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Philotomy's is well worth a read. I keep wanting to write a follow up on how I see his "Mythic Underworld", its sources and ultimate evolution. In some senses the design sensibilities of a lot of the mid-OSR come out of Philotomy, certainly the OSR megadungoen feels deeply connected to his...

I think this is a lost fact, or at least a very sound interpretation of OD&D - which of course demands interpretation. It's like the other stocking advice you point to ... great and easy to miss, meaning I suspect that a lot of people have missed it over the last fifty years. Of course there is...

Not that I know of - I think you can maybe break things down into Twin Cities and Lake Geneva for a few things, but it's not that much of a difference once D&D is published at least - both sort of become team TSR pretty quickly. Alarums & Excursions is worth a read btw.

So OD&D's monster and treasure distribution scheme is part of the confusion - it presents seemingly multiple options (I like every other OD&D fan have a "100% CORRECT WAY!") ... but I also think OD&D giant rats have 2-13HD...so ummm...It's OD&D! What's interesting here, and part of the point I...

Glad you liked it. I think looking at the OD&D design ideas is helpful because it really drives home that the large mega dungeons are a design choice of both the late 1970's and the early-mid OSR. They aren't bad, but they are difficult to run in the shorter sessions online play demands. I...

Thanks! Should be fixed now! This I think is largely correct - at least for what the Lake Geneva style becomes (very quickly) by the time D&D is fully published and propogating in the wild. I also think it's a style that defines the early OSR (The "Revival" or "Forum" OSR) and maybe even what...

I have an interest in some of the ways that D&D has evolved in the last 50 years, especially in how the dungeon crawl is played and portrayed. Lately I've been thinking about the "design forms" for dungeons and how different editions and sources from OD&D "Underworld and Wilderness Adventures"...

Of course it's more complex - and yes Game Wizards has interesting things in it. I don't intend to reduce things to a simple Gygax Good/Arneson Bad, but think it's definately worth looking at some of the developments in D&D, and especially the shift towards AD&D, tournament play, and Gygax's...

Alternatively ... B1 exists to make Arneson feel bad about how his royalties for Basic cut into his friend Mike Carr's money.... At least this is a story I've heard, it's hard to say if these are true - only that pushing Arneson out and cutting off his royalties seemed to be important to Gygax...

There's actually an interesting bit of legal scholarship to be written about Gary Gygax's litigation history, starting with his acting as a witness in an Insurance case around a guy that tried to pull the "I'm buying life insurance and then doing myself in" thing. The decision around the...

Oh yeah costs - I mean the courts actually seem to feel bad about awarding Anti-SLAPP fees to you, unless you're a celeb or already rich. Plus of course - it's fairly easy to evade paying up if you give no F*'s. Perhaps revealing a bit much about myself... This has unfortunately been part of...

It's absolutely a bizarre filing and the inclusion of weird stuff like Prima Facie tort is in my opinion a classic sign of a doomed pleading, a doomed pleading perhaps by someone who is listening to Sov. Cit. nonsense or some other brand of internet "The law is a series of magic words" sort of...

I don't know how overpowered these items are for AD&D... They're absolutely meant to win fights and provide players with very powerful options, but a) most have charges b) the game plays differently then more modern editions and it's not really about 1-2 big fair fights per adventure. Adventure...

I think this IS the OSR to a degree. That is at least the mid and later periods of it. The aesthetics of both gonzo and grimdark coming to dominate and the real emergence of ultralight system design are both tools to play short high lethality campaigns and sessions. I see this as a response to...

I've always found it interesting, but I don't especially like Castle Amber (I like B2 and G1 more for example) ... I think it's an interesting effort though and well worth a read. It is different and it does some neat things but the whole of it feels very directed and a bit forced. It's also...

My impression with both B2 and the G Series (which does have some meh adventures) is that it's specifically the result of Gygax's approach to play and understanding of dungeon design for the campaign (rather then tournament). The G series, and I'm mostly thinking of G1, is an infiltration and...

I never found ToSK especially pretentious or more boring then many adventures. I think it has two significant flaws that prevent it from meeting its goal as an introduction to OSR/Dungeon Crawl style games. 1) Its description tends to be rather generalized. That isn't to say they are bland...

Errant might fit for you. Not sure if it quite meets your goals for crunch, but it has some complexity and character options while remaining a lighter system. Here's a link to the .itch page which (scroll down) includes a free no art version. There's also an online card based SRD that might be...

I played B/X and AD&D starting in 1983ish? I now run OD&D (1974 LBBs, no Greyhawk, and houseruled - as one must) games. Ran/played 5E for a year around 2018 and it didn't quite click for me.

So a few things... A) 2E will work, but you may have to do a few adaptive tweaks, most OSR adventures are written in a variety of house ruled formats that while broadly compatible with 2E will not be close to the stat blocks and such. It should be pretty easy. B) Levels 4-7, have not been...