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It is my opinion that there is a huuuge difference between market fragmentation as in "one lighter D&D line and one rules-heavy D&D line", and market fragmentation as in "six or more worlds, dozens of mutually incompatible rule-systems and super-niche products". Although the argument is often...

No argument from me on the topic of high ability scores - in most AD&D games I have known, such attributes were commonplace. In my neck of woods, character generation was usually handled by distributing 80, in some rare cases 90 points among the six abilities (resulting in an average of 13.33...

Although I can't claim to be authoritive on this module (nor can anyone except Gary Gygax himself), I am 100% sure the design criteria didn't have much to do with "verisimilitude". Before any serious analysis or review, this needs to be established; otherwise, criticism is like faulting...

Clearly, this can be the only answer:

So is it a badly designed module or not? :] Isn't "doing what it is designed to do" the definition of well designed [for that specific purpose, obviously]?

Whoa, what? I flat out disagree. In the OD&D era, challenging the players wasn't just acceptable, it was the norm. In fact, it is still a valid play style - in part for the reason that it is the players sitting around the table, not their characters. Seriously, and I ask this because I don't get...

Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. Just how it should be. Alternatively, Judges Guild's Dark Tower.

It is often neglected that the original intended purpose of AD&D was standardization for tournament play. It later evolved into the default D&D game you would play, or graduate to from the basic sets available separately, but at the time of S1's publication, the default assumption was still in...

If it is an "one-screen city"; a place to buy supplies and get information, I describe a few locations the PCs may visit. For extended adventuring, however, I make a players' map.

Good post. Ideally, the Tomb is not a campaign objective. You don't enter it to recover the Gee-gaw of Gumph or any such foolishness. The tomb is just there, and you seek it out to see what material you are cut out of. The Tomb doesn't even treathen. That's why I dislike the Return to the Tomb...

Very little except popular opinion - which may reveal how the Tomb fits into the contemporary gaming culture, and how it is perceived by current fans, but little of substance. We can agree that S1 is one of the most polarizing modules in existence, and I guess the results will reflect this -...

Insulting bull----.

Mark: thanks a lot for your writeup! It was very entertaining to read how other people did in the tomb, and how the 3e conversion differs from the original (which has almost zero combat encounters, by the way - for good or ill).

See my sig! :D

Also, as yet another contribution to the present discussion, here are links to dungeon maps released by Judges Guild in the mid 1970s. These maps came with City State of the Invincible Overlord, and were unkeyed - basically blank maps you could fill in yourself. I find it significant that...

Allan's observation about Necromancer's dungeons is spot on, and highlight a difference between "archetypal" 1st edition AD&D and Original D&D dungeons. In the former case, much more attention seems to be given to populating the whole complex, and sort of "compressing it" to focus on the "meat"...

If you have browsed through the aforementioned free downloads page, you have already seen the Lenap region PDF and its wilderness map. Basically, the Wilderlands Boxed set is a world made up of eighteen such maps with their associated wilderness 'key', stuffed into a boxed set. Many of the other...

No. It is about lovably crafted characters, for good or ill. This may include levelling and kewl powers, or elaborate backstories, or both. Instead of mostly generic PCs serving as tools to the player's will, "modern" PCs are individual and highly sophisticated constructs. The plethora of tools...

To stimulate further discussion, here is another dungeon map from a previous auction (same authors). It is clearer to see what it is about. It depicts the sewers and other mazes below a large city.