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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenobi65" data-source="post: 1838623" data-attributes="member: 1515">3 words:Potion Miscibility Table.There's nothing like the off chance of blowing a PC to smithereens because he drank two potions in rapid succession. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />But, seriously...Beyond Gygax's dense, unique prose, the one thing that struck me then (and still does, now) about the 1E DMG is the philosophy that the DM must rigidly control the information that the players have (and, in most cases, keep them in the dark as much as possible).  Personally, I've got enough issues running a game, beyond keeping track of the abilities of every durn magic item, which the players aren't supposed to be able to find out particularly easily.  IME, players will just waste time trying to learn these things, anyway ("I swing my +1 sword, then I swing this new one.  Is it easier to swing, or not?").  It wasn't worth it to me to hoard that sort of info back in 1982 (when I started DMing), and it still isn't today.Another example of this, of which the last poster just reminded me -- the to-hit and saving throw tables were only in the DMG, thus making them, in philosophy, the domain of the DM.  What good purpose does this / did this serve, other than making too many annoyed players buy a DMG, too?  That being said...it was still an inspirational book for me, as a novice D&D player.  One of my favorite bits in the back of the DMG was the "suggested reading" bibliography; most of the novels I read in the first few years I was playing D&D were taken directly off that list!</blockquote>

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