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I see D&D as being closer to "The Game Exists to Promote Certain Ideals" in it's origins. Classic D&D was not really about Good versus Evil, however, but Law versus Chaos. It's a subtle, but important difference. On one side is the force of Human Civilization, and those few races who can adapt...

In my campaign different religions and philosophies have different stories regarding the existence of the world. The "truth", as far I am concerned, is that the Cosmos is a purposeless and accidental bubble floating in the midst of infinite Chaos. Intelligent beings evolved naturally in the...

In the old World of Greyhawk boxed set, the symbol for Lawful Good is a set of scales, Lawful Neutral is symbolized by a shield with a cross on it, and Lawful Evil is indicated by a snake. The glyph for "honor" does look somewhat like an arrow.

One of the advantages of Old-School episodic and location-based play was that it easily accommodated a constantly changing cast of characters. The classic Old-School campaign was really about the environment that the PCs were adventuring in, rather than a story that they were participating in...

How about the 3 x 3 Magic Square (the numbers from 1-9 arranged in a 3 cell x 3 cell square so that the sum of every row and column equals 15). If you don't want the actual numbers in the cells, simply use the appropriate number of dots, or substitute letters with the ordinal values of the...

I think that was me. Unwary PCs in my campaign learn to rue the day they decided to visit a Halfling community uninvited. The players who have played Halfling PCs so far have had great fun.

Classic D&D (BX, RC, or BECMI). Classic PCs, especially low-level ones, are fragile, which encourages roleplaying and non-combat resolution of problems. Use a flat per-session award of XP (example: 600 xp per session, no matter what the PCs do), and the focus can be completely turned away from...

My current Rules Cyclopedia campaign takes a lot of inspiration from the late Roman empire, with Elves somewhat in the place of the Romans. Humans are still mostly tribal, and have an early Iron-Age level of technology. The Elves regard them as cheap mercenaries and (in the case of the...

My campaigns tend to have a fairly cynical view of human nature, and so have easy explanations as to why every place isn't a magical utopia. 1) Mages are really arrogant in general. The ability to wield the powers of the universe tends to make wizards insensitive to the affairs of "petty...

The beauty of "old school" rules sets is their flexibility Don't worry about any notions of "old school orthodoxy". I played both Classic and AD&D as plotless dungeon crawls, as vehicles for emotionally powerful character studies, as plot-driven epics, and as everything in-between. Those old...

I grew up in northeastern NJ in the 80's, and D&D was heavily associated with the Heavy Metal music scene. No effort was made to play down the "evil" image that D&D often had in the media at the time. In fact, most players I knew of played either Neutral or Evil-aligned PCs. Good and or Lawful...

It sounds to me like you want 1991 Rules Cyclopedia D&D, using the optional skill system, weapon mastery rules, and demi-human advancement rules, and perhaps playing with miniatures. It's been said before, but IMHO the RC is probably the all-around best (as in highest fun-to-work ratio) version...

IMHO the strength of a class and level system is ease and speed of character creation, and the role-playing focus provided by strong archetypes. All of that is lost if you bog down the system with options. The biggest problem with 3rd Edition was the excruciatingly slow process of character...

To exclude romance from D&D is to not be true to the source material. Almost ALL of the literary inspirations of D&D (INCLUDING the uber-macho Conan stories) feature romantic relationships of some kind. Arthur and Guinevere (and Lancelot). Bradamante (the female knight from the legends of...

When trying to figure out what the Druids were historically, the big problem is deciding whether to believe the Romans or believe the Irish. If you believe the Roman historians, the Druids were a priestly caste of men who wore white robes, held oak trees as sacred, and performed human...

One of the secrets of my First Edition campaign world was that the Aboleth were the sole native intelligent race on the planet. Every other intelligent race was either descended form ancient invaders from Outer Space, or was the result of ancient genetic manipulation by one of the invader races...

The Ring of Shooting Stars. It was characteristic of the flavorful, mysterious, and just plain weird magic items of 1st Edition. Plus, there's just something romantic about a magic ring that functions best under the stars.

I think it's a good idea, although I would make it only a scroll of 3 or 4 spells. A wand of Magic missiles with only a few charges on it isn't a bad idea either. Low level Magic Users are meant to be challenging to play, so that when you actually survive you get a real feeling of...

Yes! I would love to see all of the old material available in hard copy again. Perhaps it could be done on a print-to-order basis.

Castles & Crusades, because that was Gary's intention, and I think C&C fixes most of the mechanical problems with earlier D&D while maintaining the old school feel. Of course, if CZ was released for something like 1st Edition AD&D or classic D&D, it would still be easily usable with C&C!