To Hit Armour Class Zero (THAC0) was actually a great innovation in it’s day, which was (I’m embarrassed to admit) towards the end of my gaming career, when I already had ten or fifteen years of playing D&D behind me. I remember the heated discussions we used to have about other innovations like “roll 4d6 take best 3” or “re-order your stats as you see fit” for rolling up characters. Ah, those were the days…

A measure of my age is that that “new fangled THAC0 thing” is now older than dirt and largely forgotten by most gamers. One way for me to judge the antiquity of a D&D gamer: remember the Chainmail rules (and I don’t mean read about them on Wikipedia- I mean held them in your hands)? Wormy or Phil and Dixie? How about the Flumph? No? Ah, youth…

Strangely, none of that stuff I mentioned above seems like it was very long ago. The thing with being {sigh} old is that I don’t think the possessor of said title ever really feels like *they* are the old ones. That beer bellied thing in the mirror? That’s someone else. And later… the zimmer frame? That is just a temporary thing. High school was just the other day, and retirement is decades and decades away…