B/X Notebook- How I do it.

Some of this was already discussed, but I thought I'd list all the changes I have in mind.

Clerics. Either leave them out all together and replace them with Paladins, or make them the "Christian soldiers" they were clearly intended with no other gods represented. I accomplished the latter by filing the name off of Jehova, renaming him "Mithras." If you know anything about Mithras/Mitra then you'll get my thinking behind this.

Priests. If clerics are out as a character class, simply have that area covered by Magic-Users with spells borrowed from the clerics list of spells. Simple enough, I think.

Paladins. Remove the spells, allow for any weapons, and make a few other minor tweaks to the cleric class and you get the paladin. In my mind, they'd still have to serve Mithras/Jehova or they wouldn't be paladins, they'd be... I dunno, some other dumbass class.

How these three changes will be implemented depends of the type of game I'm running. My current game, Atranta, technically has no clerics, but one of my players rolled one up while I wasn't looking and it's a really neat character, so he stays. All others are Magic-Users-as-priests. In my Savage Atvatabar/Hollow World game (not a Savage Worlds game) Mithraic clerics are in full force. So...just depends.

No Alignment. I'd resolved a long time ago that alignment did in no way dictate how a character behaved, it simply stated which team you were rooting for. So, really, I could keep it and it would have no effect on the game or I could get rid of it altogether. Either works fine for me.

Dragons. D&D dragons are pretty stupid. Color-coded and, worse, having some really idiotic "breath" weapons. Chlorine gas? Seriously? No, all dragons in my game breathe fire. All of them. And they're whatever color I want them to be. A guy I knew had an interesting way of handling dragon's breath. Instead of rolling for how many times a day they could use their breath weapon, he gave them a number of points of damage they could exhale. So, like 400 points per day and blow however much fire they wanted to until the points run out. I really like this idea and will probably use it if I ever have a dragon in my game.

Other than that I'll probably use Dave Arneson's dragon creation tables from his Adventures in Fantasy rpg or some variation of it.

The Orc Family Tree. I've made changes to Bugbears, Kobolds, Goblins, and Hobgoblins, but it's a lot of stuff and I'll save it for a later post. I will say this, though- bugbears have pumpkin heads. Because it's fucking awesome, that's why!

Rakes. Introduced in Dawn of the Emperors, the Rake is a variant on the Thief class. Either a skill-less Thief or a Fighter-lite, you decide. Someone tweaked the Rake a little bit, giving them a Fighter's hit die and attack table and retaining the loss of most Thief skills. The result is a pretty nifty Errol Flynn swashbuckler type class that really appeals to me (I usually play a Thief.)

Winning the game. One of the original members of the TRS crew mentioned to me that his group actually had a way to "win" D&D. The first person in the group to build and maintain a keep to level 15 (I assume they were playing AD&D) was the king of the hill. My memory may be slightly off on the particulars of that idea, but it doesn't matter since it fits in nicely with B/X. The first person to start a domain at 9th level and maintain it until 14th wins.
 Now, this is something that will probably never happen since I don't play D&D in a group nor do I run a regular game, but I still think it's an interesting way to play. The alternative that will most likely be put into use is the following.

Advancing past 14th level. This is something I just came up with recently and there are a lot of things to work out, but the gist of it is that the DM would award magic items of increasing power as the situation demands. This would mean that all new powers and abilities are "borrowed" and lost once the item is returned or destroyed or whatever. No more experience points or counting gold or whatever. Just play for the fun of it and try to achieve whatever the goal of the adventure or campaign is.
 If nothing else it's a way to keep playing your character without him becoming a ridiculous, bloated demi-god.

Everybody has a god. If a god is not chosen at character creation, one will be assigned to you. Quit yer bitchin', it's not like I'm making you go to fuckin' church. Everybody has a god. Get over it.