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Excuse my pedantic moment, but this is incorrect. The level title for 5th level clerics is indeed blank in some printings of the 1e PHB, but it's not because Gary couldn't think up another level title. It was supposed to be "prefect." In early printings of the PHB, a typo misspelled it as...

Personally, I think the best chance WotC has of getting money from people who play older editions is to produce supplementary materials (adventures, settings, sourcebooks, etc.) that are reasonably usable with those older editions.

It seems silly to me that when the characters enter into a combat in which enemies are swinging swords at them in an attempt to kill them that death isn't a distinct possibility. If the characters enter combat frequently with dangerous foes, death of characters is simply going to happen...

My version: Use cleric spell and turning charts and weapons list. Is an elf in all other respects. BOOM! Done. That took me all of 15 seconds. Next. When I run my B/X games, I generally treat the 7 classes in the book as "a good start." I encourage random generation of characters and...

I've written a number of places that the delineation of D&D into two lumps of "old school" and "new school" is far, far too simplistic. The content and aesthetics of the products and assumed play style therein varies wildly from 1976 to 1986 to 1996. I would argue that the style of the...

It depends. If the system is completely incompatible with what's gone before it, then the system is more important. If the system is more or less easily compatible with what's gone before it, then the adventures are more important. If you need to buy the new rules to use the adventures, you...

Not to be snippy, but DA p&p rpg is quite explicitly meant to NOT model heroic fantasy.

Dragon Age is far closer to what I want out of D&D than any of the "D&D's" published over the last 15+ years. But then, it's intentionally modeled off of the 1981 B/X D&D, which is my favorite version of D&D (and the one I'm currently playing).

The "elephant" in Tower of the Elephant was pretty clearly a space alien. All of authors who were the main influences on D&D other than Tolkien - Burroughs, Lovecraft, Howard, Vance, Leiber, Anderson, DeCamp & Pratt, Moorcock, and Zelazny - pretty freely mixed genres in their writing...

My poll results, Tactician 92% Butt-Kicker 75% Power Gamer 67% Storyteller 33% Method Actor 33% Casual Gamer 33% Specialist 17% ...which is pretty close to how I would have ranked them on my own. If I were to describe what I like doing, more than anything else, I'd say it's exploration...

This issue is why I've said a few times that the packaging and presentation of 5e may be more important than the actual content. WotC has a real fine line to tread here. If they are being sincere in their claims that they are trying to get D&D players of all stripes back into the fold (and I...

I'd like to see a complete D&D rule set in about 150 pages, plus or minus 50 or so. If I need to buy 1000 pages of rules again to play the new D&D, I won't be buying it. 3.5e was the last 3 volume rpg I'll ever buy.

The B/X D&D morale rules are perfect. Why they weren't adapted to D&D at large is beyond me. No form of D&D as far as I know has ever had morale rules for players. The players' henchmen, followers, and other assorted npc hangers on, sure. But not for the pcs themselves.

I like having a fairly mundane "center" of the campaign and then have things become progressively weirder the farther the pcs wander from the center. This works both vertically (levels of the dungeon) and horizontally (hexcrawls into the wilderness). I prefer starting pcs to be relatively...

Our 3rd to 6th level B/X D&D party fought a dragon last night. We used a spell we found on an ancient scroll to banish it to Hell (or outer space... We're not exactly sure... long story). The combat lasted about 2 minutes. Our longest combat may have lasted about 15 minutes. Maybe...

I can only speak for how I'd run a game, but if I'm running by B/X or 1e game, I'd roll for surprise on the darkmantles. I think that's a pretty clear place where the surprise rules apply. Maybe the monsters would get a bonus. Regardless, there'd be at least a chance that the pcs spot them...

The pcs find a room with a bed in it. Under the bed is a gold goblet worth 500 gp that is not visible to the party upon entering the room. How do I as GM determine whether the pcs find the gold goblet? Method 1: One of the players says, "My pc looks under the bed." Method 2: One of the...

Slight tangent here: One thing I've noticed in cross-edition discussion is a radically different idea of what a "low" attribute score is and what its significance is. In older editions, an 8 in an attribute score is slightly below average. So, in charisma terms, that's not someone with "no...

Personally, I don't think this is getting ahead of ourselves at all and that this issue is far more important than minutia like how many hit points a first level character should have, how wizards cast spells, or how saving throws work. How the game is packaged will have the single most effect...

A series of tangentially related thoughts... I think I come near the middle ground on this issue, but probably favor the "talk it out" crowd more. I vastly prefer OD&D's & B/X D&D's one-size-fit-all reaction roll chart to discreet skills. Trying to intimidate? Roll on the chart and modify...