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At least it's an option. You don't have to do it. If you choose to follow that path you spend something like 1-4 months meditating in nature, during which time a 25th+ level Druid finds you, tests you and trains you, and then you pick up the new abilities and restrictions.

To clarify a little, I was just referencing specifically what 1E says about Alchemists making potions (which is just assisting with it). They're also mentioned as selling various spell components, and defined on page 29 as handling "the compounding of magical substances". Their fee structure...

Got in Friday after work for two circuits of dumbbell bench, dumbbell inclined curls, and dumbbell lateral raises. Then did three sets of machine overhead press. I was going to use a machine for tricep extensions (for some reason I wasn't feeling my dumbbell behind the head skull crushers) but...

The big chart was also a pain to read and use. But there's some cool stuff in there.

Yep, you did have to get it back to town (not use it up on the adventure) to get XP for it, but note that 1E gave XP two different ways for magic items: 1) If an item was sold immediately for cash instead of being kept, it awarded XP at the cash value. 2) If an item was kept by a PC who could...

In the DMG it's more a matter of implication. All the discussion of rarity and how difficult it is to make them. The charts do tell you how much you can sell magic items for "on the open market", but don't seem to mention magic shops. Even the rules for alchemists make them only of use helping...

Weight stable but I've been pretty much off exercise all week. Have had conflicting commitments shortly after work, low energy and seem to need more sleep in the mornings. But I made myself get in bed earlier last night and was able to do my morning exercises today. Going to try to motivate...

Yeah, I had a subscription for a while and used to re-read regularly as a teen and in college. The occasional joke article was fine, but the overall volume of them definitely made me feel like those April issues were less useful and entertaining.

de Lint is always great, though I didn't get into him until later. The Bishop's Heir I really loved as a kid (found the ending extremely affecting), and thought held up fine on later reads. It and its follow-up The King's Justice seemed to me to refine and mature Kurtz' writing from the first...

Recovery is definitely accelerated from OD&D. In keeping with how healing accelerated across the editions. I do often point out how AD&D characters have more base HP and access to more healing spells at low level than OD&D and B/X characters. The simple "you don't die until -10" house rule so...

I think they MOSTLY kept to running their own dungeons/areas. So each only had a limited territory in the game world they had to be responsible for and keep track of. What other kinds of coordination are you thinking?

If it's any consolation, JMal didn't use that word in the first article of his I found on the topic. I don't know if he used it elsewhere. I could imagine him using it, though I imagine it'd be at least a bit ironic. He has tended to take a very nostalgic, and sometimes elegiac, tone.

Gotcha. Yeah. My Open Table/West Marches game had just me running it. The West Marches/Shared World server I played in online was a multi-DM affair, all running OSE/B/X in a shared setting with characters allowed to hop around.

I remembered the game having some balance issues (Reflex being the god-stat even above Dex in D&D), and dug up some interesting post-mortem posts from Reddit on the game. I did love the setting and feel, though (I think I still have my copies of the game and at least one expansion), so it seems...

I'm not sure I find it inherently more ghoulish than gamifying physical injuries or other forms of death, dismemberment, or disability which PCs suffer from. But you could be right that it was a factor in WotC's thinking.

It can be an issue. Folks have mentioned three of the top ways to handle it: 1. Just force the players to manage their time well, and/or extend the session until they make it back. This is how I often did it when I was running a game like this online during the pandemic. We were playing...

How about Mekton? Or Teenagers From Outer Space? Human, Satyr, Centaur and Harpy, IIRC. A Pauli Kidd design with Donna Barr art, to my recollection. Pretty sure the rules included card-based systems for dueling, for magic, and for social repartee.

Maybe I'm misremembering Maliszewski's take (here?), but I know some versions of that argument (like Delta's) absolutely don't focus only on the historical pulps. Dan does suggest that it's a problem if/that D&D has become too self-referential, but argues that it should include more references...

I was going to say, "or a DM who had been running OD&D already for years", which is basically what the 1E books are written assuming. Yes, you've hit on it. It was a huge thing in wargames. The hobby wargame community (especially miniatures gamers, somewhat less so board-wargamers who could...