B/X is good. When characters have d6 hp and it’s instant death at 0 the combat becomes way more serious and tense.

If you’re going to die, better to die on the main quest. I avoid side quest distractions.

The best lore is lore made at the table with the players. The rest is just gm inspiration.

Hard pass for me due to the author, he’s a real jerk.

If you’re running a sandbox, you just need to review a bit ahead of the party in the various dungeons.

I’m running a DCC game at the moment and honestly, I’m not feeling it as much as others do. I think people downplay the rules being complex but first of all, not having the index at the back of the book is a huge usability fail. My book has it on page 467 of 504, with quite a lot of ads in the way.

Another thing that annoyed me was that there are some inconsistencies between printings for the rules. I have a 7th printing book and it says spell casters add their luck modifier to spell checks. One of my players was looking at the 10th printing pdf where it doesn’t say they do. This kind of thing leads to confusion.

I love the art of the book and it’s clearly a labor of love but it’s not a system I’ll be eager to run again.