But seriously…as I have said in dozens of manners on tens of sites, let the rule system you play mirror the type of game you want to play. I went skill based decades ago and wouldn’t touch anything made by WotC with a standard 10′ pole (regardless of the real encumbrance) without a good sized donation to my children’s college accounts.

I think Walt is right about what was intended in 1e, and personally, as a GM who runs games with Combat as a minor component, I like a system that not only has a lot of non-combat abilities but provides guidance for creating more of them.

Winging it just tells me that someone is running a game that the system is not suited for.

Balanced rules can help by providing a reference point. The best references are researched and playtest before being put into use. A company like WoTC has the resources to do both, while a single GM would have to guess his way around it, making assumptions that may or may not change the balance of the game.

I would prefer being guided by the rules rather than guessing my way during play.

Did you not know that only the reborn sinner has the knowledge of the many sides of the Eternal Conflict of Rules and Freedom? Only he who has seen the stifling morass of 2E, dealt with the cunning artificers of 3.5, and suffered under the paralyzing freedom of 0E will know when to rely on the rules, and when to wing it.

Did you not gaze lustily at the New Rules as they were doled out in Dragon Magazine? We all did, brother.

Did you not buy hundreds of dollars of sourcebooks, unknowingly weakening your creativity with the tasteless gruel therein? I know I did, brother.

And will we do it all again, starting this month with Martial Power? Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, and it better be a really good sourcebook, with evocative illustrations and an index that actually works.

Oh, hell, who am I kidding. We love crunch, even when it gets in our way…

(Walt dons his white Texas oilman suit with the black shoestring tie and lights up a cigar).

If the lack of codification in 1e was salvation as it were, then why did so many of the faithful feel the need to clutter it up with house rules?

In the same vein (taps off his ash), why did so many of the fantasy heartbreakers during that particular decade of greed (tips his hat) add more rules rather than less?

And why did the Gygax himself feel the need to add things like non-weapon proficiencies? Why were two whole books dedicated to the proposition that dungeoneering and wilderness adventuring needed expansions and codifications?

Now I grant you all that Brother Matthew Finch eloquently extolled the virtues (blows out a stream of smoke) of old-school gaming, but friends, I would humbly submit that, to the best of my old-school recollection, the 1e thief class did include a Find/Remove Traps skill in his repertoire. So while I’m willing to concede that 1e did not reduce trap-finding to a single die roll, it did require two (percentage dice, unless you were using a d100. I believe Brother Martin is still waiting for his d100 die to stop rolling from a check he made in 1988).

So, my friends, I would conclude that “old school gaming” is more a product of personal style than 1e’s early attempts at rules codification, or lack thereof (rubs out his cigar).

Hey, that was fun! lol. Great article, Matt!

Great article, good point, and awesome lesson to be learned – you make the game what it should be for your group. The game designers are really only suggesting a way to play.

Brothers and sisters, can I get an “Amen”?

The light has shined upon Brother Neagley from on high, where the Gygax himself, the EGG, the creator of all things RPG*, looks down upon us from behind the great GM’s screen in the sky. The Gygax has most certainly crossed to the other side, and has risen again, deep in the books that once bore your ire! (pause) Seek the old in the heart of the new, and ye shall indeed find it! Hallelujah!

Yes my friends, the hand of the Gygax can most certainly be seen, pushing aside the endless rules and leaving, dare I call it, a “Greyspace” (pause) upon which your own decisions will be writ large. The Gygax is reborn like a phoenix, bringing freedom to the masses, if they have but the wit to see it, and the power to grasp it.

Did not Plato himself say, “Good players do not need more rules to tell them how to play, and bad players will find their way around them”? And does not your heart say, “Play not with munchkins, for that way lies madness and endless rules arguments”?

Brothers and sisters, open your PHBs to page 14, bow your heads, and let us play…

( * The Son of Arn has been declared a false prophet, though many in the congregation secretly worship him as well.)