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Then you aren't willing to see or fix the problem. If you came here expecting a kumbaya celebrating your puissance as a GM, I'm afraid you're not going to get it from me: Your player was right. You were railroading him. You don't get to play the "if you do this, then you have to roll up a new...

Sure. And one of the ways to respond to this situation is "running away". But apparently that completely viable option isn't on your Pre-Approved List of Acceptable Ways to Deal With This Challenge and the penalty for that is "you don't get to play your character any more". IOW, he's completely...

You're conveniently forgetting the part where your hypothetical 5E could simultaneously be several different games often with completely incompatible gameplay. OD&D didn't do that. And it's specifically that kind of multi-system / dual-statting support (which is what you'd effectively need) that...

It's important to understand, of course, that this version of the game never existed for any class except the fighter. And it hasn't been true for the fighter since 1985. (Arguably 1977, but most grognards will probably never accept that prestige classes originated in 1st Edition.)

I am absolutely convinced that when WotC uses the term "modular" that this is not what they mean. Of course, I'm basing that on the belief that WotC's designers are not insanely bent on publishing a version of D&D which (a) would be more alienating to new players than any other edition of the...

I am not a fan of 4th Edition. (Tried it. But it since it was deliberately made to suck at doing everything I enjoy about playing RPGs, I didn't like it.) But the concept of "bloodied" was so inherently useful that I found myself reflexively using it in my 3E prep notes. Sure, in 4E the...

It depends heavily on how you look at it. OD&D to 1E: The big shift here was in the number of rules. The AD&D core rulebooks were very explicitly attempting to create an "official" ruleset; whereas OD&D was basically written to be unplayable unless DMs customized the rules. 1E to 2E: 2E...

The issue is complicated by bad GMs, bad players, and also bad rules. Good rules facilitate GM rulings by giving them the tools to make effective and consistent rulings. For example, let's pose an issue like: "Should traffic laws be created and enforced to safeguard against bad drivers; or...

Translation: The only way this works is if the version of the game I like is the "core" and everything I don't like is "optional". Which is a great design principle if they were designing a game exclusively for Odhanan. But they aren't. And everyone else has different ideas of what "the version...

Yes. I fully encourage you to actually do some meaningful research into (a) the history of the term labyrinth; (b) it's earliest known usages; and (c) the actual story of Daedalus' labyrinth (and its variants). But I'm just not interested in doing your homework for you.

But it's not what the labyrinth built by Daedalus to hold the minotaur was. (You don't need Ariadne's skein to find your way back out if the path is unicursal.) It's unclear when scholars first started attempting to treat labyrinths and mazes as being two different things; but the origin is...

One key distinction of the Adventure Path (when the term was coined by Paizo) was that it specifically took the players through a large chunk of levels. Under that distinction, tournament sequences like G1-3 and A1-4 wouldn't qualify. But I would tend to agree that when G1-3 became GDQ, you...

I was going to recommend Putting the Magic in Magic Items, but I'm not sure it will be relevant: It assumes that the player is actually interested in playing a roleplaying game and not a tactical simulator. The fundamental problem here seems to be that you don't really care about the game...

... you mean that the initiative rules in AD&D which were taken directly from a tactical wargame are less like a tactical wargame than 3E's initiative system? That's... well... umm... I'm not really sure what can be said about that. So... AD&D's combat system is more free-form because of what...

Not really. AFAICT, from a legal standpoint, backing a Kickstarter project is no different than preordering a product. Last time I reviewed their terms of service, Kickstarter was very careful to make sure they weren't "caught in the middle"; but the creator of the project is still legally...

Okay... What the heck are you talking about? AD&D has an initiative system. It has a system for determining how far people can move and still make an attack. The example you're proffering here would actually play out exactly the same way in both systems (using AD&D2 specifically here): 1...

I think it is true in 4E, but I don't think it's inherent to the concept. I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I think conflating tactical/CaS and strategic/CaW is a mistake. For an example of what a CaS approach to strategic play would look like, consider the Descent boardgame: Each...

I would guess either inefficient record-keeping or analysis paralysis or both. Actual mechanical resolution in 3E increases slightly in the case of iterative attacks, but otherwise remains essentially unchanged at higher levels. Meanwhile, actual encounter length in terms of the number of...

From the OP: "People who want Combat as Sport want fun fights between two (at least roughly) evenly matched sides..." From the song: "To fight the unbeatable foe..." No offense, but: What the heck are you talking about? I know the OP focused on CaW as being about turning an even fight into...

Can't blame you. The Quick Primer for Old School Gaming is a decent (if heavily biased and frequently nonsensical) manifesto for GM fiat. But it's hardly a holistic appraisal of what gaming was like "back in the day" and the things it tries to claim were inherent in old school game systems are...