Some good things in my mail this week!
Up first the new Swords & Wizardry books from their most recent Kickstarter.
Even the GM's Screen is good.
Also got my Glow in the Dark Sorceress from ReAction / Super 7.
Pretty cool, really.
Maybe I should stat her up as a S&W Warlock sometime. There is no S&W Sorcerer. Or maybe I should make one.
For this I am going back to the dawn of the OSR to pick Basic Fantasy.
In truth Basic Fantasy can work for any "Well Supported" item. One shots, adventures, supplements, you name it. The community is rich, vibrant and engaged. Their Downloads section is loaded full of things you can get for free and are constantly updated.
This includes all their adventures.
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I am participating in Dave Chapman's #RPGaDAY2024 for August.
When it gets right down to it, you can't get more basic than Basic D&D.
Like many of the RPGs I am going to talk about this month, this one is so easy that everyone can go from no knowledge to playing their new characters in a matter of minutes. I know people have very fond memories of the Mentzer set and I personally got my start with the Holmes Basic set, but it is this one I consider my first "real" D&D.
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I am participating in Dave Chapman's #RPGaDAY2024 for August.
I don't think this one is even a contest. That would be Basic-era D&D.
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| What treasures in such a small box! |
The Moldvay Basic set was more than just an introductory set to D&D. It was an introduction to a hobby, a lifestyle. The rules were simply written and organized. They were not simple rules, and re-reading them today, I marvel that we all conquered this stuff at age 10-11. It may have only covered the first three levels of character growth, but they were a quality three.
I bought the Expert Set for my birthday in 1982. For the longest time, that was all I needed. Eventually, I moved on to AD&D. I discovered those Little Brown Books and even picked up my own real copy of Holmes Basic. I love those games, and I love playing them still, but they never quite had the same magic as that first time I opened up that box and saw what treasures were inside. I did not have to imagine how my characters felt when they discovered some long-lost treasure. I knew.
Today, I still go back to Tom Moldvay's classic Basic book. It is my yardstick for measuring any OSR game. Almost everything I need is right there, just waiting for me.
Holmes Basic, also called the "Blue Book," was my start. Sort of. The rules I used back when I began were a hodge-podge of Holmes Basic and AD&D, particularly the Monster Manual. This was fine, really, since, at the time, 1979, these game lines were a lot closer to each other. I have talked about this in my "1979 Campaign" posts.
Edited by Dr. John Eric Holmes, this book took the original D&D books and re-edited them to a single cohesive whole, though limited to 3rd level, as a means to get people introduced to the D&D game. The Original Rules (see "O" day!) were an eclectic collection of rules that grew out of Gary Gygax's and Dave Arneson's playstyles. Debate continues on who did what, and I am not going to provide anything close to a definitive answer, but the game sold well but had a steep learning curve to others who were not part of that inner circle or came from War Games. The Holmes Edition attempted to fix that.
Mentzer Basic, or the BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortals) rules, was published after the Moldvay Basic, Cook/Marsh Expert sets. The rules between the B/X and BECMI rules are largely superficial (I will discuss this more), and the BECMI rules go past level 14 into the Companion rules (more on that tomorrow).
There is evidence that the Mentzer Basic set, also known as the "Red Box," was one of the best-selling editions of D&D ever, even outselling the flagship line of AD&D at times. It was also sold in more countries and more languages than any other version of D&D. If you recall Sunday's post, the D&D Basic line was in play for 22 years, covering the same time period as AD&D 1st and 2nd Edition rules. And it is still widely popular today.
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| Basic books from England, the USA, and Spain |
Basic D&D has great online support regarding books from DriveThruRPG and other "Old School Renaissance" creators. But it is an older game. One of the oldest in fact. So, some things made perfectly good sense back then that would cause people to scratch their heads at the various design choices (Descending Armor Class? Level limits?), but that doesn't detract from the fun. Finding a Basic game or even people to play it with will be harder.
I am participating in Dave Chapman's #RPGaDAY2024 for August.
With some projects done, and others on hold (Basic Bestiary. Waiting for more art), I started a new project over my extended weekend.
The High Witchcraft Tradition
Well..."new" might be the wrong word.
I have a lot of notes from other projects that didn't quite fit or didn't get developed enough to get added. Plus this is a book I have been picking at for a while and have been calling my "Last Witch Book." If it is that remains to be seen, but I do have some great ideas.
Here is the shape of the book so far.
High Magic
It will include the use of High Magic, so magic that invokes spirits, demons, angels and the like. I would also like to include High Magic options for Magic-users. A bit like my Hermetic Mage Prestige class I did for 3.x.
Advanced
This book will be my first "true" book for the Advanced era. So compatibility with OSRIC, Advanced Labyrinth Lord, and Old-School Essentials Advanced is implied. Originally this book was going to be part of my "Basic Witch" series and focus on how I mixed AD&D 1st ed with the Expert set back in the day. I still might do that. I have a lot of ideas for that sort of play, but this is not the book for that.
Plus I will freely admit I am not as enthusiastic for D&D's future as I once was. I will buy D&D 5R, I will even likely play it a few times. But as much as I love digital and online games, that is not my preferred mode.
So instead of endlessly complaining about it, I am just going to focus my efforts into the types of games I DO enjoy playing. If you are looking for ragey click-bait, you won't find it here.
Best of the Old, Best of the New (Maybe)
I love my old-school games. I also am rather fond of new-school games as well. For me it has always been about maximum fun. So I would love to go back over some of the newer developments in games and see what can be ported back over. This one is not a guarantee. My focus first and foremost is a witch book from circa 1986.
Cover Art
For this book I am going to commission some original cover art. I have already been sending out emails to artists I want to work with and ones I have worked with in the past for this. And as much as I love the Pre-Raphaelite covers I have used in the past, I have something specific in mind for this one.
Waterhouse's "The Magic Circle" above was one of the ideas I originally had. I am, of course, sad not to use it for this book, but I also want something new.
I want this book to be really good. I want it to challenge my writing ability and game design ability. Plus I also want it to be able to cover any "so-called" witch written about in the "Advanced-era." If someone else's book/game/adventure set in the same era with the same or similar rule system and they have a witch character, I want my rules to be flexible enough and comprehensive enough that you could play that character using my rules. Lofty? Maybe. Do able? Certainly.
Potential High Witches
I have been tossing this idea around for a few years now. I finally hit a critical mass of notes to make it a real book. For me as much as for you, here are my posts about it.
Links to relevant posts
TQ1: The Temple of the Serpent Queen
This is their first adventure and you can get four different versions of it. I bought all four because I wanted to see the differences and how much work they put into making them different for the specific rules.
All four are largely the same and have only minor differences based on their OSR rules set of choice. All four are available as PDF and POD options.
It doesn't really matter which one you grab. Get the one for the rule system you are most comfortable with.
While this is a great way to give people what they want, it also splits their sales among four different titles, making it harder for them to get a "Best Seller" medal. However, it will tell them which ruleset sells better for them.
I am going to review all four as one.
This adventure centers around the reawakening of Khaliassa, the ancient Serpent Queen of lost Samarra. She is a compelling NPC/Foe so building the adventure around was a good start.
The adventure is 56 pages with maps (in proper Old-School blue), License declarations, and covers. The covers are full color, and the interior art is black & white. Designed for 4 to 6 characters of 5th to 7th level.
The adventure is divided into four chapters, roughly a chapter for each major location. There is some background, largely background on Khaliassa and her realm. Other than that, this adventure can be dropped into just about any campaign that has a rainforest-like environment.
This adventure also includes plenty of new monsters, new magic, some NPCs to add to the adventure, and pre-generated characters.
The adventure itself is a simple affair. Someone has awakened an angry demi-goddess, and now she wants to rise to power again. There is even a neat little mechanic for much more powerful she gets as time goes on.
This one hits all the nostalgia buttons.
The art is good, but the layout and presentation are excellent. The Danger Forge knows when to invoke nostalgia and when not to be a slave to it.
Khaliassa reminds me of Shahmaran from Turkish myth, and I think I see some subtle hints that this is what The Danger Forge was going for, albeit an evil version.
The adventure is fun and can be run in a couple of longer sessions, to be honest. If this is their first then The Danger Forge is off to a great start.
How I Plan to Use This
I have to admit when I first saw I thought I might be able to slot it in as a potential adventure for War of the Witch Queens, but the more I read it I had other ideas.
Deserts of Desolation & Death
My Deserts of Desolation & Death, the second act of the Second Campaign, is one I have been thinking about a lot lately. This would fit in perfectly between I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City and I3 Pharaoh. Maybe as a companion adventure to I2 Tomb of the Lizard King. I can see the Lizard King and the Serpent Queen in a centuries long war.
Considering how I am converting my "Second Campaign" over to Castles & Crusades, this would fit in just fine.
Now. Do I print it out to put in my Second Campaign binder, or do I buy a POD?
Been rather busy this week, but this one came across my feed, and I thought it was interesting. I love the Known World, also known as Mystara, so any details about it's history.
The video is about 2 hours long, so pop some popcorn and settle in.
One would think I didn't have any more to say, but those are just two of 56 posts I have here about Ravenloft (soon to be 57). But yet here I am with more to say.
What is Ravenloft?
Ravenloft was originally an adventure for First Edition AD&D, released back in 1983, and written by Tracy and Laura Hickman's husband and wife team. It was part of the "I" or intermediate series of adventures. Most of these were not linked and only shared that they were higher level than beginning adventures. Ravenloft, given the code I6, was for character levels 5 to 7.
Ravenloft was a huge change from many of the adventures TSR had published to that date. For starters the adventure featured an antagonist, Count Strahd von Zarovich, who was no mere monster. Yes he was an AD&D Vampire, but he was meant to be run as an intelligent Non-player Character. Prior to this the vampires have been the unnamed Vampire Queen of the Palace of the Vampire Queen, Drelnza the vampire daughter of Iggwilv in The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and Belgos the Drow Vampire in Vault of the Drow. By 1983 the amount written on all three of these vampires would not even be as long as this post will be. Strahd was different.
Strahd had a backstory, he had motivation, and he was intelligent and ruthless. Destroying him was the goal and that was not an easy feat by any stretch of the imagination.
The adventure also introduced some new elements as well. The dungeon crawl was gone, replaced by a huge gothic castle and a nearby village. The adventure could be replayed ab unique given the "Fortunes of Ravenloft" mechanic that allows key items, people, and motives to change based on a fortune card reading.
And there were the iso-morphic, 3D looking maps, that helped give perspective to many levels of Castle Ravenloft.
The adventure was an immediate and resounding hit. This adventure, along with the Dragonlance Adventures also by Tracy Hickman (and Margaret Weis) led to something many old-school gamers call "The Hickman Revolution" and claim it marks the time between the Golden Age and Silver Age of AD&D, with the Silver age coming after 1983. While yes there was a change, a lot of it was for the better.
For me, it was a dream come true. Vampires had always been my favorite creatures to fight in D&D, and I was an avid Dracula fan. I bought this adventure and then threw it at my DM, saying, "Run this!"
I grew up on a steady stream of Universal Monsters, Hammer Horror, and Dark Shadows. That's my Appendix N. So, an adventure set in pretty much the Hammer Hamlet where I get strange locals and have to fight a vampire? Yeah, that is what D&D was to me.
I find that the people who don't like this adventure don't see what makes it great. This is not Lord of the Rings, Conan, or some other Appendix N pulp fantasy. This is Hammer Horror. Strahd has to be played with a combination of charisma, scene-chewing villainy, and absolute brutality. In other words, it is exactly like Christopher Lee playing Dracula. Even the nearby village is filled with terrified, but the pitchfork in the ready village is a Hammer Hamlet.
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| Original, 25th Anniversary Edition, Print on Demand Edition |
I even got my original module from 1983 signed by Tracy Hickman.
This adventure was so popular that it spawned a sequel, Ravenloft House on Gryphon Hill and an entire campaign setting.
Ravenloft: The Setting
I mention that in college, I played AD&D 2nd Edition. The biggest selling point of AD&D 2nd ed was the campaign settings. There were a lot of them. Too many. But my favorite was Ravenloft. They took the events of the 1983 adventure and built an entire world around it with people, magic and lots of horror monsters. It was Gothic horror, to start with, but soon expanded into other realms of horror using the AD&D 2nd Ed rules. Not always a perfect fit, but I made it work.
It even expanded it to Earth in Ravenloft: Masque of the Red Death.
It has been so popular that it is one of the few settings to see publication across all five major editions of D&D. 4th Edition made some changes, as did 5th Edition. But that is all within the same vein (so to speak) as all Horror movies, and Dracula in particular, get reinterpreted to fit the times better. Horror is always about what people in the here and now are concerned with. Ravenloft follows suit.
Ravenloft has been listed as one of the greatest adventures of all time and Strahd as one of the greatest D&D villains ever.
I have run this adventure many times under many different rulesets, and it has been a blast every time.
Even if I am not playing D&D, I return to this adventure and this setting.
Tomorrow is Sunday, so a break from A to Z, but not my posting. I will cover Dungeons 7 Dragons 4th Edition.
This is also my next entry of the month for the RPG Blog Carnival, hosted by Codex Anathema on Favorite Settings.
I have an inordinate amount of Queens in my games. I am going to talk about two groups in particular, the Vampire Queens and the Witch Queens.
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| Tea with the Witch Queens by Brian Brinlee |
Both groups are near and dear to my heart and make up a lot of my game worlds' backgrounds.
The Vampire Queens
The vampire queens have a special connection to my early days of gaming. They are:
I have been using vampire queens in my adventures for as long as I can remember. I recall reading lurid tales of Erzsébet Báthory and watching movies like "Daughters of Darkness" and "Countess Dracula." I had worked on a very early vampire queen, who was going to be called "Miriam" thanks to "The Hunger" for my Ravenloft games (see tomorrow), but I kept coming up with so many ideas. Miriam is still out there, even if many of her aspects are now part of Darlessa. The non-vampire parts of Miriam survived as my Witch Queen Miriam.
In truth I kind of use them all interchangeably, with some emphasis on Darlessa. As they have all evolved in my games, I am slowly sifting out which traits belong to which queen.
Interestingly enough, both Darlessa and Xaltana are also both Witch Queens. Xaltana combines Iggwilv (a witch queen) and Drelzna her vampire daughter.
The Witch Queens
While the Vampire Queens are here to challenge the characters as adversaries, the Witch Queens play a much different and far more wide-reaching role.
This began as an idea of me finding and then stating up every witch ever mentioned in the pages of a D&D or related game. The premise here was that every 13 years the witches of these worlds would meet in one place to discuss what they are up to in their worlds and plan to generally stay out of each other's way. The gathering, known as the Tredecim, became a big part of my games. At the Tredecim, the 13 ruling witches then choose a new High Witch Queen to serve over the next 13 years. In my campaign, War of the Witch Queens, the then-current High Witch Queen is murdered before a new one can be chosen. This sends the witches into war against each other, but due to their pacts with Baba Yaga, they can't outright fight each other. So, all their worlds get dragged into the conflict. This includes the characters.
The characters learn first that a once-in-a-century storm has destroyed their home, and they are refugees helping move their fellow town folk to a new home in East Haven. While their first obvious goal is to stop all the weird happenings going on in their own world, they discover these events are playing out across the worlds. To stop it, they need to stop the all-powerful Witch Queens, but to do that, they will need to discover who murdered the High Queen, how, and why.
Since I started working on this and developing it more and more, I have gone over 13 Witch Queens and my planned 13 Adventures. I am using Basic B/X D&D as my rules of choice here, which limits the levels characters can achieve to 14.
I am running it with my family now, but I'd also like to run it for a dedicated group someday. I think for that I would take all the adventures I am using for it and edit them all a bit.
If I keep the levels 1-14 then the obvious choice is D&D Basic B/X. If I expand it all to level 20 then my choice will be Castles & Crusades.
Either way, I have a lot to look forward to!
Tomorrow is R Day, and I am going with the campaign setting I ran for all of the AD&D 2nd Edition era, Ravenloft.
OH? Like the art of my Witch Queens up there? The artist is Brian Brinlee and he has a Kickstarter of his new art book going on now! Check it out.
Today I am going to talk about the Known World, or the campaign setting implied in Basic D&D.
When the D&D Expert Set was introduced, it included a two-page map of part of a continent. This was described as "The Known World," and that was good enough for us back then. A lot of strange cultures were crammed into an area about the size of the North Eastern portion of North America. But hey, it was D&D, and we thought it was great. It was certainly enough for me. In fact my characters rarely left this area. There was plenty to adventure here.
At the time, I did not know the work already done here and where this world would go in the next few years.
The Schick-Moldvay Known World
Before working on the D&D Basic Set, Tom Moldvay had a game with future D&D heavyweight Lawrence Schick. In their games they had a campaign world they were calling "The Known World."
A while back, Lawerence Schick posted "The “Known World” D&D Setting: A Secret History" over at the Black Gate site. A nice history of how he and Tom Moldvay came up with the Known World for their own games and then ported it over to D&D Basic/Expert. It is a fascinating read if, like me, you are a fan of the Mystara world and/or of maps in general.
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| The Known World Replica Map by James Mishler |
There is so much here I can use and honestly I have yet to grow tired of exploring this map. BUT it is not the map we ended up with. No once the Known World left the hands of Moldvay and Schick it became a different world. That world would eventually be called URT! (ok and then Msytara).
The Known World of Urt Mystara
Spend any time here, and you will know that the Known World of the Basic/Expert Sets (B/X) was the first world I played in. While I would move on to AD&D and Oerth, the Known World would also move to Mystara. It would be the world introduced to us in the Companion Set and expanded on the Gazeteer Series, the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, and even into the 2nd Edition age and beyond.
But it was in the Companion and Master Sets that Mystara got its start.
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| Mystara and the Lands Beneath the Waves by Grimklok |
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| Click for larger |
Regardless of which version of the Known World I would use there is more than enough in any of them to last me another lifetime of gaming and exploration.
Isn't that what it is all about?
Tomorrow is L, and I will talk about Larian Studios and Baldur's Gate 3
This is also my next entry of the month for the RPG Blog Carnival, hosted by Codex Anathema on Favorite Settings.
It has often been said that all you really need to enjoy Dungeons & Dragons is some rules, dice, paper, pencil, friends, and Imagination!
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| TSR 1983 Product Catalog |
This is pretty much true.
Unlike Monopoly, Scrabble, or even war games from which it is descended, D&D largely exists as the "theater of the mind." There is no board. Your character sheet is just a collection of items and numbers. Same with the monsters being fought. The Dungeon Master, DM, describes what is going on, and you have to picture it in your mind.
This was particularly true in the early days. Yes, there were miniatures, in fact, Original D&D recommends them, but they were only being made by a few companies, and they were expensive (relatively speaking), and you had to paint them yourself. As opposed to today where those options are still available and there are cheaper plastic minis and even ones you can design on your own.
There is no board. Today, we can get maps where 1" = 5', perfect for 25mm minis. If you wanted to see what was going on, you had to imagine, and that was pretty good, really.
Back in 1983 TSR, the company that published Dungeons & Dragons, had an ad campaign with the tag line, Products of Your Imagination. It worked really since by 1983 they had moved out to other types of games and toys as the 1983 Product Catalog above reveals.
They also had a somewhat cheesy TV spot with a very young (Pre-Farris Bueller) Alan Ruck and very young (Pre-Lost Boys) Jami Gertz. It's a bit silly, but does capture the excitement well.
If you have been reading here since B-day, you will see that the actors are playing the Moldvay Basic set, but the ad appears to be for the Mentzer Basic set. Which tracks well with 1983.
Today we have all sorts of great things we can use for D&D. But there is something to be said about the whole use of your imagination to see how your adventure unfolds.
Tomorrow is J, so I will talk about Jennel Jaquays and the Judges Guild.
There are a lot of "E"s I could have gone with today. Epic. Encounter. Heck, even Eclipse and how it relates to D&D. But there is really only one "E" I want to talk about, and that is the Expert Set.
The Expert Set is the follow up the Basic Set I covered on Tuesday. Just like there is more than one Basic there is more than one Expert.
So, a bit of background.
The Expert Rules for D&D follow the Basic Rules. So these books are compatible with the Basic-era of D&D, the so-called "B/X" rules (Basic/Expert) and the "BECMI" rules. They are not, and I would later discover, part of the same line as Advanced Dungeon & Dragons.
The first Expert set was out in January of 1981. This is the one I started with. Edited by David "Zeb" Cook with Steven Marsh it is sometimes called the Cook/Marsh Expert or B/X Expert. I have a lengthy review of it here: D&D Expert Set.
The second Expert set was edited by Frank Mentzer, so it is sometimes called the Mentzer Expert or most often the BECMI Expert. BECMI was for the entire series of Mentzer edited/authored Basic line of Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal rules. I reviewed this Exper set here: BECMI: Expert Set review.
I discussed these differences for my B post, B is for Basic Set Dungeons & Dragons.
The two sets are largely compatible with each other with just minor changes that I detailed in the BECMI Expert review.
The focus here is higher level characters, levels 4 to 14, and moving out of the dungeon into "Wilderness" and, therefore, more dangerous adventures. This is the end of the B/X line but that actually is a feature, not a bug. The adventures from levels 1 to 14 represent some of the most exciting adventures you and your character can do. It was true then and still true today. Many of the official Dungeons & Dragons adventures end at level 15 (even though the limit now is 20), and the post-popular "D&D" adventure out now, Baldur's Gate 3 video game, has a limit of level 12. While the BECMI moves on to level 36 (C & M) and beyond (I), I still think this is the sweet spot for most gamers.
"That's Not REAL D&D!"
I got my start with Holmes Basic then quickly moved on to Moldvay Basic and it's companion Cook/Marsh Expert. And I was very, very happy with that for the longest time. While it is not a perfect overlap, I always equate this edition with my gaming in Jr. High. My then regular DM, Jon Cook, and I would play a lot of this. He also had the B/X books but he also had Advanced D&D (published in 1977) and we played a mix-mash of them both (something I later on discovered was very typical). Sure I wondered why things were different between the games. Clerics had slightly different spell progression and everyone was a bit tougher in AD&D, but I was content. I was happy. Until one night.
This would have been near the end of Jr. High, I know because the Mentzer Expert had not been released yet. I think I must have been about 12 or so. Anyway, Jon and I got invited to a "real" D&D session with some highschool kids. Now let me step back a second here and set the stage. At this time D&D was popular enough that we had a lot of local groups playing completely independent games. I can remember sitting in the lunch room in my Jr. High and listening to friends talk about their D&D games, I was in awe and wonder (of course, I later learned that many of them were just stealing from things like Dune like I was Dark Shadows!). So we got to go to this game and we were told just bring out PHBs (Player's Handbooks), I didn't have one, I had an Expert book.
Well. I got told in no uncertain terms that what I was I playing was NOT REAL D&D. I was like, "what are you talking about?" Gygax's name was on the insider cover. It was published by TSR. I had very nearly the same rules you did.
My friends, I had entered into my first battle of "The Edition Wars," and I did not come out unscathed. "Edition Warring" in D&D is the misguided (and stupid, yeah I said it) notion that one edition is better than the other. There were only two editions (maybe four) editions of D&D out at this point and I am already getting shit for it? The effect it had on me was enough that I can still remember it over 44 years later, AND it kept me from playing the BECMI version of D&D for nearly half that time.
Which is, of course, stupid. It also was not the last time I'd make a bad choice based on editions, but at least the next time was all my own doing. I'll detail that on Sunday.
Today, if I am going to go back and play some "Classic D&D" chances are real good I mean the B/X versions of Basic and Expert.
It is also my favorite to write and publish for with four of my books designed specifically for the B/X rules in mind, via the Old School Essentials clone game.
Much like what I said for the Basic Set any future "Basic" or Introductory set of D&D needs to do what these sets did. Introduce me to the game, give me some options, an adventure to play, and if possible, some dice! I still have my original Basic and Expert sets of dice.
Tomorrow I talk about a topic that has dominated my posting all year long, The Forgotten Realms.
Yesterday I talked about the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. Today I want to take a step back and talk about the Basic D&D game. Though there are several sets that can make the claim of being the "Basic Set."
Regardless of how many or for which edition they all share some things in common. The Basic set is usually a simpler or stripped-down version of the D&D game designed to introduce new players. They typically come in a boxed set and very often have the very first set of dice a player will own.
My own history with D&D begins with the Basic game.
Moldvay D&D Basic |
| What treasures in such a small box! |
Basic D&D is a very popular topic for me on the old A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here are some other "Basic" posts I have done in past years.
Other Basic Sets
It would be very remiss of me not to mention that there were other Basic sets as well.
Holmes Basic, also called the "Blue Book," was my start. Sort of. The rules I used back when I began were a hodge-podge of Holmes Basic and AD&D, particularly the Monster Manual. This was fine, really, since, at the time, 1979, these game lines were a lot closer to each other. I have talked about this in my "1979 Campaign" posts.
Edited by Dr. John Eric Holmes, this book took the original D&D books and re-edited them to a single cohesive whole, though limited to 3rd level, as a means to get people introduced to the D&D game. The Original Rules (see "O" day!) were an eclectic collection of rules that grew out of Gary Gygax's and Dave Arneson's playstyles. Debate continues on who did what, and I am not going to provide anything close to a definitive answer, but the game sold well but had a steep learning curve to others who were not part of that inner circle or came from War Games. The Holmes Edition attempted to fix that.
Mentzer Basic, or the BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortals) rules, was published after the Moldvay Basic, Cook/Marsh Expert sets. The rules between the B/X and BECMI rules are largely superficial (I will discuss this more), and the BECMI rules go past level 14 into the Companion rules (more on that tomorrow).
There is evidence that the Mentzer Basic set, also known as the "Red Box," was one of the best-selling editions of D&D ever, even outselling the flagship line of AD&D at times. It was also sold in more countries and more languages than any other version of D&D. If you recall Sunday's post, the D&D Basic line was in play for 22 years, covering the same time period as AD&D 1st and 2nd Edition rules. And it is still widely popular today.
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| Basic books from England, the USA, and Spain |
Is Basic D&D the Game for You?
Basic D&D (all three varieties) are all remarkably easy to pick up and play. Character creation is fast, and the play is super flexible. It is also one of the main systems I still love to write about and publish for.
Basic D&D has great online support regarding books from DriveThruRPG and other "Old School Renaissance" creators. But it is an older game. One of the oldest in fact. So, some things made perfectly good sense back then that would cause people to scratch their heads at the various design choices (Descending Armor Class? Level limits?), but that doesn't detract from the fun. Finding a Basic game or even people to play it with will be harder.
Any future version of D&D (or any RPG) needs to use Basic D&D as its model for introduction to the game.
Tomorrow, I will talk about a newer topic, Critical Role.
