Sing to me, O Muse, of BECMI!

[The Sigil]

In Search of Adventure itself is a compilation of several other adventure modules and starts the adventurers given three "hooks" to choose from in Threshold, with each hook starting a different adventure. There is a "flowchart" on page six suggesting how the adventures might logically follow one another, with "interludes" providing connective tissue between the adventures and optional side quests lengthening some of the paths... though it also notes that the characters could "go back to the beginning" and start on another path at any time and also notes that the DM could use "divine/immortal intervention" to pull the PCs into the Palace of the Silver Princess at any time from any path. Note that Kings Harvest itself was published after this compilation and isn't included; if you're an experienced DM you may not need it but I really like it because of the amount of helpful tips it gives DMs, both in terms of running BECMI and in terms of helping establish the setting and its flavor. Note that the "Rahasia/Lost City" adventure path given below kind of takes the characters more afield and out of Karameikos than the other adventures.

This flowchart has informed the way I tend to run my sandbox campaigns - usually I try to allow each location to have three direct "lines" into other adventures, and then for each of those adventures, I try to consider having at least two more "lines" connecting to yet other adventures. The party can always backtrack a bit, so the "third" option is backtracking to start going down another path.

This means that at any given time, the PCs are going on one adventure, and I am dropping strong hooks for 3 other adventures (one "backtrack" and two new ones" - generally an NPC party will foreclose on one of the "paths not taken" and complete the adventure the characters passed up).

I am also considering two "downstream" adventures for each of the three strong-hooks I'm giving them, so I can foreshadow with weaker hooks scattered about - and since I'm scattering hooks for descendants of both Option "A" and Option "B", it means when they pick Option "A" they stop getting hooks for adventures downstream of "B" (this has the advantage of making the world seem bigger and more real by making sure there are far more hooks laid out there than they can ever follow up on, but I'm only ever having to actually prep two new adventures). That's a little more than the flowchart above does, but they don't always have to be location-tied hooks; they can be event-tied hooks that I can use to "burst in" on any location-tied path they're taking.

Let's use my last campaign (which came to an abrupt end after a little over a year due to some serious real life changes that I had to yield to even though the players were still enthusiastic about the campaign; we may try to get back into campaigning but it will require some serious structural changes to the session - mostly going virtual).

I started the group in Threshold and prepped Caldwell's Castle, Elwyn's Sanctuary, and Rahasia.

(Adventures Prepped: Caldwell's Castle, Elwyn's Sanctuary, and Rahasia)

The group elected to go after Elwyn's Sanctuary. As they did so, I laid down some strong hooks for The Caves of Chaos and some weaker seeds for later use in The Palace of the Silver Princess. After completing Elwyn's Sanctuary, the party returned to Threshold and that the Caldwell's Castle hook had changed (another party had cleared out the top level, but discovered cellars they couldn't clear out; now the party had lost the opportunity to loot the castle but Caldwell was still willing to hire them to clear out the cellars). I also dropped some light hooks for Kill Bargle (Dungeon #150) to replace Elwyn's Sancturary if they backtracked again.

(New Adventures Prepped: Kill Bargle, Caves of Chaos; added to previously-prepped Caldwell's Castle and Rahasia meant I had 4 adventures in the hopper)

They decided to go to the modified Castle Caldwell instead of the Caves of Chaos or Rahasia. No problem... while there, I dropped some hooks about Journey to the Rock, decided Bargle moved on so Kill Bargle would no longer be available to them... so now they still had three adventures waiting when they cleared Caldwell (Rahasia, Caves of Chaos, Journey to the Rock). Since "all roads lead to the Veiled Society" I started sprinkling a handful of seeds for that adventure.

(New Adventure Prepped: Journey to the Rock; after dropping Kill Bargle meant I still had Caves of Chaos and Rahasia dialed up for 3 adventures in the hopper)

After completing Castle Caldwell, the group returned to Threshold and decided they would attempt the Rahasia adventure. As they proceeded through that adventure, I started laying hooks down for the Lost City and for B10 - Night's Dark Terror, while also closing up the Castle Caldwell path by adjudicating that the same NPC group that had cleared the castle in Caldwell's castle decided to go to the Rock.

(New Adventures Prepped: Lost City, Night's Dark terror; after dropping Journey to the Rock, they had three options in the hopper - Lost City, Night's Dark Terror, Caves of Chaos)

They departed Rahasia thinking they were headed for Specularum, but I knew their travel would be interrupted by Night's Dark Terror first. At this point, I dropped the Caves of Chaos and started prepping an event-based adventure, X12 - Skarda's Mirror, by introducing them to the NPC party that had cleared out Castle Caldwell's first level and done Journey to the Rock (these NPCs go missing as the "hook" for Skarda's Mirror) so I would have stuff in place if I ever needed to pull a new path "out of nowhere."

Unfortunately, it was at this point that campaign had to end. I expect they would have gone from Nights Dark Terror to the Veiled Society. Usually I like to have PCs find find Rory Barbosa's journal entry - the hook for X1 - The Isle of Dread - during the Veiled Society and I also make an effort to plant some hooks for X7 - War Rafts of Kron, which takes place in Minrothad, between Karameikos and the Isle of Dread). Had they travelled north to the Lost City, I probably would have instead started planting hooks for X4/X5 (The Desert Nomads series) and X3 Curse of Xanathon (which takes place even farther north than Ylaruam) instead. I don't have more thoughts about adventures to use because that's looking more than two steps ahead, and I try not to do that.

I am starting up a new campaign with a couple of repeat players; instead of starting in Threshold, this campaign is probably going to start in Western Karameikos near the Black Eagle Barony. As before, I'll be spreading out hooks to various adventures in my arsenal and trying to look one or two steps ahead but by using this method, I'm pretty sure the party will never be able to follow up on every hook I'm throwing out there (knowing there are always "roads not chosen" and discovering that choosing one road may foreclose another has, I found, really kept players involved in the world - they realize they can't get "100% completion on all adventures" and there is opportunity cost with their choices).

I will probably adapt some non-BECMI adventures for this latest campaign; since I have some repeat players we won't be seeing me re-use any of the adventures from my last campaign, but The Lost City and the Isle of Dread, for example, are still out there.

 

[The Sigil]

No theme, but they are perhaps the best of the crop of BECM. B10, X4, X5, CM1, M1 in particular are golden and showcase the tiers of play. I ran close to that campaign years ago but using AD&D 2e (we liked the added flexibility of races and classes and extra spells), with Dominion and War machine rules bolted on, and it was excellent.

This is a pretty good point - I find CM9 (Legacy of Blood) to be very good at showcasing the "Running a Dominion sans War Machine considerations" rules and I have a soft spot for X1 (Isle of Dread) and its use of wilderness hex-crawling (though that may just be nostalgia talking) and might agitate to include these two modules in the list above if we're asking for "the top tier of BECMI modules" but I think the list given - B10, X4, X5, CM1, and M1 - could be argued to be incomplete but certainly doesn't contain any modules that AREN'T top tier.

 

[rabindranath72]

I think a good way to understand the scope of BECMI is to draw parallels with AD&D 1e. We know Frank Mentzer was Gary's "creative right hand", and to this day, he runs pretty much exclusively AD&D 1e with some BECMI "extras".
Some similarities are subtle, others more evident:

• In the Basic set, Magic-users and Elves can acquire spells like AD&D magic-users.
• In the Expert set, Clerics get a spell progression similar to AD&D Clerics (gone are the super-powerful 6th level Clerics which got access to 3rd and 4th spell levels at once.)
• In the Companion set, we get Druids (and extra spells), Paladins, more spells, extra armor types, some extra weapons, and some extra fighter maneuvers (multiple attacks, parry, and disarm, in particular)
• In the Master set we get the Mystic (prototype Monk), the Thug (prototype Assassin) (although both are really NPC options), rules for magic resistance, humanoid spellcasters, more weapons (polearms!), and Artifacts.
• Some parts (like Weapon Mastery) are wholly original, but in my experience they don't work too well (Frank said for example that WM wasn't playtested at all.)

When you add all the changes (which don't necessarily kick-in at the stated tiers; e.g. extra armor and weapons can well work from 1st level), you get something which is remarkably similar to AD&D, although in a somewhat "streamlined" package. Yet, the "scope" of AD&D still seems wider and the game more "complete", in particular in terms of world and campaign building tools.

So one might want to consider whether adopting BECMI as a whole is a good idea, compared to choosing AD&D instead. These days, if I want all the "bells and whistles" of BECMI, I simply go with AD&D, despite the fact that BECMI has been my introduction to D&D well before AD&D. If I want something genuinely simpler/straightforward, I just consider B/X/E.

 

[AnotherGuy]

These days I've started running various vignettes within the Known World, which are 4-5 session adventures. Players get to play different characters, of various power and experience parts of the Known World which otherwise see no table time - and I get to stretch my brain coming up with different story-hooks for all these mini-settings.

At some point I may have an over-arching theme but for now, nothing is planned.

 

[Willie the Duck]

When you add all the changes (which don't necessarily kick-in at the stated tiers; e.g. extra armor and weapons can well work from 1st level), you get something which is remarkably similar to AD&D, although in a somewhat "streamlined" package. Yet, the "scope" of AD&D still seems wider and the game more "complete", in particular in terms of world and campaign building tools.

Can you give some examples? I'm trying to think of some, but I keep running into things BECMI has such as wilderness generation, domain management, mass combat, followers, mercenaries and hirelings, spell research, strongholds, taxation, high level quests, and planar travel.

 

[rabindranath72]

Can you give some examples? I'm trying to think of some, but I keep running into things BECMI has such as wilderness generation, domain management, mass combat, followers, mercenaries and hirelings, spell research, strongholds, taxation, high level quests, and planar travel.

I don't have the material at hand for a detailed comparison, but for most of the items (notable exception: mass combat and domain management) you mention, AD&D provides more depth and more gameable material; an example that comes to mind since I used the material recently: in the AD&D DMG, the sections on followers, hireling, henchmen, retainers, specialists etc. take more than 10 pages, vs the two or so pages in BECMI.

Don't get me wrong, I love BECMI to bits; it's just that if the DM doesn't want to do a lot of work, in most cases AD&D provides heaps of content to use "out of the box", and the AD&D-style extras provided from the Companion set onward don't feel as "organic" to the game as the native AD&D options; so if one is specifically interested in those expansions, AD&D may provide a better "solution"; at least that's my experience. As always, YMMV etc.

 

[cavalier973]

B/X Blackrazor, despite his name, has gone all-in for 1e, for the same reasons. He asserts that AD&D has the best rules for long-term play.

 

[CleverNickName]

B/X Blackrazor, despite his name, has gone all-in for 1e, for the same reasons. He asserts that AD&D has the best rules for long-term play.

I mean...he's entitled to his opinion, but I've run several years-long campaigns using the BECM rules and we've run characters past level 25 several times. A long-term campaign is more about what you and your friends enjoy playing, and less about the rules themselves. If you still look forward to playing it every week, it's the right game for you and your group.

That said: if you're going to go for a long-term campaign using the BECMI, I'd recommend picking up the Rules Cyclopedia for your session zero. Having all of the rules in one place is really handy for planning out a long-term character, and a lot easier than having to dig through all the boxed sets.

 

[cavalier973]

I mean...he's entitled to his opinion, but I've run several years-long campaigns using the BECM rules and we've run characters past level 25 several times. A long-term campaign is more about what you and your friends enjoy playing, and less about the rules themselves. If you still look forward to playing it every week, it's the right game for you and your group.

That said: if you're going to go for a long-term campaign using the BECMI, I'd recommend picking up the Rules Cyclopedia for your session zero. Having all of the rules in one place is really handy for planning out a long-term character, and a lot easier than having to dig through all the boxed sets.

The RC is my very favorite D&D book. I got the pod version, and it’s very nice.

 

[CleverNickName]

The RC is my very favorite D&D book. I got the pod version, and it’s very nice.

Same here! I keep my POD copy on my bookshelf right next to my falling-apart original. The print quality is really good.