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I think we're in broad agreement here, though the devil is in the details. :) Where I prefer the granular approach, within reason, as it helps keep things that should be unrelated (e.g. the pick-locks attempt vs whether the cook is awake or asleep) separate. If the GM doesn't roll for the NPCs...

1e had some rules and guidelines (in the DMG, I think) around recruiting and treatment of henches, but I think pay was intended to be negotiated each time between the hiring PC and the hench.

It's a problem the moment you need even one replacement, for any reason: --- an existing PC gets captured long-term and its player needs a temporary or permanent replacement --- a player for whatever reason decides to retire a PC and bring in something new --- real-life-driven player turnover...

Following on from my previous post: Yet another very related question is whether rules and game mechanics apply equally to PCs and NPCs within the setting. If yes, then the PCs are by definition more akin to their NPC peers; if no, then the PCs are by definition exceptional because they've got...

Exceptional in this case would seem to imply "stands out like a sore thumb" among its people. Another thing to consider is whether the PCs are assumed to be the only adventuring types in the whole setting* or whether adventurers and-or other PC-comparable individuals are more common than that...

Which is fine, but then there'd be light in the kitchen both for the cook to see by and from any cook-fires she had going. Odds are very-to-extremely high the thief would notice this as light coming through the keyhole and-or cracks around the door before even starting to pick the locks (the...

That's just how that DM ran it: tough challenges to which he wasn't going to give you the answers. The riddle was an oddity in that other than being unable to progress there was no in-character danger involved; most of his challenges tended to bring the pain, and ot deadly levels.

It's taken a whole lot o' practice, to be sure, but these days I rarely goof up when reading or paraphrasing notes unless the notes themselves throw me off (e.g. the module notes don't agree with the map, or - all too often - I can't read my own writing).

I must have missed this the first time round. If memory serves (this happened in about 1992), there was quite a bit of laughter along with the rueful hair-pulling every time someone came up with an answer and it turned out to be wrong. The very fact I remember that sequence this long...

The bolded is in itself a fairly big assumption. IME, let it happen. Aimless wandering only goes on for so long*, and then the players get bored and do something more focused. Now just what that "something more focused" will be and-or how-when it will arise are often complete unknowns, which...

Thing is, that clock would have run out at the same in-game time no matter what the PCs were doing. The only difference is that had they got through the lock sooner, it would have run out with the PCs in a different place and possibly in the territory of a different set of wandering monsters.

Last time I checked, Yahtzee ain't a role-playing game. :)

It can, if-when the binary is more like a sliding scale where, when possible and always highly malleable depending on specific situation, instead of Simple Success and Simple Failure the possible results can be more like Major failure, with complications Simple failure Failure with benefits...

I don't see a made save as being damage on a miss - you're still hit by the spell's effect, otherwise you'd not need to save and would take no damage - but more a mostly-sheer-luck thing as to whether you were, say, facing into the fireball rather than away from it or whether you happened to be...

Nope. You can't succeed - even with a complication - unless the roll says you succeed. Also, I don't buy that success always has to mean perfect success, a narrow success can be mitigated by complications just like a narrow failure can be mitigated by benefits as long as the root success or...

Given that game, odds are high it would have been every bit as frustrating only in different ways. :)

For me, the knowledge would come when (unless the GM is a truly amazing improviser with a perfect memory) the GM slipped up and contradicted herself, or looked up at the ceiling while trying to think something up rather than looked down at her notes to read what's there, or narrated a room that...

The general sanitization of 2e acted to file off some of the gritty edges from 1e as well; in process changing the tone a bit away from war and a bit toward sport.

Ah. In my take there's no such thing as infinite rerolls - the roll you make represents the best you're gonna do until-unless something materially changes in the fiction. Or that for some reason you just ain't got what it takes at the moment. Maybe it could even be as simple as waiting for...

On this much at least, we're in full agreement. :) The only time a roll might in fact conjure them into existence is if-when there's a spawner or gate or random summoning involved; rare, to be sure, but I've DMed all of these in the past at some point(s).