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OD&D (1974) is the right answer. Because it's always the right answer — except for those times when the right answer is HeroQuest.

And 1 XP was awarded for keeping 1 GP worth of treasure found during the adventure. It's difficult to overstate just how important that is in driving play — with that rule in place, you quite literally never have to "dangle hooks" in front of the players. They'll seek out dungeons on their own...

I've only attended NukeCon once. Ran Palace of the Silver Princess using Holmes Basic + Greyhawk/Blackmoor/EW. The party handled the encounters on the first level fairly well; but up on the second level, they ran afoul of an angry troll (which they tricked into yeeting itself out of the palace...

What it says on the tin. Using whatever criteria you care most about — user-friendliness, aesthetic preference, whatever — how do you prefer your character sheets? The topic presumes the use of a physical character sheet — as in a sheet of paper — that you write on with, like, a pencil. I'm not...

Well I agree with the sentiment at any rate, if not necessarily with any particulars that rely on a dichotomy between RP and mechanics and dice rolls.

That's because the "role-play is superior to roll-play, which makes me superior for being a real role-player" mind-virus remains alive and well and endemic in the gaming population at large. I don't believe for a minute that D&D (regardless of edition) is anywhere near 90% combat for most...

If I'm playing straight D&D, the ability score tables I use are (closest to, but a little more complex than) the ones from Swords & Wizardry: 3–8, −1 9–12, ±0 13–18, +1 If you're rolling 3d6 down the line, each stat has about a 25% chance of a −1 penalty, a 50% chance of no modifier, and a 25%...

Or it's D&D's best design feature. "RPGs should have one right way to play them" is ideological pablum. That is… highly illogical. In fact, it borders on insane troll logic.

At least for my part: no, no, no and no, no (in fact I don't give it to fighters), no, already there, nah, several, and I split the bard into two classes because it covers too many concepts as-is.

It's hard to argue with this thesis. For most of the history of the OSR, there were two co-dominant game systems: Labryinth Lord, and Swords & Wizardry. These were the systems seeing all the new modules and supplements and settings coming out for them. These were the systems seeing their labels...

If I'm going to play, I expect 'em as part of the referee's due diligence. If I'm going to ref, I'll have 'em baked into the character creation options before I ever invite the first player to join.

Wild Shape is pretty potent. In exchange for it, you could give the druid full BAB and Bardic Lore, and it'd still be underpowered.

All right, final update! My house rule & character sheet document is finally done (and hopefully ready to be taken for a spin, whenever I have a chance to run a campaign again). The overall shape of the system has received one last tweak, in the shape of the assassin class, which I decided to...

Killing monsters is absolutely worth XP in original D&D. Too much, in fact: in the original booklets, slain monsters are worth 100 XP per hit die (though this is multiplied by a fraction if the monster is slain by a stronger party: a troll is considered to be worth 700 XP if slain by 7th level...

HLC was one of the very few physical rulebooks I owned as a kid. (In fact, my whole collection in the 90s amounted to: the 1e and 2e PHBs, the 2e DMG, OA, the CNHB, and HLC). I adored this book, even though I never got to use it in play — because by the time we actually saw a campaign run up...

"You should run [module X] for your first campaign, it's great for teaching beginners!"

Metathesis is a very common linguistic process, like palatalization or vowel reduction. But a zed is just an abruptly truncated zeta. (And more importantly, it's frickin' French.)

The artificer and then some! — With this latest update, I do believe that I've finished mapping out all of the playable classes I'm going to need. The system breaks down as follows: Base Classes (human characters with no special requirements): Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief, and Artificer...

Virtuoso is pretty great for a high-ranking level title at any rate! This thread has been exceedingly helpful. Right at the moment, it looks like I'll be calling the class "minstrel" (because that's by far the most accurate, yet sufficiently generic, term), with level titles as follows (using...

Awesome, thanks so much for this! I haven't busted out my Core Rules 2.0 CD-ROMs in a good long while, but I still have the discs — from the first and very much last time my parents ever left a D&D product under the Christmas tree when I was a kid (don't ask) — and it was high time I took a...