In my teens my friends and I played a lot of AD&D. We bought WAY too many books. Van Richten's Guide to the Lich, The Complete Book of Wizards (and Elves, Dwarves, Fighters, etc), The Chronomancer's Guide, etc. Some time after 3e would come out, then player's options, and again we bought far too many books. I own the core books for 5e, which I barely played, and now 5.5 is out.

I wonder if just sticking with a single system is the best, not buying many sourcebooks, or just making up my own system (I created a 2d6 Star Wars system for myself) so that I don't end up with a ton of books that become outdated.

What do you guys do? Do you try to keep up to date and sell off your old stuff? Or do you just not update to the latest versions. You try to convert the stats from older books to newer versions?

Whereas her brother and husband Hyperion is the origin of light, Theia is the origin of sight and the glittering beauty of gems and precious metals. As such, she is a goddess of seeing beauty, whether it is the beauty of finely crafted treasures or the beauty of a natural landscape.

Theia the Far-Shining One: https://blog.aulddragon.com/2026/09/theia-the-far-shining-one/

Full list of entries in the Geek Mythoi Update Project: https://blog.aulddragon.com/deities-divinities/

If you’ve been enjoying these entries, please consider supporting the project on Patreon or Ko-Fi (links on the blog). Thanks!

Hello.

I am running a game where the prospective Mage has to make do - initially, at least - with a handful of Level 1 spells chiseled into stone tablets. See, I wanted to emphasize the isolated nature of the starting location by having his earliest taste of magic only possible thanks to fortuitously-gained relics he studied over and over (incidentally, it turns out that the 2e DMG briefly discusses "alternative" spell books); it will be some time before he encounters anything approaching a proper wizardly library. Now, the benefits and drawbacks of this medium compared to the standard seem fairly obvious...

* Stone is far heavier than parchment/paper.

* Chiseling magical script into slate, marble, limestone, etc, is difficult compared to simply writing with a quill; there may be a premium involved, as far as ingredients/tools are concerned, due to the unusual nature of the process.

* Stone is more durable in some ways (e.g., if an arrow or burst of flame hits a spell book, it is likely ruined), but also more fragile in others (e.g., a book hitting a hard surface will almost always bounce right off, whereas a tablet is probably going to shatter).

* Stone is unappealing to typical bibliophilic pests, such as silverfish and bookworms.

* Stone is heavily resistant to weathering.

However, there is one potential issue on my mind. Be it in AD&D or AD&D 2e, I could have sworn that it is possible to cast a spell directly out of a spell book; at best, the single spell is consumed from the page(s) (i.e., the writing disappears), while, at worst, there is a chance that the entire book is ruined. How - if at all - would this work with, say, a Mage attempting to invoke Alarm or Mount from a tablet? Is it even possible?

Hello everyone. Been very much enjoying reading the roots of the system (or should it be trunk?) from which all the modern editions trace their lineage to. It is most likely me growing up with 3rd and beyond editions that I have uncertainties on how fights in AD&D really function.

Numbers of Appearing, even when adjusted to their 'encounter' sizes seem to be quite overwhelming for even a party of 4-5 people. Having a whole side of the fight act in unison for the enemies seems quite dangerous (facing rules do molify this somewhat with the party forming a combat line to minimise number of attackers).

So I'm curious how you veterans, players and DMs both, play this without having 'one side goes first and brings down the party's fighter by sheer virtue of attack volume and low HPs'.