BECMI: not D&D?

[JDJblatherings]

Imagine a D&D game where.... There are no demons or devils at all. The gods themselves have been taken right out of the game, replaced with beings called immortals.

There were Demons in the BEMCI version of D&D.

 

[Barastrondo]

I've purchased several used copies of the B/X books, and in every single one someone used a pencil or pen to emphasize Morgan's nipples. That was you, wasn't it?

DUDE. That's like, my gaming godmother you're talking about.

Seriously, looking back all these years, I cannot actually express how cool it was that the example of character creation was so female-friendly at the time. Female player, female character, gets to be a fighter instead of being typecast as the same sorceress on the cover. Years and years before anyone thought of the phrase "politically correct," it was just understood that girls were just as welcome in D&D as guys. That, to me, is still undiluted win.

 

[mhensley]

I've purchased several used copies of the B/X books, and in every single one someone used a pencil or pen to emphasize Morgan's nipples. That was you, wasn't it?

Wow, I've noticed that too.

 

[mhensley]

There were Demons in the BEMCI version of D&D.

Bah, that's not real D&D. Real D&D is B/X. No demons there.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Bah, that's not real D&D. Real D&D is B/X. No demons there.

well "real D&D" is OD&D, B/X is revisionist.

 

[mhensley]

well "real D&D" is OD&D, B/X is revisionist.

Yep, revised so as to be readable and with art that doesn't make me cringe.

 

[ruleslawyer]

I know I'm probably in the minority, but I despised running 1e AD&D. I stuck with B/X D&D for a long time. You're right that we rarely went beyond the Basic/Expert sets with our games, but that's because the Expert set was the "sweet spot" - once you got up to Companion level characters you were fiddling with building strongholds, running domains and conquering your neighbors. That was fun once, and taking those characters into Master levels was also fun, but really, the "best" games of my youth were the ones hitting 3rd-10th levels.

See, that's interesting. Perhaps my favorite thing about BECMI, as opposed to AD&D, was that the sweet spot (IME, of course) went all the way up the chart. BECMI's "adventure path" (the B series, the X series, the Karameikos civil war, then CM1 Test of the Warlords up through the M series) worked all the way for me. Certainly, the reduced array of options and the continual scaling of monsters to match PC power levels (Large and Huge dragons, Gargantuan creatures) were turn-offs, but minor ones, in the scheme of things.

IMHO, BECMI had a lot of things that 3e should have picked up. Reached 15th level? More powerful than pretty much everyone else in the implied setting? Fine. There's a wild continent for the taking. You've reached the pinnacle of your success as an adventurer, so now go and found a kingdom in the unknown lands. Oh, and with the unknown lands come new and terrible threats, only now you have to defend thousands of subjects, lead armies, and negotiate the fate of nations.

Reached 25th level by governing your kingdom, winning wars, exploring entire mountain ranges crawling with dragons, and forging out into the unknown North? Guess what? You're now powerful enough to attract the attention of the Immortals, beings to whom an entire world is barely a speck of dust, and who represent the cornerstones of the multiverse. Become involved in their infinite metaphysical struggles if you wish... and perhaps, one day, you can ascend to their ranks!

I for one think that it would help a lot of DMs to have a firmly implied philosophical divide between low-, mid-, and high-level games laid out directly in the rulebooks, including rules to support these different levels (dominion, warfare, and plane-traveling rules for higher-level PCs, etc.) To a certain extent, these things exist in 3e as it stands, but they're sort of haphazard, and in any case certain powers (plane travel, etc.) are available in the game IMHO far too early.

It is quite possible that 4e's three-tier divide is an attempt to replicate the BECMI divide, in philosophy at least. I certainly hope so; perhaps I'll even convert those old modules!

 

[BASHMAN]

A few points of clarity:

1. There were gnomes in Basic D&D-- in the cyclopedia there were optional rules for making them (near the back).

2. There were demons & devils in Basic D&D. Wrath of the Immortals and some of the other high level modules had you fight "whispering demons" and "screaming demons", etc, which were euphamisms for vroks, succubi, and others. They didn't use demons in the lower level modules for same reason they called the gods immortals.

3. Immortals were gods-- just without using the word "god" in the game, in case 1980s christian fundamentalists brought torches & pitchforks to a local D&D game they heard of. Parents would be more likely to buy for their kids w/o adding "pretend" gods to the one they learned about in sunday school. In fact, Immortals granted special abilities & spells to their followers much like the domain system in 3e. Clerics of Odin, for intanc, could use spears and cast magic missile as a 2nd level spell.

4. No it wasn't part of the great wheel. Neither was Ravenloft, Athas, or Spelljammer. They were all meant to be their own thing-- separate from the great wheel thing. Self-contained [except spell jammer that involved travel to different primes by ships rather than plane shifting]

 

[Quasqueton]

Dragon magazine #76, August 1983
Sage Advice, page 64

Why are there so many contradictions between the Basic and Expert D&D sets and the Advanced D&D books?

The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game and the ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game are two different products, and are not meant to be meshed. The simularity in names is confusing, but the game systems are very different from each other, in the way that both are different from the Runequest game system or the Traveller game system. DMs and players should avoid mixing the D&D and AD&D systems at all times.

Quasqueton

 

[Maggan]

Dragon magazine #76, August 1983
DMs and players should avoid mixing the D&D and AD&D systems at all times.

That's gotta be one of the most ignored advice in the history of the game!

/M