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My own reading is that both Lake Geneva and the West Coast D&D scene missed part of the point of OD&D, because I do suspect that it was originally intended as a sort of mini-game to a larger Chainmail campaign - a sort of "raid the castle for gold to build your army" thing in a Castles &...

I disagree. I played a lot of D&D in the 1980's and there were plenty of different ways the game was played. There were good and bad referees. Moreover, these differences were part of table culture, which was dominant then because there were far fewer means of offical or even inter-hobbyist...

While I agree that adventure content has a good deal to do with how deadly a given campaign is ... there are absolutely bad refereeing methods that make for "killer DMing". many of us may remember some of these from playing D&D when we were pre teens and teenagers in the 1980's... 1) Having...

I always figure that one of the important aspects of older editions is the relative ease of rolling up new characters. Consequences are part of the game. Sometimes being recklessness gets you the gem eyes of the statute - sometimes it animates and pulps the party... Both results are the game...

I was also thinking of a rule for "barbarous finery" - that is if you dress in your battered armor and gear but wear thousands of GP worth of tomb gold... basically nobody wants to mess with you, but everyone wants to overcharge you and rob you ... you'll get invited to nice places but charged...

XP for Gold Spent is pretty traditional way to award XP, it encourages player involvement in the setting and provides a ready made way for characters to make an impact on it as well. In an OD&D game I played back in the G+ days (Pahvelorn run by Brendan of Wonder & Wickedness and the...

I've heard great things about it as well. This was my early version of the rules with rewards more adaptable to standard dungeon crawls: https://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2014/07/hms-appolyon-living-costs-and-basic.html

The way I've considered managing it is that paying money for fancy city clothes and upkeep allows safe access to various neighborhoods in the city and various services. Like the nobility won't talk to you if you're wearing stained travel leathers, or if they do they won't give you a good deal...

I remember finding a non-D&D related and pre-D&D lawsuit where Gary Gygax took the stand as a witness in an insurance fraud by suicide case. I can't find it now on google scholar and am not near Lexis currently, but I wondered if it gave him the impression that the courts favored companies over...

I took a look through the 1st printing of City State of the Invincible Overlord the other day and it (like many early JG publications) is fascinating. I won't say it's especially usable, or the best city supplement ever or anything of that nature, but it's an amazing piece of maximalist...

I think one of the best things you can do in using AD&D or OD&D is recognize that you will run into rules voids and contradictions ... even within the same edition. Acknowledging this and accepting that any game with these systems will be a "table version" rather then some authoritative one is...

It's a sad thing that the idea of designing a new sort a Braunstein (or at least some form of warbands/domains/skirmish based wargame with individual PCs) is being colonized by this sort of thing. It strikes me as both something with really potential for RPG clubs/shops to run and a twist on...

This strikes me as a reasonable take. I think that Williams and others managing later TSR get a lot of blame for bad decisions (and they made quite a few), but that this blame tends to be overblown and often deployed as a shield for people like Gygax ... who also made some bad business...

I tend to agree but the use of white space is a hot topic in the RPG design space.. I'd says avoid the miniscule gutters and margins of old TSR adventures as well. You need a margin of more then .3 inches or whatever - especially between columns. I've had complaints about 10 or 11 point text...

A) If you want to make something with a layout - Affinity is around $50 or far less on sale. B) I would find 100% free fonts rather then paid fonts or fonts with "for personal use" conditions - or buy fonts, that is also a thing you could do. C) Consider using a 11 or 12 point font with at...

I enjoyed this panel as well - didn't agree with everything, but it's nice to see people who actually make interesting stuff talking about their work.

I see no reason why you cannot carve out parts of a work with different licenses ... including CC licenses as long as it's clear. You can say things like "The text of this work is released under a CC 0 license, but artist, author or creator reserve and retain all rights to any and all...

Ah, yes, that's where we differ. I am sure there are fans who want a universal RPG perfectly fit for market forces, a sort of fast food of game design. I don't fall into that camp. I want to see RPGs that do interesting and things and play smoothly, designed with imagination and passion both...

Yop - that was the point I was making... Ghost rules lurk in the rules being spooky and confusing, designers should exorcise them and own the play style they want to bring to the table. It helps newcomers and it helps calm edition wars because the game says "I do this, not that". Now of course...

I do understand that ... I think that A) WotC wasn't clear enough about their goals (though 3.5 started the trend and birthed a negative reaction as well) and B) the fan base shouldn't have crucified for it. C) WotC should have rebranded 4E as "D&D tactics" and keep the line going.