Hidden in Shadows

So having gone through all of Doug Stewart's 1994 Dungeons & Dragons rulebook, what have we come away with?

For me, it was remarkable to recognize just how much of the original game "engine" was still "under the hood" so to speak.  Although D&D94 has a lot of added bells and whistles and does a lot of futzing around with various things, a great many of the rules still stem from the original game, either completely untouched or only cosmetically altered.

Even so, there are also key elements of the original's brilliance that have come to be ruined, too.

As a text to mine for houserule ideas and rule clerifications though, D&D94 proved very appropriate and useful.  The simplified introductory nature of D&D94 is no doubt a great aid in this regard.  If one tried to do the same thing with, say, the bloated Rules Cyclopedia, for example it would be quite a headache.

So attached below are the TSR "houserules" I derived as we went along.  It is a fairly conservative document.  I've only included those rules and guidelines which are truly appropriate and useful for OD&D play, whatever it may be that fell into that category, regardless of whether I myself would ever employ them.  

Houserules.docx