Run Your Character Sheets by Hand

The worst part about 5E is needing a computer to manage a character sheet. I love running sheets by hand, and filling them out the way we used to do. When D&D 4E came along and introduced the "website to track characters" - we loved it at first. And then it got to be a dependency. And then it became a pain point. And then the system was shut down and everything lost forever.

And 5E started off innocently enough where you could hand-run character sheets, and then book after book piled on the system, and you needed an online system to manage the complexity. Even the Open 5E clones all require online character sheets. After a while, 5E stops being a pen-and-paper game, and it slowly morphs into a computer game with "software as service" features and micro-transactions.

5E is a computer game pretending to be a role-playing game.

It is a wolf-in-sheep-clothing gateway to making you pay for that "something else" you need to make your life easier. This is the worst part about the system. This makes the entire game hard for me to justify and support. It does get expensive to play this.

Any OSR game is far easier to play and manage. In any version of the game past AD&D 2nd Edition, your character gets weaker as they level. You lose power, and your character is never as strong as they were in the older games. People saying, "I need 5E since it gives me the most options when leveling" are being lied to. You get weaker as you level! You don't even retain power. Your fireballs do nothing due to scaling monster hit points. I proved it here with math:

https://sbrpg20.blogspot.com/2025/07/no-to-d-4e-yes-to-old-school-essentials.html 

You are far better off sticking with AD&D or a B/X system than you are playing D&D 3, 4, or 5. Even for martial characters with fixed damages, melee damage scales better in the older games. you don't need that feat that makes you do "+10 melee damage" feat if the monster hit points are on a linear scale and not a ramped up exponential curve. You see that hack added into the game to "fix things" for martial characters and you should get suspicious of a broken design immediately.

We had everything back then and Wall Street came along and "fixed it all for us." See, it feels good, like a AAA video game. Please pay our monthly fee for updates.

So, for a system that makes me weaker as I level, now I need to pay tons of money in subscription services to manage character sheets and buy expensive digital books (that I will never own and someday go away) for more weak options? And in the older systems where I am more powerful, I can still run character sheets by hand and not pay anyone anything?

You are kidding me, right?

I guess it is a good business to be in if you are a publisher or software as service person.

But not for me. 

Mail Room: Ashes Without Number

I received my hardcover copy of Ashes Without Number the other day, and I am impressed. This is another amazing game from Kevin Crawford, easily an equal in greatness to the others in this series. This is a post-apocalyptic sandbox game that can be played three ways, with a few examples of each listed:

• Mutant Wasteland: Gamma World, Fallout, Mutant Epoch
• Deadlands: The Walking Dead, World War Z, I am Legend
• After the Fall: Aftermath, Twilight: 2000, Mad Max

Sine Nomine games are B/X compatible, so any adventure, monster, module, rules expansion, class, spell, gear, treasure, race, or other thing from any old-school B/X style game will drop right in. Want to borrow a bugbear from Old School Essentials as a mutant monster? It works; just give it a random mutation or two and call it something different - a furred bog-beast. Want that +1 sword to be an ancient nano-tech "ever-sharp blade," go right ahead. Want to port in an OSE drow racial template as an undercity "dark dweller?" Go right ahead. Want a monster from Swords & Wizardry or Adventures Dark and Deep? The books are there to pull from. Want that healing potion from OSE to be a super-science medical nano-injector? Reskin it and use it.

Your games have a massive amount of compatible resources to draw from.

And the games are compatible with each other, so you can borrow weapons and vehicles from Cities Without Number, sci-fi gear from Stars Without Number, magic powers from Worlds Without Number, and anything else you heart desires.

And those games can pull from the same resources, too, so OSE and any other B/X style game is an expansion for any of these games. Take an OSE giant mantis and make it an "alien mantis monster" for Stars Without Number, and throw a mutation on it from Ashes Without Number. That is what attacks the landing party in the away team shuttle and pins them in a nearby cave, so they can't return to the ship.  Now they need to fight the monster or explore the cave. There is your adventure, start it in media res and get playing.

Want fantasy races, magic, and monsters in a Cyberpunk setting? Use OSE and Cities Without Number, and there is a fun B/X-style Shadowrun game for you. It all just works. Want those same fantasy races in a post-apocalyptic setting, where the old world and new collide and destroy the world? Use OSE and Ashes Without Number.

And the charts in this game can create an entire world to play in. This is one of the best value and imagination resources in gaming, as it is infinitely usable with the game in the book or your own favorite game in the genre.

The highest recommendation: this one needs to be in your library if you enjoy the post-apocalyptic genre.

The Best of the Best

My gonzo game:

• Dungeon Crawl Classics.

My classic old-school games:

• Old School Essentials
• Shadowdark
• Swords & Wizardry

My superheavyweight games:

• Adventures Dark & Deep
• Castles & Crusades
• ACKS II

Honorable mentions:

• Stars Without Number
• Worlds Without Number
• Cities Without Number
• Ashes Without Number

My all-time favorite:

• GURPS

C&C is still in a closet as my shelves get reorganized and I put together my showcase shelves. I got these very nice "display shelves" from Amazon, and I redid my GURPS and DCC libraries on them, and mixed game books, dice, art, inspirational comic collections, and gaming swag on a shelf. My three DCC shelves are eye-popping and amazing, resembling something out of a high-end gaming store with a variety of fun items on display alongside the games.

I have Wally Wood comic collections, game books, large clear plastic containers filled with dice, fantasy art books from SQPartbooks.com, my DCC games and modules, face-out display stands for hardcovers, framed art on stands, various foil hardcovers for DCC, a plastic skull mask, those clear MCC/DCC light up signs, and all sorts of fun and inspirational "come play with me" stuff on those shelves.

My DCC shelves are one of my best game projects in a long time. I have a GURPS shelf like this, too, as my "shrine" to that game. GURPS is on that list, but it isn't in the genre of d20-old school games. While it is a fantasy game, it is so much more than that. GURPS is my primary game, my number one, and the one I will never part with. Today, we're focusing on d20-style games.

GURPS is my all-time favorite game, and nothing changes that.

I give the shelves room to "breathe" and don't pack them completely full, since I found a full shelf rarely gets used and serves more as a storage crate than a "working shelf." Ideally, each shelf should be half-filled with books, and use organizers or bookends to corral them, leaving room for books on display stands or clear plastic containers filled with various dice. Like the picture, a loosely packed shelf beats a full one, every time.

I may migrate GURPS to a two-shelf display and make it glorious.

But C&C is a game that could easily take time away from OSE, S&W, and ADAD. It would simplify my collection, but I love those three games equally. There is also a point at which having too much is excessive, and C&C and DCC would be the last ones standing.

Another reason I still have C&C in the closet is that I am giving Tales of the Valiant time to shine as a standalone option. Every time I get C&C out, any version of 5E dies in my interest levels. C&C is a 5E killer. I am giving ToV time for Monster Vault 2 and Player's Guide 2 to be released, allowing me to make a final decision on the system.

C&C also has Amazing Adventures and an OGL-free version of C&C. This is a fantastic game and system, easily a 5E killer for many. The only reason I don't play Amazing Adventures is that I have GURPS.

We are witnessing the final days of 5E and D&D. The game is dying. Other games will pick up the torch. The entire "Wizards-verse" is becoming tiresome, and people are growing bored with the product identity villains and settings, which have become institutionalized and stale. When I see what the Forgotten Realms has become, I see a grotesquely excessive and self-important ultra-high fantasy setting that feels as hard to approach as many fandoms that require years of lore and canon research. The art and science fantasy cities are laughably overdone. Everything looks modern.

Shadowdark will be what people play after D&D. This is my other 5E killer game. Shadowdark is the OSE of 5E. If C&C does not kill Tales of the Valiant on my shelves, Shadowdark will. It does not require a half-page of text to describe a single ability. If anything kills D&D or Open 5E for me, it is how horribly fluff-packed and overwritten the whole game is. Even the clones suffer from this, taking the longest way around to describe subclass abilities, spells, and action types that should be listed in a single bullet point on a page.

With Deathbringer and Roll for Combat joining the Shadowdark brigade of publishers, convention events selling out in every con they are listed in, the future looks bright for Shadowdark.

There is also an argument that Shadowdark, OSE, and S&W are essentially the same game, but played slightly differently. All of them could be considered 'regional dialects' of classic d20 fantasy gaming if they were languages, and are mostly compatible with each other. Some groups play a mix of Shadowdark and OSE just fine.

ADAD and ACKS II are the heavyweight standouts. C&C is also over here in the heavyweight class, just due to the size of the game.

Dungeon Crawl Classics is in a genre of its own. This is a replacement for both D&D 3.5E and Pathfinder 1e/2E for me, and it just does its own crazy, random things. I enjoy this for how insane and unpredictable the game can be. The game is full of some of the best old-school art ever put to paper, and the adventures are packed with new and imaginative ideas.

DCC brings imagination and unpredictability back to the hobby. In an era of railroaded adventures with perfect pet PC characters that are more self-inserts than any characters we played back in the day, DCC is an excellent, mind-opening, and refreshing experience.

DCC also replaces Pathfinder 1e for me, which feels right. This is a rules-light game that accomplishes 90% of what the original game did, minus the need for character-builder software, which I consider a game-killer at this point. Pathfinder 1s had this savage lands and Conan-style feeling, and DCC has that same feeling for me. Pathfinder 2E lost that and became overly focused on cosplay, steampunk, and pseudo-modern elements, which made me sad. To me, DCC recreates the feeling of the early days of Pathfinder 1e, and keeps that savage 3.5E feeling alive.

The ...Without Number games are always on my shelves, since they are going public-domain for the core rules, and the books are flat-out terrific. Any one of these games is easily a fantastic campaign, rules-light, and table-rich for generating any type of world you can imagine.

I have three more of the display shelves coming, and a mix of these games will be the best of the best in my collection. Most of the others are being sold, boxed up in the garage, or put on storage shelves. But I am entering a new phase, where I have all the games I love on my shelves, and I do not feel obliged to play ones I do not like.

Fantasy Art Links

I added several fantasy art links to the sidebar, since I feel the best way to have a gaming shelf and setup is to not pack the shelves so full they look terrible, but to have a big enough shelf that you can display dice, figurines, face-out books on stands, and other gaming fun.

Another thing is having the fantasy art that defines your game on your walls near your shelves. This is a must for me, and I even have art books on my shelves as display items.

I have some from SQP Art Books as well, mostly fantasy cheesecake art that is often edited out of most games today, since that classic art is still a part of the hobby. I wanted to include the link to this publisher in the sidebar, but the site contains a lot of NSFW books, so you'll need to find them on your own (or Amazon) if interested. These are from artists who worked in mainstream comics and created some of the most amazing covers, making them well-known figures in illustration.

I love the classical Red Sonja and Conan art, and these types of books are face-out on my three massive DCC shelves. Are they cheesy and silly? Yes, but that is why I love them.

The other sites on the sidebar are all mostly SFW (though some have classical nude art in their collections, so still, be forewarned). Displate is also a fun SFW one that focuses on gaming, and they even have D&D-themed wall art. Prices on some of these sites are reasonable, but others have eye-opening sticker prices.

Art is a massive part of our hobby, and it's essential to make your gaming shelves reflect your vision of the hobby. Don't let just your gaming books define your game; adorn your gaming areas with the swag you want to dream of for your game.

S&W vs. OSE: Character Options

Swords & Wizardry and Old School Essentials are two excellent games. They are nearly the same game, but S&W is a zero-edition game, offering a more authentic experience of the original 1974 game and a proto-AD&D game with some of the same features, albeit with far less complexity. Old School Essentials is reminiscent of the early 1980s D&D game, stripped down, simplified, and incredibly simple to run.

S&W has the core race options, but it does not encompass all of OSE's variety and character options. OSE is very 5E-like, especially in the Advanced version and Carcass Crawler zines, and you can have race-as-class Dragonborn and Tieflings running about. These are B/X-style designs, but the variety of character types is there. With S&W, you get the basic human, elf, and dwarf options, and a limited expansion in the options book, but the game does not go crazy in presenting every fantasy race under the sun.

If you want the variety of races that 5E has, and that modern-style world where you have a lot of options, go with Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy, and pick up the Carcass Crawler zines. This will provide you with the baseline options you are accustomed to, the standard mix that originated in D&D 4E, specifically in the Nerrath campaign setting.

I would use OSE to run a Nerrath game these days, and that says a lot about this game. This would be my first choice since it preserves a high level of character power compared to D&D 4E, where a magic user's fireball spell can vaporize almost every creature in the blast radius below 4 hit dice. This does not happen in any version of the game that Wizards made.

You do not have the "shooty cantrips" in this game that 4E had, but to counter that, I would be much more generous on supplying magic wands, rods, and staves to the party, in crafting, finding, and being able to trade or buy for them. If you want "shooty casters," then give them the tools to do that. Don't go crazy, and remember that finding other magic items the party can't use makes them tradable items, so a caster could trade an expended wand for a full one, with an extra item to pay for the charged-up wand. All it takes is you as a referee to toss an additional item or two in there for the trade, and even rare gems and valuable items work for this sort of bartering.

As an alternative, create things in the adventure that can recharge wands, staves, and rods when they are touched to them, such as ley lines, magic crystals, or divine fountains. Draining a magical power source like this will temporarily discharge it, and it will replenish over time. 5E will go out of its way to tell you these things are not possible, and that you must recharge magic items in a specific way by the rules. In old-school gaming, how you want things to work is how they work.

Many problems in 5E were created for the game so the designers could solve them. We had this all figured out back in the day. Don't be stingy on treasure, and give characters reasons to use gold. It is a simple fix, and casters do not need free, infinite-shot laser pistols in their fingers, as it makes magic too ordinary and commonplace. Also, since hit points are not scaled, magic missiles hit way harder in OSE than in 5E, and the spell gets lethal at higher levels.

Swords & Wizardry offers a set of options closer to the original game, including humans, dwarves, elves, half-elves, and halflings. The book of options only offers two more: gnomes and stygian. You do not get Drow, Tiefling, Dragonborn, or any of the other modern race choices. You could port them in from OSE, if you want, using the standalone race options, but we are comparing games here.

The only other central point is that S&W classes are more in-depth in terms of gaining new abilities as they level, whereas OSE classes tend to be flatter and more straightforward. This is the AD&D versus D&D split again, where the basic D&D type classes always were cleaner designs, and AD&D went into a deeper design for each.

If you are interested in having a variety of race and class options, OSE will be the best game for you. OSE is the best choice for those wanting a more modern set of options in a classic game wrapper.

If you want fewer race and class options, and each choice to have more to it, then S&W will be the game that makes you the happiest. S&W is the perfect "AD&D-lite" style of play, cutting closest to the source material while giving you deeper class options and abilities.

Personally? I would use Swords & Wizardry for Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms games. Either this or the equally excellent Adventures Dark & Deep game, but S&W will be the easier choice since it is closer to a rules-light game. If I am pulling out ADAD, I am committing to a year-long campaign or more. S&W will be better for faster play, lighter characters, and newer players.

Bother are great games that look at classic gaming through different lenses, yet provide nearly identical gameplay experiences.

Happy DCC Day!

https://goodman-games.com/dcc-day-2025-store-locator/

Happy DCC Day!

Check the link above, and if a store in your area is participating, please drop by for some free swag and to say hello! Let's show some support for local game stores and stop by to let them know you're "With the Band."

DCC was a game I gave up on early on, feeling the charts were too much, and I could not understand the spell duels. It seemed fun, but not enjoyable enough to warrant putting in serious time to learn. I was wrong, just as I was about many games I gave up on early. Since then, I have grown to love the game.

There was a time when I felt all the gonzo and crazy charts were not needed, and by the game's own rules, it says you are free to ignore them. They are there to inspire and motivate you, and if you can think of something better, then you are free to use that! For many players, they would have no idea that we played like this and that anything like this was possible, so the charts are needed as a starting point; otherwise, the game would play like 5E, since that is what most people are familiar with.

I also like the game not being complete, and this keeps your mind open to all the possibilities. You are supposed to tweak and add to the system, pull in monsters from other OSR games, use the treasure tables from different books, and generally hack and slash, creating a mutant, monster-filled game collection that starts with your DCC book.

For me? I use my old copies of Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future as add-on books for the game. I am not using them for a stand-alone game right now, and they are delighted to see some use as my "+1 games" for DCC and MCC. As a bonus, I get rules on construction, ships, water travel, and other game rules to fill in the gaps. The fact that an old OSR game, nearly 20 years old, is still beneficial and handy today amazes me and speaks to the strength of the entire old-school gaming movement.

Me? Hey, the books are not in a box and are getting used! I love this!

The Mutant Future game is excellent, since this gives me a lot of old-school mutant mayhem monsters and high-tech treasures to use to populate my radiation-blasted post-apocalyptic worlds. I highly recommend this one for MCC, and it's perfect for the game.

And play some DCC, MCC, or X-Crawl today! Use this day for fun and imagination, delving into strange dimensions and arcane ruins, getting lost in unexplored jungles, and wandering over the frozen tundra in search of the lost wizard's tomb.

DCC is all about fun.

Go have some today! Meet some people, hang out, say hello, and become a part of something.

It may just change everything for you.

YouTube: Let’s cut open Dungeon Crawl Classics and see how it bleeds

Dave Thaumavore's RPG Reviews is a great channel, and the above is one of the classic reviews of DCC, providing a great introduction to the system and its ethos. As always, please like the video, watch the video through, and subscribe to the channel! This is great, positive, and hobby-forward content that I love.

This is the best introduction to the game that I have seen, presented positively, pointing out the good and the bad points, and laying out the most important differences between this game and others.

A classic DCC video from the hobby community, and worth watching, even for those of us who know the game. It is a great inspiration for new players and veterans alike.