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I think that's a good way to sum up good prep - not so much needing to plan for every outcome, but to understand the situation and the NPCs enough to bring it all to life and improvise as needed.

Looking at people I gamed with back in the day, that sort of grossness was around. I wouldn't say that it was integral, but there were some players and some DMs that it seemed like were always bringing those elements to the game. Both Frankenstein and the Creature have a whole lot of shirking...

Both characters are flawed and ultimately selfish. That's part of the horror of the story, what makes it compelling. I'm also reminded of George Lucas' dialogue. Some of those sentences required actors to work really hard to try to make it sound natural. And that was the two-part crime of...

I wanted to use the Egg of Coot, but in my last Greyhawk campaign (which was a quasi-sandbox campaign) the PCs never went there.

I finished reading Shelley's Frankenstein. This time around, I have a suspicion both Frankenstein and the Creature are unreliable narrators. And as much as people will say Victor Frankenstein is the real monster, I dunno after this re-read. The Creature does a whole lot of murdering innocents...

On paper, I probably split 60-40% in favor of planning to improvising. I always deliberately leave myself holes in my session outline that I will have to improvise through. One thing I read years ago that stuck with me is that when we plan a session in advance and when we improvise, we draw from...

At this point I'm sure 5e has overtaken 2e as far as hours played, but until the, 2e was tops. From about 1989-1993, I was running 2e every week, oftentimes multiple times.

I dunno, if a PC wants to make a Stealth check sneak up on a guard in a chamber, I think the game becomes infinitely more evocative and interesting if they say "I dart from pillar to pillar when the guard isn't looking to try to sneak up on them" instead of "I want to roll Stealth to hide from...

With social checks, I also ask myself the question of whether the two (or more) people involved have different desired outcomes. If the answer is no, it's not a check. If the answer is yes, it is a check.

With a campaign of that complexity, you really need to track time. I mean, I guess you could get away with not, but after a certain point you're going to start running into the walls, not knowing who is where when, doing what. I remember when I did the math on my Tomb of Annihilation campaign -...

The funny thing is, I've been running a Cyberpunk Red campaign for over a year, and it pretty much requires an in-game calendar be kept. And it really does make the campaign more meaningful. When you've got rent due at the end of the month, every day you spend healing, hustling, crafting is a...

And yet, those conflicts, the shambolic, occultic nature of AD&D is a huge part of its appeal. There was a sense of mystery and lore about it. You had to delve, divine, and customize the game to run it. Because, as you said, you could not run it completely as written. I remember trying out the...

While I'm sure that there were tables that did use all the rules of 1e out there, I've never met one. My table certainly didn't.

Back from vacation. While away, I re-read William Hope Hodgson's The Boats of the Glen Carrig, Algernon Blackwood's The Wendigo, and some sundry weird fiction short stories. The Wendigo remains one of the most chilling horror stories I've ever read; it surprises me that no one has adapted it...

That about sums up my feelings as well. DCC is Jack Vance's Cugel the Clever and Shadowdark is REH's Red Nails. I dearly loved DCC until the whole CSIO mess and am still sorting through my feelings, while Shadowdark is a strong newcomer.

I am pretty much in agreement with you - to my mind, it does a disservice to PCs that have specialized in social skills if someone can just RP really well and not have to roll. And honestly, even the suavest person sometimes just says the wrong thing, or the listener takes it the wrong way...

The domain game that AD&D was supposed to transition to at higher levels would provide plenty of opportunities for PCs to spend their GP. Rulership is expensive. I've increasingly come to feel that removing this element of late-stage gameplay from D&D was a mistake. Agreed. You should not be...

The amount of detail on the that cover is phenomenal. The way the light from the dragon's eyes catches on, well, everything. Robin Wood did some amazing work for TSR. Trying to square that in your world-building seems like it would be way too much work. And it completely breaks down if you have...

Hmmm... Margaret St. Clair's The Shadow People was hugely influential on the Underdark, as is Merritt's The Moon Pool. Lumley's Burrowers Beneath is cited as the source of the Mind Flayer. Though, on that subject, I might also point to the short story Forringer's Fortune. Originally published in...

One of the many lessons on why executives should've make creative decisions. That's a great story! Those mini-vehicles were great - they presented a cheap on-ramp when most of the full-size toys retailed for $10-25.