I’m comparing AD&D 2e right now to Delta’s DND house rules and it’s funny how they match up with what Delta insists is more “realistic” or “closer to Chainmail”.  For example, Delta uses the silver standard because he claims that gold coins in the medieval world were never used as such, but as “coins of account” as mathematical shorthand. And then there’s this line from the 2e PHB:

Above these two coins is the much rarer gold piece (gp). This coin is seldom found in common use and mainly exists on paper as the standard money of account.

So Zeb Cook and Delta came to the same conclusion, using the same means...

 

Although, Delta’s stone encumbrance is way better than 2e’s pounds. Anything is better than pounds. Even weight in coins. 

Delta also makes much note of scale, and rules 1 turn to 1 minute, and 1 round to 10 seconds, which essentially makes characters 10x faster than they are in vanilla D&D. AD&D 2e increases the movement speed of characters by the same amount, but does not change the length of turns and rounds. No reason is given, presumably to keep terminology the same, but this could lead the casual observer to assume that there is an incongruity in the system. 

Interestingly, by changing rounds to 10 seconds, 2e initiative segments match up precisely to seconds, elegantly pinning game mechanics with reality.

Monks in AD&D

 I don’t like them because they’re directly based on the main character of the movie “36th Chamber of Shaolin”, and don’t fit any fantasy milieu that aren’t in Henan Province, China.

But I have to begrudgingly admit that they occupy an important place mechanically by essentially being an upgrade class to the Thief. The four “base” classes of Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User and Thief are fairly bland, and the “advanced” classes like Ranger, Paladin, Assassin and Druid are much more attractive. The Fighter especially is like a consolation prize for characters that don’t meet the stat requirements of any other class, and the base Thief is very weak. The only exception is the Magic-User. 

The Assassin is basically a ninja before OA, and has a ninja’s list of weapon proficiencies. Monks and Assassins fill the “striker” role of inflicting massive damage with regular weapons and special skills, instead of magic, and this role is basically what the Rogue class became from 3rd edition on.

The Monk is the only way to play a Lawful class with Thief skills, without multiclassing. I think it’s a mistake to drop monks to a level 1 character if they break alignment, they should drop to a Thief of the same level, in the way Paladins and Rangers drop to Fighter.

magic weapons in my campaign setting

 A +1 bonus on a d20 isn't that big of an effect. For that reason, I consider mundane weapons of high quality, like "Masterwork" or "Exotic" weapons, to grant a +1 bonus to THAC0 and damage. I'm also okay with them striking monsters that are otherwise immune to mundane damage. 

Magic weapons glow with aetherial power and grant a +2 bonus to hit and damage. Some weapons only have magical power in special circumstances, such as when used against orcs or goblins, or when held by a character of the necessary alignment. 

"Double magic" weapons glow with even more brilliant power, and grant a +4 to hit and damage. 

"Triple magic" weapons are mythical in existence and in power. They grant +5 to hit and damage, and only unique world artifacts are ever that powerful.

Orcs as Native American expys

 I love this idea. I love it so much because it makes the campaign explicitly colonial - Orcs and goblins and the other monstrous intelligent races are just naturally existing in the land and the humans are explicitly invading and driving them off. In fact it fits in almost perfectly with the backstory to the Keep on the Borderlands, where the Keep itself is established as a foothold into the "wild, untamed" Border areas. I can think of no better parallel to the American frontier of the 1800s and the idea of "Manifest Destiny". I especially love the implicit racism it projects onto the human and demihuman races and the nuanced shades of grey it adds to the greenskin races. The orc children dilemma no longer becomes so cut and dried. Gygax's assertion that "nits make lice" becomes absolutely, categorically, 100% bigoted.

Chainmail Fantasy Mass Combat

 It’s not that hard, just give your hero characters the same number of dice as equivalent numbers of “man” units from the mass combat table. For example, a Hero counts as 4 men, so against light infantry he gets 4 dice to roll. The annoying thing is looking up what fantasy units match up to which unit’s combat rating. It really slows the game down. Man-to-Man doesn’t really work with fantasy, you almost have to convert to mass combat when fighting the fantasy creatures. This means that some units are completely unable to hit certain fantasy creatures.

Chainmail is a dice pool system where you grab a handful of dice for the number of units in your army, as defined by the unit matchups on the mass combat table. Then you roll for successes, and each success causes a hit that would remove an enemy unit. 

 I honestly believe that if you took the dungeon movement and exploration rules from Basic or AD&D, and the combat and characters from D&D 4e, you'd probably have the best dungeon crawler ever made.