Astral Weeks: In D & D we trust

For the past several months, my home page has been James Maliszewski's blog Grognardia. Though it's nominally about "the history and traditions of the hobby of role-playing" -- Dungeons & Dragons and its ilk -- it's also an invigorating meditation on aesthetics. Maliszewski is an adherent of the "old school" movement, which favors flexible, elegant gaming systems (the original D&D, circa 1974, a.k.a. OD&D, published in "little brown books") to those that pile on so many supplementary rules and tables that they begin to feel restrictive rather than prescriptive.

By Ed Park

January 24, 2010