I get what the BrOSR guys are doing, and that if you're doing what they're doing properly everyone shouldn't need to put in more than 15 minutes a day into responses, but jesus christ I want to play a game not have another job. Being a virgin is a hobby, not a fucking career holy shit.
But if that's what they like, I guess more power to them.
There's a lot to go over and I'm simply not smart enough to do it. Suffice to say, AD&D 1st ed if you look at the rules as they were written was clearly trying to shepard people back to wargaming. It''s right there in both the player book and DMG that eventually players start to run kingdoms at 9th level and have these giant almost grand strategy games. The rules are there. It's up to you to use them.
While B/X and BECMI are mostly used interchangeably, this is one of the cases where they differ. B/X ruleset, that is D&D Basic (because for the starter set/basic set Basic and Expert rules were combined) stops at lvl 9-14 depending on class; your GM was supposed to have killed you before then, and doesn't give rules or suggestions for "what next" (beyond building a base and attracting followers, but gives no mechanics for following that up, because that was covered in the 3rd book).
BECMI is the full pathway from being a 1HD cannon fodder to being a literal god, and covers how you engage in campaigns all the way to god-hood, but this stuff is meant to be fairly abstracted. All the books ore more or less thrown into a blender and run through a seive to create AD&D.
AD&D was not so much about wargaming but a general injection of sperg-tier logistics and additional class options (The sperg-tier logistics could then be scaled up to war gaming). The dungeon masters guide is more about giving probability advice to a prospective GM and Gygax explaining the game's intent than anything about rules.
This includes using rules that a lot of GMs would object to nowadays despite being in black and white on the page with advice from Gygax himself [ ... ]This includes rules such as a 1:1 timescale.
Hold up, homeslice. If anyone said Gygax intended for 1:1 time, they are sorely and sadly mistaken. Gygax DID say, and I've come to agree with him more and more, that rigorous time keeping is important in games (That is, things happen at set times and you need to have the journey to the next town take 3 days, 3 hours, and 12 minutes instead of just "You arrive after plot days of travel") because it creates a sense of danger, urgency, and generally to make your players feel like what they are doing is important*.He also says its important to keep track of what everyone is doing, and for how long so everyone's time lines sync up. (this being to account for players who may not attend every session).
Its also important to have characters age (and die of old age) in proper time.
But no where does he say that you be running games in real time. If fact I generally got the opposite impression with the sliding time scales for fighting, exploring, and traveling.
The BrOSR guy isn't wrong that you shouldn't go from scrub to god in 3 weeks of game time, but that also doesn't mean that you're supposed to be running 1 day = 1 day. When you send a guy on a 40-day journey to the Ruins of Yur So'shal Ife, it should be resolved as soon as 40 days of in-game time have ellapsed, not "we'll find out in a month!".
edit: just re-read my 1eADMG, the only time Gygax implies 1:1 time is in combat where its suggested players be penalized for dithering by saying they did nothing for the round, and otherwise taking player hesitation as character hesitation. That's not 1:1 time, that's "decide quick this is combat". Other than that, you just need to make sure everyone is tracking where their characters are and what they are doing.
*Properly tuning that timing is rather difficult
This is something that's been sort of puzzling me recently. 4e got a huge amount of backlash for trying to force players to play on a grid, sure. But now everybody and their dog familiar plays on Roll20 or some other virtual tabletop service, with grid maps and tokens (which are basically minis with stolen DeviantArt assets). I would not be surprised if they tried another push towards grid-exclusivity, including selling more grid-related merch and tools. Modular cardboard dungeon tiles, shit like that.
Already done my friend.
I generally liked dungeon tiles, except that they didn't like to stay put and you needed to use like some sticky tack to get them to stay put, but then they weren't level. They should have printed them on a ferrous/magnetic material so you could at least get them to hold still on a magnet board or something. Good idea, good art, but just didn't work
To respond to both you and
@Adamska
I like map gaming just as a case of keeping everyone on the same page with location. For B/X sort of things where its just "Melee/Close/Far" and movement is going up or down one increment, its less important and theater of the mind can easily just have chaotic battles shift around the room.
With any D&D over 3.x where spells have ranges that sometimes go up and down on 5 foot increments based on modifiers/level, you need to keep fairly rigorous tracking, and you're on a grid.
I guess I view grid gaming as a necessary & tolerable evil, and its nice in digital table tops when you can auto-set distances so people don't have to count.
