Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and the original Basic D&D - your experiences?

[Obryn]

No kidding. Something needs to be done there. I never figured out the best way.

I'm thinking that and a d6 hit die should go a long way.

I read a blog where he said they just auto succeed, but that seems anticlimactic.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Once in a while one or two of us would think about running a Basic campaign, but we never could get over that speedbump of races being classes. In AD&D we regularly house-ruled that all races could be all classes, as well as freely multiclass, but for some reason nobody wanted to do the body of work that would be required for a similar house rule in Basic.

Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition Companion does pretty much that. You have the simple rules of B/X along with the additional character options from AD&D.

I must say, the impression I'm getting from this thread confirms my original beliefs - Basic D&D was not a major force.

I particularly don't count the massive sales of the Red Box as indicative fo the game being played. I see them as being used as a introduction to D&D in general, after which many people moved on to AD&D... or didn't actually continue in the hobby.

Cheers!

I played basic D&D exclusively from 1980-83. My dad took me to K&K toys on my birthday in 83 and told me to grab whatever D&D stuff I wanted.

I got the three AD&D hardbacks along with Deities & Demigods, the Fiend Folio, and a big stack of modules. I spent the next several days reading AD&D material. That was an epic birthday.

 

[Xorne]

Got the chicken pox in 4th grade; spent a week out of school with a baby sitter. Dad got me the Mentzer Red Box (the actual BECMI series was Mentzer) on Monday.

Running that solo adventure I was instantly hooked. I DM'd the adventure from the DM Book so many times in my life, starting with my baby sitter and two of his friends.

Tuesday my father got me the Expert set. Holy crap this stuff is amazing.

At the end of the week I got the 1E Player's Handbook.

Yup. That was confusing.

I was in the 6th grade before I finally understood they were two different games. I had the whole BECMI collection by then, plus quite a few 1E books, too.

I played mostly BECMI until high school, then we pretty much switched to 1E. Towards the end of high school, the Rules Cyclopedia came out, and I switched back to it immediately. In my senior year, I would collect "moves" for our Battlesystem campaign between classes (yeah, passing notes) and then work out how everything turned out. Yeah, BECMI had STAGES of play. Dungeons were what you did at low level--KINGDOMS is what you did at Master.

Anyway, to be fair I also played a SHITLOAD of Palladium Games in there... the whole multiverse. So maybe that's why I liked BECMI when I wanted to go back to D&D.

I sat out of 2E, mainly because there was little difference and there were SO MANY books published.

I came back for 3E and 3.5, and enjoyed them, but got frustrated with feeling like I was doing homework at the table around level 5-8.

4E seemed AMAZING at first, but I got bored with it quickly.

Now I'm playing 13th Age, and I like it a lot (it's what 4E should have been) but I just got a 3'x4' poster print of Elmore's red dragon from the Red Box D&D, personalized by Elmore... and I find myself reading the Rules Cyclopedia a lot.

Then they announce "Basic D&D" for 5E will be free, and it feels like things are coming full circle.

 

[Ted Sandyman]

I learned on my older brother's copy of Moldvay Basic -- a great start and still one of the best DIY intros to the hobby ever published IMHO. After a couple years with that, it seemed logical to move on to Advanced D&D, so I snagged the AD&D Monster Manual. What the heck are "psionics"? Shrug. We just glossed over the odd inconsistencies and soon moved on to the AD&D Players Handbook. More differences. AC 10? Why did the saving throws change? Hmm ... splitting race and class ... that's good, but what should we do with the existing elves in our campaign? Just treat them as multi-class fighter-MUs. The DM's Guide followed soon after and was used mainly for its experience point charts and expanded list of magic items. Eventually I'd add Mentzer Expert (supposing that Expert would follow on the heels of Advanced, right?) ... and gained nothing except for module X1. Eventually, just out of a completist sentiment, I'd add Mentzer Companion and was pleasantly surprised by the domain management and mass combat rules (which seems like something you'd expect to find in the AD&D DMG).

So how did we perceive Basic vs AD&D? We didn't. It was all just D&D. When I packed a backpack of gaming gear for an overnight a boxed set would usually get tossed in along with three AD&D hardcovers. When I ran published adventures, I made no distinction between D&D and AD&D lines, so Temple of the Frog came right on the heels of Ravenloft.

 

[ephemeron]

Yeah, BECMI had STAGES of play. Dungeons were what you did at low level--KINGDOMS is what you did at Master.

IMHO, giving a clear idea of the different kinds of things characters of increasing levels do was one of the things BECMI did best. Expanding the scope of adventures has always felt more satisfying to me than creating ever-tougher dungeons.

 

[Zal]

In 1980 when I started playing, the perception I had was that Basic D&D was meant to lead into Advanced and that Advanced was obviously supposed to be the 'better' product. It was years before I realized that BECMI was running in parallel with AD&D, and I can't recall anyone ever using the Expert or later sets. Arduin though, people would go on about it, occasionally even play it - it was kinda the Pathfinder of the 80s, preferred by 0D&D fans who didn't make the switch to AD&D (of course, there was no OGL back then, so Arduin got sued out of existence).

Also, it seemed at times like it was all just D&D and could be munged together, anyway.

Of course, that was just a kid's-eye view.

Tony, you touch on some interesting points. I think it's a mistake to conflate all versions of "Basic" D&D as having the same sense of purpose. The first "Basic" D&D (Holmes) was in fact a simplified version, designed to be an introduction to D&D, after which players were expected to move on to AD&D. My own group started with OD&D and had started with AD&D before the Holmes Basic set came out. We knew Holmes was considered an introduction (I think we read as much in Dragon Magazine at the time), and that we had already "surpassed" it. We played AD&D forevermore, and never touched anything else named "Basic". We were somewhat taken aback and confused by the "Expert" edition that later came out, but after much consternation we ignored that too.

However, my understanding is that it turned out that a lot of people were using Holmes as a game in itself, which is why the Moldvay Basic was printed, and subsequently B/X and BECMI. As kids, we paid no attention, but in retrospect, not only were D&D and AD&D separate lines of complete games, they actually became that way through popular demand, despite the original intentions of TSR.

Note that none of the "Basic" editions are the same thing as OD&D, which was the original game the preceded both AD&D and Basic, and was the basis for both.

 

[Desdichado]

Started with basic Moldvay box, went to Expert box, jumped to Advanced after that because I was a kid at the time, there were no companion or master sets yet, and i found "advanced" D&D so i thought that was the next book in the series, logically. I didn't find out the truth till years later.

I think this was common. To be honest with you, I didn't often pay a lot of attention to which version of the rules we used. I know for sure that I didn't understand the difference between the Holmes, Moldvay and Mentzer versions until long after the fact.

If I had to play one of any of these versions today, I'd easily gravitate to the B/X Moldvay/Cook stuff. In fact, we'll probably do a one-offish mini-campaign where we run through Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread with these rules just for the heck of it when we finish up our current campaign.

 

[Ranes]

I started with 1e when it first appeared. Neither I nor my friends had ever seen OD&D. I soon became aware of Basic but considered it a game for beginners, specifically for younger children. I was only fourteen at the time but the only D&D games I could find were the AD&D games being played at my local university, and my schoolfriend and I were the youngest players present. We tuned into the gossip being related to us via rich (so it seemed) Dragon subscribers. This informed and reinforced the widely held view, among my peers at the time, that Basic D&D was not something you troubled yourself with if you were already acquainted with AD&D.

 

[piffany]

I played the Moldvay version in junior high, but I'm not sure i really "got" it. I probably spent more time reading about D&D than actually playing it. (I never played X2 Castle Amber, but man it was a fun read.) Then in high school, I played a couple of campaigns in first edition AD&D, and eventually got sucked into Rolemaster, whose detailed crit tables held a morbid fascination for us.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I started with Holmes basic, which only had rules for a few levels but had references to higher level spells etc. So it felt very much like a beginner set. I switched to AD&D as soon as our PCs hit a level not covered by the rules..