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Always amazing to look back at how much business has changed in just my lifetime. TSR was putting out a lot of product back then, but these days a company with even that intensity of a release schedule might operate with barely a dozen employees. In those days you needed to manage your own...

I started DMing again this fall after a 14 year hiatus, which, other than a couple of one-shots and a failed attempt at starting an FFG Star Wars campaign which only lasted for a single session. I've now got a group of five regular and four occasional players who meet for five hours two Sundays...

I guess I must disagree... he has one great talent - he can take old wine and make it taste new again for a couple of hours. Last night, I felt like I was 12 years old, gawking at Return of the Jedi for the first time. Sure, it wore off after the movie ended... but for that time, I was having a...

Seemed a bit like an amped-up version of the Katana Fleet incident from Heir to the Empire. I liked that.

Seems that most campaigns put out by WotC and Paizo are really designed to go to 10th to 15th level - most Pathfinder adventure paths wrap up before 15th level, and with the exception of the previously mentioned Dungeon of the Mad Mage no WotC paths are meant to go to 20. Despite that, I agree...

Increasingly OSR seems to be where the action is at, along with 5th ed. Being an inveterate hacker and homebrewer, I like this trend.

My favorite solution, and one used often in fantasy fiction: the drawback. Usually in D&D this takes the form of a blatant penalty to one's abilities, but there's no need to make it that obvious. It can be more fun - and a great adventure hook - to make the drawback less mechanical. For...

"GMs are often gourmet cooks working at a comfort food restaurant filled with players." This is why I pour on the garlic and olive oil! Who can object?

Huh. Never knew that Carl Sargent the game designer was the same guy as Carl Sargent the parapsychologist. Not terribly shocking, though. Sad about his death... he wasn't that old. :(

The "filler" was part of what I loved about S&F - I never object to piles of cool new monsters! That book was just stuffed with goodness!

Yes, that certainly could be. He pretty much ceases to exist after 2000 or so, as far as Google is concerned.

Kobold Press' Midgard setting's Northlands are just about the most kitchen-sink setting of Northern European mythology you can find and still play with core 5e or Pathfinder. Plus you can go east of the Northlands and arrive in lands highly influenced by eastern European and central Asian myth...

David "Zeb" Cook was still writing for RPGs at least as late as 2010; I was just flipping through a Pathfinder module with his name in the credits a minute ago. According to Wikipedia, he's primarily been in computer game development since 2001... and in any case, he's older than Gary Gygax...

Understood if it wasn't quite what you were looking for. Another idea I had was to run a heavily modified Adventures in Middle Earth, with a spellcasting system that would work something like boons - the ability to cast a spell a few times might come from research, or be a gift from a god or...

Another 5e/3e heartbreaker that might be close to what you're looking for: https://lowfantasygaming.com It looks pretty good to me; I was thinking about picking it up and running it, but ended up running straight 5e Midgard instead.

ENWorld has long been frequented by many legends of D&D's early days, and most recently we've been enjoying Jim Ward and Ed Greenwood's reminiscences, among others. In that light, I was just wondering today... what ever happened to Rick Swan? Back in my early D&D player days in the mid to late...

I believe the name you're looking for is Joe Ybarra, legendary producer of many very early computer hits (including one of my perennial favorites, Starflight).

A few others: The Emerald Spire (Pathfinder) Tomb of Abysthor (another Necromancer 3e Module - about a third the size of Rappan Athuk at 8 levels/sublevels, but still pretty mega in my book, and a bit more digestible. Designed to take PCs from 2nd to around 8th or 9th level).

Mini-Dungeon Tome 130 mapped, stocked and plotted dungeons. It's pretty nifty.

Edralve but not Eclavdra? I didn't know who Edralve was - I had to look her up. But Eclavdra I'd know immediately!