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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheHand" data-source="post: 9768690" data-attributes="member: 88835">Here’s the spinoffs and adjacent I own and have played and my take…TotV: if you’re looking for 2014 style D&D with some new tricks and cleaned up classes, Tales of the Valiant is a good choice. I see it as a sort of parallel evolution of 5e 2024, where different choices were made. It’s also not hard to mix the content, and it has a great monster book.Level Up: Level Up is not a radical shift from 5e, but as it says on the tin, it adds advanced features and increased complexity. It also has new takes on familiar classes. For a few 5e campaigns, my group ended up adopting some of the features and classes (like the Marshall!), but not all of it. And this worked well, it’s very easy to “bolt on” desired rules from A5e to vanilla 5e. The monster book is also great, especially if you want monsters that have more varied abilities. I would even throw in Level Up monsters in otherwise normal 5e games I ran to act as “leaders” of common foes.Shadowdark: Now we reverse course from Advanced DnD. Shadowdark, taking its inspiration from older Basic DnD, it applies a lot of modern sensibilities to old school rules. Shadowdark isn’t one of my big go-to games, but I think it’s great for one-shots, quick dungeon crawls, and introducing brand new players to rpgs.Dragonbane: It’s in the list, but Dragonbane is more of an evolution of “Basic Roleplay” than DnD. As someone who used to play a hacked up Stormbringer rpg, this one has strong appeal for me. It’s “grittier” than DnD but not as super lethal as some other games, and actually has pretty generous healing rules. It’s magic scales slower and martial-type characters get heroic abilities which keeps mages/non-mages much more closely matched. And while you build your character with a a class-like archetype, you can level them up however you want since it’s all skill based. Its rules for “Monsters”, which are big epic foes, are also very fun for GMs, but also very easy. This game does a good job of threading the needle of versatility and complexity, and I think it’s easier to learn and play than 5e.Daggerheart: I’m a newcomer to this one but I really fell in love with it. I see it grabbing features from lots of other games, both new and old, and somehow seamlessly blending them. For heroic fantasy gaming this is my new number 1. It captures a lot of the things I loved about 4e, combined it with a lot of story/narrative game content dead, and somehow makes it easier to play than 5e.So bottom line: grittier fantasy gaming I go with Dragonbane, and more heroic fantasy gaming I go with Daggerheart. Simple, quick one-shots I will reach for Shadowdark.</blockquote>

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