Posting Popularity

I've been monitoring the views to each post I've made the past few years and learned a few things. First off, it seems that people are most confused with Initiative and Surprise in AD&D. This makes sense, since it was a poorly explained concept in the DMG. The other posts that got the most interest were in the rules that were omitted from the game, or those that saw little use due to how complicated they were. In this case, I'm referring to recharging magic items and unarmed combat, respectively. The final most popular categories were regarding D&D (Moldvay specifically) with regards to the Companion Rules that were never published and how alignment/cosmology in D&D is viewed with only 3 alignments.

I hope to keep providing my readers with more of what they need in the future. Since the initiative and surprise postings were so popular I might try some more examples using the characters from the convention modules, perhaps with some illustrations as well.

My research into older forms of the D&D game has given me new insights on how the current rules came about, and brought up more questions about why some rules were inserted. For instance, the DUNGEON Boardgame is just a simplified version of the original D&D "to hit" mechanic. Two dice (2d6) were rolled and compared to a chart of numbers based on what a particular HERO, SUPERHERO, or WIZARD required to hit a certain monster. These charts are almost directly from the CHAINMAIL rulebook which preceded the d20 mechanic. The ELF, having bonuses against certain creature types, was kept separate since the chart was slightly different. Having never looked at CHAINMAIL before reading the OD&D booklets, I still managed to grasp the concept since DUNGEON was my intro into the world of D&D. Surprise and Complete Surprise, two concepts that baffled me after reading through the DMG, were found in Eldritch Wizardry, a later supplement to the OD&D game. Without do this research, all these rules may still have confused me!

I want to teach as many other players the glory of Old School D&D as I can before leaving this earth. I've only been able to instruct a few of the younger generation, but the older generations I play with have embraced these rules easily! Few people my age still play D&D Old School, preferring to advance with the more complicated modern rules; few of those people have ever DMed a game themselves and don't realize the effort required to prepare a good adventure.

So I will end this posting with this: if you have a portion of the rules that you're struggling to understand and want me to elucidate or give examples, please leave a comment and I will try my best to get to it as soon as possible.