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There's another issue, because they do have a decent chance against the thief. (The thief isn't going to take the party head-on anyways, and that's mentioned in the adventure.) I think running into a purple worm or giant slug in D1, which even a 9th level party could beat, illustrates this...

Hmmm … Castle Amber, levels 3-6. Table on page 4, it's possible to run into 12th level magic-user or 14th level fighter; per the table on page 19, you can encounter a 14th level thief or an 11th level magic-user (who might befriend the party; time to roll reaction!). All three of these would be...

Let me look through my sundry OD&D/AD&D adventures: A1: These did not have level as a component for random encounters at all, neither for which table to use, nor for how many encountered. A2: Likewise. A3: Likewise. A4: As best I can tell, there were no random encounters in this adventure. B1...

Well, yeah, but it is a roleplaying game, after all. To be a game, there has to be a chance of losing. It can't be too often, of course, since part of the lure is continuity, but it has to happen sometime or else there's no sense of risk, and hence no pride in beating a tough foe. And losing is...

More importantly, we have mental associations with the words "demon" and "devil." When we say those words, we all understand them on some level because they're a normal part of the English language. Some of the monsters constructed purely for D&D also have these connotations of meaning, like...

Most of the hysteria had died down by then. The game was no longer novel and the basics of it were by then understood in popular culture. Possibly more importantly, the dam had broken with the whole Satanic panic, when the HBO movie about McMartin basically said that it was all bunkum and...

Ask me about GURPS/DFRPG in Minneapolis

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Yep. This is a big reason not to get attached to your pre-crafted storylines. Even better yet, ditch them entirely, and find threads the players like in play. They love the freedom. Elminster may be the most unlikeable NPC ever.

I can see the wizard weaknesses being an issue but the 15-minute adventuring day? That never happens in OSR games because of wandering monsters. Those are a sure-fire way to get rid of the 15-minute adventuring day since there's always something preventing you from resting up without being bothered.

Plus, Minmei isn't annoying in the Japanese version.

It seems that folks are listening to the exploits of the Capone Speakeasy boys and wanting to play the game, too.

The new names didn't help at all. They took creatures that I could imagine in some way by the name alone and replaced them with syllable salad.

More like Jewish humor, which is normal for Mad.

We probably can even now. The Tolkien suit involved the Battle of Five Armies game, which was a more substantive copyright breach; hobbits and ents and balrogs went as a precaution at the same time.

I concur. It was Rolemaster, one of the most complex rules sets of all-time, slightly stripped-down, which didn't help matters. It had no real network of players. One of my friends bought it with his mom's money; we all regarded it as something as a quirky novelty, and never played it.

Oh heavens yes. Especially Tim Kask after the original publication. There’s a long interview with him up on YouTube about that time. Eric Holmes deserves credit for realizing the game was not self-explanatory. (I’m a little curious who actually edited the original boxed set. Kask isn’t...

1) If you published a paper and didn’t give at least a byline to someone who created, developed, tested, and sent you draft notes, you’d face an inquiry. In short, Arneson was a factor in publication, and he reviewed drafts from Gygax with publication as the clear goal. In 1973, Gygax clearly...

Well … Arneson didn't just have ideas. He had a game, and he ran it for about two years before showing it to Gygax. That's not dabbling. Arneson absolutely did test his ideas on his own; what he showed to Gygax was the result of two years of testing. You do cite that guy. There would be hell to...

I’ll relate what Bob Meyer told the group when I played Blackmoor with him in late October 2017. This jibes with what Arneson had on his website (look in the Wayback Machine for the archive): Meyer was playing a hero, and his hero came upon a bridge under which lived a troll. Meyer, figuring...