You sound exactly like me, I want it to matter but completely forget about it. I think often the case is that someone, in 5e, casts light and then from then on we assume that there is enough light to not worry. I think at most I say that it messes with darkvision so if someone has cast light...
I've only just now come across delphi classics which has ebook collections for sale including: The (near) complete works of Robert E. Howard. Great for getting all of the collected works without having to spend time searching through various archives, even though that can be a lot of fun. Best...
I go for a gnome more than others, and I tend to lean into the old lore about them being illusionists. But normally if I'm wanting to play something shorter than human, it'll be a dwarf, even though they're no longer small.
I think it's a great idea, and it takes away one of the main complaints about AI, that being the assets taken from anyone. If they're able to leverage AI to help make their game quicker, without losing quality, then I think that's a win.
How well did it retain things in memory? I've heard that's quite a limiting factor but that was quite long ago, I think chatgpt is better at retaining things in memory now, but maybe not small details that might be important for a player.
One thing I do like about art in an RPG (or other) book is that it can really help define the setting by having a consistent art style. Art from like Brom and DiTerlizzi helped define the settings of dark sun and planescape respectively, dolmenwood has an art style for much of its colour pages...
I'm the same, when it comes to maps which are too detailed, makes it feel like everything has been discovered. This is one of the things I recall people praising about the original Greyhawk, it had vast expanses of nothing that allow the DM to fill in the spaces instead. Mind you, I'm also...
My advice is to remember, and remind everyone, that it is much deadlier than later editions. If players are coming from 5e, it can be a bit of a shock. I lost 2 PCs in 3 sessions when my friends and I started playing. I do love it though, currently running dolmenwood for friends and we're all...
I'm incredibly bad at organically integrating new PCs into a group so I tend to pretty much make them appear as well, sometimes just replacing NPCs with their new character or otherwise just going "This is Dave, he's part of the adventuring party now".
In one group I still ran if a single person was absent, maybe it was even if two were absent. If we got to 3 we would look at rescheduling. I think it was about 6 players in that group.
With other groups, we've never had a set day/time to play so normally we'd try sorting out the next session...
I've been reading some Conan comics, the dark horse volumes as well as going back and reading some of the old marvel savage tales comics. It was interesting to read some of the letters or editorials in those magazines as I've known for sometime that Red Sonja was a creation for marvel comics not...