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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9770453" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm on the side that thinks that OD&D (and Gygax's AD&D, at least up until the end of the PHB and for good chunks of the DMG) had a clear focus and associated intention: namely, skilled-play dungeon-crawling, with map-and-key as the core method for establishing what scenes the GM presents to the participants, and for resolving exploratory actions. What seems not to have been originally anticipated is the degree to which this game infrastructure would be taken up and repurposed for other goals of play.The extent to which that "taking up and repurposing" of D&D continued, and continues, helps explain some of the other comments the quoted posters have made:There's a lot that could be said in elaboration of these points. Here's one thing, that relates directly to the thread topic: what will make a game seem non-modern to me is if, as its method of establishing what scenes and stakes the GM presents to the players, it relies either on map-and-key, or the sort of GM-control-over-story that the DL modules exemplify (but that seems to have become almost a norm since).</blockquote>