Dumb Ideas from old-school roleplaying games. 1) bringing a 10-foot pole to poke and prod. JUST USE A SPEAR. It can do everything a 10 foot pole does. If you want to be even more silent, stick a cork on the spear tip. It'll come off easy in a fight. 2) monsters guarding treasure they could have been using. We've all been there. We finally defeat the bad guys and lo and behold they had a +2 sword in a chest. I once had a fight against several 4th level fighters and an evil magic-user. When we finally won, the magic-user had a Wand of Fireballs in his loot, which he'd not used. This is partially the fault of rolling for random treasure after the fact. 3) "trail rations". It's dried fruit, sausage, crackers, and hard cheese. Not some kind of nasty biscuit. 4) Dumb combo monsters that add nothing new. Can we please put owlbears and armadillephants back in the box? They add nothing to the base animals. What can an owlbear do that a bear cannot? What does an armadillephant offer besides "tougher skin" - probably because the creator didn't know that an elephant's skin is already tougher than an armadillo's. 5) Setting spiderwebs on fire. Seriously? I had a player say he was going to take a torch to the spiderwebs, clearly expecting them to burst into flame. Spider silk is protein. It shrivels or melts, and don't burn. (This particularly bugs me because in OD&D, Gary Gygax uses burning spiderwebs as a tactic, and even at the tender age of 18 I knew this wouldn't work, having applied candles to many old thick webs.) What are your favorite and least favorite dumb roleplaying traditions?