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Theory was that those name-level characters would retire and if the campaign were to continue you'd then play their henches etc. or roll up something new instead. In other words, even though casters were designed out to 16th-18th the game had a soft cap at about 10th for what was expected to be...

Well, that and the game has always wanted to emulate either sword-and-sandal or knight in shining armour conceits, both of which have swords as their primary weapon. Ultimately true but not all DMs are willing to make that degree of change to the items list, even in spite of... ...this. If I...

Yes, the wizard would probably stand to make a great deal of money through inventing such an item. Uhhh...how? I don't think 5e Wish lets you do that, and earlier versions of Wish carried some heavy permanent casting costs e.g. loss of a Con point in 1e. Logically, artificers and wizards...

There's long-range hope for the old school yet, if the playerbase in that game is any indication!

This. And from running that type of campaign for ages I second Gygax's words fully: nothing is more important than keeping track of in-setting time. That is, if you didn't pick up next session right where you left off this one in terms of in-setting time (never did quite grok Gygax's idea that...

That alone probably removes most if not all contradiction issues; as those tended to rear their heads when later rules were added that hadn't been 100% vetted against what already existed. You say the DM is quite young (wonderful to hear!) - mind if I ask what the age range of the players is?

If there's an in-setting need for something, odds are pretty good some mage or other has designed and built one somewhere along the line. Endless Quiver would seem to qualify. Not sure the disagreement's as fundamental as all that. I'd venture to say that we'd agree that RPGs in aggregate can...

How about getting the players paraniod about the ceiling by describing how green and slimy it is and then putting the actual Green Slime on the floor for them to step in? :)

For me, and as others have noted, "modern" might broadly equate to what is now called narrativist. Player ability to change the setting, player permission required to kill a character, granular resolution skipped in favour of getting to the next scene, that sort of thing. One element not yet...

Are you using the RAW as written in 1979 or are you including UA and-or Dragon-article amendments and additions thereafter? I ask because one factor in the early 1980s that we don't see today is that Dragon came out every month and sometimes had new rules or Gygax's interpretations in it that...

My namesake character - a Fighter who's been fried by his own side far too many times over the years - keeps a wizard-slayer longsword on hand for exactly this reason. :)

Shocking Grasp is another one where the caster has to touch the target. We always ruled it (maybe wrongly, but hey) that casting a touch attack spell like that left the caster's hand "loaded" for a round, meaning the caster could cast the spell one round and then dart in and attack with it the...

The locals would have home-field advantage perhaps, in that as crossbow bolts can be all metal and some underground species are good at mining-smelting-manufacturing metal it means the locals might have loads of ammo for their crossbows while the PCs have nothing for their long and short bows.

You're far nicer than I am. :) Someone goes swimming unexpectedly, I go through most of that sequence - particularly with things like scrolls and spellbooks. And as a player, if my character wears armour then "Armour Care Kit" is usually high on my list of carried gear and "Whetstone" is...

A common-ish fumble result when using bow is that the string snaps; if you don't have spares in your gear list you'll need to jury-rig something or go bow-less for a while. You have a point, though: if the PCs aren't ready for action - e.g. they're jumped while travelling through a forest - I...

The player whose PC just spent 4000 g.p. to pick up an Endless Quiver would have a pretty good case for feeling resentful if another player's PC just always had endless ammo anyway because of being too lazy to track it and-or the DM not enforcing ammo limits. I don't look at D&D as a...

Not sure if any of it remains on this site but in 2012 or so @Morrus had a Battle of the Bards here, where performers were invited to submit RPG-related work - either original or a performed rewording of an existing song - and people would vote for their favourite. About 40 works were...

Thanks for reminding me why I never used 1e initiative as written. :) It seems, though, like the 10-segment casting round was designed to line up with the [d6+weapon speed] initiative of the melee types. One can accomplish much the same at way less complexity by ditching weapon speed and...

Come to think of it, I'm not sure I've ever seen a spear-specialized character in any game I've run. Sure, some have taken proficiency with spear, but never specialization. I suspect it's because spear is seen as a lesser or more primitive weapon while sword is seen as the more advanced or...

Not odd at all. Umbran said nobody tracks deaths in D&D games, I merely pointed out that for my own part, I do. And if enough people in Europe share their salary numbers and someone aggregates that info then you've got something to work with. It might not be "scientific" for peer-review...