Our GM said "it's likely you would have whatever mundane adventuring gear, I just wrote down the magical stuff. So when I tried to contain a Ghost in a circle of salt he said he liked the idea, but said something like "Remember these don't play by the same rules." He shut me down instead of "yes &"

I think the biggest eye opening to the idea that no edition of D&D is better than another has been Gen Con TV's panel series on the editions. They're all fun, they all have their quirks, they're all an excuse to hang with friends and pretend to be an elf. The other was this weekend when I played 1e.

So at 7:20 I drop. I tell the GM thanks for running I had fun, hand my character to the cleric who has been stunned by Power Word Stun and go get some dinner. After dinner I ran into the wizard and asked how it went. I left 20 minutes too soon, but the party was successful and defeated the lich.

We dispel his magic, silence his throne room, but he keeps innately teleporting around. Combat keeps getting bogged down by this house rule? where he breaks movement into the segments so every player's action takes 10x as long to resolve. It's 7:15 and we pin him in a room. I can't get in...

At this point I step out to pee and come back to the door open. One of the players has to leave to prepare for a show he's in, but it's time to face the Lich. He uses some bullshit on us, I lose my +2 ring of protection because I failed a lightning bolt save.

None of us have anywhere to be (I haven't had real food since breakfast but I wasn't hungry), so we pressed on thinking it would be over soon. We get stuck at another magically locked door... And have to spend time trying to figure out how to open without Knock which we used earlier...

I'm speeding this up because honestly time was beginning to run out and we weren't going to beat the lich in time. Eventually we fight 9 skeleton warriors (a player looks over at me and goes yeesh these are a 15HD monster). We have little trouble with them but it's 6pm.and our slot has run out.

So we beat his zombie puzzle, experienced the B1 pit trap (empty hall, trying to open the door causes the floor to open under your feet), fought some zombies, and a ghost. We have 2 portraits left, an army of skeletons and the lich. We think these might be a single encounter and so we buff up and go

I once wrote that every edition of D&D is playable & that what makes an "edition of D&D" (read: not 1e or 2e) unplayable is the group. I have a high tolerance for dogshit groups & GMs. I realized I didn't want to play more games with this man but not enough that I didn't want to finish the session.

This is why I asked about telegraphing, because there was nothing given to us as players that would have suggested we solved it, but this idea of *giving the players information* seemed anathema to this man.