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It doesn't matter if Tolkien's dwarves cast spells... This whole discussion reminds me of "Gandalf is a 7th level Magic-User tops" sort of claims. Tolkien's books do not follow any D&D system and can't really be laid on top of them very well, and despite Elric or Cthulhu getting stats in the...

Personally I like to keep things a bit less granular and more abstract. I privilege location and placing over initiative and speed. My approach to rank/file and flank combat is here: https://alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/2023/10/dungeon-skr.html Usually in dungeon crawls this ends up with...

So giant mega dungeons need a large amount of variety and factions. While ancient may tower of the mad elder god wizards is certainly a reasonable start, if this is going to work as a mega dungeon you'll need more then decaying cyclopean stone halls, undead and various failed experiments...

I mean BFRPG is fine as far as I know. It's a BECMI or B/X clone from the first wave of OSR retro-clones like Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and OSRIC (an AD&D clone). I understand it does a few things different then the originals but other then that I've not heard much about it beyond...

My own impression is that as the OSR recedes into memory (or ages into senility - whichever descriptor one prefers) it becomes harder to identify. It has so many offshoots and sub communities, but lacks core shared cores spaces now. To me this is a sign that the OSR is no more... but others want...

That has been my experience as well. My suspicion is that Yochai, like myself and many others in the Post-OSR, doesn't like a small group of creators who hold extremist and bigoted political views. Most of them are also banned in many "OSR" spaces, and Yochai will ban people for intentionally...

I don't disagree, I think the possibility of this kind of play and some mechanics to support it exist within OD&D, but they are incomplete. My assumption (or how I'd run OD&D as a wargame) is that the player wouldn't control a single character but a domain - including several leveled PCs. So...

My own reading is that both Lake Geneva and the West Coast D&D scene missed part of the point of OD&D, because I do suspect that it was originally intended as a sort of mini-game to a larger Chainmail campaign - a sort of "raid the castle for gold to build your army" thing in a Castles &...

I disagree. I played a lot of D&D in the 1980's and there were plenty of different ways the game was played. There were good and bad referees. Moreover, these differences were part of table culture, which was dominant then because there were far fewer means of offical or even inter-hobbyist...

While I agree that adventure content has a good deal to do with how deadly a given campaign is ... there are absolutely bad refereeing methods that make for "killer DMing". many of us may remember some of these from playing D&D when we were pre teens and teenagers in the 1980's... 1) Having...

I always figure that one of the important aspects of older editions is the relative ease of rolling up new characters. Consequences are part of the game. Sometimes being recklessness gets you the gem eyes of the statute - sometimes it animates and pulps the party... Both results are the game...

I was also thinking of a rule for "barbarous finery" - that is if you dress in your battered armor and gear but wear thousands of GP worth of tomb gold... basically nobody wants to mess with you, but everyone wants to overcharge you and rob you ... you'll get invited to nice places but charged...

XP for Gold Spent is pretty traditional way to award XP, it encourages player involvement in the setting and provides a ready made way for characters to make an impact on it as well. In an OD&D game I played back in the G+ days (Pahvelorn run by Brendan of Wonder & Wickedness and the...

I've heard great things about it as well. This was my early version of the rules with rewards more adaptable to standard dungeon crawls: https://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2014/07/hms-appolyon-living-costs-and-basic.html

The way I've considered managing it is that paying money for fancy city clothes and upkeep allows safe access to various neighborhoods in the city and various services. Like the nobility won't talk to you if you're wearing stained travel leathers, or if they do they won't give you a good deal...

I remember finding a non-D&D related and pre-D&D lawsuit where Gary Gygax took the stand as a witness in an insurance fraud by suicide case. I can't find it now on google scholar and am not near Lexis currently, but I wondered if it gave him the impression that the courts favored companies over...

I took a look through the 1st printing of City State of the Invincible Overlord the other day and it (like many early JG publications) is fascinating. I won't say it's especially usable, or the best city supplement ever or anything of that nature, but it's an amazing piece of maximalist...

I think one of the best things you can do in using AD&D or OD&D is recognize that you will run into rules voids and contradictions ... even within the same edition. Acknowledging this and accepting that any game with these systems will be a "table version" rather then some authoritative one is...

It's a sad thing that the idea of designing a new sort a Braunstein (or at least some form of warbands/domains/skirmish based wargame with individual PCs) is being colonized by this sort of thing. It strikes me as both something with really potential for RPG clubs/shops to run and a twist on...

This strikes me as a reasonable take. I think that Williams and others managing later TSR get a lot of blame for bad decisions (and they made quite a few), but that this blame tends to be overblown and often deployed as a shield for people like Gygax ... who also made some bad business...