In B/X notably this is true of ranged weapons and spell ranges but NOT spell areas and the like - helps prevent one AOE from killing hundreds and hundreds of soldiers in a mass combat scenario.
Its also encouragement for people who already backed at low levels to either upgrade to a higher tier or add add ons. The all-in tiers get to be a better "deal" as more stuff is added and you get a constant email barrage reminding you of that fact.
Yep its quite real. I've been following SimzArt for years and I think they're pretty much pulling from their whole body of work for all the book illustrations. 0% AI.
I believe the top ones that aren't 5e D&D are, by volume of players, in no particular order:
Pathfinder (both editions)
Call of Cthulhu (all editions)
D&D (All editions other than 5e + Retroclones)
World of Darkness (all versions)
Pretty much anything else is just a rounding error relative to 5e.
"perception" in Old school games is essentially the Search action - spend 10 minutes searching at most a 10x10 square, with a 17% chance of success each time, no retries.
This rule is so horrendously bad and unusable that, by necessity, people started making up their own way of resolving...
People typically are referring to OD&D and the Basic series when they say Old School was simpler, not AD&D and definitely not AD&D second edition. If they do use ad&d as a reference point, they ignore like 90% of the rules as optional.
Old school was birthed in 1974 and died at your choice of...
I ran the premade module in it to decent success. Trying to use the campaign tools was frustrating and I ultimately gave up and pivoted to a different campaign frame. It ultimately is a better book to steal ideas from than to use as the sole source for a campaign, imo.
The art, design, and ideas in LL's stuff is really really good. They're very fun to read or flip through.
They tend to lack polish/specifics though that make them more challenging to use for actual play as-is. Specifically I tried to run Wind Wraith which was very challenging to use and...
I can attest to this. The PF1 campaign I was in broke down for this exact reason around level 9 or 10, where the DM physically couldn't keep track of the buff/bonus/etc in an encounter where he had to run multiple spellcasters, and had like 30 tabs open in his browser just to try. This was...
As some examples of early game complexity. How do you draw a weapon or potion?
In PF1: you can draw a weapon as a move action, which means you can't move during your turn. But, if you have a BAB of +1 (like a level 1 fighter), you can draw a weapon as a free action during a move action in...
Maybe 2 hours, then I started running the game. I had my group(s) read the rules and we started playing immediately, pretty well without too many issues.
I have also had a group NOT read anything and we learned-as-they-played through the beginner box. Again, no issues.
My advice from running multiple campaigns with OSE:
Your Table Will Vary. Change the game as needed while you play to make it more enjoyable for yourself and your players - talk to them about what they do/don't like. Don't do something a certain way just because you've seen it done that way...