OD&D: A matter of language

Although the past week has been pretty silent as far as postings go I have made some pretty good progress actually writing down more of the rules of 'The Fantasy Game'. Volume I is shaping up pretty nicely. While writing the rules I noticed a thing about the way the rules language has changed from the very early times to more current editions... in a way which to me takes away a bit of the flavor inherent in the ancient rules. I'm not sure if I feel this way just because English is not my native language or if there is more to it but today I would like to elaborate a bit on this observation.

Researching OD&D at the OD&D discussion boards

[After posting this stuff in the morning I added a few more links in the evening that I missed during the first run due to some browser tabs I had overlooked]

In the past couple of weeks I had a lot of fun reading through the various postings at the OD&D discussion boards (and I'm still going strong). I find the comments there very helpful in getting into the right mindset for reading the little brown books and to get sensitive about the finer formulations used in the rules.

Reading OD&D from cover to cover: Changing classes

Before we continue our discussion of elves we look a bit ahead in the rules in order to see what other surprises and detail rules await us. Some might shed new light on certain of the more complex issues we have found with the race descriptions. So next up are the rules for changing classes.

Researching OD&D: Magic-users in arms and armor - case closed for now

After reading and rereading the class descriptions in the LBB again and again I am (for now) totally convinced that the literal interpretation of the rules allows for but one result:

Magic-users may use any kind of non-magical weapon or armor.

Reading OD&D from cover to cover: The character classes

I have been anticipating the coming parts of Men & Magic a lot as now we finally get to the rules. Here I expect quite a number of surprises and my intention s to (at initially) read the rules as literally as possible and revise them in a clearer (yet brief) way. In no way do I intend to add much fluff, so I was particularly curious about the very short character class section in OD&D: One and a half pages in total for the classes (with clerics getting the most text which I find interesting), three total if taking the races into account (which I will review in another post).