Quote from: Tristram Evans;951954Sadly, that seemed the general perception of my generation; Gygax was a pompous embittered ass.

It wasnt until much later that a more full perception of him arose

I started paying attention to EGG's forum postings a couple of years before he died. I can only go on the general tone of what I saw there: he seemed genuinely humble, and would not be drawn into bitterness online despite plenty of opportunity. His temperament aged well.

Yeah he seems to have mellowed with age. As hopefully we all will. Except for Kask, who seems to insist on being a jackass.

Quote from: Xanther;952252Oh it certainly did show up in Dragon, that and much more.  The Anti-Paladin being a favorite.   It seems you couldn't get an issue of Dragon without a new class thrown in.  Yet these were clearly all unofficial.  UA made some official.  Players love power creep, WOTC had that one nailed.

On top of that. Alot of stuff in UA (and Dragon of course) was player submitted.

Quote from: Omega;952365On top of that. Alot of stuff in UA (and Dragon of course) was player submitted.

And that too added into the mix.  In wargames, "variants" had been around for decades.  Almost every issue of Avalon Hill's "General" would have some variants, and other gaming magazines published them as well.

Then with stuff appearing in the Dragon... people wanted it to be "Official."  And they wanted it to be incorporated in the canonical text, and in many cases they wanted to be paid for it.  Not paid as in "two pages in the Dragon gets you $20," but paid a percentage of D&D sales.

Really, it was fucking astounding.

And if I were Gary when somebody actually wrote "D&D is too important to leave to Gary Gygax," I would have been TEN TIMES AS MUCH OF AN ASSHOLE AS GARY WAS.

Quote from: Arminius;952224True, but a monster's HP are something a player only has to deal with when they have the monster in front of them. A bad HP roll lives on until you die. Thus your house rule. I'm not sure there's any other game that (RAW) gave players as little control over their HP, and the bigger variances compound the issue--compensated somewhat by CON bonuses introduced in Greyhawk. In practice I think house rules have been very common in this area.

Always ran games this way, with 1st level characters automatically having max hp. Almost as far back as I can remember, almost all the way to the beginning, certainly by 1979 or so, this was a houserule for our games. Once I figured out the natural game world with the built-in encounter tables was inherently hostile enough to low level players that rolling hp was irrelevant, I stopped having players roll up their first level hp, and automatically had them start out with max hp.

For the record in our campaigns the survival rate for low level characters was that about 25% of them would make it to 5th level.

I usually had all the players roll up three or four characters at the beginning of a new campaign, as most of those (and once in awhile all of those characters) would not survive.

5th level was kind of a milestone. If your character somehow made it to fifth level, there was a good chance that the character would go on to become a real hero. Will say the 1e AD&D games really took the edge off of the insta-death aspect with far fewer death saving throws being required when playing AD&D as compared to 0D&D...

Quote from: GameDaddy;952391Always ran games this way, with 1st level characters automatically having max hp. Almost as far back as I can remember, almost all the way to the beginning, certainly by 1979 or so, this was a houserule for our games. Once I figured out the natural game world with the built-in encounter tables was inherently hostile enough to low level players that rolling hp was irrelevant, I stopped having players roll up their first level hp, and automatically had them start out with max hp.

For the record in our campaigns the survival rate for low level characters was that about 25% of them would make it to 5th level.

I usually had all the players roll up three or four characters at the beginning of a new campaign, as most of those (and once in awhile all of those characters) would not survive.

5th level was kind of a milestone. If your character somehow made it to fifth level, there was a good chance that the character would go on to become a real hero. Will say the 1e AD&D games really took the edge off of the insta-death aspect with far fewer death saving throws being required when playing AD&D as compared to 0D&D...

We found to that the characters which did survive in AD&D were the ones with really good stats.  My only wizard that survived past 5th level had like a 18, 17, and two 16's IIRC.  All natural rolled in the open, under roll 7 drop 1 arrange as you please.  We also did psionics.  He was the only psionic character we ever had with whopping Animal Telepathy and something else we never used because we didn't get the rules.  I attribute Animal Telepathy and carrying a lot of treats to his early survival, although those psionics got him killed (later raised) in The Barrier Peaks.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952384And if I were Gary when somebody actually wrote "D&D is too important to leave to Gary Gygax," I would have been TEN TIMES AS MUCH OF AN ASSHOLE AS GARY WAS.

Would have been?

Quote from: CRKrueger;952448Would have been?

A touch, a touch, I do confess't.

Actually, I wish it were possible to publish a good selection of the letters TSR got; some of them were unbelievable.  It's one thing to say "We made up another magic system that we've had fun with and we think other people might have fun too," and another to say "Your magic system sucks, here is one you should use instead.  Put it in and pay us 10% of cover price per copy sold."

I'm not exaggerating.  I wish I were.

Chirine and I have talked about how five or six years in the game industry was enough to drive us out of the hobby for 15 years.  Thank Crom we weren't making any money, because if we had been we'd have had to persist.

Really, if I had to put up with the shit at TSR for as long as the first generation did, I'd make Gary Gygax sound like your Crom-damned favorite maiden aunt.

Quote from: Voros;952226This is the new standard in 5e. Took long enough.

   It was locked in as standard in 3E, was introduced as an official option in the 2E Complete Fighter's Handbook, and was more or less official by mid-2E (the Domains of Dread character creation section).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952466Really, if I had to put up with the shit at TSR for as long as the first generation did, I'd make Gary Gygax sound like your Crom-damned favorite maiden aunt.

If one reads the DF threads with David 'Zeb' Cook and others you definitely see some goofy shit that echoes the letters pages in Dragon. People asking why a thrown axe does so many dice of damage vs. an arrow, etc. An almost clinical amount of imaginative failure. Mind-numbing stuff that you can see Gygax and others suffering through in the letters and advice columns of Dragon. Even on podcasts I'm stunned at the patience the older designers show for stupid and pointless questions. Skills honed from years of convention attendance I would hazard to guess.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952466I'm not exaggerating. I wish I were.

You are not exaggerating. I've been told by the TSR staff I knew back then the same thing and that persisted into the Loraine era apparently. And not just the "give me money" sorts. Some of the letters were... odd to say the least. One or two were apparently downright disturbing. Not sure if it was Gary or someone else who said "D&D should come with a psych test..."

Quote from: Omega;952533"D&D should come with a psych test..."

They should call it the Purdue Exam

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952466Chirine and I have talked about how five or six years in the game industry was enough to drive us out of the hobby for 15 years.  Thank Crom we weren't making any money, because if we had been we'd have had to persist.

True, true. I finally had a good time at a game convention - a good time without any issues or problems - for the first time in decades when we went to Ohio. I keep getting asked to appear as A Special Guest at conventions, and I keep having to tell folks why I don't jump up and down with glee at the notion.

There were, and still are, a lot of bat-shit crazies out there, and I make damn sure to limit my exposure to them.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;952677I finally had a good time at a game convention - a good time without any issues or problems - for the first time in decades when we went to Ohio.

Which Ohio con?