Some closing thoughts:

The Good
  • Character creation is really fast. Once you know what you're doing you can have a character ready to play in under 5 minutes.
  • Character sheets are short. They only tell you the most basic things and all the little background and flavor detailed are left entirely to how you play your character. It is not considered to make such a difference that it changes the characters stats.
  • Modifiers for high and low ability scores are uniform, making it very easy to have them all memorized very quickly.
  • Saving throws are a fixed number based on class level, reducing some math and avoiding DC/save bonus arms races.
  • Only three types of armor which all just have a single armor rating and no other stat.
  • No proficiencies for weapons and armor with very little restrictions, except for the wizard.
  • Since many protection spells last for an hour or two, they are very useful for more than just a single fight (or half a fight, as it sometimes is in 3rd edition).
  • Cure light wounds removes paralysis.
  • Many other spells have nice versatile uses.
  • Easy encumbrance system.
  • XP for gold. It encourages players to work towards the primary goal of the game (treasure hunting) instead of seeking out unnecessary fights to progress faster.
  • Explicit statement of magic items having no price and not being for sale anywhere.
  • Wandering monsters are explained very well. Much better than the common nonsensical misconception about them. Making retreat and monsters that are willing to negotiate part of the main rules was a very good move.
  • Really like the initiative system.
  • No grid combat. No fiddling with positioning and situational modifiers.
  • Monster stat blocks are very short and special abilities explained very quickly and easy to handle in play. Creating custom monsters is childs play and can be done in 3 minutes.


The Bad
  • Since races are treated as classes, you can't have a dwarf cleric or a halfling thief. This can easily be fixed if you want it, either by ignoring race or creating custom dwarf cleric and halfling thief classes in a few minutes, but I see no benefit of doing it the way it is done here.
  • Wizards get only one spell at 1st level and no option to use ranged weapons, even though they have extremely low hit points and no armor. Ranged weapon proficiency is the least that should be done to improve them.
  • Chances for thief skills start way too low at first level, stay low very long, and then suddenly increase rapidly once the thief is already very good. With only 1d4 hit points and leather armor at 1st level, the odds for pulling any of these dangerous stunts off should be at least 50% or higher.
  • Read magic required to unlock found scrolls between adventures instead of being able to use them immediately.
  • Chance for cursed magic items that can potentially be fatal among randomly generated treasure is way too high.


The Ugly
  • The D&D magic system. Spell slots never work for me.
  • Calculating the result of attack rolls. The odds for a hit are perfectly fine, but the way to calculate hit or miss are needlesly complex.
  • Saving throw categories.
  • Alignment. Is less obstrusive and confusing than in any other editions, but it's still there.
  • Why no edged weapons for clerics? No reason for that.
  • Tracking time and progress outside of combat is weird, it just seems 10 times slower than you'd expect.
  • Advice for creating wilderness settings extremely rudimentary. (Though the module The Isle of Dread that came with the Box Set was a wonderful introduction to how such a thing could look in practice. However, it has not much explanation of how you do it, it only shows what it looks like.)
  • Castles serve no other functions than letting players spend the huge amount of treasures which they have horded over the course of the campaign.


My overall oppinion is that this game has a wonderful framework, which is perhaps my favorite of all the many games I've seen. But looking back at it three decades later, it feels like a prototype made from scrap parts, which now needs one additional step of actually turning it into a sleek production model made from high quality components. It's a great concept and design, but assembled in a way that is clunky, and admitedly done somewhat shoddy I have to say. But since the fixes are so easily done, I still really like it a lot. I just wouldn't ever consider playing it out of the box and only show it to my players after a quick 30 minute conversion.