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I don't think that's thread-jacking at all, because it directly bears upon the the game market of the early 90s versus today. Regarding Vampire, I can speak to my own experiences. My High-School game group was still playing 1st Edition AD&D past graduation and into 1993 (for a period of the...

Not as small a minority as you might think... I for one agree with you 100%.

The Classic Rules Cyclopedia back in print. The only complete-in-one book version of D&D ever made.

I wonder if the use of miniatures doesn't have something to do with culture and socio-economic class. The people I played AD&D when I was younger were mostly working-class metalheads. A lot of us simply didn't have the kind of disposable income that allowed for large miniature collections. Many...

IMHO, OD&D is about survival and adventure in a Pulp Fantasy world. Classic D&D is about the struggle for power and immortality in the world of Medieval Romances. 1st Edition AD&D is about exploration and treasure seeking in a Swords & Sorcery world. 2nd Edition is about character development in...

I suggest the OP look into Castles & Crusades. It fulfills all of his criteria, and is 90-95% compatible with ALL pre-4th editions of D&D. I currently run both Classic RC games and C&C games, and C&C can run even faster than Classic (and Classic runs many times faster than 4th Edition), C&C...

I've DM'd and played since 83, and until 3rd edition came out I never even met anybody who played with miniatures. We never used them, or even considered using them, for AD&D. They seemed like they would be a lot of money to spend, and a lot of fuss at the table. In my experience, running 3rd...

I think 4E in 1970 would have been a complete and total failure. As far I can tell, D&D didn't become a phenomena based on the elegance of its rules set. In fact, the opposite appears to be the case. The very incompleteness of the published rules caused people to create houserules, and that...

What if 1st Edition AD&D had made it explicit that Alignment referred to what side your character was on in the eternal war between the various Outer Planes? Rather than write something like "Lawful Good" or "Lawful Evil" under Alignment, you would have written "Seven Heavens" or "Nine Hells"...

In my opinion, much of the problem with understanding Alignment seems to be the fact that Alignment as articulated in 1st edition AD&D posited a fundamentally unfair multiverse. A person isn't Lawful Good because he does lawful and good things. He is Lawful Good because his spiritual essence is...

As a game mechanic, I regard Alignment as a designation of essence, not a description of behavior. Good people can do bad things, while evil people do occasionally do the right thing. Being "Good" as an alignment means that you intend to do good, not that you always succeed. Nor does it mean...

I currently DM Rules Cyclopedia D&D and CK Castles & Crusades. Both those games are set in the same campaign world, during different time periods. I play Call of Cthulhu and 4th Edition regularly (although the 4th Edition game has died down somewhat). One of the players in the group is into...

I'd like to say "Thank You" to everyone who voted and participated in the discussion so far. There's been some really interesting points brought up. While the majority of people voted that either the "casual players" never left, or are coming back, about 40% (as of this writing) seem to believe...

Thanks! Now in my dream world, a Tomb of Horrors movie would be directed by Del Toro, Jackson, or Clive Barker. Another total fantasy with no chance of happening is Terry Gilliam directs it, and the whole thing is played as a black comedy. The movie would probably wind up with an R rating to do...

Personally, I always wanted to see a movie version of the Tomb of Horrors. Don't even mention anything about D&D in the title, just call the movie "Tomb of Horrors". Have a party of 8 or so adventurers (all human) go in, and have only 1 or 2 characters make it out alive. Have one of the...

From my experience, the player demographics of D&D seem to have changed from its heyday of the early 80s. Back then, it seemed to me that there were many more players, but the majority of them were only "casual". Most of them either owned no rulebooks, or only a players handbook or a single box...

I CK a homebrew campaign world with 6 regular players. 4 men and 2 women. It's a very dark fantasy setting consisting of a loosely bound human empire with lots of intrigue and conspiracies. Demi-humans have been largely subjugated and reduced to reservation-like "freeholds". Only the Gnomes are...

I definitely think that nostalgia is one motivation that leads people back to the the old games. I believe there is at least another factor, however: Danger. Both old and new-school D&D provide excitement for their players, but they do this in different ways. In old-school D&D the excitement...

Confining myself to games branded "D&D", I would say my favorite edition mechanically is Classic (B/X, BECMI. & Rules Cyclopedia). My favorite edition favor-wise is 1st Ed. AD&D. My favorite fantasy game is actually Castles & Crusades, but since it's not technically "D&D" I'm excluding it. I...

When applied to D&D, "Classic" already has an established usage. It refers to the rules as found in the Moldvay/Cook Basic & Expert sets, the Metzner Basic-Expert-Companion-Masters-Immortals sets, and the Rules Cyclopedia. Sometimes the Holmes set is considered part of "Classic" as well, but it...