That is so great that there are people here still very interested in the older editions. Most of my time was spent with D&D BECMI (the 5 sets from red basic box up to gold immortals box, though I've never gotten to immortals play before... Do any of you all have experience with levels 28+ up to immortals?) since it seemed to be the perfect balance for simplified-for-beginners as well as retaining the AD&D feel for experienced , all without losing the flavor or feeling generalized.... plus perfect balance of difficulty vs. features/complexity for us to play on weekdays after school & hw or some weekend nights. ;) Too much complex thinking and numbers to calculate would have been harder for us to sustain after being tired from doing homework. Haha. However, I also liked AD&D because of its variety of classes, the various abilities, and just all around more in-depth feel (though things could get complex sometimes). Regarding D&D over internet, I am also very new to this Roll20 platform, but I like what I've seen so far. It looks like you can roll the dice, show maps, hand-draw, and voice chat all within the system, and all just using your browser. Though..................as you probably know, the glory D&D of the older editions was that it was truly a "paper, pencil, and dice + imagination" game. In my case, I remember sometimes playing over phone with conference call when we couldn't meet up. Even when sitting in the same room, we were usually lounging comfortably and only used the floor/table surface for writing/erasing and dice rolling, with occasional maps/drawings. Of course the DM had his DM's screen with many references and maps concealed though. ;P So..... not too demanding of technology. Haha. I guess what I'm saying is, unless you really wanted to make the game fancy with all sorts of visual effects, you theoretically could play with just the minimum such as voice communication, dice rolling, etc. :) Sorry. this post became longer than expected. It's just exciting to meet fellow players of these great editions of the game. And, I must say, I am really glad to meet a master DM such as you who also really enjoys the DM part. I think if more (of the newer) people to the game viewed DMing not just as a referree role, but actually as they themselves also being a player (after all DM controls not one character, but several characters) working with the other players to adventure together through the story that he/she had the "by yours truly honor" of creating, there may be more people naturally wanting to try being a DM. DM may create the base world/land/realm, but how the adventure unfolds is a product of the DM + players "adventuring" together. This view would probably also help DMs enjoy playing higher level campaigns, as the DM gets to control neighboring lands/rulers/territories by nature.... I remember, in the games I played, our characters' fun didn't really start until levels 10+. Up to level 9ish, it was all about "training and building up"="survival" of your character through the exciting adventures & quests designed for those levels. ;) I was lucky that in all my earlier gaming days, the DMs really liked to DM
(more than playing a PC role even), so we always had a lot of fun. DM did not see it as "DM vs. player", and had the knack for keeping us alive one way or another (meaning not permanent death and erasure from the game, though may have death needing teammates to somehow help "fix and take care" hehe) while still making sure our characters were very adequately afraid of dying to "keep us on the edge of our seats". To end the post, yes, definitely please keep in touch on know how you proceed on setting up this campaign. I think typically I am more available in the early mornings or late evenings rather than the afternoons, but we can discuss more once you've gotten more into setting up the game!