Caverns of Tharcia Shipping Update

Goodman Games says 61% of the Caverns of Tharcia have shipped, and I am in that last 39%. I am still waiting for this, and the PDFs are amazing. I love these old modules updated, and Dungeon Crawl Classics is a fantastic game with all sorts of crazy, gonzo, insane things going on in it.

DCC is also amazingly rules-light, and a stripped-down 3.5E that replaces Pathfinder 1e for me. The game plays fast and is fun, even for spellcasters. You never know what will happen! Where Pathfinder 1e had that high drama, deep exploration, hard-hitting magic, and powerful characters, DCC does all that as well, and even better. I can run these characters without computer software. Each class brings something amazing to the table. The game is built around the concept of 'everyone has fun at the table.'

I love the Zocchi dice, too. The dice chain is ingenious, and collecting them is also great fun.

Limitations are fun, too. If a character starts off terrible, nothing says the referee can't reward you with special bonuses if you quest for them. Want an extra point of strength? Find a powerful entity and quest for it. Do something amazing? The referee may just reward you with anything.

Drinking from a magic pool may change an ability score. Nothing says you can't do this, and nothing in the game says ability scores must be static and never change. Tunnels & Trolls is infamous for changing a character's ability scores multiple times per adventure. If a character compliments a statue of Aphrodite, and the goddess is flattered, she may just reward the character then and there with a +2 PER change, permanently. If someone else complains about it being unfair, apply a -2 PER change to the vain one, permanently. This only happens once.

Don't ever put yourself in that "D&D mind trap" of feeling nothing changes, ability scores always stay the same, and everything must be balanced and fair. Stuff happens! Ability scores can be given as quest rewards, gifted, changed because of fantastic rolls, changed by magic, trained higher for gold and time, granted by the referee's whim, or reduced due to misfortune or injury.

Ability scores are starting values, not numbers etched into a gravestone.

These are your books. This is your game. Play it how you want.

That is what I love about Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Fantasy Gaming and the Fall of D&D

On the 5E side of the world, I play Tales of the Valiant, just to have a 5E game that isn't from Wizards. But the 5E side of the hobby is horrible right now, and I get the feeling the game is like watching passengers flee to the lifeboats. More of the D&D team is leaving, Daggerheart is taking a considerable portion of the D&D storytelling community away, Shadowdark is taking the old-school 5E crowd, and Draw Steel (MCDM RPG) is hitting PDF very shortly to draw in the game mechanics fans.

The "modern gaming world" is a mess, and I can see why people are quitting and moving on to other hobbies. Daggerheart is more about keeping people in the hobby than it is about taking them away from D&D. I have a feeling that most of them would have left for other pursuits.

The world is better over in OSR-land, trust me.

We have games. They work. They don't change. They are fun. And they don't need a website to figure out a character sheet. There are no fights with them. People don't need to patch broken classes. Nobody is telling you which version to play.

The OSR is 100% more sane than the 5E world.

It is calm and stable. Quiet, almost, but people play everything, so it is a fantastic place.

Old School Essentials (OSE) is our Shadowdark. This game and Shadowdark are equally impressive, with OSE being just as fun, with many more options, monsters, spells, and rules for an authentic old school experience. This isn't 5E, but it doesn't matter. This is more of a traditional RPG than Shadowdark, since it can be played turn-by-turn, but it is not as tightly linked to a map or movement. OSE also scales to a higher power level, with dominion play, which is very fun.

Many shift between Shadowdark and OSE, and the games complement each other well.

Just like Shadowdark, I can play this without worrying about builds, drama, version wars, finding a character sheet builder, or any other modern corporate-inflicted inconvenience. How many dollars a month am I paying to support ToV character sheets in Shard? I sigh and shake my head. The 5E market can feel like one massive scam on gamers.

And Shadowdark is our Shadowdark.

Shadowdark is enormous, even first-time Kickstarter projects are raking in tens of thousands of dollars. This is a well-crafted third-party scene, featuring a unique style and look that aligns with the books, a focus on simplicity, and a bare-bones presentation that meets old-school sensibilities with 5E rules that strike a sweet spot for many players. Shadowdark belongs in the OSR, and it is the gateway game into our world for many 5E players.

This is a fantastic game, full of the best advice for playing and running the game, filled with content generation tables, and it boils down the essence of old-school gaming to its purest form.

Swords & Wizardry is so good. This is just a classic system, a true, "one and done" set of rules. This is like a classic, pre-first edition set of rules, as easy as B/X, but full of AD&D goodness. The fighters in this game are some of the best in the OSR, and the game is not afraid to pare back those ability score bonuses. Every +1 matters. The saving throw system is genius, and you are never saving versus oddly specific and obscure categories of minutia. Save versus wands? Isn't that a magic save?

One save system, with special modifiers, and you can even use ability score modifiers if you feel they apply. How do you roll ability checks? Old-school gaming was more "the referee decides" on everything. You can "just say pass/fail" or "roll a d20 or under." A STR 18 fighter and a standard indoor door? No roll needed, it shatters into splinters. Why? Because it would.

Whatever the check is or isn't, it is.

Another game that's so good it hurts is Castles & Crusades. This game kills all interest in 5E for me. This is the mythical 2.5E we never got, sort of a "What if Wizards never bought D&D", ruleset that advances the art, yet feels exactly like its AD&D inspirations.

This game is even more rules-light than Daggerheart, and it does not need all the narrative scaffolding since, in the old days, we did all that ourselves with our minds. It is highly expressive, though, with a save and skill system equally as genius as Swords & Wizardry.

This game is worthy of running any mid-1990s D&D setting perfectly, from Dragonlance to the Forgotten Realms. Ravenloft. Dark Sun. It does stories as well as dungeon crawls.

This game can be modded to be as super heroic as 5E, or as deadly as old-school D&D. The range and variety of character types blow my mind, and multiclassing in this game is way better than 5E.

This is also the last game that Gary Gygax was involved with in his life. That is a seal of approval that holds value.

Dungeon Crawl Classics is fun. The game has piles of dice, some of the most inspirational and amazing art ever put in a book, and it worships at the golden altar of Appendix N as if it were some lost god of an ancient world lost to time. It is equal parts deadly and insane, fast-playing, with humor and terror in equal parts, where death can lurk around any corner, but magic can crack the earth and forge canyons that shall last a million years.

Some in the old-school community view this as a game written to appeal to the audience, but not one that truly holds old-school values in high regard. This is not an exploitative cash grab for the old-school crowd; it is a wake-up call to share the old-school feeling and culture with the current generation. Yes, this is a tribute band to 70s and 80s rock, a more modern 3.5E-style ruleset, but damn are they good at what they do.

This is the scream at the beginning of the Judas Priest song, Screaming for Vengeance. It is a piercing shriek, a spear in the heart of the modern day, and a callback to the hippie van, bong-smoking, and neon felt poster crowd of the late 1970s. Like Mork Borg, this game serves as a wake-up call to a hobby that has lost its way and forgotten the true spirit in which the hobby was born.

DCC is not a plush gold-tasseled theater game or silly-voiced anthropomorphic cosplay.

It is a sweat-covered, boot-in-the-face, dagger in the back, and lightning through my enemy's heart grab for glory.

And dying is a part of the legend.

When you roll 3d6 down the line, you accept that your character shall someday die. Add a checkbox to the character sheet that indicates this, and have everyone mark it to begin play. Now, how shall you live that life? Shall you grab victory from the heart of death? Will you embrace darkness for the promise of power? Shall you guard the weak and raise your holy sword high to become the beacon of light to all of civilization? Or shall you be the conqueror to sit upon a throne of your enemy's skulls?

Sudden and shocking instant death, climbing to the heights of glory, and standing on top of a pterodactyl with a laser rifle, slaying the devil-worshipping orcish hordes as you fly into the demon-filled volcano, with Megadeath, Iron Maiden, and Manowar playing at maximum volume.

Adventures Dark and Deep is the pinnacle of first-edition gaming. Swords & Wizardry comes close, but this game has all the arcane tables with strange percentages and modifiers, which you record in a character sheet that looks like a spreadsheet filled with arcane die roll modifiers for all sorts of situations. This does the first-edition initiative right, with weapon speeds and casting times in phases. The monster book is voluminous, with all the greats.

This is the only game that could ever do Greyhawk justice. You cannot play Greyhawk as it was back in the day with 5E. Even the Forgotten Realms was originally a first-edition world, more serious and low-magic, with death at every turn. Wizards' D&D turned everyone into superheroes who do not die. That makes modern rules incompatible with the original settings.

The new settings are a science-fictional and contemporary reimagining of the classic settings in the classic books. It comes across as if putting starships and blaster rifles in The Lord of the Rings, and forcing everyone to accept that as how the books were originally intended.

To paraphrase Will Smith, "Get your modern crap out of my classic games!"

There are plenty of modern games that do that. People who wish to return to the classics should have the freedom to read and interpret them as they were, from the original words and source material. If modern writers keep reinterpreting this source material, and we lose access to the originals, how are we supposed to create something new, inspired by the original works? We should have the same rights and freedoms as the current writers had to play the original settings, with the original rules, to find our own truths about them.

OSRIC is a strong alternative to AD&D, and a third edition is forthcoming, without the OGL and with free-to-publish content rights for all time. This is equally worthy, and just as classic and iconic.

The argument to play first edition is not "wanting to play an old game," but it is more "we have the right to not live in George Orwell's 1984, where we must accept the socially-approved reinterpretation." This is about preserving history and having the freedom to read and interpret it as we see fit. To have the same rights and liberties as today's writers do, before they are taken away by corporate revisionism.

Be careful about giving up all your rights to the collective; you will regret it someday.

From the frozen north comes the roar of Dragonbane. This is a revived game from the 1980s, D&D as played in Sweden, a local classic brought back to life in the modern day. Everything about this game is a classic, from the art to the design, it soars instead of flying, and is one of the best solo experiences in old-school gaming. Many have walked away from 5E and ended up here, and are swinging swords and casting spells against the backdrop of a war between demons and dragons.

Dragonbane is awesome.

Even 5E has spawned complete clones of the system within the Open 5E framework, immune from the OGL and forever protected from threats and license revocations. D&D could be sold to a totalitarian country, and the 5E rules would still be alive and well. The OGL Crisis was both a tragedy, but it also spawned a wave of freedom that we still benefit from today. Also in the modern framework, Pathfinder 2 deserves mention as a game that is now protected, open, and free from threat.

D&D hasn't died, but it is not in a great place. Time will tell if things get better. The game has spawned hundreds of alternatives, much like the blooming of flowers in a field, seeded with the blood of a game that started it all.

Is Dragonbane Old-School?

Is Dragonbane an old-school game?

The history of the game dates back to the "Scandinavian D&D" of 1982, and it has endured multiple editions and variations to the present day. It finally went global with Dragonbane when Free League acquired the rights to the game.

The Free League presentation feels modern and slick, and the mechanics have a "new game" feeling to them. The art is fantastic, and the game still keeps its old-school sensibilities while embracing the high adventure and "high fantasy action gaming" feeling of modern games.

Dragonbane feels more modern in its play. Where in Shadowdark you are creeping around corners and prodding with a 10-foot pole, in Dragonbane, you charge into a fight, because fights are fun. The same is true about DCC, but DCC also rewards careful play. Dragonbane feels more like an action game, in the modern D&D style. Skill-based play is also strongly supported, leading to a more substantial roleplaying experience than D&D, along with a more organic levelling experience.

Dragonbane does solo play far better than most of the old-school games, which is a massive plus for those of us who don't have regular groups, or our regular group is flaky enough that they always talk about playing but never get together to play.

Sorry, group! But we already knew that, and I am partially to blame.

Dragonbane seems to exist in its own alternate universe, free from the TSR & Wizards influence of fantasy gaming that the rest of the world has had over the last 50 years. It is also free from the influence of Games Workshop and Warhammer Fantasy, yet it still retains that distinctly European feel. It is such a breath of fresh air breaking free from those influences, like you are reading a fantasy book from an author with a completely different perspective and style of world, and you feel everything is new and fresh again.

Mind Flayers, the Great Wheel, Skaven, Chaos, Beholders, the Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, Drow, and all the other tropes are just gone. The monsters are strange, new, and exciting. They have bizarre, terrifying attacks and habitats. I can set aside all that I know and just explore new things, new worlds, and live in a new one.

D&D leans on its nostalgia way too hard, and it holds the game back. Yes, this is a part of the fun, but there is a point where the game is mostly nostalgia, and mostly things I have already seen.

Also, while Dragonbane is definitely Western in view, it is not too modern, one-world, and blindly political, where there are no meaningful differences between kin. While there are no ability score adjustments, there are essential differences, and different races have different abilities.

The conflicts in the game are also diverse, featuring dragons, demons, undead, night kin, giants, trolls, and other major monster types, each serving as a faction in the world's story and plots. The sides fight, and characters can get caught up in the mess. The fight between dragons and demons shapes the world.

"The hostility between dragons and demons has brought death and ruin upon their ancient civilizations. It seems almost like a fundamental law of nature – that anything created by dragons alone is corrupted by demons, and that anything born of demonic will is burned to ashes by dragonfire." - Dragonbane Rulebook, page 5.

There are no "demonic dragons" like there are with D&D, and the sides here are clearly delimited and stand in direct opposition. Demons are a corrupting force that affects all of the living, but this is not the default for some races, like it is in old-school AD&D. Orcs are not all demon worshippers by default, and they must be corrupted first, just like humans and any other living thing.

Be careful of your default "D&D assumptions" because they are mostly incorrect, and the world of Dragonbane is vastly different. You can have factions of powerful orc tribes that are a significant threat, with no demonic influences anywhere to be found. Dragons are loners, survivors of a lost age and broken world, and are not a "default force of good" like you would assume. Many have turned to selfishness and wrath. The individual motivations matter!

This can also be applied to all kin and factions in the game. Motivation and history matter. Corruption matters, but it is not gamified and remains a recurring theme in stories. What you do matters, and your choices will shape the narrative as guided by the game master. You don't need gamified systems to track story things, beyond what is contained in the rules. In that sense, it is very OSR, involving work with evil factions and committing heinous acts, and it is up to the game master to decide what the effects and consequences of that are. This story-based approach is similar to an Old School Essentials and Basic D&D model.

Your actions matter. They will have consequences, both good and bad. How good or bad it depends on what was done. This is all up to the referee. If you are playing solo, roll an oracle die.

The answer to the question is yes, Dragonbane is an old-school game at its heart. There are a few new-school concepts and mechanics in the game, but for the most part, the sensibilities and design are very old-school.

Welcome aboard!

DCC: Advanced Labyrinth Lord as the +1 Game

Dungeon Crawl Classics always needs an "extra game" to pull from, which I call my "+1 Game." Why do we need a +1 Game for DCC? Well, DCC leaves a lot up to you, such as:

• Equipment Lists
• Vehicles
• Horses
• Wagons
• Boats & Ships
• Wilderness Rules
• Monsters
• Retainers
• Specialists
• Treasure
• Treasure Tables
• Magic Items
• Stronghold Construction

Advanced Labyrinth Lord has it all, even ship combat rules. Since Mutant Future is my +1 game for Mutant Crawl Classics, these two books complement the MCC and DCC rules nicely. And I am not using these books for an active game, so if I use them as reference books, that is fine.

You will not use the spells, which is a large portion of the book, but that isn't a problem. You will also use the DCC armor AC values and weapon damage.

AC is descending from 9, so DCC AC = 19 - LL AC. An unarmored AC of 9 in LL would be 10 in DCC. An AC of 2 in LL would be 17 in DCC.

Hit dice need to be increased by 1/3 or 33% from LL to DCC, using the giant types as a baseline. Also, use the larger hit die sizes like DCC does for larger creatures. Damage is about the same. Mostly, the monsters work well as-is, and you can throw a few special or extra attacks in as needed.

The magic item selection is excellent, and you can customize these with as many special and different properties as you like. Remember, in a DCC world, every magic item is unique! You could always tag a random LL spell (and the spell lists are numbered like random charts) to every magic weapon and armor, and give it one to three uses per day, and be fine. This way, the spells get used and are not rolling on the DCC charts; they are just spells for item properties.

If you have LL and are not using it, place it with your DCC collection and use it as your monster, gear, and treasure book. This book has it all, is easy to use, and works very well as an expansion to the game.

Dungeon Crawl Classics

It is hip to trash DCC these days, but I still love this game. A lot has been made about a controversial Kickstarter project. Still, assurances were given that this was only to complete the project, preserve history, and repay those who backed the original project. 

Goodman dropped the ball a few times. A huge mistake was made when the campaign started, as it failed to communicate these goals and what was happening, so everyone assumed the worst. They also ended up apologizing ad nauseam, and one would have been enough.

A few newsletters acted horribly, resorting to full clickbait tactics to elicit anger. I won't be dealing with them anymore, or the games they publish. Similarly, a few YouTube channels have also done this, and they are being unsubscribed from.

I hate the gaming market and content creation space these days, which is why I stick to writing.

A lot can be learned from this, but I don't have much hope, as the industry is in a downturn, content creator channels are not being recommended by YouTube, and everyone is struggling for attention in a rapidly declining tabletop gaming market. The entire landscape of gaming has turned cutthroat, so whenever a mistake is made or bad news comes out, expect everyone to jump on it and look for blood.

Those who act with ethics and in the best interest of the community, while staying positive and not getting into fights, shall earn my support.

A few have lost my support over this.

Goodman Games still has it.

Adventures Dark and Deep

Adventures Dark and Deep (ADAD) is an excellent game. If you want an authentic AD&D-like experience, but with a few more character options, this is the way to go. The presentation is fantastic, the new stuff is excellent, and it feels like a strange, alternate-universe version of AD&D 1st Edition, but taken into the future.

It is like the Satanic Panic never happened.

AD&D 2nd Edition and its censorship never happened.

The game never evolved into support material for the 1990s fantasy novels and their insufferable collection of GMNPCs and author Mary Sues.

We stayed with everything that made the original modules great, kept the dark and deadly nature of the game, and celebrated the baseball-stat-like character sheet you needed to understand to run a character. It is complicated, but every secondary value has a use. Things are not overly streamlined into a universal game mechanic. We did not unify the core rules or bring in expert designers to ruin everything.

First edition feels like a well-lived-in house where everything is the way you want it. And then Wizards comes in and hires a Feng Shui expert for their versions of the game to mess up your entire way of life, the whole house is different and too streamlined, and now you can't find anything. You are perpetually unhappy, having your "it just works best this way" routine disrupted.

I can play an authentic Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms campaign in these rules and still have the game feel deadly and serious. This is before everyone became Marvel Superheroes in today's games, and a 10th-level wizard that took months to get there could fail a death save and system shock roll, and it was game over. Roll up a new character.

The first edition had built-in GMNPC and Mary Sue protection just due to the natural character kill rate.

And the game is very "survival oriented" since the wilderness is a hugely dangerous place, you need to spend gold to hire retainers, and that gold needs to go into a stronghold to hold the rest of the gold you will be getting your hands on. There are no banks or lines of credit here. Grab 100,000 gold from a dragon's hoard, and good luck keeping that in an inn room back at town.

And yes, you are doing a lot of bookkeeping and referencing charts and strange modifiers to specific actions, so write those down! A character should have a bit of arcane "rules crunch" to them to help them feel authentic.

All this thinking can be applied to the OSRIC game, too, which is a worthy first-edition option as well. It is the same game as ADAD, except with fewer options and fewer rule expansions.

Want a still authentic-feeling but easier version of this game? Then play Swords & Wizardry. You keep the deadly and old-school feeling while losing the complex character sheets and table references. You get ascending AC. The game is smaller and much faster. This is a mix of first- and zero-edition gaming, such as the missing 0.5E we never saw.

Want a more modern version of the first edition, like the 2.5E that was never created? Play Castles & Crusades, and enjoy a more modern unified core system. C&C is the best modern implementation of the old-school game, and it feels like the first edition while modernizing the mechanics. C&C is also highly hackable, and you can play anything from deadly first edition play to 5E-style superheroes.

ADAD replaces Dungeon Crawl Classics for me, since instead of a game that emulates the old-school experience, this is the old-school experience. Yes, you are missing the Appendix N-inspired rules zaniness, but this is the real thing. DCC is an excellent "tribute band" to the original works, but for those of us who were there, having the original rules again, and the experience they deliver, can not be replaced or emulated.

I still like and play DCC, it has a charm of its own. This is a game that has survived being put in storage many times, and each time I missed it and retrieved it. It is impossible to quit this game, as it captures the elements of fun, absurdity, and dark humor that many OSR games often overlook. Where games like Shadowdark tend to be overly deadly and grim, and even Daggerheart can be high drama, what game appreciates fun and humor?

The original Forgotten Realms was a first-edition world. The world was not like the video game, with science fiction starships flying all over, and too many fantastical NPCs wandering about like some MMO hub city full of 101 silly Unreal Engine player models out of Fortnite. There was no "adventurer class" of people. This was an everyday fantasy world, primarily human, low magic, and fearful of the gods. Towns were suspicious of outsiders. People worked and toiled hard to make a living in this dangerous world, and kingdoms raised armies to protect their people from the monsters. Magic was mainly strange and unknown, along with most of the lands outside cities, which were full of lost empires, ruins, and mysteries from ancient times. Evil gods and demons slowly corrupted the land and took souls, laughing as civilizations fell to their wickedness.

Forgetting water and rations could kill you as easily as wandering out of the town gate and getting hit by a goblin arrow. You could get lost in the wilderness and die. A random wilderness encounter could be far too deadly for you to fight, and you will be avoiding or running away - if you can. If you can't get away, you will die. Dungeons are nasty places full of deadly wandering monsters, traps, and tricks designed to keep you down there forever so the dungeon can finish you off. The corpses of "previous adventuring parties" will be found everywhere, and some of them will have been raised into undead protectors of these tombs and crypts.

The first edition captures that feeling.

Every other edition fails.

Swords & Wizardry

Swords & Wizardry is becoming one of my favorite gonzo old-school games. It hits many correct notes, and it is careful about doling out ability score modifiers to everyone. Only fighters get the STR damage and to-hit bonuses! The DEX bonus also stacks with the STR bonus for fighters and missile weapon to-hits, making fighters highly desirable and valuable as both melee and ranged weapon damage dealers.

S&W is also a small game that borders on rules-light compared to many other games. Still, it delivers a complete experience with many classic elements. The game is comparable to an AD&D-type experience, but with far fewer rules and much more room to modify and adapt it to your liking.

Bards, barbarians, warlocks, necromancers, and many other classes exist in the Swords & Wizardry Book of Options, putting the more modern character classes into the game. This book elevates the experience to a higher level and puts the entire system on par with the options found in 5E and other games.

As a "quick system" for fantasy, S&W is becoming my number one option. This pushed Dungeon Crawl Classics out of my top spot just because S&W has a few books that do everything, plus more, than DCC does in a massive tome. I get more monsters, a larger selection of magic items, more classes, more spells, and more of everything that matters to me in fewer pages. S&W does not have all the random charts, corruption system, or other DCC "features," but if I want those, I can use my imagination and open the game up to ability score checks for stunting during combat and spellcasting.

And "stunting," skill, or ability score checks are easy in S&W. They are just a saving throw. Or you can do a roll equal to or under on a d20 to the ability score.

Castles & Crusades is the only game competing with S&W for the top spot, with Old School Essentials a substantial third. DCC has fallen off my radar substantially because the system is heavier than it needs to be for my liking. I still like the system, but not enough to make it my go-to game for fantasy.

Adventures Dark and Deep is also up there as my number-one first edition retro-clone. This is not a rules-light game, but it does amazing, incredible things while staying true to the original and best role-playing game ever written.