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On Thu, 10/30/14, Kelly St. Clair <xxxxxx@efn.org> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] CT LBB5 HG 1st ed (c)1979 - Jump Governor
 To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
 Date: Thursday, October 30, 2014, 4:50 PM

 On 10/30/2014 2:31 PM,
 Evyn MacDude wrote:
 > On Thu, Oct 30,
 2014 at 1:25 PM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list)
 > <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
 wrote:
 >
 >>
 >> Thanks for the info,
 >>
 >> You know, now
 that I've started back thru those old JTAS issues,
 I'm beginning to realize how much the basic 'Three
 LBB's'  rpg was modified 'on the fly', as
 it were.
 >> No wonder there were
 continuity issues wrt the succeeding books &
 supplements.
 >
 > Now
 add in all the Fanzine and 3rd party stuff that was coming
 out at
 > the same time and you can see
 why there is so much divergence in
 >
 personnel Traveller Universes. Later on with the release of
 MT it
 > wasn't such a broad stream of
 material.
 >

 'Twas the style of the time (he said, onion
 hanging from his belt), back
 when this
 hobby of ours really was, for everyone involved, rather than

 an industry.  Early D&D was in a
 nigh-continuous state of revision and
 accretion, from the "Little Brown
 Books" to the pages of The Strategic
 Review and its successor, The Dragon, to the
 hardbound tomes of first
 edition Advanced
 D&D, which were in some sense a compilation of
 everything up to that point (and then some). 
 There was feedback and
 sometimes tension
 between the (often literal) schools of play, such as
 the then-famous Caltech gaming group, and the
 original crew up in Wisconsin.

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Even though I was never into D&D, I remember others talking about a series of articles/editorials that Gary Gygax wrote in the Dragon back then.
Some of the comments were, 'authoritarian, dictatorial, egotist, etc'.
I never read any of that myself but then there was the long-running lawsuit & feud 'tween him & Arneson over 'rights'.
(I never did find out how that worked out. Anyone know?)
One comment I ran into years later (early '90's) on a UseNet list was this;
"I primarily went to the convention to browse but made a point to be in the auditorium when the folks from TSR were speaking. When it was Gygax's turn, he essentially just stood up, said "If you change the rules you're not playing AD&D(tm) anymore", & then sat down".<sic>

I always found it refreshing that the folks at GDW (& SPI also) encouraged their customers to experiment w/ the rules.
SPI in particular would regularly insert an editorial comment into the mag (S&T) that went like this;
"You can't believe how many letters we get asking if it's OK to change some rule or other!  It's OK!"<sic>

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