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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9600702" data-attributes="member: 7026594">For the record, he started out (in 1974) saying there's no reason you can't play a dragon or whatever as long as you start out weak and advance over time, then five years later in the 1979 DMG he was giving the more negative instructions, cautioning DMs to make any such PCs have big drawbacks, and warning of powergaming, etc.  I think he was already a bit jaded by then.In 1974 he was trying to sell the game to the broadest possible audience of homebrewing wargamers, any of whom he expected would naturally change things. By 1979 he was trying to fend off other competing RPGs, stake out territory, keep others from cutting into his profits, and trying to standardize the game for consistent tournament play. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsters!_Monsters!" target="_blank">Monsters, Monsters </a>was in '76, for reference).  Luke Gygax reports that in their home games in the 1e years he was running basically by-the-book AD&D. *And then decades later in life after his new RPGs outside TSR had crashed and burned and he had been paid off by WotC and given work writing editorials and doing voice acting on D&D Online and he was being the avuncular wizard alumnus at conventions he unsurprisingly ran OD&D-style in a more casual manner again (one which wouldn't necessitate trying to remember or look up arcane 1E rules)**.*(I infer, especially given the rules for Wishes in the DMG among other evidence, that Gary's own games and those of his friends, especially Jim "Monty Haul" Ward, were much more generous in those first five years than his advice in the 1E DMG.  And that he gave that tight-fisted and conservative and adversarial advice in reaction to deciding he had made mistakes, as well as his wish that players not emulate Jim, or the Cal-Tech gamers with their hundred level dungeons and 90th level characters.)**(When I played high level AD&D with Frank Mentzer at a con 15 years ago even he couldn't remember a lot of details of AD&D spells; and he's a guy who continued to run high level AD&D for decades after leaving TSR).The first and second ones are cromulent pastiche on the levels of original 2nd or 3rd rate pulp swords & sorcery (John Jakes' Brak the Barbarian, say, Lin Carter's Thongor, or L. Sprague de Camp's Conan stories).  The third one has some decent material adventuring around the Sea of Dust.  But yeah, overall they start out pretty dubious in quality and descend to abyssal levels.Chuck Tingle doing Gord stories like de Camp did Conan is one of the best ideas I've heard in a while. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f606.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":LOL:" title="Laugh    :LOL:"  data-smilie="17"data-shortname=":LOL:" /></blockquote>

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