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Naming abilities is fun. :D But of course, everything is still tentative at this stage — case in point, I've now added the monk class (along with some hints about how I'm going to work up the remaining human and demihuman classes), and the monk abilities don't all have clever names quite yet...

Well into the late 90s it was standard practice to call all the non-Advanced versions of D&D "OD&D." (See: OD&Dities Magazine, which is very much dedicated to what's now called BECMI/RC.) It's not that people were unaware of LBB OD&D; it's that the "O" was used less to mean "Original" and more...

1. The same way you account for them when playing OD&D or Basic D&D or AD&D normally (none of which have ability or proficiency checks as a core mechanic, nor need them to function). Either apply a rule that already exists (e.g. searching is roll low on 1d6, trying to persuade someone is a...

I have no idea what GreyLord is talking about. The first printing of S&W is very clearly based on LBB D&D. The "white box" edition retains the d6 hit die progressions for all classes, while "Core" and "Complete" use Greyhawk (not B/X) hit dice (just to cite one example). There's an elf class...

My bare essentials? Already wrote 'em up. No ability scores or nonhuman races, one class with defined levels, titles, XP requirements, hit points, attack roll, one saving throw, and one thieving skill.

"Trickster" is a bit too generic, I think. But "jester" has at least two really good things going for it: it's close enough in meaning to "minstrel" to convey almost the same idea (but more adventurous-sounding, and without the unfortunate implications attached to the term in the 19th century)...

Quick question. (Well, quick to ask, but who knows how lengthy it'll be to resolve.) If you were going to rename the bard class, what would you call it? When I run bards and druids, I like to keep them tied to Celtic culture. But the modern fantasy bard archetype — the happy-go-lucky, charming...

I'm aware. Just forgot to mention that it was one of the inspirational notes at work behind this notion. Rumors of my demise are either greatly exaggerated, or of dubious canonicity. :p 🤷‍♂️ I think I liked it better the first time, when it was called the Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition...

Not long ago, I had to put the kibosh on the campaign I was running, mostly due to a lack of free time on my part. I was running what could best be described in today's old-school vernacular as a mashup of the Original and Classic editions — mostly BECMI as the foundation, but with elements...

I run the TSR editions, so I can't recall a combat ever having "run long"; trapped in the dungeon can happen, but it's rare, and it's very bad (random tables dictating the fates of characters who end a session in the dungeon are dime-a-dozen on OSR blogs; the outcomes usually range from "lost...

I guess that means adventures are short then. One adventure is one excursion — leave town, go do stuff in dangerous places, return to town. Every game session begins and ends in Castellan/Kendall* Keep, or Hommlet, or Tanaroa, or Mantua, or the unspecified home-base locations from the G series...

My preferred paradigm is the "living sandbox" milieu. Draw a hex map, fill it with: cool places, interesting people, conflicting factions, dangerous monsters, desirable treasures, a difficult mystery, and loads of clues. Turn the players loose on the world and see what happens. Make sure the...

(You forgot "not applicable, don't use alignment".) I'm not running 5e, but I still checked "not applicable, orcs and drow absent." I hardly ever run "official" settings, so I have no use for "official" Greyhawkian/Realmsian lore. I have a variety of fay-folk and sluagh and orcneas and draugr...

First played on a friend's copy of the black box. First owned an AD&D 2E PHB (revised black-cover edition). Within a year, my personal collection had grown to encompass four more rulebooks: a black-cover 2E DMG, the Complete Ninja's Handbook, a Trampier-cover 1E PHB, and 1E Oriental Adventures.

Age: 37 Year started: 1998 (I played a couple of times before that, but '98 was my freshman year of high school and also when I seriously started gaming) First RPG: The Classic D&D Game (the mid-90s trade-sized reissue of the black box) Formative experiences: Played Classic D&D and AD&D 2E in...

It was good. I can't sit through fifteen minutes of Critical Role without getting bored to tears — watching other people play D&D (or pretend to) isn't engaging — but Vox Machina was fast-paced, funny, and generally delightful.

That's a good option too. In addition to implying breadth of competence (I can easily picture a red mage type being called an "adept"), "adept" has something else going for it in terms of the fantasy literary tradition — in Baum's Oz novels, it's one of five types of studied magic-user on par...

My best villain one-liner was a written note in a treasure chest, combined with a simple trap: the floor of the room was a wall of force concealed by a simple illusion of a stone floor, over a 20' deep spiked pit. Opening the chest in the middle of the room, one simply finds a note therein...

"Dragoon" would be less of a mouthful, and it has a bit of fantasy precedent. Part of the problem, of course, is that we're trying to coin a neologism for a concept that has no deep, resonant name in folklore and mythology. The archetypical (in the campbellian sense) great warrior-hero is often...

We can generalize the concept with terms that don't step on cultural toes. Bodyguard —> guardian —> warden or warder. I like the sound of warder — it suggests both a shield-bearer and an abjurer.