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1979, Holmes Basic.

Warlord: Backseat driver who constantly tells everyone how to play their characters (i.e., what people who don't like the warlord think the warlord actually is).

“Someone once criticized the concept of the saving throw as ridiculous... Could a man chained to a rock, they asked, save himself from a blast of red dragon’s breath? Why not? I replied. Imagine that the figure, at the last moment, of course, manages to drop beneath the licking flames, or finds...

Here's another example that takes race out of the equation. I have run games for deaf players in the past. Frequently, some of them ask, "Can my character be deaf?" They are not asking this because they want to take a disadvantage for extra points, or because they want me to make in-game...

That just makes me think of this:

Pretty much this. This is a situation where us "old white cishet guys" might be better served by just shutting up and listening instead of immediately trying to reframe the situation as about us ("but at my table I..."). The Game Police will not come and stop you if you have brutish, stupid...

A few years ago, I DMed a group through a small dungeon where the first door was trapped. It wasn't even a very severe trap, just something that would knock off a few hit points ... but the party proceeded to treat every single subsequent door in the dungeon like it was an unexploded bomb. Even...

There was an article in The Dragon that had a 1E bard class that was not a sadistic practical joke. We used that on the rare occasions someone wanted to play a bard.

B.A.'s fear of flying doesn't strike me as much of a disadvantage in RPG terms. Was there ever an episode where, for instance, the team couldn't get him on the plane and he stayed home, or arrived late because he insisted on driving instead? If not, are there really any measurable consequences...

People actually used those rules? My group back in the day found them arbitrary and tiresome -- do you really want to have to stop and roll a save for every single piece of gear every time you get hit with a lightning bolt or dragon breath? -- and never bothered with them.

These days, I find it less interesting to play a character who's a platform for magic items. Yeah, it's cool to have a magic sword that can strike someone's head off ... but only if you get very lucky with the dice, and anyone with even a single level of fighter can pick up the same sword and do...

Tenra Bansho Zero has a "reverse death spiral" damage mechanic where you get stronger as you take more damage in a fight. It's only temporary bonuses rather than actual leveling up, though.

The older I get, the less interest I have in the super-timid, poke-everything-with-a-10'-pole style of play -- on both sides of the DM screen. It especially annoys me when this attitude creeps from dungeon crawling into other genres. I've had players in superhero games worry endlessly about...

There's nothing about Cortex Prime that requires an elaborate backstory, unless you consider an "elaborate backstory" to be anything more than writing down class and race on your character sheet. All you need to know is what your character's Traits are. Similarly, consider Fate. All you have to...

There's also a PFS adventure for 2E, The Flooded King's Court, where the PCs end up putting on a play to impress a goblin king.

The 3.5E rule was a bit less forgiving: projectiles that hit were always considered destroyed, while projectiles that missed had, as noted, a 50% chance of being destroyed. See here. Of course, that makes ammunition bookkeeping even more tiresome, since you have to keep track of hits and misses...

A few more of my favorite : Fellowship is a game about a little band of heroes going on a quest to defeat the evil Overlord, just like in those books with the rings. Shared world-building is expected; if you're playing the Elf, for instance, you're the one who decides what elves are like and...

Has anyone mentioned City of Mist yet? It's kind of a cross between urban fantasy and superheroes that reminds me of Matt Wagner's Mage comics.

Because they annoy old-schoolers who think the fantasy genre stopped in 1989.

See, that just proves how well the scrolls work. I can also, if you like, sell you this rock that keeps tigers away.