The Gaming New Year 2026

Happy new year, gamers! I am a bit horrified to see it has been a complete year since I have posted anything here - New Year recap posts seem to be all I can manage these days. Well - I had better post a recap then.

2025 was an awful year in a lot of ways. It was not awful for my gaming life, but it was not a very good gaming year. There was a triumph of sorts - the endless Icewind Dale game I was in finally ended. It ended with a big fight against the Frost Maiden that a couple of us fought while the rest fought a couple minions of hers - an NPC turned on the party, adding a twist - but it ended. By the end, I think we were all getting tired of it - we were glad to see the end of it. It was a tough one to get through, but we got through it - there were a few times I was not sure I was going to show up in two weeks. I did though. It's done. We followed that ump with a homebrew campaign one of the players ran - that lasted to the fall, then ended, as Real Life took out the DM, and the rest of us gave up. That was a surprisingly entertaining campaign, though he definitely overcooked it. We played it with 2024 rules, the first time most of us had used them - but he home-brewed the heck out of it beyond that, creating a game with very few stakes. Combats were easy and boring/entertaining, all flash and excitement, but nothing to do with the stories - literally - most of the combat was somehow outside the story. A gladiator pit, an extra-planar puzzle, or just throwaway encounters. The main thread was a mystery, which was very enjoyable, but probably insoluble, involving time travel and wild magic and NPC backstories - but I still found it very satisfying, for D&D. Unfortunately, when he dropped out, we all broke if up - though that was the end of the year, it might get revived. But after 6 1/2 years, the group is done.

The other D&D game went as expected. When Netherdeep ended, we went back to the Saltmarsh campaign we'd played before, with a different DM. We swapped in a couple new characters, we switched to 2025 rules, we tried for a while to play on Talespire, but couldn't make it work, so it was back to Roll 20. It ended as that DM's first campaign ended, in a total party wipe, this time by sahuagin - monsters who outnumber you, get multiple attacks, and can give themselves advantage all the time are a recipe for dead PCs. This time he did not exactly kill us - we are, officially, in limbo as prisoners of the Sahuagin - but we gave up the game for something else. Specifically, Eye of Vecna (if that's what it's called) - the high level, plan hopping last blast adventure path from 2014 D&D - which should give him plenty of chances to finish us off again. Don't think I am complaining - I have said before, this is a great group, and his games have just enough of that old fashioned Better Have a Backup Ready 1983 vibe to satisfy my inner college student, while maintaining the other things possible in D&D. This one promises a lot of entertainment. Even if it is D&D - we are getting bastions!

That is about all the D&D I care about. We did play the Icespire Peak starter set at home, with 2024 characters - nice little game, though we all got initiative on the dragon, and it never even got to breathe. That game too had a very 1983 vibe - not bad, kind of empty. That DM has been making noise about running again - I hope so, I am not going to run D&D, and it is fun to scratch that itch. We'll see.

All these games have given me enough experience with 2024 D&D to offer some conclusions - what do I think? Well - honestly - I don't see the point of it. It's 5E but slower and fiddlier and full of things you have to lookup or forget that don't really add anything to the game. It's not hard to transition, and has some interest, but most good things come with side effects, and overall, it just doesn't seem to matter. At its worst, it evokes too much of 4E, with its board game system and its array of abstract powers. It has some nice stuff in there that might have made good homebrew to 2014, but there is very little point in it. Granted, I am tired of all forms of D&D - so it's hard to really care what flavor we're playing. If I cared, I might like it more - though more likely, I would be lobbying to play Shadowdark.

So that was D&D. I don't know why I keep putting that up at the top - it hasn't been at the top of my gaming year for a couple years - this will probably be the last time. So let's move on.

To my shame, though - D&D might have been the most played RPG this year. We had a Traveller campaign going at the end of last year, but that is where it stopped. That one yielded some great scenes - but that was the last we played the game. That basically leaves Call of Cthulhu, which has been the primary home game for a couple years - we played it, mostly Gaslight - a slow burn investigation campaign that has been entertaining but sometimes harder to handle than any big blowout dungeon crawl thing. It's been sitting for a month or so - we're getting to the pointy end, and since it is homebrew, I have to get the kettle on. 

Beyond that - I got a few new games: Daggerheart; we got a couple of the Outgunned books; I have the Age of Vikings game from Chaosium - there could be more. We haven't played any of them, or even made up characters - kind of unusual. 

We did, however, play a zombie apocalypse one shot for Halloween, using the Alien system, though with the science fiction stripped out. It was very effective - it is a great horror game, and adapts well even to high action ideas like zombies. We maintained its atmosphere of regular joes in trouble, scrambling for weapons and trying to stay alive and functional - this one featured a contractor truck, with machetes and hammers and power tools and screwdrivers and even a blowtorch - then a general store with an infected shopkeeper with a shotgun, various weapons locked up behind the counter, and a chain saw - and, well, swarms of zombies, including a few old friends. It was a blast. Most of the PCs went insane and were out of action, so the party was basically saved by a 12 year old on a bike, who found the cop's pistol (the cop was curled up in a fetal position whimpering) and took out a zombie or two. Happy times!

But as you can see - I didn't play any new RPGs, and the only way I can claim we hit four total again is by making up Traveller characters. And all games? that's better - I am pretty sure I hit 5 new ones (Wingpan, Flame Craft, Boss Monster, Age of Comics - and some kind of cat lady game, I can't remember the name of), and definitely played 10 over all - the RPGs and those, plus the usual suspects - Catan, Ticket to Rude (at least three variations), Carcasonne, Terraforming Mars, Hearts, Poker, dominoes, Aggravation, Clue - plenty. 

And for the coming year? same as the last couple - get to five RPGs if I can; play at least some new ones. Play five new games total and at least 10 over all - should make it. I have to get my Gaslight campaign in playing shape; I have an idea for t Traveller scenario to run, which I should be able to do; hopefully someone will run those games, and something else - we might get another D&D game in. Should make it.

That answer post once in a while. Once in a while, not once in a year. You would think.

Have a good one, folks! May your crits be spectacular and your fumbles be funny!

 

Gaming Review and Preview

Happy new year - a couple weeks into the year, but that's all right. As I have done the last couple years, here's a kind of state of the games post to get things rolling. Hopefully not the last post of the year - but I say that every year. So - 2024:

Start with what I played. The two D&D campaigns I was in last year went all this year a well - Icewind Dale and Call of the Netherdeep. The latter, at least, wrapped up in the end - Icewind Dale is stil on, and doesn't look like it will ever end. Though to be fair - one character is dying of a Slaad bite, one has a cursed crown and in comatose, another is brand new (after the previous character went over the to Frostmaiden, and failed to save vs petrification, and the player got tired of playing an NPC) and the other two are both cursed and impatient and as likely to blow it all up as not. So there could be an end. The Netherdeep campaign did end though - that one - I found the campaign itself very underwhelming. Lots of things to gripe about, including spending the whole thing in an overt metaphor. On the other hand, it was a very good group, playing interesting characters and it built to a nice conclusion. There's a lot of good in there. But I still won't miss it - though I do miss the characters. It was a cool party. I was playing a tabaxi bladesinger - it was pretty cool.

That group is now returning to our previous Saltmarsh campaign, with a couple new characters, and the 2024 rules - on Talespire, also new. It could have some teething troubles, but again - cool characters, and a good group. It should be fun - though it has been a hard group to schedule regularly.

That is about all the D&D we've played - a few episodes with the 2024 rules, including one of the scenarios in Keys From the Golden Vault, played with 2024 rules. The rules are appealing - I don't know how they will work out in action. We will find out when we go into the Sahuagin lair in Saltmarsh. The heist scenario might not have been the best test of the new rules - most of the game, you could have played with any system, we barely had to roll at all. It definitely felt more like Call of Cthulhu than D&D. There was a bit of a fight at the end, but again, any system would have worked. That is probably a point in favor of the scenario - it's well done, and works no matter what - but didn't really give us much to do with the 2024 rules.

Other than D&D - we did get some Cthulhu in, maybe not as much as some years. Genius Loci from Doors into Darkness, a fantastic one shot. Then a couple somewhat loose Pulp adventures - I ran something in the South Seas, somewhat inspired by Tales of the Gold Monkey - complete with a forced seaplane landing in a storm, and a fight with pirates. That yielded more classic moments per game session than you could imagine. A tommy gun doing 57 points of damage to a goon; 2 of 3 PCs having to use their miraculous escape pulp ability to survive; someone rolling a crit success to wing walk in a tempest to repair the engine; and - a crit fail for the ages. A character - with only 1 or 2 hit points left - beset by a couple of those pirates, decided to throw a stick of dynamite out of the plane into their boat. He didn't need much - a good throw roll would take them out easily; a bad one was only going to do some collateral damage to the plane or the other characters. Instead, he rolled a 00. So - obviously he dropped it. Blew himself up, the plane, the boat, the pirates - total bloodbath! And a story likely to be retold through the ages. We also played a home brew thing in the Amazon, with more planes, pre-war jeep equivalents driving off cliffs, another miraculous escape (on the only character to get hit in the fight), zombies, Nazis and a dirigible. Good stuff. All of it has stalled out a bit, but Cthulhu is, at this point, pretty much the go to game - we'll be back to it. Gaslight looks like a ton of fun - we'll get there.

At the end of the year, we managed to play a bunch of Traveller - specifically, BT-SHT 365, which Seth Skorkowsky reviewed some years back. That's been fun too; we're still in the middle of it. It's a $2.00 scenario, and it shows some time - there's a lot of work necessary to make it make any sense - but it also features some really great pulp settings and situations. It's been a lot of fun - and yielded another classic crit fail. (Same player, by the way!) This time, the characters were raiding an Oghman Raider camp - they had mostly gotten themselves into position to finish the job. An NPC in a Toyota Hilux (surely, they must still exist and run 5000 years in the future) had run down a couple of the villains; now the PC got the idea of running down another one with his grav bike. Snake eyes! He and his passenger were flung across the landscape, only surviving due to some nice armor. Yeah. Good stuff.

Finally, some playing around. We ran a couple fights in Cyberpunk - we played around with Tales of the Valiant - I wish we'd gotten to more, especially Alien or Blade Runner - still, not too bad. I also got to play a number of new board games - Boss Monster, Reincarnate, Cat Ladies of Maple Street, as well as Terraforming Mars and Wingspan, from earlier int he year. All the usual suspects of course from Boggle and Racko to Catan and Ticket to Ride to Code Names and Hearts.

This year? I intend to finish up BT-SHT 365; I am not sure after that - we might go back to some of the open Cthulhu games, or play a one shot or two. We might try some other games - or even D&D if anyone commits to running it. Eventually I want to run something in Cthulhu by Gaslight - I may love the 20s and 30s as a setting more than anything else on earth - but the 1890s is going to run a close second. The inspirations - Sherlock Holmes! HG Wells! Robert Louis Stevenson! Dracula! Allen Quartermain! Steampunk! it is a rich vein and I look forward to getting to play in it.

Like last year - I hope I can fit in 5 TTRPGs (hit 4 this year - D&D, Traveller, Cthulhu and Cyberpunk - though 2 versions of D&D); 5 new games of any kind; and 10 games of any kind. Did all right last year; same principals - play the faves, and try out some new games. Should work out.

And try to blog more often. Not hard. given how little I write here. But it's a worthy aspiration and one of these years I do it.

D&D at 50 (While it's still at 50)

The end of the year is rapidly approaching - this is not my annual year end/new year's post - this is to get in something about Dungeons & Dragons 50th anniversary before the chance is gone.

The game appeared back in 1974, those three little books in a box. Was it a big deal? In a modest way, I think it was, even in 1974. It was different - not a war game as such, though rooted in war games; a game where you played a person involved in some kind of hazardous endeavor, set in a fantasy world. From what I have read, the first people playing it were still thinking more like war games - only war games where you played a single person (who might lead an army) - doing things people did in most games. accumulating wealth, defeating enemies, and so on. There were differences - the game was explicitly cooperative (though still competitive) - you worked with other players, as much as against them. And the structure was there for a lot more - for playing characters doing anything - crawling through dungeons? fighting in wars? flying into space? surviving a zombie attack? gunfights on western streets? And for changing the tone - to more talk, more intrigue, more comedy or horror or whatever you could think of. Over the next couple years, games started to appear taking up these possibilities. Soon, there were role playing games everywhere, doing everything. But that's to come.

As for me? Like most people I started with D&D. In 1982, at college, Advanced D&D, playing Leif and Roulard, along with two or three other players, going through a generic dungeon. There was a magic pool, one of the other player's characters disappeared, and when he came back, he did something stupid that angered someone else in the party. We grabbed him - he kicked poor Leif where Leifson would would have come from - and rolled a 20. We all laughed, the DM rolled to see how bad it was - he too rolled a 20 to confirm the crit. That was the end of Leif's dynastic hopes.

I was hooked. I don't know about the other player, whose characters was promptly and horribly murdered for this dastardly deed - though this was the first time we'd played the game, no one was too attached, and we were all laughing our heads off. This was fun! When I went home from college, I discovered that my brothers had D&D books as well - we started playing, and kept on playing to this very day. Well - there have been some gaps in there. After college, I didn't play much at all; by the 90s, all of us had stopped, and didn't pick it up until 3rd Edition came out. We didn't play that, exactly - but I played with it - bought lots of books, made up lots of characters. Then 4th came out and we played that a lot (though without loving it) - and when 5th came out, we picked it up like it was 1984 again. 

And now it is 2024, there is a revised version of 5th out - I have the first two books, but beyuond playing around with the PHB when I got it, I have not touched it. I have a copy of the DMG and have not opened it. It is a fact that I don't care very much anymore about D&D. I discovered, and finally played, skill games - Traveller and Call of Cthulhu, specifically - and have not looked back. WOTC has done plenty to help thsi alienation along, but it's mostly the type of game and the genre - I don't like level/class games as much anymore; and I don't really care about high fantasy. So here I am. This is not enough to stop me from playing the game, when I am in a game; and probably won't last forever - but there it is. 

But D&D has been a big deal - for me, as well as the world. I don't write blogs very much anymore, and have not said anything all year - though I thought about it off and on. But I have time to fix it. So - happy birthday D&D! and - before I go - here is how I would rank the versions of the game I have actually played. That would be a bit of Moldvay basic, ADD, a bit of 2E. 3E, 4E and 5E. I have in fact played the 2024 version of 5E, though not enough to see how to distinguish it from 2014 5. So I will leave it alone for now. and so? here they are, ranked.

1. Fifth Edition - this is, in the end, the best they have ever done. A rare instance of an upgrade that really is better than whan came before. Rare for D&D, as you'll see in this little list. But even if I have soured a bit on D&D generally, and even if in getting huge it has engendered a lot of backlash - this is still the best version of the game there is. Easy enough to play, especially easy if you're used to the older versions, and - to me - gives the sense of playing those early versions, but done right. No more weird charts and tables - simple math. In truth, for us, 5E feels like how 1E felt - it plays like we played at the table. We dropped most of the oddball war game stuff - we played ADD like 5E. 5E just makes it all core to the game. It really is a good game.

2. AD&D, First Edition - Gary Gygax unfiltered! It's what I learned on - whatever the difficulties fo the game, we played it easily enough - we were more than happy to fill in anything we were missing or change what we didn't like - I am always shocked to learn that critical hits and fumbles were not in ADD, because we always played with hem from the beginning. Things like that. As a game - 5E is a simpler, more elegant version of this. As a publication, on the other hand, this eclipses everything else by miles. Sure, it's what I learned on, but it really did have the best books, as books, the best art, the best ideas - everything. I can still leaf through those early books - the core books, obviously, but even later additions like Deities & Demigods or the Fiend Folio - just to look at the art. Just to look for the jokes. It was a great edition. 

3. Third Edition - truth is, I barely played this thing, but this was the great solitaire edition. It's publication drew us back to D&D; we never quite figured out how to play it, but I bought most of the books (3 and 3.5 both), read them, used them - and made up characters. This is maybe the only version fo D&D where making up characters is in itself a satisfying game - it's got a bit of that Traveller vibe, where building a character is a game in itself. Doesn't have the dice, but it has the options and the ability to craft someone you can believe in. If you divide games into games as games and games as models - this is the model version of the game. You could use it to make up people you could imagine being alive in a world. Even the best other versions don't quite make up characters that have all the details of a character from a book. You can almost get there with 3. I liked it, even if I didn't really play it.

4. Fourth Edition - the exact opposite. We played this a lot - because this is a really good board game. Is it D&D? I don't really think so - even in the broad sense that Pathfinder or Shadowdark or whatever are really D&D - this is something else. That kind of hrumphing probably needs some definitions - this might not be the time, but at it's core: D&D requires a fantasy setting (swords and sorcery, magic and monsters, etc), a D20 system - and role playing. And role playing for me means that you imagine yourself as a real actual person in a real actual world. And 4th edition did not deliver that. I could not imagine 4E characters as people; could not imagine 4E fights and encounters as something actual people were doing. PCs were pieces on a board. Now - you could imagine them as people, and you could go through the motions of a D&D game - but you can imagine the shoe as a real character in Monopoly - it doesn't make it an RPG. All told - 4E was a pretty good game, fun, easy to play - but it did not scratch the itch D&D scratched, and when 5E came out we dropped it on the spot.

5. Second Edition - these last two aren't really being ranked the same way. I barely played 2E - when I did play it, I took ADD character sheets, added THACO and a couple non-weapon proficiencies and played - ADD, as far as I could tell. So - all there is to distinguish the versions is THACO, significantly less interesting core products, a line of fantastic supplements (arms and Equipment, Castles and Strongholds, or whatever that thing was called, etc) - and some great settings, I never really played with. Very much an afterthought.

6. Moldvay Basic - the only basic I played, and this, again, barely, and as an adjunct to ADD. I had played ADD; my brothers had played Basic/Expert and had the books. WE ended up playing a ocuple dungeons using the basic books, and a hodge podge of basic and ADD characters. Then got the ADD books and that was all. I have no feel for what any of the basic games played like. If I had found them first, I might have loved htem - though not necessarily. I was more a war gamer than RPG gamer in college - my joy was in things like Squad Leader and Kingmaker and War and Peace - I liked big complicated things. ADD hit me square; I am not sure if a simpler version of the game would have. Still - this is just to say I have played something with these rules, nothing at all like a real assessment. 

And there it is. That's what I have played; that is what I think of them. I could add things like - favorite book - ADD Dungeon Master's Guide. Best art - I mean, again - ADD - especially the PHB cover, which is so fantastic. Favorite monster - shoot: drow? githyanki? might be. They were right there. Favorite character? Probably Theresa, my 4E ranger, who was a force of nature. Honorable mention to Josef, the Tempest cleric, as well as Violet, the 5E version of Theresa. Favorite scenario? I only played about half of it, but Curse of Strahd - that is fantastic stuff. Biggest missed opportunity? Denis, my 5E paladin with the 7 Dex who got wiped out along with the rest of the party in the cultist's lair in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Next character? Honoria, a ranger, the first character made for 2024 rules - hopefully they've fixed the ranger, and given me room to play a ranger without her turning into dear old Theresa. We shall see. 

It's been a good 50 years for the game; a good 42 years for me playing it. 

Dawn of a New Age?

Well, I might have had ambitions about posting on this blog, but it's been almost 9 months, and not a word. That is how it goes, but it is time to get in here. D&D is coming out with a new edition! or - revision to the current edition! or - what is this thing?

They have new books coming out: Player's Handbook due in a couple weeks, DMG later, Monster Manuel sometime next year. Is this a new edition? They say not; the 2024 - something - to D&D 5th edition. I guess. I don't really mean with make a lot of this - this has become something of a trend in the industry. Mongoose did it with Traveller - their 2nd edition rules came out I'm 2016, and they put out a revision in 2022 - a revision that was in fact pretty much the same book. Better art, better layout, some clean up here and there, a few changes to tables here and there, but nothing that changed the game. Transparently easy to play a game with both books at the table - the revision really is a revision top the look of the book, more than anything. And Paizo did something similar with Pathfinder 2nd Edition - their 2E came out in 2018, and a "remastered" edition came out in 2023. This had more changes than Traveller - including removing anything that could tie the books to WOTC's old OGL - but it's a similar idea. New books, same game.

That's what WOTC claims we will have. They tout its backward compatibility - they tout its improved look. Things like that. Will it be true? Have to have the things in hand, I suppose, to say. Now - there are a lot of the things out in the wild; people have been reviewing them. I have not seen one - I have watched some of the reviews, but not obsessively. This post is very definitely about the anticipation, and expectations. When the thing itself arrives (and I've put in a word at my FLGS for one) I will come back and see what I have to say about it. (I promise that post, is nothing else; hopefully before 7th edition comes out.) For now? What do I think is going to happen?

First: I will buy one. I would no matter what - I am a completist, I have the rest of the D&D versions (not true: I don't have ODD, Holmes Basic, Cook basic, or most of the 2E core books; I have access to most of them though), and would get this no matter what. I am curious, as well - what is in there? is it worth the hype? is there anything better in it? I want to know. I will probably get the DMG on those grounds alone - with curiosity maybe overcoming the completeness: can they make something of the DMG? the current one is a bit of a flop, I think. I want to see these books. There is that. And I have put in a word for one - the alt cover, specifically, since the alt PHB cover is just fantastic. I want to have one of these things.

Will I use it? I will certainly play around with it - make up characters, play some fights - try to play a couple adventures maybe - a starter set or something like the old adventures in the Infinite Staircase or Yawning Portal books. I expect the D&D games I am in will start using it - at least next year, or whenever we get out of the adventures we're in now - maybe sooner depending on what people think of it. So I will use them. 

On the other hand, I doubt I will run anything with them. That doesn't have a lot to do with the editions - that has to do with D&D. I have kind of gotten tired of D&D. Again - not really because of anything wrong with D&D - because I am tired of level/class based games. I like skill based systems. I would much rather devote my time to something like Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, maybe Cyberpunk or try out Pendragon or Vaesen or something instead. But this is taste, and doesn't have much to do with the editions, and isn't enough to make me stop playing D&D if someone else is willing to run - so - just keep it in mind.

So - still anticipating this new version - what do I think, based on what I have seen so far? I think - it looks like it will be more or less easy to switch. I don't think it is exactly compatible with the 2014 version, the way Mongoose 22 is compatible with Mongoose 16. There are twists in character creation, in classes and subclasses, in abilities, attributes and so on that I think will make blending the systems a bit off. But it looks easy to switch, without wrecking what you have. (Unless you are playing a swashbuckler.) 

From what I have seen - I like character creation - I think the redistribution of decision points among races, backgrounds and the like makes sense - makes the whole process easier, more rational, more modular. I like most of the specifics and I like the general al shape of it. Classes? seem fine - close enough to what they are to not require relearning anything; maybe simpler to explain to newbies - I think they have something in there warning new players about what classes are more work than others. Sounds good. The subclasses also seem fine - though a lot of the changes seem kind of fiddly. Just shifting things around in a maybe pointless effort to make everything sort of work the same. Most of the specifics seem fine - though there are a couple completely unexplainable decisions. Going from 567.5 cleric domains to 4 is going to be painful, especially since at least 6 of the 2014 cleric domains were absolute bangers, and only 2 of those bangers made the cut. (Light and Life; but Tempest might have been the best subclass in the game, and Grave, Forge, and Twilights are all monsters and - so are a bunch of others. Clerics were the boss class in 5e 2014.) 

Worse: in 10 years of playing, I have seen people play 2 subclasses of rogue (other than a couple random thieves and multi class scouts and the like). Arcane Triocksters made the cut, as they should. But there is no excuse for not making the Swashbuckler a core rogue subclass. They gave us a psionic thief over the swashbuckler? they tried to fix the assassin, rather than just give us the swashbuckler? This is a failure off the worst kind. Swashbucklers are as fundamental to the class as it comes. It is certainly what people want to play. Just unbelievable.

The rest? Rangers still seem to suck. They've done a bunch of stuff with weapons and fighters to make them more complicated. They've allegedly improved monks and maybe warlocks, tried to gimp paladins, etc. The overall impression I get though is that things are roughly the same - but a lot more fiddly. In fac fiddly is the word I would use to describe almost all the changes I have seen. Fiddly in two senses. First - they've just fiddled around with all these things. Nothing is really different - but it is full of little differences that are mostly just going to confuse people who can't keep their editions straight. And second - they've added a lot of things - like weapon properties and masteries - that are fiddly in the sense of adding a bunch of little stuff to think about. Things to remember in a fight; things to keep track of; new ways of keeping track of things. Will it matter? I don't know, until we get it - maybe not in practice - but who knows? It does sound, from a lot of the online comments I've seen, that they have added a lot of fodder for the min-maxers among us. Is that good? if you're a min-maxer, I suppose. I don't know.

So - that is all I have for now. We're getting close: I do look forward to seeing this and playing with it. I hope it works, I hope it doesn't annoy me (and worse than not putting swashbucklers in the core book.) I do look forward to seeing the thing itself - the art looks - gorgeous, if maybe a bit off. Their recent pastel color palette is not encouraging - though all the art I have seen is really great looking. Who knows. I am looking forward to it, even if I am kind of sour on D&D.