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.

Structured Play Pitfalls

If you are the average D&D player, you have been trained by structured play in two truths:

• D&D is there to tell your story
• D&D must have structured and balanced encounters

These assumptions will get your character, and quite likely the entire party, killed in old-school play.

The wandering monster table does not care about throwing multiple very hard encounters at you, the longer you stay in that hole in the ground. You could roll badly for wandering monsters three times in a row, get overwhelmed, and the entire party is killed in a span of an hour.

The "environmental simulation system" of old-school play and BX does not care one bit about "your story" or "encounter balance." The world is rigged against you. You are always meant to die. The thrill is figuring out how not to.

Wizards of the Coast loves the facade of balanced encounters and story adventures, since these make for better new-player experiences. Players should feel thrilled that they went through a dungeon, completed the story of the adventure, advanced their personal stories, saved the day, and, in the end, "everybody wins." You look at the structure of any modern adventure, and it is 90% this.

Kobold Press and EN World work by this 5E assumption, too; you will find balanced encounters and a focus on narrative play in those systems as well. You cannot escape this, and you assume it is the norm.

Old-school play?

To heck with that, you are being dropped straight in the middle of a world simulator, and there are chances based on the time spent and the location you are in to encounter monsters. While the map may be keyed with monster listings, the world isn't, and you must get in, get out, manage scarce resources, find safe places, and survive long enough to head back to civilization and find a moment to rest.

All the while, wandering dungeon monsters and wilderness encounters are being rolled for. If the number on the table results in a TPK encounter, so be it. You decided to take this risk, go a little further out this time, explore one more room, and you paid the price.

This is not about a preset story, yours or the adventure's. If you are lucky enough to live that long, maybe you can tell another part of yours. A story is something that comes out of your efforts to explore the world and survive the chaos, and personal stories are something on top of that.

If you were ever into game modding, this is like taking Skyrim and adding all these "random world encounters" and "kingdom battle" mods into the game that introduces random groups on NPCs and monsters onto the map, and you can stumble into the middle of a fight where wolves are fighting with a caravan of traders, and you can choose to jump in, ignore them, or just watch and loot the bodies after the survivors move on. While you watch, a group of Nords or bandits could show up, and the fight could get huge and chaotic. Magic could be flying as you dodge random firebolts. The chaos could attract a dragon by the end of the fight.

Does this system care about CR and balance?

No. Not one bit. The world "is what it is."

BX and old-school play are the same way.

Thinking "this is the game about my story" and "the adventure should be balanced so we can complete its story" is something out of the artificial world of structured play. Encounters are not balanced here. You need to sneak past fights, play dirty, save resources, be clever, and learn when to turn tail and run. You need a retreat plan for when it falls apart, and an idea on who carries fallen friends who can't make it themselves. Your plan can't rely on one spell or person. You need to play smart and understand the world does not care about you or your story.

But the world can show kindness. You could roll a friendly reaction roll from a group of kobolds who take pity on you as you just ran out of a room after a bugbear killed your cleric and thief, and you are out of hit dice to rest and wondering what you are going to do. If you can speak their language and part with a little treasure, they may help you get your fallen comrades back, since they hate the bugbears, too, and they would be happy to fight a skirmishing retreat for you as long as you promise to kill the warren of bugbears when you return.

This is a dynamic encounter that the DM turns into a story on the spot; it's not "pre-written" into the adventure but happens organically through the dice, tables, world, and luck. These types of stories are better than pre-written character stories, the stories written into adventures, and anything an adventure writer could think up.

When you get back to town, the temple says they can't raise your friends, but they can summon a high-level vicar from the city who could, for a generous donation, and perhaps, a problem they may need help with...

After all that, and with your friends returned to the living (or not, with new characters created), you set out again, thinking about those bugbears. The survivors of that fight remember, and a plan is made to deal with this problem once and for all. And you can be sure those kobolds will be close by, watching or perhaps helping again.

None of this is your prewritten character story or the adventure's narrative. All of this happens organically through the world simulation engine. And you can have this in 5E, any version of it that you play, for free if you adopt an old-school method of play, and that "world simulation engine" mentality to DM-ing. Again, you do not need BX to do this. While BX will make the failure conditions harsher and more dire, 5E can play an old-school game just fine and be just as lethal and dangerous.

The belief that BX is some magical panacea to solve all your problems with D&D is not entirely accurate. You may try it and love it. You may try it, hop games again, and end up missing 5E. What BX can teach us is that matters, and that can be used in any of our games, is the lost art of how to play an old-school game. What we do is recreate the old-school playstyle and keep that independent from the rules.

That "sandbox engine" we used to have before AD&D 2nd Edition was replaced by narrative railroading and the video-game-like progression of D&D 3.0. Narrative games are easier to DM and sell adventures for; they will have a bigger audience, so there is a financial incentive to ship them. It is easy to sell a game with a predictable, reproducible, pregenerated experience that plays like a theme-park ride every time, for every group. It is insanely hard to ship a game that delivers compelling, easy-to-manage, sandbox play.

But once you learn, a new style of play and types of interactive worlds are open to you. Your creativity goes from slightly tweaking published adventures to building living worlds.

You can play an old-school game in your game of choice.

You do not need to change the game.

You just need to change the way you think about it.

Morale

Morale is a solid rule. This kept most OSR combats from becoming the modern "to the death" affair we saw starting in D&D 3 to 4, and it continued into 5E (where morale was an optional rule in the DMG). People play 5E like Diablo, where every monster in a room must be killed, and that is not old-school play. The OSR games were not like that, and if characters beat a side down hard and fast, they would flee, fight a retreat, or surrender.

This is when alignment came into play. Lawful characters would not kill those who surrendered.

Morale in BX was rated on a 2-12 scale, with 2 meaning the creature will not fight, and 12 being the creature will fight to the death (and never check morale). This was checked on a 2d6 roll; if the roll exceeded the morale number, they failed. The number could be adjusted by a few points up or down, depending on the situation.

"In general, morale is checked in critical combat situations. Two recommended times for morale checks are:

1. After a side's first death in combat (either monsters or characters).
2. When half the monsters have been incapacitated (killed, asleep due to magic, and so forth).

Monsters that successfully check morale twice will fight to the death."

-Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules, Moldvay edition, 1980, page B27

In 5E, we do have morale rules, as follows:

• D&D 2024: Fight of Flight, DC 10 Wisdown saving throw
• D&D 2014: Morale, DC 10 Wisdown saving throw
• ToV: Morale, DC 10 Wisdom Save (TOV GMG, p75)
• LU A5E: No morale system, relies on the bloodied condition and mental stress.

This is the first time Level Up A5E fails at a category, interesting. It is not all that hard to standardize on the DC 10 Wisdom save for all games, since they are pretty much the same. Morale in any 5E version will work just like BX when it is checked, and what happens on failure.

This will most likely make fights easier, since if the players can take out a substantial number of creatures, they may break, organize a fighting retreat, or surrender. This is usually balanced by wandering monsters, so don't worry about challenge; let the dice fall where they may.

Morale introduces complications and moral quandaries into the adventure. What do you do with prisoners? Do you let them go, with them possibly running off to tell others? Do you use your only rope to tie them up? Is it even ethical to leave goblins tied up in a dungeon full of monsters that can eat them? Do you lock them in a room and spike the door shut, using a spike and time, and making noise that could attract wandering monsters? Do you cast a sleep spell on them all and hope for the best?

This is why we had alignment.

The lawful paladin would never allow a chaotic thief to kill helpless prisoners (or sleeping creatures), so the system built in a simulation of morality, mixing roleplaying with tactical decisions that could affect survival.

It is easy to treat monsters as video game enemies; you simply kill them all, and they "poof." When monsters act with self-preservation in mind, it introduces a double layer of decisions into the game. Is how you are going about "clearing this dungeon" ethical and moral? And how do you handle the inevitable surrenders when you lack the resources, time, or people to address them?

BX did a lot for us, even though by today's standard, it was a simple game. The depth of ethical and moral choices it forced upon us during a session surprised us all, and brought out the best and worst in people we thought we knew. You don't get the raw, visceral reactions when playing online of seeing people's faces and body language as they make these choices. You do when you are in person.

Nothing is stopping us from implementing these morale rules in our 5E games; most games already have them, though they're mostly forgotten. Well, in our old-school 5E game, we adopt the classic BX systems and let them work their magic.