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Jeff Rients is a pretty big proponent of what me might call "fragile pcs." Jeff also happens to be my dungeon master. I posted the following as a comment in one of his recent blog posts: "As a player in Jeff's game, whose Dwarf, Fred, died (melted on a magic throne, fell down two consecutive...

Nope. The paladin from the Greyhawk Supplement preceded him by about two years. A fighter with 17 Cha and Lawful alignment could "become" a paladin. The wording left it fuzzy as to when Paladin-hood could be achieved. Some DMs interpreted as at character creation, while others interpreted it...

I distinguish between types of house rules. What I think of as "additive" house rules - adding rules for things that the printed game doesn't cover, I love doing. It's one of the things that I enjoy about running a game. So, new spells, new monsters, new classes/races, kit-bashed rules for...

Personally, I'm done buying thousand page, multi-volume rpgs. If there isn't a single reasonably sized product (200 pages, give or take 100) that gives the necessary rules for playing a campaign of a reasonable length (say, 6 to 8 months of 3 hour a week play), then I won't be using 5e as my...

The Midwest is definitely where D&D went from pre-D&D to published product, and that process began in the late 60s. The groups - or more properly, groups of groups - that everyone knows about were in Minneapolis (Arneson, Barker, etc.), Chicago and south-eastern Wisconsin (Gygax, Kuntz, etc.)...

Not to speak for Darren, but as someone who really hasn't seen a group that won't run away from time to time, I really don't know what it is the DM is doing to discourage or prevent them from running away in the first place. From my view, that's where the OP's question takes me... "What are...

The half-orc pc in 1e was very different from the half-orc of subsequent editions and quite distinct from the full-blooded orc as presented in 1e, and I think it was a far more interesting character than the half-orc of subsequent editions. In 1e, Orcs were beast-men who'd mate with about...

The only time I've seen players stop running away is when they've been playing with the DM-safety-net for so long that they've stopped even considering whether their pc might die in combat.

I'm curious but not particularly optimistic. We just started a Classic Traveler campaign last night and it was a blast. I'm also having fun stocking my super-ultra-mega-dungeon for B/X D&D. So, if WotC doesn't hit it out of the park, I probably won't notice. The feeling I'm getting is that...

It entirely depends on what activity is going on in the campaign. If combat is seldom or rare, death should also be seldom or rare. If combat is frequent, death can also be frequent depending on what challenge level the characters are taking on. An even fight, by definition, should make for a...

The irony of the OP's statement is that it is far, far easier now for a 13 year old to get a hold of the works of Vance, Howard, Moorcock, Burroughs, etc. than it was for them to do so back in the early '80s when D&D was at its most popular. Pick up your ipad/phone, kindle, or whatever, do a...

My 9-year-old daughter's first D&D character: Athena, a thief, after the Greek godess - she'd just read some of the myths. My daughter's second D&D character: Nymphadora, also a thief, after Nymphadora Tonks from the Harry Potter series. As it happens, my first D&D character at roughly the...

My kids play the HELL out of my 1981 edition of the game, and it's starting to show its age. A new printing - assuming it has roughly the same rules - would be a big hit with my family.

You probably already know this, but I figured I'd mention... The Greyhawk Adventures hardback has a number of specialized clerics for Greyhawk deities. Also, the 1e Lankhmar resource has some rules for multi-classing humans and white and black wizards suitable for the Lankhmar setting that...

Well, it's still compatible in that none of the terms used are alien to any edition of D&D. Would it be finely tuned to every version of D&D's particular level range (assuming the product in question even specifies a level range)? Nope. Individual DMs would have to eyeball it. Change it from...

"5 hobgoblins - chain mail, shield, spear, dagger. These hobgoblins are well-disciplined and alert. They have nothing of value aside from their armor and weapons. If they are attacked, one of their number will attempt to warn the larger force of hobgoblins in room x, while the remaining...

The quote that stuck out to me the most: "Adventure Design Guidelines: Stuff such as XP budgets, treasure tables, encounter charts, and so on are there to make it easier to create adventures and build your campaign. If you are a veteran DM, it's quite likely you won't use any of this stuff."...

Face in the Frost, yes. High Crusade, not as such. Like Stoker's Van Helsing, you have a man of science and of God who used his knowledge of Heaven and earth to achieve "magical" effects. It's an archetype that's quite common in the Verne/Burroughs style 19th-early 20th C. adventure story...

The original cleric is based off of Van Helsing from Stoker's Dracula and was actually created to counter a powerful vampire pc in Arneson's original Blackmoor campaign. Other good cleric models from Appendix N fiction are the Roger Bacon character from John Bellairs' Face in the Frost and...

Any idea what console/format? The DS and/or 3DS would be a super-win!!! (And something I said they should do ever since they settled the Atari/WotC lawsuit.)