Recent content by Spindly

Excellent post, thanks for sharing. I'll gently re-cite my above comment. Yes, Conan escaped from dungeons. No, Howard did not describe parties of functional specialists drawn from the races in LotR with only one addition (gnomes—not coincidentally the least played race). The primary template...

Fascinating history, thank you! But the Moria pattern still fits and nothing else we have seen does nearly as well. Aristotle's typology of causes might be helpful here: Chainmail was the efficient cause, Moria the formal: AristotleCausesNotes

(replied in a separate thread—think the evidence indicates otherwise)

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think the concerns you raise are fundamental for some questions but not others. The core of AD&D is parties of adventurers defined by their races, professions ("classes"), experience, and possessions (elfin chainmail saves the first-level fighter from the...

Hhmm. Just reread LotR. AD&D Player's Handbook seems pretty straight from it. Fighters (Boromir), rangers, thieves (Bilbo), druids (Radagast the Brown), wizards. Dwarves (Gygax's dwarves are very Gimli- and Balin-ish), halfings, half-elves (who can be rangers), the minor spell abilities of...