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Indeed. The OP did specify that one of those GMs had never played or run the game before, tbf, and the other was a two hour slot described as lackluster rather than awful, but if it was a monster hotel with no negotiation, it wasn't being run by the book either. The home game also evidently...

I don't think you played "wrong". I think NN identified correctly that you played AD&D in more Trad style, as opposed to most OSR being focused on Classic or a somewhat revisionist "new" OSR style of its own. https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.com/2021/04/six-cultures-of-play.html Shadowdark...

Made it back to the gym last night, in part because I was disappointed at missing Sunday and not doing my leg press and calf raises. Did two circuits of my four "usual suspects", then the leg press and hack squat were both busy, but I pivoted and did leg extensions, which I hadn't for a while...

The groups I've played with historically have been for the most part serious enthusiasts. To the extent that we commonly ran multi-year campaigns of D&D as our baseline. IME it's been rare for us to switch editions mid-campaign. I suspect that 60% is comprised both of people who don't want to...

You absolutely do not. Scribe and others have pointed out repeatedly in this thread that the GM advice you're asking for is literally in the GM book. Veldaren and Whizbang Dustyboots mentioned on page 2 of the thread that by the book Reaction rules there is less than a 50% chance of an...

Certainly Your Table May Vary territory. At the tables I sat at, demi-humans were never allowed to use this both by virtue of the RAW and by the clear intent being that this was to make humans better and help ensure they qualified for the badass subclasses, since demi-humans had all their Kewl...

I remember (and the 2E DMG suggests) simple double damage on 20s being the most common crit rule, though critical hit charts with all kinds of funky results definitely date back to OD&D. Dragon #39 was 1980, for AD&D, but Arduin (at least) had them in 1977, and I'm sure it wasn't the only source.

Yeah, even Mentzer has acknowledged that was a mistake and apologized publicly for it. It would have been much better to give them new abilities and ways to use existing ones in Companion, as was suggested would be the case in Cook/Marsh Expert. It's a shame they didn't catch and fix that error...

No luck tokens, at 3rd level? We already know the DM was awful. That's just another stone in the sling. At 3rd level if Human you had three Talent rolls. Two if non-human. Each one has a 30/36 chance of increasing your chances to cast - either by increasing your Int or your Casting Checks...

The Rules Cyclopedia is 1991 and the Complete Fighters Handbook 1989 anyway. Mentzer vs Moldvay has all sorts of interesting little tweaks and differences. One I just was reminded of last week was that Mentzer gives you a slightly more explicit definition for what Holmes and Moldvay call...

They can miss all their attacks in a given round, get hit by a round of attacks and die. This is less likely to happen to the Wizard, who will infrequently be attacked in melee by comparison. A 1st level TSR D&D M-U has one spell. One. Magic Missile might get lucky and roll enough damage to...

No. You're conflating and confusing different things from several different editions now. Remember that enemies DON'T get saving throws against Shadowdark casters. The roll to cast REPLACES saving throws and rolls to hit. You can play 4E if you want them to work more the same. But in...

No, but on average two hits from an enemy is enough to "spend" a first level fighter in an old school game. Either for the fight or just forever. The front line martials are more at the mercy of enemy rolls. The back line casters are more at the mercy of how successful their spells are. But...

Martials have always had to roll to attack. And hope the enemies roll badly to hit them in turn. Their success has always been a combination of strategy and luck. Having roll to cast just means it's on more of the same playing field. A mix of strategy (when to deploy spells, when to use Luck...

Great post. Glad to see follow up on this a year and a half later.

This is one reason I like the "flip/mirror" method so much, because it eliminates "hopeless characters" and raises the average a bit, without any re-rolls. There are other ways to eliminate the re-rolls, of course. In a game I ran last year I had each player generate one set of ability scores...