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First off, many thanks for these wonderful comments and insights. I've been hoping for more of your perspective and firsthand info in these discussions. :) One question on this bit, though: It's been my understanding (from Slaying the Dragon and indications elsewhere) that the key cause of...

Well, leaving aside for a moment the extent to which the purpose of forums like this is for the enjoyment of nerd musings ( :) ), whether they cast spells in a D&D sense kind of matters, because of the exact points you're making about the more subtle nature of magic in Tolkien. As contrasted...

Between membership being advantageous socially and in dealing with the government at the time, yes, it was extremely commonplace. People who had the moral fortitude to avoid interacting with and supporting the Nazi regime, as Hannah Arendt pointed out in EiJ, had to withdraw socially to a...

I recall reading somewhere that a flavor which is created by combining different elements to invent something new and dissimilar to existing flavors is called a "fantasia". I think pepper sodas and colas both fall under that umbrella category. Though colas are named for the kola nut and once...

MaxPerson wrote that dwarves don't cast spells in Tolkien as we understand spells from D&D, not the way a wizard, cleric or bard does. That they instead create magical objects and items. You contradicted him, and asserted that "dwarves could cast spells". Every reference in that link is to...

Soda, based on the info provided. Could be a root beer, Dr. Pepper, or one of several varieties of cola, but they're all kinds of soda.

For our edification and amusement, would you provide a few quotes and citations? :) Obviously the line in the poem/song sticks in many people's memory, but so far other examples aren't leaping to mind. Are they from the Silmarillion, as opposed to The Hobbit or LotR?

I think it's "ironic" (at least in the colloquial sense) that Gary knew that the descending AC system was awkward and had issues and yet he made the decision to stick with it for reverse compatibility JUST before D&D's sales launched through the stratosphere and its player base vastly expanded...

One of my gaming white whales is to nail down a quick and playable initiative/action system which still incorporates some elements of real world and narrative combat which D&D traditionally fails to capture, or stumbles and gets slow and awkward when it tries to. AD&D 1E has a famously...

I think this is a fair point. The difference both in scale principally considered and in gamist vs. simulationist priorites. OD&D and AD&D borrow a good bit from old-school large scale miniatures wargames. The scale (including 1 minute rounds), the rules for movement speeds and for archery...

They certainly could have, but doing it in 1E would have required ditching the attack matrices in favor of an attack bonus system, and for whatever reason they didn't have the initiative and wisdom to take that step. Customers can also be pretty unreasonable when a change requires them to...

And ironically Gary tells us in the 1E DMG that he used descending AC in AD&D "for the sake of continuity and familiarity" (DMG 164). Essentially the reason we had to wait until 2000 for ascending AC is because Gary thought, when putting together the DMG in '78-'79, that reverse compatibility...

Mostly. Rob Kuntz, Jim Ward, and Mike Carr were among those lucky few who got royalty deals before TSR reneged on those or stopped offering them at all, and they were able to make some significant cash. Like, solid middle class homeowner money easily. Although Gary and the Blumes tried to...

Nice catch! From what I read in there it does look like Gary did a lot of travel back and forth between WI and CA; maybe more before he settled at the mansion? The chapter "Gen Con 1984" (starts on p 107) talks about the two of them hanging out and working at Gary's place at Stone Manor for...

Some of the quotes in there (such as from Robert Louis Stevenson's essay A Gossip on Romance, about the nature of adventure fiction) were real eye-openers. It's also got pages and pages of primary source references, which naturally include PatW a bunch of times, but a ton of other interesting...

AD&D 1E? Appendix B?

That all makes sense to me, and is one of the reasons I haven't been in a hurry to read the second edition. I don't expect much new, so I've figured it would be basically a re-read, with some different organization. Speaking of scholarly research on TTRPGs, have you checked out Nachtwey's...

Had a longer session on Sunday, which was nice. Although I think I need to be even more careful on my leg press form, as I definitely felt some lower back stiffness and impairment last night and this morning. Three sets of dumbbell flies, three sets of dumbbell inclined curls with drop sets...

I don't even mind the ending, really. I get the concept and I like how they tried not to just resolve it with a CGI punch-up. Thunderbolts was quite good, yeah. It helps that they had some time invested in establishing several of the characters beforehand.