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Plenty of GM books got by just fine without an encounter balance system.

Not seeing a lot of faith in your fellow gamer here. We were all new once, and we all worked through to get better.

That's my point. Not admitting it and not trying to fix it for nearly a decade is their fault.

I don't know if that's true. You still get xp for overcoming encounters even if you don't kill the monsters.

Or playing a different game that doesn't assume they don't know what they're doing. Would have been nice if the books said any of this though.

Does any book that uses CR refer to it as a training system you should eventually wean yourself off of?

I'm part of the Sim crowd, and how I define that is very much on record. Can't speak for anyone else of course, but I've some agreement from folks around here, at least in part.

People managed to muddle through before 3e introduced CR. It's not IMO needed.

I'm actually fine with looking over creatures appropriate to the setting circumstances and eyeballing it, or even just putting in what I think makes sense regardless of the party. It's not like the monsters exist in the setting to provide a fair fight to the PCs, after all. I don't have use for...

Unless there isn't a 5th level that does what the upcast 1st level one does.

Not admitting to it and trying to fix it for nearly a decade is their fault though.

I think it's less that they hadn't figured it out and more that they hadn't admitted it. Heck, WotC still hasn't. Mearls had to leave the company to say anything.

Rival adventurers. Now that's the way to generate time pressure! Really strains the "PCs are special" paradigm though.

Agreed, but it should be noted that IMO the Forge and it's followers did that by making mechanics that enabled/required that long form storytelling (even if the particular story beats weren't authored in advance). So the Hickman Revolutionaries got the storytelling they wanted, at the cost of...

Takes a long time in those games to make it that high though, and when you do the game wants you to start empire-building anyway.

I believe you're both right. You'll get judgment from one side of the aisle or the other no matter what you espouse.

Not sure those two activities can be fairly compared.

What I'm hearing from this is that BECMI is great. Well and truly agreed. The B/X <slash> BECMI model base is my preference for classic D&D-style play.

Yup. I feel this set-up is distressing common, and the social contract combined with the official rules puts pressure on the GM to knuckle under and give up on their preferences in this matter, which leads to an unhappy GM and, ultimately IMO, a poor game.

I'd love to see 3pp tackling this issue!