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Neutral doesn't mean peaceful, after all!

I don't think it was so much about keeping the classes equivalent. It was more about providing appropriate challenges for the classes. A magic-user had more powerful tools to accomplish his goals, so he needed to acquire more experience points to make the adventure challenging enough. If you've...

Oh, you mean constant missing and the fly dying of old age while it buzzes around your head? :p

Edena, What about some Lawful Evil human races?

Speaking of wishes, I've always wondered how people worded wishes to raise ability scores. A wish can only raise a score a certain amount depending on how high it is, so what did a player character say? "I wish to be stronger"? "I wish I had a 16 strength"? "I wish to raise my strength score"...

Edena, On the one hand, you seem to be talking about PC-instigated setting-changes, whereas on the other hand I believe Gary was referring to a situation like one in which an entire dungeon is eliminated without the PCs actually adventuring in it. There is nothing game-breaking about the PCs...

I was playing D&D and AD&D before the cartoon was made, but I didn't keep up with the gaming community or industry back then. Therefore, when the Unearthed Arcana appeared in Toys-R-Us one holiday shopping season, I was taken by surprise. I looked inside and saw barbarians, cavaliers, and...

Yeesh! Talk about split move and fire! :)

Hi, Gary! I was wondering how many rooms tend to appear on an average dungeon level that you devise for your games. I tend to have 20–30 keyed areas on any given level, on a letter-sized five-squares-per-inch piece of graph paper. How 'bout you? Anyone else should pipe up too!

Thanks for the quick reply Gary!

% chance to know spell Hey there, Gary! There's always been some debate as to whether newly-created AD&D magic-users check the entire 1st level spell list for spells known immediately upon character creation, or if they only check spells as they come across them. I therefore have two...

Hey, Gary! I was wondering how much of a new dungeon you create (for your own DMing, not necessarily for publication) before your players enter it for the first time. This isn't a level-of-detail question, mind you, it's a quantity question. Do you just map and key a single level, several...

Hee! No worries there. I'm constantly suggesting new ways she can gleefully murder our party members. And if I ever feel like taking revenge, I can do it in the next game of Paranoia that I run! Thanks again for the reply. Now here's a followup question (and please forgive my ignorance)...

Who's got the map? Hi, Gary! A situation came up this evening that made me wonder how things were done back when D&D was new and you had a score of players crammed in your basement. My girlfriend is also my GM (ain't love grand?), but I'm not attending tonight's D&D game. Since I'm usually the...

Why do these seem so mysterious? Take Gary's description of them from the Dragon article, think of how Gary turned other archetypes into character classes, and you'll get it. Mystic: An oracle, wise woman, seer, fortune teller, astrologer. Consults the runes, the ogham, the stars, the planets...

I'm not Gary, but I'm pretty sure I know the answer to these. Usually, once you establish how many men a figure represents, the word man means figure. Where the combat tables say "1 die per man," it means "1 die per figure." If you have an army of 20 figures, do you really think they...

Wonderful! This is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. I am reminded of Judge's Guild's Tegel Manor, which was published in this very… er, manner. Heh. I tend to use strong persuasion. These days I usually announce this policy before the start of the game, to get past the inevitable...

Missing players Hi, Gary! Thanks for answering my previous question about detail and materials. You only missed one part: if another referee took up your prepared notes for a game, how much sense would they make to him? I have another question for you, this one relating to the early games in...

Preparation Hi, Gary! I know that you like to improvise a lot of your game-judging, but I'd love to hear about how much preparation you usually put into an adventure before you run it. Do you just make up everything whole-cloth? Do you draw a few chicken-scratches for a map, then take it from...