Too much Text in RPGs vs. Not Enough Text

 In 2026 I finally realized that the tabletop RPG market appears to be heavily weighted in two directions: those games of enormous page count, laden with a density of information; and on the other side of this curve is a veritable mountain of tiny, often zine-shaped games filled with what can only be described as a strangely minimalist approach to content. 

I feel like there's probably a line to be drawn from how RPGs used to be, and how for many people the barrier of entry was finding the time and energy to read hundreds of pages of material to get familiar with a game or setting to run it, and today, where you have games like Mork Borg where 90% of the game experience is interpreting the surreal art and parsing out tiny nuggets of rule or setting data. 

The interesting question is maybe not whether minimalist game systems are a response to the older style of dense, text- heavy games, but rather: is the market for more "information lite" game systems and text actually a sign of changing times? Even dense tomes like the newest 5.5 edition of D&D are actually rather information light; these books use less of the page with a bigger font to convey less information per page; just look at the D&D 2014 race write-ups to the 2024 ancestries for a fine example. Or take the 2014 DMG, which is packed with stuff (both to its betterment and its failure) compared to the briefer and lighter 2024 DMG. 

There are plenty of games where word density and system or setting depth is important; just witness Pathfinder 2E for proof this is still a thing. Cyberpunk Red, Shadowrun 6th, Coriolis, Call of cthulhu, Mythras, etc....there are plenty of these sorts of games, the "old guard" if you will out there and in circulation.

But then we have some games where the line is crossed: Shadowdark is what got me thinking about this notion in the first place. I mean, Shadowdark is a minimalist spectacle where you get the Big Fat Rulebook experience with a torrent of supplemental material, but the actual result is a shockingly low word count, a system that appears to be allergic to exposition or setting depth, and a paucity of rules content that borders on a sort of weird art. 

I was going to argue that Old-School Essentials is more of a middle ground here, given it is a precise retelling of the original B/X D&D system, and it really is....but all that demonstrates is that the idea of "rules with lite content in presentation" was also a thing in the early eighties. Indeed, one need only remember the myriad titles of Fantasy Games Unlimited to remember that this is actually a very old concept. So if oneis trying to ascribe the current wave of minimalist RPGs exclusively to short attention spans of modern crowds, I think that is probably not true, because we had plenty of games like this back in the day. What is true now is that the density of informtion in current rulesets is even skimpier and more graphically dependent than the many old FGU games ever were, though.

On the other hand OSE is a great example of how even a famously simple ruleset that has been presented in a somewhat minimalist fashion (B/X D&D editions) later evolves into something much more dense and complex (D&D Rules Cyclopedia). Indeed, for fun just read through the original Basic Set (Otus edition) D&D book, then contrast it with the OSE book (which is probably of the same word count, but manages to organize the information much more efficiently) then contrast the two with the much more elaborate and denser combat rules section of the Rules Cyclopedia. Same game....but just now with more density and more use cases being documented. 

Lately I have been a bit torn about the fact that I definitely fall in to a more old school camp when it comes to how I like my rulesets, dense and thick with too much information, vs. the fact that a game like OSE is so wonderful in its concise get-to-the-point approach of design, and then Shadowdark, which I love because it is designed to reduce complexity that could get in the way of jumping right to the part where you play the game, but perhaps at the expense of making its rules tomes and supplements anything more than utilitarian outlines that feel like a Cliff's Notes edition of D&D. 

This means that....if you are still in a corner of the hobby where part of the experience is reading and figuring out these rulebooks and their systems, then a game like Shadowdark really doesn't offer much to you.

Ah well....I guess while I mull that conundrum over I shall just resume reading the latest batch of Mythras books I just got (a Fioraccita supplement, Mythic Venice, and several third party modules I found on drivethru that I finally took the plunge on). Mythras is unquestionably in the old school camp of "there is no such thing as too much information." 

Or maybe I will read through some of my Mothership books....despite being definitely part of the zine scene where the "rules lite, informtion lite" era of gaming has been flourishing lately, a nontrivial number of Mothership books are actually super information dense (albeit for scenario and setting content), but in a tricky way where it disguises this density through the medium of contemporary short-form module design. 

I guess the one thing I can say for sure is: there's definitely something for almost everyone out there!

Evaluating a Game by it's Third Party Output

 A short post today....because better to post a bit than not at all! While digging through stuff to keep my sanity amidst the long and arduous work days I noticed that my current OSR/Indie darlings....Old-School Essentials and Shadowdark, to be specific, have a metric ton of output from third party publishers online. Shadowdark is measurably immense in the volume of content out there, and just browsing Drivethrurpg.com led me down a rabbit hole and I suddenly have like twelve new books ordered and on the way. OSE is not much different, either.....it's slightly obfuscated by having an identity that is shared with B/X D&D and all the other retroclones it is in direct competition with, but it also has a serious volume of output from the 3PP corner of this hobby.

BRP, to contrast, gets a modicum of love from some very obscure angles in the 3PP space, most of which is actually dominated by the Miskatonic imprint for 3PP from Chaosium and almost all of that is for Call of Cthulhu and not BRP. 

I have a working theory that the more energetic a support base a game has is dependent on just how easy it is for the fans and interested authors/artists to 1: generate content with the rules in question; 2: get that into a presentable PDF/POD form; and 3: the extent to which those 3PP feel that they retain creative control in this process. So the less creative control a 3PP feels they have, the less likely you are to see a high volume of support. There's a 4th factor at work here, too: if a game has enough of a following it will generate 3PP output, regardess of the other factors. This may explain why Pathfinder 2E has a modest but noticeable amount of third party content, but only from those who love the game enough to write for it and also don't mind the vagaries of the ORC license, which I have heard some differing opinions on. Meanwhile the third party output for 5E remains sky high; but the latter is probably driven by creators who also like making money and know that, even today with 5.5E as fractured as it seems, it is still the top dog in town and will sell the most product. 

Anyway.....just some thoughts. Now I must continue to peruse the dozen or so new Shadowdark books (and a few more OSE books) I snagged. 

Permissive vs. Restrictive Design (Or: game systems that let you color inside vs. outside of the box)

 A recent observation on one of my Starfinder/Pathfinder game nights was that some of my gang of players really dig the Pathfinder (and Starfinder) system and relish finding synergies and feat/skill/spell combos and stuff to make for more interesting or effective characters. It's not quite the wild west of the old 3rd edition days where build design and min/maxing was the subgame everyone was so busy playing that actual gameplay was like an afterthought, but it can be noticeably more convoluted and rules-bound than some less restrained systems.

To contrast, Cypher System, and old favorite of mine, is effectively about providing a loose mechanical set of rules that can apply broadly to most situations, and the specifics of how a thing works or what that looks like in play is narratively under the control of the players. 

Then there's D&D 5E which holds a middle ground between the ultra-permissive Cypher System and the ultra-conformist Pathfinder; you have a lot of rules on specific mechanical effects and actions, but within those limits you can generally find some descriptive wiggle room, and its skill system is almost entirely free-form, with lots of area for narrative interpretation. 

What I am realizing is that half my group likes the more creative and expressive RPGs, ones which don't require elaborate system mastery and reward creative expression in play, vs. the other half of the group which loves finding mechanical bits to work together and deploying them within the carefully defined scope of the rules. 

For myself, I prefer the more open ended rulesets, I realize; I do love me some Pathfinder, but only until the harsh realities of the system mastery requirements butt up against the fun and narrative flow; Pathfinder is one of a growing set of games that actually provide defined narrative flow rules (encounter vs. downtime rules and such where you are allowed specific types of actions depending on what mode you are in), while other games such as Cypher System will let the group define such constraints as coincide with the needs of the story, or at least don't encourage restricting the story for the sake of a mechanical contrivance where possible. 

This is not to suggest that a system like Cypher is freeform; it's got rules. But those rules are in service to the plot, and flex within it. It's one of the key reasons Cypher System is so good as a multigenre and weird adventures system; it's mechanics are designed to encourage and exploit creative play. Pathfinder, by contrast, only allows creative freedom when a rules lawyer isn't looking....or put another way, it only  allows for more freeform gameplay when someone breaks the rules.

This has got me to looking at the game systems I have in these terms. Which ones will allow for more creativity and fun within their designs? Which ones want to do that but their mechanical stucture is too weak to allow for it? Which ones are mechanically oppressive and are only fun if you are looking to, as the title says, color within the box?

I know where I put Cypher System: square in Camp Creative, with a rules system designed to encourage and support that creativity. There's the intermediary levels, such as as a game where its rules are loose and freeform, but maybe its not so great at encouraging creativity; I might consider a game like Advanced Fighting Fantasy to fall into that category. There's also a hybrid category, where I think D&D 5E fits: it has "in the box" restrictions on some mechanical elements and then is freeform in other areas such as the skill system. And finally we have the endgame of mechanical rigor: Pathfinder being the aforementioned poster child, but other systems exist out there that fall into this bucket as well, such as the Battletech RPG, Traveller and maybe even Cyberpunk Red.  

More to come!

Old-School Essentials vs. Shadowdark - Battle of the Retro OSR Giants???

 As I assembled all of the many half-size tomes I have on the shelf, realizing I had bought a disproportionate number of books (and booklets, and brochures, etc.) for a few games in particular (Mothership, OSE, Shadowdark, Mork Borg and to a lesser extent Liminal Horror), I started comparing the crop of Shadowdark books to the Old-School Essentials tomes. I've run a couple campaigns or multi-session adventures with both systems, though not as yet been able to commit to picking one of them for a long-haul. In many ways these two games are extremely similar, at least in terms of their overall goals, but in other ways they are surprisingly different. Here's a few of the more interesting differences I noticed, with the caveat that I won't talk specific rules too much, because both systems are mechanically quite different. Anyway:

Design Goals:

OSE: it's goal is to create a retroclone emulator for Basic/Expert D&D and the Advanced version gives you the tools to bolt on an AD&D style experience. It's not restricting itself exclusively to true emulation, though it does so surprisingly well, and expansions and 3PP content offer a really diverse array of interpretations of fantasy powered by OSE (Planar Compass, Kalinga Plateau, The Painted Wastelands and Dolmenwood being the four I am most familiar with). A lot of weird settings get the OSE treatment, though other weird settings seem to gravitate more toward the Into the Odd mechanics. I think it depends on the depth to which the designers of a setting want to plumb the rules; Into the Odd seems to be the preferred choice for player groups that are extremely shy of mechanical depth, while OSE ends up attracting a broader range of interest for those who want an old school mechanical feel, but are inspired by weird art, themes and interpretations of fantasy that may have been popular in their style but were too "out there" for D&D's early era shepherds (TSR).

Shadowdark: It looks to me like Shadowdark's core intent, which was to provide numeric compatibility with older editions of D&D as well as D&D 5E resources, ended up really being about creating a tightly defined set of rules for a very specific style of play: dungeon crawling, completely unapologetic, with all of the traditional bells and whistles, or at least those as perceived through the lens of a new age of gamers who love the notion of what D&D was without having actually been there. Most of the Shadowdark players I know aren't picking it up because they want a reasonable facsimile of original D&D or B/X D&D, but rather they want a D&D 5E experience without all the clutter. For this reason Shadowdark has a lot of interesting but weird little rules that are designed to streamline the experience, but also trip up older gamers or those used to early D&D (such as the way leveling works, or the way magic works) and don't in actual play feel very old school. Shadowdark is to OSR what a modern computer game that touts its amazing pixels s being Playstation One era style graphics (while being totally better looking than the actual original PS1 games of its time) are like....simulacra.

Winner: OSE wins by a slim margin, because it really is closely backward compatible and very customizable within a time-tested framework of rules. But Shadowdark is its own special beast, and if you think of it as being like the RPG equivalent of Hero Quest, its role makes more sense.

Rules Presentation:

OSE: OSE's core strength is that it's the most pragmatic, no-nonsense presentation of a OSR ruleset I have ever seen. There is no authorial intrusion, there is no empty chit-chat, there is precisely as much flavor text as is necessary, no more and no less. It's incredibly clear and well-organized (across all its rulebook iterations), and finding what you need is a breeze. So Necrotic Gnome's core presentation was to make OSE very, very user friendly. This is a huge plus as I see it; when I pick up this book and browse through it, I find myself urgently interested in playing it, which is something a lot of RPGs out there fail to accomplish. 

Likewise, adventure design for OSE is concise, driven by necessary information only, and laid out in a clean and to-the-point format designed to make GM prep smooth and easy. OSE has borrowed heavily from the indie zinerpg scene to manifest a module design approach which works incredibly well, and I feel like even Wizards of the Coast has noticed this and tried some half-baked attempts to emulate this with recent books (such as Forgotten Realms) recently.

Shadowdark: Shadowdark seems interested in brevity almost to a fault. Many rules are explained with the barest possible amount of information, often leaving the players and GM to parse out the implied results of what are in general basic rulings. This work against it at times if you are reading it from the perspective of one familiar with older D&D editions or the OSR movement, as Shadowdark is a modern game in OSR clothing, which means you can't assume anything with it. Shadowdark's communication style is so brief that it can be bothersome to people who prefer a more comprehensive or detailed explanation of mechanics, and also requires at times a lot of GM adjudication due to the lack of guidance it provides. This contrasts with the OSE rulesets in that OSE usually conveys to you the exact amount of information you need, while Shadowdark conveys the minimum amount of information....an important but subtle difference. 

On the other hand, Shadowdark's module design is heavily influenced by the Indie zinerpg scene, as is OSE. As a result, the actual modules for Shadowark are often using identical approaches to conveying necessary information in modest bites, and this leads to a sense that you could easily use Shadowdark modules with OSE and vice versa, just swapping out stat blocks as needed. 

Winner: OSE again, because it's friendly organization and "just the right amount of detail" approach to information makes it incredibly functional as a table resource. Shadowdark's brevity and bare-minimum approach to explaining anything will work best when you really are preferring a lot of interpretive freedom, though. It's almost a tie as I see it, but for my own personal tastes: OSE hands down.

Graphical Design:

OSE: OSE's art is an homage to B/X D&D and AD&D of the 80's. It's got a vaguely fetishistic approach to reimagining Erol Otus inspired artwork, and often relies on artists like Peter Mullen to accomplish this. I like it's approach more than with Dungeon Crawl Classics, which does something similar but often leans into a Retro 70's Kitsch aesthetic of a time that only existed in the doodles on the back of your High School textbooks (or so I imagine, as I was 10 years old in 1981 so I am definitely a product of the 80's rather than the 70's, when I was a little kid).

That said, OSE leans on a lot of art styles across many tomes, and some of the best and weirdest art manages a style that feels to me like "Erol Otus, if he was responsible for Adventure Time." So it's got a wide range within its deliberate aesthetic.

Shadowdark: Shadowdark is heavily focused on white-on-black aesthetics and a art style that feels divorced from B/X D&D and firmly rooted in AD&D 1st edition. It's art style is surprisingly uniform, across even third party publishers, to the extent that I think out of a couple dozen Shadowdark books I have, only one or two even bother to use real color at all....I haven't seen the 3PP design guide, but maybe there's a style guide somewhere they have to follow.

The good news on this is that Shadowdark books all look like they are part of a set; you can tell a Shadowdark book just by looking at it most times. The even better news is that a surprising amount of this art is actually really cool and evocative. The downside is I have also noticed a disproportionate amount of AI generated art in third party Shadowdark books, sometimes bad enough that it impacts my desire to even consider using the book (as is the case with Gammadark, the post-apocalyptic hack of Shadowdark, where the AI art is basically just "We have Warhammer 40K At Home" armored troopers in every other image). Luckily (so far) this does not seem to be an issue for the core books coming out of Arcane Library, though. 

Winner: Tough call! I will say Shadowdark for its stark white on black design aesthetic and imagery that feels very, very old school to me while still being quality art, but OSE is also very good at this, so its almost a tie. The third party content is more disappointing with Shadowdark, however, as too much AI generated art detracts from the books that use it, whereas that does not seem to be a problem with OSE's third party content at all for some reason.

Actual Play:

OSE: So I ran a bit of OSE a while back, a fun little campaign that ran for several levels and took advantage of one of my own campaign settings, mixed with some published modules, including maps from Trilemma Adventures (one of the greatest dungeon map books ever next to Dyson's works). It ran smoothly, it felt very old school even with using lots of third party content to "upgrade" it to some modern conventions in terms of the fantasy options available, and it was very fun. I don't think it felt terribly like the actual experience of playing AD&D I had back in the day, mainly because the core B/X emulation at the heart of OSE is just not as complex as the actual AD&D experience as it once was, but we all did have fun. I recall some of my players, far too enmeshed in modern game design, actually sat out the campaign for the most part. My own experience as a GM was pretty satisfying, though, and the play experience was not marred by 30-45 minutes of rules lawyering and lookup as tends to happen Every. Single. Session. with pathfinder 2E. Fun enough that I am now thinking about running a new OSE campaign soon, this time using The Panted Wastelands campaign setting.   

Shadowdark: I ran a short campaign last year.....a lengthy dungeon crawl, really, also set in my oldest campaign world (Lingusia), but not really using too much of it. We had fun, it was an entertaining system and its interesting quirks (including deciphering the level/XP process, the way magic casting works, and the disparity of power creep between the core book and sourcebooks) wasn't overly bothersome. It felt like a game system that wanted to just be played and get all the micromanagement out of the way, unless it involves light sources. It clearly works best for very dungeon-delve heavy gaming, although some soucebooks try to expand on wilderness delving and a few even dare to entertain using it as a "full featured" RPG though never enough to make one feel like Shadowdark would be a proper substitute for long term campaigning. I know its a style and feel preference, and Shadowdark may just be a little too simplistic for my own tastes; I know of at least two groups locally that play this game all the time, and abandoned DCC for it. For me....I kinda like it, but only maybe enough to crib some content from it for use with OSE, which really is the nicer overall product. That said....if I didn't feel like diving deep into the OSR experience and just wanted a fast play dungeon crawler for a session or two with tons of randomization, Shadowdark is pretty well the best option out there. In a sense that puts it next to Mork Borg, a system which I love running in spurts but never for long term campaigns. 

Winner: I have to give it narrowly to OSE as I really enjoyed running a couple campaigns with it and want to do more. But I also enjoyed running Shadowdark, even though the system itself often felt janky a times....but both are eminently playable. Because I prefer slightly more granularity in my OSR experience though, and also prefer the broader compatibility of OSE, I will give it this prize for being more playable.

Conclusion:

So, overall, for what I need at least I find OSE simply works better as a more well-rounded D&D OSR experience. Shadowdark works well as a pickup and play game for a session or three, but for me at least lacks the depth I need to feel like it is more versatile. OSE is on the edge of what I consider "acceptable" for versatility, but it is lovely because its close compatibility with older editions of D&D means if I really wanted to I could just hack the proficiency system from AD&D 2E into it without any fuss or muss, stick to descending AC for flavor, and grab a copy of The Night Below or Queen of the Demon Web Pits and run it pretty much as-is. I'd need to do some hacks on these modules to get them to play nice with Shadowdark, by contrast. As for adding rules from older editions, I could do that with Shadowdark, too.....but with OSE it feels like that is an option I can take if I want and its intended to work, while with Shadowdark it feels like I'd be defeating the point of the system's deliberate brevity, and also would probably find it easier to weld the 5E skill system onto Shadowdark instead of the AD&D proficiency system and kits and such. 

So! I'll talk various products on these over the next few weeks or so, including Shadowdark....which does have a lot of good sourcebooks out. I may be looking at them from the angle of "How can I get this to play nice with OSE?" though, so there ya' go!

The Death Bat's 2025 Year in Review

2025 - Oh What a Long and Unpleasant Year

I have a confession to make, one which I think is a sentiment others might feel: when the world is going to hell in a handbasket, it can have a real impact on one's desire to enjoy simpler pleasures in life. Gaming, for example, requires a certain amount of personal time investment in both effort, thought and emotional commitment. It can be very hard to provide that level of commitment when Real World problems are sapping that time and energy away from you. So while this is not a blog where I write about all the other crap going on in the Real World, it is a blog where I try to focus exclusively on hobbies, interests and escapism...and this year was a challenging experience. I mean, I finally had to start assigning myself a quota on blog posts to force myself to write, because I could feel myself slipping away from these little entertainments in life. Hell, I got rid of my Saturday gaming night this year, because I simply didn't have enough energy left in me due to the interference of the Real World.

But luckily this is not a blog about the Real World, so lets talk about the noteworthy aspects of gaming in 2025:

Deathbat's Game of the Year for 2025: Starfinder 2E

Who knew....I really love this new edition of the game, and it is 100% compatibility with Pathfinder 2E. The new design and focus makes it a much easier and more accessible experience, and a real pleasure to GM. I am looking forward to running this one more than any other game (except maybe 13th Age 2E) in 2026.

The RPG I Played the Most in 2025: Pathfinder 2E

Close runner up is Mothership, followed by Tales of the Valiant and then there was that D&D 5.24 campaign I ran to give it a fair shake. 

Best New Sourcebooks in 2025: BRP Creatures, Monster Core 2 and Monster Vault 2

A three-way tie! Both Pathfinder's Monster Core 2 and Tales of the Valiant's Monster Vault 2 came out this year, and not a moment too soon. I love the updated stuff in the Monster Core 2, and I really love the Monster Vault 2, which is entirely new stuff, something I didn't think was possible given how many monster books Kobold Press has already come out with. Meanwhile there is the BRP Creatures book, which provides at long last a decade's long "most wanted" book for Basic Roleplaying, now providing enough content that a person could effectively replace their D&D life with BRP if they wanted to.

Best RPG I Didn't Get a Chance to Play in 2025: 13th Age 2nd Edition

I have only been able to read the PDFs, still waiting for physical books, but I am very much loving this mildly revamped new edition of one of my favorite D&D iterations, and it could not have come a moment too soon....I predict I will run a lot of 13th Age in 2026.

2025 PC Game of the Year: Deadzone Rogue

Look, there's not a lot to Deadzone Rogue, it's a FPS game about a dude on a derelict spaceship who has to solve the mystery of what's going on by shooting a million rogue robots and mutants. Every time he dies a computer recreates him and he starts over, but luckily carries his experience forward. It runs like a charm on every handheld I own which means its an essential game for my travel kit.

2025 PC Game I Played the Most: Tom Clancy's Division 2

Per my Steam metrics it turns out I have played this game a ton every single month. I did an entire second playthrough this year, in fact, and am working on the DLC expansions that came out. I like it, and similar to Deadzone Rogue it runs on all my handhelds like a charm (fair disclosure: I have not tried running it on the Xbox Rog Ally base model, but I may try it just to see; its surprising how well this device works with games, actually).

2025 Best Game I Played This Year That Was Not New: Little Nightmares I and II

Yeah, I tried them out on a lark and ended up loving them. Finally about to start the newest one. I understand purists don't like the new one as much since it not a continuation of I and II, but let's be honest, by the end of I (which II is a prequel to) left your little raincoat-clad survivor as Death Incarnate, so I am not sure where they'd have gone with an ending like that.... 

2025: The Year of the Next Generation of Handheld PCs

This year we got the Lenovo Legion Go S, the Xbox-themed Asus Rog Xbox Ally series, the Lenovo Legion Go 2, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and also I understand that all the usual suspects still pump out very nice high end (and high priced) handhelds, such as OneXplayer. Both of my Steam Decks suffered catastrophic failures this year, one of which was clearly a hard drive failure, and for my OLED model I am still trying to figure out what happened if it is recoverable. This motivated me to find replacements. First I sold my old Asus Rog Ally original model, then sold my Legion Go original model, which went to a good home. Then I snagged a SteamOS edition Lenovo Legion Go S with the Z1 Extreme chip, bought my wife an Asus ROG Ally X, and then as the year closed out I managed to get in succession (yes, I have a problem) a MSI Claw 8 AI+, Xbox Rog Ally base model, and a Lenovo Legion Go 2. After the Legion Go 2 I decided I was done for now; there was no purpose to getting the Xbox Rog Ally X model which was inferior to both the MSI Claw and the LeGo 2 (as the fans call it).

Oh yeah, and the family upgraded to the Switch 2 when it came out. My son uses it exclusively as a Pokemon device, but my wife plays a lot on it. I continue to enjoy Switch 2, even though I am not really a good Nintendo guy, but I concede....I really love the new Kirby games that came out on it. 

This may sound excessive....and it is. I could have stopped with the Legion Go S which does everything I want, but I really enjoy messing around with this handheld tech, and I know it goes back to my youth when I would dream about the idea that one day this level of gaming fidelity in a handheld model could ever exist. Seriously, I was thinking about how cool handheld devices were when I was ten or eleven years old, and I have owned pretty much every handheld device for gaming that ever came out in the following decades. It's an illness, I know.

I'll probably be writing more about my experiences with this new generation if Intel 7 and Z2 Extreme powered chips in January. 

2025: The Year of the Walled Tabletop Gaming Garden and the Collapse of D&D 5.24 as the One Game to Rule Them All

   This year really saw the division rise between gamers who play D&D 5E, and those who play D&D 5.24, Tales of the Valiant, Daggerheart, Pathfinder 2E, or "insert here." The end result of the WotC OGL kerfuffle from two years back has born much fruit, but gaming now feels a bit corralled. Of these different options I feel like Paizo is working hardest to keep their corner of the market, as if Kobold Press, while D&D 5.24 moves forward on the momentum of a fanbase that is divided in a way I haven't really seen since the 4E days, albeit with less vitriol....probably because 5.24 didn't really change enough to merit anger, but what it did change just feels pointless, unfun or stupid. The number of times I have read an argument about why 5.24's method of "all humanoids are represented by a generic set of NPC stat blocks" is just fine, actually, and the system doesn't have any depth in stat blocks so there is totally no difference between a thug or scout and an orc warrior or lizardfolk is totally normal; the argument for the fans is literally, "The game isn't deep enough, get over it." Meanwhile, an even slightly more thoughtful design on the game could have simply included the customization by species rules from the original 5E DMG and it would have solved everyone's problem here, even mine. Unfortunately almost all of the changes in 5.24 ultimately feel like this: poorly thought out, solving a nonexistent problem, or tackling the problem (if there was one) poorly. I suspect 2026 will see D&D collapse further, and I hope the Daggerheart guys, Paizo and Kobold Press are there to scoop more players up.

2025: If Tabletop was a Hot Mess, Computer Gaming was a Dumpster Fire

From Games as a Service models collapsing to Microsoft publicly trying to murder the Xbox Console in favor of their Game Pass subscription model, to developers taking flack for using AI tools in their development, while other developers use AI generated voices to replace voice actors, its just a hot mess. To be clear: AI (or rather, the programs such as LLMs which are coming out of generative designs) as a tool for programmers to use makes sense to me. But the thing that freaks people out the most is when it looks like AI is used to replace human creativity; because the only people who don't seem to recognize slop for what it is appear to be Big Tech. (EDIT: That's not fair to Big Tech, they know exactly what they are doing, which is theft; it's the tech bros who will argue that slop is fine actually and not theft.)

On top of all this, the rapid development of AI Data Centers are causing RAM shortages and price spikes, and making the prospect of affordable computers in 2026 look dim. Just in the last two months you can see prices spike, and I'm actually really happy I managed to both upgrade my own personal tech and do a ton of hardware upgrades at my place of business earlier in the year, before the prices went out of control. You can find cheap laptops and desktops now, sure, but those machines have specs that were embarrassing in 2019, let alone now. 

2025: Was a Year of All Time

It sure was. I'd like to think things will be better for 2026.....but yeah, I don't think it's going that way. I think 2026 will unfortunately be the year that makes us look back on 2025 and go "Wow, remember when all the stuff we were dealing with in 2025 was just silly stuff like dumb game issues, short sighted and malicious Big Tech decisions driven by accelerationist philosophies, corporate greed and cowardice, life in a kleptocracy and a never ending river of AI slop? Yeah those were great times."

The Seventh GM Inspiration: Six of the most useful Randomized Encounter Table Books

The Seventh GM Inspiration: Random Encounter Resources

I thought a bit about how to discuss this, because I have an opinion that sometimes a book or site full of randomized tables can end up being paralyzing to GM inspiration and design, and other times it can be a valuable tool to breaking GM writer's block. Often, whether a chart is useful in the design of a scenario or during actual play can be crucial to its overall value. To that end, I thought I'd group these together and point out a series of randomized table resources I have found to be the most useful. I will note their utility for random generation on the fly (at the game table) and second their utility for background design and inspiration between sessions.

First off...I already addressed this book specifically earlier in the Inspiration series for December, but I will point again to Runequest Cities as an invaluable resource for random encounters and city design. It is equally useful for generating encounters during play and also sculpting out material between sessions. I will not count this one in the following list, but if I had to, I'd rank it #1 of 7. It's only downside: long out of print.

#6. D20 Toolbox 

This harkens back to the 3.0 D20 era of gaming, but the D20 Toolbox (once published by Alderac, now apparently available online through World's Largest RPGs on drivethrurpg.com) was an excellent quick idea generation resource and full of at-the-table encounter generation tables. It had equal utility in both situations and before I retired my copy I got a lot of use out of it in my 3.0 and 3.5 D&D days.

#5. Ultimate Toolbox

After D&D 3.5 came out Alderac released a successor to the D20 Toolbox that I also quite liked, and it contained useful entries for rolling up deep character backtrounds and NPCs, expanding on all ways on what its predecessor did. I found the book, which was written to be roughly system agnostic even though it was still mainly a D20/3.5 styled product, to be mostly useful in setting up scenarios and characters, and less useful for on-the-fly encounters, but it was a great book.

#4. The Book of Random Tables: Ancient World

This is a more recent acquisition, and a fun resource mainly for background development but you can readily roll for things like quick names, ingredients, items found in a market or a room and such on the fly. It's utility is restricted to archaic era gaming, which is to say, games set in a Romanesque or pre Roman era or something approximating such (so for my settings I used it in The River Kingdoms of Anansis and Oman'Hakat), so its utility is rather specific, but its well worth it within that subgenre.

#3. Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide

This is a copious tome full of good GM advice but the back of it contains some of the most useful monster encounter tables I have found in a GM Guide. Excellent resource for on-the-fly encounter generation, and could also be used to randomly plan out encounters. Specific to 5E style games, but within that scope it beats out all of the encounter tables I've ever seen WotC generate for regular 5E.

#2. Mork Borg 

The entirety of Mork Borg is more or less a system designed to encourage out-of-the-box, on-the-fly gaming with a high degree of randomization, so the system deserves special mention. In particular, the core rules, plus supplements Cult Feretory and Cult Heretic encompass a trifecta of dark and macabre end-times gaming goodness in a world that resembles a flaming heavy metal record chucked on an 80's record burning bonfire. Of special note is the random dungeon generator in the back of Mork Borg, which so far is how I have done all my Mork Borg one shots. The system is geared for and works best in my opinion on the fly; if you take too much time to design a scenario in Mork Borg you are likely to overthink it, which often happens in some of the copious volume of third party resources out there that sometimes hit the mark and other times completely miss the point of this system.

#1.  GM Gems

Published by Goodman Games, I believe this book has now been reinvented in a larger format for Dungeon Crawl Classics, but I have long used the original one which was allegedly system neutral but was clearly meant to be for D20 D&D/Pathfinder 3rd edition style sytems. This has long been my #2 go-to resource for quick idea and encounter generation in a pinch, and the book includes some pretty elaborate encounter tables for things such as inns and taverns, weird people you might meet and all sorts of oddities not often covered by other random table books. It's only failure is that over time there could be diminishing returns as you gradually use up all the neat stuff in this book from over-use. Equally useful for on-the-fly encounter generation and idea building between sessions, and when I go to a game I have GM Gems sandwiched in with my copy of Runequest Cities and "Random Ancient Tables" for quick use.

This column is a bit of a bonus before the holidays: I could easily have made GM Inspiration columns for each of the six resources I list above. But thematically I felt a discussion of these books as a collective works well together. Besides! I have some other more specific books I want to talk about for Inspirations 8 through 12 coming up.

The Sixth GM Inspiration: 0one Games

 

The Sixth GM Inspiration: 0one Games

This is yet another inspiration I use a lot, but in talking about it it ends up being a free plug for a great product. Specifically, I have been leaning on the incredibly wealth of interesting old school styled maps from Mario Barbati's 0one Games on Drivethrurpg.com (link above), over the many many years I've been gaming. These maps are, similar to Dyson's, filled with stylistic old school sentiment, but that doesn't make them any less useful to a modern gamer. In fact while Dyson's maps are great for short scenarios or 2-3 night sessions, if you want some serious dungeon delving and don't want to do your own cartography then 0one Games can provide some serious weight to your needs. 

All of the maps they produce are either in a white-on-blue or white-on-black format that is a familiar look to gamers from the 80's, and TSR modules in particular. Most include areas to take notes, and maybe some brief titles to engender the imagination, but just as many are more like well-executed maps with nothing more than evocative or suggestive title to go by. The net result is that you can take the Palace of the Vampire Queen, the Megacity Underdungeons, Mysterious Island, Pirate's Galleon or pretty much any of their hundreds of available maps and make them your own. Although they are all available for purchase and therefore are not a free resource, you can get some pretty decent maps for as low as $2 and the larger packages are often quite worth it. I have purchased a lot of 0one's maps over the years and gotten mileage out of them through three editions of D&D and two editions of Pathfinder now. 

It's a bit old (dating back to 2016) but the Blue Book is a free download showcasing a lot of the maps here, so it may help you decide if a few purchases are worth your time. Check it out!

It does look like 0one Games is still going strong, too. New products are out that I realize I haven't seen before, including Rooms with Flavor which I will now be checking out. Anyway, definitely take a look....for the lazy or time-strapped GM 0one Games is a valuable resource.

The Fourth GM Inspiration: Dyson Logos

 

The Fourth GM Inspiration: Dyson Logos

Dyson's Dodecahedron

Dyson's Delves

If I am going to use the 12 Days of Inspiration to highlight all of my favorite GM resources, I would be completely remiss if I did not bring up Dyson Logos's blog and books. I have gotten more mileage out of Dyson's postings on his site and used almost all the content of his Dyson's Delves books on Lulu in my campaigns over the last dozen or so years. Seriously! His cartography is incredible, providing evocative maps that don't always come with a keyed scenario, but contain enough conceptual imagery and "spatial evidence" of adventure to readily spark the imagination. His Delves books include many maps but also many keyed locations which I have adapted into scenarios in my own campaigns on numerous occasions. In fact my current Pathfinder 2E campaign is on map three of three of Dyson's maps I adapted to manage the first 6 or so levels of the campaign plot. Hell, while writing this I noticed he has hardcover editions of his Delves books which I decided I must have and ordered them (my old paperbacks are really falling apart).

There are a lot of maps you can find and develop online into your own games, but Dyson's maps are far and away the best in terms of being universally applicable to any fantasy RPG while still evoking a fantastic old school feel. I am sure most of you who still enjoy the print bloggosphere for RPGs already know who Dyson is, but on the off chance you haven't, and you enjoy customizing generic maps into your own scenarios, then you definitely should check out his blog and books at the links above.

The First GM Inspiration: Good Music - Showcasing Castle Rat

 

The First GM Inspiration: Good Music - Featuring Castle Rat

Any good GM will find that you want to have a decent environment in which to sit down and work out a good scenario or two, or develop a decent campaign. Sure you probably want some decent desk space, a laptop or notebooks, graph paper, rules handy in whatever medium you prefer (PDF, print, whatever)....but when you've got all that down, and some quiet time to focus, music may also prove truly inspirational. Music, if you can bring it to the game table, can also be very mood setting if done right. 

To that end, I want to draw your attention to Castle Rat, a dark downtempo heavy metal music band founded by singer Riley Pinkerton, which has two albums out now that provide incredible backdrops to fantasy gaming, and sword & sorcery in particular. If you want to get right to seeing if this music works for you, check them out here on Bandcamp, featuring their two albums, Into The Realm and Bestiary. I have no particular favorite here, both are equally amazing productions. 

If you only listen to the music of Castle Rat then you are missing their amazing videos. The Castle Rat Youtube channel is worth putting on in the background while crafting as a GM; the retro aesthetic of their videos feels like an imaginative "re-envisioning" of what I think many D&Ders might have held in their minds as teens and kids back in the 70's and 80's when listening to music for gaming, as opposed to the reality, which was mostly mired in the presentations of low budget films in that period. The videos are great though, worth a watch to see the Rat Queen battle the Rat Reaperess and many other lovely scenarios played out in metal ballad form.

Dagger Dragger remains my favorite:

Anyway, check them out! 

Reinvigorated! Or maybe Reanimated?

 Well I am feeling less burnout this week! But also sometimes more burnout. I did a deep dive into various systems and found that I was definitely starting to sense a pattern in my interests. Here's what I realize now; noting that this isn't a unchanging constant; just what my tastes seem to be running to in the moment:

Verisimilitude Over Abstraction: I prefer somewhat more simulationist systems, which favor verisimilitude over "rule of cool" as a natural recourse. I liken this to the difference between a movie where our hero drops 10-15 feet and seems to take injury or has trouble getting up from such a fall, vs. other movies (Marvel films come to mind) where same hero seems able to drop 30-50 feet and is unphased, even without having super soldier serum to explain his massive invulnerability.

This means systems like BRP, GURPS, Mothership, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Cyberpunk Red and Dragonbane are standing out to me because they provide meaningful engagement levels with some sort of baseline "reality" but some other systems....even ones I like....aren't feeling too good to me at the moment because I am not presently "vibing" with the idea that the abstractions on the character sheet and in the system are really just numbers and have more to do with "did this look cool?" than anything else. That rules our D&D 5.5, Cypher System, Fantasy AGE, Tales of the Valiant, and no doubt others.

Pragmatic Character Info: I'm preferring systems which communicate clearly what you rcharacter is about, without a lot of rule-flipping and holistic interpretation. Pathfinder 2E is not a good example of this; it is laden with weird feats, obscure conditionals, and a balanced mechanical process which means skill sets are very "meh" in figuring out how your character looks different from another similar character. Contrast with BRP, which narrows the character generation to a set of common baselines defined by genre expectations for powers (if used), but in general you can look at a character sheet and understand what it means to run that PC without having to crack the book open constantly. 

The System Respects Theater of the Mind: lots of games these days lean in to the popular desire for maps and minis, and I get it; those can be fun (I suppose). But I have run RPGs for most of my life without such gimmicks, and the sorts of stories I want to convey through gaming these days (and most days) work better when the players aren't focused on the ancient wargame element that remains embedded in conventional takes such as D&D. Admittedly GURPS, as an example, supports elaborate hex-based movement and suggests this can be useful; I have played in GURPS games where the GM used this to effect, and I get it. But I have also run (and played) in countless GURPS games where it was all theater of the mind, and the experience was always more creative and superior. So systems which either implicitly or explicitly support TotM play are preferred.

No Authorial Overtones: I won't single anyone out, but if the system has a heavy authorial overtone which tries to tell you how to play, either explicitly or implicitly, that can be a real turnoff. The author does not trust you to play the game the right way for you, the end-user, and that is just not cool. I can be in 100% agreement with the game writer's viewpoint and this will still piss me off because it is an attempt by the author to control the narrative on the end user experience.* 

There are quite a few RPGs on the market today that like to talk about how their source of inspiration was, shall we say, a racist person in his time, and then denigrate his works, even as they then proceed to write an entire system around said works, implying there was still merit to the man's creations, enough for them to exploit for money. Hypocrisy! It makes it very hard to take such works seriously. Either you acknowledge that you are, indeed, inspired by the creative works of said author which means you feel his imaginative developments have merit and inspiration beyond the unpleasant bits you did not like (okay, yeah, I'm talking about Lovecraft here) and will expand upon his vision despite your dislike of his century-old racist attitude, or you maybe should decide that its ethically better for you to go write a different game and leave well enough alone. I'm looking at you, Age of Cthulhu and Arkham Horror. 

Sometimes it feels like these games were written by authors fearful that their audience would get mad at them for not appearing cognizant of these perceived injustices or social issues. The best head-scratching example I can provide is in Liminal Horror, which has a paragraph about how its not cool to play cops, authority figures or people with wealth or means. This, of course, is actual nonsense; part of the point of RPGs is the ability to explore roles beyond most people's grasps....and horror as a medium is excellent at skewering all sorts of professionals and the wealthy with equal aplomb; its not merely the purview of the poor and downtrodden to be murdered by eldritch cults. But if you were writing this game a few years ago when there was a strong push on social media to "strike back at the man" or you are a younger author (spiritually or physically) enmeshed in antiauthoritarian counter cultural values, then this might feel like a sensible paragraph to put in, no matter how utterly stupid and counterfactual to the actual genre of horror it is. 

Important: despite this minor rant, I really like Liminal Horror as a mini-system; it occupies a unique concept space and I look forward to the Kickstarter backed future edition coming out soon. Also, I find that entire rant ironic given that the best module produced for Liminal Horror so far, the Bureau, is entirely about a fictional authority organization inspired by the Bureau of Control from the eponymous video game. So one of the system's first modules directly contradicts this angry little countercultural paragraph that demonstrates a woeful lack of imagination and genre understanding right off the bat. 

Okay, rant off! Tonight I plan to close out the D&D 5.5 game, and am proposing we tackle Dragonbane or Mothership next (because that's what I packed for).

*Note that I am not talking about games which have advice on "know your audience," sections, or talk about the use of the X card. Those are just practical advice (don't run a game for 9 year olds with Kult, m'kay? or if you are running for a diverse crowd of Gen Z players, an X card may be quite revealing if you are not good at reading a crowd as a GM). Admittedly, if a game tells me to "remove the spiders if a player is offended" my internal advice is: don't run a game with spiders for someone who is scared of imaginary spiders, you know? Maybe find different players?

As the Werewolf Changes

 During last night's game I was surprised to notice that Jackalweres no longer have a problem with silver in the 2025 Monster Manual. So in checking out the other lycanthropes I discovered that hey, it turns out in D&D 5.5 you can harm werewolves with anything, normally, now. They get a few extra HP and a slight AC boost but lose all the mythological flavor of the thing they used to be.

This got me to thinking about how they looked in other systems, so I thought I'd plunge down that rabbit hole a bit to see:

AD&D 1E/2E: Can only be harmed by silver or +1 weapons. So at this stage in the game, low level PCs who have trouble finding magic weapons really need to carry a silvered weapon with them just in case.... In rereading their entries I assume they transform as an action but maybe it was as part of their movement. I seem to recall running AD&D where they could move, transform and attack all in the same combat round, which makes sense in the longer 1E turn cycles.

D&D 3.5: Gain damage reduction 10/silver but only in hybrid and wolf form, interestingly! Shapeshift is an action. Looking at the old format for D&D 3.5 stat blocks on monsters reminded me of how convoluted and information dense they were; how interesting to see that the 2025 MM swung so far to the opposite direction that the current stat blocks feel anemic and drained of all color and flavor.

Pathfinder 1E: Have resistance 10 to all attacks except silvered weapons! Change shape is a move equivalent action, and they induce lycanthropy on a failed saving roll following a bite.

Pathfinder 2E: They have shapeshift as an action, and are vulnerable 5 to silvered weapons. Lycanthropy is induced on a failed save.

D&D 4E: they have regeneration 5, but silver stops their regeneration. They shapshift as a minor action, and they do extra damage against bloodied opponents. Instead of imparting lycnathropy as a disease they induce moon frenzy, which behaves a bit like the confusion spell (but does not end with the inflicted turning into a lycanthrope, interestingly). Diseases and curses in 4E were notoriously weak and ineffectual.

D&D 5E (2014): resistant to nonmagical or silvered weapons, but shapeshift as a standard action. Still have some flavor text that leans into making werewolves interesting in a traditional way. If bitten, on a failed save you just have lycanthropy now.

D&D 2024 (5.5): They gain 13 hit points and get a better AC, but lose any special resistance to ordinary damage, and silver is not even mentioned. They can shapeshift as a bonus action. Lycanthropy if bitten, but you have to reach zero hit points for it to take effect.

Tales of the Valiant: Werewolves are resistant to non-magical damage (silver is not mentioned here either). They induce lycanthropy as a curse after biting someone who fails a save.  

How about some of the other games out there? Let's see:

Swords & Wizardry Complete: mirrors AD&D 1E; so they can probably shapeshift as part of their turn, and are immune to nonmagical, non silvered attacks. Lycanthropy is automatic in an opponent reduced to 50% of their hit points by the werewolf.

Dragonbane: Werewolves hate silver as it deals full damage (along with fire) and messes with their senses. They take half damage from non-magical weapons. taking even 1 point of damage from the werewolf induces both paralysis (potency 9) and lycanthropy, and can only be cured with powerful magic or wolvesbane. And on its monster attacks a 6 induces a berserker frenzy in which your party probably dies!

Basic Roleplaying/Call of Cthulhu: They have regeneration, are immune to most damage (silvered weapons will do full damage and kill them on a serious wound, though), and taking any damage from a bite induces lycanthropy, which can maybe be avoided on a luck role if the bite also severs the limb that was bitten. Nice! The BRP statblock addresses magic and fire doing full damage as well.

Cypher System: they are level 4 creatures, which normally would mean 12 health but they have 24 health. They can cause lycanthropy if you are sufficiently injured to be reduced on the damage track. They take a long time (1D6 rounds) to shapeshift if caught in the act.

Dungeon Fantasy RPG (GURPS): These things are terrifying with damage resistance 15 against all attacks except silver (which does double damage and ignores the DR), and they regenerate 1 HP per second (GURPS combat rounds are 1 second long, so for D&D purposes that's 6 HPs of regeneration for a D&D round). Interestingly Dungeon Fantasy punts on the lycanthropy as a bite-induced curse with some flavor text about how the local temples try to keep that under control, and the rest of the statblock ignores it. GURPS Werewolves from the 3rd edition sourcebook of course does a lot more that I won't belabor here.

Fantasy AGE: They show up in the Bestiary sourcebook, and can induce the lycanthropy curse on a stunt, with the difficulty being based on how many stunt points are applied. The inflicted makes checks each night until the full moon; if they don't kick it before the full moon they go full lycanthrope. There's a section on lycanthrope vulnerabilities, but silver is mentioned as only one possibility, with the GM encouraged to customize for the campaign.

Mythras: Mythras punts on this one terribly and you need to go dig in the wolf section to get a sense of it. Ostensibly they are emulating older, more archaic notions of shapeshifters rather than more modern takes on lycanthropy, I guess? 

Mork Borg: It's actually a character class, the Cursed Skinwalker (in Feretory). You die, and your body is possessed by an animalistic presence, returning you to life as a cursed skinwalker. a bloody, skinless wolf is only one of your options. Tangentially werewolfish, but it wouldn't be Mork Borg if it was conventional now, would it? 

Okay, it was at this point that I ran out of energy (I was looking at The Fantasy Trip's take, which is to lump werewolves and vampires together as cursed/diseased species when mental fatigue just overwhelmed me). I have to say, if you want a werewolf to be scary, then there are two games that do this exceedingly well: Call of Cthulhu/BRP and Dragonbane (with honorable mention to GURPS/Dungeon Fantasy). The least scary edition of the the werewolf can be found in the current D&D Monster Manual for 2025, which is a real shame; it really lacks any of the color and vibrancy of the mythology it derives from. Curiously, they have done a better job with some other monsters in the book (medusa got a slight improvement imo, for example) so it is a shame to see them drop the ball here just because, apparently, someone might not want to be bothered with finding a silvered weapon? Weird. Very weird. Aside from D&D 2024, the next worst take on werewolves is (imo) Mythras, which puts the least amount of effort into the concept, delegating lycanthropy to a paragraph in the wolf statblock section.

This is making me want to consider Dragonbane for gaming in the very near future now, though. 

Observations on Running Three D&D-Types At Once (D&D 2024 vs. Shadowdark vs. Pathfinder)

 Running Shadowdark back to back with Pathfinder and D&D 5.5 has been an interesting experience. I have observed the following in running what is essentially 3 "D&D likes" at the same time:

1. D&D 5.5 has some nice (small, but nice) improvements on monster design...subtle, but makes a difference in actual play. Monk still feels very broken; you have to want, as DM, to design the encounter to actively kill the monk to have a chance of doing so. In running the game I am still hauling older books with me to fill out missing content in the newer edition, which is annoying. Overall though its still D&D 5E, just now in a slightly more abbreviated edition. I concede that it's fun....but maybe a tad long in the tooth. I now think D&D benefits from a bigger reset with new editions. This was not a big enough reset.

2. Pathfinder is proving the most enjoyable in terms of pacing vs. rules complexity; it falters only when player familiarity wanes (so a player with their act together progresses quickly; then a player who does not know what they are doing stops the game on their turn...stuff like that). I have adjusted to the system well enough, and feel like this is proving to be my "comfort zone" for a D&D-style game right now. I appreciate that it is easy to build a challenge for PCs in PF2ER that feels meaningful. My biggest gripe with the system these days is adjusting to all the modified content, stuff that is still there, but was "scrubbed" of old OGL references.....think kholo vs. gnoll, for example. Search the Monster Core for the Brain Collector! He's hidden away in there. Stuff like that.

3. Shadowdark feels simple....almost too simple....but as a result it's rules get in the way the least; the pacing of the game feels much smoother and faster than its more robust cousins as a result. Shadowdark also cleverly removes most "get out of jail" spells and effects from the players....truesight and feystep type stuff which can turn in to convenient "bypass encounter" mechanisms are simply absent from the game. The GM can include this stuff if desired through treasure and boons....but entirely at the GM's discretion.

This is, all in all, too much D&D-like for me to run all at once, even if I am enjoying all three games. I am now, in consideration of how much I am enjoying the rules pacing in Shadowdark, once again looking to another rules-minimal system: Cypher System, for a future non D&D-like game. 

Doing Too Much Gaming - Bad Time Management Theater

 I don't know why, but it seems easier for me now to get too many games going, even when I can arguably state I have less free time....or, in some cases, a need to value free time in which I am not doing anything in particular if I want; you know, things like reading, watching a show, going for a hike, cleaning the house, stuff like that. "Downtime" one might say.

So lately I've been wrestling with the fact that I have a periodic Tuesday night game online a friend GMs, the Wednesday night live game I have been running since the dawn of time (more or less), and the Saturday night game I have run on and off again for ages....and lately have been managing weekly due to my renewed interest in Pathfinder 2nd edition. Then there's Friday night: for a few weeks I experimented with playing in a local Pathfinder group which washed out due to GM health issues. The remaining players talked me in to running on that night, and I elected to run Shadowdark. It was fun! But then the common problem with RPGs rears its ugly head: weekly sessions. Repeatability. Time consuming dedication to a routine. I shoulda offered a one-shot! My bad.

On Wednesday I complicated things even worse by winding down Mythras and resuming D&D, now shark-jumped right to D&D 5.5. It's actually been perfectly fine; despite some elements being weird, I rather like most of the oddball little changes I've encountered so far, and some of the more subtle changes in monster design do make the newer monsters stand out as a bit tougher. It's hard to kill the monk, but you can do it with a bit of tactical consideration, so I no longer think the new monk is "that" powerful...just sometimes, in encounters not designed to overwhelm the monk.

But the point is that A: after stupid hand-wringing about design differences in the new edition it is all clearly just more nonsense sprouted by the Internet Machine, and the new edition is functioning just fine (even if I have to edit my orcs and drow in from the earlier iteration of 5E for now); and B: yeah, I didn't just double up on the D&D experience, I tripled-up on it, running D&D, then Shadowdark, then Pathfinder each week. So now I am at risk of burning out on too much D&D-like gaming again, and also not getting enough of the other non RPG fun stuff done I would like to do (which is mainly keeping up on my reading but hey, that takes a lot of time, too). 

There used to be a time when I could run two games a week (really, back in the day I only ran a weekly game on Wednesday and a bi-weekly game on Saturday) and it was just fine. What the heck happened??? I need to figure out a way to get this all under control. At bare minimum, I need more time to prep for the games I do run; Tuesday night should be my time to prep for Wednesday and Friday night my time to prep for Saturday (unless I am taking the missus out for the evening...although the missus was showing up to play Shadowdark so I guess that counts...?) Honestly, I know it all kind of went off the rails post covid, as that is when the addition of online gaming, the need to fill time with "things to do" made VTTs viable, leading to a tendency to overfill time with gaming. Newer games do admittedly need less prep time, too; back in 2010 when I was running Pathfinder 1E I really did need about as much time to prep as the game itself could take; and as many GMs may recall from those editions, it took some time to learn good shortcuts, tricks and techniques to reduce the GM workload; not so with the new D&D, new Pathfinder, and Shadowdark...these games reduce GM prep dramatically. 

Ah well....first world problems, I guess ...and honestly just the sort of problem to worry about when I'm avoiding a glance at my 401(k) retirement fund these days ;-)

 

The Ever Changing Gaming Prospects for 2025

So! The conundrum set off for me by my dislike of the design direction of the current edition of D&D has led to a close evaluation of options. It has led me down the following path:

Mythras - So I am actually running Mythras on Wednesdays now, which is not much of a stretch as I have run Mythras on and off over the last several years. My goal this time is to maybe, just maybe, stick with it for longer than a short campaign. We shall see; the problem is that my intrigue at the style/approach Mythras offers is often occluded by the more conventional approach D&D and Pathfinder take; or put another way, sometimes deep simulationism and verisimilitude are not as fun, long-term, as slightly gamified fun can offer.

D&D 5.5 - One of my friends sort of talked me into giving it a try, to look at the good options and maybe hold judgement on the bad bits until I see how it plays at the table (and over time). I decided this is a possibility, if I run a campaign that is new, built ground-up on the implied expectations of the new edition. I did devise a decent campaign outline so far, but I am still not feeling overly motivated to run D&D 5.5; my theory is that secretly, maybe even almost unconsciously, I am just really burned out on it all and this is as good an excuse as any to take a break. 

Dragonbane - I want to run this but I feel like it needs an expansion rulebook to hold long term interest, and I am regularly thwarted by my players' threats to roll all mallards. 

Pathfinder 2E Revised - this actually looks like the best overall prospect to me for continuing a D&D-like style of play without all the finnicky expectations of a new edition that foundationally change the core feel of the game. That said, Pathfinder 2E Remaster has its own special issues, not least of which is trying to figure out what monsters have been arbitrarily renamed or remastered into analogous replacements (e.g. gnolls now being kholos and such). But, aside from that, and my general irritation at may little design decisions in the system, it is still shaping up to maybe be the best choice for me. Except, of course. for.....

Tales of the Valiant - So it's basically D&D 5E, but with some nice revamps, and its main problem is not offering enough player choices (yet). But that aside, it is sort of the default no-brainer for me to continue gaming with. My group does seem deeply interested in D&D 5.5, but I think if I push hard enough I can get them to at least give this a shot. 

In digging through my collection I also found a few choice relics that I would like to play but which often get neglected when time to plan something comes up. Specifically:

Swords & Wizardry Revised - this lovely remaster of the S&W Complete rules, now with two additional rules/monster tomes filled with new content and classes are really my favorite iteration of the OSR (aside from OSE). Alas, my only problem with running it is that I am just not sure I could get most of my group to tolerate going to back to an old school state of mind. Last time I ran it (and OSE) I find about half the group would rather sit out a few sessions than bother to play an OSR game. Yeesh!

Forbidden Lands - I was really enjoying reading up and learning the intricacies of this Year Zero Engine based game and in looking at it again I realize it would be a fascinating experience to play. All I need to do is figure out how to "make it my own" in the sense that its default world assumptions are not always in alignment with what I want to do with it.....note that this is the exact same problem I now face with the new D&D books, they have shifted away from D&D as it has existed in prior editions (though maybe not as extreme as FL in terms of the implied world assumptions), but who knows, maybe I could find time to absorb the default setting and figure it all out as it is intended.

Cypher System's Godforsaken and More - Cypher System is a great game, and easy to run. I love a lot of it mechanical elements and focus on story. It has a good series of sourcebooks for supporting fantasy play. Maybe I should consider looking to it for my D&D-likes. It certainly is flexible enough to support the campaign settings I want to adapt to whatever system I pick.

GURPS Fantasy and Dungeon Fantasy - I have never been overly keen to run Dungeon Fantasy because it is essentially taking the core strength of GURPS (its generic, universal flexbility for realistic gaming) and wedded it with D&Disms. If I want D&D dungeon delving, there's always D&D. Same problem with Classic Fantasy for Mythras. But there is regular GURPS and the Fantasy sourcebook (and Magic). It's main problem is one of scope and work; I'd need to put a lot of effort into building stuff out for a game, and at my age I no longer have the time and interest to deal with GURPS's level of fiddliness (Mythras is on the edge of my tolerance level). But! I used to run GURPS all the time with a fairly low level of prep, though usually for modern day or SF games. Maybe I can find a happy middle ground here. Worth thinking about at some point.

Savage Worlds - With the Fantasy Companion and the Pathfinder for Savage Worlds books this would seem to be a no-brainer, but for various reasons I can't quite pinpoint easily, I was finding myself less than satisfied with the system in a recent Supers campaign I ran. I think the sense of gravitas and engagement with the mechanics were not there. Almost....dare I say it....too simplistic and swingy for my tastes, although maybe also my fault for picking a genre (comic books) my group was not terribly into or familiar with. The net result was disppointing, at least to me. So maybe doing fantasy with SW is actually a better bet as the group is most definitely more familiar with this genre and the system in that sense.

Okay! So enough pondering on this for now. 

The Monster Manual 2025 - The Book That Finally Broke Me

 So if you hang out on forums such as ENWorld you are probably reading the lengthy forum discussions, which almost entirely revolve around the absence of drow, orcs, duergar and the many, many other curious changes in the new Monster Manual. I have the book, and at this point my son who also has the new book has even used it in his middle school game. I have been somewhat reserved in my comments about it because I don't want to steal his thunder in enjoying the book, and he can draw his own conclusions. For me, the book is a curiously divisive exercise in what it looks like when this generation's version of Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD) happens to no longer be filled with good Christian moms worried the game is teaching demon worship to their kids, and is now instead filled with a different crowd that is worried it is teaching racism by allegory and the notion that portrayal of a thing (such an innately evil race) is tantamount to acceptance and belief in such a concept in the real world. It is, from my perception, precisely the same scenario that TSR faced in 1989 with the release of their sanitized version of AD&D 2nd Edition, designed to remove "problematic elements" that were perceived as causing issues for the potential buyers and players. 

So in 2025 history is now repeating itself. For me, I am disappointed as there are actually some neat things in the new 2025 MM, and some really good artwork. I'd like to use this book.....but the absence of so many old friends (foes) that are a staple of many campaigns, and the interesting and often nuanced complexity that can come with orcs, drow, and other species that lead to good storytelling as well as the exploration of the human condition through decided nonhuman beings drawn from myth is now deliberately limited, under the pretense that someone, somewhere, may be offended.

So for me, this has made deciding what to play going forward suddenly much easier. I am now looking to Mythras, which I am running Wednesdays as my go to game. Tales of the Valiant, which has a few issues but one of them is not the lack of drow, orcs and duergar, is suddenly looking like my best bet for a modern 5E experience if I want it. Pathfinder 2E managed to be both nuanced and respectful and STILL include orcs, even if they decided to retire conventional drow is still better than what WotC has done. Dragonbane, Forbidden Lands, regular old BRP, the OSR movement, and more exotic fare like Mork Borg are all out there, and all worth my time. D&D 2025? Maybe not so much anymore. The game feels like it is now aimed at the contentious, self-censorious young adult writing crowd, and I guess that's fine, I'm the old guy who would like a more interesting and mature engagement in my elf games, so I have no problem looking onward to other things. D&D, it has been fun, I'll miss you. Maybe I'll go back and play some classic 3rd Edition again, and remember the good old days when the point of the game was to have fun fantasy adventures and not try to find hidden allegories for the evils of the modern world embedded within.  

Reality Incursion

 Ah what a January! Grim flu ripping through the family (I was out for a whole week), lots of work catch-up, and no shortage of micro emergencies mixed in. The usual fun times.

I got a reprieve from my Wednesday group for a bit. My son ran two sessions of the Alien RPG using the Chariot of the Gods module, and it was pretty dang fun. He is 13, but already appears to be a chip off the old GM block, having acquired his dad's talent for improvisation and storytelling. It was a glorious adventure and everyone died by the end of session two, which is ironic as that mirrors the way many of my early scenarios went when I was the same age. TPKs were just a thing that happened back in the day, and while its arguable that Alien RPG's approach can make those more readily obvious, I would also argue that not having a TPK in The Caves of Chaos was fairly unusual....TPK was the usual default, especially the first round in.

I haven't been away from GMing exactly; I have now run two sessions of a Savage Worlds Supers campaign, using a blend of classic Supers rules with the Horror Companion for a more "Dark Horse/JLA Dark" style campaign, although in truth I found myself feeling less interested in restricting myself thematically in actual play and the scenario ended up feeling more heavily influenced by the likes of The Titans, Suicide Squad, Nemesis and other thematic elements. I'm not really trying to plot too hard on this one, I decided. Better to just let it all go where it will.

For returning to Wednesday I rapidly ploughed through all my dreams and visions of breaking away from D&D and have accepted that Dragonbane and Mythras are both game systems I would like to tackle, but I still don't reside in the right timeline or frame of mind to accomplish this at the moment. To do justice to either I need to find personal time to invest my energy in the systems,* teasing out what is needed to make them comprehensive campaigns catering to each system's strengths, and be ready to act as tutor to the players, and to do battle with the rules lawyer. I just ain't got that sort of energy anymore. Maybe at some point, or with the right sort of group (the nostalgic one I remember having 25 years ago would be a fine set of test subjects for such a game) but today? Today I need the thing that I already know too well. And even that thing, D&D, requires I spend a bit more time with it to learn the new incongruities and alterations to its recent botox treatment. 

Monster Manual 2025 will be out in like 2 weeks, anyway. Going to be interesting to see how or if it is a game changer for the play experience. 

*The problem is, I have some X amount of free time, but I have 25 things vying for control of it. When I sit down these days to use that precious 2-3 hours a night I have to enjoy something, the time ends up going to a mix of book reading, comic reading, maybe a video or two, and more recently some sessions in World of Warcraft Classic or Path of Exile 2 with my wife. The interest I once had in obsessively sitting down and crafting NPCs and materials for a game system like mythras while building out a campaign that leans in to the unique developmental ethos of the game world of the system just no longer grabs me like it once did. I don't believe this is even a case of "other things are easier," anymore, because I can easily spend hours crafting a campaign setting and scenario set for D&D; it's because I no longer crave that sort of synergetic interaction with rules systems anymore, I find it tedious and uninteresting. It is okay for me, I have accepted, to admit that maybe I have done this hobby too much for too long, and some of it now feels a bit old hat to me, a bit less interesting. That could change with time, or not. But my strength of interest lies in the world building and the storytelling, and the game system which lets me do that with the least amount of fuss is what I must roll with for now, even if I do find the "old me" occasionally surfacing and eyeing Mythras of Dragonbane hungrily, even for but a moment.

Death Bat's review of Last Year's Projections

 Well here we are again! Another year, another review on last year's predictions and projections for the outgoing year. How did my plans and predictions stack up?

Predictions:

D&D 2024 Releases but Beyond Isn't Ready - near as I can tell I am spot on about this; that demo with fully 3D figures that looked like a CRPG? I don't think there's any evidence that exists right now, so far as I can tell...

Tales of the Valiant - I predicted it would be successful and might eat some of Pathfinder's market share but not penetrate the core D&D crowd. I think I am wrong on the first count and right on the second count. Instead, it looks like TotV will be its own niche corner, and won't really eat anyone's market share, instead becoming yet another variant with its own core crowd thanks to Kickstarter.

D&D-Spin Off Fatigue - I expected this to happen in 2024, and I think to some degree it has happened, as the "alternative to D&D" market has indeed fragmented into something like a dozen different variants from Daggerheart to Tales of the Valiant, Pathfinder, Shadowdark and all the existing D20 variants out there. It's so bad that I think D&D 2024 is effectively succeeding by being an anchor with the most common ground in the middle of it all. 

Fewer new IP and Gaming Properties - I am not sure this is true. It seems like there are a metric ton of new IPs and games out there, or on the way, but what I am missing is where people are collecting their information. I rely largely on ENWorld for my gaming news, and they are only "so so" at things not related to D&D. 

Goals:

Mothership - I wanted to run more Mothership in 2024. I did run a one shot in January and a two parter at the end of the year in December. I did not run another lengthy campaign, however. I forget offhand when the Mothership Boxed set finally arrived, but I recall it was sometime in May. That waiting for the new edition to release proved to be part of why it didn't take off; it finally came out, and as is often tradition for Kickstarters it took me a while to get back in the mood to deal with it. I also realized that my last really successful online Mothership game was a bit of lightning in a bottle; you sort of need the right kind of group to really pull off Mothership. I don't know that I currently have that sort of group right now. Some of my players, sure! But others.....hmmmm not so much.

Dragonbane - Despite wanting to run this, I have not as yet gotten around to it. 2024 was a year where I found little time to mess with new mechanics, and ended up sticking to the "familiar and easy," which is to say, lots of D&D 5E.

Traveller - I did run a short Traveller campaign early on. I stopped running Traveller for one very specific and disappointing reason, about which I won't dive too deeply here, but let's just say that I wish players would let the dice roll and not fudge crap all the time (read: cheat). I am unsure of how to fix this problem other than to run games of somewhat more complexity, making it harder to easily cheat on die rolls, or to take over some dice rolling (which I really prefer not to do). In general I sort of assume that this happens on occasion from certain people, but it was a bit excessive in the last Traveller game I ran, and was substantiated by others. As a result, I really lost my taste for running the game for my group. And honestly....it's impacted me kind of hard ever since, and I am extremely reluctant to run certain game systems with entirely player-facing die roll mechanics as a result. If certain players (and there are only certain ones here, mind you; others in my group are great and honest!) desire to cheat to insure their "victory" then why not just play a video game, watch a movie or read a book? 

Post More - Pssh 'nuff said! I totally slacked off on posting for most of 2024.

Pace Myself - I think I did okay here. I have gamed less often on Saturday, which is often a trouble night for me, especially now that I live a 25 miles south of the city where the gaming locations we meet are at.

Miscellaneous:

I made some offhand comments, and wanted to mention those:

Rivers of London - Chaosium has not done much new with it, but its still there being promoted. In this day and age a game with maybe one sourcebook in a year or two is becoming increasingly common. I did buy the first novel in the series the game is based on, but haven't read it yet. 

Esper Genesis - They actually came through! The print edition of the Technician's Guide arrived a few months back, so kudos to them for getting this out at last. A pity it arrived in the wake of a new edition of D&D and took so long I suspect it will be harder for Alligator Alley to get the trust of Kickstarter backers.

GURPS - I suggested GURPS could have a new edition but won't. In their defense, they did get a good reprint with nice binding. I think, based on my observation of the market and the interesting directions it has gone, that GURPS is probably best off as a niche game system with a core fanbase that can remain ignored by the broader community.

13th Age 2nd Edition - I suggested it won't come out in 2024 and I was right. Another Kickstarter waaaay behind deadline. I am looking forward to this one when it comes out. Will it come out in 2025? Maybe, but it will arrive to a saturated market. Unless WotC releases the new Monster Manual and it turns out to be garbage for some reason, causing a wave of dissatisfied DMs to look elsewhere.

Pathfinder - I suggested maybe Pathfinder's increased costs will lead to a shrink in market share. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I know I have fellow players who have commented on how Paizo's books are getting too expensive to keep up with now. I think the costs are driven by the unionization of their workstaff, which is a good thing, but also a rough spot to be in a largely non-union, low-profit corner of the business. I suspect 2025 could be a make or break year for Paizo. 

Okay, next I'll make some predictions for 2025 and set some goals!

2024 Player's Handbook Is In the Wild!

 I picked up my special edition cover of the 2024 Player's Handbook yesterday and spent a fair amount of time reading through the book. As many have already commented, this books' single greatest contribution to the game is organization....the book really is incredibly well organized, in a smart way that makes a lot of sense, and leads the reader to wonder why it took this long. I have a few other observations so far....but this is hardly a proper review as of yet, just observations. The real meat of any discussion will have to wait until I've met with my group tonight and we have formulated a plan of attack for when we will start using the new PHB in actual play. But in the interim, here are those observations....

Someone Hates Fluff

This is the least fluff-filled PHB I have ever seen. A single page for most character species (and I like that they are using the term species now) of which half of the page is an illustration seems scant at best. Most of the species and their possible subtypes are getting maybe a paragraph of introduction at best. 

Gaucho Orcs

Orcs got a reboot in this book. They have exactly one page, half text and half illustration. Gruumsh is now some sort of orcish analog for Odin or something, and orcs have a penchant for nomadic wanderlust. There's like 1 paragraph of detail, and half of it reframing Gruumsh. All of the other details can be derived from an illustration of an orc family that makes them look like sombrero and poncho wearing gauchos from the old west. In a post World of Warcraft universe I respect the idea that orcs are a thing people want to play but it is insanely weird to see all the core conceits of what it means to be an orc get completely stripped out and replaced by a vague suggestion of form in the example illustration. 

Very Clean Class Write-Ups

The classes are all reframed and reformatted, to the extent that even spell lists are now included for each class in the class description proper. Its incredibly efficient and impressively done. There are so many weird little changes to the classes that this part more than any will be where people find the most arguments for this being a D&D 5.5 or even better a 6E.

The Core Mechanics are Still The Same

There are lots of tweaks and bits everywhere, but the way the game plays remains the same. This system is arguably a bigger jump than 3.5 was from 3.0, but it all in the extraneous details such as classes, spells and species and far less in the mechanical core.

A Really Weird Number of Characters in This Book Have Freaky Open Mouthed Eerie Smiles

I don't know what the artistic intent is here,* but the number of characters smiling like they are hopped up on mushrooms or derived from some freaky AI generated model is just a tad on the disturbing side. There are, thankfully, lots of illustrations of D&D characters doing actual D&D type stuff (fighting, spell casting, exploring, investigating, etc.) but possibly better than half the illustrations in this book appear to be of freakishly weird denizens whose exact class and species is up for debate smiling like an amorphous AI generated illustration about to bite your head off, and it's frankly weirding me out, like, a lot.

The Garb of Characters is in Stark Contrast to Equipment Illustrations

Aside from the excessive use of smiling and expressions of sheer, unmitigated and possibly drug-induced joy, the art in the book is pretty solid. There is a moment of disconnect for me when you get to the nice but very mundane sample illustrations of arms and armor, and I then look at the insanely elaborate dress and garb of the sample characters and wonder to myself, "no one is wearing any of the practical gear this book is telling me the average mundane PCs will be using, they are all wearing aristocratic designer garb straight from the poshest corners of Waterdeep, the sort of things you wear to your cousins' wedding and not to a dungeon fight."

There's more yet to be gone in to. I am still soaking up the new stuff, especially weapon stunts and the enormous number of class tweaks, but overall this is a pretty solid book, and still feels very much like 5E in terms of what its accomplishing, so I can accept the interpretation of the 2024 PHB being more of a 5.5 edition than anything else, because its mechanical core remains the same solid nugget we've been using for the last ten years. 

*I once watched some Youtube videos where they talked about how adding a open-mouthed, shocked or smiling look to your image in a thumbnail was supposed to dramatically increase clicks (user engagement) with the video. So for a while every bloody Youtube video had someone in the thumbnail expressing delight, surprise and shock with a wide open mouth. Eventually, the novelty of this conceit must have worn off as people got tired of the gimmick and it stopped being useful to most Youtubers except I imagine for Mr. Beast. 

I bring this up because I feel like the art team at WotC were told by someone that people love sheer, unrelenting borderline insane expressions of joy crossing people's faces, regardless of the illustrative intent or context of the image, and that became an embedded design imperative. Luckily, as I mentioned, there's enough more conventional illustrations to offset this, but holy cats....either a few more smiling maniacs or a few less illustrations of non drugged up adventurers behaving normally and I think the art alone could have sunk this book just by crossing some uncanny valley line. (EDIT - probably not, and this is probably just me and my preference for characters "fitting the mood" better for the subject....and me being out of touch with the totality of what the mood is for D&D 2024, I suppose. But still! I can't be the only one who finds some of these maniacal smiling adventurers off-putting.....this is probably just a personal extension of why I don't enjoy Disney movies or something.)

Tales of the Valiant is here! Let the 2024 Edition Wars Commence

 I finally got my Tales of the Valiant Player's Guide and Monster Vault books, along with the very nice GM screen. Together these two books comprise all the core you need to play the game, so I am intrigued to see all the useful (but non critical) content in the GM's Guide coming out later this year.

The new books are sturdy, standard Kobold Press style, with gorgeous Kobold Press artwork that "feels like D&D" which is the best compliment I can provide to the game. Given that the Kobolds have essentially positioned Tales of the Valiant to be to D&D 6th Edition what Pathfinder 1E was to D&D 4th edition, this is a good place for them to reside.....whether that is by accident or design I cannot say. If D&D 6th edition -and go look at all the release details so far if you don't think the new D&D 2024 isn't a full-out new edition!- does not grab as much attention and go over as well as it could or should, then Tales of the Valiant could provide a more than suitable alternative. 

TotV will most likely remain niche no matter what, as its the kind of thing you sort of know about and get interested in if you're already hip deep into RPGs, while D&D has cornered a different kind of market with a more casual crowd who's overall interest is less obscure and more trendy. But if it turns out that D&D shed too much of its identifiable crust in the remaking, then we could indeed see people start looking around for alternatives (or maybe even just stick with their old books). 

I can see this happening: D&D 6E seems to be caught between two markets right now. The general perception of the new class and rules promotional details coming out strongly suggest a mechanical rework designed to appeal to a more hardcore crowd interested in a bit more mechanical rigor and tactical acumen. Simultaneously we are being told the game is being revamped for "how people really play" and there seems to be a strong push toward friendlier and less violent art, character focused development that leans hard into the "start as a super hero, not super zero" thematics that 5E was already noted for, and a broader sense of inclusion for game tables which eschew the rigors of mechanical combat in favor of pure role playing. These are interesting and very opposite demographics to appeal to simultaneously in a product....and I will be interested in seeing if WotC can pull it off.

There's also an entire segment of modern D&D gamers who have only come in to the hobby with 5th edition, and have never had to experience an edition change. For many, a perceived increase in mechanical rigor (or even just a moderate level of changes for change's sake) could be more than they want to deal with. I could be wrong....who knows!

Even if D&D 6E takes off and also succeeds via D&D Beyond and Roll20 (which, correct me if I am wrong, seems to be substituting for D&D Beyond's original goal of making the online experience more video-game and microtransaction driven), it's okay, because Tales of the Valiant clearly has the "I like physical books" crowd covered, and even better if you do want to go VTT with it, Shard Tabletop is a damned fine product. If TotV can manage to make Shard or something similar provide an easier set of tools to desgn and subsequently print out for live table gaming, they will manage to cater to both live and virtual crowds easily. With D&D Beyond.....I feel like maybe D&D is not as poised here as they had originally intended. But hey, it's not September yet, we shall see how that goes.

Amidst all this are other game systems, but I think they all suffer in odd ways that prevent them from getting to be the next Pathfinder 1E to D&D. Pathfinder 2E, for example, shed so much OGL identity that it is functionally a different sort of game now, one with few to no identifiable "D&Disms" left. At least Tales of the Valiant wasn't afraid to include an owlbear, for example! It retains a lot of stuff that firmly plants it in the realm of "D&Dlikes" which means its comfort level will be more familiar to many players now than PF2E. PF2E, meanwhile, is poised to be a good alternate for people who want a D&D inspired experience but also really want a lot more mechanical rigor and very tight math. There is a crowd for that, and they are already playing their preferred game (PF2E). 

Other potential contenders lurk out there, but each offers a niche experience. Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised is my favorite OSR experience next to OSE. OSE is also cool. Shadowdark is out there, and it seems like people do like it. None of them are poised to become the next Pathfinder 1E, though, because each is catering to a specific playstyle subset of the broader population.

Anyway, the last six months of this year will be a fun roller coaster for D&D and now Tales of the Valiant. I'm developing a new campaign (well, an old one set in a new -or old- era) for TotV and will start posting some details here soon. I think I have buy-in from my group, so I'm excited to get a chance to try it out before the D&D 6E madness hits in three months.