Level Up A5E Hits Different

Level Up A5E hits different for me. The game is like a "community feedback" for the original 2014 5E rules, and incorporates the best-of-the-best ideas from D&D 3.5E and D&D 4E, along with tightening up the game's math to a degree that I have not seen either D&D 2024 (which got more OP) or even Tales of the Valiant (which mirrored 2014) ever do. The game explicitly supports the three pillars of play through its design: combat, social, and exploration. The entire SRD was rewritten from the ground up to create the world's only complete and freely available 5E SRD, with all options from the A5E core books available.

That last part is the real difference. The official D&D SRD and the Black Flag SRD were written to leave large chunks of the game out on purpose. You get one subclass per class, a handful of backgrounds, selected spells and monsters, and enough rules to build new content without being able to actually play the full game from the document. A5E did the opposite. Go to a5esrd.com, and you have every heritage, culture, destiny, class, combat maneuver, journey challenge, exploration procedure, and monster from the core books. You can sit down and run a complete campaign with nothing but the free SRD. No missing pieces, no "buy the book to get the rest of the options."

A5E did the work that 2014 needed but never received. Combat maneuvers give martial characters real decisions every round without turning them into spellcasters. Exertion is a resource that actually feels like effort instead of another pool of points that resets on a short rest. Expertise dice sit between advantage and a flat bonus so the game has texture instead of binary outcomes. Fatigue and strife tracks make exploration and social scenes have teeth. The journey system turns travel into something you play instead of something you skip.

It also makes the darkvision problem matter again. Both D&D and Tales of the Valiant still treat darkness as dim light for anyone with darkvision, so sight-based Perception is at disadvantage, and passive Perception takes a –5. ToV reduced how many lineages get the trait, but the rule itself never changed, and most tables still ignore it. A5E does not. Because it has a highly robust, dedicated exploration system, walking into a dungeon with a –5 Passive Perception penalty is incredibly dangerous. Under the Trials & Treasures rules, an unlit party relying purely on darkvision will consistently miss hidden traps, walk straight into environmental hazards, and fail to spot hidden monsters before an ambush. Light sources are not flavor. They are how you survive the Exploration pillar.

Heritage plus culture plus destiny is a cleaner way to build a character than race-plus-background ever was. You get the mechanical bits you need without the identity argument every time a new book drops. Classes have choices at every level instead of dead levels and "you get another use of the same thing." The marshal exists. The ranger is not a joke. Weapons have properties that matter. Supply is tracked without becoming a spreadsheet.

This is the version of 5E that still believes the world is bigger than the character sheet. You can drop the 10-minute exploration turn, wandering monster checks, mapping, and resource attrition on top of it, and it does not fight you. The math is tight enough that a tough fight stays tough. The exploration rules already assume you are going to spend time in the wilderness instead of teleporting past it. Social encounters have procedures instead of "roll persuasion until the DM gets tired."

2024 went the other direction and made everything a little more powerful and a little more same-y. Tales of the Valiant stayed close to 2014 and did not really fix the exploration or martial problems. A5E is the one that treated the three pillars as equal design space instead of afterthoughts.

If you want to run 5E like an old-school game, this book already did half the work for you. The rest is just putting the procedures back in: time, light, food, mapping, and making the players tell you what they are actually doing instead of what skill they are rolling. A5E will not fight you on any of that. It was built for it.

Revisiting Level Up A5E

I still really like Level Up: Advanced 5E. I originally bought the A5E Monstrous Menagerie by accident, thinking this was a normal 5E Bestiary, but then I found it was for another version of 5E, and I felt I wasted my money. Then, I got the other two books...

And happily, I was wrong.

The Monstrous Menagerie is not a clone of the Monster Manual with extra pages. It is the best monster book you can drop onto a 5E table right now. Every creature has something to do besides soak hit points and wait for its turn. They have motivations. They have signs and foreshadowing hints that they are already in the area before anyone ever rolls initiative. They have behavior lists, so you know what they actually do when the party is not looking.

Unlike D&D 2024, which generalizes everything and strips the lore right out of the monsters, A5E’s creatures have ecology, motivation, and personality. The dungeon is not a video-game instance. The orc is not a bag of numbers. You hear the drums. You see the tracks. You smell the campfire. Then you decide whether you want the fight.

That is old-school thinking. Once I had the Menagerie, I picked up the Adventurer’s Guide and Trials & Treasures. Same pattern. They did not “power up” the game. They stayed inside the original 5E math and then gave every pillar something to do.

Exploration is no longer a montage. There are journeys. There is terrain that matters. Exhaustion is not a joke. Gold actually has places to go besides magic shops. Martial characters get maneuvers instead of “I attack again.” Heritage and culture are split so a character is more than a race line on the sheet. Destiny gives you a reason to care about the story that is not just another subclass feature.

None of this breaks compatibility. You can run any 2014 adventure, any 2024 adventure, any third-party module. The numbers still work. The difference is that the referee now has procedures instead of vibes.

That is what I have been chasing on my blogs for years. The 10-minute turn. Mapping. Resource tracking that actually hurts. Player skill instead of “I roll Perception.” A5E already has most of those tools printed and playtested. You do not have to invent them in the margins of your 2014 books.

I still run Greater 5E. Characters from 2014, 2024, Tales of the Valiant, and A5E sit at the same table. But when I want the game to feel like 1980 instead of 2014, I reach for the Level Up books first. The Menagerie sits next to my other monster books and gets used more than any of them.

I thought I wasted money on a book for “another version.” I ended up with the version that actually remembers why we sat down at the table in the first place.

Apathy

I try to ignore the negativity surrounding the D&D 5.5E release, but I have fed into it myself with my own disappointment and apathy. My feelings? Some of the art in D&D 2024 is atrocious, and the removal of humanoids from the Monster Manual was a terrible decision. A game that should be timeless and for everybody started to pick and choose who gets to enjoy it.

The designers of the game should never speak with a voice that excludes others. Some of the releases mocking the old-school crowd rub me the wrong way, even as humor; they are in poor taste. The shame they heaped on the game's original designers also sent a message that we were no longer welcome in "their" hobby.

I can see why many old-school games walked away and picked up BX, never to look back.

They have had enough.

Me? I paid a few thousand dollars for these books. I am getting my use out of them. To heck with YouTube's feelings. I don't really care if others are burnt out. I paid for these; they are mine, and I will play them however I want to.

I get some people's feelings, and I know people like this who ignore the shortcomings and want to "just play." They will run with 5.5E, port in the parts of 5E they like, and keep their games going in a nebulous version that's a combination of just about everything.

It isn't 5-point-anything, it is just "Greater 5E" at this point. 2024, 2014, ToV, A5E? Whatever. Do you have a character sheet? What book did you create them with? I got that, not a problem, your character will work, just sit down and let's play.

While I am betting most store games say "D&D 2024," they are most likely "whatever you show up with" in spirit. I get this feeling "Greater 5E" is this huge tangled ball of string and yarn that just reflects everything in the 5E hobby. This is why this blog is sort of system-agnostic: as long as it is 5E-compatible, it is fine.

The downside of the 5E book-and-system mess is that it causes burnout. People want one game to play, one simple set of books, and one set of rules to follow so they can ignore a confusing mess of books and options. If you want that, D&D 2024, Tales of the Valiant, and Level Up A5E are your best choices. If you don't like Wizards of the Coast, stick with Tales of the Valiant. If you want a hyper-detailed 5E game, play Level Up A5E. If you are happy with 2014, stick with that.

And I know people who ignore the stupid parts of D&D 2024 and just "play by the rules." They are happy to have a cleaned-up, streamlined, three-book set to start fresh with, and they will tell me, "It is how you make your campaign that matters, not the silly art in the book."

I get it.

Look past the dumb parts and fix those yourself.

But we shouldn't have to do that. I shouldn't have to buy a supplemental Monster Manual to get the missing creatures. I shouldn't have to mentally block out some of the cringe art. I pay for a game that should speak to me, and not drive me away.

That is why I keep Level Up A5E and Tales of the Valiant on my shelves. If I feel that negativity building, I switch to these versions of the game and keep going.

It is Greater 5E these days, a mix of rules, systems, and books. It is 2014 if that is your jam. It is 2024 if that is what you have. It is any of the other great Open 5E systems if that is the direction you choose.

Basic and Expert D&D

This is what we want our 5E game to feel like. The 1980 version of the game. We want the strict turn order (B23), party roles (B19), mapping, caller, combat sequence (B24), and all the advice in the "Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art" section (B60) to apply. We want the wilderness turn order structure (X23) to apply outside the dungeons. We want hirelings, specialists, and mercenaries. We want castles, construction, and sieges. We want to explore hexes and clear them of monsters and lairs. We want to get lost in the wilderness and underground, and for the maps to matter again.

We want to capture the best parts of these books while staying in 5E.

"In the D&D rules, individuals play the role of characters in a fantasy world where magic is real and heroes venture out on dangerous quests in search of fame and fortune. Characters gain experience by overcoming perils and recovering treasures. As characters gain experience, they grow in power and ability."

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules, Moldvay edition, 1980, page B3

That statement still holds true in 5E. I feel the designers have forgotten about these simple words and this powerful statement, and everywhere the modern version of the game goes wrong can be traced back to forgetting what these words meant.

Many players get tired of 5E and just return to these games. I don't blame them. After "falling out of reality," the rules of 5E begin to fight with logic and common sense, and all of a sudden, the "fake game world" begins to seem more like a video-game reality than something grounded in the real world. The rules of the game matter more than logic, and they become a "fake logic" under which the world operates.

You get tired of that, and it wears on your psyche.

It is like an MMO that feels like a wondrous, fresh, unbounded world when you first enter it, and six months later, knowing how the world really works makes it feel like a tiny, small, constricting space where you have no freedom and must obey the fake systems and rules to progress a fraction of a percent today.

I want an old-school feeling and game, but I want to stay in 5E. Why do we have to give up one for the other? Part of this is the jaded masses, the optimizers who tell us there is one true build to maximize damage, and that the world does not exist, only the rules. This is why the rules were simple back in the day: there wasn't much to your character sheet, and you could not escape the world through the rules. You were a fighter with 41 hit points and a THAC0 score, six ability scores, and that was it.

Figure out the rest from the referee's descriptions, and you can't interact with the world by saying you make a skill roll. And there weren't any skills, so you can't lean on them to do everything for you either.

D&D 5E has gotten lazy and tired in its old age. It makes the original game look fresh and new by forcing people to interact with the environment without a character sheet.

But we have to stop.

We need to ask ourselves, "What do we want?"

Especially in terms of the mythical old-school game. Is what we want a dungeon turn structure, resource expenditure, time tracking, light sources, interactive environment (sand skill rolls), and regular wandering monster check? Do we want the same thing for wilderness exploration turns? Do we want the players to draw the maps? If so, I can just set those as house rules and have it all in 5E.

A 1-in-6 wandering monster check every 20 minutes? A short rest is one hour? Fine, that comes out to a 42% chance of your short rest being ruined by wandering monsters every time you pull that in a dungeon. And you burn another hour of light, mark the torches off. Medical supplies, if anyone is healing. Rations if you have halflings. You don't have the supplies, so there's no healing and eating, and the halfling is gaining a fatigue level.

I can be hard on the resource and time tracking, no problem. I don't need BX for that.

The 5E players who think this is Diablo will complain that I am "dragging things out," but let them complain. They will moan about "needing to track stupid supplies and weight" and "being forced to go shopping," but those are very old-school things we used to enjoy. Do you have iron spikes and a hammer? Well, no jamming the door shut. Those things have uses, and you are not taking a short rest while being chased. Equipment in the old days used to have superpowers, but that was forgotten in newer games in favor of a character-centric approach.

The appeal of BX is its reduced focus on the character sheet as the solution to every problem. You can't cover your eyes and "skill check" your way through the world. You can't regain powers with a magical short rest and be all ready to fight at full strength. Magic can't solve every problem. The action economy won't save you.

I can fix that in 5E, too.

Skill checks are dependent on interaction with the world and roleplay. If I ever hear "I search the room," you are automatically rolling on a disadvantage, or I will make you automatically fail and stumble into a trap. Searching how? For what? Where? Looking for what? Are you being careful? You don't tell me what you are doing; you will likely fail. Same thing with "I roll persuasion." That stupid look on your face while you stand there silent isn't going to convince anybody of anything.

Give me a great plan or a masterful speech, then you may roll with advantage, and you may never need to roll in the first place. I will just give it to you.

Skill rolls require player effort.

That's the deal.

Yeah, there is a way to do all this in 5E without switching to BX. The interactivity can be the same or better in 5E. So we have a turn structure and interactivity? We can have mapping, too? This is 80% of the way there, with the final 20% being lethality.

And lethality is highly dependent on which rule system you pick, or what houserules you choose. Lethality is an easier problem to solve. So, we are about 80% of the way there, just in changing a few things about how we play, and slowing things down a little with structure.

The 10-Minute Exploration Turn

What a messy topic. I could deep-dive into this, but once you dig deeper, you realize that time and movement have always been D&D's fatal flaw. Early versions of the game had you moving 120 feet every 10 minutes while mapping and exploring, and when you figure out the actual rate of speed, you have people literally moving in slow-motion through a dungeon.

At 0.136 miles per hour, the three-toed sloth is faster than you at 0.17 miles per hour. But this is careful exploration and mapping, so you will explore at a sloth's pace. Of course, the 10-minute exploration turn was always an artificial game construct, and we never questioned it - it just worked.

This was "game time" and "game movement," and it aggregated a lot of activities into one clean turn of time, and a 10-minute window. This isn't GURPS with its one-second turns. Simulation games were a natural reaction to this aggregation back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the original Top Secret game in 1980 also had one-second combat turns.

And I know, if you are exploring that slowly and that carefully, how does anyone fall into a pit trap?  Every 12 feet you move, you take a minute checking the walls, ceiling, floor, and poking everything with a 10' pole. You poke the single foot of distance ahead of you for five seconds, then the next foot takes another five seconds, and so on, all the way down to 120 feet of hallway.

Then again, in real life, some things you would not expect to take an hour end up taking longer. When your life is on the line in a dungeon, I can see why many things all of a sudden take a lot longer to do.

AD&D had special multipliers for different types of movement. The game still used the 120' per 10 minutes for mapping and exploration, multiplied that speed by five for movement through known areas or using a map, and by ten if you were fleeing. Often, they kept the same movement on the map; they just reduced the time it took to move it, using fractions of a turn.

AD&D 2E tried reducing exploration rounds to a minute as cracks in the wall started to appear, and simulation games like GURPS and Champions started using real-world movement rates. The 10-minute turn was retained, but only for things like spell and torch durations.

D&D 3.0 and Wizards of the Coast removed the 10-minute exploration turn entirely. They used a system of "local movement" for 1 minute and "overland movement" per hour. "Tactical movement" was the combat per 6-second round.

D&D 5E is more of a freeform time tracking, whereas D&D 5.5E feels a little more structured and formalized. Dungeon movement is 200' per minute for slow, 300' for normal, and 400' for fast. All times are "as needed," so if searching a room takes 10 minutes, then it does. Movement is typically tracked per minute. Pulling in ToV and A5E: ToV tends to be like 2014 D&D, while A5E uses a journey system, but the movement rates are the same as in 5E.

Of all the 5E versions, D&D 5.5E has the cleanest exploration rules, with a dedicated section on the topic and suggestions for 1-minute and 10-minute blocks, depending on what is needed. D&D 2014 and ToV feel the softest on exploration structure, while A5E takes it on a more macro-scale and defines a journey for longer treks, while still keeping that softness at the lower scale.

All this to get to the point. What if you wanted to roll random wandering monster encounters every 2 BX-style dungeon exploration turns? In D&D 2024, this feels the easiest. Stick to one and ten-minute time blocks for movement and searching, keep an organized time record, and every 20 minutes roll for wandering monsters. The fact that D&D 5.5E has a dedicated section for exploration in the DMG helps a lot, and it allows me to easily slot this procedure in, along with a time tracker.

This can be easily extended to D&D 2014, ToV, and A5E. What makes D&D 2024 the winner among all other versions of 5E is that the game recognizes that structure is needed for running exploration and explicitly lays out a section to cover it. The earlier editions feel too soft on dungeon exploration (outside of A5E's structured journeys and the excellent rules for those), and that low-level, turn-by-turn, time-tracking, and torch-burning game just feels absent.

D&D 5.5E also adds more detail and structure to equipment, formalizing the in-game use of each item. This is likely the designers' experience with Pathfinder 2E coming up, with items needing discrete game uses and rules inside of them, rather than being more "loosey gooesy who cares" things you write on your character sheet to be used if the DM asks if you have something. D&D 5.5E also wins in terms of equipment rules, with a stronger set of rules to back them up.

Shadowdark, providing an excellent, tension-filled turn-based experience, likely influenced D&D 5.5E in tightening up the dungeon exploration rules and laying out the methods for those out in a section of the DMG. Competition here improved the game; the other 5E-based games were happy to stick with the very loose exploration system that felt more like narrative gaming.

What a messy, complicated subject!

So, in short, keep a tight time tracker for dungeon exploration, and track time in blocks rounded to the minute. If you rule, it takes 5 minutes to spike a door; mark 5 off the time tracker. One minute is the shortest measure of time tracked in the books outside of combat. Longer actions are best measured in 10-minute blocks.

Every 20 minutes, roll an old-school wandering monster check.

Every hour, another torch burns out.

Lanterns burn for 6 hours on one flask of oil.

It is easy to add detailed time-tracking to your game, along with old-school wandering monster encounters. What do you get for the effort? A ticking clock, forcing players to manage resources, spend time wisely, and it makes the environment come alive as wandering monsters creep about and hunt the characters in that maze of tight, twisting passages.

Alignment

 

Of all the modern 5E versions, in terms of alignment support? D&D 2014 and 2024 clearly win the alignment battle. Both systems preserve the classic AD&D-style 9-axis alignment system, so popularized in memes since the Internet was born. D&D 2024 reduces the mechanical aspects of alignment by removing it from monsters and by making spells such as "detect evil" detect only certain creature types. Also, where D&D 2014 has typical alignments for monsters, D&D 2024 does not.

So in a way, D&D 2014 is the strongest in terms of alignment and rules. I can see why the interactions with alignment rules were removed in 2024; they are an extra layer of rules used infrequently in special situations, and it is easier to leave them out, remove the special cases, simplify the game, and reduce the layered complexity of the system as a whole.

D&D 2024 is a more streamlined version of the concept, with alignment shifting toward a role-playing and personality-framing tool. It has very little to do with mechanical rules, and the game seems to be putting up a wall between roleplaying traits and traits that affect the rules. But they still kept the system and did not remove it entirely, unlike every other Open 5E clone.

Tales of the Valiant got rid of alignment entirely. Level Up Advanced 5E moved the entire system to "alignment traits," and it is removed from character creation. So, D&D 5.5E deserves praise for keeping alignment alive rather than throwing it all out. If we can point to bad choices, we have to point to the laudable ones.

The only game with the traditional alignment as we knew it in the old-school is still D&D. This is laid out best in the AD&D DMG:

BX only used three alignments: Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. So, what does this do for us in an old-school game? Let's go back to the source material, again:

"Alignment describes the broad ethos of thinking, reasoning creatures — those unintelligent sorts being placed within the neutral area because they are totally uncaring. Note that alignment does not necessarily dictate religious persuasion, although many religious beliefs will dictate alignment.

The overall behavior of the character (or creature) is delineated by alignment, or, in the case of player characters, behavior determines actual alignment.

Thus, alignment describes the world view of creatures and helps to define what their actions, reactions, and purposes will be. It likewise causes a player character to choose an ethos which is appropriate to his or her profession, and alignment also aids players in the definition and role approach of their respective game personae."

-AD&D 1E, Dungeon Masters Guide, p23

From the master himself, Gary Gygax, on why alignment is important. Now, while AD&D 1E did have mechanical alignment rules (detection spells, etc.), the description of alignment feels more in line with the streamlining of D&D 5.5E. It is kept in the game because it is such a strong roleplaying tool, and given how complicated the rest of 5E is, something has gotta give, so alignment was shifted away from the mechanics and moved back to a pure roleplaying guide.

Alignment defines the reactions, actions, and purposes of intelligent beings.

That's it. Gygax hit the nail on the head there. If you need a guide on how to roleplay a creature, alignment shall be your guide. Do you roll a friendly reaction from a group of chaotic evil bugbears? That could happen. Just because they are friendly doesn't mean they are all just as noble and caring as you. Due to their evil nature, they may stab you in the back when they see a chance. Alignment tempers reaction rolls and acts as a buffer so that every friendly creature towards your party doesn't become a paladin who hangs out with you constantly as best friends. You still shouldn't trust those bugbears, even though they are acting all nice right now.

This is a huge failure for both ToV and A5E. We can always port it in, but we should not have to. This is a clear failure of the game design communities listening too much to social media, feeling that "alignment is outdated," overreacting, and removing it entirely, with nothing to take its place. Saying "the game should not make moral judgments" is weak, and really, it is removing a critical tool that the DM will use to do the same thing.

Games that want to focus on selling you prewritten stories will slowly remove the tools that you can use to make your own. Of course, alignment isn't necessary if you get everything from the adventure module. All the motivations are there! You don't need these "extra words telling you something twice."

Alignment is such a necessary rule; I find myself subconsciously importing it into ToV and A5E, since those games are harder to roleplay without this universal and useful tool. Not having alignment makes the game harder to play and also harder to DM. This group of orcs? They are lawful evil, and they will generally stick to a deal they made, even though they are still rotten to the core. They make deals, expect them to be honored, and have just enough belief in order and structure to stick to their word, too.

D&D does alignment the best, it always has, and I hope it will continue.

If you are running a story-based game, alignment fades in importance since the prewritten story tells you all you need to know.

If you are running a sandbox game? Alignment becomes one of the most important factors in reactions and trustworthiness, and gives you a broad brush to begin painting with before you settle on the fine details. Alignment is critical for sandbox games.

Level Up Advanced 5E

Level Up Advanced 5E rewrote the SRD before the OGL debacle even was a thing. They rebuilt the game for community feedback, creating an adventure-compatible version of 5E that feels solid and supports the three pillars of play (combat, social, and exploration). Everything has been rethought through and redesigned from the ground up.

So this game was OGL-exempt because they rewrote everything as their own IP, then they licensed it out under three licenses (OGL, ORC, and CC-BY). That took an amazing amount of foresight, and it set them up well when everyone else was scrambling to remove the OGL from their games.

This game is sort of like Nimble 5e, a re-interpretation of 5E that does its own thing, but remains math-compatible for adventure support. Subclass compatibility is not recommended here, which is why ToV is the stronger choice for that type of 3rd party material.

What I like about Level Up A5E is that, since they rebuilt the game with extensive community feedback, it has many fixes inspired by old-school play, such as exploration being a core system, death mattering, and the removal of many of the 2014 annoyances and exploits. Of the three games we have considered, A5E has the most old-school DNA built into the system.

Martial classes are the best here, with combat maneuvers costing a stamina resource, and martial classes collecting and mastering new abilities as they level. This keeps them apart from caster-classes design-wise, but gives them cool powers they can use for resource management.

Rangers are similarly redesigned and can learn survival skills and become specialized in different survival techniques. This adds to the record-keeping and complexity of the game, but if you are deep into modding 2014 5E, you will find a lot to love here. You need rangers for wilderness adventures, and they do so many cool things.

The wilderness exploration game here is the best out of any version of 5E ever written, and actually beats the BX wilderness game in many areas. If you love survival-based games combined with 5E, you will find an excellent home here. The combat is also highly rated, with many options open to martial characters, making a strong core of non-caster class abilities and depth.

The backgrounds have the special game built into them, and also provide an amazing amount of interplay with the world, with those backgrounds able to "level up" and provide new bonuses and perks. Are you a soldier? Someday, you may earn the right to be able to call up a small force of soldiers yourself, be called upon for emergencies, and be given special missions by those you know.

Of all the 5E games, Level Up A5E has the best old-school feeling, since a lot of the feedback was from old-school players who wanted more of that in the game. Yes, this is still 5E, but it feels more like a heavily modded, deadly, and advanced version of the rules than anything else out there. If D&D 2024 is "BX 5E" then Level Up A5E is more like "AD&D 5E."

The six-level fatigue system was split into mental and physical tracks, which reduces its impact on combat effectiveness and makes it more usable and thematic. This is a step up from 2014 D&D and ToV, and on par with D&D 2024's ten-level straight modifier system. I can see how D&D 2024's ten-level system, past a -4 modifier, is equal to 2014's "one level and we are hosed" system.

Compared with D&D 2024? Level Up feels equal. While D&D 2024 is focused on streamlining and speed of play, Level Up A5E is more focused on creating depth in every subsystem, complicating the game while adding structural value through those additions and expansions. They go in opposite directions, with D&D 2024 being simpler and A5E being far more in-depth.

Every monster except orcs is in the Monsterous Menagerie. Orcs are now a core race, so they are excluded and use character classes as their "monster types," just like elves or dwarves. It is an alright change, one that fits the game's lore, but I still miss the Orc entry.

It is not like I don't have them in D&D 2014, and those port right in.

Here, Orcs are more their "World of Warcraft" style inspirations (early WoW, not today's jokey Orcs), so they get a bit more recognition and respect, and possibly their own kingdoms and holdings of lands with tribal infighting and politics. I actually do not mind that and see it as a strong point for the game, if you are going to pull Orcs out of the Monster Manual, make them equals in the strength of lore and the worlds. This is something Faerun and Greyhawk still ignore for the most part, and these races should be stronger in lore and the world's history, with their own lands, subfactions, conflicts, and history.

And no, these are not the silly Tex-Mex Orcs out of D&D 2024. What were they thinking?

While Level Up is still 5E, this game feels more old-school in spirit, and there isn't much I would want to change to make it feel that way. Death matters here, and even dropping to zero hit points has a cost. A lot of the rules incorporated are early D&D 2014 houserules, when old-school players still loved 5E, and that culture of play was trying to find a home in 5E before the Critical Role crowd took over, and the old-school players left for BX and 1E.

I can play Level Up with an old-school tone and feeling, not change any of the rules, and it automatically feels that way and works mechanically. Yet, the game is still 5E at heart, beating with the OG 2014 blood.

It is a unique, niche, and recommended game if you love the early days of 5E, before the drama and YouTube crowd, and when old-school play in 5E was still possible. Of all the games we talked about, Level Up Advanced 5E is the best old-school experience in 5E.

Level Up A5E is a niche game, but well worth your time.

The second best would be a tie between D&D 2024 and Tales of the Valiant. Both offer high ease of use and play improvements, and D&D 2024 reintroduces a wilderness exploration game. ToV does many things well and has a solid library of class designs that are on par with D&D's 2024 classes. ToV's support is better in many ways than D&D 2024's, and it is not tied to a live-service model. ToV will need a few extra books to support wilderness exploration, but the parts it needs are still here.

And D&D 2014 would take last place with its six corebooks and lack of a wilderness exploration game. While some of the patches make this a better game, the amount of books and patching needed drag this down.