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<blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 5179873" data-attributes="member: 3400">I think I should disabuse you of the notion that us old-timers thought Gygax was somehow infallible. While the 1e DMG may be a fun read and offer useful advice, for example, there are some rule explanations that are terrible as far as promoting clarity and usability.Simply, not every adventure written by Gygax (or even substantially written by him and finished by someone else) is going to appeal to everyone. I thought the 4th level's layout was silly, the module generally too tedious, and the elemental nodes completely dispensible. I thought it could have used a good editor to tighten it up so it could reach the potential it has. Others disagree.I liked the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. There was so much variety that, even if things didn't make much sense, the dungeon never became tedious and never felt particularly silly, though it ran on the razor's edge of that sometimes. The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, I think, impressed me less than Tsojcanth, but it was shorter and less tedious than ToEE. The Keep on the Borderlands I never found to be written particularly well, but it's an environment easy to make dynamic and it's very easy to convey that to the players. By comparison, I found you really have to push the idea that the different elemental forces are violent rivals for the players to even notice there's a difference between them other than elemental specialty. So while the write-up covers the dynamism of the ToEE environment, it's a lot less evident to the players.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="billd91, post: 5179873, member: 3400"] I think I should disabuse you of the notion that us old-timers thought Gygax was somehow infallible. While the 1e DMG may be a fun read and offer useful advice, for example, there are some rule explanations that are terrible as far as promoting clarity and usability. Simply, not every adventure written by Gygax (or even substantially written by him and finished by someone else) is going to appeal to everyone. I thought the 4th level's layout was silly, the module generally too tedious, and the elemental nodes completely dispensible. I thought it could have used a good editor to tighten it up so it could reach the potential it has. Others disagree. I liked the [b]Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth[/b]. There was so much variety that, even if things didn't make much sense, the dungeon never became tedious and never felt particularly silly, though it ran on the razor's edge of that sometimes. [b]The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun[/b], I think, impressed me less than Tsojcanth, but it was shorter and less tedious than ToEE. [b]The Keep on the Borderlands[/b] I never found to be written particularly well, but it's an environment easy to make dynamic and it's very easy to convey that to the players. By comparison, I found you really have to push the idea that the different elemental forces are violent rivals for the players to even notice there's a difference between them other than elemental specialty. So while the write-up covers the dynamism of the ToEE environment, it's a lot less evident to the players. [/QUOTE]

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