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OSR and Thieves' Skills in Old School Essentials

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My friend Dan and the RoUL DnD Group have been discussing thieves skills in DnD. We questioned if they were too weak in the OSE rules. Should a thief be better than others at detecting traps and sneaking around? We noted: Any character has a 1-in-6 chance to hear noises behind a door and 1-in-6 chance to find a room trap or a secret door.  Dwarfs and halflings has a 2-in-6 chance to hear noises and a dwarf has a 2-in-6 chance to detect a "room trap." A thief at level 2 has a 2-in-6 chance to hear a noise; also, less than a 1-in-6 chance to detect treasure traps and the same chance as any other character type to detect a room trap. Should we 'home brew" OSE rules to increase the skills of our thief? I studied our  notes in Roll20 and reread the OSE rules. T hieves level-up quickly. You can see it in the bar graph with black bars for a thief and blue bars for a dwarf, halfling, and fighter. A thief is 4th level at 4,000 XP and a halfling, dwarf and fighter are 4th le...
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OSR, a solo game, and a sea-trog

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Along the Mistral Sea wanderers tell of 'sea-trogs.' Not hateful creatures, most say, but unpredictable. In a solo game, I met one... [close-up, Khumai ( Ral Partha Miniatures, sculpted by John Robertson] *** North from OneKeep, an elven acolyte named Vol carried an empty bag and poked for cockles. He wanted enough for board at the rangers' place. Around a cove, he sited a giant crab (AC2, HD3, 2 x pincer (2d6). Vol ran for life.  Finally away, he poured two thimbles of elvish whiskey, each like torches burning. Later that afternoon, Vol had a bagful of cockles. That's when he saw the sea-trog, shin deep in the surf, its knobby, green tail uncurled to his face.  [a 'Khumai' ( Ral Partha Miniatures, sculpted by John Robertson] What's more, Vol saw that the sea-trog saw him. [Initiative: Vol 6 vs. sea-trog 7] It raised an arm. It pointed a finger. Under the sea-trog's sway, Vol dreamed of tides and the rollicking sea.   An hour or so later, he woke-up ...
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OSR and Clark Ashton Smith

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Awaiting the acolyte Orderic, the young veteran Frembas handled packages for tower mages along a fading coast. The year had gotten late, flapping helplessly like creatures in Jules Massenet's 2 Pièces pour piano: No. 1. Papillons noirs . The visits there were fine. A ntiquaries in their towers shared sometimes sublime, sometimes 'execrable' texts and tomes!  [fragment from Rodolphe Bresdin's lithograph The Comedy of Death (1854) ] Like this one - Bresdin's lithographic dream. 'Who was this Bresdin,' Frembas' host exclaimed. 'How was it, Bresdin saw these Lazari dance? What made them rise?'  *** Clark Ashton Smith knows what makes some shadows rise! In his The Maker of Gargoyles (1932), spurned Blaise Reynard's rage infused two murderous gargoyles: [Blaise] would not have said, perhaps would not have even known, that in one of the gargoyles, he had imprisoned all his festering rancor, all his answering spleen and hatred..." And in the o...
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