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I love the "challeneg by dungeon level" arrangement of OD&D (and 1E, sort of) because combines the best of balanced and status quo challenges and, most importantly, puts the players rather than the DM in the decision-making role. Provided they know that each level of the dungeon is theoretically...

FWIW, here's part of an essay I wrote a couple years back describing what I see as the difference between "The World of Greyhawk" as default AD&D campaign-world (exemplified by the 1980 folio and various WoG-set but not Gygax-penned modules of the early 80s) and "Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk"...

See this from the 1E DMG: Note also that the original (1980, folio) version of The World of Greyhawk was 32 pages (plus 2 poster-sized maps). The 1983 version added considerable extra material (including the info about racial types, plants/trees of the Flanaess, encounter tables, weather...

The fact that despite them being the central features of the setting we never got a detailed treatment of either Greyhawk City or Greyhawk Castle. That we later learned this wasn't actually Gygax's home campaign-world at all, but rather something he made up more or less from whole cloth at the...

I recommend doing what most people did back in the 80s (whether they consciously realized they were doing it or not): use all the ephemera and trappings of 1E AD&D (ability score adjustment charts, class and race descriptions, alignments, price lists, AC chart, weapon damage chart, spell lists...

I was out of Official D&D by the time Sargent's FtA stuff came along so I never saw any of it, but I did see both Zeb Cook's Greyhawk Wars set (which was absolutely terrible, a complete travesty, and in fact one of the final straws that drove me away from Official D&D (along with Spelljammer and...

This is a good one. It's very "old school D&D" to have a big (in bulk, not necessarily in value -- e.g. chest of copper or silver pieces, tapestries, pile of ingots, etc.) treasure fairly early in the adventure that forces a choice on the players -- do they leave the dungeon with the treasure...

Goose-egg. I'm fairly certain I've never bought a single WotC product, even going back to before they took over TSR. Noble Knight Games, however, still takes a fair bit of my money, on the order of probably $50-$100 a year, maybe more.

Castle Amber as-written is almost certainly too long to run in a single session, even a marathon one, but you might be able to pull it off if you tighten it up a bit and eliminate the Averoigne section completely.

Check out module B5: The Horror on the Hill, which combines pretty much all of the classic D&D tropes (stereotypes/cliches) into a single package, is low level, and is just about the right length to run straight through in a single marathon session. For mid-level (5-7), S2: White Plume Mountain...

The "antagonistic DM" tone of much of Gygax's D&D writing is often misunderstood, in that it's actually mock-antagonistic in the manner of a tough coach or drill instructor -- Gygax envisions that a big part of the DM's job is to "push" his players to excellence (developing their player-level...

At the time I was coming up in 1984-85 (right at the tail end of the D&D/rpg boom) toy stores (Kay-B, Toys R Us, etc.) and discount department stores (Kmart, etc.) tended to only carry TSR stuff. Mass-market bookstores (Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, etc.) carried the same TSR stuff (usually in greater...

It's interesting to me that, in contrast to the "Return to" series which was clearly motivated by the popularity of the originals (ToH, KotB, WPM, Against the Giants, and ToEE were all among TSR's most popular and fondly-remembered modules of the Classic Era), the "Expedition to" series (with...

Don't be so sure. The other "big" product that was rushed into release alongside UA in order to save TSR was a module, T1-4, which also proved popular enough that it was still being reprinted as late as 1992 (3 years after 2E was released, and a year after the last printing of UA). [Per The Acaeum]

It's not so much Dragonlance as all the other stuff TSR released in 1984 -- the Conan modules, "Journey to the Rock," "The Forest Oracle," "Midnight in Dagger Alley," etc. These modules all looked nice (especially the DL ones) but content-wise they were severely lacking compared to what had come...

This isn't really true, though. The time TSR was selling the most modules was almost certainly the time they had the most competition in that area pre-OGL -- Judges Guild was selling D&D modules with the D&D logo on them, other companies were selling 'generic' modules, and other games were...

I don't know if you already have a hardcopy, but if not it shouldn't be too difficult or expensive to get one (because the game was in-print for a long time (over 10 years) and was published by a large publisher (Avalon Hill)). The best bet is probably the 1993 perfect-bound book edition; next...

Back in the 80s some characters were big into buying and investing in property -- one group in particular invested a lot of time and money into a major renovation and expansion of the Trader's shop in Hommlet, after the former owners met with an unfortunate "accident." In the current campaign...

Original D&D in play tends to be almost entirely freeform and negotiation-based, with DM fiat (perhaps augmented by an ad-hoc die roll, perhaps not) serving as the primary resolution mechanic. The rules of the game are so minimal (and so vague and open to interpretation even where they exist --...

You can't exactly "go home" -- it'll never be as fresh or exciting as it was when you were a kid, and could have a sleepover and play all night with your friends -- but it's still possible to have a lot of fun playing retro D&D (it's the only kind of D&D I play, FWIW). Some recommendations: 1)...