Lean & Mean - Observations on Original Dungeons & Dragons 1974 game, Original Traveller, and Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg

 When it comes to original Dungeons & Dragons there's a bit of a sense of romance about the grand game. And while some players have dismissed the OD&D game. For myself it remains a timeless classic and this is because for me as a player there's something that sparks interest from the ground up.
Being on the otherside of the screen for me as a player has been a bit well, different.  

And one of those things that hits different is the fact of not how limited in scope Original Dungeons & Dragons is but how without all of the 'gaming dogma' the game handles itself like a well playing machine if you know what your doing with it as a DM. 
And the 'Reviews from Rlyeh blog hits this pattern on the head in thier Original Dungeons & Dragons 1974 review;  " Nicely though, the Foreword to ‘Volume 1: Men & Magic’ prefigures the famous ‘Appendix N’ in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. It suggests Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian stories, Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales, Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser adventures as inspiration. These suggestions point to a more pulpy inspiration, but what is curious is an absence from the list—J.R.R. Tolkien. So no The Hobbit and no The Lord of the Rings. Their later inclusion as inspiration would arguably make Dungeons & Dragons a much drier game, but their influence is very, very much in evidence here in terms of the Classes and Races available to play, and then equally, if not more so, in later editions of Dungeons & Dragons"

 1974 Original Dungeons & Dragons feels far more wide open to me as both player and DM in a way. This is something that we see in original Traveller as well. The inclusion of too many gaming details and elements seems to take away from the actual play. And the reason for this maybe that too much gaming crunch and lore can actually hinder play. 
And yet there's something more of the wargame here as well as the blueprints for the grand game. Because at it's core that's what original Dungeons & Dragons is, the blue print and the grand game itself. 
The fact that original dungeons & dragons has such a 'nuts & bolts' approach to it's material means that literally other material can be used and you won't break original Dungeons & Dragons. 

And this in point of fact goes back to both Appendix N and original Traveller's Pulp roots. In Tales to Astound a wordpress blog this exact observation has been made back in 2015; "For years I was one of those people who had a “dissatisfaction with picaresque stories.” And for this reason, as Maliszewski properly guesses, I saw “D&D as lacking in some way.”

Unexpectedly, as I dig into (and enjoy immensely) the Lamentations of the Flame Princess game I’m running for my friends, I’m really coming to enjoy the pulp tales. I’m no longer dissatisfied with them, and really loving the rules for doing what they’re doing." What's interesting to me as both player & DM is the how and why everything always comes back down to the Pulps source material made these games great. And another reason why I think Lamentations of the Flame Princess needs more credit then it gets within the OSR.