Recent content by Gus L

Yes this is precisely the period I'm referencing. I think the style of play varied among regional affinity groups (West Coast, Twin Cities, Lake Geneva etc), preferred periodicals - you are right to mention Alarums & Excursion, which has more than one style of play at work in it (though I think...

My own suspicion having read a lot of the documents from the era of OD&D and then the ones that followed in the TSR years is that alignment in OD&D is meant largely as a tool for determining army lists... In things like Blackmore and other early games (per First Fantasy Campaign, Strategic...

Prices in early editions are very weird for a "dungeon crawl" game - or even one about bands of heroes fighting monsters, especially with the general loose encumbrance of those editions. When one combines how cheap equipment is with how much gold you need to level (and the treasure tables...

I personally find that simple rules that actually have subtle and interesting effects on the game are the most valuable* My favorite edition and rules are all from OD&D's Little Brown Books (Greyhawk doesn't exits for me - I deny it is real except for the page including harquebuses as ranged...

I think it's fine to add spells and classes to B/X. Adding ones from newer editions, especially AD&D though... it's been done a lot of times already with varying degrees of success. You can likely find many versions of a B/X (OSE, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, LotFP, or whichever...

Knights & Knaves and the AD&D community are not places I'm welcome, but I am happy to hear OSRIC is getting a new edition. Personally and I know the AD&D gang wants to hear nothing I have to say I think it could benefit from two different approaches that might be hard to reconcile. 1st -...

This is basically antithetical to how I run and play OD&D and B/X. The combat in these systems is messy and it feels important to emphasize to players, especially new players at low levels, that direct, fair, face to face, combat will likely end with the party losing members even if they win...

I think one of the most useful skills one can have as a sandbox referee is the ability to pick and reskin other people's adventure modules. I mention this because it even if it seems second nature to some folks, especially those with a lot of experience with early play styles, I see lots of...

I think this is the basic concept behind the snadbox, but for it to work I think one also needs to lay down a few piece of infrastructure. A) Connection between overworld and underworld (dungeons). Why are the PCs inclined to go delving in different places, how do they learn about them, what...

It's funny how this first definition has grown since the collapse of the OSR as a specific scene - roughly post 2020 and the end of G+. Having been associated with what would eventually be called the OSR since about 2011, I see it as a revisionist definition of "OSR" that derives from a...

I've intentionally used "twit" as it's the vague language of insult and invective that avoids the issue of vexatious ligation or threats of it. I am sure you can find details on why exactly one might think Pundit is a twit. Or you could read the more bizarre things he's said on his forum. There...

Not entirely sure, not spending long enough looking or running anything through Tine Eye etc. I don't recognize the paintings offered, but given they have a "digital fantasy art" thing and a smudged quality that is more concept art then Franz Hals, I don't really think any of them are...

Ummm. I looked at the sample...Not my thing and from a designer who has spent a decade earning my disrespect. Seems like a typical Urbanski product: overwritten, derivative, bland aesthetically, and lurching toward the worst sorts of 1990's design excesses ... like busy fake parchment...