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GURPS is a complete game. Its supplements are genre and/or setting information. It's useful, but not needed, although in 4e it has deviated to the "Player book / GM book" model. About HERO, I know nothing. I know it's pretty popular out there, but it never crossed the sea to us ;) And the oWoD...

Page 84, the whole second column, "Puzzle as Skill Challenge". I like more the option of page 81, "The "get a clue" check".

... And that's one of the things of "old school gaming" that I don't miss at all ;) It reminds me of the world of video games. Many people (myself included) feel that modern video games get many times lost in having bigger explosions, killing the most prostitutes and rocking harder and don't...

Why am I not surprised? ;) What I meant is that 4e focuses too much on damage as almost the only way to "punish" players, and the only way to end a combat is to drop all your enemies to 0 hp, blow by blow. Surely, SoD sucks when it comes unannounced, and the pre-4e Sleep spell is almost a...

I want a complete game. It's not so hard to do... Every RPG out there except D&D has been able to do it :P That's why I love the RC and Labyrinth Lord... Everything you'll ever need to play is in just one book :) Fluff books and modules are great expansions, and there's always room for another...

Steal :) I mean, with a name, race/class/level, alignment and one or two sentences (even better if you can relate it to characters you might remember, as in "He's like Ben Stark, but older", you can easily (over)populate a world. If you want your players to remember him or you plan him to be a...

I'd say that yes, sandbox is as much "old school" as it gets. I'd add a feeling of constant danger and a little player justified paranoia as well ;) What's sad is that, RAW, the 4e rules make 1a and 1b very difficult. A because you really can't do much more to a player which lasts more than a...

My first D&D was AD&D 2e, and I loathed it. It was just a bunch of rules that made no sense, and everything working so differently was very clunky. Also, it felt very cartoony to me. When 3e came out, I didn't fear I would like it less than 2e... It was nearly impossible! And what I found was a...

4e Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide. Because it takes 20+ years of uninspired material, kills it, and takes its stuff :D

Rod of Wonder. I didn't even look at the item description. I just knew that, when I pointed at anything, something happened. And I freakin' loved it :)

The implied "Points of Light" setting is more than enough to me. I've just started reading the FRCG, and I think it's the best version of the Realms I've ever seen, but that's because I've always hated FR and this book completely destroys it :D If you want a premade setting, I'd go for Scarred...

It hasn't been removed; just displaced. Now it's the wizard who has to make 9 attack rolls each time he uses an area power like Thunderwave (level 1 at-will with an area of blast-3). Yes, that was something that needed to be fixed. This one, OTOH, I've never seen the problem with. As with...

Yup. I find LL smoother, too: less rules, more freestyle. I find it very refreshing when I can play a whole module as one of Paizo's Pathfinder issues in just one game night. OTOH, we enjoy greatly the tactical component of 3.x, so we have our hearts divided :D

Let me emphasize the tense you used: "made". It's been more than 20 years since then, so it's a smart move to move on and focus on what could make D&D a popular game *now*. Saying that 4e, by design, isn't anywhere near "old school" isn't the same as saying that 4e is a bad game. Not because of...

Well, having a look at his notes (as they're posted on his Gleemax blog-thing) I don't think "his" ToEE is similar in anything else that in name to the T1-4 module. Damn, and I thought I hadn't forgotten to start my post with "To me". Oh, wait... ;)

It's somewhere on wizards.com, so it's anything but handy :D Looking for it, however, I found the column about trap design: Design & Development: Traps! Also, thanks to another poster, I've found that Mearls has started running a "ToEE" campaign. If you look at his blog on Gleemax, you can...

I'm more of a 3.x fan, but 4e has indeed some positive qualities, and some of them are great. 1 - Fixed leveling. In 4e each level gained means something (no dead levels), and there's not too much difference between levels, so the characters can still face more or less the same threats (there's...

To me, "old school" doesn't have so much to do with one or another spot rule as with the modules that made the old school: Keep on the Borderlands, Temple of Elemental Evil, Against the Giants, Tomb of Horrors... If we believe what we have been said by the designers and the marketing guys at...

OTOH, when I was briefing my players about their possible deity choices, the most common reaction was something along the lines of "He's the coolest god ever!" And, if you think about it, it makes much more sense than the myriad of "I'm the god of illness, icky things and bad stuff and, somehow...

I don't recall if it was stated anywhere, but I've always assumed that the vast majority of priests came from the Expert or Aristocrat classes, with just a few "real" clerics as the heads of the various temples. I've done it that way in Eberron, Greyhawk and Golarion. In fact, in D&D a cleric...