Issue #69 of Dragon (January 1983) is another one about whose articles I have very strong memories. The strength of my memories is bolstered...

A great weakness of mine is constructed languages. While I can't say for certain – there's always the possibility that something els...

Level titles first appeared in original (1974) Dungeons & Dragons , seemingly inspired by the various types of figures available in the...

Last month, I presented a draft of a proposed new character class for inclusion in Secrets of sha-Arthan , the  tomb robber . A common quest...

A tomb robber by Zhu Bajie   Tomb Robber  Prime Abilities: DEX and INT Hit Points: 1d6 per level  Starting Possessions: Leather breastplate...

Issue #76 of White Dwarf (April 1986) features a cover by Peter Andrew Jones, whose art has appeared on the cover of the magazine several ti...

Issue #45 of White Dwarf (September 1983), featuring a very weird cover by Gary Ward, is an important one in the history of the magazine, at...

I've long had a fondness for Chaosium's boxed sets , starting with Call of Cthulhu , the first RPG from the company I ever owned. Fr...

Despite my Hamlet-esque waffling about the merits of thieves as a character class in Dungeons & Dragons , I'm actually a huge fan of...

Issue #24 of Imagine (March 1985) features a cover by Ken Kelly and marks the second anniversary of the TSR UK magazine. As its cover procla...

Yesterday's post about solo wargames  reminded me of something that I had almost forgotten: that, in 1983, TSR  published the first of t...

In its early days, one of the things for which this blog was well known was its poor opinion of thieves. I won't link to all the posts f...

Lately, for reasons unknown even to myself, I've been re-reading Unearthed Arcana , one of the last things TSR published under Gary Gyga...

One of the fascinating things about re-reading Holmes is noting that, despite its strong congruity with the LBBs -- specifically the LBBs + ...

For various reasons, my thoughts have been turning to RuneQuest a lot lately, particularly RQ II, which is the edition with which I have the...

In the nearly two years I've been writing this blog, a lot of (virtual) ink has been spilled about the thief class and its suitability i...

Supplement I introduces the idea of giving Fighting Men a bonus to their Armor Class based on their Dexterity. While I appreciate Gygax'...

One of the interesting peculiarities about the Supplement I (and Holmes) thief class is that, while it possesses a "remove traps" ...

I was looking at the guidelines given in the Expert Rulebook for "levels beyond those listed," which offers some advices to refere...

Jack Vance's sequel to 1966's The Eyes of the Overworld was published in 1983 -- too late for Gary Gygax to have included it in App...