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Slightly off-topic, but I think armor was an issue even back in the TSR days. When I was rolling up AD&D characters we mostly did equipment by the book, and starting gold was generous enough that my warrior characters hardly ever started off with anything worse than chain and shield, plus all...

The BECMI bell curve ranging from -3 to +3 was very clean design, easy to learn, and did not require rolling fistfuls of dice in order to get a viable character. Whereas AD&D had this bizarre mishmash of bespoke ability scores, no two remotely alike, that did not give any bonuses except at very...

Once again we see the essential conflict over what D&D is and should be. In this thread we have posters saying that D&D is a high fantasy game, so the problems come from trying to make that game appealing to fans of low fantasy, while others say that the problem comes from trying to make a...

I do remember the 1983 boxed set having demographic data listing the populations of different races in various regions. There were a fair number of non-human populations scattered around, but not many realms on the map. I never really saw it as a big problem for players making non-human PCs...

Some groups in the OSR scene seem to want games to be “serious business!!!”, which does not seem to have been the most prevalent attitude back in the day, at least as far as we can tell now.

Speaking of silly, names like “Frobozz” and “Lord Dimwit Flathead the Excessive” always reminded me of the weird names and fake swears in MAD magazine, or the humor in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which was a formative influence for me and everybody in my 1980’s D&D groups. I memorized...

Considering what we now know about EGG’s willingness to use the rules and setting to enforce his personal ideas about fantasy archetypes, and his preference for pulp sword and sorcery, it is not surprising that Greyhawk did not have much room for Gnomes and Halflings. I seem to remember some...

It sounds like the dice rolling and bookkeeping might get a bit tedious after a while, especially if the campaign is combat-heavy so weapons and armor take a constant beating.

I have great memories of many hours playing these three games on Apple IIe computers with green screens in the school computer lab (after school activity) and on our home PC clone with its amber screen (exotic!). Some of the puzzles were that special kind of “how in the world was anyone...

Yes, it is strange to see so many people taking a purist approach that tries to freeze these old kitchen sink settings in amber. In the very early years of D&D it was assumed that any DM worth their salt would homebrew everything. Even after TSR started to publish official settings and...

Alignment is out of fashion and has been officially de-emphasized or deleted from newer editions of fantasy games like D&D or Pathfinder, but I do think it can be useful as a character motivation or adventure hook if handled carefully (i.e., not as a stick that the game designer orders DMs to...

Looking back, “mellow” is not exactly the best word choice, but I am also not sure if there actually is a single perfect adjective that captures what I was trying to say. I wanted a succinct way to describe how EGG’s attitude seemed to change as the 70’s turned into the 80’s. In the 70’s he...

This situation is indeed bad, but it reminds me of how much worse it was back in the day. The 1985 Unearthed Arcana book was rushed into print because TSR needed cash fast, so it contained even more errors than usual. In November 1985 Dragon magazine published an article of UA errata and rule...

This comment reminds me again of the Civilization games. In a 2014 interview with Ars Technica, franchise creator Sid Meier said that the Civ team at Firaxis had a “rule of thirds” design philosophy for new Civilization entries: one-third traditional gameplay, one-third improvements on the last...

Yep. In other words... B/X and AD&D combat! Or OSR games designed to recapture that spirit. What you describe sounds a lot like the repetitive loop of “swing magic long sword” that had me complaining about boring 1E combats circa 1988. It did not help that some of the stricter DMs I played...

I am right handed but I would organize a shelf of gaming books the same way, starting with general books at the left and proceeding right towards the more specific.

Interesting that the Civilization games came up in this conversation. Turn-based 4X strategy games for desktop PCs would not seem to share many design issues with tabletop RPGs, but that series has seen a kind of arms race between the game designers and certain subsets of hard core players who...

PCs getting taken out of action by all-or-nothing control spells was never any fun, but at least in early editions like B/X or AD&D the effects did not usually take up much real session time due to faster combat rounds. Players generally had fewer options and fewer decisions to make. Combat...

Back in the day, I got a brief taste of AD&D 1E before learning how to play and run D&D from the Moldvay/Cook B/X sets. Although I now appreciate the lessons I learned from B/X, AD&D gave me a lasting preference for games with a wealth of options in character creation. This was just as well...

I have just accepted that I am a Paizo battle mat collector. I love the art style and plan on eventually using their products at the table. Paizo seems to have discontinued their accessory lines except for pawn sets for core books and flip-mats for their two RPGs. Some of the newer flip-mats...