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Perhaps fortunately, I'm not designing cars. :) The inherent problem with any open-ended and complex progression system is that there's always going to be phases where it works really well (i.e. as designed) and phases where it doesn't due to accumulated glitches. To give another car example...

Even when I'm the one who wrote the module I'm still reading it as I run it; it's not like I memorize the whole thing (if I could I wouldn't have written it all out in the first place!), and the players are inevitably going to do things I didn't account for and thus I have to read the words in...

How do you do that without presenting the same information twice, though? Duplication is wasted page space, and also runs the risk of errors creeping in where the info in, say, the long-form presentation contradicts the info in the short-form.

I'm not so sure about the bolded. A point-form timeline can be every bit as readable and far easier to understand (and, at the table, use) than the same history written out in long-form paragraphs. Example: if I'm running a game in Middle Earth and want to know the history, I'm going to look...

Sometimes it's there so that if the PCs make inquiries the DM has something to fall back on and isn't left trying to make something up on the fly. But if the PCs don't ask, they don't and won't learn that info. So be it; some players aren't interested in that. Other times it's there to give...

Part of the problem is the decreased acceptance of the idea that some species are simply flat-out better at, or better suited for, some classes than they are for others. In 1e, Hobbits make great Thieves or Assassins but lousy melee Fighters. Dwarves make great melee Fighters but can't do...

That's very much how I see it. Or the government is largely made up of retired high-level adventurers who have kept their skills current. Slots in well with the 1e idea that name-level characters retire and become lords or ladies - i.e. minor nobility, even if self-styled - overseeing a...

Why not? In a might-makes-right society, which many D&D settings strongly tend toward, being or becoming the biggest baddest band o' murderhoboes in the land would seem to be a highly viable career goal. That, and for my part I see D&D settings as being every bit as violent as the historical...

Change "Intelligence" to "Wisdom" in the quoted post and you've nailed my playstyle bang on. :)

Tradition and nostalgia would lead to both - you'd have bad saves at low level progressing to good saves at high level.

That's not luck, that's actual good design: you get the bits right that most of the people are going to use most of the time, then let the other bits (that people don't use nearly as often) fend for themselves. 1e and 3e did much the same thing. They got low-mid level right - which is where the...

Easy enough to tweak any spell that targets either Intelligence or Wisdom to instead target both, with the victim having to use the worse of the two saves...

And much of the point of playing D&D is that I can be and-or do things I can't in real life.

Particularly for lower-level play, you're pretty close to the mark overall here. Our games tend to be fairly lethal at low levels to begin with - kind of like a very slow-motion DCC funnel - even before any CvC stuff might rear its head, and so players tend not to get attached to their...

I don't make the "fourth" adjustment. Xp values are what they are, regardless how easy or difficult the battle might be. I just let the J-curve of advancement tables take care of characters gaining xp by mowing down mooks - they'll run out of mooks to kill long before they advance very far. :)...

...and confused? For so long it's not true?

I think I see part of why those numbers come out low. Were I doing it the starting point would be: 6+1 HD monster +1 EAXPB (potential damage per round) +1 SAXPB (free action) [+1 SAXPB (if proficient in any missile weapon)] 5+1 HD monster +1 HD (second class) +1 EAXPB (spell use) +1 SAXPB (the...

And I find all those numbers come out way too low in comparison to the degree of threat those opponents present to the PCs. Nah, not here. Odds are they'd blow some of it up during the combat by lightning bolting the other party, then sell off some of the rest. Even without that I'm fine with...

Then invent that condition and give it a name other than 'stun' which can then continue to mean what it already does: that you're stunned, standing there defenseless and incapable of attack or (coherent) movement.

This actually came up in our game a year or two back: the party had to very carefully disassemble a valuable tapestry in order to access the piece of cloth hidden within it, and then reassemble it afterwards. And so we all rolled d10 to see, on a 1-10 scale, how good we were at sewing and-or...