Cleaning Up My DCC Library

I have too much junk!

The zine culture, small publishing, endless modules, crowd-funded mega modules, and all this other "stuff" for DCC have my game bloated and unplayable. The DCC bloat feels as bad as the Shadowdark bloat at this time, and I find myself having to pare down my collection to the absolute best of the best and put all the junk in storage.

I am there with 5E, and I found focusing my collection just on Tales of the Valiant, and using the Shard VTT to support it with character creation, is my best answer for the mire of junk I find myself stuck in.

All of a sudden, 5E feels playable again.

The mess of options and fluff is gone.

And I am left with a smaller, more focused, compelling game. It is so easy to get overwhelmed when a game reaches a specific size; you just quit playing it.

I am there with DCC right now, and I can't play the game and shy away from it since my shelf is a mess, crowded, filled with junk, and unplayable. I would play you more if I had less of you. I want a smaller, cleaner, more focused "fun center" and not one stocked and jammed with so many books it looks like a disaster zone.

Right now, I don't even have any room for my dice on that shelf, and it is a huge shelf. When a game gets larger than one shelf, it is too much game.

I get why some flock to one-book games, like the excellent Dragonslayer. One book is all you need. Not a library. I could play this and one of the megadungeons, and be set.

Off the Shelf: Hyperborea

Let's pull Hyperborea out of our storage crates and put the game back on the shelves.

Hyperborea is very similar to the classic first edition, and it's compatible with both Swords & Wizardry and OSRIC. It is a strange game meant for swords and sorcery and not high fantasy. Hyperborea is a better choice (for some) than Dungeon Crawl Classics, offering a more traditional experience that lacks much of that game's table-based play and randomness, while retaining an intense, gonzo, Conan-style feel.

I have not really gotten into Hyperborea, as I am more of a fan of first and second editions than I am heavily modified derivatives. Still, I see the strengths of a game like this, where the experience is more like savage sorcery than your traditional Arthurian knights. Modern Dungeons & Dragons tends to slip into a pseudo-Renaissance setting mixed with the Knights of the Round Table. These days, D&D is more an allegory for modern street adventures than anything in the fantasy genre. I like a heavily themed game that gives me a barbaric feeling, as this one does.

The game is contained in two books, one for players and the other for referees, and it is a tight implementation of the rules. It is 100% compatible with any first edition or even Swords and Wizardry, so you will not go without adventures or monsters.

The magic is more traditional and does not have spell failure or spell mishaps like Dungeon Crawl Classics does. The original game never had wacky spell failure, so I understand where they’re coming from. The gonzo and crazy nature of the world is where the focus is, instead of an internal focus where magic mutates you. Here, the focus isn’t on mutation and randomness. Referees and players, not the rules, enforce the gonzo, insane nature of the world.

This is the key difference between Hyperborea and Dungeon Crawl Classics. Hyperborea does not rely on randomness to convey its theme and feeling. The game will be as gonzo and insane as you make it. If you want something to happen, make it happen, and it does. There are times when Dungeon Crawl Classics feels like “gonzo with training wheels” when it is far easier to be less reliant on charts and tables and random results, and do it yourself, given what you know and like. You will always get the result and craziness that is closer to your heart if you do not use a table and let it tell you what happens next.

That is why some prefer Dungeon Crawl Classics as a game that you migrate from the fifth edition. The charts and tables tell you what can happen, and you need that level of training to understand what savage swords and sorcery all are about. For experienced groups and game Masters, it is far easier to say something crazy happens and then enforce the genre through direct rulings instead of chart results. I still like the tables in Dungeon Crawl Classics, but having played these games for decades, I don’t really need them. There are times when I find the results on the charts limiting and less imaginative than what's in my head. I suppose I would have more fun with the game like Hyperborea, where I can “say what happens just happens.”

This is going alongside my first edition collection and my second edition books, along with the grandmaster game of OSRIC, and joining my games on my living room shelf. A solid tabletop game, fewer books than my bloated DCC collection, and I look forward to reading this and having some fun.

DCC vs. Second Edition

 If I had to keep one game for fantasy, would it be Second Edition or Dungeon Crawl Classics? While my love of a combined Second and First Edition is strong, the fun factor of DCC can't be discounted.

DCC has far, far, far better support than Second Edition, and even ongoing and regular crowdfunding projects, and if there is only one reason to put Second Edition away, this would be it. DCC's support is better than 5E's at the moment, with giant adventure modules released regularly and a steady stream of smaller adventures with varied and imaginative settings.

With Second Edition? I am either playing BX adventures, which are not bad, or recycling AD&D adventures. The support is "sort of what you can find or convert in." It is not bad, but it is not dedicated support. There are a few adventures written for For Gold & Glory, and they are nice, but they are still nowhere near the support DCC regularly receives.

On the other hand, every adventure written for BX, OSE, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and any other retro-clone is compatible, and it gets easier if they support descending AC. So, really, you do have pretty good support if you expand your thinking and pull in adventures from BX. These work well for FG&G, and really, this is the OSR; your choice of rules is how you express yourself today, and that is cool.

It comes down to a few things. Can I get the full rules to a new player for free in PDF form? Is the publishing license open and free for anyone to create under? Is the book attractive and invites new players to join in and have fun?

FG&G hits all three points perfectly.

And there are some amazing ones. I like a lot of the mega-dungeons written for these games, and each one is easily a 10-year campaign. There is an open question of "Are mega-dungeons too much?" I love how huge and expansive they are, but there are times I prefer a larger campaign area with a few dozen medium-sized dungeons rather than one huge, multi-level monstrosity.

Second Edition has the nostalgia factor, while DCC gives me a tribute band experience, not bad, but not the real thing. There are some tribute bands of classic acts that are better than the real thing. As age takes its toll on these bands, the tribute bands can play with an energy and technical level that shocks me. I don't know the hard-working tribute bands; they pour a lot of heart into what they do, struggling and endlessly compared to the real thing, but putting in the time and effort just out of pure love.

DCC hits that same level of respect from me. This is a group of hard-working people who love the hobby as it was and are trying their best to bring back those days with fun, imaginative ideas. As a tribute band to old-school play, DCC hits all the right notes and brings me back to those days. With the Second Edition, I am playing a game that has seen better days, still the beloved original, but there is a danger here of my memories clashing with the reality of a game that has seen better days and fallen out of active support.

With DCC, every class is designed for maximum fun at the table. They are great class designs, and they have that "instant fun" designed into them, so if you sat down at a random table in a convention to play DCC, you are guaranteed to have a good time. With the Second Edition, it is the slow grind, and while I appreciate that, in today's world, where lots of things ask for our time, I will gravitate towards an instant-gratification game more than a slow grind.

I still like Second Edition; it is the best version of the game for me, across every edition Wizards or TSR put out. For the classic feeling and play, little matches it, and they loosened up the racial level limits to a point where they don't matter as much (or could be ignored), and the story XP is a solid system that is like a lot of the modern XP systems we have today. Taking away "gold for XP" and boosting moster XP makes a huge difference in motivation and why we play. The second edition is 100% compatible with anything made for the first edition or AD&D, so it is a solid choice.

For instant gratification and fast play, DCC wins.

For campaigns and classic play, the second edition, using For Gold & Glory as my rules, wins.

Off the Shelf: Dragonslayer

This game does not get as much love as it should. Dragonslayer is front-to-back, page-to-page, pure awesome. Now that Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy is no more, people are taking another look at this game and realizing that sleeping on this book was a mistake. We are sort of in a two-way battle between this and the new revised Labyrinth Lord 2E, and this game compares favorably as a BX/1E mix that Labyrinth Lord Advanced once covered.

Page after page, the art in this game is fantastic. This game gives Goodman Games and DCC a run for their money, and the beautiful line art evokes the old-school style perfectly.

And this is a one-book game! One book is all you need for unlimited fantasy adventures.

Fighters in this game have a cleave ability, allowing one additional attack per two levels if the fighter kills a target. This is one extra attack at level one, two at level three, and so on. The fighters in this game are fun, and that cleave ability is greatly appreciated. In some old-school games, playing the fighter seems like punishment, and you get nothing to do except roll a d20 per turn and do damage. Here, they fold in the classic low-HD multiattack rules into the cleave ability (without the HD limitation), and it makes you want to be out there in the front ranks, hacking away at crowds of monsters.

The OSE fighter, in comparison, feels too basic. This is more of a "reference work" book, and once you add in some of the optional abilities from the Carcass Crawler zines, things improve for OSE, but you need to mod the game to customize how it plays. In the new OSE Advanced, I hope those optional rules are folded into the core book, and the game takes on its own identity.

The racial level limits in Dragonslayer are lower than OSE, but everything is more or less compatible between OSE and DS, or any old-school game for that matter. The hit-die scale is on 1E levels, with fighters being a d10, so the lower level limits are likely due to the bump in hit points. The game's power level is adjusted by focusing on fewer levels and more hit points.

Dragonslayer gives full hit points at level one. Nice. Please don't force me to play a level-one character who rolled a 1 for hit points. There is a fun to that, but most would throw that character away as an expendable rabble. If I want that, I will play DCC with my level-zero peasants.

A level 10 fighter in Dragonslayer with a +2 CON bonus will have 78 hit points on average. A level 10 fighter in OSE with a +2 CON bonus has an average of 61 hit points. In general, you are tougher in this game than OSE, and you do more damage.

If you don't want the complexity of OSRIC, but you want all the cool 1E "stuff" in a BX-like package, then Dragonslayer is a fantastic game. The base game feels like BX, and not like 1E's endless tables of modifiers and percentages to bend bars and lift gates, and it keeps things simple. The demons and devils are here, so this is not censored like 2E was.

Compared to Shadowdark? Dragonslayer is more heroic, no spell failure, no small-map play, no torch timer, more theater of the mind, and not as tightly focused. I love Shadowdark as a "small dungeon" game, almost as a board game, but if I want a more traditional game, Dragonslayer will fill that old-school need nicely.

Dragonslayer is a fantastic game, well worth your time.

Mail Room: Labyrinth Lord 2E PDF

I like Labyrinth Lord, and it is good to see them back for another edition. The OGL is gone from this version, and we have one of the originals back. The game is not a strict copy of the original rules; it adds a few new races and tweaks a few things, which is interesting. The game is finally getting its own identity and flavor. This is taking BX as a base and moving on from there, without feeling it needs to pull in 1E material. This is the new king of the BX starting point games, where the 1E stuff is not essential, and the game should feel more like a 1E base.

A shout-out needs to go to the extremely close Basic Fantasy, a BX clone that hits all the right notes for many, and it uses a modern ascending AC system while being free to download and play. I can see how many would say "juststick with this" instead of supporting yet another BX clone, since the market already has quite a few of them.

Where Dragonslayer does more of a BX and 1E mix, Labyrinth Lord keeps 1E out of the game and just does its own interpretation of a BX ruleset. Dragonslayer is a nice and solid alternative as a replacement for the old Labyrinth Lord Advanced Fantasy, where we started to see 1E monsters and classes enter the game. Dragonslayer uses the 1E hit point scale, with fighters being a d10 hit die instead of a d8.

Dragonslayer is a fantastic game, well worth supporting and playing, and this is the king of mixed BX and 1E content, where you have the stuff from 1E, but a simple BX framework to play with it all in.

If you do not want to go with the full complexity of an OSRIC or For Gold & Glory, and you want to keep the base experience simple, and you want the 1E additions, then Dragonslayer is the perfect game for you.

Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy (now out of print) did a near-perfect BX implementation with no changes. When you start to fold in Advanced Fantasy, you lose some of the elegance and simplicity, and some of the classes (fighter) need quite a few mods and optional rules from the Carcass Crawler zines to feel worth playing. I see how OSE, to some, feels all over the place and needs a bit of tweaking to become fun, and the extra material required keeps it from being a one-book game.

OSE is currently experiencing an identity crisis and needs to find its focus. The revision next year will sort things out, and they make a few more changes to Advanced Fantasy to pull in some of the material people want, and to up their game to become a great one-book game.

On that "one book game" scale, I would rank these as follows:

1. Dragonslayer
2. Basic Fantasy
3. Labyrinth Lord 2E
4. OSRIC and For Gold & Glory
5. Old School Essentials

On my personal preference scale? I am a fan of 2E, but Dragonslayer hits a lot of the right notes for me, too.

1. For Gold & Glory
2. Dragonslayer
3. OSRIC
4. Old School Essentials
5. Basic Fantasy
6. Labyrinth Lord 2E

On the "Does this game have bards?" scale, from no to yes, we get:

1. Dragonslayer
2. OSRIC
3. Labyrinth Lord 2E
4. Basic Fantasy
5. Old School Essentials
6. Shadowdark
7. For Gold & Glory

I bring up bards since the class feels like it has an identity crisis, especially in old-school games. In a classic dungeon crawl, where the party fights to keep quiet, what use is a class that makes the most noise? Even the base book of Shadowdark skips the bard. In newer games, there is a tendency for the class to be the default choice for players who want to be disruptive or don't care about the game, and there is a flippant nature to them that reduces the seriousness some tables desire in gameplay.

And I have played bards for decades and see this too, so I am not a hater, but someone who is generally concerned that the bard class has lost its way. I am not a hater, and I see the confusion and how some lean into this class to disrupt the game. Sometimes they are illusionists, other times healers, other times combat mages, and yet other times they feel like the "default town class," and nobody knows what role a bard fills.

As a result, you see a lot of old-school games drop the bard altogether, and even core-book Shadowdark does this. They do have it as an expansion class (as well as the ranger), but they do not feel like "core book" classes, and there is a reason they are not in the base book.

Design meets the focus of the game, and some classes get dropped since they are distractions to the core experience that the game tries to deliver.

So Labyrinth Lord 2E comes in as a BX+ game, rebuilding the basic game with a simple core but not feeling it needs to add any 1E content. It is closest to Basic Fantasy, which is a game very close to a modernized BX, but with strong ease-of-use features. Labyrinth Lord 2E adds new elements to the mix, so it is a fork of BX that maintains compatibility with BX. Some would want to stick with Basic Fantasy, Dragonslayer, or the 1E/2E clones over supporting another new BX game.

It is good to see an old friend return so strongly.

Second Edition Deserves to Live

It is sad how the Second Edition died. With TSR bankrupt, the game took on a tarnish from the mismanagement of the 1990s, as AD&D itself was blamed for the downfall. The game did not deserve to die and end like this. Wizards' buying TSR and releasing 3E as a complete rewrite reenergized players, but it left a stain on 2E's legacy, as if it were a failure.

And we have not had a stable edition from Wizards since. They replaced the 3rd Edition like they replaced the 4th, and now the 5th Edition is in its endgame phase. D&D 4 Essentials came out to "clarify the rules" and "not replace the original," and we see the same thing with 5.5E.

I wish we lived in an alternate timeline where TSR never went away, and we were back on the original set of rules that started this all. Constantly changing the underlying system of how D&D works is getting tiring, and I just want the game to play how it felt back in the good days. While a lot of the concepts are the same, characters and the damage scales have been constantly tinkered with over the last 25 years of Wizards' ownership, and nothing from 3E to 5E uses the exact scaling anymore.

The First and Second editions are the original game, and essentially the same set of rules, and are compatible. 1E and 2E are classic games, like Monopoly, and they should be seen the same way. There are times when I wish Wizards would stop releasing new editions of the game and support and preserve the ones they already have.

And not rewrite, but preserve and honor.

These days, it feels too much to ask, so I am over here in the OSR enjoying the games as they were.

Second Edition is like the 5.5E of today, if 2014 5E was the First Edition. Both games were "changed due to outside societal pressure" to be more "mainstream product." Both may bankrupt the company. The Second Edition introduced significant numerical changes that improved the game, and we still had some great game designers working on the rules.

While a lot was removed due to outside pressure in 2E, it all found its way back into the game, even demons and devils. With 2024 D&D, half-elves and many other choices were removed from the game, and all humanoids were removed from the monster lists. None of the removed content from 2024 D&D is likely to ever return to the game due to the zeitgeist of social media pressure.

The ideological crusade that forced the removal of content from 2E was an outside force, and the designers found a way to bring it all back. The ideological crusade that created 5.5E came from within the company, and we are never going to get these things back.

I fault 2E for its failings, for being too commercial and mainstream, such as dumping assassins, half-orcs, and demons. Demons return in the Outer Planes Appendix, and the Assassin returned in the Complete Thief book. Half-orcs return in the Complete Book of Humanoids. So, all the cut content was eventually restored; it was just well hidden and took a few years to be published and released.

The main books of AD&D 2E remained a mass-market game to avoid controversy.

They kept the game essentially the same as AD&D 1E, and just cleaned up the rules and organization. The more I study D&D 3.0 and 3.5E, the more I see them as inferior to the two originals. I wish Wizards kept its games in eternal print, not changing them, but just keeping every edition of the game available to buy, even in print form. POD is halfway there, but many titles are still not available, and the 1E books have scanning errors.

Still, this was the version of the game that got us back into D&D. We loved the removal of XP for gold pieces, and the story XP system with the higher encounter XP made us fall in love again. The game wasn't about greed anymore; this was about stories and epic tales of heroism. The game wasn't any less deadly either, although progression seemed faster due to the higher rate of XP for encounters.

The tone of the game shifted from gritty swords & sorcery to heroic high fantasy.

Removing demons and devils improved our game. As a DM, I needed to come up with evil factions, use other monsters, highlight evil dragons and their cults, put the yaun-ti front and center, focus on the drow, and use the monster book in creative ways. We never had them as a part of our Forgotten Realms campaign, and the game was better for it.

That is not to say I did not miss them, as ultimate bad guys, they were missed. They more thematically belonged in Greyhawk and other settings, back when 1E featured them prominently, and they did make appearances by the time the Outer Planes Appendix came around. Still, having the first run of the Realms as a "no demons place" made it feel special, like the gods actually worked for a living and kept them out, and other evils had to step up and take on the roles of corrupters and wicked masterminds.

This is why I love For Gold & Glory. It is a clean-room Second Edition game that works as the engine for any Second Edition book or adventure. People can write for this game, and it works with any First Edition book. It is nice to see a version of the game that does not get much love receive attention and support. This is also setting agnostic, and it feels more thematically medieval and grounded than much of the Forgotten Realms books and 2E source material.

It is a fantastic game, authentically medieval, storytelling, and compatible with anything in 2E and 1E. This feels like home to me. The classes are not overpowered and bloated, and you need to rely on gear, teamwork, and smarts to make it by. While the product identity monsters and spells are stripped out, they are easily added back in, or left out if you want to play in original worlds.

Where other games feel too simplified, like Old School Essentials, and other games feel unnecessarily flashy and wild, such as Dungeon Crawl Classics, FG&G hits the Second Edition notes and feels perfect. This is still 1E, but with many quality-of-life improvements. The non-human level limit caps were significantly raised, too, bringing about a better parity and fairness to the other character races.

FG&G is also an open game, and people can write material and adventures for this version. We can't do that for AD&D 2E. I always support the community-supported game that allows for the most freedom.

I get why First Edition takes most of the attention. This is the original game. People look at the Second Edition and see something that Gary Gygax did not work on; it had censorship issues, and it was the edition of the game that bankrupted TSR. When it comes down to it, there are only very minor differences between them, and both editions are cross-compatible.

I love the tone of Second Edition shifting to heroic high fantasy, and the feeling that this was the "game of the novels." The 1990s novels were very popular escapist entertainment. They perfectly captured the freewheeling adventure of those novels, where heroes went from place to place, swinging swords and casting spells, saving the day, and making daring escapes. While the First Edition could do that, the Second Edition was built to provide that experience, primarily through changes to XP, which shaped the nature of play and the flow of the game. 

Second Edition was Player Empowerment

The moment we realized that the XP for GP system was thrown out for AD&D 2nd Edition, it changed the entire game for us. We became fans again. The "natural assumption" that experience means reward and story progression, rather than "cheating by finding a 50,000gp emerald" and rocketing up the level chart, made us reevaluate the game's core assumptions, and the system became fun again for us. Here is an example of why.

Let's use Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy for this one, and assume we are the referee laying out a sandbox world. Now, this is how I would never lay out a sandbox world, so this is just for our example. Let's say our party consisted of your typical fighter, mage, thief, and cleric foursome. We decide what the maximum level of the players will be in this sandbox, say, level seven, and then go to the XP charts. 

We see that 80,000 gold pieces per character are needed to get everyone to level 7, which is level 8 for the thief, but it is close enough. Multiply that by four, and then we have 320,000 gold pieces of loot we need to spread through the world to get them there, and we can assume they will miss a lot of loot so we can be a little on the generous side, or "place unfound loot" in their path if they miss out on the 10,000 gp they walked by in the last dungeon.

We get minimal XP for monsters, so it is better to steal the loot rather than kick down the door and fight. This encourages creative thinking, which is a benefit. Wandering monsters give us minimal XP, too, so the fewer we meet, the better off we are. Wilderness encounters are the same, just a waste of time.

We are living in a BX, BECMI, 0E, and 1E world here. Gold and loot are experience. Rob, cheat, lie, and steal your way to fame and glory. Avoid fights. If it isn't bolted down, take it and sell it; every gold piece helps. Rusty weapons? Take those too, if we have the weight allowance. Also, for the most part, ACKS follows this model too, though it has the advantage of needing all that money in the domain game.

And, as a referee, I would stop handing out treasure; progression would all but stop. I can stop a campaign's progression dead in its tracks with a GP equals XP game. I just get stingy with the loot.

The key takeaways here are that the referee has strict control over progression through loot distribution and that fights are best avoided. Wandering monsters and random encounters are terrible things.

Back to the Second Edition, and I refuse to play the POD reprints as I fully support the community games. I recently watched a YouTube video by a noted OSR creator who said there is "no need" for retro-clones these days, now that you can buy the originals from Wizards. He is 100% and utterly wrong for saying that, as retro-clones are needed to protect against "future shenanigans" by Wizards, and also, there is NO WAY you can legally publish an adventure and say "this is for AD&D" or anything other than the current, supported version of 5E these days.

The community relies on retro-clones to publish new material for these rule systems. Do I want to publish and sell an AD&D 1E adventure? Use OSRIC. BX? Use OSE. Second Edition? Use FG&G.

You can't go on the Dungeon Master's Guild and write AD&D and BX adventures. They must be for 5E only. Until Wizards releases the previous editions of the rules to Creative Commons, supporting retro-clones and holding them up as "the definitive edition we should be playing" is the best way to go. Also, the POD reprints have errors that have not been fixed.

I take it a step further and play the retro-clones, and choose to talk about and only support them. This is how we immunize the community from a future OGL Crisis, and this is the only sane position to take in these "corporate times" of greed. To just say "buy them from Wizards" does a massive disservice to the entire community of creators, third-party adventure and expansion creators, and the entire market as a whole.

I can publish an adventure for OSRIC and sell it.

I can't publish an AD&D adventure at all; there is no way.

I am not sorry for calling this out, nor pushing the clones over the originals. We got into the OGL Crisis because of this laziness, and it will happen again the day DM's Guild goes away. This is gaming: every service and site gets cancelled someday, and all your digital content is lost, so you will need to repurchase it somewhere else.

When that day happens, all the people playing the POD reprints will flood YouTube to complain and be milked for outrage clicks, and I will be over here happily still playing and creating for my retro clones. I will get so much time back in my day, never need to watch the hundreds of hours of anger, and be happy with what I have.

All because of making the right choice today.

While I may use AD&D 2E PDFs in my games, For Gold & Glory is my Second Edition core ruleset. OSRIC is my 1E, forever, even with the sacred words of Gygax in print. I do not care, and I am making the right choices. If enough people do this, it creates the change we want to see.

Do you want to create change?

Or do you want the world to continue down the path it is on?

Be the change you want to see.

Back to the subject. The XP we get for a hill giant in BX and OSE is about 650 XP for defeating them, divided among party members, so about 150 XP. When your next level is over 20,000 XP away, that is a drop in the bucket, and given this is BX, and we could be 15,000 XP away from the next level, this would mean defeating 100 of them (with no treasure), just to reach the next level. Monster XP is near-worthless in BX games. There is no way a party could even fight 100 hill giants, even one at a time, without taking losses, not to mention that it would take forever.

Hence, treasure is the XP equalizer.

How about First Edition? In OSRIC, we are better off with the hill giant at 1,800 XP. Now we are getting somewhere. With 450 XP per party member, we are still talking about needing 33 of them (minus treasure) to clear that 15,000 XP. That is still a steep hill to climb without finding treasure, so even in OSRIC, it is better to avoid fights and just grab the loot.

Second Edition and For Gold & Glory are the moments when everything changes, and they did for us. Even though they stripped out half-orcs, demons, and assassins from the game, this was still the best edition of AD&D we ever played, and it got us in the game for a full 10 years. We skipped 2.5E and just used the core rules, which are beautifully preserved by FG&G. We could still back-port in the missing elements from 1E, and when Planescape 2E came about, the demons were back under new names and management.

What about the Second Edition?

No XP for treasure. None. It is an option in the DMG, but discouraged, and it is not mentioned in FG&G. You do get "Story XP," which should be equal to the XP gained for overcoming encounters while accomplishing that goal, and the degree of challenge. The language is essential here! Overcoming encounters also means surrender, fooling them, helping them, turning them into allies, or any other way an "encounter" can be "overcome."

So the hill giant in FG&G is worth 6,000 XP, nearly ten times the BX experience amount. Double that if you defeated the hill giant in a quest where the beast was attacking a village, and you were helping people or doing something heroic. If you convinced the hill giant the town wasn't so bad, and got the townspeople to back off, and they all lived happily ever after? Guess what? You still got the full 12,000 XP, split among you.

The encounter was overcome. The story goal was completed with a positive outcome.

And you didn't need to grab a single gold piece to earn those XP. You never needed to worry about treasure, and its importance was secondary. Mind you, it was still nice to have, but having the game's focus shift from acquiring gold and wealth to heroism, accomplishing quests, and story goals was huge for us. This, even though the rules were 99% the same as First Edition, was enough to make us fans of the game again.

And let's factor in random encounters now. Overcoming random encounters on the path of completing a story goal means the XP value of those encounters, already very high, is added to the story XP for the quest. So that pack of hyenas you fought on your way to the hill giant cave as a random wilderness encounter? It counts toward completing the story, and the already high XP is doubled when the story is finished. Are the cave beetles encountered as wandering monsters in the cave? They all count.

Zero gold pieces were gained here.

Note, in FG&G, magic items do give XP. This is the only exception to the XP for treasure rule, but the XP values are about on par with defeating a monster, so it is a minor adjustment, and certainly nothing you can depend upon for leveling. Still, that XP does count towards "story XP" when they are calculated.

As a referee, I do not need to place 320,000 gold pieces around my sandbox to account for leveling anymore, nor do I even control progression all that much. Most of that is in the player's hands, with the monsters they defeat and the stories they undertake, which could also be their own stories and goals.

This is another essential thing. Story XP is not just "referee quests" but can be a part of a character's personal storyline, goals, and motivations. If a character starts a self-initiated "revenge arc," it could create Story XP for the various milestones and story points along the way. Never in the First Edition did they do this, yet it is possible in the Second Edition.

If players just wanted to "wander the map" and "kill everything," well, then that playstyle opens up, too. It is a bit pointless, but it is an option. Story XP will double progression speed, but they are free to wander the map like Grand Theft Auto and cause chaos if they want.

FG&G and the Second Edition rules do have the problem of "not needing money" at the higher levels. There are no prices on magic items here, nor were there in Second Edition AD&D, which openly dismissed the idea of "magic item shops" in the DMG. Is gold not being important really a problem in Second Edition? The entire concept of wealth as advancement was removed from the game, and characters had minimal need for wealth beyond hirelings and gear.

You have to remember: Second Edition was positioned as "the game for the novels," and the novels weren't about gathering all the gold to get progression either. In the novels, the characters performed heroic deeds, learned, and grew stronger, but never really reflected the original game's "gold for XP" concept. So Second Edition simulated the NYT Bestseller novels of the 1990s pretty well, and that is what the game was built for.

If there is no dominion game, and you don't need to buy magic items worth hundreds of thousands of gold, what do you need gold for? Gold is only required to buy a few things: travel, hirelings, mounts, and pay for lodging and supplies. You could run a "low wealth" game in Second Edition and never affect progression, player power, magic item availability, or any other part of the rules.

That is a feature, not a drawback, since chests full of gold tend to weigh down a party and limit their ability to travel and adventure. In a more story-focused game like Second Edition, if we need to get to "Danger Falls" to save the princess, we hop on our horses and head out. Who cares about securing 30,000 gold pieces of treasure in a bank or stronghold? Let's just focus on the story and go!

For groups wanting a more story-based game that focuses on heroics and not wealth, the Second Edition was built for that exact purpose. This may be the game you were looking for but never knew you wanted.

There is no way for me to stop progression in a Second Edition game as a referee, nor should there be. The game goes from referee-controlled to player-driven, with a much stronger focus on story arcs, quests, plots, and goals. The world and the NPCs become much more critical, along with factions and their motivations. If Orc barbarians are burning the northern villages and sacking towns, there is some instant motivation for players, and no treasure needs to be dangled in front of their faces for the players to want to jump in.

All the players need are goals and stories to go out and be heroes.

These will be driven by the NPCs, factions, and centers of civilization in the world. This is how the referee controls interest and drives player agency.

The rewards will be in the stories the characters tell. Not in the loot locked up in dungeon rooms.

And your characters are free to go wherever adventure calls them to.

Originally published on the SBRPG blog, 11/25/2025.

Second Edition Bliss

BX, BECMI, 0e, and White Box tend to be too simple for me. I see most of YouTube going crazy for this easier-to-play system, and yes, they play fast and don't require much rule support, but a lot feels missing. What will always be true is that the BX system as a "base compatibility layer" is the bedrock of gaming, a standard set of math and numbers that all games can communicate with and use.

The one thing Wizards did to "own the game" was break backwards compatibility, which was a sin, and it destroyed D&D. We have the scaling damage of 3.5E, the insane triple-down hit points of 4E, and the doubled hit points of 5E.

There is nothing wrong with the original math. THAC0 is laughably easy; don't listen to the clowns out there. Roll a d20, add the target's AC to the roll, did you roll THAC0 or higher? You hit.

Of course, you are using descending AC too here, but there is nothing wrong with that either. The better the armor, the less of a to-hit bonus you give your opponents. It is simple. Do you have AC 0? The entire world gets no bonus to hit you.

In fact, you can pre-adjust THAC0 for your melee and missile attack adjustments, and it gets even easier. My 6th-level fighter with a THAC0 of 15 has a +1 melee-hit bonus from STR, and a +2 sword. My base THAC0 is now 15 - 1 - 2 = 12. Have fun adding that proficiency bonus, ability score bonus, and weapon modifier to every attack, 5E players. Even if you make it one number, you are still adding it to every roll in 5E and comparing it to a floating target number.

5E is more math versus a floating target number (AC or DC).

With THAC0, my target number never changes: I only add a number from 10 down to 0 (or lower in rare cases) to my attack, then check my THAC0. I attack an AC 3 creature with my THAC0 of 12. Roll a d20 + 3, beat THAC0.

Also, with the second edition, you lose the demons and devils in the game. OSE does not have them either, and that has not stopped that game. They are the same as in the first edition, so port them in from that, and adjust the XP awards to the second edition standards. Or, use the renamed ones out of the AD&D 2E Monster Compendium and Outer Planes Appendix. They are all there; you just have to do a little finding.

Personally, our Forgotten Realms game ran fine without them for a decade, and I liked having to be creative with other monsters and not fall back on the same old tired enemies. Let the mastermind be a red dragon this time, or an intelligent purple worm. Use an NPC. With Tieflings everywhere in 5E, I am tired of modern D&D proving the Satanic Panic right, and they have become as exhausted as the Drizzt trope. Sorry to burst your ideal character bubble, but everyone is playing them, and they are tired now.

Plus, if you remove them from the "normal world" when demons do show up, it feels special again, and not everyone is playing one. Let evil be evil, and stop co-opting it.

I like For Gold & Glory, the beautiful, free second-edition retro-clone. The book is far better organized than the Wizards reprints, and the core-book art is superior. I will give the 2E Monster Compendium scores on better art for plates of each monster, even if they are slightly cartoony. FG&G does the job, feels like classic AD&D, and the PDF is free for everyone.

Why am I buying BX OSR games when I have this? Designer hubris? To say I "have something" and try to use that as an influencer? Why is it that on YouTube, most OSR influencers are trying to sell you something while ignoring the free games? Why is it Labyrinth Lord versus Dragonslayer all of a sudden? Are we all dumping OSE, which is also an expensive version of the game, for some reason?

The ads were bad enough on there; now all the videos are ads.

OSRIC is free. FG&G is free. Even Basic Fantasy is free.

Are we in this for the game and community, or are we here to sell people things?

Another great thing is FG&G's compatibility with the 2E complete guides, which give us "subclass options," or what we call character kits, to flavor our character classes without creating new ones or piling on complexity. A gladiator or barbarian is a fighter with a character kit; it is simple and easy, reducing rules bloat. These books you need to buy from Wizards, but they are worthy and an improvement over the first edition.

I love character kits over 5E's mess of subclasses. This is a much cleaner design, and it works perfectly. I never want to see hundreds of character classes and subclass options for each one in a game ever again; it is a terrible mess of a game design that reminds me of tangled, knotted, dusty, and filthy cords behind an entertainment center. 5E's design sucks, and it is far too complicated for its own good.

A gladiator, cavalier, or barbarian is a fighter with a character kit. No new classes are needed. The design achieves flavor with minimal rules interaction, and is a modern, object-oriented design that is clean and simple. There is a beauty to 2E's design that has never been replicated, and certainly not by the BX-obsessed OSR. Many OSR games will create a gladiator and barbarian class, just to fill books and sell you more stuff.

Yes, I am calling this out, but the OSR suffers from many of the problems that ail the 5E design community. Where simplicity, inheritance, and elegance can solve a problem, many OSR games do the same exact thing that 5E does: create classes to please the collectors, sell books, and bloat the game until it becomes unplayable.

Character kits rock.

THAC0 is the better system.

The second edition wins on solid design principles.

The AD&D 2E monster book is also a purchase if you want the product identity monsters; for FG&G comes with plenty of monsters of its own and is compatible with all of OSRIC's monsters, too. For that matter, all of BX is compatible too, just make sure descending AC is supported, as it should be. If you look around, you will find literally tons of OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry monsters that are directly compatible with second edition, and there is no shortage of foes to fight.

We have bards here, too, so that is not a reason to skip out. In fact, bards are a more challenging class to play, and I like that design since it forces you to have a high degree of player skill and leverage your roleplaying chops, which you should be doing as a bard instead of falling back on designer gimmes and free magic powers. I would not let an inexperienced player choose a bard in 2E; this is for skilled players only. As it should be.

Add the second edition's story XP and increased monster XP on top of what is already the best version of the game, and you have pure gaming bliss.

Originally published on the SBRPG blog, 12/6/25.

D&D 6E? AD&D Re-release?

The latest thing on D&D YouTube is rumors of an AD&D re-release by Wizards.

I would like to see this, as long as it is unaltered, with no modern art, and it is not censored or changed.

But I know better. I don't trust Wizards all that much.

And we have better options in OSRIC, OSE, Dragonslayer, and Dungeon Crawl Classics. But here is my feeling. A game is not just the rules.

A game is the support it gets. Dungeon Crawl Classics and over 100 adventures? That is far, far better than an AD&D re-release, and offers me more fun and long-term gaming than simply printing a new edition of nostalgia and calling it a day.

The writing team at Wizards does not have it in them to release anything as significant as the Tomb of Horrors, Ravenloft, or any of the classics. They do not have the writing chops or old-school sensibilities to write anything other than modern tripe.

An AD&D re-release?

One and done.

Likely smeared with current-day politics to rub agendas in our faces and tell the grognards they are - and will always be - horrible people. Just like they did to Gygax. Will the book come with a warning message?

They still have a long way to go to regain good graces. If they open the license to 1E as a result? Then, that is an excellent start on the way back. You have my interest. I am bought in. That ensures the community can step up and support the game. It is a great move to mend fences. I will support that.

PDFs not tied to D&D Beyond? Now we are talking. I don't mind if they support this on D&D Beyond, and I encourage them to take that step. All should be able to play whatever version they love and remember. Wizards need to get out of the rules-writing business and into the "playing D&D" business. They already have too many versions of the game to support. A 6E will make things worse and further divide the fans.

They should support OSRIC, OSE, Basic Fantasy, C&C, Labyrinth Lord, DCC, Dragonslayer, and any other D&D version on D&D Beyond. Bring everyone in the tent. Sell all their digital books, with options for physical copies. PDFs to own, please. Support everyone's character creation methods. Everyone comes here to play. Why not?

Be more like Facebook, and less of a "book publisher."

But OSRIC and other community-supported BX games will be here to stay. This is the measuring stick of their progress.

And DCC has the support to keep me playing long after the Kickstarter ends and interest wanes.