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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wolfpack48" data-source="post: 9346612" data-attributes="member: 6872648">Well, having lived and played through all that, I do remember it being very much a note of conversation in Dragon articles both from Gary and others, about the proper amount of challenge, notes on being impartial and fair, not falling into the killer DM trap, giving players plenty of clues, and so forth. Everyone was coming to grips with the fact that players knew more about the types of challenges that could be placed, and ways to keep things challenging and fun. I don't think, however, there was ever a discussion about not challenging players at all and simply entertaining them. Everyone points to Tomb of Horrors, but you can also point to Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, which had its fair share of puzzles and traps, but all the clues were made apparent and relatively easy to solve if the party put their heads together. Monsters always had unique or special abilities to keep players on their toes, and the slaver series had tactical challenges in the combats, even with standard type orcs and goblins. Also, keep in mind that one of the earliest modules, Village of Hommlet had a mystery about the dungeon, for which clues needed to be obtained by interacting with villagers.What there wasn't a lot of time spent on was finding new rule buttons so the players could just roll on a stat to solve the mystery. Pushing players to use their noggins was a goal, and I think a good one.</blockquote>

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