D&D is best played as a score attack game

  

 Let me start by saying that I do not think TSR ever intended D&D to be a score attack game as we know them today. Space Invaders released in 1978, Galaxian in 1979, and Galaga (pictured above) in 1981. These games all featured a gameplay loop focused on getting your score on an electronic leaderboard. In digging a bit, Gary Gygax states in Dragon Magazine -

D&D and TTRPGs Have An Accessibility Problem

 

The original edition of Dungeons and Dragons launched in 1974, primarily marketed to gamers who were adults of working age, who were already involved in the hobby gaming scene. Of course, they had no idea how far the idea of codified roleplaying games rules would go in the future. The brown box was priced at $10, which seems pretty modest for today. However, using an inflation calculator, we can see that $10 in 1974 is actually about $55 or more in 2022 dollars. That seems in line with what a tabletop war game enthusiast would pay for something today. The minimum wage in 1974 was $2/hour. Five hours of mopping the five and dime and you could send mail to friendly cokehead insurance salesmen to have your own fantasy adventures!

Dungeon: The Spiral Temple

A few years ago I was tasked with running a D&D 5e one shot for my niece and her friends, for a 16th birthday party. I whipped up an adventure using a map from Dyson's Dodecahedron blog, and rolled randomly to determine the contents of each room. Then, I personally tailored the monsters to ones that made an interesting narrative. This may be a dungeon that most adults would think is bland, but provided a lot of fun interaction for a group of teenagers who had no idea what to expect.

Not My OSR! We Are The Old School Revolution

An opportunity surfaced to talk about how our campaign differs from the common notions of old school play, so I figured I'd use it as a springboard to publish some thoughts about our campaign in 2023.

Attack Bonus vs. AC sucks, and here's an attempt to fix it

I don't like Armor Class in D&D. I certainly like ascending rather than descending, but I don't like the ambiguity that comes about in actual play. Here's an example (and at the end, some proposed rules.)