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I see a room for morale rules in an adventure. In an adventure, combat situations are tied to story elements that form a basis for morale decisions. Is the opponent encountered at home, protecting somebody or just passing through? What motive does the opponent have for fighting? All these things...

I think it is a death spiral for the guys in the front, for the reasons you mentioned. Plus, a system like this requires more administration than it is worth in my opinion: how many times have I been healed before? How many hp do I heal less with every healing again? To me, that seems too much...

To go through a small adventure like the one Mr. Mearls described in only one hour is a desireable goal in my opinion. If you don't have much time to play you can do something like this and still feel like you have accomplished something. That is something to build on and is good for attracting...

Dragons in 7E should be handled with the appropriate care and utmost respect.... ....or they will get very angry and try to eat you.

You can have that feeling, as you admit, without random tables. But this really is a big difference between out styles of play then. Because even though the Triangle of Zinfab is not interesting for the band of worg riders, there needs to be story about the worg riders. And maybe you can come up...

I think I understand your point. About the troll and the bear cave, though: What is the story here? The bear, the cave or the troll? The main problem I have with wandering monster tables is that most often in my experience, they distract from the actual story. So if the story in your example is...

It is a question of plausibility. If you look at a character sheet and see a martial daily power you have to find a plausible way to explain why this martial power can only be used once. Why not 2, 3 many times. And I think that some people have a hard time with that and therefore do not like...

No, I am not. ToH is an example of adverserial GMing. Many other adventures, of which I have named 6 really important ones from the old days, however, are. I do not know the abbreviation GDQ. I also have not read anything from you about what old-school-game is for you, since you are only saying...

You put the question very bluntly. "Idiot" is such a strong word. But I think that "unfairness" does not make a better game, no. Wandering monsters rolled out of a table with no connection to the story make a much lamer game to me. They serve no purpose at all. In my opinion, stuff like this...

HP in 4E are not physical wounds only, they are a form of will-to-survive, endurance, morale, etc. Also, DnD has never been a game with a death spiral such as Rolemaster, for example. In any edition of DnD, every character could fight or cast spells just as well with full hp or one hp. In my...

I think this sums up very nicely why a lot of people have so many problems with 4E. While there never was a problem to assume that spellcasters in a vancian system can do certain things only once per day and then have to rest for 8 hours, daily martial powers will not convince this crowd. So in...

That people are arguing about what somebody writes on boards like this is the purpose of boards like this. And the aspect that ToH differentiates between being an experienced player playing an experiened character seems to be one of the main characteristics of old-school-play. As I have...

Thank you for writing this. I agree completely about the awful design. But because of that, I really cannot say I love this module. Old-school play makes a difference between the experience of the player and the experience of the character. And adventures were designed that way. In G1-3 and...

I don't know if Mr. Nock thinks this, but when talking about ToH, I do. There is a lot of room to write something very harsh about ToH, IMO, but since it is futile to discuss overall taste, all that is left is to say that we could not disagree more.

Yes, absolutely, I unuderstand what you are trying to say. And I agree with your sentiment. But The Tomb of Horrors (and that is what I was talking about) is an adventure completely based on adversarial DMing, wouldn't you agree? And I must admit that this sort of game has never suited my taste...

These again, are myths, in my opinion. It is not "unfair" or "unbalanced" to overcome obstacles with no obvious or simple solutions. There are these kinds of challenges in any edition of DnD, including 4E. Why are you still riding the train of "non-old-school gamers are less creative than...

I hope I am mistaken, but: Is the OP trying to diss non-old-school gameplay? It is nothing but a myth that old school play has more verisimilitude than, say, 4E play. There is nothing plausible about a fireball burning every single treasure in a room. There is nothing plausible in being able...

I remember how we needed to try out different things to find out what a magic item did back then as well. I did not like that back then and would not want that for a +2 weapon, though. And a bag of holding is a bag of holding. Actually, I do not miss having to fiddle with magic items at all...

I think that castles and keeps have nothing to do with character design, but rather with campaign design. And the campaign is based on what all players want, not just what the GM wants. A problem arises when a campaign has nothing to do with PCs building castles and keeps but a class' power is...

I don't think that DnD has ever been that kind of game. Midlevel characters never faced a real chance to be killed by a single longsword attack with the RAW, for example. Low level, maybe. But then again, that probably was the reason why some people started play with 3rd level characters. They...