What do you understand by "channeling your inner Gygax"?
Is this a noble endeavour?
How can the average gamer contribute to channeling his inner Gygax?
Discuss.
Detail.
Get him out!
Get
him
out!
Look, what you do in the pivacy of your own home is your buisness. But don't talk about it here okay?:)
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Sounds fun to me.
It just means throwing TPK challenges at your PCs haphazardly, right?
At least, that's what I think of most when I think of "Gygax". So, if one "channels" Gygaxian play, or gets "in touch with" their inner Gygax, that would be all about shamelessly killing off PCs in whatever unfair or nearly unfair encounters one can ruthlessly think of. Oh, and the more bizarre set of deadly encounters the better.
Not something a DM wants to be in the habit of doing, for sure, but every once in a while...
Does it include getting snarky and making jibes at the players when they can't surmount an obstacle, thereby giving the impression that the DM has "won" and the players have lost? I've known a few DMs like that.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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The henchman is likely to aspire to greater things too, and he or she will tend to look out for personal interests. Bullying, duping, cheating, and similar maltreatment will certainly be resented. The henchman will talk about it with others of his class and fellow henchmen and hirelings. Henchmen will never loan out money or valuables without security - particularly if one instance of failure to repay or loss has occurred previously. Loyalty will certainly drop in this case, and if such action is repeated, loyalty will be lost in most cases. If their liege is so bold as to suggest that the henchmen should make loans to other characters, there will be flat refusal in all likelihood. The key here is playing the henchman as if he or she were an actual person - better still if the character is somewhat greedy and avaricious. Interest should be paid on loans. Use of a henchman’s valuables, such as a magic item, should be based on the holding of some equal or better object of similar nature, certainly one usable by the henchman, and the promise of some payment in addition - such as a minor item of magic!
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Each and every monster must be played as closely to its stated characteristics as is possible. Clever ones should be played with cleverness, stupid ones with stupidity, ferocious ones with ferocity, cowardly ones with cowardice, and so on. In all cases, the DM is absolutely obligated to play the monster in question to the best of his or her ability according to the characteristics of the monster and the circumstances of the encounter. A magic-using creature will intelligently select the best (or what the creature believes will be the best) spell or magic device for attack/defense. Intelligent monsters will make use of magic items in their treasure hoard! Thinking monsters will tend to flee from encounters which are going badly in order to live and fight another day. There is no reason why monsters can not learn from encounters, employ flaming oil, set up ambushes, and so forth according to their capabilities and resources.
--1st Edition DMG, excerpts from page 103
Gary Gygax had a distinctive style in everything he did: as a game designer, as a DM, as a writer. When he was at the top of his game, in full command of his powers, he could conjure ideas with the power to surge forth and change the world.
He also gave us Cyborg Commando. Sometimes audacity isn't enough.
The aspect of Gary-as-DM that people find easy to parody is his infamy as an "enemy of the players". From the body-count in "Tomb of Horrors" and "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth" to Rot Grubs, Rust Monsters, and Trappers, to the repeated advice in the 1st Edition DMG to make life hard for the PCs. (see further along page 103, for example).
But I think there is a deeper theme running through Gygax's work than "kill the PCs; kill them all." Original D&D and --particularly-- 1st Edition AD&D seem to be about "make the PCs earn their victories."
It's been reported that Gary's response to 3rd Edition had been "It's not my kind of game." And if I were to point out a rule that goes against his style, I might pick "wealth by level", as some character-builders interpret it. The idea that your character has some kind of privilege to a pile of gold, which she could use to just go out and buy magic items, merely by dint of being a particular level, runs against his theme of making the player characters earn their victories.
So, the next time you're DMing, and the Wizard's player announces that his Cleric cohort is brewing some potions of cure light wounds, tell him that the Cleric has decided to raise her prices on the potions up to their fair market value. When the player sputters that you can't control his pet NPC, tell him you're feeling a Gygax Moment coming on.
Rob Kuntz sometimes travels these boards, and it would be wonderful to have him chime into this discussion.
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Chris, funny, I just read that passage this afternoon flipping through the old DMG. A character of mine in Kirth's game just hired a henchman (well, the town drunk, to carry his bag, poor wizard has a 6 strength, after all) and I decided to reread what Gygax wrote about hirelings for nostalgia's sake.
:)
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Let me briefly present the case in opposition.
...
That's gratitude for you.
And, you know, I don't see anything wrong with that advice, unless you took that as a suggestion that all henchmen have identical personalities and would agree in lockstep with one another.
This, as opposed to the way I've seen cohorts played in many recent games, as mere extensions of the Leadership character, never disagreeing with their liege and willing to reveal their secrets to anyone in the party who asks.
Bear two things in mind, Man in Black:
- Original D&D and the first years of AD&D were much less about a band of heroes going out and saving the world, and much more about opportunistic grave robbers and adventurers. Mordenkainen isn't a nice guy. Neither is Robilar. Neither are your PCs, nor their henchmen. The Writer's Guide to the Pathfinder Society is something of a throwback to this style. (Things changed, adventures began assuming PCs would jump at the chance to save the world from evil, very shortly after the surge of negative publicity about D&D, suicide, demon-worshipping, etc. I'm pretty sure that was the cause.)
- Old-school AD&D is much more a game about resource management. Parties are expected to keep track of ablative things like arrows, rations, oil. And spells. There are no magic shops in town, and magic items are never simply for sale. Nor can you simply sit down and make them, without specific eldritch ingredients that require adventuring to obtain. So the best way to find spells for your magic-user's repertoire is to raid other, perhaps nastier, magic-users. Just getting a hard-to-find spell from a henchman is a cheap trick: particularly if she's not your henchman.
As I say, it's an easy attitude to parody. And I would bet that the DMG is leaning a little more strongly in its direction than necessary, to counteract the pressure from the players who'd like to just ask somebody else's henchman to do something and have his liege's player happily comply.
In the wake of Gary's influences, some players --perhaps not most-- have developed a greater sense of entitlement. They don't want to be screwed by dishonest merchants in the great marketplace. They don't want to have to keep track of arrows, or how long their mounts have gone without water. They think training for level advancement is a drag. If they long for a wand of fireballs, they expect to be able to just walk into a city and buy one without a lot of fuss. They don't want to have to plan for how to get some expensive, but ridiculously bulky, treasures back to someone who would pay for them. They don't want doors to ever be stuck closed, or magic treasure to ever be cursed and difficult to remove. They don't want to negotiate with grumpy NPCs who, despite a bag of gold jangled in their faces, simply don't care to cast stone to flesh this week.
Those aren't the "fun" parts, and current game design is to maximize the fun, without the "boring" parts putting a drag on things.
Gary was more about making PCs earn their victories.
To me chanelling your inner gygax is simply not being afraid to lose a charecter or to kill a charecter for doing stupid stuff.
Theres a big diffrence between having your wizard role 5 consecutive fort saves when the kobold assasin gets the adimantite locking garrote with contact poison around his neck or having the party ignore the obvious magic circle in the room, no detect magic or read magic nothing not even spellcraft, and then complain about a Total Party Kill.
Both can be accused of chanelling your inner gygax but it depends on how you use it.
I see other people obsessing over the players being 'supposed to win' and such, and it just feels like that would be a boring game ya know?
"make the PCs earn their victories."
I agree very strongly with these points.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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A common philosophy in the DMG is that "NPCs never ever ever ever ever ever EVER work cooperatively with PCs", to ridiculous levels. Gygax wasn't suggesting that NPCs should be played with a life of their own and not merely as extensions of the PCs, but rather that NPCs are all part of Team NPC, and should not under any conditions ever think about working for anyone else, even if they are part of the PC party, even in gratitude to someone who saved their life.
Clearly, we're reading different texts, Man in Black. "Interest should be paid on loans." "Henchmen will look out for their own interests." NPCs will resent "bullying, duping, cheating and other maltreatments," and respond better to courteous and civil behavior. That's working cooperatively. You're claiming that the DMG commonly instructs the DM to "never ever ... work cooperatively with the PCs". (As a direct quote.) The closest you've got there is "Non-player character hirelings or henchmen will ABSOLUTELY REFUSE to co-operate freely with player characters..." by which Gary means, "will refuse to roll over."
I understand you don't like 1st Edition. Maybe you had an unpleasant experience under some DM who didn't know what he was doing. In other threads, you've suggested that PCs are the big heroes and they should win most of the time, and the 1st Edition philosophy is probably not your style. But you're applying your personal biases to the text, seeing things that aren't written there.
--+--+--
Regarding the particulars, party members save one another's lives every day. If you treat a henchman / cohort with abuse --saving the healing spells for the "real" members of the party, giving him less than his fair share of the rewards, not really caring about the cannon-fodder-- and then tell him you want to borrow his gear or copy spells from his magic book, don't be surprised if he's resentful and willing to use your desire to his advantage.
Again, this contrasts with all of the Leadership / cohort instances I've seen in the last decade, where the player uses the cohort as nothing more than an extension of her primary character, happy to do whatever's asked. I've even seen cohorts used as emergency resources: kill the current wizard cohort, and use Leadership to attract a new cleric NPC, because the party needs healing.
You caricature my post as saying: "This position isn't ridiculous, because the polar opposite position is ridiculous." That's not what I said. The advice in the DMG is reasonable. An NPC who hires on to go into terribly dangerous territory with a bunch of tomb robbers isn't going 'cause he's a nice guy who thinks the world of you, and who is eager to make your life easy. He's going because he thinks there's some profit to be had, and safety in working with a bunch of veteran explorers. He's not going to betray the PCs to the monsters, or rob them in their sleep. But he's not there to do them favors, either.
Nonetheless, the polar opposite position is indeed ridiculous.
--+--+--
"Sorry, Bob, but you guys can't find anyone willing to cast Stone to Flesh this week. Since your character's going to be a statue for a week or two, I suggest you bring a book to read next time."
Or play a secondary character. Or wait a few minutes while everybody else takes care of their own issues. (Remember, training to rise in levels also takes 1-4 weeks in 1st Edition.) Why? Because the world doesn't revolve around your PCs. You're not that special.
That's actually the keynote here. Llewelyn, the wizard in the tower, has his own experiments and his own objectives. The party's work may align to his goals, in which case he'll be more helpful. Or the party may actually be working against him, in which case, they're likely to wait a long time for him to get them back into the dungeons. Perhaps you've heard the aphorism: "I'm a neutral party. By definition, that means I'm not on your side."
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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You're claiming that the DMG commonly instructs the DM to "never ever ... work cooperatively with the PCs". (As a direct quote. Mind backing that up with two or three page citations? Remember, direct quote.)
Sorry. You caught me between edits. I decided I was being puerile and recast my stance. Indeed, I replied to the very sentence you cited in my edited entry.
Again, the DMG advises that DMs run henchmen, and not to let the PCs roll over them to the PCs' advantage. And that's still good advice.
I understand you disagree with me. Maybe you have a deep-seated resentment of your father, and thus transfer this feeling onto other men who boldly state opinions contrary to your own. Alternately, we can dispose of frankly quite silly speculation about the other's motives.
Pardon my french but what the frack!?
I understand you disagree with me. Maybe you have a deep-seated resentment of your father, and thus transfer this feeling onto other men who boldly state opinions contrary to your own. Alternately, we can dispose of frankly quite silly speculation about the other's motives.
AMiB, I know that was a response, but it seems like an oversnark. Tone it down a bit, for our sake, would you? I'm interested in your opinion on the matter, but only if I don't have to sort it out from the bouts of unnecessary hostility.
His comment may have seemed presumptuous to you, but he was trying to be helpful. Your comment was little more than a personal attack.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Trying to figure put the cryptic #2 on initiative (DMG pg 66). That's Gygax to me.
Could you be more specific, Stefan?
And yes, Gygax's prose was thick with rich vocabulary, misspellings (When I put "wands of lightening" and "minionions of Set" into WG7, I wasn't making anything up.) and words that didn't quite mean what he thought they meant. (There's nothing intermittent about "continual light". Did he mean, perhaps, "continuous light"?)
"minionions"
I know I've seen that somewhere before...
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1e is a lumpy system that is the product of its times.
What do people mean by this statement? I have seen it used on numerous occasions to basically mean "1e isn't as good as the modern D&D's". Given that the game is an imaginary representation of things that never were, are people saying that in the 21st century authors have better imagination? Or is this something to do with the rules themselves? What is the amazing advancement that makes 1e AD&D dated?
I'm quite sure that Gygax didn't make a game that involves a DM killing all the PC's and that is how you have fun playing D&D. I would put that squarely at the feet of the individual DM.
Cheers,
S.
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Trying to figure put the cryptic #2 on initiative (DMG pg 66). That's Gygax to me.Could you be more specific, Stefan?
And yes, Gygax's prose was thick with rich vocabulary, misspellings (When I put "wands of lightening" and "minionions of Set" into WG7, I wasn't making anything up.) and words that didn't quite mean what he thought they meant. (There's nothing intermittent about "continual light". Did he mean, perhaps, "continuous light"?)
I will once I get my hands close to my DMG I'll quote the entire passage. The initiative system is a little vague when it comes to casting spells during melee. If someone has a good idea of the intent I would be over the moon. Knights & Knaves and Dragonsfoot still have threads relating to this topic.
It seems like the initiative system as penned by Gygax is actually really well designed and subtle. But working out exactly how this subtle system works is another thing.
S.
I think my DMing style in 2E and 3E was more or less in this vein. I made the characters work for what they got and put them up again challenging foes. When I found they were steam-rollering through monsters of the same CR (in early 3E), I started facing them down with monsters of a level higher, sometimes two, and seeing if they could handle it (and they usually could, although not without some difficulties). When players got NPC hirelings and started mistreating them, the hirelings would sometimes run off, complain about the PCs' actions or, on one occasion, formed a Hirelings' Union which threatened to go on strike unless they got better pay and the mage stopped experimenting on them with various polymorph spells for the sheer hell of it.
In effect the game could be much more lethal than I've found it in more recent years. My first DM really had no compunction about killing players or even the entire party outright if they made mistakes or got in over their heads, and I think that is the only way to go. Letting the players waltz around annihilating everything without breaking a sweat is boring, and one of the reasons I lose interest in the game once it approaches epic-level play when it becomes nigh-on impossible to design villains whom the players can't simply destroy through some 9th Level spell you've completely forgotten to prepare a counter against.
When I found they were steam-rollering through monsters of the same CR (in early 3E), I started facing them down with monsters of a level higher, sometimes two, and seeing if they could handle it (and they usually could, although not without some difficulties).
This. I consider the CR system as-written - even in 3.5 and Pathfinder - pretty much a guideline and nothing more. So if CR 5 challenges are getting curb-stomped by a CR 5 party, I up the ante a bit, and keep doing so until they either start curb-stomping those (at which point I use monsters at CR+2 until those become too easy, or lean back on loot a tad because they apparently have too much) or try to figure out what in the Nine I'm doing wrong.
My first DM really had no compunction about killing players or even the entire party outright if they made mistakes or got in over their heads, and I think that is the only way to go. Letting the players waltz around annihilating everything without breaking a sweat is boring
Yep, agreed wholeheartedly. I draw a very firm line against this and the rot worms in the ear thing, myself, but if the players go and do something utterly stupid - such as an example from somewhere on this board of hearing local tales of an uber red dragon and deciding to waltz into its cave at level 3 with blades drawn and shouting threats - or fumble a crucial skill check (1 or 2 while cliff-climbing makes a good example) or something like that, bad things happen.
On the other hand I'm not opposed to fudging the dice behind the screen occasionally in their favor either. ;)
I blame WoD.
...... I don't get it.
Trying to figure put the cryptic #2 on initiative (DMG pg 66). That's Gygax to me.Could you be more specific, Stefan?
And yes, Gygax's prose was thick with rich vocabulary, misspellings (When I put "wands of lightening" and "minionions of Set" into WG7, I wasn't making anything up.) and words that didn't quite mean what he thought they meant. (There's nothing intermittent about "continual light". Did he mean, perhaps, "continuous light"?)
[threadjack]
My friends and I really enjoyed WG7, Chris. Which, according to the internet, means we and maybe 10 others were in good company. :)[/threadjack]
But it's quite telling that one of the longest-lived and most-beloved RPGs other than D&D is a parody of Gygax's 1e DMG philosophy of running a game.
There really are a lot of things we just don't follow any more and a handful that went out of vogue and came back.
I had completely forgotten about the section in the DMG insisting that playing with miniatures was the correct way to play (and the Grenadier line of miniatures no less). In fact I had forgotten how much 1E was (at least in theory) a table top game as most of my gaming would have been under 2nd which was not a table top game.
Not to say that everyone played 1E with loads of miniatures - I didn't and I didn't know anyone locally that did but Gygax certainly played with miniatures and considered it the correct way to play. We even get some basic miniature rules in 1E and some of the 'targeting specific body parts' rules for certain monsters make much more sense with miniatures.
When was the last time the Dwarf contracted a sexually transmitted disease? In 1E you are supposed to roll for contracting a disease or parasites for each character every month (sometimes more often depending on conditions - mostly current geographical climate) - it even comes with a real nostalgia inducing chart that modifies the roll for a dozen or so possible conditions.
Then there is the part in the DMG where Gygax insists that any player that even so much as glances at the DMG sideways ought to be severely punished - loss of magic items at least and maybe levels would be better. I actually have a friend who tells a story of going to someones house to play in their game many years ago and when she pulled out the DMG along with the rest of the core books there were audible gasps from the regulars in this guys game and he basically told her to get out of his house.
For confusing rules we need to look no further then alignment languages and what happens when the DM switches your alignment. On top of level loss you suddenly don't know your old alignment language and are just learning the new one - its unclear what happened to your knowledge of the old language.
These days players seem to feel that they have some kind of a say in their characters back story...back in the day players did not control that sort of thing at all - you had mainly just done whatever it is your class was and then the DM might roll on the secondary skill table. If you were lucky you avoided 'no measurable skills' and found out that Stout Heart the dwarf had been a gambler before he became a fighter.
The whole aspect of winnowing the wheat from the chaff in terms of identifying superior players would not fly in most versions of the modern game. I notice this on the section on keeping track of campaign time in particular but really it pervades the whole book - in fact its core to Gygax's philosophy on the correct way to play the game. Everything in his modules tells us this is so.
Speaking of the section on keeping track of time, everything in this section strikes me as 'dated'. It emphasizes that the point of keeping track of time is critical - its mainly critical because some players may be off doing their own thing probably involving character development. While they are away they don't get to delve into the dungeon and therefore don't get phat loot or XP.
The section essentially can be boiled down to 'superior' players know that most of the time doing anything involving personal character development will take them out of the game for to long to be worthwhile. It takes a long time to go wandering all over the place outside when compared to hitting the dungeon again and again. Few rewards will really compensate character as well as the continual delves into the local dungeon with its steady stream of riches, magic items and XP.
The number of ways I feel this section is just wrong is pretty substantial.
- I don't like that personal character development is seen as something to be punished.
- I don't like the idea that time itself is a tool for the group to do things without some of the players. I mean we are actually dealing with a situation here were you ask good friends not to bother coming over for game night because their character is off trekking through the wilderness and won't have a chance to play while everyone else hits the dungeon.
- I'm distressed with the complete focus on dungeons as a source of lootage and the focus of the game etc.
In fact If I have ever read something on why its OK for the DM to play fast and loose with keeping track of time this might be it. Just about every reason Mr. Gygax gave as to why its important to keep track of time are ones that I would interpret as being the sort of thing where I'm going to want to play fast and loose with time in order to get to the adventures I want to run with my group.
Strangely the section fails to mention the things I do like about keeping track of time - weather changes in the campaign world. Events unfold, even in far away places, and develop - and rumors of said events filter back to the players. Essentially the aspects of keeping track of time that emphasize the worlds authenticity. Admittedly we'll get that sense of authenticity in spades when you find out that your dwarf contracted a sexually transmitted disease sometime last month.
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Jeremy I think you are onto something.
I would say in my opinion that later editions made the rules more consistet at the cost of "believability".
In 1e your class was a job that was hard work to become and hard work to get better at (and costly). You needed trainers and money and time. Now "ding" leveled up! Background was something you designed yourself in 1e from your imagination (hang on no mechanical onuses - CRIME!!!). Later we had to believe that learning skills mid-adventure was common and they all took the same amount of time. "Hey look I can climb now even though I haven't tried it even once and we are in the middle of a dungeon - sweet."
If you wanted to maintain being a fighter or a magic-users it's what you did, it's all you did in between adventuring in 1e. 1e was gritty, real feeling. Later we have the Hollywood never empty 6-gun approach.
Combat, a real advancement there in "yep it could happen". A round is 6 seconds in 3e/4e, besides the obviously "what the hell" of swinging the 2H sword like a blender, we have the magic users who can find several spell components, and then cast the arcane spell in the blink of an eye. Mechanically an advancement (quick and nasty), but I'm not seeing how this can be envisioned. What does a mages pouch belt look like now?
End of the day Gygax,even if you disagree with the organisation of the rules,or perhaps think that people of the 21st century can't handle holding more than 2 or 3 mechanisms in their heads at the time, gave us a World in whih we could act out in a fimiliar/believable way fantasy games. Commoners had low hp's, you were a lot better, the monsters were very bad. Oh look it's an orc, well that orc could likely kill any commoner around. Lucky heros exist.
Thanks Gary,
S.
But it's quite telling that one of the longest-lived and most-beloved RPGs other than D&D is a parody of Gygax's 1e DMG philosophy of running a game.
Are you refering to HackMaster? Just curious...I haven't had any expereince with HackMaster at all.
Thanks,
Ed
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I'll open up by admitting I have almost no experience with 1st edition, and only a few months worth of playing AD&D 2e under my belt.
Having said that....
My main problem is with unnecessarily complicated rules. Ability scores, for example. The idea that somebody with 15 strength- exceptionally strong, much beefier than myself or the average person- gains no special bonus to hitting or damage over somebody with strength of 8, is silly. You can go from 8 strength to 15 without gaining an bonuses in combat, but then as soon as you get another 3 points, you roll the percentile (another arbitrary and confusing addition) and you can have your bonuses boosted massively.
The rest of the stats are similar. 7 to 14 dexterity is a 'dead' space, and from 15 up the bonuses advance rapidly.
Races bother me greatly too. The idea that a Gnome, who can live to be half a millennium old, can only learn to be an illusionist and can then only advance to a certain level, while a human can far surpass them in mastery of illusion magic in less than 1/5th the lifespan is...irritating.
It can still be fun but it really bothers me how inconsistent and arbitrarily made-up many of the rules are.
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Ummm... Stephen... you contradicted Jeremy.
He said that your background was randomly rolled for you by the GM, and you said players come up with it on their own.
Did the book promote both methods???
There is a table for rolling a background profession (NOT background) BUT this isn't what you are (as in 3e/4e) it's what you were until you started the silly dangerous life of being an adventurer.
Rememeber in 1e if you were a class you were the best of the best. Don't let later editions colour you view of the World. Think of an elite sportsperson. What does someone training to be a heavy wieght boxing champion do? Does he spend much time doing anything else? That is the "feel" of 1e classes (think of them as professions or skill sets).
As to the story, tomb raiding or political is up to the DM really, system doesn't really come into it.
S.
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The rest of the stats are similar. 7 to 14 dexterity is a 'dead' space, and from 15 up the bonuses advance rapidly.
Races bother me greatly too. The idea that a Gnome, who can live to be half a millennium old, can only learn to be an illusionist and can then only advance to a certain level, while a human can far surpass them in mastery of illusion magic in less than 1/5th the lifespan is...irritating.
It can still be fun but it really bothers me how inconsistent and arbitrarily made-up many of the rules are.
I think their is only one exception and I can't remember which stat but all of them have differences (STR, open doors, bend/lift gates, max. load) between the "dead" space. Keep in mind that the biggest, badest Red Dragon had 88 hp. In the silliness that is 3e it's possible to deal much more than that in one round at a mid level. The fighter got +5% chance to hit per level (as in later editions) - this was huge, ANY + to hit or damage made a massive difference. 18/00 +3/+6 is literally 1 in 100 assuming you have 18 STR.
Race/Classes: Gygax created a game and a feel. Demihumans had multiclassing (such as it was) that was their thing. Human dual-class. 2e DMG explains well why the racial lmits exist (and not to mess with them too much) the reason is a Game World rather than a Game Mechanic one. Elves live so long why isn't the world (no matter which one) always run and controlled by 20+ level Elves? If they advance at the same rate as humans fine, BUT they then can live for 3-4x longer than a human. Let's face it if a human and an elf said "we will meet and duel every 10 years", the elf would still be in his prime and winning by default due to the human having died of old age!
Another case of Mechanics becoming the driver from game design over Crediability (which is a funny thing to say, I hope you get my point).
Yes in 1e wounds got infected, yes diseases killed whole towns, yes healing was not as common, yes it was a fantasy world developed by Gygax.
But make no mistake (and other forums focusing on 1e will attest to this) Gygax never did something arbitrarily.
Cheers,
S.
From what I've read about Gygax (I started with AD&D 2E, or so I think, so I may not be really Gygaxian myself), one of his main points used to be this:
"Challenge the player, not the character"
This single line marks the main difference between "old-school" and "new" IMHO. By implication, in new-school roleplay, you play a character, whereas in old-school you just play.
Old school expects players to use their own wits, talents, and luck to surmount the challenges laid before them which, rather than being laid in terms of "skill challenges", they're actual puzzles and other "food for thought" (the greatest expression of this style, of course, being the (in)famous Tomb of Horrors). This has the advantage that smart people pretty much have it made, all they need is their wits and a lucky die. The drawbacks, though, are twofold, first one is that players tend to just play themselves over and over (after all, it's either "play smart" or "play dead", then again this might or might not be perceived as something bad according to your definition of roleplay). Second drawback (the one potentially damaging) is that well, if you suck at puzzles or are otherwise on the slow side then sucks to be you, for this hobby has nothing for you other than frustration and disappointment.
New school, on the other side, brings to the table a disociation of player and character, the character becoming his own persona with his own set of talents, wits, knowledge base, strengths and weaknesses (enter the games with formal skill systems). This one has the advantage that a player is under no obligation to go to the Police Academy if he wants to play a detective or having been the prom King/Queen at school to play a bard, opening the possibility to play whatever character concept tickles your fancy (in this school, you're -not- your character, the fact that he has +10 in Diplomacy or Perception doesn't mean you yourself have to be as capable IRL). The downside, however, is that a badly handled new school game can make players lazy, just letting the dice fall where they may without even trying to roleplay the process by which they attained the result of said roll (becoming "roll-players"), there's no point in a school that focuses on "being someone else" if you don't actually try walking the mile in his shoes.
Which one is best? Both have their strengths, both have their flaws, it's all on whatever works for you. Then again, both names of "old" and "new" school might be rather vague now since 4E started the whole "old is new again" thing.
My personal favorite? New school, I'm irredeemably both a new-school and a thespian roleplayer to the point that my relation with both of these trends is rather intrinsical, try to take us apart, and I'd most likely die in agony... also, I royally suck at puzzles and riddles.