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I had this settled in my mind at one time, something involving IIRC damage to horses, but I no longer remember what the reasoning/logic I used was, and I was probably full of crap anyway...

Some suggestions for achieveing that "old school" feel: 1) environmental hazards -- slippery floors, rooms that flood, narrow ledges over steep drops, rooms that are excessively hot or cold, rooms or corridors filled with poison (or otherwise magical) gasses, etc. 2) combat encounters should...

I've got almost all of the titles mentioned by Gygax in the 1E DMG Appendix (90% of which were published prior to 1974), plus lots more books by those same authors, plus lots of books from the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series (which stopped publication in 1974), plus assorted other miscellany (I...

I agree with what seems to be the building consensus: the explosion in popularity of fantasy post-LotR, post-Star Wars (which may have spaceships and ray-guns but is fantasy at heart) and post-D&D led to a lot more stuff being published, which resulted in perhaps a greater number of good fantasy...

Too much. In a typical 4-hour session I'd guess somewhere between 1 and 2 hours is typically spent on combat.

One session, or less. If the premise of the game doesn't sound intriguing or I look over the rulebook and am not impressed I'm not likely to play the game at all, no matter how cool the guy who wants to DM it insists it is. If I play it once and don't have fun I'm very unlikely to play it again...

The reason why players choose to rest too often is obvious. If the way the game is set up 4 encounters are assumed to drain the PCs' resources, then logically the 1st encounter the PCs will be at full strength and the encounter will be easy, the second they'll be at 3/4 strength and the...

A "living" dungeon (which is to say a dungeon with living/intelligent inhabitants, as opposed to something completely passive/static like the Tomb of Horrors) should always react to the PCs' activity. Every time they leave the dungeon (or even hole up inside it overnight) when they come back...

I'm generally of the opinion that's the way D&D should always be played. Give the player a sheet with qualitative descriptions of their character's stats (strong or weak, smart or dumb, wise or rash, tough or sickly, agile or clumsy, magnetic or odious personality), a list of their character's...

Very good stuff in this thread, especially from S'mon and Korgoth, including this passage that I like so much, and agree with so thoroughly, that I'm going to quote it in full: A big point about dungeon-design that I think has been lost on a lot of people in the past 20+ years is that they've...

C&C goes for more of the AD&D feel in a lot of areas -- it has separate classes and races, 9 alignments instead of 3, includes AD&Dish subclasses (rangers, bards, illusionists, assassins, etc.) and races (gnomes, half-elves, half-orcs), and has more of AD&D's implied 12-15 level power curve than...

My comment wasn't inspired by HATE, honest, because in fact it would make me very happy if two of the top 5 rpg companies were primarily purveyors of retro-appeal D&D (being a retro-D&D fan and all), it just doesn't match my perception of reality, which places both Mongoose and SJG well above...

I'll admit that I didn't read it all that closely (which I consider the module's fault more than my own because that means it didn't hold my attention -- I'm not a paid reviewer so I'm under no obligation to read modules I'm not enjoying all the way through) but of what I did read I remember...

Three to four hours, up to maybe 8 to 12 hours for an extended delve. Camping "overnight" inside the dungeon is generally considered a bad idea (unless you like being attacked by wandering monsters in your sleep) but isn't completely unheard of (and sometimes, if they get lost or trapped, they...

I love the covers, especially the ones by Erol Otus. However, I've looked through a few in the store, and own one (the 1E conversion of DCC 12.5) and haven't been too impressed, either with the material itself or (in the case of DCC 12.5) with the 1E-conversion (it felt too much like they just...

Part of the problem is that I'm not sure what you mean by "North West LA" -- Brentwood? Malibu? Chatsworth? Also, while I know of several decent game stores in greater LA, none of them are in that specific area. Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica is apparently under new management which I can't speak...

Which is really very clever design when you think about it. The ranger starts out with more hp than the fighter (possibly a lot more if he has a significant Con bonus) but the fighter gradually catches up so that by "name" level they're effectively tied and at higher levels the fighter begins to...

I thought Judges Guild's biggest acknowledged contribution to D&D was (inadvertently?) helping TSR to realize that there were people out there who didn't want to create their own adventures and would happily pay good money for "someone else's dungeon" (i.e. modules). This is what Steve Marsh...

The OD&D ranger class by Joe Fischer is transparently based on Tolkien, and I've always assumed their magic-use was supposed to model something Aragorn did (like the ranger's ability to use crystal balls models A's use of the palantir) but I certainly don't have LotR memorized so I may be wrong...

A survey that was conducted (or at least reported) by a business associate of TLG, no less...