How Gary Gygax lost control over D&D and TSR

It’s only overcomplex, if you do it wrong =) .

I assume that any D&D problems are due to the fact that Jesus Saves (and only takes half damage)

You mean if you actually use the entirety of the rule books. The rest of the industry has moved on in the last 20 years. I haven’t seen anything in D&D in 20 years that made me want to play it again. The new, narrative focused games based on FATE or Apocalypse World, for example, are much simpler and probably more rewarding to play.

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There is a tradeoff. The more free form you make the game the more fun it can be, but that depends entirely on the DM. Good DMs are hard to come by and it can be better to just run a module than let someone who really shouldn’t be doing it try to do an open system. Kind of like getting McDonalds instead of having a chef specially prepare something for you. McDonalds isn’t great, but it’s a known quantity and it’s probably not horrible (substitute something else if McD is horrible for you), whereas the chef is a total wildcard.

Lifetime subscriptions can be a nightmare when there is a change in ownership or publishers.

I am now recalling the other publication-related mess, ARES magazine. As I recall, ARES became a section within THE DRAGON, and your subscription was transferred to that magazine.

I still have a near-complete run of ARES, with the games. Also some of the bound-in games that came with THE DRAGON, like Snit Smashing, and a peculiar boxing game, and a Tom Wham fantasy boardgame.

Re Dungeon Masters… Long time ago I stumbled over this and now managed to find it again by a fraction of the lyrics I remembered in some obscure google groups post…

The Hymn of RPG

                   by Joe Robins and Melissa Binde
                 (ttto: The Battle Hymn of the Republic)

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Fred
We’re trembling at the thought of evil plots inside his head.
For we know that danger lurks and in a minute we’ll be dead,
His dice are rolling on!

CHORUS:
Glory, Glory, Dungeon Master!
Killing off the players faster,
Sends to us a new disaster.
His dice are rolling on!

We’ll charge into the dungeon and we’ll roam along its halls
But we’ll never know what evil lurks inside its cold, stone walls;
For there the floors are filled with monsters, perils, and pitfalls;
His dice are rolling on!

Walking through a city, we all feel like nervous wrecks,
Avoiding strangers – suddenly there’s sounds behind our backs.
We turn and see a live gargoyle is breathing down our necks,
The dice keep rolling on!

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I don’t eat McDonalds. I’d rather not eat.

I envy your collection a bit. Pretty much all my war-games did not survive my various moves around the US or to Japan.

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