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.

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.

A Blog for Everyone

Why did I start a 5E blog?

This came to me after realizing that many OSR YouTubers were treating BX as a "solve every problem" game, leading people to believe that a rule system was the answer to why they had fallen out of love with roleplaying. This is the classic "game hopping" cycle that even I go through constantly, and if you are a reader of my main blog, you know how the winds change in my mind.

But something told me "BX is not the answer," but people were getting this wrong, at least a part of it. I had to ask myself, "Can I have BX-style play in ANY game I play?"

And the answer is yes, I can.

I just need to go back to BX, pick out the classic methods and procedures of play from that game, identify them, and show people how to use them in any game. Any game can play "like" BX. Is it as lethal and deadly if I use 5E? No and yes, it depends on how we play the game. There are TPKs in 5E, but in general, it is less lethal than a BX game, which has a higher default tension level.

But lethality aside, my 5E game can be played using a BX turn structure and feels just like an old-school game.

And I went out and got D&D 2024, even though I feel I don't need it, and wasn't positive about the changes they made. I am supporting the game for this blog so I can speak to those players. The fact that most of the in-store play in this area is D&D 2024 means in-person play is very strong, and it may be a VTT thing where the D&D 2024 softness is seen as the lock-in of D&D 2014 content on VTTs, which means many are hesitant to break what they built online in their digital libraries.

And yes, I will try to play D&D 2024. If I want in on those local games at the hobby store, to finally become real again and play with real people, I will learn the new game. I am not so much of an ideologue that I will refuse to try new things, and I can gloss over parts of the game I dislike or disagree with (such as the missing humanoids from the Monster Manual and some of the art).

And I play Tales of the Valiant, so that gets supported here, too. All versions of 5E, even 2014, are supported here. This is a big-tent site, and all versions of 5E are loved and supported, as long as the character-building we love is there, and they can be modded to support an old-school style of play.

And since this is still 5E, moving between versions of the game is super easy. The differences are minor, and when you look at the entirety of 5E, they are so compatible that they are all house-ruled versions of each other, with D&D 2014 as the source document. Even if you are mixing rules in your head between versions, it won't really matter too much, and your game will be fine.

Even the excellent Level Up Advanced 5E, a niche version of 2014 that just amazes me with how well designed the game is, and it goes in a new direction, supporting all pillars of play. That is supported here, too. This has so many old-school nods, and D&D 2024's support for the exploration pillar of play was likely influenced by this game. Those wilderness adventure rules did not come out of nowhere, and the lack of decent wilderness exploration rules in 2014 is a sore spot, leading people to think D&D was solely a tactical, dramatic combat game.

Level Up A5E is excellent, and I am still a fan.

And, yes, we also support the classic D&D 2014 game. I have friends who are so broke they can't afford new books, so why should we exclude them? If this is what you have and love, why are we excluding you? Welcome, 2014 players, and your six core books with all those rules patches. I love this version, too, classic, unbalanced, broken, double-casting, broken combos, but very OG cool.

Plenty of people still play patched and fixed versions of D&D 2014, and they are just as viable and playable as any alternatives.

What unites us is old-school play. We don't want to change games, like all the YouTubers are begging us to play BX and other games, because it would fix every problem we have with roleplaying, and we still want to be able to walk into a hobby store and play with others. While I love a great, tension-filled, harsh game of BX, the 5E players do not have to be excluded from that experience because they don't change their game.

We can adopt BX's core principles and apply them in 5E. Will our game be as deadly and tension-filled? Will we be playing by BX rules to the letter? No. I don't expect that out of this. But we will have an experience that is much closer to the heart of the game, instead of the narrative story game that modern D&D has wandered off into the narrative story gaming of YouTube live-play, and we love the classic, tension-filled, resource-tracking, players-make-the-map, absolute blast of classic D&D.

We can get pretty close to classic D&D by combining BX procedures with 5E rules. The rest we can houserule, and we don't lose the games we love, nor do we have to change systems.

The dungeon turn? Players making the map? The wilderness turn? Monster reactions? Morale? Interactive play that does not rely on skill rolls? Light and torch-tracking? Wandering monsters? Time tracking? Clearing hexes and building domains?

None of those are magically dependent on the BX rules.

I can port all those structures and procedures directly into 5E and end up with an old-school 5E game that feels much more authentic than a FATE-like narrative story game that uses the 5E rules. Those procedures and methods are universal truths that we should not forget, nor write out of the game.

We can still play 5E and have an authentic, old-school experience.

Will it be exactly the same? No.

The real game here is in the methods, structures, and procedures. This is our Rosetta Stone, our source of truth for roleplaying. The way we play is much more important than what we play. If we can preserve the old-school style in our play structure, any game we play will be more fun for us.

Yes, BX is amazing and fun. The OSR YouTubers are often right; that simple, deadly game is a classic.

But the way BX was played can enrich and enhance any game we play.

And to the BX YouTubers, you need to go beyond procedure and structure, and explain why the BX rules and math are better than 5E. The procedure and structure can be easily ported to 5E. I know what I love about BX, but consider this a challenge to go beyond the obvious and get deeper into the why.

It is easy to be negative.

It is much harder to be positive and constructive.

If I can help you find a fun way to play 5E, take this old-school style into a gaming store, and show a table of players there "the way" while still playing the store-preferred D&D 2024 game, then my work here has value and is worth the effort. If I can make the game more fun for you and keep you from burning out, then that is one less person who leaves the hobby. If it helps you see 5E in a new light, not as a game where "skills solve everything" and "wilderness is just a cut scene," then I will have helped open the door to you for new adventures.

You will still be playing D&D 2024. But you will be playing it exactly how we used to play the original. You get the best of both worlds. Your table may see the game in a new light. You will bring the magic back to the table and not shortcut or shorthand the procedures of play for expediency. There is a magic in these old, dusty tomes of BX D&D. Let me help you find it.

The way we played is an absolute truth.

What we play can change.

Wandering Monsters

While the turn structure says wandering monsters are checked for at the beginning of the turn, this page (B53) says they are checked for at the end of the turn. In any case, this feels like they are checked between turns, and they apply to the following turn if encountered.

Besides the monsters which live in rooms, characters may encounter monsters which wander about the dungeon. These monsters are known as "Wandering Monsters". At the end of every 2 turns, the DM should check for Wandering Monsters. To do so, roll Id6: a result of 1 indicates that the party will encounter a Wandering Monster in the next turn. The Wandering Monster will be 20-120 feet away from the party when encountered (roll 2d6, multiply the result by 10) in a direction of the DM's choosing, and will be headed toward the player characters.

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules, Moldvay edition, 1980, page B53

So, every two turns, we roll 1d6 to check for wandering monsters. We can do this in 5E, but a part of the problem is that not all adventures, especially the story-based ones, have wandering monster tables. This is going to be a problem in D&D 2024, where Wizards moved away from wandering monster tables and instead list monsters by CR in the Monster Manual.

I just realized that some of these games, most notably D&D 2024, lack a 10-minute exploration turn. I will get to this in a later article, since this will be a problem.

You will need a 2014 DMG or the 2014 Xanathar book; ToV and A5E also have these tables, with A5E having the best implementation. If you are in 2024 and don't have a table, use the Monsters by CR lists in the 2024 DMG, and pick one that makes sense, or use those lists to make your own table, if you have time.

This is the first real stumble for D&D 2024 when it comes to old-school play, but it isn't a huge one if the adventure has the tables, or you have access to another book. Most adventures have them, and those may work for you as well, or you can use an online tool.

The dungeon may have certain areas where Wandering Monsters are encountered more often (such as on a roll of 1 or 2). The dungeon may have areas where the DM checks for Wandering Monsters every turn, or where a monster will appear when a corridor is entered. Wandering Monsters should appear more often if the party is making a lot of noise or light, but should not be frequent if the party spends a long time in one out-of-the-way place (if they stop in a room for the night, for example).

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules, Moldvay edition, 1980, page B53

Okay, hold up! This is something that I do not see on the YouTube channels that push BX. The original rules mention that wandering monsters can be rolled for:

• Every turn
• At a higher chance (1 to 2 on a d6)
• Automatically, when entering a certain area
• At higher chances or frequency, depending on party activity

So, that bard playing music, the fireball exploding, or the dwarf running in full plate mail? Yep, you are going to up your chance of wandering monsters. There may be a "central hallway" where the chance is 1-3 on a d6 every two turns, or every turn. There may be a giant ant burrow where ants will always appear when characters come close (unless you toss a fireball in there). There may be a kobold warren where it is checked every turn.

There may be places where it is checked less frequently, such as once every three turns, once an hour, or longer. This is what a DM did in an old-school game. We called things as we saw them, and tweaked our sandbox to surprise the players and the DM.

And yes, resting in the dungeon was even mentioned back in 1980, which is more appropriate for a remote cave where nothing creeps by than it is a closet in an occupied Orc fortress. Still, if you attempt this, you'd better have a plan for who is on lookout and when, and make sure it is laid out with the DM before you even try. I may still check every two hours, just to see if something comes up for you.

And remember to choose a reaction or roll it randomly! Maybe that giant spider in the cave crawls in silently and snuggles up next to you while you are sleeping for body warmth. I will require a saving throw when you wake up, so as not to scream at Fluffy.

Note: Lots of wandering monsters will affect adventure balance! This is old-school sandbox play, and it is the ticking clock that punishes those who waste time in the dungeon. Every two turns, you roll. If a monster shows up, you choose or roll a reaction. This will, by default, make things harder. You may not survive, so you'd better have a plan to get in and get out, especially when you are slowed down carrying treasure back to the dungeon entrance.

And all of this can be done in 5E, whichever version you love. This is not exclusive to BX, and since Dungeons & Dragons started with these rules, we can use them as-is in our 5E games to add some old-school flavor.

We don't have to change our games to have epic wandering monster encounters and make them feel more old-school and cool. We can keep playing 5E, adopt these rules, and have an old-school game with the rules we love.

What is Old School 5E?

What is Old School 5E? Well, one game begins the discussion, and that is the excellent Shadowdark from the Arcane Library. Is this game "Old School 5E"?

I need to define what I mean by 5E first. I feel the heart of 5E is not the d20 resolution system, nor is it an advantage-and-disadvantage dicing system. Nor is it in the stat rack or rolling damage on polyhedral dice. Otherwise, most of BX is 5E.

To me, 5E is the character build system. This is what people play for, why they show up at the table, and the part of the game that they play without needing a referee or an active game at the table. This is what Tales of the Valiant and Level Up A5E try to redesign with their implementations of the core rules.

The character build system is the holy grail of 5E.

Tales of Aragosa will come up in this discussion, too, since it is a 5E-like system without the comprehensive build system that real 5E needs to be compelling. This system is a refinement of the excellent Low Fantasy Gaming and remains an excellent system for low-powered 5E.

Shadowdark rewards clever play and risk management (lights, expendable items, and managing inventory space). You may need to drop that 10' pole to pick up that bag of gold. That decision may be a life-and-death one.

5E rewards character optimization and resource management (resting). 5E has a video-game power-replenishment feel built in, and in most implementations of 5E, inventory management is deemphasized. This will be a problem for us in the final set of rules we pick for Old School 5E, and we will need to find a 5E implementation that does a better job at making inventory and encumbrance important.

5E also has exponential power progression, whereas Shadowdark and Aragosa are more linear. This is another requirement for Old School 5E: we must meet the player expectations for a "5E" experience.

• We need character building
• We need the power curve
• We need the full 5E experience

So this gives us a few options:

• D&D 2014
• D&D 2024
• Level Up Advanced 5E
• Tales of the Valiant

So how do we judge these? We need a criterion to pick and choose them on; otherwise, it is just your dungeon game of choice. We need to go back to the original source and pick out some things to look for.

For that, we will use BX D&D, the classic, and figure out what we are looking for in our mythical "Old School D&D." We need our 5E game to closely align with where the challenges are in BX D&D, without just playing BX D&D. We want 5E to be as close to the challenge, resource management, and gameplay loops we find in BX. The closer we can get to BX, the better of an Old School 5E we will have.

We also need to take the Expert Set into account, since we want exploration to be supported. So, on a rough first draft, what are we looking for?

• Lethality
• Serious Injury and Death
• Balanced Rest and Recovery
• Realistic Healing
• Exploits Addressed
• Inventory Management:
• Encumbrance
• Consumable Items
• Items Used in Exploration
• Meaningful Treasure (at a cost)
• Turn-Based Play:
• Dungeon Turns
• Wandering Monsters
• Light and Vision
• Interactive Gameplay
• Wilderness Gameplay
• Wilderness Turns
• Survival Mechanics
• Food, Shelter, and Weather
• Wilderness Encounters

So we have a few areas we want to judge each game on, since these are the big reasons to play BX. We want to see whether they can be "ported in" to our favorite version of 5E, or whether our favorite version of 5E already includes these as a rule option. We could mod the rules from a 3rd-party supplement, but we want to be fair and see how many options each game comes with on its own, to reduce the number of books we need to support.

We do not want to go into this and have the same old exploits used in our games: pop-up healing, the lack of death in the game, goodberries being all the food you need, and the unserious nature that many games fall into. If a game has rampant exploitation of these rules oversights, then it will score poorly on our criteria list, which means D&D 2014 will likely start out at a massive disadvantage. But we will be fair and give it a chance, since optional rules could fix things, if they are present. If a game lacks rules in an entire area, such as exploration and wilderness rules, it will also score poorly.

Also note that Shadowdark earns an almost-perfect rating across all these categories (except wilderness), as well as under the original BX rules (which are perfect across the board). Aragosa also rates very highly in these categories.

But our job here is to find a version of 5E that preserves as much of the old-school methodology as possible, while keeping the character build system, progression, and power level intact.

BX will be our guidepost, but 5E will be the road we travel.