Let's Review: Reality's Edge

What is it?:

Reality’s Edge is a Cyberpunk skirmish game set in the grimy, dark, depressing world of the Sprawl. 

 

The setting:

It’s 30 minutes into the future and the Space Jerk/Tech Bros/Super Rich just run the world now. Crypto Currency is actually being used (even if that makes the least amount of sense in the whole thing) and we have cybernetics. It’s everything that science fiction authors have been trying to warn us about for decades.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read too much about the setting, as it’s kind of mishmash of cyberpunk settings, with a dash of current trends (gig economy, crypto currency, social media, etc). I’m not saying it’s bad, not at all, it’s just that I have my own idea for the setting and I’ll get into that if/when I get around to playing some games.

 

The system:

The system for Reality’s Edge is very similar to the one from This is Not a Test, with a few changes and adaptation for the gritty cyberpunk setting. For the most part, models roll a d10, add a stat, and beat the TN (Target Number, usually 10). There’s stats for shooting, fighting, hacking, your firewall so you don’t get hacked, and even some digital hit points, which is really about your connection.

When you make your group, you’ll start with making a Showrunner, who is a promoted version of the various model types (I’ll get to them shortly), who also gets a background and a few other things. Then, you’re supposed to make your Backer, but I’m going to skip them for now. Instead, let’s talk about the rest of model types.

When making a crew or team, you can recruit up to five other models from a pretty good list of classic cyberpunk archetypes. We’ve got hackers (who are called Console Cowboys, in a nice nod to classic cyberpunk), Sprawl Ronin (which is a very interesting flip on the classic Street Samurai title), gang members, enforcers, social media influencers, ninja types, and drone handlers (which I find to be a very interesting inclusion), just to name a few. You might think that this low number of types might lead to a feeling of sameness in crews, but each time you pick one, you get to pick what sort of variation they get in stats, as well as pick a random table to roll on for their starting skills. These members of your crew start out as freelancers, who you can later recruit into permanent member of the crew, who then gain experience.

The last part of your crew is going to be the avatar of the mysterious backer of your Showrunner and your crew. This avatar is going to be a hologram or only exist in cyberspace, as that’s something else that’s also on the game board, too. Anyway. If you’re just playing one off games, your backer isn’t really a big deal. When you start a campaign, you get to pick (or randomly roll) what kind of backer you have and give them a special ability. Backers vary from media corporations, military/government sponsors, organized crime, corporations, and unshackled AI, which is my personal favorite. Each sponsor gives you a pair of advantages and gives their avatar a special skill.

The last part of building a crew is buying gear, which is going to add up quickly. You have melee weapons, pistols, long guns, support weapons (except not rocket launchers for some reason), cybernetics (with a cyber-psychosis mechanic to keep things interesting), and Apps for the hackers, that act a lot like spells. Now, most things cost 5, 10, 15 points, but it’ll add up quick. Plus, there’s only one healing item, but only one combat medic character type, so things are going to get deadly fast.

Once you get around to the missions, or JOBOPS as the game calls them, where you get to do your hacking and killing. Most jobs are about what you might expect in a dystopian cyberpunk future: kidnapping people who want to change employers (or because another employer wants them), protecting a location, or stealing data. My favorite one is protecting a Ramen cart as your crews transport it through the ghetto. There’s a fair amount of jobs, each with their own complications, as well as a master complication table. I feel like this can add in some repeatability, but it would be nice to get some expansions with extra jobs. Maybe that was part of the plan and it just hasn’t come to pass yet. Anyway.

Once the jobs are done, you get to roll for rewards, and traces if you fumbled while hacking and stuff, as well as recruit your freelancers. That’s right, most of your team isn’t going to gain experience during games. It’s the gig economy, but with more bullets and less heath care. Which is saying something. I still don’t know how I feel about this mechanic, but I can see why it works like this, with the setting we were given. I just worry about how this comes down to a roll, with bonuses from bribes, as I tend to roll poorly.

The last part of this book is the “rogue’s gallery” of NPCs you might encounter in the game. This list varies from the corporate security you might expect, to the drunk salaryman and VR griefer you’re probably not expecting. As much as I like the types collected here, I’m slightly unhappy with the amount of corporate goons that could have been condensed and replaced with more interesting NPCs.

 

Is it worth it?:

Reality’s Edge is most expensive Osprey Wargame that I’ve run across at $45, so that makes it a much harder call to make. For me, I found a cheaper copy online, which made it easier to swallow, but it’s a hard sell if you’re not sure if you’re going to like it or not. So, I have to leave this in the “maybe” category as that price makes it harder to figure out.

Mastering the Game: The Right Tool For the Right Job

 

The imagination makes it worse...

Welcome back to Mastering The Game, where I ramble about how to run RPGs and hopefully you get something useful out of it.

Today, I want to talk about something that’s come up in some conversations recently, both online and in meat space, talking about how every system isn’t the best for every game. What do I mean? Well, one example that someone gave was people trying to use D&D 5e for science fiction or some kind of space epic. The point isn’t that D&D can’t do it, it’s that it doesn’t do it as well as something that’s designed from the ground up to handle space stuff. Related to this topic was a discussion of how old games (think 70s and 80s) didn’t have everything mapped out in the rules, so people could come up with stuff to fill in the blanks, that it was expected that Game Masters and their groups would come up with the rules they needed to play the game. Now, while I disagree that game designers intentionally left things out, as I believe that most of those old games weren’t as well play tested or developed as modern games (which doesn’t mean that they should be compared on a one to one basis, modern game design has tons of tools they didn’t have back in the day), there is a point that players and GMs will try to do something with the system that the designers didn’t even think of.

So, let’s use the example that came up in another conversation with a friend. She likes horror movies and was looking for a system that would help her create the look and feel of a horror movie, having found a game on Kickstarter. I let her know that there was already a game with a similar name and premise, and we found that it was super cheap on DriveThruRPG, plus I had played it once before. While we were discussing horror gaming, I brought up some of the classics, like Call of Cthulhu, White Wolf games, AFMBE, Deadlands, and some others. I also mentioned that there are some universal systems that do have horror mechanics (GURPS and Savage Worlds are the ones I had the most experience with), they aren’t designed to be horror games. Just because a game has the mechanics for something doesn’t necessarily mean that those mechanics are the best for that thing. Another part of this discussion was that the simpler the mechanics, the worse they’re going to be to handle the thing you want. Now, I will admit that my statement there is a very general one and there are exceptions to it, however, we must also admit that it’s probably more right than it is wrong.

Perhaps horror isn’t the best genre to cover with a rules discussion, as the real thing that determines the effectiveness of horror is the atmosphere created by the GM and maintained by the players, but there’s enough there for it to run with. But let’s take a closer look at horror and the various things it includes, mechanically speaking. Horror, at its core, is about fear and dread. Now, there’s a lot to unpack there, and I’m sure some might disagree, but we really can’t argue that it is the intent of horror to invoke dread and/or fear. 

Yeah. Nope.

 Of the two, dread is something that needs to be cultivated by the GM, by using all the tricks in your book. Randomly rolling dice and making nonsense notes, asking “are you sure you want to do that?” or by asking a player where their character is looking during a quiet period are all simple things that you can do to make the players uncomfortable. Keeping them on edge is the goal of it. Keeping their characters low on health and ammo is another thing that will make them stressed. Another thing is to play creepy or unsettling music, or maybe watching a scary movie together in the same genre while making characters. You want to be subtle over overt when making players, and their characters, feel dread. However, it’s not something that can be easily done with rules mechanics or dice rolls. Dread is something ethereal and fleeting. It can’t be done well with something written in a book. And it can be easily ruined with one well timed joke. Not that you shouldn’t let the tension break now and again but it the class clown is acting up, it’s going to spoil the mood. One of the best things I’ve found to keep players on their toes is to keep them guessing as to what they’re up against. A lack of detail in description can go a long way to making them afraid and tense. Fleeting glances, things in the shadows, unusual sounds, and being unable to get a good look at what’s there are great ways to do this. Because their imagination will always make it more frightening than the words you can say, as they will bring their own fears, insecurities, and emotional baggage to the fore when they have to picture it in their heads.

Fear, on the other hand, can be handled (to a degree) with mechanics and rules. For the characters, that is. When someone is afraid, they’re usually not as sharp as they are when they’re calm. So, most horror games, or games that can handle horror, will have some kind of effects for characters when they’re afraid. Of course, making the players afraid will also make the characters afraid, but you can’t always count on that happening. Fear mechanics are really what is going to make or break a horror game system. They need to translate the human Fight/Flight/Freeze mindset that appears when something jumps out at you in the night. And this is where you can see how well the game will work for what you want to do. A flat penalty to rolls is one of the weaker things. To use an example, the classic Deadlands system has a very detailed fear table, based on how badly the character failed the roll, plus how scary the thing is in the first place. And while it does repeat a lot of things, mostly just by adding things to the results, it also gives some varied reactions. You can soil yourself, run away in a panic, or even have a heart attack and die, assuming the thing is scary enough. It doesn’t have to be totally realistic, especially if you’re dealing with the supernatural, but it does have to feel reasonable. Fear is something we all feel, to some degree or another, through out our lives and our reactions to it changes over time, with our experiences. That means that your fear mechanics should take this into account. That doesn’t just mean that you have a system that varies by age, but that the system should have ways for characters to react differently to fear. To go back to our example of Deadlands, there’s Edge you can take which says that you don’t run away if you get that results. You suffer every other effect, but you stand your ground. Which is the Fight part of the list above. And the system you use needs to have those variations inside it, if you want it to do a good job.

Fear is relative

 Now, let’s jump back to some examples of popular games. While I’m not very experienced with D&D 5e, I do know that the system is very simple and streamlined, meaning that fear effects are probably going to be something like giving a character Disadvantage when they’re afraid or something similar. I’m sure I’m wrong, and I bet that D&D expands the mechanics when fear is much more important (like in Ravenloft) or when they want to introduce a bunch or optional rules. And to draw back to a point I touched on earlier: you could come up with some house rules of your own, if you feel like it. As a brief aside, I find that having rules in the books to be better than stuff people come up with on their own, as it leads to less arguments and has a better chance of being balanced. For the other popular game I mentioned, Call of Cthulhu, that game is based around Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, which always includes some kind of insanity or madness. But not every horrible thing is going to make you crazy and it’s not going to be some random insanity rolled from a table. For example, in a D&D 3.5 game, the DM got a hold of the CoC 3.5 port and used it for some stuff. When my cleric ran up against some terrible thing, do you know what insanity he got? He was unable to see the color yellow. It made it into a joke. The fact that RPGs don’t have the best history with handling mental health issues is a big one that I might have to tackle another time. Moving on, the problem with CoC isn’t just that it skews towards insanity, but that it has a more modern, real world premise. CoC is set either in the modern day or last century, and requires a book (if there are any for the current edition) to be taken into space, as an example.

So, what do we do if we want something that can make the exact game we want? Well, there’s always options and you can always modify stuff. Let’s say we want to run a horror game, but in space or on a moon colony. There’s a few options. The easiest one is to pick a universal system that handles horror and just plug the books in and play it. You could use GURPS or Hero System, both of which have rules for fear and science fiction stuff, and go from there. Of course, you could also try to find a game that’s based around a science fiction horror franchise, like the Alien RPG and run it as is, or slightly modify it to match the game you want (just re-skin the Xenomorphs into some other monster and run with it). Or, you can take a system that does the horror well, and find or make up stuff for the science fiction part. A prime example for me would be AFMBE, which does have a science fiction source book. It might not be exactly what I want, but there’s enough there to get it off the ground. If you have some genre that you really like, slasher films as mentioned earlier, there’s going to be a game out there for you. At least one that I know of. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s a problem.

The path of most resistance is going to be taking a system you like, the one that has the basic rules that you know really well, and forcing it into something it’s not designed to do. You can look around and see if someone else has already done it, as we live in an age where you can find that information online without too much of a hassle, which I bet someone already has. Once you find that information, make sure it works for you. If it doesn’t, drop it or work on it so it does match what you’re looking for. I find it a hell of a lot easier to modify something than just pull a whole thing out of my ass. (You know what I mean.) The thing is that it’s way easier to add in rules for radiation and surviving in the vacuum of space to a game then it is to come up with a system that reflects real horror and the tropes of horror movies in a game. Let someone else do the hard work for you, rather than doing the hard work yourself.

The real point of the matter is that you need to find the system that works the best for the core of the game. That’s the most important part of the game, which is why I’m saying this again. If the system can’t do what you want it to do, try something else. Find a set of quick play rules, you’re usually free or very affordable, and see if you can find something that works for you. Don’t try to make something do something it wasn’t designed to do. If you can’t find something that does everything exactly as you want it to, then try working on changing something into what you need it to be. But, just remember, it’s easier to fudge the small stuff, not the big stuff. What you need is the system that matches more with what you want than what you don’t want. If you want to do a thrilling space epic, it’ll be easier for you to find something that was designed to do that, rather than forcing D&D to try to handle something it wasn’t designed to do. 

Also, kids are goddamn creepy...

 I understand that people get afraid of trying new things or learning new rules. I know that you want to stick with what you know. However, the problem with something like D&D is that the simplicity that made it easier for you to learn in the first place will hold you back when you want to do something that has the complexity of what you want to do now. Most people start with D&D for a reason but you don’t have to stay there. Especially these days. There’s so many different games out there, some that you might like even more than D&D, so you need to spread those wings. You can’t be afraid of a harder system. The thing is that, as you play the game more, the easier it becomes to play. You’ll get the rules more as time goes on.

Okay, almost started a tangent there. Ahem. My point is that you need to find the game you want to play, not make what you’re currently playing into what you want to play. I hope that makes sense. And I hope you got something out of this ramble.

Sources Say: SpellJammer, 5th edition

 

Name: SpellJamer

Produced By: Wizards of the Coast

System: Dungeons and Dragons, 5^th edition

Genre(s): Fantasy, Age of Sail, Space fantasy

Yeah, we’re doing this… Before we dig in, I haven’t played any editions of D&D since 3.5. As you know, in the last few years, D&D has really taken off. And, every once in a while, I get asked by a friend “Do you want to learn how to play D&D again? This new edition is really good.” I got tired of saying that I really wasn’t interested, or I’d think about it, and get excited, but then get weird because of the bullshit I dealt with the last few times I played. When a friend of mine said that they might be doing a new version of SpellJammer, I said “Okay, you know what? If they actually make it, I’ll start playing D&D again.”

So. Here we are. Having core books cost $50 is a real dick move, Wizards. I hope you choke on my money.

The new edition of SpellJammer is here and I pre-ordered it as soon as I could. I literally didn’t even have any of the books for 5^th edition, and I still ordered it. That’s how much I’ve been looking forward to this. And how is it?

It’s… Passable. But let me explain.

 The new SpellJammer is a boxed set with three books, which has a double sided poster sized map, and a DM’s screen. The three books are an outline of the setting, a monster manual book, and a big adventure. It’s about $70 but it’s worth it. I do hope that the setting book becomes a single item in the future, to bring people in, but I doubt we’re going to get anything for this. I have a feeling this a one-and-done, make the fans happy thing. Okay, okay, let’s talk about the changes to the setting.

The first thing is that the whole idea of crystal spheres and the Phlogiston is gone. Completely gone. Instead, the whole thing about SpellJammer is that it takes place in the Astral Sea, which is part of the Astral Plane. Or is the Astral Plane? I’m not exactly sure. Even after picking up the core books for 5e, I’m still a little lost on how things work in this edition. Another thing is that the Elven Navy is completely gone. And the Unhuman War never happened, so none of that fun. This version of the setting is much more relaxed and more about exploring than war and conflict. However, they did keep the Mercane (originally the Arcane) in the setting. They were introduecd in the original boxed set as traders and merchants that plied the Phlogiston, and they re-introduced in 3.5 as traders and merchants that dealt with buying and selling things across the Planes. I also think that they changed from Arcane to Mercane because the latter is able to be trademarked. As much as they dropped the older, more wargame-y stuff, they did retain some fun and spirit of adventure. Okay, now we talk about the boxed set.

Book one, the Astral Adventurer’s Guide gives us a brief history of the setting, how things work, and the new races we can play, like the Giff, Astral Elves, Hadozees, and Plasmoids. After this, it goes on to explain how gravity planes and air pockets work, but with far less rules and detail than in the original edition. They also talk about Helms. Unlike the original version, which had both Major and Minor helms that would effect how fast the ship could move, we just get the one. Also, they’ve gotten rid of the various other Helms, like Life Jammers, and so on. We also get a very short section on how space combat works, but they really just wanted players to be involved in boarding actions, and not using the two types of weapons they give us (Ballistas and Mangonels). I have to say, these rules are bad. Really bad. There’s nothing really there. While you could use the rules from the original version (it’s on DriveThru RPG for $10), there’s too much of a difference between the two, as one is super simple and the other is overly complex, to really just switch it out. Once this section is down, there’s a bunch of ships, most of which were in the original boxed set, now just updated. Honestly, I really wish they had just updated to old ship sheets and had them in the box rather than the DM screen. The last part of this book is an updated version of the Rock of Bral, which is neat to have around, because they give you a map.

Book two is Boo’s Astral Menagerie, which re-introduces some classic monsters, like the Neogi and Kindori, as well as introduces some new ones like Space Clowns. The book has a good mix of the old classics and new creatures that reflect the setting. It’s nice to see this, and redeems some of the flaws we get in the first book. I do wish there was some more stuff in here, but what we got is fun and makes it clear what kind of game this can be. There’s some very horrible monsters born from Elder God nightmares, which means that you can very easily turn this into horror game. Or, what I’m probably going to do, is make it kind of Mythos Horror Comedy…

The third and final book is The Light of Xaryxis, a great epic adventure. Of all the books in the set, this the best one. It’s a true epic, with the life of a whole planet on the line, and the future of an empire on the line. I don’t want to give any details about the adventures, but I do want to say how much I appreciate the adventure taking into account that the players might fail to win a conflict and how to handle the adventure even after that. The adventure has a really good cast of fun and interesting characters, some of which are begging to be brought back if you continue your voyages in the Astral Sea. If you did pick up the boxed set, I strongly suggest giving the adventure a try. It’s a real “amazing voyage.”

There’s also a DM screen, which is neat but the encounter tables aren’t going to useful if you use it too much. It does have some pretty art on it.

In the end, this boxed set is a mixed bag. There’s so much here, but at the same time, there isn’t. Since I’m familiar with the original setting, I was filling in the gaps as I was reading, but you wouldn’t be able to do that if you hadn’t. And these gaps make no real sense. Why force your players into doing boarding actions when people might not want to be space pirates? The only mention of space pirates is the Githyanki, which tracks with the Astral setting, but we could have so much more. For some, the gaps will make this a product they won’t spend money on. For others, the chance to fix the problems with energize them. Personally, I’ve been wanting to play SpellJammer for 20 years, so I’m going to give it a chance. However, I’m also ready to do a lot of work to get a working system for space combat and the like.

In the end, if you are going to pick this up, go and get the PDFs of the original setting. You’re going to need them to fill any gaps in the system and the setting, as well as giving you a few more ships you can use. But that’s another $10 on top of $70 for the boxed set.

In the end, I have to say that this boxed set was a bitter disappointment for me, but it isn’t complete trash. But I can’t really recommend it to people as it is. Which sucks.

Let's Talk: About My Relationship With Dungeons and Dragons

So… It’s been a wild year for D&D, hasn’t it? I’m sure that if you’re reading this, you’ve heard about the Wizards of the Coast Open Game License stuff that’s gone down over the last week or so. It’s been wild to read. Honestly, I didn’t know that the OGL 1.0a was still being used for much beyond Pathfinder. However, I shouldn’t be surprised that it was used for the 5e stuff.

Anyway, let’s move on to the topic at hand, my relationship with D&D or really how long I’ve been playing it and not playing it and what I’m doing now. Let’s go.

I first started playing D&D in middle school with the one friend I really had back in 1996 or so. Back in these days, it was AD&D 2^nd edition. The old black books, if you’re familiar. I continued to play into high school and then beyond high school, still using AD&D. I had a DM who had developed at really in depth setting over the years he had been playing and had made home rules and such over the years. This isn’t exactly unheard of in the D&D community from the very start. Soon after the introduction of the original D&D game, it seems like people started changing the rules to make sense for what they wanted to. And they also began to develop their own settings, usually based on their own adventures and ideas. And there’s not much a company can do about this. They sell you rules and you can do whatever you want with them. I’m pretty sure that the video game modding community shares something in common with the mindset of those who created their own D&D settings. I’d like to point out that a guy named Ed Greenwood started making a setting that would later be known as Forgotten Realms, which was later acquired by TSR, the company that originally produced D&D.

It’s fair to say that playing that old edition of D&D captivated me and awaken my imagination, as well as the possibility of telling my own stories. However, AD&D 2^nd edition was not easy for me to understand the rules. My brain and math do not get along and THAC0 is the bane of my existence. There’s going to be two reactions to that acronym; either you’re going to have flashbacks or look at me with a dumb look on your face. If you didn’t have flashbacks, count your lucky stars. While I wasn’t great at understanding the rules, I did fully embrace playing pretend.

And then WotC bought TSR and we got D&D 3^rd edition. And it was good. It was a system I could really wrap my head around and gave me the tools to start running my own games. During this period, I was playing in two different games, one in AD&D rules and another in 3^rd edition. It was a good time for my gaming life. I also began to discover other games. Things like Cyberpunk 2020, Rifts, Deadlands, Vampire, Hunter, the Star Wars D6 edition, and GURPS, although I only really played GURPS here and there before 3^rd edition came out and maybe twice afterwards.

With the release of 3^rd edition, we got the original OGL, and it caused a revolution in the gaming industry. As you saw, I listed a bunch of different games, each with different systems. Aside from a few of them (looking at you, Palladium), the companies quickly picked up the OGL and used it to convert their settings and systems to the D20 system, as 3^rd edition became known. Soon after, or around the same time, smaller companies started to release books with unique and interesting content that could be included in your D&D games, or taking your D&D games into wildly different campaign settings. Not just the official ones that were being either slowly updated to the system, but ones that were totally original. There were books that gave you new gear, new monsters, new character classes, new foes, new rules, and the like. These would vary between smaller soft bound books that had a few dozen pages to hard bound books with several hundred pages.

There were also fans making RPGs of some of their favorite media into D20 system games, because the rules were easy and readily available. For me, it was a great time, as I could pull things from a bunch of different books to make my own settings and throw players for a loop.

This was also the era where I played the most D&D in my life. At one point, I was in two weekly games; one in AD&D 2^nd edition and another in 3^rd (later converted to 3.5) and I had a lot of fun. It was really the Good Old Days for my gaming life. I also tried to run some games here and there, but I did have a lot to learn.

Another thing that came from the D20 system was D20 Modern, which I’ve discussed elsewhere, but I always liked the idea of it more than actually playing it. It just never worked out, really. Which is a shame in my opinion.

Now, we need to move on to the end of this era for not only D&D but my time with it. You see, Wizards was acquired by Hasbro and when things like this happen, there’s always changes. Now, this is just my opinion, but I think that the corporate masters at Hasbro saw all the money D&D was giving away with the OGL and wanted to bring it back to their coffers. And thus D&D 4^th edition was born. And no one I played with at the time was really excited or wanted it. Sure, 3.5 had several problems, but we’d already invested a lot of money into the system, not to mention time and effort. A lot of people who played or ran the games had worked out what books to allow, what sort of worlds they wanted to be in, and had bought several Wizard’s products, as well as third party ones. And now we had to give it all up for a new edition? No thanks.

In hindsight, I find it interesting how we had done with this edition that our 2^nd edition AD&D DM had done when 3^rd had come out. As I mentioned, I was in those two games with two different editions. Well, there were two reasons why we stayed with the old system. The first was that we were in the middle of a major campaign that had been going on for years at that point, using a setting the DM had worked on for decades, with a ton of homebrewed rules, classes, and races. Converting that to 3^rd would take a lot of time. There was also the issue of the DM not really wanting to learn a new system, even if it was easier. People are creatures of habit and a fair amount of us hate change to varying degrees. We don’t want to update what we’re familiar with just because it’s popular. However, a fair amount of the group I was in were getting familiar with the newer edition and helped the old DM update his stuff. Shortly after 3.5 was dropped, that campaign switched over to 3.5.

 When it comes to 4^th edition, my friends went through the same thing. They had resisted playing 4^th for several years, having some major issues with the mechanics. But then someone bought the core books and then they wanted to try it and one thing led to another and they were soon playing 4^th regularly. Meanwhile, my life had changed and I no longer had time to play D&D or really hang out with them, so I never got into it. What little I did know about 4^th edition, I really didn’t like. I feel like as Wizards attempted to streamline and condense the rules, classes, abilities, and tried to incorporate the accessibility of things like how they were done in MMORPGs, they lost the uniqueness of the classes and the game itself. I’m no longer angry or bitter about what happened but I do just feel… Sad about the whole thing. D&D was an important part of my life and then it faded away.

However, out of that, I began to explore more and more different and unique games, as did some of my friends. While most of them continued to play D&D, we would try other things besides GURPS here and there. I was able to run some Deadlands, a very brief game of Hunter, I played BESM with some other friends, and played a variety of systems with super heroes. While I didn’t jump on the Pathfinder train like a lot of people did, I respect it. I’ve only briefly played it, many years after playing D&D, but I liked how familiar it felt without the baggage. It was a good time.

Before moving on to 5^th edition, by the time it had come out, I was done with D&D. I think I’ve commented a few times how much I dislike the fantasy genre these days. You have to remember that when I was playing in two different D&D games, this was also the same time that the LotR movies came out, which caused a massive explosion of fantasy books and other D&D settings. It was peak market saturation. Those same friends also played Diablo and World of Warcraft, while I didn’t. A lot of the books I read at the time were fantasy, but all of them. The genre was hard to avoid but it was also starting to become more bland and boring. I felt like there wasn’t really anything interesting going on with it for me. I did develop a few campaign settings in my spare time for D&D during this period, when I wasn’t playing or running anything, but they were all unique or tried to be in places that my group and I hadn’t really played in before. While we were on a sailing ship for part of a campaign, it was mostly to get us from point A to point B, without much of a chance to explore how that would go. So, one of my game ideas was for a fantasy version of Pirates of the Caribbean, but more about pirate nations and politics. Another one featured an Elven kingdom that had been slowly fallen from power, due to the expansion of humans and Dwarves, before being pushed to the brink of destruction by a long war against orc hordes. This kingdom, with a new, very evil prince that ascended to the throne, would lead his people into a fantasy version of Facism and a war of reclaiming his peoples’ land. Another idea I had was for a world with several racially divided kingdoms having just ended a massive war having to deal with a bright and strong orc mercenary returning to the scattered orc hordes and start making them into a proper kingdom from what he learned while fighting in the war. Think of something like an Oricsh Genghis Khan. And those were the kinds of ideas I had. Spinning ideas out of things I’d like to see, subverting the expectations of the players, as they wouldn’t expect most of this stuff.

 But now, let’s finally get around to 5^th edition D&D. I heard about it, saw it on the shelves, but pretty much ignored it until last year. I briefly played a game online with it before that but it just didn’t engage me. It wasn’t until SpellJammer was announced that I even really looked at it. In fact, I flat out told a friend of mine that I wouldn’t pick it up until SpellJammer was in my hands. While SpellJammer is disappointing (yes, there is a review I’ve been meaning to write for a while), I did buy the PHB. And I can understand why it became popular. It was easily accessible without being bland. From a purely mechanically view, it’s a solid game. But I still don’t like it or love it. At this point, I’ve bought the core books and the SpellJammer boxed set. Beyond that, I have a few other books I need/want to buy so I can include the stuff in my SpellJammer game, but that’s it. 4^th edition did a lot of damage to my favorite setting, Forgotten Realms, and the world I see in 5^th edition doesn’t make me happy. It feels far more generic and watered down to the complex and interesting world I once knew. And it pains me to look at it. Things that were great are either gone or less important. I know that a lot of people didn’t like FR because it felt “generic” in older editions, or that it was copying LotR, but I read a good number of books and I felt like the world of Toril was a living, breathing thing. Now, it feels no different than Greyhawk, which was the default setting for 3^rd and 3.5. These changes have kept me away from 5^th and make it that much harder to get into it. I will say that there are some wonderful things to see in the 5^th edition Monster Manual, and that the classes included in the PHB are nice, even the way they handle races and the variants of them are good. However, this isn’t my D&D. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be yours and if you enjoy playing it, more power to you. I asked around my new friends that have played D&D in the past and a fair amount of them started with 2^nd edition AD&D but really got into it when 4^th edition came out. For them, that’s their D&D and they have embraced 5^th with open arms. And I have no problem with it. I can’t drag on them for enjoying something that isn’t something I like. You’ll always remember what got you into the hobby with rose tinted glasses, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And it’s really about what you enjoy.

 When I started working on this little (massive) essay, the D&D community was roiling with the leak of the OGL 1.1 and the obvious corporate greed on display there. By the time I’ve gotten around to finishing this, a lot of that has changed. Hasbro and Wizards has got through ignoring the problem, putting their foot in their mouths, and now, finally listening to what the community has to say. However, I think the damage is done. Wizards has lost a lot of money, but they’ve also lost the respect of the community. They’ve done a lot of make D&D more inclusive and less problematic, which I fully support. I know that they’re probably doing this to expand the market share of their products, but even being driven by greed, it’s good to see. D&D means different things to different people and that’s great. For me, D&D is something I can look at fondly, but it’s no longer a part of my life, nor is it something I want to engage with. I will be playing it, but I’m not looking to get back into it fully. That time has past.

If you’re on the fence about what to do now, as I feel that many people are now wondering if they can trust Wizards from this point forward (I don’t think you can but that’s my opinion), they’ve been hearing a lot about a bunch of different games and systems. I think a lot of people are having the exact same moment I did when 4^th edition was released. You can try to hold on to what you have and ignore D&D One, or you can look into those other systems and games. I think we’re going to see something wonderful happen in the gaming community, where those who have heard about things like GURPS, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, and everything else will now be giving them a try. I say, go for it. Losing D&D as my main game made me really embrace what I really wanted to play and I was able to push forward with that. I hope you can, too. And give those greedy jerks in Hasbro and Wizards corporate (the ones that said that D&D was “undermonitized”) the middle finger on the way out.

What you need is a game that you enjoy, which doesn’t have to be D&D. Good luck.