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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9067808" data-attributes="member: 7023840">That's not quite correct. You have to put the AD&D DMG into the perspective of it's time in order to understand why it's so muddled.In the beginning, you had OD&D. OD&D wasn't so much a game that you played, as it was a toolkit for creating your own game. I need to emphasize this- it was pretty much impossible to play OD&D "straight out of the box" (with just the LBBs). So OD&D was necessarily a game that relied on supplements, magazine articles, 3PP, rulings at different tables, and being taught, usually in person.As I've noted in other threads, we can see this in a few ways. First, a lot of the early RPGs were created out of OD&D- many of them, even the first superhero RPG, were simply OD&D campaigns with custom rules. Second, there were different cultures of play- notably, there was a difference between the more narrative-heavy "SciFi" crowd and the more "Skill/Death" wargame crowd. That's ... it's kind of a simple way to look at it, but it's detailed in a lot more depth in The Elusive Shift.So what you're seeing in AD&D and the DMG is Gygax at war with himself. On the one had, you'll see a lot of passages from Gygax as the hobbyist when he extolls the the virtues of making the campaign your own, playing up to the fun and the imagination of the game, and so on. On the other hand, you'll see a lot of passages from Gygax as businessman, where he talks about how AD&D is the only true game and you have to follow the rules.Which is why the advice in the book seems to swing randomly from "make it your own" to "the rules are not mutable," sometimes within the same paragraph.There is a similar split with regard to handling players. On the one hand, Gygax is constantly talking about engaging players, making it more welcoming, and discusses how high-level players will go to other worlds. But ... he also makes sure to continually admonish the DM to keep a tight check on players and repeatedly warns the reader that all players are power-hungry and will try to abuse the system.In short, you can find support for almost anything within it, if you look hard enough.</blockquote>

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