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The AD&D PHB says this (p 30): First, second, third, and even fourth level spells are granted to the cleric through meditation and devout prayer. This spell giving is accomplished by the lesser servants of the cleric's deity. Fifth, sixth, and seventh level spells can be given to the cleric...

I think this is the most obvious response to the "frivolous" thing. If it's not frivolous to grant the cleric spells so that they can go off hunting and looting, why is it frivolous to help them extract all the power they can from the DoMT? And if the Commune spell is able to give guidance as...

It's probably more like a "floodgates" argument than a slippery slope one. Personally, it seems to me that if a deity can cope with all the clerical prayers for spells every morning, a little bit of Communing hardly seems like it will bother them. Or to come at it another way: if a GM wants to...

I think you're thinking of this: https://www.enworld.org/threads/dungeons-dragons-has-done-away-with-the-adventuring-day.707237/post-9489723 800 posts later I still had posters - who were not present at an event that happened over 35 years ago now, and who know none of the participants, nor...

In Gygax's PHB and DMG, alignment is set out as a type of disagreement about means: lawful good people think that the best way to ensure "the good" (life, truth, beauty, wellbeing) is by way of relatively strict or at least clear social order/hierarchy; whereas chaotic good people think that the...

4e D&D has advice on correlating suitable heights of drops to PC levels - that, is, the potential damage from falling is incorporated into the general framework for assigning a level to threats/challenges. I don't think any earlier versions of D&D do this - I'm not sure about 5e D&D. In any...

I'm not sure what you mean by rules that make sense contextually but still allow players a great deal of freedom. You mention D&D and PF, and what is most distinctive about them is their intricate PC-building rules (including spells and magic items); and also perhaps their intricate wargame-y...

This doesn't tell me how the "info dig" is actually resolved. And this doesn't sound like Sir Galahad.

Feuerbach might say that he's not, strictly speaking, an atheist - he's just establishing a true consciousness about the content and significance of statements about god (ie on his account, they're really statements about human nature and capacity). I've not read serious biographies, but I...

I write professionally, but not fiction (genre or otherwise) - I'm an academic in literary disciplines (law and philosophy), and my work is published in academic journals and books. The idea of trying to do serious work without talking to others - about my ideas, about their ideas, about others'...

It's not their coinage, though - the term goes back to the 1970s. Eg both Gygax and Pulipher use it, to describe the wargame-y play that you identify in your post.

I posted about this issue a few years ago: D&D General - Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

Doors are a huge chunk of Gygax's AD&D rules! If you take out the combat rules, and the rules for door, there are very few rules left other than all the rules for spells and magic items. (And even some of them are about doors!) In the classic dungeon, the door is the trigger for a...

In Gygaxian skilled play, the mechanics for dealing with doors - detecting them (if they're hidden), listening at them, opening them - are a component of skilled play.

In Burning Wheel, the rule for failure is this (I'm quoting from Gold Revised p 31; the text on p 34 of Revised is pretty similar): When the dice are rolled and don't produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails. What does this mean? It means the stated intent does not...

A lot of games have multiple dimensions of skill, though - eg in cricket there is batting and bowling. In games that aren't scored - like RPGs - there may not be a strict measure of skill, and it becomes more a matter of judgement. I still think these judgements can be made, though. To me...

Although there are also some very interesting (and reasonably influential) games from the late 90s. The two I'm thinking of (admittedly one has a 2000 publication date, from memory) are Maelstrom Storytelling and HeroWars. The latter morphed into HeroQuest, then HeroQuest revised, and now there...

Often we agree, but on this occasion we don't. On the issue of ranking: there can be a "known best player" without an official leaderboard. In my main university RPG group, everyone knew which player was the best at deploying the Rolemaster spell rules; he was also (subsequent to attaining this...

Another interesting thing about the comparison of Daggerheart (as rules "light") to PF2e (as rules heavy) is that it can help someone whose main experience is PF-esque and D&D/d20-esque games to see what is possible with other designs. That might help them appreciate how even lighter RPGs are...

I don't know FR very well. Is there scope to imagine that, in FR, a deep water port means navigable approaches and docking consistently over (say)15' deep? But I think it makes a pretty good model for a D&D city! The cities I've been in that have given me the greatest degree of D&D vibe are Fez...