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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4989682" data-attributes="member: 80487">Different "old school" DMs certainly did and do have different approaches. One might have a puzzle solved by dice-roll, especially for a character of exceptional intelligence and experience level; another might pose an analogous puzzle to the player. I detest "fudging", but have come across indications that the biggest names among the hobby's pioneers indulged in it on occasion. There are even "railroad conductors", story-driven or otherwise. And of course the D&D supplements and Dragon magazine issues of the 1970s and 1980s offer sometimes amazingly baroque house rules on one subject after another. (Sometimes simpler ones as well; I don't know who liked the unarmed-combat rules in the 1st ed. DMG, which Gary disavowed.)The thing is that you've got a simpler starting point and a lot of freedom to do your own thing -- even if it's the opposite of someone else's thing -- without "playing the game wrong". A book from TSR is not in charge; the DM is in charge.Sure, players unfamiliar with the AD&D "standard" rules might be at a disadvantage in tournaments, but that's not widely relevant.I personally would not be inclined to run an old-style D&D game without magic. There goes half the PHB, and another big chunk of the DMG. What's the point of lugging the books then?With 3e and 4e, a lot more seems "essential". Certainly the fans I've met see little point in parting with the weight of rules apparatus; and in any case I see little appeal in spending hundreds of dollars on material that's just going to gather dust. "Use it or lose it" at some point seems sensible.I get plenty of use out of the Gygaxian DMG without bogging down my game in such continual look-ups of trivia as make up the central activity of a typical 3e or 4e session in my experience.Not that I'm dead-set against that kind of thing. I happen to like Chivalry & Sorcery, which is famously rules-heavy.It's just that C&S is not D&D.</blockquote>

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