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Leaving out the wilderness portion entirely, the dungeon section of S4 was originally designed and run as a two-round tournament at Wintercon V in 1976: the Lesser Caverns as Round 1, the Greater Caverns as Round 2.

I don't think most games of D&D are (or should be) solid committed explorations of the ideas of anything, Tolkienesque or otherwise.

I second this. Very fun adventure that should fit right within your time allotment and works much better as a one-off than as part of a campaign (due to its infamously railroaded beginning).

Very good post, but I feel it's worth pointing out that most of the non-medieval elements you cite are things that were added to the game later, and weren't there in the more explicitly medieval-based earliest editions. Pantheism doesn't really exist in OD&D (as Delta has already described...

I played in a bunch of ostensible tournaments back in the mid-late 80s, but they weren't at all like what you describe -- it didn't matter if we finished the adventure or how well we performed because advancement to later rounds was on an individual basis based on votes for best player (which...

This guy:

Chainmail Fantasy Supplement (i.e. proto-D&D) Intro: Dungeons & Dragons (1974) Box Cover: OD&D vol. I, p. 5 (SCOPE): D&D, at least in its earliest incarnations, was absolutely meant to be based at least superficially in the medieval, or at very least the anachronistic "fantastic-medieval" of...

Based on the thread title I assumed this was going to be about level 1 of Rappan Athuk...

First I'll skim/read the intro and look at the maps to decide if I even want to bother reading the whole thing. If so, I'll skim through it, glossing over statblocks and "filler" rooms/encounters, to decide if I want to run it or not (if I make it to the end that usually means I've decided I...

Never had a character who had one. Never that I can recall played in a party with anybody who had one or DM'd for anybody who had one. In other words, in all my years of playing D&D I don't recall ever seeing one in play. However, having fairly recently read the Jack Vance story "Morreion,"...

The adjustments in OD&D (except for Charisma) could pretty closely be modeled with 1d6: 1 = 3-6 (major penalty: -20% XP, -1 hp/die), 2 = 7-8 (minor penalty: -10% XP, -1 missiles), 3-4 = 9-12 (no adjustment), 5 = 13-14 (minor bonus: +5% XP, will withstand adversity, +1 missiles), 6 = 15-18 (major...

QFT. IIRC, the only differences in the ability adjustments between OD&D and Holmes Basic is that the latter gives the extra hp bonus for Con 17-18 from Supplement I (which I'm not crazy about -- +2 or 3 hp/level is an awfully big bonus for doing nothing more than having a lucky roll), and...

You mean what scores give what adjustments? It's the same as the 1981/Moldvay Basic Set: 3 = -3 4-5 = -2 6-8 = -1 9-12 = no adjustment 13-15 = +1 16-17 = +2 18 = +3 I don't like this chart -- I think the adjustments start too close to the center of the curve, I think +/-3 is too big an...

In Original D&D clerics had fewer spells than magic-users, both smaller spell lists (4-6 spells per level for 5 levels vs. 8-14 spells per level for 6 levels for magic-users) and fewer spells per day (no spells at all until 2nd level, and generally slower progression thereafter -- though, oddly...

The first thing is just purely arbitrary Gygaxian metagaming -- he wants to reward clever players without encouraging excessive greed. If this offends your sensibilities it's easy enough to either assign in advance which mouth has the 1000 g.p. gem, or to make all the gems worth 250 g.p. apiece...

This looks really familiar. Is it by chance from a certain 1st edition module that had a 32pp book of new monsters and magic items in addition to the adventure, or is it just remarkably similar? Either way, I love stuff like this. If this is something you made up yourself, good job.

The latter ;) :o

Learn to draw maps. Hire some men-at-arms (since you won't have anything better to spend your starting funds on). Perfect the art of stuffing rags into oil flasks, setting them alight, and hurling them at monsters. When combat comes, make sure there's always at least one friendly between you and...

Whereas my point, I guess, was that for a significant chunk of D&D's (and thus the rpg hobby/industry's) early history (1974-1979) it had just such a poorly explained ruleset, comparable to how people in this thread are describing RIFTS (a game I have no first-hand experience with, fwiw), and...

So does that mean they can wear normal armor and just can't wear magic armor? So, again, does that mean clerics can use non-magical edged weapons or not? No explanation offered of how they do this... How does that work, exactly? How, for instance, does an elf determine his hit points -- does he...