BD&D vs. AD&D

[Taureth]

AD&D.

I found BD&D fun to browse through, but never had any desire to play it, particularly.

As some one who prefers playing demi & semi human characters, and spell casters, I just found the classes, races and spell lists of Basic too limiting (particularly if you consider that when I started playing 1E, it was under the expanded options of the original UA book). There wasn't enough meat on dem bones, to suit my tastes.

Still, I do understand the joy of sitting down for a spur-of-the-moment session and taking advantage of simpler rules in the name of fun. We did that very occasionally with the OD&D books as well as Tunnels & Trolls (and the latter in particular is really a lot of fun if you suddenly get the urge for a simple, old fashioned dungeon crawl and all you've got in the house are six sided dice. Take that, you fiend!).

I would not argue, though, that BD&D may well be a more streamlined and cohesive system.

 

[ExploderWizard]

AD&D had a lot of great material,and adventures. Basic D&D had the better and more elegant rules system. The time when the two systems were both supported was truly awesome. Everything was so compatible that you could easily use stuff published for one system in the other. The early to mid 80's was certainly my favorite time for buying D&D product because of this.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

What makes you think this?

Because it's what Basic means to me. I was incorrect, my point is valid, a lot of people get the early versions confused.

I was incorrect so I again concur with the focus of thedungeondelver's point, minus my caveat.

 

[Desdichado]

1edADnD was too much. although it was the natural progression of what Supplement I Greyhawk (1975) had started. the switch in focus to building up your ability scores so you go more of a bonus. and the arms race it lead too. the powergamers wet dream that is D&D now.

Believe it or not, I actually agree with diaglo. I cut my teeth on the B/X sets, and had a fair amount of fun.

I didn't have any fun with AD&D. In fact, when AD&D was the option presented to me, I quickly burned out and left D&D for the better part of 15 years... until 3e came out, anyway. B/X felt loose and free, and gave me what I wanted from D&D; at least better than AD&D did; that is a way to recreate stuff like I read in fantasy novels at the time. AD&D felt much more like a game when at heart I wanted the roleplaying, I guess. AD&D was pointlessly cryptic, arcane, poorly organized and arbitrary.

 

[RFisher]

I pretty much agree with Diaglo’s assessment.

The truth is—as I now can see—that back-in-the-day everyone I knew was playing D&D with the AD&D books. When we did use modules, we ignored whether modules were marked as D&D or AD&D and just played them with our standard D&D-in-AD&D-clothes way.

These days, though, even the few complications that we did use from AD&D just don’t feel like they deliver enough return. For D&D, I don’t really need anymore than B/X.

But, I do find everything else to be handy for inspiration or the occasionally steal. e.g. Some of the stuff in the RC I find handy for fleshing out the descriptions of treasure hordes. e.g. The potion miscibility table from the 1e DMG is nice to have if the subject comes up.

Spoiler

I have even been known to borrow a thing or two from 3e. Don’t tell anyone, though, or they’ll revoke my grognard-card.

 

[Darrin Drader]

When I started playing, I ran this cobbled together Frankenstein game that included elements of AD&D, BD&D, and various other things that were just thrown in. If one version of the game had something I liked, I'd yoink it. The final campaign I ran under this system was a conquer the world game, using the map that came from the black box master's set. Shortly thereafter FR came out, and then 2nd edition, and I pretty much stuck with 2E until 3E.

Which system is actually better? I gravitate to my 1E AD&D books over my basic books when I'm feeling nolstalgic.

 

[Dire Bare]

Which do you think was the better D&D game system: Basic D&D or Advanced D&D? Why?Total Bullgrit

I was introduced to D&D by just looking over the AD&D monster manuals at a friend's house, who told me that the game itself was too complex, so he and a buddy just told stories together using the MM as inspiration.

So, when I convinced my mom to get me my first D&D set, I naturally went for the "not-advanced" version because I naturally assumed they were the same game and you had to start with the Basic Set and then move up to AD&D when you were ready.

When I found out that they were essentially two very similar but different games, that basically had two close-but-different rulesets to do essentially the same thing . . . I got pissed off!!! I thought, "I'm not falling for this stupid crap!" And from that point on until college I would only purchase and collect BECMI D&D, nothing with an "A" in front of that D&D. I felt so smart and superior to all those fools who got suckered into "advanced" D&D!

Then Dragonlance happened, and the wave after wave of awesome AD&D campaign settings that started to make my poor Mystara look tawdry in comparison . . . then Mystara was "graduated" to AD&D 2e right around the time Planescape was going strong . . . and I finally became an AD&D 2e addict!

Then 3rd Edition brought everything together for me, and all was good.

 

[Dire Bare]

Oh, I forgot . . . which is better? "Basic" D&D or "Advanced" D&D. Even when I was in my elitist collect-only-BD&D-products phase, I never thought one system was superior to another system. Both systems did the same thing, in almost-the-same-way-but-different manners. Each system had rules subsets that I liked and subsets that I didn't like.

Despite my love for BD&D, I always thought the race-as-a-class idea was lame, and created demihuman class equivalents to the human options of fighter, cleric, thief, and wizard. I had an elf warrior class, and elf thief class, etc, etc.

I also hated level-limits. Not the general idea of them, as both games had them, but the BD&D implementation of them. Your human character could advance to 36th level, but your demihuman character could only get to somewhere in the mid-teens and take those silly "letter" levels which still felt limited and underpowered. But my campaigns as a DM never really got that high enough to matter anyway, and all my friends would run AD&D games.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

BECMI is pretty much B/X, but with a level cap of 36 rather than 14. It also adds some optional sub-systems, dominion rules, immortality for super-high PCs, and a lot more monsters.

IMHO, its BD&D 2nd edition, as it is as close to B/X as 1e is to 2e.

The B/X edition had a few differences including a "companion" section that gave a few abilities for characters higher than 14th level that never made it into the BECMI set.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Let me start off first by saying that BECMI and the RC are still definitely Basic D&D, but calling it "BD&D" is such a misnomer in the first place. It's just D&D. Basic is the name of the low-level rulebook, but it's not part of that particular game's moniker. "Classic D&D" is the more widely accepted term. The Companion and Masters Sets and the Rules Cylopedia might make the game a little more complicated at high levels, but let's face it, when is high level play not complicated?

So, between Classic D&D and Advanced D&D? I personally much prefer Classic, although, when I do play AD&D, it's 2nd edition without any kits or Player's Option books, which is about as rules-lite as AD&D can possibly get. But even then, AD&D has complexities that just turn me off, from the ability score charts to the massive and pointlessly unwieldy spell lists.

Frankly, when I first gave up playing 3rd edition, and the choice before me was to go back to either the Classic game or the Advanced game, my gut instinct said "Advanced" because I thought that I'd miss multiclassing, race-class combinations, and the moral-ethical alignment axis. Then I tried both games out, and I found that when I was playing Classic I didn't miss any of those things at all. Single-classed characters, demihumans pegged in their racial classes, and an ethics-only alignment system actually made character creation so much easier to deal with that the whole game followed suit and ran like a well-oiled machine.

Add on top of that the succinct spell, magic item, and monster lists and the real strong point of Classic D&D shines forth: it is complete and self-contained. You can play it right out of the box, and you don’t have to add or subtract anything. You can count on the game to be balanced all the way up to level 36, because it doesn’t get wonky until Immortals-level gameplay. And there are actual, playable rules for running dominions, conducting wars, and ascending to godhood! In short, Classic wins, because it's the most playable edition.