Search results

Such as Chainmail? You aren't the only one with access to those sources. They offer no support for your claims. Interesting. You cite the Blumes (father and son, not brothers, by the way), who didn't take over TSR until well after the PHB and DMG were published. Steading was published in 1978...

Just to nitpick though, the D&D thief is, mechanically, nothing like Bilbo. The original D&D thief is sort of an amalgam of Cudgel the Clever and the Grey Mouser.

No one is saying you couldn't play using a giant megadungeon. What is being disputed is that TSR intended that this should be the norm, and that it actually was the norm. The materials provided by TSR didn't point to this conclusion at all. The fact that most campaigns seemed to not take this...

It is a dicthotomy. You claim that having tables that show lists of (for example) ninth level monsters and treasure is clear evidence that this should be used for making megadungeons. But we have adventures that seem to use this material without this being part of a megadungeon. Rather, it uses...

Double post

So, your argument is that TSR intentionally published items that were incompatible with the style of game that was intended to be played, and never gave anything more than cursory countervailing instructions in their products? And further, that somehow, despite the scantest direction given in...

And Cadfan reveals that he doesn't have any idea what the Howard books are actually like, and destroys any credibility that he might have had on the topic of older fantasy authors.

At the outset we played modules when they were available (and we had characters the right level to play them). When a new module came out, it was usually snapped up and thrown into the mix by one of us acting as DM. If an adventure appeared in The Dragon, that would get played too, and some of...

Here's a question for you: you keep making a big deal about the tables showing monsters in a Nth level dungeon (where N is some fairly large number) and citing this as evidence that dungeons were expected to be 10, 15, or 20 levels deep. Steading of the Hill Giant Chief is a two level complex...

They could be low if an AD&D DM was stingy with treasure. But that's not the question being asked. The question being asked is what did the publisher of the game appear to expect the rate of advancement to be, and the way to figure that out is to look at the materials the publisher provided for...

I am certain that Gygax played using a megadungeon - many of the anecdotes he relates center on one. But to make the leap from that to the idea that TSR expected that this would be the play style runs directly counter to the materials TSR actually marketed. You seem to forget that I was there...

Having read a fair amount by both of them, and a pile of more recent fantasy, I'm pretty sure they have. But that's just me.

No one should read The Faerie Queen. What a waste of time that was. Paradise Lost, on the other hand . . .

That's a reasonable position, except that when push came to shove, it turned out it was very possible to publish such an adventure: Undermountain, Castle Whiterock, Rappan Athuk, and World's Largest Dungeon (heck, throw in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil too)are all examples. And all...

No one is saying they will move all of the treasure out of the dungeon, just that the amount that won't be found and moved will usually be a fairly small percentage of the total. Any party that doesn't go into a dungeon without some plan for extracting a huge volume of treasure simply hadn't...

That still doesn't answer the question. Once TSR did begin publishing adventures, why not publish one or more of the big mega adventures that you claim they assumed everyone wanted to play in? I just find the whole idea that megadungeons were the rule and the assumed play style to fly in the...

The problem with the assumption that Pcs wouldn't be able to move treasure is that characters have so many options for transporting it. Tenser's floating disk is a 1st level spell. Leomund's chest is another option. Teleporting it from the dungeon to a place of safety is another, and so on. And...

Here's a question, since you assume it was to be the norm of play that there would be a superdungeon as the centerpiece of a campaign: why did TSR never publish any supplement of this nature in the 1e era? And the problem with the megadungeon assumption you seem to think is in the books is...

The problem is that the map to G2 is located in that secret treasure area as well. It is the only way to get to G2, so unless the DM wants the adventure path to end with G1, they have to find the room. The total value of the copper pieces in that 8,800 lb. of metal is 220 gp, or 220 xp...

Well, to be perfectly fair, without major house rules, 1e D&D doesn't work very well for a LotR based campaign. There's too much magic. There's too much treasure. The monsters are from a wild variety of mythologies. And so on. You could change all that, but as I said at the outset, that would...