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I would add to this, in a simulationist and "skilled play" orientation, the dungeon should react to the players. Inhabitants notice the party and redeploy. Traps can be reset or improvised. The big boss actively strategizes to slow the party down, or divert them. Personally, for me the fun...

If you want your D&D sessions to feel like dramatic storytelling -- smash 'em up video games, pro wrestling, or action movies -- then controlling and nullifying threats is detrimental to that atmosphere. If you want your D&D to sit more on the simulationist end of the spectrum, and keep the...

Color me intrigued by this system. I loved Earthdawn for many reasons, but on the rules front its baroque stepping system stands out. Rolling d20+d8 instead of d20+4 is pretty fun, especially if rolling high gives you something extra and it's not just for passing the success threshold.

I'd say that sums it up nicely. When you have the time and patience to do a deep dive into the books, the rationales for many rules become understandable and you can see how about 70% of the content holds together in a nicely balanced system, while 30% can be jettisoned or modified. But that...

Interesting essay. I can imagine a system where each player has a "react token" that they can spend on a menu of minor actions out of turn, including the opportunity attack but also bonus action, position adjustments, helping an ally, etc. Maybe the main rules change is that players don't have...

I think the effort needed to systemize the XP for monsters ub AD&D is disproportionate to the benefit, and a source of "false accuracy" because the value of most special abilities is context dependent. A swarm of giant centipedes is a deadly encounter even for mid-level party due to the risk of...

Robin Hobb's "Realm of the Elderlings" series that started with Assassin's Apprentice is pure gold (but I haven't read the last trilogy yet). It has 13 hefty novels.

This was one of the biggests shifts in the game experience between 1e/2e and later editions. When spellcasters no longer needed to fear getting disrupted, they had to nerf many iconic spells to keep some kind of parity. So from 3rd edition on, spells gradually weakened and became more like...

I don't think I ever played RAW. As a teenager, we didn't master the rules, ignored things we didn't understand fully or that were too fiddly (WvsAC, detailed initiative decision tree vs simple d6) made liberal use of suggestions in Dragon; I don't think we even used surprise correctly at that...

My interpretation of p.65 is that if a spellcaster begins a combat round adjacent to a melee combatant then they should not even attempt casting. "Spells cannot be cast while violently moving -- such as running, dodging a blow, or even walking normally." To get your normal AC during melee you...

See this is one of those cases where GG shot himself in the foot and then insisted it was fine. RAW initiative is MUCH easier to run with one simple change (my house rule): "The side with the lower result on the d6 goes first and their actions start on the segment indicated by the result. The...

Fun idea and nice write-up! I always had the impression that Snarf was about 5 feet tall (medium). Shorter than most humans he meets but significantly taller than the robot (Aveear?) and goblins/kobolds/etc. I have the softcover collection somewhere, and I think it has AD&D stats for the main...

No. 1 - Mage (as a player). No. 2 - Iron Heroes (Monte Cook one-off, kind of a 3e reinvention with 12 non-magical PC classes). Runner-up: his Diamond Throne setting. No. 3 - Traveller

Magnificent cover. One of my all-time favorites! @M.T. Black reading this column motivated me to pick up a few back issues from a local used bookstore. Training costs in AD&D are primarily a way of siphoning off the gold that players need to collect to gain levels. If you do away with...

AD&D is a statistically interesting case. The odds of rolling 15 or better on 3d6 are about 10% (19/216). In Gary's world we can infer that to get tangible bonuses from ability scores your PC should be in the 90th percentile. A few months ago I asked myself: how many NPCs in Hommelet have at...

I have used AD&D psionics in serious games, and I like psi in my fantasy, but I won't lift a finger to defend the PH appendix version either.

If the PC doesn't spend any game time on collecting and tracking mistletoe, reduce all spell power by 50% assuming oak leaves or other improvised natural ingredients. The PC is still casting 3rd level spells at level 3 and using one of the fastest XP tables in the game, so that spell power...

Randomness, lucky rolls and treasure drops, and exploiting luck to build your PC's legend were definitely part of the core game. However, the enormous power gap between randomly generated characters, via ability score and hit points, is one of the very few things about AD&D that I actively...

Weapon spec is so good that in my campaign I felt the need to give single-classes clerics, thieves and MUs their own forms of specialization. Clerics - similar to the Suel pantheon series in Dragon but with more consistent bonuses. Not as powerful as 2e specialist priests. MUs - similar to 2e...

Let's give the full arcane spellcasters a d4 hit die again! :devilish: