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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Garnfellow" data-source="post: 3281926" data-attributes="member: 1223">Gary Gygax certainly didn't play the rules as written -- I've heard a couple of his players note that what made EGG a great DM wasn't his total and absolute command of AD&D rule minutiae: it was his ability to weave a fast-paced and captivating story, and to improvise elegant rulings on the fly.Probably the one person who could come closest to claiming to have run a strict RAW AD&D 1e game is/was Frank Mentzer, and I think even he has said that he never really was 100% compliant, either -- at least not with his house games.Frank seems to have a very practical approach to running games -- he focuses on the game-play experience at the table, and not a strict, procrustean application of the rules. If a rule didn't quite work right or wasn't logical  in a specific context, he'd simply ignore it rather than let that errant rule get in the way of his player's experience.In some ways, Frank's approach very much anticipated the later work of Robin Laws and other game designers who stepped back and asked, "what's the point of this rule, and how does it improve the intended play of this game." Before that, most designers seemed to be asking only "how does this rule provide more realism or detail to the game?"</blockquote>