Recent content by delericho

If you're talking strictly about maps, the main things seem to be multiple entrances, multiple possible paths as often as possible, loops and branches, and multiple links between levels. Oh, and secret areas (though ideally these should be nice-to-have areas, not must-find ones). I do also like...

There are distilleries in most places, though a lot of them are much of a muchness. Possibly of interest is the Clydeside Distillery in Glasgow - it has the distinction of being both the newest (I think) and also built into older buildings on the river, so you can see something of Glasgow's...

Whereabouts in Scotland? It's a fairly big place. :D

The absolute best potatoes I've had are roasted, so that would be my vote. However, I agree with this:

I've done both theatre of the mind and carefully drawn grids. On balance, I vastly prefer TotM except where the system strongly rewards tactical grid-based combat (as in later 3e and, especially 4e).

In general, apply each where the fun lies. In the case of traps, I'd suggest building in things like tells and other clues for the players... but if you find you have a group that just hates that stuff, default to rolling the dice. (But I'd suggest going with one or the other - if the group...

Right now? AD&D 1st Edition - it's the only major version of the game that I've never run. For the most part, though, I'd be happy with more or less any reasonably-crunchy game (or edition of D&D). I'd probably default to 5e or one of the near-clones, due to recent familiarity, but am not...

I'm afraid I can't see how to construct a setting that both matches those criteria and is different enough from the existing settings for me to be interested in using it.

It takes an awful lot more time to run and adventure than to read it. Therefore, the market for easy-to-read adventures is larger than that for easy-to-run ones. (And Paizo, at least, reported for years that far more people bought their adventure paths to be read than ever actually ran them.)...

My very first game was AD&D 1st Edition. My second was kind-of-sort-of Dungeons & Dragons - the school library had a book "What is Dungeons & Dragons" which had a rough synopsis of how the rules sort of worked, and we cobbled something together from that. Third was D&D using the "Red Box"...

Rise of the Drow? I should stress that I haven't run it, or even read it, so am not in a position to give it any sort of endorsement. But it was recommended to me, and it at least sounds like it fits your requirements.

As the OP mentions, "The Iron Throne" is surprisingly good. I'd also second the suggestion of "I, Strahd" (though I wouldn't recommend the sequel). Otherwise, I'm afraid that D&D novels are fairly slim pickings. I keep thinking I'd like to reread the first two Dragonlance trilogies again...

Dungeons feature prominently, assuming you use the more permissive definition of "dungeon" that has always been a feature of D&D. I almost invariably use one encounter with a dragon per campaign - it's probably not the climactic encounter of the campaign, but is one of the big showpiece events...

There are very few years I could actually answer that. Sadly, this is one of them: 0.

Eh, I'm sure that even back in 1977 people were saying D&D only had a couple of decades before disaster.