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See this thread at Dragonsfoot.

Cross-posted from the "Rogues: Essential Class or Sacred Cow" thread: The problem with literary models for the D&D cleric is that the role the class serves (glorified medic who provides healing and support but can also be a second-line fighter when necessary) is much more necessary in a game...

The problem with literary models for the D&D cleric is that the role the class serves (glorified medic who provides healing and support but can also be a second-line fighter when necessary) is much more necessary in a game than in literature (where the author doesn't have to keep track of his...

More straight fighter archetypes from D&D's source-literature: John Carter of Mars, Robert Wolff (aka Jadawin) ("World of Tiers" series), Leif Langdon (aka Dwayanu) (Dwellers in the Mirage), Simon Tregarth (Witch World), Skafloc (The Broken Sword), Gimli, Legolas, Sinbad, Jason, etc.

Latest rpg purchases: Bushido (1980 (Phoenix Games) edition) -- I had a copy of book 1 (Heroes of Nippon) ages ago, but never had (and always wanted) book 2 (Land of Nippon) Ars Magica (1st (Lion Rampant) edition) -- never owned this game, always heard good stuff about it These were picked up...

The thief class wasn't part of original D&D (they were added as an option in Supplement I in 1975) and the game worked fine without them -- traps were found by dwarfs, player cleverness, or the cleric find traps spell and were avoided rather than disarmed, locks were opened by keys, by force, or...

Success in D&D is generally dependent on violence and fighting, but is only dependent on "murder" if the DM makes it be (or allows it to be). Non-intelligent animals and animal-like monsters generally don't carry much/any moral baggage when killed (at least among the people I play with)...

No observers -- if you're going to watch for more than a few (which is subjective, but generally less than 15) minutes you have to play. This goes for girlfriends, family members, friends in from out of town, and anyone else who might show up to a game session who's not part of the normal group...

No, but a shallow short-attention-span playstyle is almost invariably focused on killing things and taking their stuff. (And lest there be any confusion, I'm not at all intending to put down the "shallow short-attention-span playstyle" which is, in fact, by far my favored playstyle as both...

Sounds like your players aren't really interested in your plot (they'll say they are if you ask them, but that's probably because they want to keep you happy so you'll keep running the game and they don't have to). My guess is that they're probably there to 1) socialize and 2) "play the game"...

Other - Monsters of Myth (link in my sig)

In our case the other DMs have been using a more lenient version of the "-10 hp rule" than what's in the 1E DMG -- BtB any attack that takes a character to -4 or below is dead, not just dying, and any further damage suffered by a character below 0 is instant death, whereas the way we've been...

- last couple sessions (and probably the next few) have had 3 players w/ 2 characters apiece + DM, but prior to that we averaged 5-6 players/session, and if all the players showed up at once we'd have 9 (+DM), in which case obviously we'd only have 1 character apiece - we play 1E AD&D which...

That's my ignorance of 3E (especially high level 3E) showing, then, and my complaint apparently applies more to C&C than to D&D itself -- since C&C characters don't pile on bonus modifiers to the degree D&D characters do, but the challenges levels (equivalent to D&D's DCs) still increase, a high...

Indeed. OD&D included 3 classes (fighter, cleric, mage), 4 races (human, dwarf, elf, hobbit), and spells up to 6th level for mages (8-14 spells/level) and 5th level for clerics (4-6 spells/level). Basic/Expert D&D included 7 classes (fighter, cleric, mage, thief, "dwarf," "elf," and "halfling")...

It's a reflection of my general ambivalence towards the trend in d20 (and d20-derived games like C&C) that challenges more-or-less keep pace with character abilities, so that a 1st level character facing a balanced challenge likely has about the same chance of success as a 10th level character...

I (probably not surprisingly) like the way saves were done pre-3E -- not necessarily the categories (which I'll admit are arbitrary and that there are either too many or too few of) but rather the way character level is the primary determinant in likely you are to save -- that low level...

I had to look at a map to remind myself what this situation was (negative grognard points for not having the entirety of the WoG's geography memorized :o ) and I was reminded that I noticed this and tried to make sense of it once before many years ago. The explanations I came up with then were...

The new monsters from S4 weren't in the 1976 version; there were different monsters that were "new" at the time (like water weirds, troglodytes, and otyughs) but were later included in the AD&D MM, so the idea was the same (a dungeon full of crazy new monsters) but the specifics were different...

I wish there were a one-book version of D&D, along the lines of the original boxed set (3 digest-sized booklets, total 112pp) or the 1981 Basic/Expert edition (2 books, total 128pp with some redundancy). A complete, fully playable game could easily be done in 128pp, probably 96pp. A cheap/free...