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.

DCC Rulebook: Erol Otus Cover

This is a beautiful variant cover of the Dungeon Crawl Classics rulebook. Granted, this is the same book underneath, but the strangeness and alien nature of this scene grab me as something different than anything we have seen in the hobby before. It is alien, strange, violent, sexy, perplexing, and has almost an underwater battle quality to it all, as if we were looking in on some fever-dream alien world of sea monkeys battling kelp creatures.

This could be a spirit combat on the astral plane between a powerful Wizard and an alien intelligence seeking to dominate the world.

This could be a spell duel with each caster taking a new form to do battle with.

This could be a normal battle between the party's fighter and a dragon worm, and the viewer wandered too close to the hallucinogenic mushrooms in the final cave.

This could be the final bosses of a dungeon, and you arrive in the middle of an epic fight, where the best you can hope for is to escape with your lives.

Who knows what this is? Make it up yourself.

DCC is the game you want it to be, and it never tells you that you are playing it wrong. It's a game that you can make it what you want, not just what the designers tell you to play. So, D&D's designers took humanoid enemies and alignment away from us because they know better? DCC has an adventure with a chainmail bikini cover, and then sells pride merch in their store. It does not care, and I love it. The divide and conquer "game puritans" can find another game to direct selective outrage at, as this one is 100% just for the fun.

I am tired of D&D and its endless parade of tieflings, githyanki, mind flayers, drow, and other alien races with British and other strangely out-of-place European accents. All the bad guys are good now. The races have been gentrified, spayed, and neutered to be neutral player options. The orc and humanoid monsters are gone, and anything we liked about old-school D&D, the designers now tell us we should be guilty for enjoying.

D&D is not their game to ruin. It is our pastime to pass down and enjoy.

Baldur's Gate 3 was the end of D&D like Avengers Endgame was the end of the MCU. Years of work, build up, cultural relevance, shared relevance, and then a massive release. Past that, nothing compares, and I really don't want to see constant weak rehashes of it all, either. Like the MCU, D&D keeps plodding along for a few years while everyone slowly realizes it is dead, a zombie IP that only the marketers get excited about.

It is time for something different.

DCC is a fresh start for me, harkening back to the early days of the hobby where anything goes. Any version of 5E has this designer's hubris baked in, like it is the designer's job to tell you what options you have, how you have fun with the game, how to build encounters, and how adventures are supposed to be. You will find some in the OSR mirroring that opinion, like their ideas of gaming should be the ones everyone should follow. With DCC, anything really goes.

I have been playing D&D since it first hit the shelves. I have seen games come and go. I have seen endless OSR games trying to recapture lightning in a bottle, telling us the one proper way is their vision. Very few of them can deliver on that promise. Only ACKS II remains compelling because it tries to be different and eliminates the garbage in the SRD that doesn't align with its vision. It creates an imaginative world. It opens the possibilities to me. Too many feel mired in restating the past, and the only one that does successfully is Old School Essentials, since it stays out of your way as much as possible and lets your imagination run free.

DCC does that, too, in its own way of going back to the source material and rebuilding on a 3.5E-style framework. The monsters are not supposed to be endless classic rock repeats put on shuffle. Every module, every beast, and every adventure should be different and new. If there is an ogre in the world, there is only one. Defeat it, and it is gone forever in that reality - get some new monsters.

This is cool.

Do not do what you always do, look for some dusty campaign setting to park yourself in, find the nearest tavern, and wait for someone to walk in, hiring adventurers for the next dungeon. DCC is active, something strange happens, something that cannot be easily explained, and heroes are needed! The dungeons are full of bizarre and deadly things. There are times when the solution will take some creative thinking and non-linear logic.

When I am looking at my game shelves, what am I looking at? Am I looking at things that inspire me or bore me? Does the game take away parts of the lore and history I remember? Is the game visually compelling? Does it excite my imagination?

D&D has fallen into its own look and feel. It is this stuffy, overly manicured, modern hairstyle, 3D-game-looking, thee-thou fake accent, pseudo-modern Ren Faire slop. They got lazy and fell into a McFantasy style, where if something "looks D&D," it "is D&D."

DCC is the antithesis to the modern D&D look-and-feel.

Admittedly, this is more of a display cover to be put on a book stand as a call to action, a reason to play, and something to sit proudly on your display shelf next to your battle-hardened play copies. It is a premium work of art, a tribute to one of the artists I love, and an excellent centerpiece for a DCC collection.

Mail Room: Caverns of Thracia Legendary Adventure DCC

Caverns of Thracia has finally arrived, and good thing the books aren't damaged since this came in a half-split-open box, and the shipping left a lot to be desired. You rolled a critical failure there, Goodman Games, please do better next time! They were severely behind on all their shipping, as evidenced by the three or four update emails I received over a few weeks.

Considering this was a Kickstarter, I expected more care in shipping an order this expensive. Usually, I have no problems with their shipping, and the books are always well-protected. I will update people on the shipping of my orders and see if this is a new problem or just a one-time thing.

The entire adventure and island remind me of X1, The Isle of Dread, only less islander culture and King Kong style adventure, but with more Greek-style ruins and serpent people. The structure is the same, a hexcrawl lost island with a dungeon as the climax. I would still love to see a Goodman take on the classic King Kong jungle expedition, more than the original film that terrified audiences in the black-and-white era, with giant monsters fighting and a doomed expedition (funnel) trying to make it to the ruins.

You get more here in the Caverns of Thracia than you do on the Isle of Dread; the island, only described in the original adventure, is given a map, and there are plenty of places to fill in your own dungeons and adventures. The booklet that came with the Kickstarter is a good campaign overview and base, along with a nice expansion area for waterborne adventures.

I will need to break out my copy of Labyrinth Lord as my +1 Game for ships and naval combat rules. These two games were made for each other, so I am not complaining. This game and Mutant Future are indispensable add-on games for DCC and MCC for me.

I also got some of the adventure collections in hardcover, and those are nice to have. Besides the shipping, I am happy. I can't wait to see what the next Kickstarter from them brings!

YouTube: The Best Solo RPG Experience? (DCC)

This is a fun video that I just stumbled upon. A solo playthrough of DC from Legends & Dice Cafe. The video has this rough-cut charm with pauses, delays, random comments, laughs, and a raw, unedited format that is just like being in the room with someone.

"The art in here is super sick. I enjoy it a great deal." - video, 16:50

It's a lot of fun to listen to in the background, and it's also a positive, refreshing experience of listening to someone learn and play DCC solo. Even filling out the character sheets by hand is fun to listen to. Please like and subscribe! I'm always on the lookout for under-the-radar videos that offer a more positive perspective on the hobby than the constant Wizards drama we see on D&D YouTube.

The highlighting in that book drives me crazy! To each their own, your books are yours to do what you want with, and I love it.

We need more of this positive, fun content in our hobby.

Making the Most of the OSE Advanced Fighter, part 2

So, the OSE fighter class is still not doing it for you, even after the optimizations in article one of this series? Well, let's keep looking for some more official inspirations and options published in the official 'zine publications, in this case, Carcass Crawler Issue One.

In this issue, we get the gargantuan player race (CC1, p21), and when used as a stand-alone character option, can level to 10th level as a fighter. This race can also wield two-handed weapons with one hand, using the OSE "attacking with two weapons" rule (OSEAFP, p236), for a -2 on the primary weapon and a -4 on the secondary, and two attacks a turn total.

Combine that with the high strength to-hit modifiers of the gargantuan, the high damage of two-handed weapons, weapon proficiencies (OSEAFP, p23), and you will have a beast of a half-giant character who is a literal wrecking machine in combat, even at level one. This is one of the most potent melee builds in the game, and you do not need to mod the game to have it with official rules sources.

There are other races here that make for some excellent fighter options, such as the goblin getting a +2 AC versus large creatures (CC1, p22), making them an excellent choice as a defensive "nut" versus dragons and other large beasties, especially in plate mail with a shield. The goblin can get to 8th level as a fighter, which is good given the scope of most campaigns.

The infravision and detection options of goblins are also convenient, along with a high CON-based resistance save modifier. With a CON of 15-17, they get a +4 to all saving throws versus poison, spells, and magic wands, rods, and staves (CC1, p22)! That is a crazy good saving throw modifier, one of the best in the game. Do not sleep on a goblin fighter; they can be lethal and highly survivable.

We have rules for black-power weapons in this issue, too, perfect for high-seas swashbuckler and pirate-themed games, along with early colonial horror gaming settings, like Lamentations of the Flame Princess. OSE has you covered if you want to use this system with Renaissance and Colonial-Era gaming.

We have something for any type of fighter, too, even our brute or any other fighter in the game! We get Combat Talents (CC1, p28), which give our fighters new abilities at level 1, 5, and 10! We can select cleave, which provides us with a Swords & Wizardry-style ability to strike a second opponent when one is defeated. There are leadership, defensive, two-weapon, and other options here that beef up our fighter and make them feel like other old-school games in the OSR genre.

We have some great thief options here, too, but I may make a series devoted to thieves and making the most of those. We're focusing on fighters in this series.

The fighter in OSE was one of the weakest points in the game, with the base class feeling so basic and lacking options and abilities. I was so wrong about this! Even in the core rulebook, there are optimization options that can make you stand out as the party's front-line warrior. With this 'zine, the options get even better, and what was once a simple class has new races to add to the mix, along with selectable talents to give our fighters that extra flair they need to stand out in a crowd ...or a party of adventurers.

Highly recommended, and this makes an optimized build from the core rulebooks even better, and it gives players some of that customizability we have in other games like 5E, back to the player. It lets them specialize and tweak their builds to their playstyle.

Shipped: Ashes Without Number

I have the Ashes Without Number PDFs, and wow, what a fantastic game. This is also up on DriveThruRPG now, so you can order, too. The books are on their way from Kickstarter.

I love old-school gaming; everything works so well together, and you can focus on playing and having fun. There isn't any drama here, and we can all have fun and focus on our stories, characters, and worlds.

And the games are simple, allowing you to focus on fun instead of the complex action types, rules, death saves, multiclass combos, and the next player trying to break the game rules. The games here are fun, easy, and drama-free.

And in this case, completely amazing.

Comic Crawl Classics

I like Comic Crawl Classics. 

This game doubles as a pretty handy generic universal system using the DCC rules, if you ignore the superpowers and just use the "power dice" to increase ability scores, weapon skills, or general skills. You can use this for modern-day, science fiction, or even non-powered fantasy settings pretty easily.

This is also a pretty fun DCC compatible game as well, where you can run superheroes through DCC adventures. One "hero class" does it all, and you do not need character archetypes.

This lacks vehicle combat and rules, so that is one weakness. The equipment and armor is also pretty generic, but it is really all you need. The powers are rated on effects, ranges, and damages - so a lot is left to common sense and judgment calls. This is pretty standard for DCC, since there is no need for a science and physics based simulation for these types of things.

The power level goes up to 14d6 damage for direct damage energy blasts, which is pretty hefty for a hero in a B/X reality. You don't really want to say, "well, 4d6 is a shotgun, so that is only a few times more powerful." This is on-average about a 50 hit-point strike, which is enough to blast a dragon out of the sky. In a comic-book sense, this should knock out a tank. If "tank equals dragon" you could rate vehicles on a B/X scale and just give them a high AC and a ton of hit points pretty easily.

• Car = 10 hp, AC 12
• Jet or Truck = 20 hp, AC 14
• Large Plane or Tractor-Trailer = 30 hp, AC 16
• APC = 40 hp, AC 18, 7d6 damage auto-cannon
• Tank = 50 hp, AC 20, 14d6 damage tank gun

There, this is DCC, this stuff is NOT hard. This is what I love about this game, I could hack together a starship combat system in five minutes. With other games, it is a year of waiting, eighty dollars, tariffs, and a Kickstarter project for a 300-page book that sits on a shelf and rarely gets used.

This is B/X and a little bit of 3.5E, this stuff isn't hard. You don't need to live in Seattle or be a game designer to figure this stuff out. We love to over-complicate things when "good enough" is actually "great."

Comic Crawl Classics is a great generic system for DCC, and a pretty fun set of superhero rules. Recommended, and it can act as a "glue" for characters you want to play, but really don't have a DCC system to cover them.

Video: Bankruptcy SCANDAL rocks TTRPGs!

Professor Dungeon Master is a great channel. Please watch his video all the way through, like, and subscribe. This one is good information on the Diamond bankruptcy and how it will devastate some companies. What can we do?

For the companies affected, now is the time to step up and buy direct from them. Pre-order any of the affected releases from them now. If you see cheap books being liquidated, do not buy them, regardless of how great a deal they are. They were wrongly taken from the publisher, so blacklist them from your purchases. As a community, we don't buy stolen books. I can wait a few weeks or months if the company that makes the games I love pulls through this mess.

This is not about getting a great deal.

This is about helping the companies we love survive.

If you're interested in other books from these great companies, purchase them now. Support those you love. Every direct sale helps. Do not purchase through Amazon or any other seller, except on the company's website or at your local game store.

Step up.

Now is your time.

Video: Alignment Isn’t Outdated. It’s at the Core of D&D.

Alignment is not in D&D 2024 or Tales of the Valiant. They removed this concept from the game. Today's video discusses this topic, and it's a good one. Please watch it all the way through, like, and subscribe to this channel.

If anything will be the nail in the coffin for "new 5E," it will be this one fact. Classic fantasy worlds do not work without alignment systems. They become modern, nothingness, relativism, and mush. The concepts of good and evil disappear, and the call for heroism is silenced.

Once you remove alignment, there is no reason to play these games.

Shipped: Caverns of Thracia Legendary Adventure DCC

I finally got my shipping notification for Caverns of Tharcia! That took a while. Goodman Games appears to have been overwhelmed by the shipping of so many books, which is a good problem to have, and I am happy for them.

These adventures and DCC itself are just fun, and nowhere can you get so many tributes to the old-school, recreations, and re-published classics in one place.