D&D General Veteran fans - did you think of Basic D&D and AD&D as completely different games?

[Ath-kethin]

I started playing D&D in 1993 or '94, and it took me over a year to even fully grasp that 1e and 2e were different games. We used all the stuff interchangeably, including Basic modules.

Something nobody else has mentioned, though, is that BECMI character went up to 36th level, whereas AD&D only went to 20th. At lower levels they were much the same, but by mid levels and especially at higher levels you had to be careful. A 15th level AD&D character is VERY different form a 15th level D&D character in power.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I was a kid in the 1980s. I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons via the RedBox. I didn't own the AD&D core rulebooks, although I did have the Monster Manual 2 and the Wilderness Survival Guide. I bought and played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons modules and I played them with Basic rules. We didn't know the difference, we were fast and loose with the rules.

 

[cbwjm]

I learned BECMI through the rules cyclopedia and moved into 2e ADnD a few years later. I felt like they were more or less the same game though with slightly different focuses. Probably didn't mix and match too much though, especially not the classes since things like hit dice and such were different between them. I think once I switched to 2e I more or less stuck with it.

 

[jgsugden]

They were not totally interchangeable, but you could adjust for them on the fly as a 10 year old.

In the end, it is a matter of perspective and opinion.

 

[Azzy]

Modules are absolutely used interchangeably. PCs? Not so much. While somewhat compatible, you can run into certain issues by mix mashing BX with 1e PCs. Things like spells to the cost of equipment can vary widely. For example, a basic fighter has 1d8 hp with different str and con mods than a 1e, and will probably start with plate and shield and 1e will not.

Both are DnD though. Same game, just minor differences.

Speaking for myself, we used 1e and BX adventures all the time with each other. But we never had a mix of PCs.

Replace B/X with BECMI, and you'd have my similar experience.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I would say we treated them as different versions of the same game. As others have said, we assumed that monsters and modules were interchangeable, but everything else was not.

That said, I only played Basic when I was very young (8-10), then didn't play until we had a choice between 1e and 2e, which we treated the same way.

 

[Casimir Liber]

We started in 1978-79 - played with basic rules as that's all we had (dungeon geomorphs/B1). As each D&D book came out (MM, then PH, then DMG - the last two around Xmas/summer 1979/80 here in Oz) we seamlessly slipped into AD&D. We all viewed Basic D&D as AD&D with trainer wheels on and pretty much ignored it from then on. We started homebrewing almost immediately (e.g. dwarf and elf clerics listed in PHB but for some reason NPCS only (???? - screw that restriction right from the get-go) - you could see it developing on the fly. e.g. basic D&D had 5 alignments (N/CE/CG/LG/LE), which the MM almost followed but had a few select creatures (cloud giants, night hags and some others) listed as either "neutral (evil)" or "neutral (good)" - by the time PHB came out it had morphed into the alignment system used in 2,3 and 5e.

We all viewed basic D&D as what you taught beginners before (quickly) "graduating" to AD&D, especially as the expert rules took some time to be published.

And yes we used BECMI modules in AD&D quite happily

 

[Lord Shark]

We used them all interchangeably; my local group was one of those that went from Holmes Basic to B/X to AD&D, bypassing BECMI entirely.

 

[teitan]

TSR had to maintain that line, for legal reasons (it was to do with the Gygax/Arneson fallout, and the legal rights each had). They had to maintain both lines in print and rigorously push the line that they were entirely separate games. It wasn't until either the very last days of TSR's demise, or possibly early in WotC's tenure, that someone reached out to Arneson and the rifts were healed.

As for whether we considered them separate at our table: sort of. We never really mixed editions (even 3.0 and 3.5e mixing was very limited), so never used BECMI materials once we 'graduated' to 2nd Ed. But there are sufficient similarities between every TSR version of the game that you could mix-and-match with reasonable success.

They also maintained it because it sold EXTREMELY well worldwide.

 

[Hussar]

For those that say they used material interchangeably, do you mean that I could play an Elf (as in B/E elf) in an AD&D game? Or your weapons in an AD&D game all did d6 damage? What do you mean by interchangeable?