OD&D PDFs at RPGNow

[Voadam]

The (Mentzer edited) Red Box Basic & Blue Box Expert are available. As is the original (Holmes edited) Basic Set.

What isn't is (Moldvay edited) Basic Set that came between those or the original (Cook/Marsh edited) Expert Set.

(The Moldvay Basic Set is sometimes called the pink or purple box because of the color on the sides of the box.)

Once you opened the boxes, both the Moldvay & Mentzer Basic books were red, & both the Cook/Marsh & Mentzer Expert books were blue.

Edit: Fans have offered to provide RPGNow (& I assume Paizo as well) PDFs of the "missing" Basic & Expert Sets for free, but Wizards hasn't granted the OK for them to be sold.

Right, I meant the older red and blue book basic and expert sets, not the later ones that they have pdfs of.

 

[Voadam]

... dreamy sigh ...

Just seeing the covers of the Moldvay Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert gives me huge twinges of nostalgia.

Ditto.

 

[Doug Sundseth]

Swords & Spells

S&S allowed for the purchase of armies with points (as did/do many minis games then and now). IIRC*, in S&S a goblin with morale grade D, a dagger, and no armor had a cost of -1 point. I'm sure you can intuit the problem.

Of course, now that I think about it, this might be why Sauron managed to get Mumakil, Grond, War Ogres, and Flying Nazgul, while the Fellowship had to make do with a high-CON horse and a couple of swords with Detect Goblins and Orcs.

* It's been 30 years, so you'll have to assign your own probabilities about whether IRC.

 

[RFisher]

Right, I meant the older red and blue book basic and expert sets, not the later ones that they have pdfs of.

Yeah. I figured. But I thought I'd take the opportunity to trot out the clarification anyway. (^_^)

... dreamy sigh ...

Just seeing the covers of the Moldvay Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert gives me huge twinges of nostalgia.

Then my work here is done.