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Actually, I think that Neutral Good is more Good than either Lawful Good or Chaotic Good. Law and Chaos both reflect tendencies that can compromise Good. Neutrality with respect to the Law-Chaos conflict/dichotomy leaves a character free to pursue Good even in ways that offend either Law or Chaos.

Moorcock borrowed the Law vs. Chaos thing from Anderson, who was before LOTR but not much (only months).

Looking up 'wrath' and 'justice' in the section of the index on 'imprisonment' in the index. Looking them up under their own headings won't give you unique chapter and verse.

Well, one thing is that those of us who are not familiar with the Bible and the Book of Mormon presume that Justice, Wrath, Patience, and Hope are pervading themes that will have dozens of entries each in any index, and will be important as concepts even where the words do not occur. It doesn't...

I think they probably would. In the first place there were underground labyrinths in '30s fantasy literature, and they were arguably more prominent in Conan and in The Hobbit (1937) than in Lord of the Rings. Moria is after all only tiny part of LOTR. Conan's and even Bilbo's adventures under...

Have you read any chansons de geste? Or even Orlando Furioso? The paladins of Charlemagne were just fighters. Nothing holy about them, except that Turpin was a bishop. Paladins picked up some of their holy abilities from Lancelot, Perceval, and Galahad. But most of their flavour comes from...

Dead right! If you can find a copy, read Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, for a picture of elves in fantasy before Tolkien humanised them. Ouch!

I heard it was Dave Arneson's fondness for spelunking that did it, though of course both might have been influential. I suspect that the keyed map is a more obvious way to space encounters than the keyed flowchart, which is in turn more obvious than the plot-driven adventure. If we hadn't been...

Sadly, when people kidnap you in your sleep to put you into an idiotic death-trap, they usually search your socks for explosives.

Corollary: riddles are hard. Leave them until you are an expert.

Dead right. A basic principle of adventure design is that if two outcomes of an encounter are possible, you have to be able to cope with both. And if three, all three, etc. An experienced GM might be able to rely on simply not making things to drastic in the first place and winging it if...

FEW.

I'm with you. It would never occur to me that a Bible would have an index in it. And I don't know what time would be "appropriate" even when I did find those words in a Bible. Why would anyone build such a trap? What is the point of kidnapping someone to see if they could solve such a puzzle...

It was also for the same reason a time in which games in general were more widely played. Not only were such things as Monopoly and Scrabble big, but card-games were more widely played, and parlour games such as Dumcrambo and Charades were very often played at adults' parties. The market would...

Excellent observation! And its "fire & forget" character is not the only peculiarity of Vancian magic. In earlier sources magic was a lot slower and more subtle. Though perhaps issues of game balance and of keeping all classes involved in mêlée (preferrably with charcteristic tasks) might have...

No hobbits. Elves and dwarves would be far less human. No ents. Goblins rather than orcs. Possibly there would have been more fighting against evil men rather than against humanoid monsters (following Eddison, Howard, Burroughs). And maybe increased influence of Burroughs and Eddison would mean...

Indeed. I think that is apt. Have you ever seen the movie Sneakers? There is a bit where Robert Redford's character is trying to retrace by sound a route he was taken blindfolded, and comes to a bit where he expected to see a cocktail party.

Yes but: if you do taste the Pierian Spring, remember that "shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again".

Right now, the juiciest carrot you can dangle in front of your players is knowledge. Knowledge of where they are. Knowledge of whether they are here (rather than elsewhere) for a reason or were flung at random (this will make a big, big difference to the tone of the rest of the campaign). Send...

'Gaggle' gets my vote, too. Though giving the difficulty most of my groups have deciding what to play, their slowness in generating characters, and the way it takes an hour and a half at the beginning of each session to get them to shut up, sit down, and start playing, I would like to suggest...