This, at least, is not entirely true. OD&D does not have any distinction at all between male and female characters in the original 3 pamphlets.

Pretty sure that stuff came in later, post-Greyhawk. It certainly showed up in fanzines of the late 70s, though…

Haha, I’ve been pulling your leg, the confused response was just too funny to ignore at first. I have a new comment that explains it.

You’re good, and yes, it is older than 2e.

OK, time to come clean. I had assumed the other old people would have this at the ready, but when the confused responses came in, I just rolled with it and now I’m bored with the joke.

This is for BECMI. The question itself is real, though, I’ve heard of better Thief progressions, and I don’t want to just top out at 14 like most people do since I never got to play with the Masters or Immortals sets and I want to try it at least once so I know how it plays.

Definitely not AD&D, I have those too and they’re much heavier books – these are more like magazines.

I should note that I have a blue one in here labeled expert rulebook. One of my players is bringing more that go with these.

I searched for the text on the box and mine is this one

https://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Basic-Rules-Set/dp/0880383380

Just the basic box set? We wanted to try playing to max level since none of us have ever actually done it.

D&D?

Wait, what happened to Hasbro??

Similarly, in 2020 a game called Nox Archaist came out for the Apple ][. If you liked Ultima, you should check it out – it even has a book sized manual to go with it.

The Forest?

War crimes and human leather.

It’s funny, your description of Souls games echoes how I feel about 3rd person action games that aren’t made by FromSoft. To me, Dark Souls 1 felt like the crisp combat I had been wanting but never getting from stuff like God of War or the older Monster Hunter games. Bloodborne refined it somewhat, and to this day, that style of 3rd person combat is my favorite.

Crazy how perceptions of a game’s controls are so individual. Our difference really illustrates to me how hard it is to nail a game’s “feel.”

I use my Steam Deck as a portable console too. My laptop is a super ultra light thing (XPS 13) that can’t run games very well to begin with, but that’s fine since I have it for work anyway. In the end, the two of those together still cost less than a competent (and new) gaming laptop. And I don’t even have to put up with Nvidia’s terrible Linux drivers!

I’m surprised to not see Flare RPG mentioned. It’s nothing groundbreaking on its own, but it’s actually got two nicely fleshed out campaigns, and tooling for people to make new ones. It’s a nice, fun, FOSS single-player RPG, and it’s great if you want that old fashioned Diablo feel.

Another vote for Endless Sky here as well, it’s just excellent, and surprisingly expansive.