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Any D&D historians out there: did Anderson or Gygax develop the idea of alignment?

I personally thought D&D could get by just fine without monks. Just my opinion, I have no compelling argumnent to support this.

The inclusion of psionics in 1st ed. always seemed rather odd to me. The rules were very quirky and did not seem to fit at all into the medieval/Tolkeinese themes and flavor of D&D. What is an abillity like "Molecular Manipulation" doing in a game with knights and dragons? "Ego Whip vs. Mind...

Why are people complaining about this thread having been "done" already? If you don't like the theme of a thread, don't click on it. Regardless if its your 1st post or your 1000th post, you should be able start a thread on what ever you want, as long as its vaguely relevent to RPGs and is not...

Yes Slobber, I've fired a shotgun and a lot of other firearms as well. I was trying to evoke an image of something powerful that could hurt you if not handled properly. I think that describes a shotgun rather well. I agree that not all legendary account of magic portray magic as dangerous...

By "classic" D&D I mean the game as set forth in the 1st edition Advanced D&D hardcovers. If this is not generally considered classic, I'm sorry. However, its not hughly relevent to the general question I'm posing.

mm, I choose the three hardcover books because they propelled D&D from a small niche to a game with wide appeal. If D&D had remained an odd assortment of little softcovers, we wouldn't be playing it today.

The whole notion that character's gain experience ponits by killing things and taking their stuff is legacy of classic D&D that I think the game would be better off without. 3.5 still tells DMs to do big math problems to figure out XP for PCs. This promotes the idea that killing = leveling...

D&D is adding so many new classes, both base and prestige, that I'm beginning to fear that the game will slowly collapse under its own weight. I look a characters posted on the Rogue's Gallery and I can't make heads or tails of a lot of them because I don't own the "the Book of X" or the...

m, thanks for the interesting footnote.

Ahh...Rogue you ARE actually an attorney! You are right. So much time and effort was wasted on business and legal squabbles during the formative years of D&D. Pity.

Here's my short list: -No alignment: adds nothing to the game in terms of mechanics or roleplaying. Alignments are simplistic, confining and have led to endless, pointless debates (ex. If a LG PC kills a helpless orc is he now CE?) -Magic as a commodity: the price lists for magic items and...

Rogue, let me pose my question another way. If knowing what you know about D&D c. 2005 you could go back to a time before D&D emerged in its "classic" form (i.e. 1st edition) what would you change? Is there anything in the core themes and concepts of "classic" D&D c. 70's that you would alter...

Just to clarify, this discussion assumes that the three core books (PHB, DMG, MM) of 1st edition represent the "classic" D&D that influenced all that followed.

Although D&D was created some thirty years ago, many of the core concepts of the game, for instance alignment and “Vancian” magic, have endured virtually unchanged and remain central to D&D in its current form. For the sake of discussion, pretend you could go back in time and become the...

Yes Jsewell, I did think it was dreadful when I was a kid. I was embrassed by how bad it was because when I told other kids I played D&D, they often reply "you mean like in that dumb cartoon."

This PC is a joke, right? Please tell me its a parody or a mockery or a parody of a mockery of a sham.

A banal and formless realm where people and places mysterious change names and a great seas and mountains change locations over night! No, its not some Planescape variant. Our DM did zero prep work for his "campaign" (note quotation marks), can't remember the names of his own towns and NPCs...

Don't be fooled! This poll is a clever trap. By picking one of these weapons you are associating yourself with one of the sappy characters from the truly dreadful 80's cartoon "Dungeons & Dragons."

I got the original rules in the blue boxed set for Christmass (1978?). Instead of dice it came with cardboard chits you had to cut out. I'd seen poly dice but had no where to buy them. I remember my Mom accidentally threw out the cup containing the d20 chits. I was eleven and I had to fight...