timgrant

In an OSR game, you only fight when you have to, because victory is not a foregone conclusion.

You might also "roll up" your character instead of creating one. Which everyone should at some point, because it's a whole part of the game that's disappeared. If you hate trying to come up with a character concept, you might well love a game where the dice can give you some ideas.

Most modern OSR games will tell you that characters have no "plot armor" and are just as vulnerable as NPC's, just like they were in the old days. But read the rules, and the PC's actually do have some plot armor after all, just a bit less.

Mappers had to look listen to the description of the DM and try to draw a "good enough" map. Very easy to get things mixed up or one square off, and have to erase and redraw. "A doorway to the left" can be confusing when you're are heading south and it on the right of your map. Or maybe the DM means the left of the map?

Bear in mind, there was often treasure hidden in secret rooms, so knowing where the unexplored space was could be pretty important.

Once in a blue moon there was a player who got a thrill from that, but most folks hated the hassle.

There was a fair deal of "rules of order" style rules in early D&D.

Ever hear of a "caller"? That was the special player in early D&D rules who got the privilege of telling the DM what the party would do. It did kind of help with big groups, actually.

Better that than being stuck as the "mapper."

I gave my 8 players a Condorcet poll for which game I should run next. Their main gripe was a Condorcet poll sounded complicated (it wasn't).

Kevin Crawford's "Without Number" games swept the podium (Stars, Cities, Worlds) knocking D&D to fourth place.

The real big table might be a factor. Combat is just so much faster.

Oh, I don't let the fickle dice tell me when to give a hint or twenty. Nat 1's come aplenty when you gate-keep crucial information on a die roll.

Only thing that worked was jettisoning the players who torpedoed campaigns for whatever reason.

Nah. Basic was way deadlier.

You can be the first type, and some players will still see you as the second.

Like, they attack the king's castle for no reason and are upset the guards don't lie down and die, then refuse to surrender when things are entirely hopeless and they're offered mercy. Such a mean DM!

This is just another way to out yourself, gamer.

Had me until your last sentence.

It's always going to be mixed, to some degree. The challenge is making it work anyway.

Yes, and Noon to 3:00 PM can blow a hole in your free time in a way that something running 7:00-10:00 PM doesn't.

I put about 6-10 hours a week into RPG's (DM'ing/playing/prepping) but would never want to play every Saturday afternoon. That would totally crimp my other interests.

Just want to point out Gygax had 2 sons, who are quite different people. I believe you are referring to Ernie Gygax.

Luke Gygax, by all accounts I've heard, is a great fellow.

Gygax also elevated Jean Wells in the company before the subsequent management basically made her a secretary. Wells had a decent working relationship with Gygax, which you can see if you read in Dragon magazine "Sage Advice" column from the mid 80's. Gygax should have listened to Wells more often than he did, but he did try to empower her to make the game more friendly to women.

Still, his legacy towards women in gaming is mixed at best. In the 80's, TSR games which Gygax was less involved in tended to do better with women, notably Star Frontiers, but also "Basic D&D" which did not include rules making it disadvantageous to play a female character, unlike Gygax's Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which capped female strength below male strength for each race. And I think telling a new D&D player their character would be a lousy fighter is pretty rough.

Yes, there was a pattern in Gygax's creations of evil female power that went beyond the dragon example. Most notably drow were the only evil elves, and the only matriarchal (he would have said "female dominated") ones. This pattern wasn't his invention — it's as old as Snow White, Cinderella, and the rest — but even in his own time, others (for example, Tom Moldvay) created more inclusive games.