good at combat, but by the narrative you want to bring to the table. I don’t care if the game is fair; I don’t need it to be.

Spellcasters, in particular, should stand apart. Their identity shouldn’t come from raw power alone, but from preparation, timing, and intent. The spells they choose shape how they interact with the world, and that should be visible in play. Two wizards with different spell selections should feel like entirely different characters, not just variations of the same template. I don’t need 30 Wizard sub-classes to create distinct “wizard types”, a magic-user is a magic-user, just like a fighter is a fighter. What makes them distinct is how they use those powers.

When all of this comes together, with lethal stakes, fast resolution, and meaningful choices, combat naturally becomes narrative. Players stop thinking in terms of mechanics and start thinking in terms of actions, risks, and consequences. The fight becomes a story in motion rather than a separate game layered on top of it, more importantly, what comes before the fight has an elevated level of importance.

Fantasy Realism

The second pillar is what I think of as fantasy realism, though it’s less about realism in the traditional sense and more about internal logic. The world doesn’t have to mirror reality, but it does need to make sense on its own terms. What happens mechanically should reflect the perceptions of the characters and make sense to the players.

This is where the idea of associated versus dissociated mechanics comes into play. A mechanic is associated when it makes sense within the world, when it represents something the character is actually doing. The character and player can lean on the reality of the world and know that the mechanics work to reflect it. A dissociated mechanic, on the other hand, exists purely for gameplay purposes, disconnected from the logic of the setting and player character realities.

A simple example would be something like tripping an opponent. In a grounded fantasy world, that’s just something anyone can attempt. It’s part of physical interaction. But if it becomes a limited-use “ability” tied to an abstract resource, it stops feeling like an action and starts feeling like a button you press. The moment that happens, the player’s focus shifts away from the situation and toward the mechanics.

That shift might seem small, but it has a ripple effect. Once players begin thinking in terms of “what can I activate” instead of “what would I do,” the connection to the world weakens. The game starts to feel less like a lived-in reality and more like a system to be navigated.

Fantasy Realism is a rather odd thing, it’s about normalizing weird things that never existed, but still tries to establish them within the context of that fantasy as a real thing. In a sense, many weird things can’t exist in a fantasy for it to be a realistic fantasy. It’s a bit of a circular argument, but for example, a Light Spell does certain things, but there are many things it can’t do. Why? Fantasy Realism. Try to make sense out of that!

This isn’t about rejecting mechanics or demanding strict realism. Fantasy, by definition, isn’t realistic. Magic exists, monsters roam the world, and none of it needs to align with real-world physics. What matters is consistency. The world needs to have its own logic, and the mechanics should support that logic rather than constantly breaking it.

When that consistency is maintained, players naturally engage with the game in a narrative way. They act within the framework of the world because the world makes sense to them. When it isn’t, they fall back on the rules as written, and the experience becomes more mechanical than immersive.

For me, maintaining that sense of fantasy realism is critical. It’s what keeps the game grounded, even when everything happening in it is entirely fantastical.

Character Customization

The final piece of the puzzle is character customization, and while most editions of D&D handle this reasonably well, I still have a couple of preferences that shape what I consider ideal.

First, I want customization to stay grounded in a gritty, low-fantasy tone. I’m not looking for an endless stream of increasingly exotic options that need to be retrofitted into settings. I prefer something closer to the original feel of settings like the Forgotten Realms, where the world has a clear identity and the available character options fit naturally within it.

When I say I want a wide range of choices, I don’t mean anything goes. I mean a variety of options that feel like they belong to the same world, drawing inspiration from classic fantasy rather than constantly expanding into something more abstract or exaggerated. There’s a tone to it, a kind of grounded fantasy aesthetic that I find much more compelling.

The second aspect is that I want character options to emphasize narrative identity over mechanical power. A small bonus or a unique ability is fine, but the real value should come from how those choices shape the character as a person, not how effective they are in combat.

This ties back to the idea of starting from zero. No matter how interesting the concept is, I want characters to begin as relatively ordinary individuals and grow into something greater through play. The journey matters more than the starting point. If a character feels fully formed and mechanically complete at level one, something is lost.

What I’m looking for is that moment where a player understands who their character is, not because of a build they optimized, but because of the choices they’ve made and the experiences they’ve had in the game.

Bringing It Together

When I look at these four ideas together, they describe more than just a set of preferences. They describe a particular feel, a way the game unfolds at the table.

For me, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition captures that feel better than any other edition. Not because it’s perfect, but because it aligns with these principles at a fundamental level. It doesn’t need to be bent or reshaped to fit this style of play. It already lives there.

And that, more than anything else, is why it remains my personal gold standard.

Problem Mechanics

Now, before anyone accuses me of wearing rose-tinted glasses the size of dinner plates, let me be very clear: I am fully aware that Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition comes with its fair share of… let’s call them quirks. Some of them are dated, some of them are clunky, and a few of them make modern game designers visibly uncomfortable.

I get it. I really do, I’m not making a sales pitch for THAC0 here.

Whenever 2nd edition comes up in conversation, the same usual suspects tend to be dragged into the spotlight like they’re on trial for crimes against game design. So let’s address them properly.

Class and Race Limitations

The Player’s Handbook outlines various restrictions, race/class combinations, ability score requirements, and so on. These are often presented as a major sticking point, but for me, the solution is almost laughably simple: I ignore them, always have, and I’m yet to sit at a table in all my years of gaming where things like this were enforced. In fact, in the 80’s it was unanimously agreed that this sort of thing was generally stupid; it was the OSR that brought them back. Actual old school gamers didn’t really do this, or at the very least, it was understood that it wasn’t important in most cases. It was used when it was relevant to the game and ignored when it wasn’t.

Unless I’m running a very specific setting where those limitations serve a narrative purpose, they don’t really add anything meaningful. They’re not essential to the mechanics, and they certainly aren’t critical to the storytelling. More than anything, they feel like artifacts of a different design philosophy, one that hasn’t aged particularly well nor was particularly well thought out to begin with.

If someone wants to play a paladin with a strength of 8, go for it. You’ll just be… a very underwhelming paladin. And honestly, that sounds like a character concept with legs.

To me, these “restrictions” read less like hard rules and more like suggestions from another era, perfectly safe to ignore without the system collapsing into chaos.

Rolling for Ability Scores

This one tends to divide people, but I’ve always been a fan of rolling ability scores. There’s something inherently fun about not knowing exactly what you’re going to get. It adds a bit of unpredictability to character creation, a sense that you’re discovering the character rather than engineering them.

And importantly, starting with less-than-perfect stats isn’t a problem in 2nd edition, it’s a feature. Characters grow over time, both mechanically and narratively. Beginning with average or even mediocre abilities gives the game texture. It creates room for development.

Not every hero needs to be born exceptional. Some of them can earn it the hard way. In my experience, the most forgettable characters are always optimized characters.

THAC0 and Descending Armor Class

Ah yes, the infamous THAC0. The mechanic that launched a thousand internet arguments.

Here’s my honest take: I’ve never actually used it in any variant of D&D.

The very first DM in the very first game I ever played with flipped the math, turned everything into ascending values, and we just… kept doing that. Problem solved. No confusion, no headaches, no existential crisis over subtraction.

If your THAC0 is 18, congratulations, you have a +2 to hit. If your armor class is 7, that’s AC 14. Done.

Some things are just objectively true, and it’s crazy to me to think that there are people out there who still make the argument that THAC0 and Descending AC are better. It’s not, it wasn’t in the 80’s, and it never will be. Just because something is modern doesn’t mean old school players have to come up with cacamany ways to justify shitty mechanics. THAC0 sucked… PERIOD.. END OF STORY! I can understand that some people still use THAC0 because they are used to it, perfectly fine, but if you’re arguing that it’s better…let’s just agree to disagree because you are objectively wrong.

This is one of those debates that has always puzzled me. People act like THAC0 is some insurmountable barrier to entry or defend it like it’s a meaningfully different construct, when in reality it’s just a different way of expressing the same numbers. If you don’t like it, change it. The system doesn’t break. The dice don’t revolt. Everyone survives.

It’s a non-issue masquerading as a major flaw, literally the most inconsequential mechanic in all of D&D, yet it has prevailed as the most common debate. It’s absolutely bizarre to me.

Thief Skills and Non-Weapon Proficiencies

This is where I start to get a bit more opinionated.

I really struggle with how skills have evolved in later editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Earlier systems, even into 3rd edition, kept things somewhat grounded. But by the time you get to Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition and 5th, skills often feel less like character traits and more like mechanical levers you pull to bypass situations.

And that’s where it breaks for me.

At its core, a “skill” is supposed to represent something your character is good at. It’s part of who they are. But in practice, it often becomes a gamble, “I invested in this, now let’s see if the dice agree that I’m actually competent today.”

That disconnect is hard to ignore, and it’s also what has led to the dice odds slowly over time favoring the player more and more, arriving in a way back to where the whole concept started. A representation of what you can do, rather than what you can sometimes do if you’re lucky with the dice.

Take knowledge, for example. If your character has spent years studying the arcane, why are we rolling dice to see if they remember something about magic? Either they know it, or they don’t. That’s a judgment call based on their background, training, and abilities, not a coin flip.

The same goes for physical capability. If you’re strong enough to lift something, you lift it. If you’re not, you don’t. Rolling dice doesn’t suddenly make you stronger, it just adds randomness where it doesn’t really belong.

Now, there are exceptions. High-stress situations, sneaking past a guard, spotting a hidden trap, those make sense as rolls. Pressure introduces uncertainty. That’s where dice shine but it is also a great place to put a class with specialized abilities for that purpose, aka, The Thief!

And this is why I’ve always preferred the way 2nd edition handles it.

Thief skills, in particular, are a great example. They’re specialized, class-based abilities that reinforce identity. If you’re playing a thief, you own that space. You’re the one finding traps, picking locks, and moving silently. That’s your role, it’s a specialization, and no one should be as good at it as you, and this makes sense within the logic of a fantasy world.

And roles matter.

When someone chooses to play a fighter, they expect to be the best warrior in the group. A wizard should feel like the master of magic. A thief should be the undisputed expert in stealth and subterfuge. When skill systems flatten those distinctions, something important is lost.

Non-weapon proficiencies, on the other hand, strike a nice balance. They represent additional talents and areas of knowledge, things that define your character beyond combat, without turning every interaction into a dice roll. They’re more like declarations of capability than lottery tickets.

And that’s really the core of it for me.

Your character’s abilities should be something you can rely on. They’re part of your identity, not a gamble. The dice come into play when circumstances are uncertain, when stress, danger, or chaos make success less predictable.

An archer doesn’t miss during practice. But in the middle of a life-or-death battle? That’s a different story.

Stress changes things. That’s where randomness belongs.

Outside of that, I want the game to trust the character, and by extension, the player, to simply be good at what they chose to be good at.

Conclusion

To be frank, I could probably keep talking about Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition all day. There is so much about this version of the game that resonates with me that I could easily write an entire series of articles. In fact, the biggest challenge with this piece has not been finding things to say, but figuring out where to stop.

At the end of the day though, I think the simplest explanation for why I love this game is also the most honest one.

I love how it feels.

I love the rhythm of it, the atmosphere of it, and the way the mechanics and writing align with my personal vision of what Dungeons & Dragons should be. The game feels dangerous without being oppressive, imaginative without becoming absurd, and narrative without abandoning mechanics entirely. It occupies this strange middle ground that no other edition has quite managed to capture for me.

Now, the point of this article is not to convince you that 2nd edition AD&D is the definitive version of D&D. I think far too much energy online is spent trying to persuade strangers that their preferences are somehow objectively wrong. Preference is preference. We all come to this hobby looking for different things, and that is perfectly fine.

What I wanted to do here was explain why this particular edition speaks to me the way it does.

The truth about D&D and any RPG really is that whatever sort of D&D you’re having fun playing and creating for, is the best kind of D&D. Period. It might not be for me, but that doesn’t make it bad. It just makes it bad for me.

If this article has sparked your curiosity, though, I would offer a couple of pieces of advice before diving into 2nd edition AD&D.

First, focus on the writing and the experience at the table rather than the myths that have grown around the game over the years. A lot of people judge 2nd edition purely by reading isolated mechanics on paper or the perceptions of keyboard warriors with a cause, and I honestly think that gives a very misleading impression of how the game actually plays. This is a fantasy writer’s version of D&D, designed for fans of reading fantasy books. That is the game’s secret.

The experience of playing it is very different from the way the rules read in isolation. There is a narrative rhythm to the game that only really reveals itself after some time with it. The flow of play, the pacing of scenes, the structure of combat, the emphasis on storytelling and atmosphere, all of it comes together into something that feels genuinely distinct from every other version of D&D, even from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, despite how much DNA they share.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, explore the settings and expanded material. Read the Complete books. Read the setting guides. Read the monster entries in full instead of just scanning stat blocks. The more you explore, the more you begin to understand what I mean when I talk about the game’s connection to sword and sorcery fantasy and narrative storytelling.

These books are unapologetically verbose. They want you to sit down and immerse yourself in the world. They want you to imagine things. Sometimes they feel less like rulebooks and more like someone desperately trying to infect you with enthusiasm.

I will also say something about modern D&D that might come across as a bit controversial, though I genuinely mean it fairly, and it’s directed at Wizards of the Coast more than the fans.

Modern editions of D&D have actually done a pretty good job of achieving their design goals. Personally, I find them too high-powered and too tactically focused for my tastes, but that does not mean they failed. Quite the opposite. If your goal is to create a more mechanically balanced, tactical, character-driven fantasy combat game, then modern D&D absolutely succeeds at that.

It would be unfair to criticize the designers for accomplishing exactly what they intended to accomplish. Besides, for me, lowering the power levels, adapting the game to be less tactical and more story-focused, these are things within my power to adjust. Modern systems are flexible enough to achieve this. There are even 3rd party source books that help achieve just that.

Where I think modern D&D struggles, however, is the writing.

And here I will admit my bias and disappointment openly.

Personally, I find the writing in the latest material, particularly 5.5 core books, to be painfully sanitized and overly simplistic. It often feels less interested in sparking imagination and more concerned with flattening every edge and sanding away every rough corner. There is very little mystery to it, very little atmosphere, and almost none of the rich, excessive enthusiasm that defined older editions, especially compared to 2nd edition AD&D. It has no style or reckognizable theme of its own; it is, in a word, bland and generic, in the worst and unappealing way. From a writing perspective, it’s a complete catastrophe.

Older D&D books felt like they were written by eccentric fantasy nerds who desperately wanted to pull you into their worlds.

The latest core books coming out of Wizards of the Coast feel like they were reviewed by a corporate committee whose primary concern was making sure nobody anywhere might misunderstand a sentence.

That sounds harsh, I know, but it is genuinely how I feel when comparing the two.

That said, I have not completely given up hope. I’m glutten for punishment, and foolishly, I am actually quite excited about the upcoming Forgotten Realms books. I would love nothing more than to be pleasantly surprised. In many ways, this feels like my first and final real attempt to reconnect with modern D&D on its own terms.

Because at the end of the day, I do not want to dislike modern D&D.

I want to fall in love with it again. I want to be part of it, I want to look forward to new books and be excited about using them, and I want to be inspired by them.

I can always fall back on my beloved 2nd edition AD&D, but I’m always hoping for a better future.

D&D, In Theory

In Theory: Why D&D 5th succeeded and 5.5 is failing

Let’s get one thing straight before we wade into the swamp.

I don’t have a dog in this fight.

I play what I like, I ignore what I don’t, and I move on with my life. It’s a surprisingly effective strategy that I highly recommend to anyone currently drafting their 14th Reddit manifesto about “the death of the RPG hobby.” As far as I’m concerned, the best version of D&D already came out decades ago, 2nd Edition AD&D, and it’s been entertaining fans like me for decades, not asking for a rebrand, a rules refresh, or a marketing campaign with buzzwords like “evolution.” It just exists in its glorious awesomeness.

I think of all the games that embody the D&D Ethos, I think 2nd edition AD&D is it. It is the most D&Dish of D&D’s, and I think that is why it remains my absolute favorite.

So, whatever Wizards of the Coast decides to do with the modern game? Interesting, sure. Important? Not really. Their wins and losses don’t keep me up at night. I’m more of a curious observer than a concerned shareholder.

But I am interested in the trajectory of Dungeons & Dragons and RPG hobby as a whole. The way it changes, the way it stumbles, the way it occasionally trips over its own shoelaces while insisting it meant to do that. It’s fascinating. And more importantly, it makes for good writing opportunities. And if this blog is going to talk about anything relevant in tabletop gaming, it has to talk about D&D.

So here’s the situation.

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition wasn’t just successful; it was a phenomenon. It dragged the game out of niche obscurity and shoved it into the mainstream spotlight. Podcasts, streams, celebrity games, you couldn’t throw a d20 without hitting a new player. It has done nothing short of kick-starting a golden age of Dungeons and Dragons.

Then came its so-called successor: Dungeons & Dragons 2024 edition 5e Revised or 5.5, or whatever name it’s going by this week. A game that arrived wrapped in bold claims, corporate confidence, and just enough ambiguity to make you wonder if you were buying a new edition or a software patch.

I had my beefs with 5th edition D&D, there is no question about that, but no one could ever accuse 5e of not being a card-carrying member of Dungeons and Dragons. It was a game that adhered to the D&D ethos through and through.

And despite being labeled “the best-selling D&D ever” by Wizards of the Coast, a claim with little evidence that deserves its own investigation, it landed with all the impact of a damp fireball. No explosion. No spark. Just a quiet fizzle. The fanbase’s reaction has been cruel at best, outright hateful at its worst.

So the question is simple: What happened? Why did it happen?

And maybe most importantly, how do you follow up a golden goose by serving scrambled eggs?

Let’s get into it.

We have been here before

History doesn’t repeat, but in D&D, it definitely rerolls.

The whole 5.5 situation is not new. Not surprising. Not even particularly creative. We’ve watched this exact episode before, just with worse branding and fewer YouTube reactions.

Let’s rewind to the late 2000s.

Back then, Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition was riding high, arguably the biggest thing D&D had been in years. But like all editions, it eventually drifted into the Long Tail: that slow, inevitable phase where releases keep coming, but excitement quietly packs its bags and leaves. The shelves are full, the rules are bloated, and even the diehards stop buying new books.

So Wizards of the Coast did what they always do when the engine starts sputtering: They scrapped it and started over.

They assembled a top-tier design team, seriously, no sarcasm here, these were heavy hitters in RPG design, and told them to fix D&D. Modernize it. Streamline it. Give it structure. Give it teeth. Make it, you know… a proper game.

And out came Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. A game so divisive it made alignment debates look like polite dinner conversation.

It was a bit of a disaster, and Wizards of the Coast’s official D&D franchise would get knocked off its throne for the first time since it rose to it. But here’s the uncomfortable truth, brace yourself: 4th Edition wasn’t a bad game.

There, I said it. Take a moment. Breathe.

4th edition Dungeons and Dragons had a lot of problems when it came to the D&D ethos, but a far bigger offense of the game was how much it had in common with MMORPG’s like World of Warcraft. It was, in a way, a tabletop version of an MMO . I think fans found that particularly insulting.

If you examined it objectively, stripped of the logo, it was a tight, tactical, well-balanced game, frankly ahead of its time. A heroic tactical fantasy RPG that really defined a new sub-genre in RPG’s that would catch on and in the future (as in now) trigger inventions like 13th Age and Draw Steel, for example. Compared to the glorious chaos of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition (which reads like it was assembled during a wizard duel) or even 2nd Edition, my beloved, bloated masterpiece, it was smooth. Clean. Playable without needing a legal degree. It should have been a success, but it wasn’t.

So why did it crash? Why did a good game get rejected by the very audience it was built for?

Because the designers solved the wrong problem. And here’s where 5.5 walks straight into the same rake.

Both 4th Edition and this new “definitely-not-a-new-edition-we-swear” version suffer from the same fatal flaw: Once again, the designer forgot the D&D Ethos.

Not balance. Not mechanics. Not accessibility. Ethos.

That invisible, irrational, deeply ingrained identity that makes D&D feel like D&D and not just “generic fantasy system #27 with better UI.”

There are many games without the D&D logo, that adhere to the D&D ethos more than some versions of actual D&D. Castles and Crusades is a great example; it is, without question, a version of Dungeons and Dragons.

4e didn’t feel like D&D, that was the primary and unanimous complaint from fans.

And 5.5…Well… it feels like D&D after a corporate wellness seminar.

Same mistake. Same cause. And if history is any indication, same result, just with better marketing copy.

What is the D&D Ethos?

I think not everyone understands what the D&D Ethos is, in fact, it’s often confused with lore, but the two are not really the same thing.

This is where things get messy.

The idea of “Ethos” isn’t neat, it isn’t quantifiable, and it definitely isn’t something you can drop into a design document and explain. It’s slippery. It’s instinctual. It’s institutional. You know it when you see it, and more importantly, you really know when it’s missing.

The easiest way to explain it is through example.

Take ability scores: they are primary attributes of a character that range from 3–18. Why? Why, after 50 years, are we still clinging to this relic like it’s a sacred text? Why six abilities? Why generate a number that, in most cases, doesn’t even matter mechanically because the game only cares about the modifier?

From a pure design standpoint, it’s nonsense. You could streamline it tomorrow, clean it up, make it more intuitive, more modern, more elegant.

But we don’t. The secret is the reason we don’t is because you really can’t. It’s part of the D&D ethos.

That 3–18 range comes from rolling 3d6, a method for generating ability scores from the past that most D&D tables don’t even use anymore. We’ve got arrays, point buy, all sorts of cleaner systems, but the bones are still there in modern D&D. Not because they’re optimal, but because they’re D&D. It’s legacy code baked into the DNA of the game. It doesn’t need to make sense, it needs to feel right.

That’s Ethos.

The modern 5e D&D character sheet doesn’t really look all that different than a 1st edition AD&D character sheet. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and that is the way the fan base wants it.

And once you start looking, you see it everywhere. Spell slots and Vancian casting. Hit Points that somehow let you survive being stabbed repeatedly until you suddenly fall over at zero. Armor Class as an abstract number instead of, you know, actual armor doing anything logical. A shortsword doing 1d6 damage because… it always has. Wizards being squishy and allergic to armor. Fighters being walking meat grinders. None of this is sacred because it’s good design, it’s sacred because it’s D&D design, it’s part of the D&D ethos.

Could you improve these systems? Absolutely. If you were building a modern fantasy RPG from scratch, you probably would. But that’s the problem, D&D isn’t a modern game, not really. It’s a game held together by decades of expectation, tradition, culture, and a fanbase that knows exactly how it’s supposed to feel. You can update it, sure, but every change is a negotiation with history, and fan base expectations, and these two things are immovable forces of nature.

Sure, fair-weather fans and new arrivals might come in and demand modernization, but the core D&D community, the vast overwhelming majority fan base, is not vocal. Their world is at the table, it’s a place of practicality that is executed away from online spaces like Twitter and DnD beyond. The noise always comes from vocal minority groups who don’t understand or care for D&D’s legacy, but when it comes down to it, the cash cow that is Dungeons and Dragons answers to the core fan base, and as 4e discovered and as 5.5 is discovering now, these people vote with their wallets. You’re not going to get feedback on your new evolved edition of the game, you’re not going to hear about it until you see the needle drop on your spreadsheets.

The D&D Beyond Forums is a strange place where not only is it an echo chamber of a vocal minority, but the messaging is enforced by the moderators. The only thing you’re allowed to do on these forums is agree that Wizards of the Coast does everything right and whatever the latest thing they released is wonderful. Disagree with anything, and you will be moderated. The result is a place where no real D&D debates and discussions are allowed. If Wizards of the Coast uses this forum, presuming it represents the D&D community, things like 4e and 5.5 are going to continue to happen in the future.

This is because, just like me, every D&D fan already has the edition of the game they love, so if whatever is new doesn’t register with them, they (we) just go back to playing the game we already love. No reason to make a fuss about it.

This is exactly where Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition stumbled. The design was tight, the math worked, the systems were clean, but it drifted too far from that underlying D&D Ethos. It stopped feeling like D&D. What players got instead was a well-designed, highly functional fantasy system that just happened to be wearing a D&D nametag. And fans didn’t want “well-designed.” They wanted recognizable. They wanted D&D.

Because that’s the real trap. Designers can push the Ethos. It’s not frozen in amber. But it evolves slowly, cautiously, over time. From a business standpoint, every deviation is a gamble, and you never quite know which sacred cow is actually load-bearing. Push too far, too fast, and suddenly you’re not evolving the game, you’re replacing it, abandoning the very thing that made you famous to begin with, and perhaps most importantly, this disconnects you from the fan base.

4th Edition crossed that line and faceplanted.

And 5.5? It walked right up to the same line, took a confident step forward… and then acted surprised when the ground gave way underneath it.

But what specifically about the 5.5 design has departed so far from the core D&D Ethos that has fans abandoning the game like it’s the latest coronavirus? Understanding that, is the real magic trick here.

Where 5th edition succeeded and 5.5 failed

One thing you have to understand is that this is almost never about one catastrophic mistake. D&D doesn’t collapse because of a single bad decision, it erodes. Slowly. Quietly. Painfully. Breaking away from the Ethos isn’t a dramatic explosion; it’s death by a thousand very deliberate, very “well-intentioned” cuts.

It’s the little things that get under people’s skin. The tweaks. The “quality of life improvements.” The subtle reworks that, on paper, look harmless, but in practice feel like someone rearranging your house while insisting it’s for your benefit. That irritation builds. It spreads. It turns into a kind of collective Barbarian rage that starts at one table, then another, and before long it’s everywhere. Not all at once, but steadily, like a slow infection.

And this is why when Wizards of the Coast says 5.5 is the best-selling D&D of all time, I’m not even inclined to argue. That’s probably true. Of course it is. Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition was massively popular, and those players were always going to buy the “next version,” whatever label it shipped under. New books are exciting. Updates are exciting. I bought in too. Most of us did.

But sales happen at launch. Opinions take time.

That Barbarian rage? That comes later.

So let’s talk about the cuts.

The Art

Art isn’t window dressing in D&D, it’s foundational. It’s part of the Ethos as much as dice and dragons. It sets tone, defines expectation, and tells you what kind of fantasy you’re stepping into before you’ve read a single rule. D&D fans are ruthless about it. There are unwritten rules here, no official guidebook, just decades of accumulated taste, and if you miss the mark, people notice immediately.

And somehow, 5.5 missed it.

The best word for the art direction is sanitized. Safe. Soft. Focus-grouped into submission. And that’s a problem, because D&D art has never been about playing it safe. It’s been heavy metal album covers, grimdark nightmares, heroic last stands, bizarre fever dreams, sometimes all on the same page. It’s supposed to have teeth.

Art like this is typical for the 5.5 books. I don’t know what this is, what game this belongs to or what setting it is meant for, but whatever it is, it does not belong in a D&D book. This is .. nonsense.

What we got instead feels like it was run through a corporate filter designed to remove anything remotely sharp. The edges are sanded down, the grit is gone, and what’s left feels less like fantasy and more like something that passed an internal brand compliance meeting.

It’s like Iron Maiden deciding their next album cover should feature Martha Stewart smiling politely over a cup of tea.

There are good pieces in there, credit where it’s due, but they’re buried in an overall direction that just doesn’t understand what D&D is supposed to look like. And when the first impression of your game is off, everything else starts uphill.

Fantasy Races (Species)

If you want to find a fault line in D&D’s Ethos, look no further than its fantasy races. This has always been contentious territory. Fans argue about it constantly, and have for decades. It’s also why you have to be especially cautious when making changes. The last thing you want to happen is for the fan base to suddenly become unanimous about what the ethos of D&D is regarding races.

What belongs? What doesn’t? What feels like D&D?

The addition of Dragonborn and Tieflings was controversial back in the day. Half-Orcs have been debated since the AD&D days. Drow as player characters? Still a lightning rod. Even ability score modifiers, those little nudges that push races toward certain classes, have sparked endless arguments about whether they reinforce fantasy or restrict it.

The key thing is this: these changes have always been gradual. Painful, sometimes, but gradual.

5.5 didn’t do gradual. It ripped the bandage off and called it progress, creating a domino effect that led to unanimous sanctions from the community. Wizards of the Coast managed to take something the community was divided about and led them to take a stand on the topic, one that opposed the decisions they made in 5.5. It was the worst possible outcome for them.

Renaming “races” to “species.” Removing half-races like Half-Elves and Half-Orcs as meaningful mechanical options. Stripping out ability score modifiers entirely. Flattening distinctions. Smoothing edges. And then, of course, the orc shift, moving them cleanly out of “monster” territory and into fully normalized player options, which for many players wasn’t just a tweak, but a fundamental redefinition of the setting’s logic.

This one change quite literally invalidates most of the official D&D settings and their lore.

Individually, you could argue for any of these changes. That’s not really the issue. The issue is all of them at once.

I know that removing Half-Races like Half-Elves from the game was politically motivated, which in its own right was egregious, but the problem you really run into is that in much of the D&D lore, half-race characters are some of the most memorable and beloved characters in D&D. Tanis Half-Elven from the Dragonlance series novels, for example is an absolute legend and it’s destructive to the game to erase that from the ethos of the game.

Because Ethos isn’t just about what you change, it’s about how much you change, and how fast. And 5.5 didn’t nudge the system forward; it shoved it. Hard. The result wasn’t clarity, it was confusion. Tables arguing. Players divided. A constant, low-level friction about what D&D is even supposed to be anymore.

And then there’s the presentation. In 5e, races got space, three, four pages to breathe, to define culture, identity, flavor. In 5.5, they’re condensed, abbreviated, reduced to something closer to a stat block with a portrait. Vague. Non-committal. Stripped of the texture that made them feel like part of a living world.

In the end, these changes broke the ethos in the eyes of the community and in some ways, helped to unify it, which will make it even more difficult to both keep the changes introduced in 5.5, they will have to backtrack if they want to recapture the D&D audiances buy-in but it also means they won’t be able to alter it in the future.

At this stage, this aspect of 5.5 was just outright rejected by the D&D fan base and while there are echo-chambers like the D&D Beyond forum where you will find support for it, it’s a misleading message for Wizards of the Coast. Again, you have to remember to think about the vocal minority; they might be loud, but it’s not their wallets you’re after. You need the core D&D community to buy into these changes, and they have very coldly rejected them.

Power Creep & Dungeon Masters

Power creep in D&D isn’t new. Even in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, you could feel it, slow, steady, almost polite. A subclass here, a spell there, a magic item that maybe pushed things a little too far. The community tolerated it because it moved in inches, not miles.

5.5 doesn’t move in inches. It lurches forward like an out-of-control steam train.

But here’s the thing, power creep isn’t really a player problem. Players love power creep. Of course they do. Winning is fun. Being strong is fun. Having a character sheet that reads like a loaded weapon is very fun. When players bulldoze encounters or make reckless decisions knowing they’ve got fifteen different ways to get out of trouble, their takeaway isn’t “this is broken,” it’s “this is awesome.”

The real cost lands squarely on the shoulders of the Dungeon Master.

Because the DM is the one trying to hold the whole thing together. They’re the ones responsible for making the game feel challenging, coherent, and, most importantly, meaningful. And when every character at the table is effectively a walking solution to every conceivable problem, that job stops being fun and starts feeling like unpaid overtime.

When players trivialize encounters, bypass obstacles with a spell checkbox, and shrug off danger like it’s a mild inconvenience, the DM is left trying to constantly escalate just to keep up. Bigger monsters. Harder fights. More convoluted scenarios. And all of it starts to feel artificial, like you’re inflating difficulty just to punch through an ever-growing layer of mechanical padding.

It’s exhausting.

If you look up D&D 5e on youtube, most videos are going to be about “how to DM”. The reason is that in modern D&D in general being a DM is exceedingly difficult, and the books really do very little to teach you. In 5.5, the situation has become progressively worse.

And this was already a problem in 5e. There’s a reason you see so many groups full of eager players desperately searching for someone, anyone, willing to run the game. The shortage of Dungeon Masters isn’t anecdotal anymore, it’s systemic. We’ve reached the point where people will literally pay hourly rates to complete strangers just to have someone sit behind the screen and manage the chaos.

5.5 didn’t fix that problem. It made it dramatically worse.

From personal experience, running 5.5 feels like trying to challenge a party of superheroes who showed up to a goblin fight out of sheer boredom. The characters are absurdly capable from the outset, stacked with options, layered with safety nets, and equipped to handle just about anything you throw at them without breaking a sweat. Fear? Gone. Tension? Optional. Consequences? Negotiable at best.

They’re not adventurers anymore, they’re demigods with a starter kit.

And from the DM’s side of the table, that’s not exciting. It’s tedious. It’s a constant uphill battle to create stakes in a system that seems actively opposed to having them. The adventure design doesn’t help either, balance is all over the place, and the claim of “backwards compatibility” feels more like a technicality than a reality. Sure, you can run old 5e adventures, but be prepared to gut them, rebuild encounters, and essentially do the designer’s job for them if you want anything resembling a challenge.

Which brings us back to Ethos.

D&D has always been about the climb. Zero to hero. That’s the fantasy. You start fragile, uncertain, maybe a little incompetent, and you earn your power over time. Levels matter because they represent that journey.

5.5 skips the journey. You don’t grow into power, you spawn with it.

And when you remove the climb, what you’re left with isn’t empowerment. It’s boredom with better stats. This community complaint about 5.5 I personally get from experience. Running 5.5 as a DM sucks balls.

Conclusion

The truth is, I could probably write three more articles like this, each one picking apart a different way 5.5 sidesteps the D&D Ethos, but at some point you stop adding evidence and start repeating yourself.

Because the core issue isn’t complicated.

D&D has an Ethos. A real one. Not something printed in a rulebook, not something you can bullet point in a design meeting, but something that exists all the same. You can argue over the details, sure. People have been doing that for decades. But when you move too far, too fast, and too often away from it, the result becomes obvious. Not academically obvious, viscerally obvious.

5.5 isn’t a bad game because of any single decision. In fact, taken on its own terms, it’s not even a bad game at all. Mechanically, there’s a lot to like. It’s clean, it’s accessible, it’s polished.

But it’s not a good version of Dungeons & Dragons.

It misses too many of the grounded, intangible pieces that make D&D feel like D&D. And when you sit down to play, that absence becomes impossible to ignore. Everything looks familiar at a glance, but the moment you interact with it, something feels… off. Slightly twisted. Like you’re reaching for something you recognize, only to find it’s been subtly reshaped into something else.

It’s the same problem Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition had. Familiar components, unfamiliar experience.

And that disconnect creates these strange, almost surreal moments at the table that don’t quite fit the fantasy the game is supposed to evoke. It’s hard to define until you see it happen in real time, like a Halfling Fighter casually swinging a massive two-handed battle axe with maxed-out Strength like it’s just another Tuesday. Is it “allowed”? Sure. Does it feel like D&D? Not even a little.

That’s the problem.

I can’t give you a perfect definition of what D&D is. Nobody can. But I know it when I see it, and more importantly, I know when I don’t.

And judging by the wider community, I’m not alone.

The energy around D&D right now feels… thin. The buzz is fading. The excitement that carried 5e into the mainstream spotlight is sputtering out. You can see it in the content space, you can feel it in conversations, there’s just not much to latch onto. For a game that once felt unstoppable, that’s a pretty telling shift.

And yeah, this edition kind of sucks, not as a game, but as a D&D game.

But here’s the good news: it doesn’t matter as much as it sounds like it does.

No one is coming to your house to confiscate your books. Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition still exists. 3.5 still exists. And 2nd Edition, glorious, bloated, beautiful 2e, is still sitting right where you left it, waiting to be played.

D&D doesn’t disappear when a new edition misses the mark. It continues, just not under the banner of the new edition.

And if history tells us anything, it’s this: Wizards of the Coast has been here before. They stumbled with 4e, and they course-corrected.

They’ll do it again.

Probably right after they finish insisting this one is exactly what we wanted.

D&D

In Theory: Old School D&D Is Not About Nostalgia

When you’re a blogger, and you dare to speak about Dungeons & Dragons that isn’t the shinier side of 5th edition, one thing is guaranteed: critics will come crawling out of the dungeon like goblins who heard a dinner bell.

Now, normally, I don’t pay them much attention. I live by the sacred mantra: “I don’t care about your opinion about my opinion.” It’s served me well over the years. Keeps the blood pressure low, keeps the writing flowing. But every now and then, against all odds, someone lobs a comment that isn’t just noise. Something sharp. Something worthy of debate.

And I’ll admit it: I like those.

Because buried beneath the usual internet bravado and keyboard-warrior energy, there are occasionally questions or comments that actually challenge you. The kind that forces you to stop, think, and, best of all, write another article. (Content creators, you know exactly what I’m talking about.)

So today, we’re diving into a piece of “feedback” I received about my Old School D&D articles. Now, it’s no secret I’m a fan of the Old School Revival, OSR for those of us who enjoy acronyms almost as much as we enjoy arguing about THAC0. I’ve written about it plenty, and I’m not exactly subtle about my bias.

But this particular comment? Short. Sharp. No fluff. The kind of statement that kicks the door in instead of knocking:

“The only reason anyone likes Old School Dungeons & Dragons is nostalgia. If it wasn’t for that, no one would be playing it.”

Oof. Straight to the hit points.

Now, it is a bit reductive. But is it entirely wrong? That’s a much more interesting question. There are layers here to unpack, because the accusation is obvious, but the hidden context is that old school D&D is not a good game. That we are playing an inferior mechanic on purpose.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to dig into in this In Theory article.

Real History vs. Imagined History

Let’s start with something that tends to short-circuit the whole “it’s just nostalgia” argument before it even gets out of initiative order.

The Old School Revival, the OSR, and the adoption of old-school style of play by a modern audience have been around as long as old-school D&D originally was itself.

Yeah. Let that one sink in for a second. Time flies when you’re rolling dice and arguing about encumbrance, but this isn’t just fuzzy memory talking; it’s math. Cold, unfeeling, rules-as-written math.

Dungeons & Dragons was released in 1974. If we’re being generous, the “old school D&D era” wraps up around 2000 with the release of 3rd edition. That’s 26 years of old school D&D.

It’s been 26 years since then. We are, officially, living in a world where “modern D&D” is no longer new, it’s as old as old school D&D was when it became old school D&D. At this stage, modern D&D probably has back problems, and is thinking about getting into woodworking.

The point is that the original D&D was as old in 2000 as 3rd edition; the first modern edition of D&D is today.

3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons was a phenomenon, at the time of its release, there was no such thing as the OSR. While 3rd edition’s existence made the OSR possible thanks to the OGL license, contrary to popular belief at the time, 3rd edition wasn’t really seen as modern D&D, it was just a new edition. Such classification came much later.

Now, let’s make this personal.

I’m 50. Born in 1975. My first brush with D&D was around age 11, somewhere in 1986, right at the tail end of 1st edition. And when I say “played,” I use that term very loosely. We had the books. We had the dice. We had character sheets.

What we did not have was any earthly idea what we were doing.

It was less “playing Dungeons & Dragons” and more “ritualistically flipping through mysterious tomes while occasionally rolling dice and arguing.” I don’t remember any of it in a meaningful way, no campaigns, no stories, just vibes and confusion. We sort of pretended to play D&D.

My real introduction to D&D, the kind where you actually read the rules and attempted to follow them, came much later, in the late ’90s, when I was around 16. Which, as it turns out, is hilariously bad timing if you’re trying to be nostalgic about “old school.”

Because by then, the old school era was basically over.

TSR was circling the drain, Wizards of the Coast was gearing up to take over, and 3rd edition was about to kick the door down and rearrange the furniture. The point is that even at 50 years old, I’m not actually old enough to have been part of the “old school D&D era”.

So here’s the uncomfortable truth for the nostalgia argument that people still make today about old school D&D.

I like most people today have played more old school D&D in the last five years than I (we) did in the previous thirty combined.

For me, this isn’t some warm, fuzzy return to childhood. It’s not nostalgia, it’s discovery. Old school D&D wasn’t a formative memory; it’s something I found later, with more context coming from modern era D&D, more experience, and insight.

I don’t love old school D&D because of my memories playing it, I don’t actually really have any, I discovered old school D&D in the modern era, with modern D&D as my primary experience being the reference point of comparison. This type of experience is the overwhelmingly most common one in the OSR.

Old School D&D is often associated with concepts like “random tables”, but the reality is that random tables have always and continue to exist in D&D. It’s not really an old school concept. In fact, most things are labeled as “old school” ideas still exist in modern D&D. Old School D&D is more about the simplicity of play. The reason such statements exist however, is because most of the people making such claims never actually played D&D in the old school era, which is kind of the point here.

If I were going to be nostalgic about anything, it would be 3rd edition, the system I actually played from 2000 to about 2014 (yes, I skipped 4th edition, and no, I will not be taking questions at this time).

So that’s point one: I don’t really have anything to be nostalgic about here. Most people don’t.

And when you look at who’s actually playing old school D&D today, it’s not just a bunch of ancient grognards sitting around reminiscing about the good old days while polishing their dice collections and muttering about THAC0.

It’s young players. A lot of them. In fact, the most prolific members of the OSR creative community, the people making the biggest moves are all people who weren’t even alive when old school D&D was in print. Shadowdark, Old School Essentials, Five Torches Deep, Naive, Index RPG, Basic Fantasy, and so many more, all of these games were created and published by people born well after the 80’s and 90’s.

Sure, the OSR was kick-started by the old guard unhappy with what Wizards of the Coast was doing with D&D in the 2000’s, the wise, the weathered, the “back in my day we had one saving throw, and we liked it” crowd, but they didn’t sustain it. They just lit the torch. They exposed the modern audience to old-school principles through modern releases of old-school games.

Kelsey Dionne, the creator of Shadowdark, one of the pillars of the OSR community, is far too young to have ever experienced old school D&D in the old school D&D era. Yet she is about the age group that most of the OSR is led by. These supposed “old school days” the OSR is nostalgic about happened long before the people writing for them were born.

The people carrying it forward are the modern players who discovered old school D&D after it was already “obsolete” with modern D&D as their main reference point.

Which makes the nostalgia argument a little… awkward. Because it’s hard to be nostalgic for something that existed before you did.

And yet, here we are.

The Driving Force Behind The Old School Movement

There’s something interesting hiding underneath the nostalgia argument, and it’s worth dragging it out into the light. Because when people say, “Old school D&D is only popular because of nostalgia,” what they’re often really implying is that the game itself doesn’t hold up. That it’s clunky, outdated, and ultimately inferior, and that the only reason anyone would play it is their emotional attachment to it.

In other words, people aren’t choosing old school D&D because it’s good as a game. They’re choosing it in spite of it being bad.

It’s a tidy argument. It almost sounds reasonable on the surface. It’s also completely detached from how people actually engage with games. People seeking entertainment are not going to make sacrifices for a “stance” in an argument. This is not a cult, ready to sacrifice their free time in the name of ritual.

Here’s the thing: people play what they enjoy. This isn’t a political position, and it’s certainly not some kind of ideological sacrifice. No one is sitting down at the table thinking, “I could be having more fun, but I’ve decided to take a stand for outdated mechanics.” This is entertainment. If the experience isn’t delivering, people move on. They always do. It’s that simple. Occam’s Razor.

Which is why I think the nostalgia argument misses the mark so badly; it starts from the assumption that players are irrational, that they would spend their free time playing a game that is obviously terrible as a matter of virtue and stance in some abstract argument.

If we’re going to talk about hidden motivations, we should probably acknowledge one that actually has teeth: the sunk cost fallacy. Modern D&D, especially 5th edition, is not just a game, it’s an ecosystem. Books, supplements, digital tools, miniatures, subscriptions… it adds up. Quickly. Once you’ve invested that much time and money, there’s a natural tendency to want the system to work. Not just to function, but to deliver the exact experience you imagined and invested in when you bought into it. The sunk cost fallacy is a major factor in how and why certain ecosystems continue to thrive despite competitive products being objectively better. Warhammer 40k, iPhones, and John Deer Tractors, just to name a few.

The sunk cost of D&D in terms of books is just the beginning. Most modern D&D players have spent ungodly amounts on digital versions of these books on D&D Beyond. To walk away from that, I can understand, would be incredibly difficult.

So people adapt. They tweak. They adjust. They patch. They literally accept failure in the name of protecting their investment. They rebuild sections of the game to get closer to what they’re actually trying to achieve rather than exploring other systems. This is what is suggested we are doing in the name of nostalgia with old school games, but the reality is that this is actually happening in the modern D&D community with modern games.

And that’s where the cracks start to show.

When most modern players say they’re playing D&D, what they’re often trying to create is a very specific kind of experience, cinematic, character-driven, collaborative storytelling. The kind of thing that feels fluid, immersive, and narratively satisfying. The kind of thing that looks effortless when you watch it online, but the modern 5th edition game actively does not support. In fact, it is designed to derail that effort quite purposely. The reason is simple: if you are able to play the game with just the books, you don’t need all the other stuff they are trying to sell you.

Modern D&D relies on the idea that it cannot just be played with the books, that you need “other stuff” like subscriptions and updates in order to continue to play. So it’s designed to try to enforce that mentality.

At the end of the day, everyone wants an Eddie leading their table. This is what D&D is about. Friends, dice, fun. That experience needs to be simple and straight to it, and this is what old school D&D offers as its main value proposition.

Mechanics interrupt pacing. Combat drags. Resolution systems pull focus away from the fiction at exactly the wrong moment. Instead of supporting the experience, the rules frequently feel like something you have to manage, negotiate with, or quietly sidestep in order to keep things moving. But of course, there is a solution you can buy to fix it. How about DnD Beyond? How about Dungeon Tiles or that fancy initiative tracker? etc.. etc.

Not to mention the 3rd party opportunities to make money, like YouTube. How many influencers have turned fixing D&D into a profession?

You can see this reflected everywhere. Look up advice for modern D&D and you’ll find an endless stream of solutions, not for how to play the game, but for how to fix it. How to streamline combat. How to make storytelling smoother. How to handle edge cases. How to “build” characters. How to avoid certain mechanics altogether. Entire libraries of guidance are built around making the system behave the way people want it to behave, rather than simply using it as designed and getting that result.

In fact, if you play 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons as designed, meaning you have no other reference than the books and you simply play the game that is there, I think most people would have wildly different experiences at the table. It would look nothing like what you see on Critical Role, nothing like what people are trying to actually achieve at the table or assume the game is about.

What’s particularly ironic is that many of these “fixes” aren’t new ideas at all. They’re rediscoveries. Approaches and assumptions that were already baked into old school D&D play, now being reintroduced as house rules and best practices in a system that didn’t prioritize them in the first place.

I understand this cycle because I’ve been through it myself. For years, across multiple modern editions, I tried to make modern D&D deliver the experience I wanted. I adjusted rules, ignored others, added new systems, borrowed ideas, and generally treated the game like a project that needed ongoing maintenance. And for a long time, I assumed that was just part of the deal. It was “how” you played D&D. You had the rules, but the game was this other thing you had to design and enforce yourself.

But eventually, the pattern becomes hard to ignore. If you’re constantly working around a system to make it function the way you want, it raises a fairly obvious question: is the system actually designed for that experience in the first place?

That question is what pushed me, and many others, toward the OSR. Playing the game as written, is exactly what you see on Critical Role. A narrative, collaborative storytelling experience that unfolds in a conversation. All you need is the rulebook, character sheets, dice, and friends.

That’s not nostalgia. Not reverence for the past. Not a belief that old school rules are inherently superior in some abstract sense. Just a very practical realization that the experience we were trying to create aligned more naturally with a different game. The fact that it happens to be old school D&D is just a coincidence.

That’s the part of the story that tends to get overlooked. The growth of old school D&D isn’t being driven by people clinging to what they remember. It’s being driven by people searching for something that works as designed, that does not require “fixing” or digital solutions to play like DnD Beyond.

They start with modern D&D, run into friction, try to solve it, and eventually, out of frustration, begin looking elsewhere. It’s a tough process as it requires the admission that the hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars you have spent on books didn’t actually deliver what you wanted. It’s a rather brutal realization, it requires a harsh acceptance, and people often are unwilling to make the transition, trying to protect their investment. That sunk cost fallacy is real in modern D&D communities. But when they do make the realization and try out other ways, they find that old school play doesn’t require nearly as much effort to produce the kind of experience they were aiming for all along. It turns out for 20 bucks, and a single book is all that is needed to get that Critical Role experience with very little additional effort.

That’s not nostalgia. That’s problem-solving.

And it’s a much better explanation for why the OSR continues to grow exponentially year after year.

The Future of D&D is not Digital, It’s Back to Basics

There is one more thing, a subtle thing in the background that is also driving a wedge between modern and old school D&D. It’s already happening, and I think Wizards of the Coast has completely missed it.

The future of tabletop gaming isn’t more digital. It’s less.

You don’t need to be a psychologist to see the direction things are moving. We live in a world where nearly every aspect of life is mediated through a screen. Work, a computer. Banking, an app. Social life, Notifications. Even the simplest, most practical tasks now come with a digital leash attached. Want to fix your car? Better hope you’ve got the right software. Want to maintain a tractor? Congratulations, you now need a login and a firmware update.

There was a time when technology made things more convenient. Now it often makes them more dependent. And people are starting to feel it.

Because it’s not just work anymore, there’s no escape hatch. Even our personal lives have been absorbed into the same ecosystem. Dating, socializing, entertainment, shopping, it all routes through the same glowing rectangles we’ve already spent the entire day staring at. At a certain point, convenience stops feeling like freedom and starts feeling like an obligation.

And when that shift happens, people begin to push back.

Not in grand, revolutionary ways, but in small, deliberate choices. They start looking for spaces where they can disconnect, even temporarily. Places where interaction is direct, where attention isn’t fractured, and where the experience isn’t mediated by a device.

That’s where tabletop gaming comes in. The rising popularity of board games, miniature wargaming, and role-playing games isn’t an accident. It’s a response. A conscious move toward something more tactile, more social, more immediate. “Unplug and have fun” isn’t just a marketing slogan; it’s becoming a genuine value proposition. And it’s only going to grow stronger as digital fatigue continues to set in.

Project Sigil didn’t fail because it was a bad tool, it failed because it was a digital tool for an analogue game. It was created for an audience that doesn’t exist.

Which is why the push toward fully digital D&D feels like such a fundamental misread of the room. What people want from D&D isn’t a better app. They want very specifically a non-digital experience, an escape from the screen.

They want something that feels like Critical Role, not in production quality, but in spirit. A table. Friends. Conversation. Laughter. The unpredictable, human moments that don’t translate well through a screen and don’t need to.

What they don’t want is to recreate that experience through a layered stack of software, subscriptions, and digital tools.

And yet, that’s exactly the direction things have been heading with modern D&D. It’s the intent of modern D&D to become a digital game.

Projects like Sigil Virtual Tabletop weren’t just ambitious; they were built on the assumption that the future of D&D needed to look more like a video game. More visual, more integrated, more digital.

But that assumption ignores a very simple reality: the more digital you make tabletop gaming, the more you risk stripping away the very thing that makes it appealing in the first place.

The lukewarm reception and practical stagnation of projects like Sigil isn’t just a development hiccup. It’s a warning sign, clearly ignored by Wizards of the Coast. A cause and effect. And it won’t be the last.

While D&D has been moving toward screens, a growing number of players have been moving away from them. That’s where the OSR fits into this picture.

At its core, the old school movement isn’t just about rules, it’s about returning to a style of play that is fundamentally built for the table. Face-to-face interaction. Minimal barriers. Systems that get out of the way rather than inserting themselves into every moment of play. A way to get together, pull out some dice, and have fun with your friends offline.

Could you run old school D&D online? Of course.

But it doesn’t need to be online. It doesn’t rely on tools, platforms, or digital infrastructure to function. It was designed, intentionally or otherwise, for a group of people sitting around a table, talking, imagining, and playing together.

And that matters more than I think Wizards of the Coast realizes.

Contrast that with modern 5th edition, where digital tools have become so embedded in the experience that it’s fair to ask: how many people could actually run character creation from scratch, by the book, without something like D&D Beyond?

It’s not impossible, but it’s telling that the question even needs to be asked.

D&D Beyond character management is about as much fun as filing your taxes. Everything that is wrong with the modern D&D experience can be summed up by looking at this picture. Is this really how you want to experience D&D? Through an app?

When a game begins to assume the presence of digital assistance, it’s no longer just a tabletop game. It’s a hybrid system, one that quietly depends on the very infrastructure many players are starting to push back against.

And that’s the tension.

If the broader cultural trend is moving toward less screen time, not more, toward intentional disconnection rather than deeper integration, then doubling down on digital isn’t forward-thinking. It’s misalignment.

Old school D&D, whether by design or by accident, sidesteps that problem entirely. It offers something increasingly rare: a complete experience that exists fully offline, requires very little overhead, and delivers exactly what many players are starting to look for.

Not nostalgia. Not spectacle. Just a table, some dice, and a group of people actually present in the same room.

And in the years ahead, that might turn out to be the most valuable feature of the OSR of all.

Conclusion

I could make a bold prediction about where D&D is heading, but if there’s one thing history has shown, it’s that modern D&D is remarkably adaptable. Whether it’s an adaptation the company wants to make is another question entirely. Profitability has a gravitational pull, and right now, that pull is clearly toward digital ecosystems, subscriptions, and integrated platforms. That’s where the money is. Still, it would be unwise to assume they won’t pivot if the ground shifts beneath them; they’ve done it before.

That said, I think we can safely put one argument to rest: old school D&D is no longer about nostalgia. If it ever was, that phase has long since passed. What started as a retrospective curiosity has evolved into something much more independent, something that stands on its own merits rather than its memories.

And that matters, because it changes the entire conversation.

I don’t believe official D&D is on the brink of collapse, nor do I think it’s heading toward some dramatic downfall. But I do think its cultural relevance will continue to erode, slowly, almost imperceptibly, unless Wizards of the Coast takes a hard look at what the game actually is, and more importantly, what people want it to be over the next fifty years.

Because at its core, the appeal of D&D isn’t complicated.

People want to sit around a table. They want to roll dice. They want to laugh, argue, improvise, and create something together in real time.

And they want to do it without needing a login, a subscription, or a second monitor.

That experience needs to be approachable, immediate, and, crucially, free from digital dependence.

Whether that aligns with the current direction of official D&D is… questionable.

If the trajectory continues toward deeper digital integration, then what we’re likely to see isn’t a sudden break, but a gradual drift. Players won’t leave in protest. They’ll simply start exploring alternatives, games that deliver the experience they’re actually looking for with less friction and fewer layers between them and the table. I think when we talk about the OSR, that’s exactly what is happening already.

That’s exactly where the OSR and old school D&D are waiting.

Not as relics of the past, but as ready-made solutions. Systems that already assume face-to-face play. Games that don’t need to be propped up by tools because they were never designed to depend on them in the first place.

That transition, quiet, steady, and already underway, has nothing to do with nostalgia.

It has everything to do with clarity.

Because strip everything else away, and D&D is still what it has always been: a tabletop game. Not a platform. Not a service. Not a digital product suite.

A table. Real people. Real dice.

The kind of experience people see in things like Critical Role or Stranger Things and think, “Yeah… I want that.”

Not the production value. Not the polish.

Just the real part.

And increasingly, that’s exactly what old school D&D is giving them.

Best of List, D&D, Role-Player Game Reviews

Top 10 Versions of Dungeons and Dragons

One question that shows up in my inbox again and again is simple on the surface but surprisingly loaded underneath. What is your favorite edition of Dungeons and Dragons?

I have done broader best RPG lists before, but that is not really what people are asking. They are not looking for my thoughts on the entire hobby. They want to know which banner I fly when it comes to D&D. Which version sits closest to my heart? Which books I reach for when someone says, do you want to play.

So I decided to answer properly.

Instead of naming a single winner, I pulled together a top 10 list that includes not just official editions, but also variants, clones, and offshoots that belong to the larger D&D family. Some are obvious. Some are unexpected. All of them, in one way or another, carry the torch of dungeon-crawling fantasy adventure.

It turned out to be a fun exercise. And with so much debate swirling around modern Dungeons and Dragons right now, it feels like a good time to zoom out a little. There is a vast landscape beyond the latest edition war. Plenty of roads to travel. Plenty of dragons to slay.

10. Forbidden Lands

I will start with what might be the most controversial entry on this list. Controversial only because it is the least mechanically related to D&D of anything here. Its core system comes from a completely different lineage. It does not descend from TSR or the d20 tree.

And yet, thematically, Forbidden Lands often feels more like classic D&D than some official editions. If we are willing to call 5th edition D&D, then I say by right, Forbidden Lands deserves a seat at the table.

What makes it unique is that it is tightly bound to its setting and intended campaign style. This is not a generic fantasy engine. It is a game about survival in a harsh and broken land, well defined, illustrated, and presented in beautiful detail. The players are not chosen heroes destined for greatness. They are desperate adventurers trying to carve out a place in a world that does not care if they live or die.

The mechanics are not perfect. There are a few rough edges, oddly familiar if you play a lot of D&D-style games. But what it does extremely well is align rules with tone. The system reinforces scarcity, risk, and tension. It avoids the incoherent sprawl that some classic D&D editions suffered from while still capturing that old school edge.

It is brutal. Life is cheap. Characters can and will struggle to survive. That feeling is deeply reminiscent of early D&D, when survival was not assumed and advancement had to be earned the hard way. Maybe it is not quite as unforgiving as the earliest editions, but it carries that same weight. Every journey into the wild feels risky. Every campfire feels temporary.

The boxed set presentation helps enormously. Forbidden Lands is largely self-contained. Yes, there are expansions, but the core box gives you everything you need. System, setting, campaign framework. It is all there, cohesive and focused. There is something refreshing about that. No endless stream of mandatory supplements. No sprawling library required. Just a complete experience in one package.

I have not played as much Forbidden Lands as some of the other games on this list, but the campaign I did experience was enough to convince me. It had that unmistakable D&D flavor. Exploration. Danger. Treasure. Hard choices. The difference was simply that the tone leaned darker and the system carried its weight more cleanly.

For that reason alone, it earns its place here. It may not share D&D’s mechanical ancestry, but in spirit it absolutely belongs to the same school of adventure.

9. Pathfinder 2nd Edition

I am not entirely sure I am a natural fan of the tactical RPG genre. I appreciate it. I respect it. But it is not my default preference. That said, when it comes to D&D style tactical systems, Pathfinder 2nd edition is undeniably solid.

I spent a fair amount of time running and playing it, and for good reason. It answers a very specific question. What happens if you take 3rd edition, modernize it completely, and then dive even deeper into tactical precision and character customization?

The answer is a beast.

Pathfinder 2e is enormous. Over six hundred pages of tightly engineered rules. Layers of customization. Class feats, ancestry feats, skill feats, archetypes, options within options. It likely contains more meaningful character choices in a single core rulebook than most of the other games on this list combined.

And yet, for all that weight, it is remarkably well organized. If you love deep mechanical play, Pathfinder 2e executes it in the most streamlined and optimized way possible. It is complex, but it is disciplined complexity. The math works. The action economy is elegant. The system is balanced with almost obsessive care.

What I admire most is something it shares with Pathfinder 1e. It takes a core concept and refines it relentlessly. Then it builds outward with themed expansions, adventure paths, and supplemental books that feel purposeful rather than random. It supports its own vision thoroughly.

At the same time, it is simply too heavy for me to run these days. I do not have the time I once did. There is no winging Pathfinder 2e. You cannot improvise your way through it casually and expect the system to carry you. To run it well, you need to put in the hours. Real preparation. Real system mastery. Without that effort, the experience suffers.

In my current stage of life, that level of demand is hard to justify.

As a player, however, I am far more open. If someone else is willing to do the work behind the screen, I am happy to show up and engage with the system. From the player side, Pathfinder 2e is a rewarding tactical experience. Fights are dynamic. Choices matter. Encounters can be genuinely challenging. And when paired with one of its strong adventure paths, it can deliver some truly memorable campaigns.

The Kingmaker adaptation for Pathfinder 2e is a great example. A massive kingdom-building saga, packed with depth and scale. As a player, I would gladly dive into something like that.

As a Game Master, though, I have to be honest. It is a hard no. Not because it fails, but because it demands more than I am willing to give at this point. Pathfinder 2e absolutely earns its place on this list. It is a masterfully engineered system. It is just one that requires a level of commitment I have long since outgrown.

8. Castles and Crusades

There are games on this list that I have spent years playing, systems that shaped entire eras of my D&D life. Castles and Crusades is not one of them. And yet it still earns a place here, because it fills a very specific role in the broader world of Dungeons and Dragons.

It covers a niche that I do not often need, but once in a while, it is exactly the right tool for the job.

Castles and Crusades emerged at a time when 3rd and 3.5 edition Dungeons and Dragons had grown increasingly complex. Character builds became intricate, rules interactions multiplied, and system mastery was often rewarded over good old-fashioned adventuring fun. Castles and Crusades stepped in as a lighter alternative, a rebuttal to the question, what does modern D&D look like. It felt like a modern continuation of 2nd edition AD&D, but with a cleaner and more unified core mechanic. In another timeline where TSR had remained in control and refined AD&D using a more streamlined approach, this might have been the result.

It was clearly dedicated to preserving the feel of classic AD&D. The classes, the tone, and the emphasis on medieval fantasy adventure all remained intact. The goal was not to reinvent Dungeons and Dragons, but to refine it. To keep the spirit while trimming away the layers of complexity that 3rd edition became known for.

For me the difficulty has always been the audience. The people I play with tend to fall into one of two camps. They are either committed old school players who want early TSR editions or faithful retro clones, or they prefer whatever the latest official version happens to be. At one time, that was 3rd edition, then Pathfinder, then 4th edition, and so on.

Castles and Crusades sits squarely in the middle. It preserves early D&D while presenting it in a modern framework. In theory, that should make it a perfect compromise. In practice, D&D players are rarely looking for compromise. They usually know exactly what they want.

As a result, my copy has often stayed on the shelf. A bit of a dust collector.

That said, from a design perspective, I have a great deal of respect for it. The system is elegant, focused, and confident in what it is trying to do. It is unapologetically both old school and modern at the same time, and it manages to pull that off remarkably well.

I’m not sure I love the Siege Engine, which is the core resolution system for C&C’s answer to skill checks. I always found the dice odds and results of that particular rules mechanic off, but as I tend to avoid the use of skills in my games whenever possible, it’s not that big of a deal. I think the game would have been better off either using the D20 skill system or the AD&D non-weapon proficiencies, but the middle ground kind of didn’t work as well as either one of those did.

That caveat aside, if you have a group that enjoys modern Dungeons and Dragons but is willing to simplify things a bit, and you are a Dungeon Master who prefers the feel of classic adventures without all the classic mechanical baggage, Castles and Crusades can be an excellent choice. It may not be the game I reach for most often, but I am glad it exists; it earns its rightful place on this list.

7. 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons

I know some of my old school D&D friends will raise an eyebrow at this one. Especially after the 2024 update and all the noise that surrounded it. But here is the simple truth. I am a gamer. I care about what happens at the table far more than what happens on social media. I am here to roll dice, tell stories, and have a good time. The rest is just background chatter.

For me, 5th edition is the most polished and efficient power fantasy version of Dungeons and Dragons ever made. It knows exactly what it is doing. You are not a struggling adventurer scraping by with four hit points and a rusty sword. You are a force of nature. A fantasy superhero with spells, abilities, and enough resilience to stare down a fantasy monster without breaking a sweat.

And that is fun.

5th edition is about bold moves and dramatic victories. It is about kicking in the door and believing you might actually survive what is on the other side. The system is flexible, easy to learn, and offers a huge range of character options without drowning players in mechanical detail. It gives you variety without demanding spreadsheets.

That matters.

It also matters that this style of play speaks to a lot of people, especially younger players. My kids love it. They want to charge into battle against multiple dragons and come out standing. They want big moments and spectacular powers. 5th edition delivers that in a way that feels smooth and accessible.

As a writer, I love working in the 5th edition design space. It is easy to create adventures when you can assume the characters are competent and durable. You can focus on cool scenarios, memorable villains, and cinematic set pieces without constantly worrying whether the mechanics will collapse under pressure. Yes, it is difficult to create truly punishing challenges, and the game gets truly wacky at high levels. But if you approach 5e expecting it to be a brutal survival simulator, you are probably aiming at the wrong target.

Above all else, 5th edition is simply fun to play. If you are old school like me, you do have to let go of certain expectations. Once you stop trying to make it something it is not and just lean into what it does well, it becomes clear why it has brought so many people into the hobby.

The starter sets are a perfect example. They are some of the best introductory products Dungeons and Dragons has ever produced. I own them all, and despite having shelves full of adventures, my kids are perfectly happy replaying The Dragon of Icespire Peek again and again. We defeat the dragon, celebrate, and then roll up new characters to do it all over. It is like rewatching a favorite movie for the tenth time and still enjoying every scene.

Wizards of the Coast clearly understands how to speak to the current generation of players. What might look unusual or unnecessary to older fans feels completely natural to younger ones. They do not carry the same expectations or nostalgia. They just see a game full of possibilities.

If someone comes to me today and says they have never played a roleplaying game but want to learn D&D, 5th edition with one of the starter kits is still my go-to recommendation. It is welcoming, flexible, and immediately rewarding. And sometimes that is exactly what the hobby needs.

6. Pathfinder 1st edition

For me, Pathfinder 1st edition represents the entire 3rd edition era. When I put Pathfinder on this list, I am also tipping my hat to 3rd and 3.5 edition Dungeons and Dragons. Pathfinder 1st edition feels like the definitive final form of that lineage. The system was refined, expanded, and pushed right to its natural limit.

I played an absurd amount of 3rd edition era D&D. From the original launch of 3rd edition to the sprawling Adventure Paths of Pathfinder, no other game on this list has generated more memories or consumed more hours of my life. We practically lived at the gaming table. Twelve to fourteen-hour sessions were normal. Several times a week was normal. We were young, obsessed, and fully committed.

That era was a golden age for me, and part of that is simply timing. I was in my late teens when 3rd edition arrived. No wife. No kids. No career clawing at my schedule. Just friends, dice, and time. So much time. We learned the system inside and out. We did not just play it. We mastered it.

It also felt like a second great age of settings. Much like the early TSR days, the 3rd edition era exploded with new worlds. Scarred Lands. Eberron. Golarion. Midnight. Iron Kingdoms. Each one with its own flavor, its own tone, its own promise of adventure. The writing was ambitious and plentiful. You could jump from gothic horror to pulp intrigue to mythic war without ever leaving the broader d20 umbrella.

And the adventures. Some of the best campaign material ever written for the game came out during this time. Kingmaker stands tall in my memory as a near perfect expression of what long form campaign design could look like. Big ideas. Player agency. Epic payoff.

Mechanically, this was the age of prestige classes and intricate character builds. We loved it. We loved planning out ten levels in advance. We loved squeezing every advantage out of feats, skills, and class combinations. Looking back now, it feels excessive, but at the time it was exactly what we wanted. Video games were deep and complex. Miniature games rewarded optimization. We wanted systems with moving parts, and 3rd edition delivered.

That said, this is probably the one game on the list I would not return to today. Not because it failed. Quite the opposite. It demands time, focus, and energy. It rewards dedication. Back then I had those resources in abundance. Today, with family and career taking their rightful place, the thought of diving back into that level of mechanical depth feels exhausting.

That is not a flaw in Pathfinder. It is simply a shift in who I am now.

I regret nothing about those years. They were loud, ambitious, rules-heavy, and absolutely glorious. Pathfinder 1st edition stands as the monument to that chapter of my gaming life, and it earned every hour I gave it.

5. Dungeon Crawl Classics

Dungeon Crawl Classics is another brilliant offshoot of D&D that might be just a little too niche for its own good.

If Castles and Crusades is a careful bridge between eras, Dungeon Crawl Classics is what happens when you hand the keys to a group of wildly creative designers and simply say go. Goodman Games has assembled one of the most imaginative teams in the hobby. Their adventures and supplements do not feel restrained or filtered. They feel unleashed.

The result is a game bursting with ideas. Strange ideas. Loud ideas. Ideas that do not ask for permission and no sane person would ever approve them, but Goodman Games is …special.

For many D&D fans, whether old school traditionalists or modern build-focused players, it can be too much. Dungeon Crawl Classics demands an open mind. It asks you to step outside your expectations of what D&D is supposed to look like. You have to let go…a lot. Let the dice take over. Let the chaos breathe.

I ran a single Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign during the pandemic, when we were all locked in our homes and playing digitally. It was the perfect time to experiment. My group was ultimately lukewarm on the whole thing, and I understood why. DCC is strange. Its magic system alone feels like a deliberate rebellion against predictability. Spells can spiral into glorious disasters or explode into legendary triumphs. Control is not guaranteed or even expected.

In fact, that loss of control is part of the point. Where most RPGs try to smooth out volatility, DCC leans into it. It takes the core tropes of Dungeons and Dragons and turns every dial as far as it will go. The tone becomes gonzo. The situations become outrageous. At times, it feels like a fever dream version of classic fantasy adventure.

To really enjoy it, you almost have to take off your traditional D&D hat. If you cling too tightly to balance, careful planning, or long-term character optimization, the game will fight you. But if you embrace the madness, it becomes something special.

I personally love it. I think Dungeon Crawl Classics is an absolute blast to run and play. The shenanigans that unfold at the table often feel like a wild fantasy cartoon brought to life by dice. almost a kind of comedic parody of D&D. It is not sloppy design. Beneath the chaos is a carefully constructed engine built to generate those moments on purpose.

Still, it takes a very specific kind of group to truly enjoy it. It pushes both old school brutality and modern spectacle to their extremes at the same time. That combination is not for everyone.

I admire it deeply. I have tremendous respect for its creativity. But I completely understand why it might not click for most players. Dungeon Crawl Classics is less about comfort and more about curiosity. It rewards those who love bold design and fearless imagination as much as they love playing D&D itself.

4. 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons

1st edition AD&D is a true old school classic for me. I played it in the mid-eighties, when I was still very young, but even today I feel a surge of energy when I pull those old books off the shelf. The covers alone still have power.

That said, of all the games on this list, this is probably the one that has aged the worst.

Let me start with why I loved it, and in many ways still do.

It had style. It had mystique. Being a Dungeon Master felt like stepping into a secret order; being a player felt like you were stepping into a mystery. These were not just roles at the table. They were positions of either authority and deep knowledge, or explorers of a great mystery. The game expected Dungeon Masters to study it, internalize it, and guard it. Players, on the other hand, were meant to discover it through play, not through reading the books. This unspoken understanding was a social contract, and there was a clear purpose behind it.

As a player, the game was a mystery. We did not read the Dungeon Masters Guide. We did not flip through the Monster Manual. Doing so was forbidden. You learned by playing. You learned by surviving. You learned by making mistakes.

Knowledge was power, and that knowledge was earned; it was a trial by fire.

The first time we encountered a gelatinous cube, it was not a stat block. It was a horrifying surprise, but the next time, the players knew how to deal with it. Experience was earned by players and characters alike. The first time we got lost in the woods, found a magical lock, picked up an unidentified scroll, or crossed an ocean, there was no safety net. No clear mechanical explanation was handed to us ahead of time, we didn’t know the odds or even fully grasp the dangers. We discovered how the game and the world worked by interacting with it, by suffering at its cruelty and learning as we went.

The result was a game where the world felt real in a way that is hard to describe. Your character lived in it, but you as a player were also navigating something unknown. Characters died. That happened often. But the player gained experience. We remembered where the dangerous forest was. We remembered that troll and the hard lesson about fire. We made our own maps because none were provided. We built keeps for safety, opened taverns with our ill-gotten gains for fame and glory, and followed storylines that unfolded over years out of personal attachment to the events. Events in which characters perished to the plots of evil villains that lingered despite our best efforts to stop them. There were personal agendas, oaths of vengeance, we cursed the DM for cruelty and unfairness, but secretly we applauded the experience because it was so vivid.

There was a veil over the whole game, and we didn’t peek. The rules themselves were part of the exploration; the DMG was a mysterious book, and we could only imagine what was inside.

In modern D&D, that veil is usually gone. Players know the system inside and out. They know what monsters do. They can look up spells, effects, and optimal builds between sessions. The mystery is replaced with transparency. That is not necessarily bad, but it is different.

The hard truth is that maintaining that veil was never sustainable back then, either. Eventually, we all wanted to try being Dungeon Masters. We read the books. We saw behind the curtain. Once you understand the machinery, it never quite feels the same again.

Today, when I look at 1st edition AD&D with experienced and unveiled eyes, I see flawed mechanics, inconsistent rules, and some genuinely questionable design decisions. The structure is messy. The balance is uneven. The clarity we now expect simply is not there.

And yet, I can still feel what it was meant to be. I can still sense the potential. The idea that the game itself is something you uncover over time. That the rules are not just tools, but secrets.

Modern players ask more questions. They want clarity. They want consistency. They want to know how things work before committing to an action. They are less willing to let the system itself be part of the mystery. Without that mystery, 1st edition AD&D can feel fragile and awkward.

But when it worked, when that veil was intact, and the world felt unknown, AD&D had a kind of magic that was indescribably wonderful. I can understand the OSR for wanting to keep this version of the game alive and immortal. I’m 100% convinced that no other RPG in existence can offer the experience AD&D can, and if you haven’t experienced it yourself, I pity you.

If this were a list of the best RPG experiences of all time, AD&D would be at the top of the list by a margin so wide that there would be no point in adding any other games to the list.

3. 1st edition BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortal): AKA The Dungeons and Dragons Rules Cyclopedia

Yes, that is a mouthful.

The unified BECMI line is an interesting creature. The original purpose of Basic and Expert was simple. It was meant to be an entry path into Dungeons and Dragons, a starting point before players graduated to 1st edition AD&D.

But TSR being TSR, things did not unfold quite so cleanly. Business decisions and internal dynamics led to Basic and Expert continuing to expand. Companion added domain play. Master pushed power levels higher. Immortal went cosmic. By the time you had the full BECMI spread, you were looking at a system that rivaled Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in scope and complexity.

In a sense, it became an alternate evolution of AD&D. Not the same tone, not the same mystique, but just as ambitious.

Where AD&D felt mysterious and almost arcane, BECMI felt structured and purposeful. To me, its true strength was scale. This was a game built to sustain an epic campaign. Characters could progress from level 1 all the way to 36. No other version of D&D committed so fully to that kind of long-term arc, nor did most systems support game elements beyond simple adventuring.

It is the only edition that truly embraced the idea that a campaign might run indefinitely without slamming into a hard ceiling. I have never met anyone who actually reached Immortal play at level 36, but the mere existence of that ladder is inspiring. It suggests a game designed for years of development, not just months.

I ran a Mystara campaign that lasted nearly six years. Same world. Same characters, we reached level 21 if memory serves, we could have easily gone on for another decade. We began with Keep on the Borderlands, rusty swords and no backstories. Over time, those same characters ruled kingdoms, negotiated wars, shaped politics, and watched the consequences of their choices ripple outward. It became generational storytelling. Legends built at the table.

You can tell stories like that in other systems, certainly. But BECMI supports it directly. It has mechanics for domain management, armies, mass combat, and high-level play baked into the structure. From dungeon delving to empire building, it provides a framework.

Of all the old TSR-era systems, this is one that I believe still holds up remarkably well. It is robust, deep, and surprisingly cohesive when taken as a whole. The Rules Cyclopedia in particular stands out as one of the most practical and usable single-volume rulebooks TSR ever produced.

That said, like all TSR games, it expects house ruling. No version from that era arrived perfectly tuned. But the underlying design space is strong enough to support that tinkering, it was quite flexible. Not only as a design space, but because it had such a close relationship with AD&D, you could pull elements from the supplements supporting that game as well.

It is also important not to confuse BECMI with the earlier B and X sets. They are the same game, or at least share DNA, but BECMI grows far beyond a simple introductory game. This is not a basic experience. It is a complex and demanding system for players who want a long and detailed journey. In terms of commitment, it sits comfortably beside AD&D and 3rd edition.

Which is why I do not really run it anymore. Like those other deep systems, it asks for time and focus that I simply do not have.

But if someone came to me and said can you run BECMI for us, I would struggle to say no. It remains one of the strongest designs TSR ever produced, and it absolutely still works at the table; it’s worth the stretch.

2. Dolmenwood & Old School Essentials & B/X

I group these three games because they are directly connected. Old School Essentials is a beautifully organized and clarified presentation of B/X. Dolmenwood builds on Old School Essentials and wraps it in a rich, self-contained setting. They have interchangeable structures so adventures for any of them will work with any of the systems without alteration; they are, in a word the same game.

What I love about this architecture, especially as a Dungeon Master, is its simplicity and its immediate focus on adventure. I would even argue that these are not role-playing games in the modern sense. They are adventure games.

The difference, at least in my mind, is subtle but important. In most modern role-playing games, the character as an identity becomes central. Backstory, personal arcs, emotional journeys. In B/X and its descendants, the character is more of an avatar. An extension of the player exploring dangerous places. The focus is on what you do, not who you are.

My expectation with these systems is simple. I can say hey, do you want to play D&D, and ten minutes later we are rolling dice and kicking in doors. There is very little friction between the idea of playing and actually playing, which I can with confidence is ALWAYS a problem in almost all RPG’s. Character creation is quick. The rules are clear. The goal is obvious and explicit in the metagame (1 gold = 1 XP). Go into the dungeon. Survive if you can. Bring back the treasure.

Dolmenwood adds tremendous flavor to that formula. It provides a fully realized setting, strange and whimsical and dark in equal measure, with locations and hooks ready to use. It feels open and alive, but it does not demand hours of preparation. You can point to a map, choose a direction, and the adventure is already waiting.

I have never had an easier time getting a game to the table than with B/X or Old School Essentials or Dolmenwood. That immediacy is part of what made B/X so powerful in the eighties, and it is why its descendants still work so well today.

I often prefer pulling one of these off the shelf over 5th edition. But it is important to understand the tone. These games have teeth. They are not about cinematic heroics. They are about risk and survival. When you play a 5e starter set, character death is possible but unlikely. When you play B/X or Old School Essentials or Dolmenwood, death is not just possible. It is expected. The real story is often how your character meets their end.

And somehow that makes the victories sweeter.

Because the rules are light and direct, it is easy to get everyone aligned around the core premise. We are here to explore dangerous places, fight monsters, and haul treasure back to town. There is very little barrier between intention and action.

If I had to choose a line of D&D that gets from do you want to play to actually playing faster than anything else, this would be it. The kicker its, a stupid amount of relaxed fun, pure joy at the table without any of the weight.

1. 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

We have a winner!

When I think about the most complete and most authentic expression of Dungeons and Dragons, the version that captures the tone, the aesthetic, and the core gameplay in its purest form, I land on 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

That is a bold claim, I know. But when I picture what D&D is supposed to feel like, this is the game that comes to mind. The art. The writing. The atmosphere. The balance between danger and possibility. Just the right blend of low and high fantasy. It embodies the identity of Dungeons and Dragons in a way no other edition quite does for me.

There is nothing in it that I would remove at the level of essence. Nothing I feel compelled to replace with something from another system. It feels whole.

At the same time, it is a deeply flawed game in many ways. In fact, of all the systems I have run over the years, this is the one I modified the most. That may sound contradictory, but when I talk about modification, I mean adjustment and tuning, not rewriting its soul. I balanced numbers. I clarified mechanics. I nudged pieces into alignment. I did not change what the game was trying to be.

One of the recurring issues with 2nd edition is the gap between description and execution. Especially in the expanded supplements, I would read the flavor text of a spell, a race, a class, or a weapon and think this is perfect. This is exactly what it should be. Then I would look at the mechanical implementation and feel the disconnect. The rules did not always deliver what the text promised.

That tension drove me to tinker, and 2nd edition is wonderfully suited for tinkering. It has a flexible design space and an enormous body of supplements. You can adjust it without breaking it. You can shape it to your table without losing its identity.

It is also the most adaptable edition in this lineup. Hand me almost any fantasy setting and, with the right books and a few mechanical tweaks, I can make it sing in 2nd edition. It sits comfortably within the grooves of traditional fantasy. It feels like the natural engine for the kind of worlds D&D was built to explore.

I also consider it the fairest of the classic systems. Earlier editions could be brutally lethal, especially for certain classes. Magic users and thieves often felt like they were one unlucky roll away from oblivion. In 2nd edition, you still faced real danger, but you had tools. You had options. You had a fighting chance. It struck a rare balance between survival horror and modern power fantasy. It was tense without being hopeless. Dangerous without being absurd.

I love this system. It is the only edition for which I own a truly massive library. Even now, I still collect for it. The material produced during that era feels rich and valuable. There is depth there that I continue to appreciate. I will admit the adventure writing for AD&D was hit and miss, but the settings were chef’s kiss. 2nd edition AD&D era settings were the best we ever got for any edition by a considerable margin.

If someone walks up to me and says hey, do you want to play D&D, and they do not specify an edition, I assume they mean 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. In my mind, that is the default form of the game.

D&D, Gaming Articles

In Theory: D&D 6th edition in 2027?

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There is absolutely no debate that 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, released in 2014, was a runaway hit. It did not just do well. It did not quietly succeed. It kicked in the tavern door, rolled a natural 20 on persuasion, and walked out with the entire hobby under its arm.

Now, yes, those of us with a few decades of dice scars may have a list of complaints. We have opinions. We have feelings. We have binders. But even the grumpiest old school gamer has to admit that 5e was a phenomenon. The numbers do not lie. The dragon was awake again.

There are many reasons for this success, but the big three are as clear as a freshly laminated character sheet.

First, 5e was a course correction. After the bold, shiny, heavily gamified experiment of 4th edition, Wizards of the Coast gently steered the ship back toward something that felt like classic D&D. Not a full retreat. Not a full reboot. More like returning home after a semester abroad with some new ideas and a slightly different haircut. It felt familiar again. That mattered.

What D&D should look like, what it should feel like, and in general what it should be mechanically has been debated for as long as the game has existed. There is, however, one universal thing that I think everyone can agree on, which is that it should be fun. And fun is the most subjective and incurably based on personal taste. You cannot create a game that everyone will love, but 5e came pretty damn close.

Second, Dungeons and Dragons escaped the basement and walked onto the stage. Thanks to groups like Critical Role and other streaming pioneers, playing D&D became entertainment. People were not just rolling dice. They were performing. They were voice acting. They were crying on camera. At one point, it was entirely possible that more people were watching D&D than actually playing it. Somewhere, Gary Gygax probably raised an eyebrow.

Third, Wizards of the Coast embraced the digital age instead of pretending it was a passing fad at the perfect time. The pandemic hit, and we were all trapped in our houses, and playing D&D online swung the door open. Unearthed Arcana gave players a peek behind the curtain. DnD Beyond made character creation less of a paper management mini-game. The DM Guild let aspiring designers throw their ideas into the wild (myself included), and the age of VTT’s blossomed. The game was not just something you bought in a bookstore anymore. It was something you interacted with online, argued about, homebrewed, and refreshed your browser for.

All of this helped, of course. But there was one more crucial factor.

The game was fun again. I know many people in the old school space hated it, but I think a lot of that hate comes from a general hate of change and is pretty misguided and mostly an assessment offered by a group of people that never even tried it.

Not exactly the same fun as the red box days, I get it. Not quite the ruthless, unforgiving dungeon crawls of our youth. But it hit a sweet spot with a wide audience. It welcomed new players without demanding they memorize a rulebook the size of a small nation’s tax code. At the same time, it did not completely exile the veterans to the wilderness.

I played it. I still play it from time to time. It is not perfect. It is not sacred. But it is, undeniably, a good time. And sometimes that is all a game really needs to be.

Gender Politics and Woke Agenda

All right. Deep breath. Let us wade into the dragon’s lair.

At some point, about two-thirds of the way through the 2014 edition’s ten-year reign, the world outside the hobby started changing at a rather brisk pace. Culture wars went from being something discussed on late-night talk shows to something that seemed to leak into every possible corner of entertainment. Television, movies, comics, novels, blockbuster franchises with laser swords and capes, nothing felt untouched.

Dungeons and Dragons did not exist in a vacuum. It never has. And eventually, Wizards of the Coast made it clear that they were going to plant a flag. The company leaned into contemporary social themes and made an effort to reflect modern values directly in the game’s language, art, and presentation. From their perspective, this was not reckless. It was responsible. It was being on the right side of history. It was aligning the brand with the audience they believed would carry it forward.

On paper, that sounds perfectly reasonable. No company wants to look outdated or hostile to its audience. The problem, as many entertainment giants have discovered over the past decade, is that audiences are rarely as unified as marketing departments hope they are.

Large franchises such as Star Wars and Marvel have had very public struggles navigating this terrain. For some fans, changes feel refreshing and overdue. For most, they feel intrusive, even if you support the ideology and purpose behind them. The result is often less a calm evolution and more a noisy food fight on the internet. And once the food starts flying, it tends to splatter everywhere, bumping against the bottom line.

Going woke with shows like Acolyte has cost Disney millions, but they are perfectly capable of creating insanely successful shows like Andor that stay away from political messaging and just let themselves be awesome. At some point, you have to pick. Do you want to make money or do you want to be political?

By the time D&D’s fiftieth anniversary update arrived in late 2024 and early 2025, rebranding the system as the 2024 edition of Dungeons and Dragons, tensions were already simmering in the wider culture; people were frankly kind of sick of the fight. The DEI and Tumblr warriors who never actually played D&D to begin with were gone, and the only people remaining were fans of the game, not so much the politics. The new core books sold quickly at launch. Wizards of the Coast proudly announced record breaking performance. Critics, however, have not been kind to these books. As is often the case, the marketing headlines were louder than the spreadsheets.

The reception itself felt different from 2014. The original 5th edition was greeted with near universal enthusiasm. The 2024 refresh, while mechanically very similar at its core, received a far more mixed response. Some players praised clarifications and refinements. Others felt uneasy about tonal shifts in the writing and presentation. The game had become very…preachy, as did the company running the franchise.

Then vs. now. How far the mighty have fallen. I understand that this is a bit out of context, a comparison designed to create outrage. My point is that the image on the left is indisputably Dungeons and Dragons, through and through. The one on the right is a parody and has nothing to do with Dungeons and Dragons at all. Period.

One of the loudest points of friction centered on the game’s language around ancestry, identity, and morality. Longstanding fantasy concepts were reexamined. Half-race people were reframed or removed. Traditional assumptions about inherently evil creatures were softened or rewritten. Orcs were no longer automatically villains. The language around alignment and culture became more cautious, more nuanced. Real-world politics and political positions were infused into the game on every page, in the words, in the design, in the art.

For some players, this was overdue housekeeping. For others, it felt like an overcorrection. They did not come to the table looking for a seminar on modern ethics, especially by the end of 2024, at a time that we had already endured so much infiltration of politics into our hobbies and entertainment. They wanted dragons, dungeons, and that escapist feeling at the table that D&D had provided for decades. They were looking for familiarity, the comfort food that is D&D. Instead, D&D like so many franchises, was weaponized to push a political agenda.

The art direction also shifted in tone. Where older editions leaned into grim and gritty sword and sorcery, the newer books embraced a brighter, more inclusive aesthetic. To supporters, this was welcomed creativity and inclusivity. To detractors, it felt sanitized or didactic. The debate was less about rules and more about vibe. The message of the book was not about Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy, but about the real-world culture war being waged in the pages of our games, splashing its way into yet another beloved hobby.

I’m not saying this is bad art; it very clearly is done by a very talented person who has a flair for color and style, but if these images did not appear in a D&D book, no one would mistake them for representing D&D worlds and settings. It’s art that belongs in a different game. In what setting do bards dress like rock stars and play an electric base?

And that is the thing. Mechanically, the 2024 edition is still 5th edition at heart. Advantage still exists. Armor class still matters. Fireball is still fireball. But tone is powerful. Presentation shapes perception. When fans are already fatigued from broader culture battles in other franchises, even subtle changes can feel amplified.

Meanwhile, corporate realities marched on. There were reports of layoffs within the broader Hasbro structure. Longtime contributors departed. Ambitious digital initiatives such as the planned virtual tabletop platform known as Project Sigil struggled to find a stable footing and collapsed, and there was a complete lack of any evidence of the game’s success, with plenty of proof to the contrary. For a brand publicly celebrating success, the surrounding news cycle felt oddly turbulent and out of tune with the messaging. This continues to this day.

Now rumors swirl, as they always do in this hobby. Whispers of a sixth edition drift through forums and video essays. Wizards of the Coast remains largely quiet, which of course only fuels speculation further. Silence, in the internet age, is rarely interpreted as calm confidence.

In the end, what we are witnessing may be less a moral apocalypse and more a growing pain. Dungeons and Dragons has survived moral panics, edition wars, satanic scares, and rulebook bloat thick enough to stun a troll. It is unlikely to be slain by a paragraph about orcs.

But it is fair to say this: the 2024 era feels different. Not necessarily doomed. Not necessarily triumphant. Just… contested.

Rumors have now begun, from claimed leaks coming out of Wizards of the Coasts to speculation, the question everyone is asking. Is 2024 ok? And if not, what is the next move?

My Theory

My theory is fairly simple, and possibly completely wrong, which of course makes it perfect for the internet.

The RPG industry is nimble. It always has been. It is powered by small publishers, independent designers, artists in spare bedrooms, and creators who can pivot faster than a rogue dodging an opportunity attack. If the cultural winds shift, they adjust. If players want grittier rules, lighter rules, stranger settings, someone will test it, publish it, and move on before the ink dries.

Wizards of the Coast does not move like that. It never has, and TSR did not either in its prime. When you are part of a large corporate machine, you carry weight. Layers of approval. Strategy decks. Risk assessments. Brand alignment meetings where phrases like cross vertical synergy are spoken without irony. By the time a plan is approved and executed, the rest of the hobby may already have experimented, adapted, and moved on.

Being big has advantages. Massive distribution. Deep pockets. Marketing reach that indie designers would trade a legendary artifact for. But size comes with inertia. In a fast-changing cultural climate, inertia can look like tone deafness even when the intent is good.

Add to that monster-sized echo chamber in which Wizards of the Coast lives. When your interviews are conducted by your own employees, when messaging is tightly controlled, and every word goes through sensitivity experts, when the loudest feedback comes from the most vocal online minority, like the utterly incoherent and completetly diluisional DnD Beyond forum community and its moderators, you risk mistaking noise for consensus. In the 2024 update, once a direction was chosen, it was embraced completely. The tone was deliberate. The messaging is unified. If this were a space opera, someone quietly said execute order sixty-six, and the creative trajectory was locked in.

Here is the nuance that gets lost in the shouting.

The fan base does want inclusivity. We want diversity. We want talented creators from every background imaginable making incredible games. Kelsey Dionne is a great example. A married lesbian designer whose work on Shadowdark won awards across the hobby. People did not buy Shadowdark because of her identity or the infusion of a political agenda in her book. They bought it because it is a sharp, confident, well-designed game that understands dungeon crawling at its core. She understood that the people who cry war over political issues and the audience who buy RPGs are not the same people. The awards and accolades came from D&D fans and were earned through craftsmanship, not activism. She was not given any credit from the so-called woke left because she refused to play their game. It was D&D fans who stood by her side and helped promote her work; she succeeded on merit, not bullshit.

I could go anywhere in the world, show any random person this image, and ask them where it’s from, and everyone will say “D&D”. This is Dungeons and Dragons art; everyone knows this. It’s a universal style, an understood cultural identity.

That is the distinction. You do not have to signal virtue. You have to be virtuous in your craft.

Most players are not asking for fantasy worlds that feel like corporate retreats. They want danger. Moral tension. Villains who are actually villainous. They want to feel heroic precisely because the world is not safe and tidy. They want that in the writing, in the mechanics and in the art of the games they play.

The mistake, in my view, is assuming that a diverse audience requires a softened fantasy. Being part of a minority group does not mean you want your dragon-slaying adventure to turn into a polite seminar with emotional affirmation circles fueled by sensitivity training. People of every identity enjoy sharp stories, dark themes, high stakes, and gritty art. To assume otherwise feels patronizing, even insulting.

What we are seeing feels like overcorrection. As if the brand is attempting to atone for decades of perceived sins by turning the dial all the way in the opposite direction. The irony is that when everything is curated to signal virtue, it can start to feel less diverse rather than more. Narrow in a different way.

There is indisputable proof that Wizards of the Coast is perfectly capable of capturing the theme, mood, settings and style of D&D in art in spectacular fashion, as proof in this amazing image from the 2024 5e book. Adding shitty art not representative of the name Dungeons and Dragons was done intentionally.

Dungeons and Dragons claims to be for everyone. But when the aesthetic and tone begin to feel targeted toward a very specific cultural slice, some longtime players inevitably feel sidelined. Representation is healthy. It was handled well in 2014. Strong female characters. Diverse heroes. Expanded visibility. It felt organic. It still felt like D&D.

The 2024 edition, by contrast, feels different to many players. Not because representation exists, but because the tone feels self-conscious. As if every page is glancing over its shoulder, worried about offending someone. That nervous energy seeps into the reading experience and to the table.

Most players, regardless of background, simply want great games. Bold settings. Mechanics that sing. Adventures that make them feel clever, powerful, terrified, and triumphant. They expect the game to avoid lazy stereotypes and actual bigotry. That is baseline. But they do not want every paragraph to feel like a position in a cultural debate.

But of course I’m talking about players, not social justice warriors, not the Tumblr echo chambers, not this violent vocal minority who doesn’t give a shit about Dungeons and Dragons, they just want to win an internet fight and see yet another franchise created by middle-aged white men burned to the ground.

We get it, Gygax was a racist and a misogynist, but he has not been part of D&D for nearly 40 years, and he is also dead and buried. Shut the fuck up and let it go!

Look again at Shadowdark. It trusts the audience. It leans into classic fantasy energy with confidence. It focuses on play. It feels like it is speaking from love of the hobby rather than from a corporate messaging strategy, and it does not misstep and offend reasonable people. It’s just a great game; it has let go of all the bad old legacy of D&D and embraced everything that is amazing about this hobby and this game.

I suspect this tension has not gone unnoticed inside Wizards of the Coast. Across entertainment, companies that leaned too heavily into overt cultural messaging have faced financial turbulence and consequences. Executives notice patterns. Quiet meetings happen. Words like recalibration and brand realignment start circulating.

The long silence since the 2024 edition launched, combined with persistent rumors of a sixth edition, suggests something is brewing. Maybe it is a simple iteration. Maybe it is something bigger.

Dungeons and Dragons has reinvented itself before. It will again. The real question is not whether change is coming. It is whether Wizards of the Coast recognizes that one may be needed and understands where they are failing.

What 6th Edition Should Look Like

What should 6th edition actually look like?

If the rumors are true and a new edition is on the horizon, my hope is simple. Not louder. Not shinier. Not wrapped in corporate buzzwords. Just better.

Right now the wider RPG scene feels alive. Designers are experimenting. Small teams are taking risks. Books feel focused and confident. They feel like they are trying to make great games, not press releases disguised as rulebooks. If 6th edition is coming, it should study that energy very carefully.

The biggest shift I want to see is a return to trust.

Trust the audience.

Trust that players can separate fantasy from reality. Trust that they can handle complex themes without a warning label every other page. Trust that diversity at the table does not require constant commentary from the publisher. If you hire talented, diverse creators, their voices will naturally shape the game. You do not need to underline it in red ink on every spread.

Focus on design. Focus on writing that crackles with adventure. Focus on fantasy that feels dangerous, mythic, and larger than life. Dungeons and Dragons is not a public policy document. It is not a corporate confession booth. It is a game about impossible heroes standing against impossible odds.

Yes, the hobby has a past. Many of us were there. We remember the rough edges. The jokes that aged poorly. The blind spots. Acknowledging that and doing better is healthy. But doing better does not require swinging so far in the other direction that the game loses its teeth. Growth is not the same thing as overcorrection.

Look at what Kelsey Dionne accomplished with Shadowdark. The inclusivity exists because she exists. It is part of the creative DNA of the project. It does not need a spotlight or a speech. It simply sits alongside tight mechanics and a clear love of dungeon crawling.

That is the model.

The best way to be inclusive is not to sand down every sharp corner. It is to welcome everyone to the table and then give them something awesome to play. Let the diversity of creators and players shape the culture organically. Corporations are in the business of making products. That is fine. Just make a great one. If you give players a compelling reason to buy your book, they will.

Above all, trust your audience.

We do not need moral instruction in every chapter. We do not need dragons reframed as misunderstood metaphors for modern anxieties. We need perilous ruins. We need villains worth hating. We need magic that feels powerful and a little dangerous. We need victories that feel earned.

We need dungeons.

And dragons.