Basic D&D, Holmes Edition - a review

[LostSoul]

I wanted to reply to a specific portion of the review:

The text explains that character ability scores are created by rolling 3d6 to generate a number from 3-18. Then each ability score is given a paragraph of explanation. But the numbers, (3-18), don’t give any bonus or penalty beyond experience point adjustments. Although the text says, “… a character with a strength of 18 would be super-powerful, one with a strength of 3 (lowest possible dice roll) would barely be able to lift his sword off the ground,” there is no actual mechanical difference between the two characters. Other than an experience point bonus/penalty, there is no game mechanic difference between 18 strength and 3 strength.​

I think that "a character with a strength of 18 would be super-powerful, one with a strength of 3 (lowest possible dice roll) would barely be able to lift his sword off the ground" is the mechanical difference. A highly-variable one based on the DM, but still - the game tells the DM how to treat STR scores.

 

[Iosue]

My assertion is that it just wasn't as horrendous as the OP thinks it is, looking back in nearly 40 years of retrospect and game design. I was there. we used it, and we had a blast. None of us felt the "need" for better written rules at the time. We felt the need for more "stuff"...spells..classes, monsters etc.

I started on Holmes basic in 1980 at the fine old age of ten and I remember thinking that it was a pretty simple, straightforward game. Admittedly that was a long time ago and I might think differently if I re-read it now, but I'm pretty surprised at the comments here on it being dense or difficult. I played it for a few years before buying the advanced books.

Yes, these are very much my take, as well. I don't see it as "atrocious". The overwhelming impression I get from it is "old". It doesn't have the tight design most folks expect from their RPGs these days, the kind that makes B/X popular even now. It certainly doesn't have the excellent layout and design that 80s RPGs would develop. It's layout is pretty much the same as you see in all TSR products in the 70s; continuous runs of two columns broken up by black and white art. But it's pretty straightforward: character generation (ability scores, classes, alignment), exploration of the dungeon (movement/encumbrance, light, wandering monsters, reactions, and experience), special character abilities (thief skills, turning undead, clerical spells, magic-user spells, saving throws), combat, monster list, treasure, and then dungeon building advice. It does its job of getting across the basic structure and premise of the game.

I think that "a character with a strength of 18 would be super-powerful, one with a strength of 3 (lowest possible dice roll) would barely be able to lift his sword off the ground" is the mechanical difference. A highly-variable one based on the DM, but still - the game tells the DM how to treat STR scores.

Yes, this what I was getting at earlier when I talked about Holmes attempting to retain the broad possibilities of D&D as a kind of game, rather than restrict D&D to a particular type of game. It's the same kind of thing as the "Additional Character Classes" section. Absolutely no hard mechanics as we think of them for doing this. The idea was each DM would find their own way.

 

[MerricB]

My question here is: How many people actually got their introduction to D&D through this Holmes edition? Especially as an intended basic and introductory version of the game, it is crazy convoluted as text and insanely designed as a game.

Do you have the original books by any chance? Because Holmes was working from just the original set + Supp. I Greyhawk, and that's actually a really hard starting point. I also wonder how many people started with this set blind, rather than first learning the concepts of the game from other people.

The biggest problem with the Holmes rules is identifying the key rules you need to run the game; the actual rules are fairly easy, but it's finding where they are that is tricky.

 

[Aaron2]

I used to defend Holmes by comparing it to OD&D. However, I recently got a copy of Empire of the Petal Throne and it is astounding how well written the game rules are in that book which came out in 1975, two years before Holmes. That one book has character advancement rules that extend indefinitely, tons of monsters, spells and treasures, rules for non-human PCs, a skill system, a simple domain system, rules for fighting and betting in the gladiatorial arena and even a low-level adventure generation chart. Plus it has the only example of play that shows how to handle locks and traps without a thief class. There's a typewritten manuscript that MAR Barker made just for his friends early in 74, just a few months after OD&D was released, and it is just as clear.

 

[MerricB]

That's very interesting, Aaron. (I note that both sets of rules are available of drivethrurpg).

 

[Christian]

I received a copy of the 1978 Holmes-edited edition of Dungeons & Dragons ... My question here is: How many people actually got their introduction to D&D through this Holmes edition?

I did. Played that edition until the AD&D DMG finally came out, then my group switched to AD&D. I don't think I've played the Holmes version since. I don't remember being at all frustrated or puzzled by the rules, but I had nothing to compare them to. It was a game of pure imagination to me--what need clear and detailed rules?

Isn't it kind of amazing how something like this can sell so much with virtually no marketing? No general-media ads in the 70s, no Internet, etc. I learned of this game by word of mouth. I personally never saw any ads for anything D&D outside of TSR publications until the 2000s.

I remember the game was brought to my attention via an ad in Games magazine. I'm fairly sure that I introduced it to the small corn-farming town I lived in; whenever I met new local gamers while I was still in school, I'd ask how they started, and invariably it was not only word-of-mouth, but traceable back to me. So that was a very effective advertisement.

 

[Bullgrit]

Do you have the original books by any chance? Because Holmes was working from just the original set + Supp. I Greyhawk, and that's actually a really hard starting point.

I have read the orginal brown books, but I don't own them. I do, however, own Supplement I Greyhawk.

Recently my sons and their friends have been playing RISK regularly on the weekends. Now, they're not actually playing the game by the rules, even though I taught them the rules maybe a year ago. They, (mostly my 12 year old), are making up rules, including diplomacy, sneak attacks, and other options. They are essentially role playing global conflict with a RISK board, RISK pieces, and RISK dice. I wonder, (suspect), many people played D&D back then in a similar way -- just making up a lot of the rules to suit themselves, using the "rules" as just a conceptual springboard rather than even as guidelines. This would fit perfectly with Gygax's stated reasons for designing AD&D to bring everyone's game in line with a standard rule set. It's also about the only way I can imagine someone playing with those rule books.

Bullgrit

 

[Aaron2]

They, (mostly my 12 year old), are making up rules, including diplomacy, sneak attacks, and other options. They are essentially role playing global conflict with a RISK board, RISK pieces, and RISK dice. I wonder, (suspect), many people played D&D back then in a similar way -- just making up a lot of the rules to suit themselves, using the "rules" as just a conceptual springboard rather than even as guidelines.

As your Risk example proves, game rules can be used as springboards or guidelines even if they are complete and coherent. There is no advantage to a game having incomplete or incomprehensible rules. None.

 

[MerricB]

I have read the orginal brown books, but I don't own them. I do, however, own Supplement I Greyhawk.

Recently my sons and their friends have been playing RISK regularly on the weekends. Now, they're not actually playing the game by the rules, even though I taught them the rules maybe a year ago. They, (mostly my 12 year old), are making up rules, including diplomacy, sneak attacks, and other options. They are essentially role playing global conflict with a RISK board, RISK pieces, and RISK dice. I wonder, (suspect), many people played D&D back then in a similar way -- just making up a lot of the rules to suit themselves, using the "rules" as just a conceptual springboard rather than even as guidelines. This would fit perfectly with Gygax's stated reasons for designing AD&D to bring everyone's game in line with a standard rule set. It's also about the only way I can imagine someone playing with those rule books.

Bullgrit

It's how they were often used. See here:
http://www.crydee.com/raymond-feist/origins-of-midkemia

 

[Waynan]

Indeed a he! (Iosue is Latin for Joshua.)

I think Moldvay is an amazing piece of work. When I first used it to enter the world of D&D, I didn't think anything of it. It was so straightforward, and elegantly laid out. Here's how you make and advance characters. Here's how exploration works. Here's how combat works. Here are the monsters for the DM to use. Here are the treasures the monsters will have. Here's a section helping the DM build dungeons, and some excellent DM advice. All in 64 pages. The rules are light enough to provide a framework to build on, and yet if you play it purely by the book you have a robust game of suspenseful exploration.

Moldvay improves on Holmes in all respects, and I think even Holmes conceded that in his review. But I think to appreciate Holmes, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the players back then. The thing is, D&D was as a concept, just so big. The original books were not what we would consider a tightly focused design, but a primer on a whole new way to approach gaming. Arneson's home game was quite different from Gygax's, which was again different from Holmes'. I think a common approach to RPGs now, perhaps since the publication of AD&D 1e and Moldvay, is "the rules are the mechanics through which the players engage with the game". Whereas at the time I think it was more "rules are just some advice for the DM to adjudicate common situations", and the players didn't have to really worry about them. And so when it came time to choose your weapons, ostensibly you didn't go "I'm picking the weapon that gives me the most damage," you picked the weapon that fit your image of the character. And if the designers at the time thought getting in close and going stabbity-stabbity with a knife while the guy with the battle-axe was taking big slow swings, well that's a feasible set of assumptions to go by. Another consideration is that Holmes probably expected folks moving on to AD&D would be playing with slightly more complicated combat rules for speed and weapon damage.

What I marvel at with Holmes is the size of the job he had: he had the original three books, plus the three supplements. He wasn't really a game designer -- just a player who made a successful freelance pitch. There were huge gaps -- how is initiative decided? How long is a turn, exactly? How long is a round? Every table played their own version of D&D, and to Holmes this was a good thing. He was trying to distill a gaming movement into a 45-page booklet, and provide guidance while still retaining that wild "take this basic structure and make it your own" spirit. It was a different path from Moldvay. Moldvay took that big movement and pared it down to the essentials, and further, he had a mandate to ignore what was going on with AD&D, so he could rebuild D&D on some sound mechanical and mathematical principles. Holmes was trying to retain as much of the original as possible, filling in the gaps while retaining the wide open possibilities, and put it into a manageable shape for a non-wargamer.

Another thing to consider was that Holmes is listed as the sole editor on the project, and this was before TSR had a huge staff. I suspect that in as much as fresh eyes saw it, they corrected only obvious typos, and didn't address much in the way of design. Moldvay, meanwhile, had Harold Johnson and Frank Mentzer doing production/layout, and the credits for Editing/Continuity list Lawrence Schick, Allen Hammack, David Cook, Kevin Hendryx, Jon Pickens, Patrick Price, Paul Reiche III, Evan Robinson, Ed Sollers, Don Snow, and Steve Sullivan. It is hardly a surprise that Holmes contains errors and inconsistencies, while Moldvay is a far more polished design, in both game and presentation.

And while Moldvay noted in his article on the new Basic set was based on the original White Box rules, there is much that he took from Holmes. For example, in the original booklets, the turn is quite convoluted. It's basically 10 minutes, but is made up of "two moves". So you take your character's movement and double it to find out far you move in a turn. Rounds are not given a time frame, except that there are 10 in a turn. (Hence, in AD&D 1 round = 1 minute.) Holmes simply gives everyone a base movement score based on encumbrance, and says that a round is 10 seconds. Moldvay retains this take on movement (although he slows down the pace), and uses 10 seconds per round. Moldvay also retains Holmes' 5-level monster reaction table, rather than the 3-level table of the original game. Holmes slightly changes the XP value table found in the Greyhawk supplement, and Moldvay retains this.

So, my view is that, yes, it is flawed, and Moldvay is a much superior product. OTOH, Holmes had a hell of a job to do, and judging by the response, I certainly can't say it wasn't successful. He provided a base for others to build on. The gamer in me prefers Moldvay and Cook to Holmes or even AD&D. But the amateur D&D historian in me respects the hell out of it.