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While I'm not that keen on "demi-humans", dropping them outright removes 3/7 of the available classes.

In the campaign I'm going to start Real Soon Now, no really, elves and dwarfs were once subjects of the Vanir Dominion, destroyed in a sudden catastrophe.  Scholars speculate that the Vanir were related to elves somehow, and perhaps dwarfs, but no Vanir survived.

The Vanir apparently had a caste system based on physiology and magical talent.  All Dwarfs occupied the worker caste, building underground palaces for their masters that none of their masters survived to occupy.  Theirs is an egalitarian society, for the most part, with each settlement choosing its own leaders (or rather, managers).  Their egalitarianism, unfortunately, does not extend to the sexes; their dropping birth rate has led to most clans forbidding females from heavy labor and venturing into the dangerous outside world.

Elves, on the other hand, retain castes: royals, nobles, envoys, wardens, and commons.  (The Elf class represents the envoys, the ones most likely seen outside Elf Realms.)  As a whole, the elf aristocracy are stuck in the past, turning ever inward to their own dwindling lands.  Wardens, guardians of the scattered and hidden Elf Lands, frequently attack strangers on sight ... even other elves.  The "commons" who in times past performed all the unglamorous chores that kept elf society running, become less and less distinguishable from the Wild Fae.

Halflings, possibly distantly related to humans or Dwarfs, mostly stay in their hills.  The Halfling Hills do not resemble the Shire so much as Fantasy Fucking Vietnam: traps to incapacitate or kill clumsy big folk, tunnels riddling the placid hills where halflings can move unseen, and diminutive, paranoid hunter-gatherers dressed in rabbit-skins and rough cloth.  Only a few halflings have left the hills under unusual circumstances, and they call only a very few Big Folk friends.

This post is longer than I intended, but, for the TL;DR folks, I've put all demi-humans in isolated areas, and attempted to subvert some of the usual tropes.  I could make Dwarf Freeholds, Elf Lands, and Halfling Hills disappear entirely without materially affecting the larger world.

The layout looks different between the free and full versions, and that spell apparently got squeezed out.

Here's the description in the full version:

Bookspeak
Magic-User Level 1
Duration: 1 round/level
Range: Touch

When the subject of this spell touches a book, it animates, forming a mouth around the edge where the paper shows. The subject can ask the book one question per round, and if the information is inside it will answer. If anyone else approaches or asks questions the book snaps and growls that round instead of answering a question.  Intelligent books may save to resist the spell (as a Magic-User of a level equal to the author). Magical books do not impart their effect when they answer. The spell is a shortcut to actually reading a book, and it will not give more information than a careful reading would.

Thanks.  I figured as much.  You don't seem the type to say "end your current campaigns and make new characters", just to take a wholly random and implausible example.

Actually, this is the situation in Glorantha, the original world of RuneQuest and now HeroQuest.  All myths *are* true, even when they contradict each other.  For example, in the year 374 the sun stopped in the sky.  Elves in the southern continent believed that their god gave them extra sunlight to combat a blight.  The monotheists of the west believed their Invisible God had given them a sign to confound their pagan opponents and their so-called gods.  In the east the Dragon Emperor reached another stage of enlightenment, which caused the sun to stop.  In the center of the Northern continent a new god was born.  Dwarfs believed that the World Machine ground to a halt, and they fixed it.  And so on ... same miracle, different explanations.

In Glorantha, religion is a cultural thing: all westerners follow one of the Malkioni sects, all plains nomads look to shamans, each region in the "Holy Country" of Prax has its own god or pantheon.  Most places get by with a live-and-let-live polytheism, but cultures in conflict almost always have competing religions.  The Malkioni monotheists believe their Invisible God created the world and all pagan gods are deluded or malevolent beings from before the Dawn Time.  Polytheists have more-or-less the same creation myths, but with their particular gods as the heroes and opposing gods as villains.

While your world doesn't need to go to Glorantha's extremes, priests may believe in gods which fit comfortably in the same pantheon. (The typical thousand jealous gods of D&D are wholly ahistorical; lay people and other priests prayed to whatever god might influence their lives.)  Like the Western world, maybe all religions agree on the same god(s) but disagree on the way to worship.  Maybe, as in the Hellenistic world, people of different cultures try to connect all similar gods to each other, e.g. Roman Venus is Greek Aphrodite is Egyptian Hathor is ...

The Shaver Mystery provides a slightly different model.  Imagine an abandoned city of an ancient race, filled with marvels the ancients consider inconsequential toys.  Among these toys are biomechanical servants, split into two factions: Teros whose Asimov circuits are still working, and Deros who have become savage and insane.  Deros occasionally raid the surface for new victims to torture and eat, not always sequentially.  They use telepathic rays to seek out victims to drive insane, for fun.  Sometimes they have dealing with other horrible things from outer space.

Let's also assume Deros have booby-trapped the city, hoping to trap the remaining Teros.  Oh, and it's difficult to tell Teros and Deros apart: some Teros have patched themselves again and again, waiting for the masters to return, and some Deros retain attractive humanoid forms despite the corruption of their minds.  (Because pretty = good and ugly = evil is boring.)

Two months ago I ran Stargazer with three experienced players (and two pregen beginning characters each).  They found the real treasure room quickly, worked out how to solve the puzzle, and got the gold.  Then they decided to explore the rest of it, because why not?  One character got killed by his doppleganger, and others got stunned a few times, but otherwise everyone made it out OK.  (Maybe I inadvertently nerfed it by getting descriptions wrong, or substituting Jenga for chess when players have steadier hands than mine.  Maybe the players were too savvy.)

After the session, I asked the players for feedback.  Generally they appreciated the weirdness and old-school vibe.  One guy with very specific tastes didn't like "instant death" effects; he prefers heroic characters, and he loves Star Wars D6.

Granted, this was a one-shot, but I didn't need any setup beyond "You're traveling and you see these lightning strikes ..."

No real conclusions here, just another data point.

Since a staff requires both hands, shouldn't it be bold-italic?

Dungeon #94 includes "Omega World", a minimalist d20 take on Gamma World, and that game includes a Free-form Experience system, based on what happened in the session: Nothing, Mediocre Adventuring, Standard Adventuring, or a Spectacular Success or Failure.  Apart from scaling XP down to old-school levels, I might just adopt that.

D&D's combat system is frustratingly abstract.  Why does armor make you harder to hit in the first place?  In the real world, soft armor provides extra resistance to sharp edges and points, and rigid armor (or Kevlar) diffuses the force of a blow.  Trying to simulate the interactions of weapon mass, velocity, and sharpness against armor thickness, density, and tensile strength would create, well, Rolemaster.  Most games simplify somewhat.

Under the "passive defense" mechanic that D&D uses, armor either deflects the force of a blow or fails catastrophically, with Strength increasing the chances of armor failure.  D&D characters gain more hit points as they progress through their class, implying hit points represent luck, stamina, and combat position as much or more than physical damage.

Under the "damage resistance" mechanic used by RuneQuest, GURPS, HERO, and others, armor reduces the force of a blow by a fixed (or occasionally variable) amount, transmitting the rest of the force as hit point damage.  DR-style games usually treat hit points as actual physical damage.  (HERO uses "stun" damage to represent comic-book reality, with "body" damage as a side-effect.)  As a result, strength adds to hit points of damage, e.g. RuneQuest's Damage Bonus or GURPS's base thrusting/cutting damage.