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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6351415" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't see how this bears on the quality of Gygax's advice.I GMed for an average of around 4 hours per week from 1990 to 1998, and have GMed for an average of around 4 hours per fortnight since then. That's thousands of hours of GMing. In that time I haven't followed Gygax's advice, and I don't think my game has suffered for it. As I posted upthread, the more I have prioritised the participants in my game over the "integrity" of my campaign world, the better my game, and my GMing, has become.I'm not sure what you mean by "the game itself" as something above and beyond the PCs' actions.Presumably the GM doesn't have to adjudicate the NPCs' actions! That's just generation of backstory, via whatever mechanics the game dictates (AD&D 1st ed uses a lot of random rolls), which is not radically different from other RPGs.Do you mean that the GM has to make decisions about what rules are in use? I don't see why that's the GM's sole prerogative. For instance, if a GM was disinclined to have rangers in his/her game, but a player really wanted to play one, I don't see any reason why an AD&D GM should treat that request differently from how a Rolemaster or 3E or 4e GM would treat it. There's nothing special about AD&D which makes it more prone to breaking if the GM follows the lead of the players in including particular game elements. (Obviously some game elements in AD&D are broken, but that's not distinctive to AD&D, and presumably Gygax doesn't think that that is the reason for his Afterword - that it's a protection against bad design.)Given all the debates I see online about templates, ECL, etc, players wanting to play a dragon seems to be a bigger issue in 3E/PF than in AD&D!As far as having given out too much treasure, I think one of the problems with the DMG is that it gives contradictory advice. At one point it emphasises that treasure should mean TREASURE; at another point it gives the ludicrously stingy examle of the ogres. It includes tables and descriptions of magic items filling a good portion of the overall book; then at another point it warns the GM not to hand out treasure; then the MM includes treasure tables, and Appendix C includes NPC generation tables, that make magical treasure pretty ubiquitous. I think Moldvay Basic did a better job of this, by having level-appropriate magic item generation tables, and clearer advice on the use of treasure tables.As far as adjudicating the creativ use of spells or other PC capabilities, I think this is just as much a part of a 4e GM's job as an AD&D GM's. (Others can comment on 3E.) I think 4e has tools that make this easier (eg DC by level and damage by level tables), but the basic job description is the same. And my view remains that the correct ordering of priorities is participants ahead of GM's campaign ahead of "the game" in some abstract sense. Back when I used to GM AD&D regularly, adopting this ordering improved my game; whereas attempting to apply Gygax's ordering came close to wrecking it.That may be true, but that is not what Gygax says. Or at least, if that's what he meant he put it poorly, given that he puts participants last without any drawing of distinctions or clarifications.I don't find the analogy very persuasive.For instance, the idea that a player will be "spoiled" if his/her druid is allowed to ride a wolf, even though the game rules don't expressly allow for it, strikes me as implausible. Enforcing the rules to make sure the game doesn't break is one thing; that's a basic job requirement for a referee. But blocking player input into the fiction because you think it's implausible, or you have an alternative preferred conception, is something quite different.</blockquote>

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