Um. Okay. Look, I appreciate some of your input. And I will certainly defer to you knowledge of 3.5e+. But you seem to have very little to close to no actual knowledge of early D&D. I could be wrong. But it is not evident in what you are writing.
I started playing in 1977. I played both Basic/Expert, and AD&D 1e. I've played D&D for 38 years. So please, put the "My D&D Experience Wiener is Bigger Than Yours" argument back in your pants. We have a disagreement. That's not the same as you being smarter or more experienced than me simply because we disagree. It's entirely possible, and a possibility you should consider, that we simply see things differently despite having similar backgrounds with the game.
Early D&D was modeled after wargaming (Arneson) and expanded on by Gygax, and had a rotating cast of players in an underground dungeon with little-to-no plot overriding plot, often involving items such as a fountain that would generate monsters. If you look at the early modules, whether they are BECMI (Chateau D'Amberville) or not (Barrier Peaks, Tsojcanth), the one thing you will note is the conspicuous absence of a "Boss Fight."
STOP talking about the "boss fight". That's a strawman. It's not what I was talking about, it was never what I was talking about, and I've explained that twice already. I said it was RELATED TO the boss fight (because a Boss is often a single creature) in my first post about this, but then said it's NOT the boss fight and that I am just talking about the Solo monster. If you look at those early adventures, there are LOTS AND LOTS of rooms with just one single monster in them - a solo. That's what I am talking about. Get it now?
'If your concept of a "Boss Fight" is just "one creature" without any other connotation, then, um, sure. Sometimes you fought a single creature. But that's not a "Boss Fight," that's fighting a single monster.
Well given I explained that twice already, yes.
The concept of the "Boss Fight" that I see with pathfinder and 3.5e players (and 4e players), which is to say, a single, very difficult creature you face after numerous other encounters is one that is foreign to me as a grognard. But maybe I wasn't in the right grognard circles?
There were some boss fights way back when (though again, this is a distraction and not the topic I was referring to). Gygax liked Demogorgon and Orcus. He liked Bahamut and Tiamat. He liked Juiblex and Yeenoghu, Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Dispater, and Geryon. He liked Baphomet, Fraz-Urb'luu, Graz’zt, and Pazuzu and the devils Belial, Mammon, and Moloch. He liked Lolth, Zuggtmoy, Tharizdun, Iuz, Iggwilv, and Vecna. Some of these were major villains in his games, others he imagined would be used by DMs in their games as major villains. He did imagine PCs would end up eventually facing these creatures, often to end campaigns. This was a pretty well established concept for him. But, again, that's not really the topic I was speaking to.
And now we have strawman. Once a person has gone to arguing about arguing, we have reached apotheosis, haven't we. Then again, it's easier to say, "Strawman" than to to note that you haven't provided anything to back up your claims other than to state that old modules occasionally have a single monster, which, apparently, is a "Boss Fight." The more you know?
Only because I said Solo Monster, and then put in parenthesis "
related to a boss fight" and you ran with "boss fight" as if that was what I was talking about, despite my repeatedly saying "whoa hey wait that's not what I am talking about".
