OSR Why B/X?

The reason is Tom Moldvay. Not only was his edit the most consistent and clear text with straightforward play procedures - he also was responsible for many of modules that are held up as a gold standard in the OSR community (Castle Amber, Isle of Dread, The Lost City). His approach to refereeing and adventure design (that is concerned with being both challenging and mostly fair) are foundational to the community.

To a fair number of people in the OSR community Moldvay is D&D.

Campbell said:

The reason is Tom Moldvay. Not only was his edit the most consistent and clear text with straightforward play procedures - he also was responsible for many of modules that are held up as a gold standard in the OSR community (Castle Amber, Isle of Dread, The Lost City). His approach to refereeing and adventure design (that is concerned with being both challenging and mostly fair) are foundational to the community.

To a fair number of people in the OSR community Moldvay is D&D.

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I know I'm a big fan of his work. The first of his seminal undead-themed articles for 1e was published in Dragon #126, the first issue of Dragon I ever bought.

Campbell said:

The reason is Tom Moldvay. Not only was his edit the most consistent and clear text with straightforward play procedures - he also was responsible for many of modules that are held up as a gold standard in the OSR community (Castle Amber, Isle of Dread, The Lost City). His approach to refereeing and adventure design (that is concerned with being both challenging and mostly fair) are foundational to the community.

To a fair number of people in the OSR community Moldvay is D&D.

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It takes a special kind of genius to not only condense an art form into a brief but eloquent synopsis, but to lay a framework for others to use to expand for decades to come.

When anyone asks me what D&D is, Moldvay’s Basic is what I point to. It’s First Principles stated as cleanly and clearly as anything you can find elsewhere.

Reynard said:

Core 2E wasn't so much "more medieval" as it was "more paperback medieval fantasy." There was a recursive relationship between D&D and paperback fantasy in the 80s and until the more experimental 90s both hewed pretty close to the same sets of tropes and aesthetics.

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It was also a case of the game catching up and adapting to the current mainstream in fantasy. The post-Tolkien paperback fantasy books most of us grew up with didn't exist when D&D started in '74; they didn't become a fixture in bookstores until Del Rey started publishing Shannara, Thomas Covenant, and Xanth in '77.

You can definitely see a cause-effect relationship between the monster success of the Dragonlance Chronicles (first published in '84), TSR's subsequent focus on novel publishing, and 2E's change in focus to heroic, story-driven play (or "Hickmanization").

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but coming across one of my favorite pictures in B/X always makes me chuckle and say "hu-mansplaining."

Alzrius said:

I've never been clear why B/X is preferred over BECMI. My current working theory is that the "CMI" part, with its focus on domain-level play, the quest for Immortality, and then playing an Immortal, clashes with the low-fantasy aesthetic that the OSR prefers.

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I think this working theory is probably on the right track.

The Sigil said:

I think this working theory is probably on the right track.

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Sort of, but not really. There's a lot of cruft to the later mechanical additions as well. Domain-level play is a common add-on to many OSR games, so I doubt that's the problem. I, sure. But not C and M. Most likely it's because B/X is lighter, cleaner, and simpler which seems to be one of the main draws of OSR gaming.

Evaniel said:

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but coming across one of my favorite pictures in B/X always makes me chuckle and say "hu-mansplaining."
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My favorite picture of halflings. That's how I envision them, not the big headed children that came after

overgeeked said:

Sort of, but not really. There's a lot of cruft to the later mechanical additions as well. Domain-level play is a common add-on to many OSR games, so I doubt that's the problem. I, sure. But not C and M. Most likely it's because B/X is lighter, cleaner, and simpler which seems to be one of the main draws of OSR gaming.

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yup. Mentzer's basic book is almost double the page count of Moldvay's basic. And comes in two books. I think that has an impact.

I came in with Mentzer's Basic in junior high. I played a few brief sessions of 1e before buying the 2e books that had just been released that year. 2e is really where I made my gaming bones, but I keep coming back to B/X (most recently in the form of OSE w/ the Advanced Fantasy Rules). It just hits the sweet spot for me. I'm sure nostalgia is part of it, but I never actually played it back in the day. It does what I want basic to do far better than Mentzer's set (for which I do have a lot of nostalgia).

The concision is part of it, and I've actually come to appreciate some of the quirkier bits (like clerics getting 3rd and 4th level spells at once). The aesthetics (like the halfling picture above) are certainly part of it, too. I LOVE the art in the Mentzer set, but man, the art in B/X just screams the particular milieu of D&D--weird, pulp fantasy--to me in the way that the somewhat more generic fantasy art of Elmore et al. (which was definitely the house style when I was growing up) just doesn't.