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D&D Theory: List of 10 Games that can replace 5th edition D&D

I thought the timing for writing an article about potential RPG’s you could get into to replace 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons is quite perfect. Lots of people are upset with Wizards of the Coast after their completely disastrous handling of the franchise in the recent year and recent weeks in particular. I think a lot of people are looking around to see what else is out there and while I already have plenty of lists and information about other RPG’s on this site, I wanted to make one specifically for 5e players looking for alternatives.

Now one consideration for this list includes “logic” for the replacement of 5th edition. What I mean is that I don’t think “I’m mad at Wizards of the Coast” is really a reason someone might stop playing 5th edition, but I do think there is a wide array of logical reasons why a group, DM or individual player might. As such this list isn’t just about games that replicate 5th edition as a replacement but includes other RPG’s that do certain elements of the tabletop experience in a more focused and better way than 5th edition. As such I have included a “If you don’t like….” logic section for each game that describes an element of 5th edition you might not like and how the listed game does that particular element better. Hopefully, this helps to make the list more focused.

Enjoy the list and good luck in your hunt for a replacement for 5th edition D&D. Note that while this is a top 10 list, I have not put them in order of quality or anything like that. These are all great games for different reasons so it’s just a list of 10 games rather than a top 10 list of games to replace 5th edition D&D.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition

If you don’t like….

If you don’t like a game that has poor rules coverage and constantly asks you to make rulings where you wish there was rules coverage, I think Pathfinder 2nd edition is a great choice.

I think if you’re talking about replacing 5th edition Dungeon and Dragons, the most common, rightfully so, piece of advice you will get is to switch to Pathfinder 2nd edition. I think this is more of a competitor driven advice than necessarily good advice, which is not to say its bad advice. It really depends on what aspects of 5th edition you enjoy as to whether or not this will be the right choice for you.

Be warned that while Pathfinder 2nd edition does a lot of elements a lot better than 5th edition, it is a very focused game with a very specific style of play built into it that is not terribly flexible if you want to focus on other elements and styles of play outside of its focus.

Pathfinder first and foremost is an incredibly robust and option-rich game with an extremely focused effort on balance and mechanization of gameplay. What that really means is that this game has massive rules coverage, has very heavy character optimization which results in a focus on the execution of rules rather than rulings premise. 5th edition D&D is quite a bit different in this regard, many of 5th edition rules assumed a lot of D&D intervention and hand waving of rules in favor of narrative storytelling.

This is an adventure game in which any action you take has a rule associated with it and character options that can improve that effort. Now this does not mean you always execute every rule in the game when you do something, it just means you have the coverage, the option as a DM, to include some sort of execution when players do anything. Hand waving is certainly a part of the game, but unlike 5th edition, hand waving is rarely done out of necessity because of an absence of rules, it’s done as a preference. The rules always have your back in Pathfinder 2nd edition and this is one of the really distinct differences between the two games.

There is a firm consistency in how actions and execution work in PF2nd, rules are very explicit and clear and there is little left to interpretation. The consistency of the rules is such that once you get used to the system, you can pretty much always guess how an element works and be correct, so despite a 600+ core rulebook, most of the rules work exactly as you expect based on the precedence of the standardization of rules and the purpose of outlining each one is for unique circumstances and cases of specific action to ensure you are rarely put in a situation where you must rule something yourself.

This however is only a small part of Pathfinder 2nd edition despite it being a core feature and while the ruleset is incredibly consistent, balanced and easy to use, the best part of Pathfinder is that it comes with an incredibly detailed fantasy setting with a rich history and total support for it via its mechanics. Every class, race as well as unique fantasy trope, like spell sources, magic items etc.. are built into the world and have an explanation in terms of where in this world that thing comes from.

Its a wonderfully satisfying thing for a DM when a player picks Goblin as an ancestry for example and you can look up where goblins come from, what is there culture like, what are some of the unique aspects that feed into and bring to the table, the narrative of that race. It’s so well fleshed out, and well written and there are so many fantasy/story rabbit holes to crawl into it’s amazing. It all brings Pathfinders Golarion setting to life and makes it feel real. You have this really firm basis on which the game is set and while of course, you have the option of using homebrew or other settings with Pathfinder, Golarion is so well done, so perfectly matched up with the content of this system you are likely to discover that you won’t want to do this extra work. It’s a fantastic setup.

Finally and probably most importantly there is absolutely no question in my mind that Pathfinder Adventure Paths (adventures written for Pathfinder) are absolutely top-notch quality. Paizo is an absolute legend when it comes to creating adventures and campaigns for their game and for this reason alone it’s worth making the switch in my opinion.

One great example is Kingmaker, one of Pathfinder’s premiere adventure paths that have players not only going on a grand adventure of exploration but establishing their own kingdom. This one was so popular it got its own video game, arguably one of the best CRPG’s to come out since the Baulders Gate series.

One additional sort of bonus with Paizo and Pathfinder 2nd edition is that they achieved a long time ago the communities desired inclusivity of the game and developed the game with a modern morale compass that has escaped Wizards of the Coast for so long. Paizo is in a word, a prime example of what a modern company’s political stance should be, which is simply to do the right thing without being asked to and without making it a political stance constantly brought up as a marketing ploy. They simply just act right without all the morale signaling and politics unlike Wizards of the Coasts that is not only constantly shoving politics in your face, but also constantly screwing it up and releasing racist and sexist crap in their books despite any messaging.

Pathfinder 2nd edition is a great game and Paizo is a fantastic company that stands with the player community. They understand their audience, they understand their community and they know how to support their game. Pathfinder 2nd edition is without question the most well-supported game in the market today.

Castles & Crusades

If you don’t like….

The idea of switching systems and having it impact your style of play as a 5e player or DM, Castles & Crusades is the perfect system for you. It is very much in the same style & vein of play as 5th edition with an incredibly robust and flexible game system that allows for a very easy transition from 5e.

While the 5th edition community may not necessarily be up to speed on the evolutions of the game since the original 1st edition AD&D, it is a fact that D&D branched off into different directions since those early days. I think most might not be aware that the true descendant of the original AD&D game is Castles & Crusades. In fact, Gary Gygax himself played Castles & Crusades and it is actually the true successor to Dungeons and Dragons, not 2nd or 3rd edition D&D which evolved the game into the modern 5th edition game you are familiar with. Still, while the mechanics certainly differ, the core premise is the same.

In fact, in an alternative timeline where the franchise was not bought out by Wizards of the Coast, today everyone would know Castles & Crusades simply as D&D.

Upon opening the player’s handbook the first thing that will strike you about the game is how familiar and very D&Dish it is. This is a game that stuck to the classic tropes of the game but don’t mistake it as an OSR game because it most certainly is not part of the OSR even though many will claim it to be. This is a modernly designed game, that takes into account all of the evolutions of D&D and the RPG hobby as a whole in its design. In its 8th printing, this game has continued to be supported since 2004 and though it too has evolved over time, it has also remained consistent and compatible with all material that has ever been printed for it as Troll Lord Games is dedicated to creating a stable and consistent gaming environment for its fans long term.

Castles & Crusades plays as you probably already imagine D&D to be, its going to be oddly familiar if you have played 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th edition D&D and this is because much of the evolution of the hobby has been hit and miss with the Wizards of the Coast versions of the game, while Castles & Crusades has hand-picked the things that have been established to work well and fine-tuned those elements over decades of focused testing.

Like Paizo’s Pathfinder, Castles & Crusades has a default built-in setting called Aihrde, but unlike Pathfinder this setting is sort of intentionally designed to be a bit of a generic D&D world to allow players a tremendous amount of customization. Castles & Crusades is incredibly flexible, in fact, you can take any classic D&D setting and use C&C as a rule system with little if any additions or changes to be made to make it fit. It is very organically designed to be D&D and as such, all of the core races and classes you are accustomed to are there as you would expect.

More than that though Castles & Crusades via expanded books has continually made sure that those elements in official D&D settings that are created for those settings are also released in expansion books for C&C. Meaning there are books like the Crusader Companion which are available for free that give you races like Dragonborn, classes like Berserker and concepts like Multi-Classing. Castles & Crusades has kept up with all of the modern fantasy tropes and though they do not include these in the base game, ensuring D&D has a clear and very classic starting point, these expansions allow the game to be expanded easily to include any sort of fantasy you want to run. Everything I wished Wizards of the Coast would do with D&D.

Castles & Crusades is also a very open-source game, meaning the licensing of the game is designed to support the community and 3rd party efforts and this aspect of the game is fully leveraged making this an extremely well-supported game both officially and unofficially. Whatever you are looking for, whether it be rules on mass combat, kingdom management, expanded spell systems, alternative combat systems, conversions of classic adventures, system conversions… whatever it is, you name it and Castles & Crusades has your back. What makes the C&C community so great is that most of this material is available for free, which includes the Players Handbook itself. For example, there is a 5th edition conversion guide if you wish to take your 5e game and convert it to Castles and Crusades available for free.

I think the thing that makes Castles & Crusades really special in the market is the high level of quality of the books and the content itself. This is not a company that just splashes source books willy nilly and while the library is large at this point, this is because the game has been in operation under the same, stable and consistent system for over 2 decades. The result is consistently high-quality content that you can rely on.

Castles & Crusades is without question one of the premier systems and comes with the highest of recommendations to 5e players looking for an alternative mainly because switching from 5e to Castles and Crusades is not going to ask you to change your style of play.

Forbidden Lands

If you don’t like….

If you are finding D&D adventure modules and running pre-made stories that tend to rely on rails for the players to stay on a bit dull and you like your game to be gritty and tough, Forbidden Lands is a great choice.

I have talked about the award-winning Forbidden Lands many times on this blog and there is a very solid reason for it. It is a hidden gem in the rough waters that often accompany the OSR.

Let’s be honest here for a minute. The issue with the OSR is that, in part at least, it’s about playing old-school editions of the game and while that may strike a note with many, for 5e players, going back to playing B/X or AD&D isn’t exactly what they are looking for. 5e players like modernization and that is not only ok, but arguably it’s to be encouraged. Not everyone shares in the nostalgia of playing the classics as they were, much of the D&D community is forward-looking and Forbidden Lands is one of the few OSR games that says “hey we like old school gaming, we just don’t like old school rules”.

Forbidden Lands however is more than just a throwback to the classic play style with modern rules, it is a uniquely focused game that targets a very specific sub-genre of D&D play. Namely, the concept of the hex-crawl and survival D&D built are the premise of emergent gameplay.

In Forbidden Lands, you and your players are living in a kind of post-apocalyptic area and era of this world. The dust of the tumultuous past has settled and you are asked to venture out into the unknown and forgotten lands to make your own way.

In this game you explore the world that is dynamically generated by the DM using a very clever set of rules which generate what I would call emergent gameplay. Meaning that even the DM doesn’t fully know what is going to happen and since this is very much an open-world game by design, everything that happens is entirely driven by the players own motivations. What do they want to do in this wild open space? Whatever that is, the execution of that becomes the story of the game and everything about the game is designed to support that endeavor.

Now Forbidden Lands itself does have a back story so in a sense, eventually, you uncover enough information about the world around you to pursue what is effectively a “main campaign” of the game itself. So while the whole place is a dynamically generated playground for the players to pursue any endeavors they like, the games story does have a resolution and all of the dynamic content of the game that is generated in the course of play is tied into this piece of the game.

While the game is not a d20 system that 5e players might be familiar with, it does boast Free League Games premiere custom mechanic on which many other great games are based like my personal favorite, Aliens RPG. It’s a simple, very abstract system that will be a snap to learn and yet is incredibly entertaining as it relies on more than simply pass-fail states.

All and all I think Forbidden Lands is one of those games you must experience to appreciate fully but for the DM’s out there looking for something interesting to run, this game is as much fun to run as it is to play. The story writing here is absolutely amazing and the setting itself, dark, ominous and full of mystery, is everything you want in a great RPG experience.

One of my favorite games to come out this side of the century.

The One Ring

If you don’t like….

If you have grown tired of the generic, anything-goes fantasy that 5e has grown into and want something with a classic fantasy feel that is focused on role-playing, The One Ring, based on Tolkien’s middle-earth is going to get you there!

The One Ring is simply, Lord of the Rings the RPG, but it’s so much more than that simply because it’s a game that understands on what it is based and mechanically aligns itself to ensure your adventures play out like the Lord of the Rings books and movies.

This game has an incredible focus on making sure that middle-earth in all its epic glory comes to life at the table, not only by having a very strong game mechanic that really pushes for this to be true but because The One Ring has some of the best writers in the business working on it.

Ruins of The Lost Realms is a taste of what I mean here, we are talking about work that fits the term literature in my opinion, setting you up to have adventures that players don’t even realize are possible in an RPG. You are going to feel things as The One Ring focuses very heavily on the premise of RP with the G taking a bit of a back seat.

The hallmark of a great RPG is that it’s supported by well-written adventure modules and Ruins Of The Lost Realm is sooooo much more than just a great adventure module, it is so well-written, it deserves a place right next to The Silmarillion.

In short, The One Ring, as you would hope it would be, is focused squarely on storytelling and on personal relationships all with a backdrop of epic, world-shaking, questing that makes the players feel like they are a character in the Fellowship of The Ring. It does this organically, in a way where even players that are ordinarily not the story-focused kind will find themselves sucked into this one, not unlike what happens when you binge-watch the latest hit from Netflix.

To me the One Ring is the definition of what an RPG should be, it puts you right in the middle of one of the greatest fantasy stories ever told and hands you the reigns. Easily the single best RPG to come out 2022, I dare say no RPG fan should miss this one, especially a Lord of the Rings fan. Grab that starter box and check it out!

A Song of Ice and Fire

If you don’t like….

If you are finding D&D to be a bit unrealistic, with too much focus on adventures and not enough focus on the premise of believable characterization and wish to play something more gritty, A Song of Ice and Fire is for you.

Let’s be a little frank about D&D. The premise of the game is that you are a supposed “adventurer”, a bit of a do-gooder, that goes around exploring dungeons, fighting monsters and generally doing things no actual person, even in a fantasy setting is likely to volunteer to do. It sort of requires a level of suspension of disbelief in the context of a fantasy that I think is very often a bit of a stretch, almost cartoony.

Modern fantasy writing like the Game of Thrones saga is a good example of what happens when you look at a fantasy world from a more realistic perspective and use human nature as a guide to creating a world in which people act more like you might expect them to.

Based on George R.R. Martin’s modern classic world, A Song of Ice and Fire is dark, gritty, violent and sometimes a bit too real, but for fans, despite the need to sometimes look away, we love it and Song of Ice and Fire the RPG brings all of that to the table.

In what I can only describe as one of the most unique setups in RPG’s today, in Song of Ice and Fire you and your friends not only create characters all belonging to one of the houses in the story, but part of the game is creating and managing that house yourself.

This is a game that puts you in the driver’s seat in the political struggles in the Game of Thrones story where you try to raise your house to prominence by participating in the cutthroat Game of Thrones where you win or you die.

Beautifully designed to suit the gritty nature of the game world, this is a game where fighting is absolutely lethal and a last resort, while simultaneously the political stories are not much refuge as they are equally brutal. It’s a game in which you are either a wolf or a sheep, but of course the game encourages you to be a wolf and so you struggle against an endless barrage of political maneuvering, some of your own creation, others thrust upon you.

There is never a dull moment in this game as it provides the DM with so much ammunition to keep the stories going, not only that, you can do all of it in the backdrop of the story of the unfolding setting itself, changing events and creating your own version of the Game of Thrones story.

My friends and I played this one a few years back and to this day we talk about the politics, people and events of that game. This game just has a way of imprinting on you as it plays out in such a vivid and believable fashion.

Absolutely adore this one, I would only caution players and DM’s that this is definitely a far cry from an “adventuring” game. It’s a political thriller, the kick-down-doors and kill-everything approach simply does not work here. It’s a game where finesse, political strategy and calculated moves must be executed with surgical precision, its a game for planners. It’s wonderful and painful at the same time, but this game creates stories you will not soon forget.

Alternity RPG

If you don’t like…

Many D&D players that are currently looking around for an alternative, may be doing so simply because they have grown tired of the fantasy genre as a whole and a natural switch is to check out science fiction. If that describes you, let me tell you about the greatest science-fiction game ever made, Alternity!

Before I do that, however, let’s get on the same page. Fantasy and Science-Fiction are very related genres, in fact, to a point, they are the same. Both genres were born from the same place, arguably, the first science-fiction-fantasy book ever written was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and for a long time after that, the difference between what is fantasy and what is science fiction was a murky construct that would only be split decades later.

Now with that said I bring you Alternity, a game that not only is the precursor to the entire d20 system but may in fact, despite decades of D20-based games, be the best example of the system done right. This well-oiled machine was designed by TSR and Wizards of the Coast alumni Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker and is without question in my mind one of the best science-fiction RPG’s ever published and remains so to this day.

It is designed to allow a GM to create every kind of science-fiction setting from the ground up from post-apocalyptic wastelands to space operas, from Blade Runner-style future earth to X-File style horror-mystery science-fiction. It is all-inclusive and does it with such elegance and style it pains me that this final TSR release which in my opinion is one of the best RPG’s to come out of TSR ever, which includes all versions of D&D, went under most people’s radars.

This game is mechanically a fusion of a skill-based and class-based system allowing for maximum customization and it boasts clear rules for all of the major science-fiction tropes from Cybergear, Mutations, Hacking, Space Combat, Space Exploration, Virtual Reality and even Magic.

There is literally nothing you can think of in the vein of science-fiction or fantasy that cannot be done with this system and it can go from high end super powered science-fiction to gritty reality with only the most minor adaptation, all work done for you and laid out in the Gamemasters Guide.

Not only is Alternity the unquestionable king of science-fiction in RPG’s, it also has two of the best non-franchise science-fiction settings ever written made just for it. Darkmatter, an X-Files-style alien conspiracy setting and Stardrive, a massive, Star Wars-level space opera that is based on very gritty and believable predictions about the future.

Stardrive, in my humble opinion, remains one of the best settings ever written for any RPG. How this is not a movie at this point I don’t know, it’s a masterpiece.

I love this game and have been using it for the better part of 2 decades and while there are many fantastic science-fiction offerings out there today like the amazing Aliens RPG (more on that later) and the highly thematic Star Wars Edge of the Empire, to me Alternity is the best of the best, the king of kings, the ultimate and only RPG true science-fiction fans should even be considering if you are going to consider sci-fi as an alternative to 5th edition D&D.

Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea

If you don’t like…

If you have grown tired of your games feeling like easy walk-throughs for your players and you want to present them with a tough and gritty challenge there are actually quite a few RPG’s to pick from that do this, in fact, it could be a list of its own. The reason I think Hyperborea stands out when assuming 5th edition players is that this game is what a fantasy RPG might look like if a modern gamer tried to create a classic D&D clone with one exception (I will get to that in a minute).

Technically Hyperborea falls into the OSR space as, at its core, this is a B/X based game, but unlike B/X there are some adjustments made to the setting to make some of the B/X concepts that might offend modern gamers a bit more palatable and better suited. More importantly, it’s a bit crunchier and feels much more complete than B/X ever did.

For example, this is a game where you simply choose a class, no race selection (same as B/X rules) but it’s because this is a human-centric world and while other “things” exist in the world, as players, you play only humans. Now there are different cultures of humans so you can select your race in the sense of choosing a unique human culture like Amazon, Kelts or Vikings for example, but you aren’t picking Elves, Dwarves or Halflings.

You get a very wide selection of classes and sub-classes to pick from with a good level of crunch, 22 in total, each with a unique set of abilities that will ensure every character is unique and each class is built into the context of the setting which itself is a kind of almost post-apocalyptic medieval fantasy with some science-fiction elements in the backdrop.

What makes this a great transition game for 5e players is that it takes into account the sort of focal preferences that modern gamers enjoy. It’s a simple-to-learn, easy to get into game and It focuses on rulings over rules, while offering the brevity of crunchy mechanics so that you have something to lean on. I would describe it as having the exact same amount of crunch as 5e.

Personally for me, what I love about it and really what I ultimately love about most RPG’s is that it takes a story-first sort of approach and does so by leading by great example with the setting. That is the sort of game that speaks to me. Hyperborea, the default setting for this game, just hits so many unique fantasy tropes, approaches fantasy a bit out of the box and has some really fantastic presentation so all of the material is easy to absorb and make your own.

It’s what I would call for 5e players, a really great rut buster. Like if your finding your 5e games are becoming uninspired if you are seeing patterns emerging and you want to do something different, switching to a setting that really re-writes fantasy as you know it is a really great way to break that cycle and Hyperborea not only does that, but provides you with what I think 5e players will find is a very familiar yet fun new system to learn that produces this very gritty reality. This IS D&D, don’t doubt it, but it’s got a bit of an edge to it.

Now I should mention one of the drawbacks here and that is by default, Hyperborea uses THAC0 (combat matrix) as its primary combat resolution system with descending armor class. I don’t know why the publisher chose this method over the much simpler attack bonus, ascending armor class structure, it’s a mistake and they shouldn’t have done it. Not that this is a deal breaker for me and frankly, it’s not that difficult to flip the math yourself but, if you think THAC0 is stupid and I agree with you, you have to decide for yourself if this is going to be a deal breaker or not. It is what I would call a chink in the armor of what is otherwise a fantastic game.

On the plus side, the system is used to great effect and Hyperborea really captures the gritty battle sequence with perfection. It’s a unique combat system that is based on B/X but expanded upon to try to bring some realism to the fight with some welcome cinematic bits. Melee combat in this game is vicious and it will create that much-needed stress and sense of danger that 5e is so often missing with consistency.

In my book Hyberborea is a real gem in the rough, it’s definitely a bit edgy and will require some know-how by the GM to make good use of the system, so there is a learning curve here, but it’s got a crunch in all the right places and has really good coverage for elements of fantasy adventure you really need including more expansive topics like Naval Battles, Mass Combat and Sieges, so you can play this game in different scales at different times. Just a really well-written, well-thought-out system that really brings gritty fantasy to life.

GURPS (Generic Universal Roleplaying System)

If you don’t like..

If you wish Dungeons and Dragons fantasy had a bit more realism in it, GURPS is undoubtedly the master of bringing the simulation of reality to life in a fantasy RPG and has been for decades.

I know that for many D&D players and DM’s the draw to D&D is the abstraction, the cinematic world in which fantasy exists quite a ways outside of the premise of realistic world and functions more like a cinematic movie with CGI-infused action… but… For some players, they want to create some gritty reality and though I would still recommend Hyperborea for most, for those that really want to get into the nuts and bolts of reality to a point of simulation, for that GURPS is one of the most robust, most flexible and without question one of the most expansive systems in existence.

Not only does GURPS have every conceivable element of fantasy covered, in truth, GURPS really lives up to the name universal because you can effectively run pretty much anything you can think of using this system.

This is a skill and skill point buy system, so character creation here redefines the word expansive. You could take a million players and ask them all to make a Fighter and you are going to have a million unique Fighters. This is a game that does not repeat and two characters are never going to be alike.

The simulation element here is very detailed and as such, execution of most mechanics like combat is going to be slow. This is a game that zooms in on every slash and parry, you track things like location of your hits, damage to your armor, cuts and bruises and everything in-between.

It’s extremely visceral and definitely a big departure from the abstraction of Dungeons and Dragons, but I would be remiss not to include it in this list as GURPS ability to create a truly unique gaming experience is unmatched. I can’t think of any game systems on the market, past or present that produces the sort of focused gaming experience that GURPS is capable of.

For me, GURPS is often my game of choice when I want to do something extremely specific when it comes to a campaign using elements of play normally not covered by other systems. For example, a few years back I wanted to run a western and I wanted to have a really great, very detailed mechanic for gun fights that was realistic to the real west, not the one you see in movies. GURPS performed wonderfully bringing that surprising reality of gunfights of the old west to the table.

When it comes to fantasy, the nice thing about GURPS is that the level of detail you want to include in your campaign is up to you. This is because everything in GURPS is very modular and almost all the rules are optional. At the core of GURPS is an extremely simple system and you simply add layers of rules like legos to get that perfect amount of detail you’re looking for.

If nothing else, for DM’s it’s a great read as simply exposing yourself to this system, will plant ideas into your head you probably would never have considered before. It’s a gold mine of inspiration, both mechanical and narrative which, even if you never play the system is worth reading.

Great system, and definitely a worthy addition to this list.

Old School Essentials

If you don’t like..

If you wonder what D&D was like back in the 80’s and what to try something super classic, Old School Essentials has you covered.

Ok so I know I plug Old School Essentials quite a bit and so do a lot of nostalgic D&D fans who love the old days, but I’m also painfully aware how difficult reading and coming to grips with the old D&D books can be. Basic/Expert D&D and Advanced D&D 1st edition are not the most approachable games, in particular, if you are a 5th edition player and accustomed to a certain level of organization.

I think this is what makes Old School Essentials and it’s expanded book, Advanced Genre Fantasy Rules such a great core system. It gives you the old-school game, but with a measure of modernization that 5e players will understand and expect.

This is an amazing re-edit of the classic 1st edition D&D game (both basic and advanced) and delivers that old-school gaming experience minus a few of unwanted warts like THAC0!

I have been running Old School Essentials for nearly two years now with a gaming crew and we have had an absolute blast with this one. It’s simple and straight to the point and while very structured, delivers a great space for some amazing storytelling.

This game is, in a nutshell, everything that old-school gaming is about so if you’re looking to give that classic D&D experience a try, this is the game you want to do it with.

What makes old-school D&D so much fun. Watch stranger things.. its that.

Alien RPG

If you don’t like..

If you are unsure what to do about the whole Wizards of the Coast-D&D fiasco and you just need a break but don’t want to commit to anything long-term but still want to run something fun for your gaming group while you decide, Alien RPG is the KING of One-Shots.

Ok so it’s science-fiction and not fantasy and I get maybe this is a bit of a stretch for this list, but Alien RPG, voted #4 of Best RPGS in 2023 by GamersRadar to the surprise of no one, is without question in my mind, one of the most fun one shots I have ever run.

With Alien RPG there are two modes of play. Campaign mode, which is your standard way of running RPG’s where you run an episodic… campaign as the name suggests and Cinematic mode which is a mode designed to give you that Alien movie feel, perfect for one-shots or short mini-series campaigns.

What you get with Alien RPG is a gritty, yet easy-to-run system similar to the one used in Forbidden Lands (already mentioned) but you get to horse around in the Alien universe.

Horror, suspense and action wrapped up in what I believe to be one of the best franchises in existence.

Now I will admit, being a super fan, I’m a bit biased here, but the popularity of this game is not a fad, there is real substance here as the writing and design for this game is absolutely top-notch. You have never seen a gaming book this gorgeous in your life if all you know is D&D. They spared no expense anywhere, it’s so well supported, so beautifully designed and illustrated, the writing just melts off the page.

I love this game, it’s without question the game I grab if someone comes to me and says “let’s run a one-shot”. This game delivers on all pistons, it is pitch-perfect in bringing an exciting one-shot experience.

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D&D Theory: Dungeons & Dragons Over The Years: Part III Of III – CANCELED

As I was putting the finishing touches on what would have been an entire post dedicated to the history of D&D editions in the Wizards of the Coast era from 3rd edition to One D&D… this happened (The OGL 1.1 by Wizards of the Coast).

Now if you are a D&D fan as I am and you understand the importance and critical role the OGL license published with 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons (the first Wizards of the Coast edition of the game after the TSR era ended) is, you know how vital to the health of the game this license is.

As a part-time content creator for D&D, the leaked OGL 1.1 and the follow-up response from Wizards of the Coast regarding the upcoming OGL was so jarring, such a betrayal, and such a greedy, lie-filled and despicable move by Wizards of the Coast that I can’t in good in conscious promote Wizard of the Game products anymore.

From this point forward 5th edition and any Wizards of the Coast products will no longer be mentioned, promoted or reviewed on this site. This is a permanent boycott of Wizards of the Coast and its parent company Hasbro by Gamersdungeon.net.

I encourage you to go to https://www.opendnd.games/#open-letter and support the tireless and selfless content creators that have made Dungeons and Dragons such a success and join me in boycotting Wizards of the Coast content!

Gaming Articles, Role-Player Game Reviews

D&D Theory: Dungeons & Dragons Over The Years: Part II Of III

We continue where we left off in part I of our article series where I talk about past editions of Dungeons & Dragons and why you may consider playing them even today. In today’s article, I will cover my take on 1st edition BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master & Immortal) rules and 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons.

Enjoy the article!

1st edition BECMI D&D Rules

I will say here and now that to me BECMI was and still is a revelation, hands down one of the best systems with the best style and theme for D&D in existance. That said, its really part of the B/X line of games and I kind of see it as an expanded part of the same thing.

In our first article, we talked about 1st edition Basic & Expert, a rule system that was intentionally easy to learn and run, designed for new players, but there was a wrinkle in the plan. Despite its design goal of being an introduction to D&D and an entry point to Advanced D&D rules, the B/X system took on a life of its own. Not only because it gained its own following but because despite any effort to make it new player friendly, the game was obscenely difficult to be successful in as players with some of the toughest challenges and heavy-handed death rules to exist in any version of D&D (0 HP = Dead).

The game was ultimately adopted by a community that went from newbies trying to learn the game to seasoned gamers who preferred Basic & Expert to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and didn’t want to switch. Instead what they wanted were more robust rules sub-systems that offered more coverage within the framework (B/X) they were accustomed to.

There were other reasons for B/X to be continued and expanded on which related to legal matters in TSR that involved the franchise name, who controls it, and who collects royalties on the D&D name, but we are not here for a history lesson, rather we are here to talk about the game itself.

With this growing community of Basic/Expert rules players wanting something more robust, but unwilling to switch to the AD&D game space, TSR started producing more advanced rules for the B/X system, in a sense creating advanced Basic/Expert D&D. TSR in the 80’s was a confusing time.

Between 1977 to 1944 there were quite a few different versions of the 1st edition Basic game and this makes going back today trying to figuire out what’s what kind of confusing as it was back then. To be clear, BECMI is based on the 1st edition Mentzer Basic edition of the game released in 1983. Depicted here is the 1991 release known as “The Black Box” which is not the same thing as one example.

There was a total of 3 additional supplements that expanded the game starting with the Companion set, then moving to the Master and Immortal sets. Each new set added new rules complexity as well as addressed the required adjustment needed for previous sets to accommodate higher-level play (longer character progressions). By the time they finished releasing these 3 new supplementary rule sets, the maximum level for characters was a whopping 36th level!

All five sets (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master & Immortal) were later released in a single-volume book called The Dungeons & Dragons Cyclopedia and this earned the system which was seen as separate from both B/X and AD&D the name BECMI.

The Rules Cyclopedia is the final and most complete version of the BECMI system and I think few would argue that there is any reason beyond nostalgic collection to chase after the 5 box set volumes if you wish to play BECMI. It’s all here and it’s all you need and more.

BECMI was in a lot of ways very similar to the 1st edition B/X rules but unlike B/X it was actually a much closer match to AD&D itself in terms of rules coverage. It was a bit of both but it was modular which meant that unlike AD&D it was designed specifically so that you could use some or all of the companion rules, picking and choosing the mechanics that you liked or were relevant to your campaign and excluding those that weren’t.

While there were several very notable subsystems that were added to the basic and expert rules, BECMI ran and played very much like the standard B/X system.

The Companion Set added rules for elements like unarmed combat, the creation and management of strongholds (Dominion Rules) which coincided with the increased levels of character classes possible, capping off at 25th level. This of course meant that spell-casting characters had access to higher-level spells which are also included in the companion set, as well as all the amenities needed to accommodate higher-level play (hit points, saving throws, etc..)

One important addition of the companion set was the addition of new sub-classes which for the 5th edition crowd should sound familiar. You might think 5e invented this concept, but the truth is that sub-classes is actually a 1st edition D&D concept, arriving with the companion set.

Clerics that reached 9th level could choose to become a Druid sub-class which came with its own benefits including new spell lists for the Druid class.

This wasn’t the only new sub-class option included as each class after reaching 9th level had some sub-class options, though when the companion came out it was only the druid that was identifiable as a fully-fledged sub-class.

Finally, the companion set gave us mass combat which worked with the dominion rules and the henchmen, hirelings & follower rules of the base sets. It also expanded a great deal the types of adventures that were created for the system, notably some of my all-time favorites like Test of the Warlords which made full use of the companion set rules.

The Companion Set was supported by the Companion Module series which kicked off with Test of the Warlords showing off its kindom management and mass combat rules. It was a great adventure that really was a self contained campaign set in the remote region of Norwarld in the Mystara setting. For modern games this was the Pathfinder Kingmaker of its time.

The Master set was perhaps the most important addition to the increasingly more complex format that became BECMI. Aside from more growth for all classes, capping out at 36th level, the master rules brought quite a few new optional and expanded rules that in many ways made this a more advanced game than advanced D&D.

Weapon Mastery was probably the most widely appreciated element of the Master rules, though equally the most complex set of rules. It created what is even to this day one of the most robust melee and ranged combat systems for warrior classes available for D&D, in a sense fixing all of the complaints about the power levels of late game fighter and melee classes in general. It allowed characters to acquire unique fighting styles and moves, improve the damage with the weapons they used and allow them to be quite competitive with classes like the Magic-User and Cleric on the power scale.

Additionally, we got rules for Siege Equipment and running sieges, a natural extension of the mass combat and dominion management rules found in the companion set and much appreciated for those of us that didn’t shy away from the expansive kingdom management content available for the game by this time.

The Master box set was probobly one of the least frequently used sets simply because really high level play was quite rare. That said, I think BECMI had a really great approach to high level play and it was quite viable, just not often done.

There was lots of good stuff in the Master rules, in fact, of all the things added to the basic/expert rules, this was it was the Master rules that really filled in the finishing touches on gaps typically found in D&D games. Things we often ran across like players wanting to raise armies, build castles and conquer lands that just weren’t in any other D&D system at the time.

The final set, The Immortal rules in essence did two things. It explained where gods come from and it defined the concept of ascending to a higher plane of existence as a player, aka, becoming a god yourself.

It was an interesting read but to be honest I have never met anyone who played a D&D campaign so long that they achieved 36th level let alone having a need for rules on how to become a god. It’s a cool concept but really lacked purpose in your typical D&D campaign.

There were very few immortal level modules made to support this level of play and I don’t know anyone who ever actually ran or played in them, but actually they were really well done. In particular The Immortal Storm was very clever.

One cool thing in the Immortal set was descriptions of various immortal gods and this lore I always found to be quite useful for inspiration. From Orcus to Demogorgon, the Immortals book gave you some really great lore for your fantasy campaign.

The final book, The Rules Cyclopedia was mostly known to be a consolidation of the rules found in the BECMI sets, but under closer inspection, there are quite a few things that were unique to this book not found in the other companions.

Several sub-classes were added including the Mystic, a sort of Monk as well as variations on the fighter like Paladins and Rangers. At the time I don’t think anyone really considered these missing elements of the game as AD&D was fully compatible with BECMI so if you wanted to play a Ranger for example you could just use the one in AD&D as written. Still it was nice to have all the classes available in BECMI consolidated in one book.

The book also included a lot of corrections and frankly, it was much appreciated as there were quite a few quality issues and conflicting rules in the original BECMI companion books which are corrected here. Most notably the Rules Cyclopedia gave explanations and maps for The Known World, officially named Mystara at this point further solidifying BECMI’s rule system as a foundation for the setting. This was later further expanded on by the Mystara Gazetteers, a book series that dove into the details of the setting, notably including several new classes and character options for players with each book.

While the compilation of BECMI rules into a single book was the point of the Rules Cyclopedia, the best thing to come out of it really was the establishment of Mystara as a full setting that would later see unmatched support in the D&D Gazetteers that followed.

The Rules Cyclopedia to me is a foundation book for D&D in general as many of the rules sub-systems like Mass Combat, Sieges, Dominion Rules, and Weapon Mastery system are completely system agnostic. As such, there is a lot in this book that can be used with any D&D system, past and present and despite the age of these rules, they are still the most applicable and thorough rules on these subjects, far more expansive, detailed, and usable at the table than any others that came before or since. The Rules Cyclopedia is only second to the 1st edition AD&D DMG as far as D&D resource books go in my opinion.

Collectively what made BECMI a premier version of D&D was how well it covered every aspect of D&D play. No matter what your players wanted to do, this system had your back with clever mechanics, clear rules and though quirky at times, great system-agnostic sub-systems that have really stood the test of time. Like AD&D, taken as a whole it’s quite robust but unlike AD&D, it is a very modular system so you can start out with Basic rules and simply add supplements as your campaign matures and you have new requirements.

Why Play It Today?

I’m biased, but I have to say it, why wouldn’t you play it today? BECMI to me, no matter what aspect of D&D play you look at is one of the most effective. flexible and straight-to-the-point D&D systems available today. It eases you into the game one step at a time, and grows in both complexity and depth as you proceed into higher tiers of play, while remaining very easy to balance and extremely playable even at really high levels.

If you are like me and you want to run a D&D campaign as a lifestyle game, one that goes on for years and years, most D&D systems really can’t do that well while keeping character progression as a constant in the game. In particular in modern systems, but even AD&D, once you reach a certain level, usually around 6-10+, the game becomes unwieldy. Characters become too powerful and trying to create balanced gameplay becomes impossible. With BECMI your characters can be 25th level and they can still die at the hands of a Goblin horde, the game never ceases to be dangerous or challenging.

Now I will grant you 36th level is kind of overkill, I can’t even imagine how long of a campaign you would need to run to reach such heights, but the sweet spot, unlike most D&D games, isn’t between 1 to 9th levels. This system continues to be extremely useful while remaining challenging even at the highest tiers of play. I have personally run campaigns for BECMI that reached as high as 25th level and the game remained every bit as good as it was at 1st level.

The thing however I find most people enjoy about the game is that it is so universally applicable and adaptable as a fantasy adventure platform for RPG’s. While at its core is a setting, Mystara, the troupes found in this system are extremely flexible and modular. It really doesn’t take much effort to come to conclusions on how one might adapt this system to other settings and because it is compatible with 1st and 2nd edition AD&D as written, by association you have most of the major D&D settings compatibility built in.

This has been my system of choice for D&D fantasy adventure for decades, its harshness and focus on resource management as well as its presentation is a great foundation for Dungeons & Dragons. I have played all of the D&D systems pretty extensively and I enjoyed those games, but whenever I think about running D&D, this is the one system that really speaks to me. To me this is real D&D.

Now the question isn’t why would I play the game, the question is why would you. I think the best sales pitch for this game is that its universally agnostic and modular. You can take this system as a DM and mold it in any way you want, including adding rules from other D&D systems, and without changing a word use those systems without issue. In a sense, BECMI is universally compatible with all D&D editions that came after it with perhaps the only exception being 4e.

Hands down the best version of D&D in my opinion… period.. no discussion.

2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Just like 1st edition AD&D, 2nd edition AD&D was reprinted in collectors edition a few years back.

2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons had some pretty big shoes to fill after the explosive success of 1st edition, but it also had to contend with some of the fallout of the satanic panic and the many complaints from the player base about the inconsistency and quirkiness of the 1st edition AD&D rules. It was a game born out of the need for correcting the past.

1st edition AD&D was really complex and 2nd edition AD&D really entered the scene with an attitude that while it would be backward compatible, which I think it very much was, it was also going to be considerably easier. TSR I think wanted the game to be a bit less Advanced and perhaps this was because they wanted to consolidate the two forms of D&D that existed at the time BECMI and AD&D under one roof. It would also be the first edition of the game that would be created without Gary Gygax’s influence for better or for worse.

With that as a framework 2nd edition AD&D I think was very successful in what it wanted to achieve but not particularly successful as a product. A lot of the issue with this version of the game had to do with the declining quality control at TSR which was starting to flounder as a company. By the end of the 2nd edition run, TSR was basically bankrupt. I would argue however it was not the fault of the game system so much as the company running it.

2nd edition AD&D also had a starter box for new players, arguably the quality control on this thing was pretty terrible. Unlike all the starter sets that came before that are still admired today and considered “classic”, this is a relic no one bought then, nor is it a collectors thing today. It was just really terrible.

AD&D 2nd edition had three core elements that actually made it an evolutionary step up from its successor.

For one, it was considerably easier to run. The rules were more digestible, easier to understand and far more consistent. It was still a system that relied heavily on adjudication with rules still having that “up to interpretation” style of writing more often than I think it should have but it was still a very broad system with great coverage and far fewer restrictions. Unlike 1st edition you really could run 2nd edition AD&D RAW, there were many rules and many moving parts as such you would not typically use the system in its entirety but thankfully the system made a clear distinction between rules that were core rules and those that were optional. This modularity was an important feature of the game.

In fact, it’s modularity that really defined 2e AD&D, a concept of the system that would be regrettably abandoned in future editions to the detriment of the game. At this point, D&D had established itself as a game that could be run in a wide range of styles with a really wide range of player preferences, so having a huge chunk of the rules be optional was a really great aspect of the game that allowed all of these styles to live harmoniously under one system. Less fuel for table arguments, it was understood that the DM would decide which optional rules to or not to use.

The great thing about 2e was that it used blue boxes to identify optional rules and it used the space to explain why you might want to use the optional rule and how it could affect the game. This was extremely useful and made the system feel really well constructed.

The second thing that made 2nd edition really great was the “Complete X” book collection which brought in a concept called Kits that allowed for really far-reaching character customization. These books were largely theme-based class option books and there was one book for each class which made 2nd edition AD&D a game system with a much bigger broader character creation element than we had ever seen before with a bigger focus on the narrative of the character rather than strictly mechanics, even though it was actually quite mechanical nonetheless.

These kits not only gave you many examples of the unique handling of different classes but gave you the tools you needed as a DM to create your own custom kits to serve whatever setting or story you were working on. Now I will say these kits often had poor balance, there were clear winners and losers here, but D&D at this point was still very much an “up to the DM” focused game so it was natural for DM’s to see any mechanics in these books as “here is a cool idea, use it if you like it, change it if you don’t”.

The Complete Handbooks were in my opinion one of the greatest things to happen to D&D as it allowed players to create really unique backstory elements and align them with their mechanical characters. You could be an investigator, bounty hunter or smuggler rather than just the very plain Thief. These books also included really specific narrative constructs, for example in the Complete Thieves handbook thieves guilds were explained in great detail as well as really detailed rules for how to use thief skills and much more.

This principle continued in other rules expansion books like the Tome of Magic, Player Options: Skills & Powers and Player Options: Combat & Tactics. These books were actually poorly received which should have been a warning sign to future editions as much of what would become 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons were based on these books.

Personally, I always liked these books, in the same way I like the Complete X collection, they were inspirational and optional rules that with a bit of DM intervention formed some great core mechanics that allowed the creation of many unique styles of play.

While all of the options books had clear balance issues and suffered from quality control problems, with some DM intervention they offered increadible expansion to the game for those players who wanted more mechanical gears to pull on.

The final thing that made 2e AD&D really quite special was the fact that the game for the first time in the history of D&D considered magic-users and magic, in general, an intrinsic part of the game. It was clear from previous editions that Gary Gygax did not like Magic-Users or magic in his game and it really showed in how he treated them. With 2e AD&D, TSR made magic & magic-users fun, versatile and diverse. You could play specialist mages like Necromancers and Enchanters, the spell system and spells themselves had far broader effects with a lot of narrative flare and perhaps most importantly you had more diversity in spell-casting classes.

Magic was further supported by the Complete of Books which included specialization books like the Complete Necromancer. This was an amazing level of detail that would set a new standard for how players viewed and what could be done with their magic-user class.

I have always felt that 2e AD&D was a clear and much-needed fix for 1st edition AD&D. Today, without question if I was going to run AD&D in any form, it would be 2nd edition. In fact, I would argue that objectively, even though I prefer B/X and BECMI, 2e AD&D was the best of the TSR versions of D&D. It’s a very robust, very modular and very flexible system. It got a pretty bad wrap largely because of terrible mismanagement of TSR and probably could have been a much better system if quality control was a bit more stringent but it was the last system that we would see that was actually backward compatible with classic D&D content and so for many, it is the final version of true and real D&D.

The D&D franchise would be purchased by Wizards of the Coast after 2nd edition and through this act, the classic era of D&D was over.

Why Play It Today?

For me personally 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons is a great system because it’s quite easy to run, has fairly clear rules while retaining that classic D&D feel. Now like all the classic versions of D&D that came out of TSR it is a mechanically flawed system, there is no disputing that, but its philosophy, its concept, its spirit as a D&D game is beyond reproach. It is D&D as it was meant to played, as it was designed to be experienced.

To me everything that followed starting with 3rd edition was an improvement on how D&D works mechanically, but in those mechanical evolutions a hole was punctured in the spirit of the game and it would turn out to be a major over correction where mechanics became favored over philosophy and concepts of the game missing the point of the many expanded concept introduced in 2nd edition AD&D. The soul of D&D would soon be diminished and by 4th edition D&D totally abandoned.

I say this here because 2nd edition was probobly the best game mechanically that TSR came up with, meaning, it had the cleanest gameplay, it was the best mechanical version of D&D that still retained the spirit of the game.

For modern gamers this is the edition I would actually recommend if your curious about what people mean by “Classic D&D”. Sure you will find some of the mechanics a bit quirky but it will be familiar, it will make sense, you will know how to play intrinsicly if you have played modern versions of the game. Mechanically its all here, even as flawed as it may appear to you (because it actually is flawed), but you will get to experience the classic nature of the game, that gritty D&D spirit that really doesn’t exist in modern editions of the game.

Gaming Articles, Role-Player Game Reviews

D&D Theory: Dungeons & Dragons Over The Years: Part I of III

Dungeons & Dragons is rapidly approaching its 50th anniversary as a franchise and what a glorious 50 years it has been. Over the decades D&D has enjoyed immense success in just about every medium, but of course, the pencil-and-paper RPG is what makes this wheel spin. At no time that I recall has D&D seen more success than in recent years, the hobby has absolutely exploded in popularity and it’s in part because of its appearance in various tv shows, but certainly primarily because of the incredibly successful 5th edition released in 2014. The game has enjoyed many versions and variations of the game, each one a variant of what came before and if you really count some of the sub-edition and in-between stuff there is actually, even more, to choose from than might be immediately apparent.

Now modern gamers are going to play modern games, it’s natural as you enter the hobby, you go for the latest and greatest which is not only expected but recommended. That said, as a guy who has played every edition of the game extensively and is a huge history buff, I’m always excited to talk about what has come before and why modern gamers might want to take a spell and consider some of these past additions for their table even today.

5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, the latest version of the game made great strides in an attempt to solidify past and present editions into a single system to satisfy the many growing issues that have crept up in modern designs which include 3rd and 4th editions of the game. It’s by far and wide the most popular modern edition of the game with past generations of gamers as well as obviously, modern games (can you say 50 million people playing D&D!?).

Contrary to popular belief, past editions of the game as compared to modern games are not some old relics to be discarded and forgotten. Any one of these old editions can create amazing table experiences and I would argue are worth exploring even today. In fact, most complaints about modern games stem from certain gaming elements that were already tested, identified and resolved in old systems that have crept back into the modern game design because when you don’t know your history you’re doomed to repeat it, yes I’m looking squinty-eyed at you Wizards of the Coast!

With that little enticement, in today’s article, we are going to travel back in time and talk about each edition that came before, what you might find in between the pages and why it might just very well be worth your time to explore it.

Enjoy the article, it’s a big one!

Dungeons & Dragons: Original Edition

The original game was reprinted in a deluxe box set in 2013 as part of D&D’s 40th year anniversary. This classic, despite its age, is still played today.

We can only speculate as to what was going through Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson’s minds when they created the original white box set, after all, they were paving the way into uncharted territory perhaps not even aware that they were about to create an entire genre of gaming and franchise that would last for decades. Interviews in hindseight make them appear almost like geniuses who percieved a whole new genre of gaming but the reality is they were just a couple of nerds that like to make games.

The original game is perhaps best described as a proof of concept. Many of the ideas that would evolve from this 1st version of D&D were very rough in this original edition and while I would like to tell you that every edition of the game is worth exploring, this one included, of all the editions that followed this one would probably be the most alien to modern gamers.

For one the game was in its infancy and much of the terminology and concepts that would define D&D as the game we know today were yet to really be coined. There were only three classes in the game, The Cleric, Fighting Man and Magic-User initially and the game was very much about free-form role-playing with the absolute minimum of rules beyond some basic combat execution mechanics. Notably by modern standards, I think most would view some of the mechanics as odd at absolute best, in fact even among OSR (Old School Revival) circles the original game is considered a bit of a quirky historical reference.

D&D inspired an entire golden era of early PC gaming including classics like Bard’s Tale. Just like D&D, retro gaming and revivals of classic games from the 70’s & 80’s is common in PC games as well. We got the whole Bard’s Tale trilogy remastered in 2018.

For example, the damage characters could deal in combat was based on their class, not their weapon, there were no skills, feats or special powers and while there were 3 classes in the game with a 4th coming along later (Thief), for the most part, the game was very close to a completely rule-less system depending very heavily on DM adjudication, yet the game was very procedural at times as well bringing it much closer to what we could call an adventure game rather than a role-playing game today. Something I don’t doubt purist would wholeheartedly disagree with, most who played it leaned on the adjudication over structure element of the game.

Today there is still a fan base for this original style of play which was very much narrative storytelling focused. There are retro-clones available today like Swords & Wizardry which is a compilation and organization of the game into a single volume done by the famed OSR designer/writer Matt Finch who is among a small group of people responsible for the creation of the OSR as a concept. As such you don’t have to go through the trouble of hunting down original copies; versions of this game that are effectively replications of the original rules are available in print today through sites like RPG Drive Thru.

Swords & Wizardry is just one of several retro-clones of the original game available today. This one is hailed for its amazing line art and organization making the game a lot easier to understand than the original printing.

Why Play It Today?

I would be hard-pressed to give an exact mechanical or even conceptual reason to play the original game. I suppose you could say that if you like free-form role-playing where rules are more often improvised than stated, this might be a reason to try this one but I think most gamers today would probably want more mechanics than this game offers, both DM’s and players alike. If free form is your thing, you could just as well ignore rules that exist in your game than play one where they are missing when you want or need them.

I think the only real reason to try this original classic is just to get an understanding of the history of D&D, where it started, where it came from, and how the design evolved. This game is still played today, but unlike many of the versions that followed, the OSR community existing today that plays this game is made up predominantly of people who played the original way back in the 70’s. That is not meant to discourage or disparage the game, it is a classic, an original to be preserved and held high for its achievement, but still. Original D&D is to RPG’s what cave paintings are to art, an interesting historical reference but not exactly something that is going to teach or introduce modern gamers to anything that hasn’t been done better in games that followed.

Nostalgia certainly plays a role in D&D communities, but even when we look back, it’s rarely original D&D that is being presented, more often it is 1st edition Basic/Expert or Advanced Dungeons and Dragons that serves as a way back machine. Original D&D is just too far back to be relevant nearly 50 years after its release. A fate I fear will befall B/X & AD&D some day as well.

For me personally, it’s one of the few editions of the game I find difficult to recommend, it was kind of a trial run and while I think it has a lot of historical relevance, in practice, it’s pretty rough as a game system and much of the games core premise while familiar is actually quite distant from how both RPG’s and specifically D&D evolved. It’s a curiosity, certainly worth a read, but I personally never felt drawn to run it.

It’s a game you play to get a look through the lens of the origins of the game.

1st Edition Basic / Expert

1st edition Basic/Expert rules had several subversions over the years but the most often referenced and perhaps the most well-known is the 1981 Moldvay box set. For many D&D generations, this box set defines classic D&D for them.

Contrary to popular belief D&D actually evolved from two separate core games that while reasonably compatible had a vastly different approach conceptually.

1st edition Basic & Expert rules were released alongside 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and while one was intended as a starting point for the other, the games evolved along different paths and in a sense became two simultaneous editions of the game.

There are a number of core differences between 1st edition B/X and 1st edition AD&D.

First and perhaps foremost, 1st edition B/X was structured as an adventure game first and RPG second. A core of the game was that there were defined rules that structured elements of the game like the exploration of dungeons, wilderness adventures and adventures on the high seas. This concept I think would be quite unique to modern gamers who see the “adventuring” part of the game as a free-form role-playing concept, rather than a structured element of play which is exactly the case in the B/X system.

The concept of D&D as an adventure game is differentiated by the structure of play outside of combat. In an adventure game there are rules that govern all aspects of the game creating emergent stories and while the principle between adventure games and RPG’s are so similar it’s almost impossible to tell them apart, they are in fact quite different in practice.

In B/X time is tracked in actions even during adventuring periods and this has a procedure that is different for each of the types of “zones” of adventure (Dungeon, Wilderness & Waterborne adventures). Just like in combat, each initiative players take an action, which results in a “round” taking place and just like combat, this can have different effects on the game from torches going out, spells expiring, wandering monsters and other effects like getting lost in the woods, running out of food and so on. Not all that different than any other D&D game, but the tracking of time and the governance of rules of how to manage is mechanically driven.

Another core feature of B/X is that there are no race & class combinations, instead, races are their own classes. This is also wildly different and is exclusive to just this and the original edition of the game not to be repeated in any future editions barring reprints. Race as class (Elf as a class for example) I think is something that would raise the eyebrows of modern gamers but the premise here is that, in B/X, D&D is a very specific type of fantasy. In fact, B/X as a system is directly linked to a setting called “The Known World”. The known world would later evolve into the “Mystara” setting which evolved further with the releases of the Companion, Master and Immortal rules, effectively advanced B/X rules as strange as that sounds which is in contrast to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. This setting is built around a very Tolkien-like fantasy setting and the classes in the game are structured to depict that fantasy exclusively.

No version is influenced more by Tolkein fantasy, which includes the original edition of D&D than 1st edition Basic/Expert rules. Tolkien fantasy is built right into the rules and many of the core abilities and structures are designed intentionally to replicate middle-earth sensibilities.

This is a bit confusing but you can think of it this way. Initially, B/X was created to be a basic starting point and AD&D was where players were expected to graduate. I don’t think TSR expected that the B/X rules would gain their own, separate following and this resulted in a demand from this new B/X community for expanded content. They wanted more advanced rules, but not in the form of AD&D, but rather expanded rules for the B/X game system as its base. I will talk more about the result, BECMI (Basic/expert/companion/master/immortal) rules a little later.

The third thing that really made B/X unique is that the game assumed a sort of meta-game infrastructure. The game was really designed as a challenge to players, rather than their characters and to support that concept several meta-game rules existed that worked together.

For starters, the players were assumed to be treasure hunters. This is why we had structured adventuring rules, but there are also rules for rewards that support this. For example, XP for monsters was very low, but you would earn 1 XP for every 1 gold piece (treasure) you found. The idea was that players were motivated to travel across the landscape (Wilderness & Waterborne Adventure Rules), go into dungeons (Dungeon Adventure Rules) and find treasure (1 gold = 1 xp). This is how you advanced in the game and was a measure of your success.

The depiction in Strange Things in which players huddle together, form plans, roll dice and seemingly are playing a game more than role-playing may seem strange to modern gamers, but if there is a version of the game that depicted this element it would be Basic/Expert rules where the feeling of winning in an RPG was kind of real and very player centric.

Additionally, character classes were very minimal, you gained very few powers and much of your strength was based on the equipment you carried. Magic equipment was of course the best way to empower your character but the only way to get magic items (which could never be purchased) was to go into Dungeons and find them.

B/X as such was a very structured adventure RPG quite different from Original D&D which was very free form and future editions of the game that were very narrative and character-centric. B/X was a very player-centric game with a very firm meta-game motivation built into it.

The final thing about B/X, oddly enough even though it was a game designed with new players in mind, though it had a simple ruleset was incredibly difficult to be successful in. The game while being structured, meant that rules governed a great deal of the outcomes of the game which means dice rolls. This combined with the incredible deadliness of the game made the actual gameplay for expert (veteran) D&D players.

Using player meta knowledge and past D&D experience, really playing D&D as a player skill set was both encouraged and expected under 1st edition B/X rules. “Good Players” were far more likely to succeed in the game than “New Players” who lacked past experience. It was an odd position the game took from a design perspective given it (B/X rules) was designed as an introduction to Dungeons & Dragons.

A character in B/X would instantly die when they hit 0 hit points and at 1st level characters rarely had more the 2-8 hit points. A single blow could end a character’s life, not to mention how deadly traps and other effects could be. By and large, despite being aimed at new players, 1st edition B/X was the deadliest game in D&D history and remains today as the core of the OSR community for that very reason. A game designed for newbies was ultimately adopted as the foremost example of master-level role-playing aficionados who love a challenge becoming the foundation system for the OSR.

While B/X box sets and rules are still available today through sites like RPG DriveThru, one nice thing about B/X rules popularity among OSR designers is that it has become the adopted love child on which many games are based. The result is that there are various re-edits and retro-clones of B/X, my personal favorite being Old School Essentials by Necrotic Gnome. This fantastic re-edit of B/X not only gives you the core rules in a really great edit but the game is expanded with several source books that take you beyond the basic B/X rules to include more classes and more advanced optional rules. As well they do some optional math reversal for you to get rid of the dreaded THAC0 and descending armor class so you don’t have to. Really great stuff!

Old School Essentials is just one of many retro-clones and remakes of 1st edition Basic/Expert rules, but it’s by and large the most popular, and this is likely because it stays honest to B/X rules as closely as humanly possible while correcting and expanding the game in ways that is very commonly done in house rules. It is in my opinion the best version of B/X rules out there today.

Why Play It Today?

There are actually quite a few intriguing reasons to play Basic/Expert edition Dungeons & Dragons, but I would still argue that modern players might see the game as quirky if not outright strange.

One of the main advantages of 1st edition Basic/Expert rules, setting aside the challenge level of the game (as a game) is that the rules are very simple to learn/teach. Far simpler than anything we have in modern systems. This simplicity is combined with existing familiarity anyone who plays D&D would have compared to modern games, meaning that if you know how to play any edition of the game including 5th edition D&D, you already know 90% of the system (B/X) because by far and large it is the basis for all other editions of the game.

This simply means that you can get the game to the table very easily with any sort of player group even complete novices. No one is going to struggle to understand how to play and everyone can get right to enjoying the game without the need for elaborate explanations often required to grasp modern games.

This simplicity is furthered combined with unmatched support for the game in particular in the form of adventure modules and unique variations on the system all of which are compatible with each other. In the nearly 50 years that D&D has been in development, this version of the game has continued to receive new content thanks to a thriving community and immense 3rd party publishing support. There are more adventure modules created for 1e B/X rules than all other editions of D&D combined. It is the most well-supported D&D system today, even more so than modern/current editions like 5th edition D&D.

A big part of why Basic/Expert rules are so flexible is the incredible compatibility it maintained long past its lifetime. 1st and 2nd edition adventures including all AD&D content are 100% compatible while 3rd and 5th edition modules are incredibly easy to adapt. The only rough spot is 4th edition which is generally incompatible with all D&D systems.

The next big sales pitch, which speaks to me personally has always been the structured and clear goals of the game for players. One very common issue with D&D is the absence of a common definition of what you are supposed to be doing in the game and understanding it as a game and as a concept. Modern games have this “it’s anything you want it to be” approach to playstyle, but this is particularly unhelpful and problematic when you sit down with five players and a DM to whom “anything you want it to be” is different for each person. Finding common ground, a gaming group where everyone is in sync and creating an experience that satisfies everyone at the table borders on an impossible achievement in modern gaming. It’s why despite the popularity of modern systems, the complaining from the player base is so excessive you would think they hate their hobby the way they speak about it.

1st edition B/X is a system that has clear goals, clear direction, one playstyle and no apologies, no excuses and no fancy philosophies. There is only one right way to play 1e B/X and the game tells you exactly what that is in no uncertain terms with no interpretations required. Certainly, it’s not a take-it-or-leave-it deal and you can and are actually encouraged to mess with the system, but at least you are on solid footing when you read the rules as written, there is a clear starting point, there is no confusion about what the deal is. Love it or hate it, it is what it is.

One additional element that has been lost in D&D is the ability to play the game as a pickup-and-go as well as a one-shot system. B/X combat is fast and snappy, its mechanics simple and it’s core gameplay clear. The result is a system that very happily supports the idea that you can pick up the books and say “let’s play D&D” and be up and running in 10 minutes or less. It’s ideal for 1 shot and pick-up games where you can simply play anytime you feel like it with anyone. This is because B/X is built on emergent story and gameplay concepts, meaning that you don’t need to do much prep work to get a very functional and entertaining game night, creating the story is built right into the system for you.

While AD&D (1st & 2nd edition), 3rd and 4th editions were all far too complex games to make either good introductions or be flexible enough for pick up and play games, with 5e thanks to introduction boxes like D&D Essentials Kit, picking up a game with little prep is again possible. This may be why 5e D&D is so popular as it goes back to its roots as a game in many ways and being easy to pick up is one of them, an idea founded in 1e B/X rules.

Finally and like anything this too is a matter of taste and preference is the fact that B/X 1st edition is effectively a D&D construction kit. If you ever wanted to create your own version of D&D, there is no system more modular and more adaptable than B/X 1st edition. This is a D&D lego set and while the core system has clearly marked boundaries, you cannot break the game, it’s so incredibly flexible you can take any other edition of the game, take any rule you want from that game, including any spell, feat, power or whatever, add it as written into B/X and it works without a hitch. Naturally, your power levels will fluctuate as a result, but there are not going to be any mechanical compatibility issues, it just works. It’s a creative DM’s dream come true as a system and it’s a lot of fun to do. A system that is firm in the layout of what it is, but infinitely modular to be anything else you want it to be while always remaining approachable to and by anyone.

1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

AD&D 1st edition was reprinted by Wizards of the Coast in 2016 without edits, a tribute to decades of fandom.

I think most D&D players, even modern gamers know a thing or two about Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, while it is not the first edition of the game it is considered to be the granddaddy of D&D written by the god-emperor himself, Gary Gygax.

AD&D 1st edition however is actually one of the most problematic games in the D&D line up, which is not to say it’s bad, it’s actually quite phenomenal, but it requires a very stern hand to wrangle this beast and an open mind to its core concept. There is no question that this is one of the most complex versions of the game to learn, to run, and ultimately to master, definitively earning its unique title as Advanced D&D. In fact, it’s a rare DM who can fully grasp the core of the rules and implement them efficiently fully as written. RAW 1st edition AD&D games were rare then (70’s-80’s) as they are now. It really takes a true master to run a good 1st edition AD&D game which might explain why so many players and DM’s have a love-it-or-hate-it relationship with the game. In the hands of an inexperienced DM it can be a disaster, in the hands of a master DM, it is nothing short of a work of art. It’s a game that embodies the soul of D&D in a way that no game before or after ever could, but one must be a soulweaver to bring that essence to the table.

1e AD&D under TSR’s banner gave birth to all of the classic settings that are staples in the community today. Dragonlance is just one among many that created fantasy fans all over the world. Playing in this setting under the original system is an experience I would recommend to every D&D fan without hesitation.

AD&D shares many similarities with B/X, the two games are designed to be fully compatible and they are, but AD&D features a number of unique departures as well as much deeper and more fleshed out concepts that you will not find in either B/X or any other version of D&D that had come before or would come after.

First and foremost the rules of the game are hidden from the players very intentionally, documented in a massive and secretive tome in painstaking detail and frank commanding language known as the 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide. A book that I both personally consider the first and definitive final word on how to be a Dungeon Master and one of the most confusing reads you will ever experience, spectled with brilliance and nonsense in the same breath.

This book not only defines every conceivable element of the game but it does so with flavor and a deep meaningful understanding of fantasy, an edgy abstracted realism, and a firm hand. It’s a book that declares the Dungeon Master god of the game in no uncertain terms, the great creator tasked with entertaining and challenging players in the most devious and detailed oriented ways possible.

The result is a system that is explicit, yet flexible, mysterious, yet self-aware and most of all, it creates a gritty, believable fantasy world in stunning detail if and its a BIG if you can wrap your head around all of the wisdom it passes on and be open-minded enough to embrace it.

The 1st edition DMG to me is the bible for Dungeon & Dragons, running D&D having never read it means you are always going to be a lesser DM than you could be. It is priceless information you will never find in any other book written for the game.

Now that is a very colorful way to describe AD&D and I will admit, no matter how many times I open the pages of the AD&D DMG, I can’t help but be swallowed whole by the mystique of it. It’s inspiring. That said, its a read riddled with issues, in fact, in a lot of ways, its approach as a whole is an issue to some both conceputally and mechanically speaking. Its perhaps best described as a confounding experience, you will either find its soul or be confused by its intention.

Still, D&D is a game and AD&D is a version of it, so the question is, what does it do differently, what aspect of the game may be worth exploring if you’re a modern gamer. Why go back to it?

Like B/X this is a game that is going to have a familiar surface, looking at the character races and classes, stats and hit points, armor class and sub-systems while some of them will feel like quirky versions of what you are used to they are not going to be alien to you.

There are however three core things that really separate AD&D from any other version of the game for better or for worse, you decide!

The first is the focus on the mundane, administrative elements of medieval life. AD&D as a system really tries very hard, successfully in my opinion, to make players feel the hardship of a medieval fantasy world. Your resources are limited, your powers are limited and it all amounts to the game being a brutal struggle for survival.

There is a harshness to everything with no video game structured answers or hand-waving of the elements of the adventuring life. You are as likely to die in the woods of dysentery as you are at the end of an orc’s blade. AD&D wants you to worry about how sharp your blade is, how clean your water is, how many arrows you have in your quiver, how heavy your pack is, how many spell components you have remaining and all sorts of other resource issues that drive your actions and decisions. No matter where you look in this system there are uncomfortable limits and restrictions. There are no character “builds” that let you circumvent the harshness or avoid the discomforts. The result is that players form comraderies in much the way soldiers do in war because the only way to truly survive, maybe even excel is through teamwork, the only way players can accept their circumstances is by suffering them together.

This of course can be seen as a major drawback as well. Adventuring heroes suffering anti-climatic deaths does not exactly make for a tolkein fantasy or fond memories. Sometimes the game is just a bit too real to be fun, a not all together uncommon complaint about AD&D.

The 2nd main focus of the game is emergent narrative storytelling. AD&D has a lot of charts and DM’s are often asked to let the events of the game unfold through the use of tables, encouraged to embelish these events and allow the chips, or dice as it were, to fall where they may. That is not to say that everything should be randomized or that the game is pure random chance, but the game is setup in such a way as to ensure the players are working against a structure rather than pure DM fiat.

These rolls are often measured against character attributes and abilities, which ties into the 3rd unique element of AD&D I will talk about in a minute, but the principle concept is that you do not just roll when you “do stuff” to see if you succeed, but you often roll to see “what happens” in general, how the world around you responds.

You open a chest, what is in it? Is there a trap on this chest? Is there an Alchemist in town? How does the merchant you just met feel about you? Do the Orcs run or fight this round? Rolling the dice isn’t just to see if you can disarm a trap or if you can find it, its very existance may be left to chance. This emergent concept is a foundational element of AD&D.

Forbidden Lands reminded me a great deal of AD&D 1st edition and it shows that there is still a place in gaming for harsh and ruthless survival stories and emergent storytelling. It is a great example of an OSR throwback and might serve as a much easier alternative to teaching the many lessons of AD&D.

With AD&D there are rolls that determine the input or outcome of a narrative. Maybe killing the chieften scares the rest of the Orcs and they run away, maybe it makes them even more angry and they attack with barberic ferocity! The DM is encouraged to let a big part of the story be told by the dice, far larger chunks than one might be accustomed to in a modern game. This in turn creates emergent stories, unexpected events, things the DM could not himself plan or would have even considered adding into the game. This aspect of AD&D creates a sense of danger and the unknown, not just because you as a player don’t know what will happen, but you know the DM doesn’t either. In AD&D very often, the dice do the storytelling.

This too can be a problem, encountering deadly traps and finding nothing in treasure chests while stumbling across random encounters every time you open a dungeon door can be daunting, brutal, unfair even. AD&D run as designed, can be quite suffocating and demoralizing. Some will see it as a challenge, others as unescessary cruelty.

The 3rd and final unique element of AD&D is that the games classes are definitively archetypical and each class deals with a very specific element of the game, offering a group an advantage in the area filled by a character of that class. This is true in B/X as well, but in AD&D there is a far more granular game, hence the class abilities are equally more granular increasing the complexity and types of class roles. A group without a Ranger is likely to get lost in the woods more often, have food shortages when traveling, have longer travel times and so on. A group without a Cleric is going to have a hell of a time crawling through a crypt filled with undead and recovery of the groups health will be dauntinly slow. A group that has a thief will likely end up with a lot more treasure, a lot fewer casualties as a result of traps and will be able to access parts of dungeons inaccessible without their skulldugary skills.

Some cross over exists here and there, but each class plays a key role and in the end each adventuring party will always be missing some element that is relevant to the adventure, some unfilled gap that they will struggle against.

Making each role a pivitol part of an adventuring party means that each player is a critical to the success of the troupe, everyone’s lives are easied by their presence against the horrific struggles of the medievil world you face together.

This aspect of the game is so refined, so poiniant that its become a staple in the gaming world in particular in MMO’s, yet oddly enough as editions progressed forward the game of D&D has slowly evolved away from this principle element to a point where in modern editions of the game its practically non-existant. A party of adventurers in 5e for example will not have a gap in the groupes capabilities because a Ranger, Rogue or Cleric are not part of a party.

This element also adds an aspect of meta strategy. Players that gather to form adventuring troupes are going to be very aware of their shortcomings and their strengths, they will devise group strategies that favor those strengths and avoid exposing their weaknesess, creating a kind of a game within a game. The composition of your party will and does dramatically change how you approach the whole concept of adventure.

Again there are drawbacks to AD&D’s archetype enforcement. At times you might sit down at an AD&D table and be forced to play a Cleric because the party needs one even though you actually want to be a thief, but the group already has one. Their is inflexibility in this rigid structure, the modern game favors players running whatever character class they want and in this is a kind of joy. Sometimes in AD&D, the struggle begins even before you start playing as players bicker over what the party needs as oppossed to simply creating whatever character you want.

Why Play It Today?

For me AD&D does two things, both of which give this game justification as a game to try today, but I would simultanously caution modern gamers that this is a very brutal game, much like Basic & Expert 1st edition is but unlike B/X it’s also very complex and can be a chore to learn and run.

The first thing is that I think the concept of emergent gameplay is applicable to modern games, though modern games don’t encourage or teach it, even though they are perfectly capable of the execution. AD&D teaches you how and when to do this well, so the experience of running AD&D as as DM makes for an exceptional education you won’t find in any other game on a subject (emergent gameplay). In my opinion emergent gameplay is not optional, it is a required element of the game that must be included for the game to be meaningful. The players must know that the fate of their characters isn’t just a DM decision, that the world around them is a living breathing thing, random as it may sometimes be. This is one thing I feel is worthy of your time and effort to learn and learn well and no game will teach you emergent gameplay better than AD&D 1st edition.

Emergent gameplay is an amazing seasoning to narrative constructs because as much as DM’s often think themselves briliant story designers, the truth is that most of us are not. Emergent gameplay creates a natural way for amazing stories to evolve (emerge) and with the right set of tools which the 1st edition AD&D DMG most certainly is, the creations will always be wildly unique inspiring stories you would have never thought to create yourself, acting as a platform for your own inspiration.

The second thing AD&D does really well is that it teaches you why limitations are better than options, a lesson you will never learn from a modern RPG, quite to the contrary most modern games very mistakingly teach the oppossite. AD&D shows you how you can play a straight, tough game, one that might almost seem mean to the players and end up with an amazing gaming experience in which your players flourish despite the hardships. This is because the reality of games of any kind is that victories that are tough to achieve, inspire players to be smarter, better, proactive, involved and curious to test their metal, all elements that become rewards in their own right. The side effect is failure but if you know anything about drama you know that traggedy and struggle produce the best stories which ties in nicely with the concept of emergent gameplay.

I really enjoy Pathfinder 2nd edition as an alternative to D&D, but this is a game that really shows how unwieldy and generic a game can feel when it has too many options and it’s reach to broad. When everything is possible and everything is unique, nothing is unique, the fallout of option overkill.

For me personally AD&D 1e holds a very special place in the DM arsenal. It is chalk full of lessons that simply aren’t taught anymore and should be to both players and DM’s. It is a game written with the voice of a true master storyteller, someone who understood the principle foundations of narrative role-playing.

It does however require an open mind as some mechanics have not aged well (I’m looking at your THAC0!) but a bit of math is a small price to pay for a great gaming experience and the truth is that most of the mechanics that aged poorly, can be easily corrected with a few house rules.

Some of these house rules, corrections and clarifications can be found in OSRIC, a retro-clone for AD&D that makes the game a lot more approachable. I would personally argue OSRIC fails to contain the same mojo of the 1e AD&D DMG, but it does, in plain language sort of explain things that are sometimes heavily hidden in the flavor text of Gygax’s quirky writing and as a practical matter this is quite useful.

Like Old School Essentials which retro-clones B/X rules, OSRIC is a re-edit of the 1e AD&D rules making it far easier to consume and understand the core rules, in essence making AD&D 1st edition far easier to run. You lose that Gygaxian writing that makes 1e AD&D such a fun read, but as a rule reference is really great.

Conclusion

That concludes our first part of the walk down memory lane of D&D gaming history. Clearly, like any fan of D&D I have my opinions and it’s certain to trigger disagreement, but I feel quite confident having played these games extensively I have nailed at least my own experience and perceptions.

Part II is coming soon where I will dive into 1st edition BECMI (Basic/Expert/Companion/Master/Immortal) rules, 2nd edition AD&D and then switch gears to the birth of the modern D&D era with 3rd edition!

Board Game Reviews

Washington’s War by GMT games 2010

Designer: Mark Herman

In recent days I have played quite a bit of Mark Herman’s classic Washington’s War yet despite the game being number 15 on my top 20 games chart I did back in February 2022 and No. 6 in my Top 10 War Games I did in 2020, I’m yet to do a proper review on it. It’s a long past due oversight that I really wanted to correct and so here we go!

Mark Herman is a brilliant designer, a statement I make without hesitation and he made a big splash as the founder of the influence struggle and historical CDG war game genres in a single game called We The People in 1993. This led to a number of what are now considered classic historical war games in their own right that used these mechanics like Twilight Struggle, For The People, Empire of the Sun and Paths of Glory just to name a few. It was, to say the least, a pivotal moment in game design history that lead to the release of Washington’s War which is for all intense and purposes the 2nd edition of We The People.

It would not be an overstatement to point out that while We The People sparked an evolution in the historical war game category, breathing life into two different genres of historical war games it remains wildly underrated. Washington’s War, its follow-up, is really no different, in my mind it is one of the most criminally underrated games in all of board- gaming sitting in a shockingly disgraceful 730 on BBG as of this writing.

I will be the first to admit that We The People lacked the visual appeal of a mainstream game, it certainly does look the part of a complicated historical war game. This likely contributed to its shockingly underrated status.

Washington’s War is a game about the American founding father’s struggle to create a new nation out of 13 fledgling colonies as they opposed the British Empire in what has got to be one of the most fascinating pieces of history there is. The Revolutionary war is chock full of extraordinarily interesting personalities, political struggles that make The Game of Thrones look like child’s play and some of the most vicious military engagements in all of American history. Washington’s War manages to squeeze all of that history into a game that is easy to teach and learn while remaining streamlined to precision.

I love the influence struggle and CDG category of historical war games, my collection is full of them, but Washington’s War is the only game in my collection that I feel comfortable in pulling out with just about anyone. Whether you are a Eurogamer, casual dabbler, or a serious historical war game fan, you will fall in love with this games incredible back-and-forth tension. It is not just a great historical war game for historical war gamers, it is just good gaming period by any measure.

Twilight Struggle is a mainstream hit coming out of the historical war game universe, but it’s really odd to me. It’s a complex CDG based on the Cold War that has a fairly steep learning curve. It wouldn’t even be in my top 3 CDG influence struggle games I would recommend as an entry point into the genre.

Now I have played my hand a little here, clearly, I’m a fan but given the accolades it has already received on my site over the last few years, I don’t think it should come as a surprise to my more frequent readers. The devil is in the details however and while I would describe this game as a good time in a box, I think it’s fair to say I owe more of an explanation to this review, so let’s dig into the revolutionary war!

Overview

Final Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star(4.2 out 5) Great Game!

Washington’s War is an asymmetrical influence struggle CDG (Card Driven Game) war game. That is a mouthful, but given that We the People, the 1st edition of Washington’s War effectively created this style of game, it’s perhaps reasonable to explain what it actually is even if we have already watched this genre evolve over the years in so many other games.

In Influence Struggle CDG’s like Washington’s War, players take turns playing cards which they use to execute actions on a point-to-point map. In our case the map of the eastern United States where the revolutionary war takes place. One of the key elements here is control of different areas via influence tokens called Political Influence in Washington’s War which represents the political control the Americans or British have in an area in any of the 13 colonies.

The object of the game is to have sufficient political influence markers in each of the colonies to control them and essentially whichever player controls the most colonies by the end of the game will win the game. Technically the US needs to control 7 colonies while the British only needs to control 6 of them to win.

The catch is that there are also generals and armies on the board who can take these areas by force, so part of the game is also using actions to move armies around and engage in battles to force your influence onto the board.

The different cards also have event effects, special actions players can take when playing a card. These events represent different actual or hypothetical events from revolutionary war history. There are also several unique conditions and phases in the game like Winter Attrition for example that represents the harshness of the winters and the complexity of keeping standing armies in the field in this era. These various unique conditions create the challenges players must contend with as the war progresses.

Suffices to say that description is probably insufficient to really get a feel for the game, but I think what is most important to understand is that this game like all influence struggle CDG’s is about board control, timing, and about the back and forth tension between players as they vie for power on the point to point map. Since We The People, we have seen many games in this genre that leverage this mechanic, most famously Twilight Struggle. Washington’s War however takes a much more rules-light and less restrictive approach to this style of play.

The war plays out on a point-to-point map like many influence struggle games, but Washington’s War definitively falls into the “War” category of games where some influence struggle games have a more debatable status in that regard. In Twilight Struggle for example you do not move armies about the board and engage in battles.

Most notably, players share a deck and cards don’t have as many multiple uses as many games in this genre do where a card is both an event and an “ops value”. Instead, cards either are events or are actual ops cards (1, 2, and 3 ops). This makes the decision matrix for Washington’s War much simpler, in fact, in the influence struggle genre, it actually makes Washington’s War one of the lightest and most approachable games in the genre.

More importantly perhaps is the fact that Washington’s War has few exception-based rules, which is very commonly seen in historical war games and is by far the primary reason in creating a division between mainstream and historical war games. Historical war gamers love their “historicity” (made-up word, I know). What it means is that historical war gamers have a far higher tolerance for heavy rules implementations and rules exceptions as long as those rules breathe historical simulation into the game and this road can go quite deep in many historical war games. Washington’s War, while it certainly is historical, does this more with core rules rather than exception-based rules. What this boils down to is that though Washington’s War has not really become a mainstream game, there actually is no reason for it not to be. This, like any other board game, has straightforward rules that anyone can learn and is actually a lot simpler than many if not most Euro games mainstream gaming communities readily play.

That leaves the question, what is it about Washington’s War that has prevented it from crossing over to mainstream gamers as Twilight Struggle did? Is there a problem?

Components

Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
Tilt: christmas_star

Pros: GMT is a great publisher that never has never disappointed me and in Washington’s War they once again nailed it.

Cons: Looks deceptively like a complex war game which it most certainly is not, hardly a complaint but my explain why it’s not as mainstream as it deserves to be.

As a courtesy to the reader, I will make this brief, this is a GMT production which means that by default all components are top-notch quality. From the gorgeous and sturdy gameboard to the thick card stock and counters, everything is made to last with a wonderfully clear presentation.

It’s fair to remind readers that GMT is a historical war game publisher and while the component quality is definitively top-notch, rarely do we see miniatures in GMT games. This is largely a courtesy to keep costs down and the result of game pieces in historical war games having information on them relevant to gameplay as is the case with the cut-outs in Washington’s War. This is not a flaw, but a feature.

The rulebook is super clean and precise, the game includes a playbook that is so good you can almost learn how to play the game without reading the rulebook and just following along with the playbook. Finally, the game has the best reference cards I have ever seen in a game, so well thought out that once you play one turn of the game you aren’t likely ever going to have to reference the rulebook again as the reference sheets have everything you need to play the game on them.

Short and sweet, the components of the game are pitch-perfect. Nothing is overcooked, it’s just right, no complaints from this reviewer.

Theme

Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
Tilt: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star

Pros: Washington’s War has just the right amount of nuance to breathe life into the fascinating history of the revolutionary war without overwhelming you with rules “chrome”.

Cons: Veteran historical war gamers looking for a deep and/or complex revolutionary war simulation may not find what they are looking for here.

When it comes to the historical war game themes, it’s always a matter of taste on how much simulation, replication and historical accuracy a person wants in their game. I’m of the opinion that a good historical war game will allow you to play inside a historical period, but keep the scripted elements of the game to an absolute minimum. I don’t want to replicate history or follow along some historical path forced on me by the mechanics of the game, I want to be put in a position to make the same decisions the commanders and leaders of the time had to make and ultimately find my own path to victory in a sort of alternate history of the subject matter.

In this vein, Washington’s War is ideal because while the game has all of the elements of the revolutionary war including the important personalities, events, locations and abstracted conditions of the period, how the game plays out is not going to reflect the actual history of the revolutionary war. From the very first action to the last, you are going to inevitably change history.

Despite this a-historical execution, the game still captures the period perfectly from the asymmetrical sides and unique conditions they had to contend with to the interesting political events and personalities involved all making an appearance in the game. What changes are elements like when the French join the war if ever, or when if ever the declaration of independence is signed. Does Washington get captured during the war? Does the continental congress get dispersed? Do the British win or lose the south, can they use their dominance of the sea to win the war? All of these aspects of history are thrown off their axis in some form or another, many historical events may or may not ever take place and much of what does and doesn’t happen in your version of the revolutionary war history will depend on card draw, dice and most important decisions you make as a player.

I found the game to be extremely thematic, hitting the high points of the revolutionary war in particular in the way the Americans struggle to have a military that can face the British, the difficulties of the Americans to bring the French into the fight and the tough challenges of trying to control a country that was really quite divided on the subject of independence. Washington’s War feels like a game on the revolutionary war in every regard, yet doesn’t impose the history on you for posterity. It allows the a-historical outcomes unapologetically and as far as I’m concerned, this is exactly what I want out of any historical war game.

I found that every game of Washington’s War played out wildly different while always maintaining these struggles that were part of the history of the period. More importantly, however, these struggles are imbued into the mechanics so they feel natural rather than scripted, nor are they infused with a lot of exceptions to force the subject. Certainly, you are going to make some of the historical decisions as did the founding fathers because they make sense, but often I found myself in what-if moments, the execution of which is exciting and tense and triggers discussions with your opponent about the history of the game.

One of the ways Washington’s War really comes to life as a historical game is the uncertainty of the conflict. There are never any breakthrough moments in the war, there is a lot of attrition, a sort of push and pull where no matter where you push and win, it always results in you having to pull back somewhere else. This creates great tension in the game, really giving you that sensation of being an underdog as the American, while making you feel powerful as the British. Yet despite this, the game has incredible balance, even within the constraints of the asymmetrical feel each side has and despite Americans being the underdogs and the British being big and powerful, the game never gives the impression that either side has a leg up in the final outcome of the game (war). It is a war that either side can win and strategy plays the predominant part in that outcome, which feels both historically accurate and makes for a great gaming experience.

Finally and I mean this as a complement and not a negative comment, the game doesn’t overdo the history. Mark Herman designs very often are so regimented when it comes to history and while in many games like Empire of the Sun which is the driver for the game and ultimately what brings you to the table, Washington’s War relies far more on the strategic play to pull you in. Historical it certainly is, but this is a streamlined machine that introduces the history in subtle ways, while it remains far more a game than a simulation throughout. There are almost no exception-based rules in the game that try to force historical elements on you, which is not often the case with historical games and certainly not Herman’s designs. Mark takes a light-touch approach in Washington’s War and strangely it’s this distancing from exceptions that makes the game feel more historical and thematic, as it all just becomes more accessible.

General Washington for example is represented as a strong commander for the Americans and comes with a special ability allowing him to avoid some winter attrition penalties. This is a very subtle special power and it’s easy to remember because Washington is a unique commander, the game is named after him after all. It’s one of the very few exception-based rules and it kind of just makes sense and is logical enough to be easy to remember.

I really love this approach and I’m reminded of the fact that while I love games like France 1944 and Empire of the Sun, two other Mark Herman designs, I often wish I could play lighter versions of those games that still capture the same historical principles and strategic elements without being so complex and filled with exceptions. Washington’s War really nails this streamlined, more direct approach and I think the result is a far more enjoyable and notably more accessible game which ultimately lets the theme actually flow a lot better. You could almost say that there are fewer interruptions to the enjoyment of the history of the game thanks to a lighter rules approach.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Empire of the Sun and wouldn’t change a thing about it, but there are countless “if this then that” exception rules that make even playing the game correctly a real struggle sometimes. Washington’s War is a straight-to-the-point type of game that avoids the more common “chrome” direction most historical war games take.

If there are any flaws in the theme and mind you this requires one to get very nit-picky is that the CDG mechanic uses the one deck approach. This means both players draw from the same deck and that British and American events when drawn by the opposite player ultimately get discarded for 1 ops actions as they cannot be used for the event. There are a lot of really cool events in the game that simply never see the light of day in any given game as a result simply because of who drew them and while there is a mechanic in place where opponents can pick up discarded event cards, it typically doesn’t happen as players usually plan out their entire turn based on the cards they do draw. I personally prefer CDG’s where each asymmetrical faction gets its own deck as seen in countless games like Twilight Struggle, Empire of the Sun and Paths of Glory for example. The result of such a setup is that you are always drawing cards relevant to you, and more events hit the table which brings into the game more of the history and ultimately the theme of the game.

I would put this complaint in the minor quibble category based on personal preference rather than an actual issue with the game. It’s just a me thing.

As a whole, I think Washington’s War nails the theme beautifully in this game. It’s just the right amount of rules to get the theme across, there is a lot of attention to detail in the history even though all the various conditions and unique elements of the period are handled very subtly. I’m sure there are games on the revolutionary war that are far more detailed and make better historical simulations, but I think Washington’s War was aiming to be more high-level and abstracted and in approaching the design in this way, it has made this historical game a lot more approachable and easier to get to the table. I don’t think it really sacrifices anything critical with this approach and while I could understand that more serious historical gamers might be looking for more chrome, as a guy who plays in both casual and serious fields, I found this game highly thematic and fun.

Gameplay

Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
Tilt: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star christmas_star

Pros: As a fan of CDG influence struggle games, I’m like a moth to a flame here, I adore this genre and this game.  It’s a fantastic introduction to the genre, perfect for newcomers.

Cons: Washington’s War is based on the We The People formula which while great and revolutionary (pun intended) is a bit dated compared to how the genre has evolved. 

As simple of a mechanic Washington’s War is, there is tremendous weight in the strategic gameplay of the game, in fact, I would argue that the complexity of the game is quite high when you consider the deployable strategies possible here.

It’s a bit like chess where you can learn the rules easy enough, but becoming a good chess player is a considerably more robust topic.

For one Washington’s War is a very tight game, it’s really about very subtle motions where placing a token in one place rather than another can have a profound impact on the outcome of the game. That is not to say it’s sensitive to mistakes, but rather that each action really matters. You rarely make irrelevant decisions, every move and counter move is important and the whole thing just feels like it has weight behind it, adding to the tension and attrition.

In any given round for example as the British player, you may have the ops cards necessary to move a couple of units, place a couple of tokens and perhaps play an event. That is not a lot of activity in the big scheme of things, but because the game is relatively short and exactly when the game will end dynamic, these decisions can be quite critical and impactful. In fact any round after the 4th round requires you to be vigilant because the game can end quite abruptly so you need to make sure at the end of each round you are in a winning position.

The game doesn’t have this 3-4 rounds from now I will be in a position to win approach to strategy. You need to effectively be winning at the end of every round of play.

Rounds can end because there are cards in the deck that if drawn must be played which define when the game will end and this starts after the 4th round. The tension this brings to the game is awesome.

Generally, the game is about playing cards and taking actions, so the sequence of play is quite simple and like most influence struggle games it’s about having the most pieces on the board you can muster in the right places. You need to control a certain amount of colonies to win and control of a colony is defined by how many political control markers you have in each colony.

The difficulty of this is that each colony has a varied number of spaces that can be controlled, some like Virginia have more than half a dozen, while others like Rhode Island have a single space that defines control of the colony. This means that while more is clearly better, where you put your influence is equally vital. There is a trade-off between controlling a colony with a lot of tokens, which can make it more difficult to take away from you, and colonies that have a small number of control points which are more volatile and more likely to trade hands during the game.

Adding to the mix of this go-like game of point-to-point area control are the armies of each side and the generals that lead them. These armies move about the board forcing their will onto territories and the only method to control their ability to project power by your opponent is with their own armies.

This is where the “war” element of the game comes to fruition and again it’s handled in a simple and elegant manner. The factors that go into the effectiveness of an army are easy to calculate, there is ways to surprise opponents with cards and the dynamic factor of the dice makes outcomes calculable but not reliable. More than that, losses are generally minimal, battles can be won and lost, but armies are not easily dispersed so winning a battle does not mean you sort of breakthrough and dominate an area, but rather just push your opponent back in what really is a war of attrition.

The armies and their commanders on the board have a considerable impact on this influence struggle game, making it definitively a war game.

There is also difficulty in moving armies and this is very asymmetrical and historical. The British have larger and more powerful armies, but they require a higher OPS card to move them, so you are likely going to move them less often. Meanwhile, the Americans have smaller, generally weaker armies that require lower ops cards to move, meaning you are likely able to move them more often. America’s military agility is further supported through two special rules, their ability to intercept and retreat, allowing them to intervene and avoid British attacks.

This game of cat and mouse creates a tense and very thinky mini game where each player is thinking less about outright crushing the opposing military, as this is highly unlikely to happen, and more about trying to position their military in the most optimal points on the map to exert power and control, adding to the influence struggle theme rather than overwhelming it.

Finally, there are a few other elements in the game that I like to refer to as “historical conditions” that create challenges for the players to overcome.

Winter attrition already mentioned, creates a real headache for the American player who is constantly having to contend with their armies dispersing between rounds. There is the struggle to get the French into the game which is pretty vital for the Americans as it brings into play the ability to blockade ports and a much-needed French command with French armies.

For the British the struggle and often the frustration is really dealing with the reality that with the right hand of cards you could really bring the fight to the American’s but the high maintenance commanders can only be moved with higher ops cards, typically 3 ops which means that you really have to plan way ahead and around their stubborn refusal to cooperate with your plans. You are simply never going to have the cards to do exactly what you want and your circumstances continually get worse as the war progresses. Ideally, you want to win this game as early as possible as the British because it gets tougher and tougher as time goes on.

The event cards are a mechanical layer here and while I would say the impact of these cards varies from “meh” to “holy shit”, generally their inclusion is more about infusing the game with theme than it is about strategy. They certainly can play a significant role in the plan of a particular round when drawn, but usually, you are trying to squeeze the events into your strategy rather than building a strategy around the cards if that makes sense. In fact, generally speaking, that is usually how all of the cards in the deck are used. You have a strategic plan and you are trying to use whatever you draw to make that happen, rarely if ever does your hand dictate your plan.

The event cards in the game have varied effects and their usefulness usually depends on the developing situation on the board, sometimes they can have a big game-changing impact, and sometimes they are worth more as a 1 ops action than actually using them.

What can I really say about the gameplay in Washington’s War other than that it’s absolutely fabulous? It’s just such a great tense game, with easy-to-understand mechanics, and lots of great history full of surprises, twists, and turns. It’s just a really fantastic gaming experience, nailed down to a 2-3 hour 2-player game that just works in every way. It’s game design brilliance.

I have no complaints about this game at all but know that my love for CDG-driven influence struggle games likely makes me a bit biased here. I love this genre of games and Washington’s War is one of the most approachable and satisfying takes on this genre out there. It certainly does not replace my love for Imperial Struggle, which I consider the current ranking champion in this genre, but this one is so much easier to teach and learn. I think it’s the best way to introduce new players to the genre.

Longevity and Replayability

Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
Tilt: christmas_starchristmas_star 

Pros: The game is very dynamic offering endless replayability, you aren’t ever going to play two games that resolve the same.

Cons: The simplicity of the design is a benefit for the purposes of introductions, however all but the most casual of gamers are going to graduate from this one rather quickly.

Washington’s War has a static start and that might give the impression that there is a limited number of plays built in that once you expire them you will have seen everything there is to see.

This is categorically false and I say that from having played this game at least a dozen times at this point. The dynamics of this game are a combination of decisions and strategies implemented, cards drawn and dice rolled. There is just no way two games will ever repeat or even appear similar to each other. Despite the static start, this game is a dynamic rollercoaster, whereas a player you will find yourself trying to unravel countless puzzles this game presents.

There is a lot of replayability here and there is no doubt in my mind that like many games in this genre including the famed Twilight Struggle, this is a game you can play over and over again and always make new discoveries.

Now in terms of longevity, for me personally, after a dozen plays while I’m always ready to go for it again, I find that anytime I have taught someone Washington’s War, my urge is to take the next step with them into more involved and complex CDG influence struggle games.

This game is light and as a veteran gamer, I enjoy complex games and it’s what I want to be playing. Washington’s War for me is a great way to introduce new players to the wonderful world of historical war games and in particular to the CDG influence struggle games, but it is not the final frontier and I want to graduate new players to more robust games. I feel the longevity of this game for most historical war game fans is going to be limited to using it as an introduction to historical war games, game. I would be surprised if two veteran historical war gamers would find the game enough of a challenge long-term.

There are many influence struggle CDG war games like Washington’s War, all of them benefit from the road paved by the evolution of the genre since We The People initially set the standard. It’s perhaps no surprise that as time has gone on, deeper and heavier variants have come out. Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul is a great next step after Washington’s War before moving on to even more robust games like Imperial Struggle.

That said, I do think more mainstream and casual gamers would find this game very satisfying long term. I hope that doesn’t come off as elitist and rude, but the term “complexity” means something completely different in the world of popular mainstream gaming and historical war gaming. As a historical war game, this one is feather-light, but I think compared to most modern-day board games, it would be generally considered a medium, perhaps even heavy weighted game on the complexity scale. The rulebook is 23 pages, practically a pamphlet for modern historical war games but quite heavy if this were say a Euro.

Conclusion

Among historical war gaming geeks like me and fans of Mark Herman’s work, Washington’s War is by many considered his masterpiece, his Mona Lisa. I would personally argue that this honor goes to Empire of the Sun, but certainly, Washington’s War is one of his stone-cold classics, there is no denying it.

Washington’s War is easy to learn and teach, it’s nuances offer a much deeper level of strategy than the mechanics suggest and it does a wonderful job of capturing the theme of the Revolutionary War without being a hard simulation. All of these things combined make Washington’s War an amazing gaming experience and an excellent addition to any fan of the CDG & Influence Struggle genre of games.

I would also make an argument for this game to get more mainstream attention, it certainly has all the hallmarks that have made other CDG’s like Twilight Struggle such smash hits and really I find it surprising that Washington’s War lives in general obscurity. I will say it again for posterity, this is not just a great historical war game, this is just a really great game period and you should not let the stigma of historical war games frighten you from trying it. Any fan of Twilight Struggle will find themselves quite at home in Washington’s War, in fact, I would argue this is a far better and much easier entry point into the genre than Twilight Struggle is.

If there is anything to complain about when it comes to Washington’s War, I’ve certainly missed it. It fires on all cylinders as far as I’m concerned, I give it my highest recommendation for pretty much anyone looking for a great, tense 2-player game, historical or otherwise.