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

[Imperialus]

We play a total mish-mash. We use the thieves tables from B/X, the spell lists from AD&D, B/X initiative, treasure tables and monsters from AD&D, classes from both, XP tables from Labyrinth Lord... Our go to reference books at the table are Labyrinth Lord except for Item Saving Throws which are from AD&D.


As for my personal experience I started with 2nd ed AD&D in the early 90's. Moved on to 3rd ed when it came out. Got pretty jaded in the 3.X era and discovered Grognarida. We decided to start a B/X game and it's been going for almost 7 years now.

 

[havard]

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!

Hi MerricB!
Thanks for starting this thread. As you mentioned originally, it was the out of court settlements with Arneson that forced TSR to keep producing material for "Classic D&D" (A better term than "Basic" in my opinion). Although it sold surprisingly well, it was still obvious that TSR wanted their customers to start with Classic and then move on to Basic. On the other hand many of us stayed with Classic or as in my experience, we kept playing both games, realizing that both had their distinct qualities.

Most likely Classic D&D was also a big hit with more casual gamers who might be interested in chatting about their gaming experiences on forums 30 years later as well as gamers who moved onto other RPGS rather than AD&D. TSR's message to Classic Fans that they were not really a priority with the company became more and more clear as we got into the 1990s. This probably caused some to switch to AD&D (or other games), while some of us more hardcore fans simply became more partisan, pointing out that Classic D&D had qualities that AD&D did not have.

Another factor worth mentioning is the importance of Classic D&D internationally. The Red Box was apparently translated to over 50 languages, including Mandarin Chinese. In Europe AD&D was not translated untill years later if at all. Take a look at the number of European posters in places like the Mystara forum at The Piazza to see part of the legacy of Classic D&D.

One strength Classic D&D had in being seen as the "red headed step child" of TSR was that this was a line where designers could explore areas which were considered no-nos for the AD&D Flagship. Consider the detailed exploration of playing godlike beings in the Immortals Set.



-Havard

 

[Grainger]

Well, I'm going to take slight issue with your nomenclature. I never thought of it as Basic vs Advanced. It was always D&D vs AD&D. And D&D was what we started off with and played the most, so it never felt like "basic" or "limited".

Yeah, I never called it "Basic" - I came on board with the Basic and Expert sets, so I already thought of "Basic" as being the first set only. The game was "D&D". Ironically, D&D ended up being as sophisticated as AD&D in some ways, once you had all BECMI sets and Gazetteer rules in play. I think calling it "Basic" (unless you truly are just talking about the Basic set) does it down unfairly.

I know that AD&D players often rolled their eyes at the "race as class" side of D&D, and I can see that it must have seemed limiting if you came at it from that angle (I just thought of a D&D Elf as being a Fighter/Mage, for example). But, on the other hand, when I played AD&D 2e, it always seemed like there were too many "you have to do it this way"s in character creation - there were ostensibly more options, but they served to shut off possibilities. But I now realise that was just my perspective; the trouble was, the two systems were 80% the same, and as with many things that are similar, it's hard to get over the differences, and they end up seeming far more different than they are. I think players of one game or the other probably didn't "get" the other game, through no fault of the game itself.

 

[MerricB]

Thanks for starting this thread. As you mentioned originally, it was the out of court settlements with Arneson that forced TSR to keep producing material for "Classic D&D" (A better term than "Basic" in my opinion). Although it sold surprisingly well, it was still obvious that TSR wanted their customers to start with Classic and then move on to Basic. On the other hand many of us stayed with Classic or as in my experience, we kept playing both games, realizing that both had their distinct qualities.

"Classic" gets complicated as a term because the Basic D&D of Moldvay and Mentzer is a long way from what I consider the Classic D&D of the original game and Holmes.

One of the big problems I have with the huge numbers of Red Box sets sold is that I really don't know how much they translated into people playing the game. A few years ago, I came across a Red Box in the house of a friend - they'd bought it 30 years ago, but never used it (the dice were still unopened). What I really would like to know is how many sets of Expert D&D sold - I'd say that would be a far better indicator as to the popularity of the line.

However, you are quite right: During the late 80s and very early 90s, the game saw some remarkable work being done in the Known World. (And then... it stopped).

You make very good points about the effect on translations on the fanbase!

Cheers!

 

[Grainger]

One strength Classic D&D had in being seen as the "red headed step child" of TSR was that this was a line where designers could explore areas which were considered no-nos for the AD&D Flagship. Consider the detailed exploration of playing godlike beings in the Immortals Set.

Yeah, BECMI (or Classic, if you prefer), had Humanoids (Orcs, etc.) as player classes years before 2e - I wonder if the Book of Humanoids took the Orcs of Thar as inspiration. It also had the cool fey races in Tall Tales of the Wee Folk, and interesting twists on familiar ones in the Gazetteers and Hollow World (albeit some of this putting in options that AD&D already had - Dwarven Clerics, Drow (Shadow Elves), Elven Fighters, etc.). Not to mention, the excellent Dominion and castle building rules, and the great mass combat system.

I don't think many AD&D fans realised what a sophisticated and rich system BECMI became over time, even if it was poorly supported in Dragon and product releases (although with the great Gazetteer series, I'm not complaining too much).

 

[Grainger]

I started with BECMI, and some of the players immediately went off to play 2e (or a mix of 1e and 2e in one case), but I stuck with BECMI. I wasn't particularly interested in the mechanics, so much as the possibilities. BECMI worked, we'd had great experiences playing it (in the slightly naive, but enchanting first game - a homebrew megadungeon, not that we knew those terms then! - that my friend ran).

So I stuck with BECMI - I had the BE sets already, and soon picked up the others. It made sense, rather than investing in an entirely new system (flicking through the AD&D books, they were clearly a different system). I then ran a successful campaign with a small group of friends for years. I also played a bit with friends who'd gone the 2e route, but didn't really like the system. It just seemed like character creation offered a lot of choices that were rules-based, rather than letting me think about character - but that was just my bias, because I was invested in BECMI. It also seemed like it would be a lot of work to convert my campaign (I know people say that you could mix and match, but I think the differences were great enough, if you had a gameworld predicated on one game's creature stats, and lots of NPCs statted up).

In truth, however, if it had been 2e that I'd played first, I'd probably have stuck with that, and wouldn't have wanted to play BECMI. Both were about as good as each other, really, with different pros and cons, especially if you ran a home-brew campaign - the actual published modules and campaign worlds weren't so important.

Now I'm giving 5e a go, and I'm loving it so far. I probably wouldn't go back to BECMI or 2e now, but that's a different story (and it's a personal choice - I just want something familiar, but new; there's nothing wrong at all with older editions if that's what floats your boat).

 

[Baron Greystone]

A recent comment on a blog caused me to wonder about how others perceived Basic D&D compared to AD&D back in the day.

I started with Holmes. Then moved to 1st ed AD&D as the books came out. I played with a lot of different groups in three states. Basic was labeled "Basic." That's how we saw it. We were happy to pilf their modules if one looked good. Upon looking the rules over, we only saw justification for our opinions. Low levels. Simpler. Race as class (ugh). Never had a desire to switch, and 1st ed AD&D is still my edition of choice.

 

[billd91]

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..

That's how I started as well. We did have an interim period in which I was DMing out of a friend's copy of the Red Box Basic set while the owner of the Holmes D&D box was unavailable. I also must have had a Player's Handbook available as well because we were using some classes not available to the Red Box. But though the Red Box could have led to the Blue Box Expert set, our path had already been decided that we'd be moving on to Advanced to handle higher level characters beyond what the Red Box or Holmes edition could support. In fact, once we leveled past the Red Box combat tables, we were using tables I had copied out of a DMG at Waldenbooks onto scraps of paper I had in my pockets.

 

[havard]

"Classic" gets complicated as a term because the Basic D&D of Moldvay and Mentzer is a long way from what I consider the Classic D&D of the original game and Holmes.

Well, as long as we know what we are talking about it doesnt really matter. The term "classic D&D" was actually used for one of the late intro sets (Compatible with the RC, BECMI etc).

I generally use Classic for the whole range from OD&D and including BECMI the RC and the 1990s boxes. The rules in these games are surprisingly similar to one another. I would generally use Original D&D about the 1974 games and BX, BECMI, RC etc about the later sets which again are even more similar.

One of the big problems I have with the huge numbers of Red Box sets sold is that I really don't know how much they translated into people playing the game. A few years ago, I came across a Red Box in the house of a friend - they'd bought it 30 years ago, but never used it (the dice were still unopened). What I really would like to know is how many sets of Expert D&D sold - I'd say that would be a far better indicator as to the popularity of the line.

However, you are quite right: During the late 80s and very early 90s, the game saw some remarkable work being done in the Known World. (And then... it stopped).

Yeah, I have no idea about sales figures for the Expert Sets. One thing worth considering though is that TSR did attempt to convert Mystara to AD&D. I always believed that their motivation for doing so was that they believed it could convince Classic D&D players to switch over to AD&D. So TSR must have believed there was a potential market there. Of course, TSR did a pretty bad job at converting the setting, at least if the goal was to attract existing Mystara fans to the line, which may be a reason why it died.

OTOH, the decision to kill of the Classic line and later Mystara probably had as much to do with the overall situation of TSR at the time and the steady progression towards bankrupcy and being bought by WotC who decided to shut down everything NOT the Forgotten Realms at least untill the situation could be evaluated/3E could be introduced.

Again, WotC managed to find a permanent sollution with Arneson so after that the "Advanced" was dropped even if 3E/D20 was more similar to AD&D, in spite of a few BECMI-isms being brought over.

As to my own experiences with Classic D&D, we started with the Mentzer Basic Set and Mentzer Expert. Although we bought and played AD&D as well, the BECMI campaign kept going untill the late 1990s when we decided we needed a full break from classes, levels and what we saw as artificial restrictions. After playing GURPS, RuneQuest, Feng Shui and many other games for a few years, I got back to D&D with 3E. After a while though I started to look back and found that BECMI really does everything I want from D&D. Sure I have picked up 5E and will probably give it a shot, but most likely I will use BECMI unless the players insist on something else.


-Havard