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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Korgoth" data-source="post: 3816705" data-attributes="member: 49613">Gary's famous Preface to the 1E DMG addresses the topic over several paragraphs; sometimes only a small section of his discussion on the mutability of the rules is excerpted (thus rather out of context).  In the Preface, he is explaining the concept of AD&D as a "framework" and "mutable system" (and this is a work designed for DMs, and is perhaps the first such work a person at that time would have read on the subject of how to run a role playing game).Gary emphasizes multiple times in the early part of the 1E DMG that the game is open to and encourages elaboration and individual imagination, so that no two campaigns will be the same.  He stresses that the rules are necessarily incomplete, require DM arbitration and have as a feature of their incompleteness the ability to be molded to suit the aims of the individual game.  But he also says, and this is the controversial part, that if you change the game too far in certain directions, you won't really be playing AD&D anymore.  He cites two pitfalls here: [1] either messing up the balance of the game so that is becomes too easy (what would later be called "Monty Haul" gaming) and thus falls apart (a practical point: Gary thinks if you run Monty Haul you won't be running a long-lived and ultimately enjoyable game), and [2] the game becoming so "alien" that it is no longer AD&D.  He doesn't explain this in detail, but it seems aimed at rules concepts (like he mentions in the previous paragraph referring to Ability Scores and Magical Spells and Items having relatively similar effects)... it's clearly not aimed at "thematic purity" since Gary himself gives guidelines later in the book for mixing AD&D with Gamma World and Boot Hill.  The Preface imagines that DMs who share in the common set of rules assumptions will even be able to meaningfully discuss their games with one another, and perhaps even tournament games would be a possibility (interesting that these things weren't a given when he was writing).I think if one reads the entire Preface in context it appears as a sympathetic and useful document.There also may be a text or two from Dragon that concern people, but I'd need a refresher on those.</blockquote>

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