Monday, June 3, 2024

 I have long held a fascination with the more exacting technical aspects of the AD&D 1e system, like time segments, and the more granular weight measurement, but after recently attempting to run the game by using those very elements straight, I've found them to be much more trouble than they're worth. Not the least of it is that in the middle of running the game, I simply forget to use those rules, as I have so many more duties as a DM that tracking tiny numbers just slips my mind, and for another I don't want to stop the momentum of the game just to count item weights or graph out player movement in the middle of combat and count out segments of action. The rules as presented in the books are also rife with exceptions, special cases, and obviation that one could feel that they were never really run as written anyway. While I originally viewed AD&D 2e's simplification of these rules with askance, now I've come to accept that what is lost in true simulation is made up for in straightforward use during play.

I'm disappointed that there's so much interest in 1e yet so little in 2e, though from what I've seen most people want to play 1e just out of a morbid curiosity with little true attachment to the game, except of course of the aging baby boomers that never moved on from 1e and claim it like some holy writ.

 The original 1954 Godzilla is a very cerebral film about Japanese tradition, modern science, post-war politics, and human suffering. It was...