The problem with stat bonuses

The only thing that happens when player characters level up in O/AD&D is that their THAC0 decreases and their Hit Die total increases. That means that their chance of hitting an enemy gets better, and they can survive more hits. Their damage per hit does not increase, and neither does their Armor Class, which is their chance of not getting hit. This means that a level 10 character is as vulnerable to a hit as a level 1 character as long as they wear the same armor.

Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution modifiers all change these probabilities. Strength bonuses decrease THAC0 (thus increasing chance to hit) and increase damage done by a flat amount. This means that fighters with melee weapons are effectively attacking at a higher character level. Constitution bonuses increase hp per level, effectively allowing player characters to take hits as a higher level character. Dexterity bonuses are the only way to lower a PCs AC outside of equipment, so it is a character's only innate defense against getting hit by monsters of higher level.

The end result of all this is that it becomes impossible to balance combat challenge around a player party level. The only possible way would be to add up all Strength and Dexterity missile to-hit bonuses to find out what effective level the party is attacking as, and tally up all Constitution and Dexterity to-hit modifiers to determine what effective level the party is defending as, and then craft a unique monster or set of monsters within that narrow band to provide the players with a challenge.

This is why, I guess, OSR groups look down on 'encounter balance', no one wants to do the math and if they did, all encounters would end up looking the same. Once PCs get their hands on magic items, not only do simple +bonuses to hit and damage change the math but magic items with special abilities change the whole manner in which combat is played. This asymmetric gameplay is what I think attracts people to OSR style combat, but it is too easy to make encounters either too easy, or too difficult for the players.

Best breakdown of traps I've read yet

https://www.runagame.net/2015/10/d-traps.html

The PDF is worth reading

cool oldschool art by a not traditional old school artist

http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2010/10/down-in-dungeon.html

Musing about editions

AD&D 1e was the first old school edition of D&D that I played. After running a few sessions of it I realized that its not really the game I wanted to play, but the problem is that the experiences I had were so wildly divergent from each other. When all players choose simple class combinations like Human Fighters, Thieves and Clerics, I enjoy the game immensely and am having the experience I want to have. When players start using the "advanced" options and start multiclassing Assassin/Druids, Monks, and Paladins, I feel that the game starts to buckle under all the extra options and special abilities of the characters, and as a DM I have to start morphing the game to fit the characters abilities. This is the same reason that I stopped playing 5e and modern RPGs, because I didn't want to juggle between all the super special options that players get.

After diving through a lot of editions, I figured OD&D has the type of ability stat spread and options that I want - which is essentially nothing, a very minimalist game. However, players do not enjoy that type of game and /want/ special enhancements to their characters. OD&D is really only fun for me, since I'm perfectly happy playing a mercenary minded fighter who needs only to rely on his arms and armor, but its not very attractive to most players. In all the games of AD&D, BECMI and OD&D that I've played in or ran, I've only had 2 people play Magic-Users, and one of those players had a Paladin character beforehand. Magic Users are the one class that come with special abilities right out of the gate in OD&D, and no one wants to play them because of their perceived lifespan.

So I've settled on BECMI as a way to meet players halfway. BECMI still has a short list of classes and special abilities given to those classes, so players can have their modifiers but its limited enough that it doesn't disrupt the game. BECMI also offers greater high level options for players and several personal goals for their characters to work towards, the PCs can really grow to be unique and custom to the player's playstyle. And, BECMI characters are more durable than OD&D characters, without gaining all the bonuses of AD&D characters of high ability scores.

If I ever play in another 5e campaign

I'm just going to use the Nentir Vale campaign setting. Well, I'll call it the Nentir Vale, but I'm going to be using custom maps. The cosmology, deities, history of the world will be the same though, just with vastly changed geography.

I won't be using any of 4e's Nentir Vale campaigns though. My experience running 5e modules has really soured me to modern premade campaigns. The monsters are a real boon, though.

Update: Apparently, the Nentir Vale is Mike Mearle's baby, so FUCK THAT

Supplement I: Greyhawk -review

I finally sat down and read this book. I've previously discussed OD&D, but I've restricted myself to just the 3 LBBs. I liked the material contained within them but I found it limiting, both in terms of the expansiveness of the game and in terms of prepackaged content. Greyhawk adds more content and tries to add more concrete rules to the game and smooth over some incongruities.  This is really the supplement that adds more 'crunch' to the game.

  Within this supplement, the game begins to take on the shape that is recognizable as AD&D and the Basic boxed set line - variable HD for classes, variable weapon damage, all stats now give conditional bonuses for high scores, etc. The infamous strength table and the percentile strength makes its appearance here, though the bonuses it grants are much less than what makes it into AD&D.

 The Thief and Paladin classes are also introduced, but again much weaker than what they will eventually become. The Thief exists as a set of useful dungeoneering skills, and allows Dwarves and Hobbits a second class they can opt for. Multiclassing is also introduced for demihumans, thus cementing the separation of race and class  in the D&D game. The Paladin, as presented in Greyhawk, is just a lawful good fighter that has a limited ability to heal or cure disease, and at higher levels gains extra powers with his holy sword and steed. This version of the Paladin is much less powerful than his AD&D counterpart, who can also cast spells and has a constant aura of protection from evil.

The weapon vs armor to-hit bonus chart appears in Greyhawk, but it has a lot less entries than the one in AD&D. It is clearly a holdover from Chainmail, but given how many publications it has appeared in, I strongly suspect that circa 1977 Gygax used weapon vs armor bonuses in his game. There is more discussion of using the alternate combat system to play D&D, further reducing the need to have a copy of Chainmail to play.

Like every one of Gygax's rulebooks this is poorly laid out and poorly worded, but personally I've spent enough time reading old school D&D rules to be able to pick out the important highlights. Adding the 3 LBBs and Greyhawk together gives a game very similar to AD&D but much more restrained in power and scope. The bonuses for PCs and monsters are smaller, and all classes don't get the fantastic tools that they would get in AD&D. Personally, I would prefer to play this game over AD&D, as I feel that the number crunch of AD&D is much worse, while everything else is otherwise the same.

Random "DM-less" dungeon crawl

Photos from a randomized dungeon crawl with my wife, using D&D Basic, Pathfinder flip tiles, and monster tokens from 4E essentials kit.

The dungeon layout was generated by shuffling and pulling out the tiles whenever a character token reached an open edge, room contents were stocked by using the D&D Basic random dice tables. I was able to play a PC cooperatively with my wife, as there was little to do in the way of traditional dungeon mastering. 

I got this idea from the D&D Adventure board game, The Temple of Elemental Evil, and it worked beautifully by jettisoning the trappings of the board game and using the full RPG rules. For a night of random hack and slash dungeon crawling, it was quite fun.

Religion in early D&D

Dungeon Modules B1 In Search of the Unknown, B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, and T1 The Village of Hommlet do not reference the pantheon of deities that were introduced in "Gods, Demigods and Heroes" or in "Deities and Demigods". Instead, there is an oblique reference to a Church and a singular religious figure, St. Cuthbert.

In B1 the only references are in the names of the pregenerated Cleric characters, one of them is a devotee of the "Great Church", another of the "Secret Church", and one of "St. Cuthbert". In B2 there is a chapel inside the Keep, the Curate who maintains it, a duplicitous priest who lives in his own house, and the Temple of Chaos, but there is no mention of which deities any of them serve. In T1, the Church of St. Cuthbert has a strong presence in town and causes tension with devotees of the town's Old Faith.

These modules give us a fragment of a glimmer to how D&D was played in its early days, and to me it seems that instead of using a strict pantheon of gods, early campaigns relied on a loose interpretation of Christianity and pagan faiths from British medieval history. I think the addition of a strict pantheon of gods to the worlds of Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms, or any other, is a mistake and actually divorces the game from its inspiration and restricts the kind of stories you could tell. I find a looser interpretation of religion more to my taste, as something that's closer to historical reality than the mess of fictitious deities that everyone plays with. And, I think a proper implementation of religion into D&D can help explain some of the more incongruous aspects with the game, such as the cleric and paladin classes or the effect of resurrection on elves, and the lack of demihuman PC clerics.

Here's how I would remix it:
There is a Great Church in the land and its patron saint is Saint Cuthbert. (From the modules above, there is no indication that St. Cuthbert is a deity, rather than just a venerated saint.) The Church represents the totality of organized religion, and all human settlements have at least a chapel or some place of worship around which the village has grown. The Church is humanocentric, and only admits humans into its highest ranks.

The Great Church allows members of its clergy to wander the world as missionaries and enforce their mission by force of arms. These Clerics still follow precepts of the Church such as the restriction against shedding blood, and through prayer and knowledge of scripture they are able to perform miraculous works such as healing others and stopping harm to the body through disease or poison. Clerics can travel the world dressed and armed as Fighting Men, but choose to carry blunt weapons because they are trying not to kill their opponents.

The Paladins are an Order of Fighting Men who swear loyalty to the Great Church, and through their faith can perform some miracles. These men are not part of the Church hierarchy but can also heal, cure disease and are protected from evil. (Interestingly, OD&D Paladins cannot cast Cleric spells). Any deviation from their code of ethics results in an immediate loss of their powers, and they must atone and perform penance under the guidance of a Church hierarch to get it back. Only human fighting men, so devoted and charismatic, are admitted into the Order.

The language of the sacred texts of the Great Church is considered the Lawful alignment language, and it has become the de facto language for legal documents and academic documents in Universities of higher learning.

Outside of the monolithic human church, the spirits of nature and natural phenomena are worshiped by the intelligent races such as Elves and Hobbits, and even some humans are devoted to this worship they call the "Old Faith". Like everything humans do, they've created a high structure of wise men called Druids, who worship Nature and strive to keep a neutral balance among all things. Elves and Hobbits generally stay away from the circles of the druids, though some individuals may join. The language used to commune with Nature is considered the Neutral alignment language.

Hiding from open engagement with the other two is the Secret Church. This is made up of people who use the sacred texts and teachings of the Great Church and reverse its meaning. Those who speak the reversed language can cause the opposite effect of miracles to take place, such as harming instead of healing, cursing instead of blessing, and damning instead of saving. Wandering militant devotees of this Secret Church are evil Clerics, well versed in the teachings of the Great Church who must also follow its stricture of behavior, such as the ban on shedding blood, otherwise they do not have access to the miracles they wish to misuse. The reversed language is called Chaotic, and speaking it attracts demons, devils, and other fiends from the lower planes, and also grants command of evil spirits and the undead.

Apart from the main religions there are many discrete Cults and Temples, all devoted to their own deities and beliefs, who may or may not be a real creature from a higher or lower plane.

A final note about Clerics and Paladins - In AD&D certain demihumans can multiclass as fighter/clerics, such as the Half-Elf and Half-Orc from the PHB, and an expanded list including Dwarves and Elves in Unearthed Arcana, which gives them all the weapon, armor and health bonuses of the Fighter class and the spellcasting ability and saving throws of the Cleric class, thus creating a very potent combination at the cost of a halved rate of level advancement. Humans gain no such multiclass ability, and so the Paladin is the only way Humans can gain such bonuses. The Paladin generally speaking has better abilities than the Fighter/Cleric but his spellcasting is weaker, and must maintain a very high charisma and a strict adherence to Lawful Good, or lose all his abilities and be demoted to the level of a standard fighter. In this way the Fighter/Cleric has it easier, but a Paladin played well is much stronger.

Why Hex Crawl?

Especially while soloing you can spend more time focusing on the "boring" parts that live groups tend to ignore - managing food and water, accurately timing your actions, counting exact distance traveled.

Hexes are a useful shorthand for distance traveled, and I always round down any leftover movement if my movement rate doesn't equal a full hex. Thus its important to have accurate maps. Hence, hex crawling solo makes you build more accurate maps.
Because of the random elements involved in hex crawling, running a solo hex crawl is a lot of fun and can lead to many unpredictable scenarios.