Graph Paper Games

Zak S (from over at the Playing D&D with Porn Stars ) has his own RPGaDay questions, which were pretty interesting, and so here's my answers: 1. Worst game you ever played "Played"?  Not just owned, or ran?  I mean for "owned" I could go with the Whispering Vault .  For "ran" I could say. um... Rifts ?  Played?  I haven't played in that many RPG's, truth be told.  I'm more a GM.  And I've liked most of them.  Let's say TORG . 2. Interesting rule embedded within otherwise baleful game While I'm not the biggest fan of hit location charts, if you want one the clear-plastic-overlay-on-top-of-body-silhouette from Millenium's End is a lot of fun, if just for the suspense of it. 3. Game you never played but you knew it sucked just looking at it Zero 4. Game you most wish didn't suck Rifts.  I'm pretty excited that Savage Worlds got a hold of the license, although it might count as a sign of the apocaly...

Darn it, I made this mistake of checking my blog feed and seeing people put down "all the friends I made in gaming," which is a good answer but then I'd just be ripping other people's creativity off. Here's what I was actually thinking of putting down, mostly because I work with a lot of neuro-atypical people. " How Dungeons & Dragons Saved My Autistic Son "

Hey, I'm a day late on this one because I really don't have one.  Seriously, I need a celebrity that plays RPG's who is not a celebrity because of playing RPG's? Who does that leave me?  Vin Diesel?  Okay, we'll go with Vin Diesel, because I am sure not going to pick "The Jar Jar Binks of Star Trek."

So, after Adam's post about the epic-length Champions game in which he played as a child, I got pretty sentimental about Champions, Fourth Edition (aka the Big Blue Book).  Rather than bring in my entire, huge group of players, I decided to start small.  So, I made PC's for both kids, Bubblegum (Champions edition) for the daughter, a guy named "Kroxigor" for the son.  For those who follow these things, Bubblegum is a low-level martial artist with Entangle and Flash, Kroxigor is a straight up light brick at 250 pts. First, Bubblegum encounters Pulsar attacking the police.  She does a good job switching between her gum powers and her martial arts. Then, Bubblegum finds Kroxigor fighting Bluejay, who is attempting to recapture him and return him to his creators.  They make pretty quick work of her. Then, back at the defunct Ultimate Posse headquarters, the pair hear that GRAB is robbing a bank.  Three villains is a lot for them to handle...

I don't play favorites with my friends, but three bloggers who consistently create content that I pick out of my massive feedly list are Barking Alien , Tower of Zenopus , and Cross Planes . In honor of the fact that he and I have a ridiculously similar taste in RPG's (except for my heightened tolerance of fantasy) I present the following photo for Adam.

So, before I answered this question I read Adam's post on the subject on his blog Barking Alien . Possible photo of the author. So his point, for those who don't have time to read it, is that you should be playing your favorite game.  And to the surprise of few, I agree with him.  I don't have the snark factor he does, and honestly I get how GM's compromise with their players about what game to run for the simple fact that the GM wants to game with them.  And yes, good friends will entertain the notion that a GM might like a game because it is really good, or at the least (and I learned this a long time ago) a game the GM loves he or she will run very well, and that makes it good for everyone. What's ironic is that I've been talking to my kids about one of my favorite games to see if they might be interested in taking it out for a sentimental test drive.  We'll see how it goes.

First, let me just give credit to the guy who came up with the idea of merging Star Wars and Steampunk. But for me, I think my favorite idea was to merge Mekton (giant anime robots) and Dune, a concept I floated back in my college days.  Somewhere in my long-term memory I have the concepts for giant robots for the Bene Gesserit, Houses Harkonnen and Atreides, the Sardukar, and the Freemen (who have both the small, still-suit robot frames and the giant kick-ass sandworms). Why hasn't someone done the manga/anime version of Dune yet?  You'd think the way Herbert's kids have prostituted out their literary inheritance they would have done this already.

In 2086, two peaceful aliens journey to Earth seeking our help. In return, they gave us the plans for our first hyperdrive, allowing mankind to open the doors to the stars. We have assembled a team of unique individuals to protect Earth and our allies. Courageous pioneers committed to the highest ideals of justice and dedicated to preserving law and order across the new frontier. These are the adventures of the Galaxy Rangers.  My sister and I loved the animated series Galaxy Rangers so much my sister actually named her son after one of the characters.  The series, for those who have the misfortune of being unfamiliar with it, is a combination Space Opera/Superhero/Western featuring four main characters (Niko, Zachary, "Doc," and Shane, from left to right, above) who each possessed superhuman abilities (or at least gadgets, in the case of Doc) and used them to zip around the new space frontier solving mysteries, catching criminals, and battling the "Crown Empire....

It seems like an old one, but it has been around since 1992, namely the first edition of Over the Edge .  In OtE, you build a character not through stats or skills but by identifying traits, like "firefighter" or "merman from Lemuria."  Abilities, skills, etc. are all derived from extrapolation from those traits. Aspects from FATE, Distinctions from Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, and so many other narrativist, low-crunch games took this concept and ran with it.   Editor's Note: one could make an argument that the Ghostbusters RPG was really the first to use this mechanism, and that's fair, except there were still stats . Anyways, the idea of open-ended descriptions of your PC having a rules effect rather than numerical values for stats or skill rankings opened things up a lot for me.  For one thing, it got me thinking a lot more about what motivates a PC or NPC, added depth to their personality, and encouraged me to stop number crunching.

Not really a house rule, but one that gets used in every gaming session (including now in the youth game being run by a former player, so it lives on). At the end of each session, I hand out index cards and ask people to write down three things. The coolest thing that happened in the game. The coolest thing another player did in the game. If the game were a TV or movie, whom would you cast for the role of [major NPC of that session] Having the players ask this question is a nice way to provide closure to each session and get some feedback as a GM about what the players enjoy in a game.  It is also fun to see how people's imagination work when it comes to visualizing the action. The final thing it does is forces me to make sure I have at least one interesting NPC with which the players interact each session.

Wow, what a question!  God knows I've spent a lifetime looking for it. It's almost easier to ask what doesn't work, and look for the white space in between to figure out what does.  I mentioned earlier I don't like RPG's that are too tied to the RPG creator's world (like DragonAge or The Strange ).  I don't like RPG's that have 37 pages of gun porn (like Edge of Empire ).  I don't like games that take themselves too seriously as some transcendental experience, but also don't like games that are too break-the-fourth-wall goofy.  I don't want six page character sheets, but I want an RPG that gives me enough rules-wise to be able to distinguish one character for another in terms of game mechanics.  While I don't mind the odd bit of moral ambiguity, I want an RPG that gives the players the opportunity to choose to have their PC's act like heroes, because in the end I'm the grown-up version of the kid who liked to read comic books a...

I had to really think about this one and what the questioner is really trying to say.  So here goes.... I like gaming at my own house.  It my previous house I had a fantastic finished basement, the creation of its previous owner who was a model train enthusiast.  In my current house I have a semi-finished basement: painted concrete block walls and a sealed cement floor, but it works.  My son was given a 4' by 8' table (long story) which now is the table upon which I game.  That's my gaming environment and I like it. Actual room depicted. Mostly I just like gaming at my own home first and foremost.  It means I can relax more, feel comfortable using the restroom, etc.  I don't care for gaming at gaming stores.  I know a lot of people do that out of necessity and as a way to game with relative strangers who they might not want to be in their house or because they don't have the space.  I don't have those problems: I have space and frien...

The trick to this question is that I feel like I have to avoid the licensed products.  Star Wars is not an RPG setting, it's a movie series in which an RPG has been made.  A setting that was specifically developed for an RPG?  Two come to mind.... The rules might be a dog with fleas, but I have always found the setting for the Rifts RPG to be strangely compelling, mostly in their "everything but the kitchen sink" approach.  Actually, I would not be surprised if the Kitchen Sink OCC might be somewhere in the Rifter magazines.  The fact that Savage Worlds has somehow managed to pry the Rifts license from Kevin Siembieda's MDC grasp might just be a sign of the Apocalypse. Close runner up: Cyberpunk 2020.  Take a variety of cyberpunk movies, novels, etc. and frappe' them into a single world that has enough touch points to make fans happy, and you've got Mike Pondsmith's RPG setting.  I've read that Pondsmith really wanted an RPG that focused ...

So true confession time: I have completed most of my RPGaDay blog posts in advance and just schedule them to come out each day. So when I wrote a few days ago for today's RPGaDay question At some point I should write a blog post about me and horror RPG's and how they never, ever seem to work out. Well that day can be today, the day that the first answer comes out. So why is running a horror-themed RPG so difficult?  Let's break it down in no particular order. 1. I game with children.  Specifically my daughter, a sensitive pre-teen for whom I do not wish to create a collaborative story featuring gore or brutal violence for shock value.   While my RPG's do feature violence, and even death, it's the "Hollywood violence" of D&D or superhero stories or whatnot. 2. I tend to make jokes.  I won't even put this on my gaming group, but they are also guilty.  You know how this works.  Something happens and you make a pop culture reference or a M...

Bureau 13 .  Just for the Foglio artwork in a horror RPG. No?  How about Beyond the Supernatural ?   Chill ?  At some point I should write a blog post about me and horror RPG's and how they never, ever seem to work out.  I'm too much of a clown, my group is too relaxed, I'm gaming with five teenagers, and frankly horror is too easy to slip from inspiring fear and terror in your imaginary character's situation to being a "kill the monster" scenario. Call of Cthulhu gets close to this.  You don't fight the horrors of the Lovecraftian mythos.  My EOW game system is also pretty good for horror games, because it is so damned easy to die in it (and once you do, you're kind of stuck for the rest of the day-long gaming session) so you're less likely to say, "I just draw my pistol and start firing."  But I have really, really struggled with the horror genre to the point where I can not honestly say I've had a good enough expe...

Hmmm.... No question. Now I will say I have a lot of love for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying , more than the next guy (unless he's the guy writing the Plot Points blog), but MHR has a distinct flavor that does a great job emulating comic books, but over the long term tends to start to feel bland.  While I own it, I haven't played Icons , but I suspect the same thing with that game as well. Does Champions have its problems?  You betcha.  It's got eight million ways to screw with the rules and build over-powered PC's (another reason I hate the internet sometimes).  But with the right players and the right mindset?  It's a great game. Now for a true confession.  I can not "get" Mutants & Masterminds.  Other people love this game.  I get the feeling that is the literary heir to Champions, so to speak.  But something about the rules doesn't click with me.  It's not that I dislike the rules, I just am having a tough time wrapping my ...

Unlike yesterday, where I had to sort through a ton of games all of whom leave me with a certain lack of enthusiasm, I have a great deal of fondness for a lot of sci-fi RPG's out there. For example, the greatest RPG campaign I ever played in was with Palladium's Robotech RPG (technically we were using the Sentinels rulebook, although the GM had all of them). But after years of consideration I'm convinced, as is often the case, that the campaign's success lay in the GM, not the rules. Or I could go with the Star Trek RPG from FASA. When I went from elementary school in 7th grade to high school in 8th (which is what happened in that particular region), I went from playing D&D with one other guy to having access to a much larger gaming community of older people, and they were playing Star Trek. It was my first real experience with a gaming group, and my first campaign with a GM who was an adult.  It was a whole new experience, and I have a lot of se...

Let me ask you a question. I own a Nissan.  I bought it because it was the best used car that was available that was the kind I wanted and could afford.  It's a good car, a car I like driving and fits my needs. But is it my favorite car?  Would I rather be driving a flashier car, or a car with more character, or a car for which I have fond memories?  Or is the car that I drive every day, the car that works to suit my needs as a person, my favorite car? See, for two years I (and a friend who sometimes stood behind the screen) ran D&D Fourth Edition.  For the last seven months, going on eight now, I've been running D&D Fifth Edition.  So, if my goal is to get together with my friends and have a good time engaging in a collaborative storytelling game and eating some not-so-good for you food, then either of these two games has met my needs admirably.  And if the Nissan is my favorite car (and I do like it a lot), then either of those two game...

Hmmm... This is kind of a tough one.  Normally on Fridays I do what is considered by many to be rather short sessions, like three to four hours.  However, at the EOW mini-convention that I attend every year, we usually game all day, like from after breakfast until dinner time.  But I'm not sure which of those sessions is the longest. So, I'm talking about an eight or nine hour session with a break for lunch in the middle.  That's pretty much the norm for EOW. As a side note, EOW is coming up in October, and I'm supposed to be running a session.  Time to get cracking!

Well, technically speaking, the Traveller campaign the EOW group has been doing has been going on for years, like maybe seven. On the other hand, they only meet four times a year. And I only make one of those sessions, at the annual EOW mini-convention.  My PC is a crew member who works in the loading bay of the main commercial spaceship the group owns, so that's not really a big deal when I'm gone. So, on the side of "this counts and should be my answer" the EOW Traveller campaign is one that has seen the group go from being the crew of a plucky little Free Trader called unimaginatively Beowulf to being about the Beowulf Corporation, which commands a small fleet of ships (mostly acquired through salvaging disabled pirate vessels).   The campaign has a rotating GM roster, and I heard that the last session's GM sort of hit the "reset button" and launched the core crew into another universe where they lost all their resources, et al and are basically...

A Doctor Doom themed dice tray. Currently WIP. More pics as the project progresses. Comments welcome!

The World's Greatest GM Screen by Hammerdog Games. Basically it is a blank GM screen with clear vinyl pockets in which you can stick whatever you want--rules, pictures, etc.  And these days, you can find some homemade GM screen insert done by a fan of the game for practically every RPG out there.  So you don't have to keep dropping $10-30 every time you switch RPG's. With the advent of the "landscape" GM screen I kind of wish I had one that went that way, but since I mostly stand while GMing (for lots of reasons) the additional height isn't such a big deal.

True confession time: I don't listen to that many podcasts. Second true confession: I have a podcast of my own.  For work, not gaming.  So there you go. Something in the back of my head says I ought to, because I could theoretically listen to podcasts and paint miniatures at the same time, which I can not do while watching television or surfing the internet, for example.  I can't even really paint and listen to books on CD, because every now and then my attention would be so tuned to the painting that I'd miss something in the text of the book. But mostly I don't listen because I don't have time.  One reason why I love RPG's is because I can think about them while driving or in a waiting room or shopping for groceries.  I'm not sure I could or would spare the time for podcasts, but I'm looking forward to hearing people's recommendations. So, the only one I have listened to at all is d6 Generation because it covers more than just RPG's bu...

So, so many choices.  I felt it was a little inappropriate to pick something because was particularly titillating or something that was really reflecting a licensed product (so no Star Wars illustration, for example).  There are a lot of classics out there, but the one I first thought of was this one. It's from the 1st Ed. DMG.  I love the photo because it seems to encapsulate what I feel like fantasy RPG's should be about, namely average people having to overcome really freaky stuff.  I'm someone who at heart likes "fantasy horror" over "murderhoboing" or whatever fantasy roleplaying tends to be these days.  Also check out the glowing eyes at the bottom of the step.  I love a picture that tells a story and isn't just some awesome looking hero with a heroine slumped in his arms as he rides a dragon or some such thing. It also, ironically, shows what it sometimes wrong with fantasy RPG's, in that many people will look at the photo and n...

As I mentioned a while ago , my campaign's background changed pretty radically recently from being a sort of gothic fantasy to a grim, fantasy noir involving various factions battling each other across a devastated city.  At last Friday's session, the group told me that wanted to go from being hired swords of the various factions to creating their own faction with the goal of ultimately controlling the city. Possible gang illustration This is a big change from the original concept, a sort of "murderhobo" set-up where they were just running around exploring ruins. This is realm-building, and there is not a pre-existing set of rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide for this.  That means that for the first time in a long time, I need to go from encounter building to actually making rules. First, though, we need an endgame.  At what point does the group effectively become the dominant gang in the city?  I'm presuming that means a certain point of manpower, a ...

I don't know if I have a favorite.  Aaron Allston write Strike Force, my favorite sourcebook of all time, and a host of Star Wars novels.  Bill Slavicek is considered one of the foremost authorities on Star Wars and his SW RPG material was practically canon by LucasArts.  Monte Cook cranked out a ton of stuff under the D&D masthead, and is now doing really interesting things with Numenera and The Strange. But I'm going to go with Andrew Watt.  I met Andrew in the first few months of being in college, and we became best friends from then on out.  Andrew introduced me to the gaming community at our college, a group that became the social and emotional nexus of my life for the following years.  Andrew was and is a kind, intelligent, creative human being who patiently tolerated my inevitably overly-flamboyant PC's: a Crazy in Rifts, a Smuggler in Star Wars, a Barbarian in Fantasy Hero.  He himself would bring in meticulously-wrought PC's into whateve...

My favorite RPG publisher?  West End Games. They are not publishing any more, but West End Games had a very good sense of publishing game material that seemed to match both the source material and how gamers would likely play it.  Some games have a pretty strong disconnect between the creator's original intent and how people ended up playing the game (Cyberpunk 2012, for example), but West End seemed to capture the slightly tongue-in-cheek humor and "Hollywood action" that most gamers seem to enjoy when they sit down at a table. West End Games published Paranoia , Ghostbusters , and the first Star Wars RPG as examples of their high points as well as lesser-known works such as TORG and Shatterzone .  For a time they acquired licenses to large numbers of sci-fi and fantasy TV or movies such as Tank Girl , Species , Indiana Jones , Men in Black , and the Hercules and Xena TV franchise.  They also did one RPG for DC Comics, which like many licensed superhero RPG fe...

It's funny, because I have to answers to this question, but both seem right within my grasp. First, I'd love to see a Lost Girl RPG. A team of various supernatural beings going around trying to keep the peace while navigating the politics of their society?  There's your "elevator pitch" for a Lost Girl campaign. As I mentioned above, I think it would be easy-peasy to go this campaign by hacking the Angel RPG, but I'd love for someone other than me to do it. My second, because I always seem to have two answers to every question, is a Warehouse 13 RPG. Investigators trying to locate historical objects imbued with almost supernatural abilities, all the while trying to stay under the radar of society?  Again, a really easy sell.   This one I've actually done, or at least sketched out for my kids, using the FATE system.  You've got Pete ( Alcoholic Ex-Marine, Just Having Some Fun ), Mika ( Raised in a Bookstore, Haunted by Failure...

One of the re-occurring jokes in my D&D is about bears.  In the first adventure, the group was approached by a couple of yokels who told them they would show them where they had found a dungeon out in the woods (the Tomb of the 99 Mad Monks, as it turned out), in return for a share of the treasure.  The tomb was located in the back of a cave, and in the cave lived two bears.  The group managed to get past the bears thanks to the efforts of Calidis, a druid on the team. Right after getting through the entrance to the tomb, the team's thief/assassin snuck back out of the cave and killed the two yokels who were waiting outside, thus preventing them from getting a share.  I was worried that this would cause friction in the group, but I did realize I needed to determine the response of the two bears in the cave.  I decided to roll randomly for it, and the result was the bears messed around with the corpses of the two yokels, making it look like they were respon...

Okay, so are we talking about the news media, or any other, like an appearance in a TV show, movie, etc. I just got put onto this series when a friend recommended it for my kids.  It's a great story taking place in a creepy private school in Gotham City.  But where does the RPG element come in? I suppose it could be from "Big Trouble in Little China" "Maps," the best friend of the main character Olive, is a huge fan of the game "Spells and Serpents," and tends to view most of their adventures from that paradigm.  When exploring a hidden chamber under the school, Maps says, "I am going to loot the hell out of this place."  She calls Killer Croc a "lizard man," and of course, paints a beholder in art class. Anyways, my kids love the series and so do I, so go check it out.  Next question!

Damn, I'm having a tough time choosing between two, mostly because they are so similar. Basic Fantasy and Swords & Wizardry .  Both solid retro-clones, both well supported, both well loved by their creators.  Basic Fantasy is a tweaked version of Basic Edition D&D, with modifications like an ascending Armor Class.  S&W is virtually the same thing, only with descending Armor Class as the norm (with ascending available in brackets on the table). Honestly, good luck on telling them apart.  I tend to think that S&W is the more polished product in terms of appearance, but even that is just a nudge. There are a lot of other options if you were to ask the question in terms of "pay what you want," like FATE , for example.  But since I'd be likely to pay at least something, it wouldn't be free.

Hey, I was just talking about this ! The weekend before last, at KantCon.  For those who just started reading this blog (and welcome), The Ultimate Hero is this sci-fi/superhero RPG by Paragon Notion , and it basically has everything but the kitchen sink in a fun little package.  I have been thinking that the game really needs an "Appendix N," a list of the inspirational material for the game designers so the player can have some idea of what sort of style they were shooting for. If not for KantCon, my answer would be once again D&D 5th Ed, which I've been running three weekends a month since January.

Is it bad that I really had to wrack my brain on this one? I will admit that a lot of the impetus for this purchase wasn't because I was convinced that the sixth printing of this book was a vast improvement over the previous five, but because I tend to be a bit of a completionist when it comes to my game collections and because, quite honestly, when you've gone into your FLGS a half dozen times or more and never bought anything but still use their bathroom you start to feel a little guilty. Castles & Crusades is also my favorite "retroclone" that doesn't actually drive me nuts for being too much of a retroclone.  Although to be honest, 5th Edition D&D also feels a hell of a lot like Castles & Crusades .  I think between those two and 13th Age you pretty much have the "what WQRobb wants out of a D&D game" covered. Now, the RPG purchase previous to that one is a bit more interesting and noteworthy... Icons is not the super...

I thought I would try out making my own character for The Ultimate Hero .  My character concept was a creepy hitman-style character who could pop out of the shadows, unload a couple of pistols, and then disappear again.  It less than an hour to put together, but here's the result. Name: Unknown Alias: The Ghoul Race: Supernatural (no subrace) Charisma 2 Intelligence 3 Willpower 4 Dexterity 5 (primary) Stamina 4 Strength 2 Disadvantages: Dark Secret (10), Foe from the past (10) Advantages: Ambidextrous (10), Attribute Bonus (Dexterity, 10), Damage Resistant (10), Keen Smell (3), Magic Sense (2), Supernatural Power Specialist (30), Very tough (15) Racial Abilities: Immune to Cold Vulnerability to Soulfire Passive Defense 11 Active Defense 15 Health 104 Endure Pain 5 Starting Power Level 1 Power Channeling 6 Power Pool 95 Saves Kinetic 15 Will 3 General 3 Powers: Shadow Walk 1 (5) Life Drain 1 (5) Night Vision (5) Healing (5) Skills: Martia...

This quest seems ambiguous.  Surprising game as in rules, or game session?  And surprising good, or surprising bad? Surprise as it good?  Because I encountered Marvel Heroic RPG before FATE, the whole idea of a fairly abstract system where descriptors of the PC's mattered as much if not more than stat blocks was a pretty novel concept, and frankly one that has so deeply ingrained itself into my game-brain that I'm constantly saying to myself, "That would be this [TV, movie, novel, or comic book character's] Distinction/Aspect." I was so used to thinking of superheroes in terms of Champions with point-buy powers and loads of mechanics that the idea of not even having any sense of game balance was a real shock.  But what really shocked me was how well it duplicated comic books, not just super heroes.  Pacing, scenes, characters carting around the emotional baggage that is practically the hallmark of a Marvel story--all represented in gameplay. Can I just...

Has it been less than 12 months since D&D 5E came out?  Wikipedia says so. First, I'm surprised that it has only been 12 months since the game has come out, given the real market presence it seems to have.  Second, I'm surprised how few RPG's I've actually purchased lately that I can remember enjoying.  The Valiant Universe RPG was a huge let-down, FATE was two years ago.  I don't think I'm buying as much in the way of RPG's these days.  I think I bought a copy of the Mongoose version of Traveller in there somewhere, but I can't be sure.  Boy, things sure have changed...

This is kind of an easy question, because I've only backed one RPG ever.  Blade Raiders. By Grant Gould , an artist for the Cartoon Network animated Star Wars series, created a fantasy RPG that is so totally divorced from the Tolkein conventions and Gygaxian mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons that it really can't be called a "fantasy heartbreaker."  I've talked about the game elsewhere, and I would still like to try it out sometime.  It would be an easy game to convert into playing a campaign in the world of the Nickelodeon series Avatar.

So, lacking much in the way of content on this blog lately, I thought I'd try the RPGaDay blog challenge for August.  Here's the chart. Day 1: RPG you are most looking forward to. Tough one, because I'm so out of the loop on what RPG's are in the pipeline.   Star Wars: Force and Destiny  from Fantasy Flight Games is due out, and I'm sort of interested in that, but I'm terrified that like practically every other iteration of a Star Wars RPG the inclusion of Jedi will break the damn thing. And frankly, the FFG games are expensive and they are slowly releasing over three books what should have been in one: scoundrels, rebels, and Jedi.  Cough up $150+ for that, and have the funky dice mechanics?  I think I'm talking myself out of my own answer here. I have the core D&D 5E rulebooks, and they are a fairly decent version of D&D.  If I don't like that version of D&D, I have Castles & Crusades .  If I don't want to do D&D, I ...