D&D General The Beating Heart of the OSR, Part 1

[Cadence]

My guess is Moldvay didn't want to take up two different lines for Tolkien, and probably considered LotR an adult work, so he included The Hobbit along with it in the Adult Fantasy section.

That makes perfect sense.

Drifting back I was wondering about the animated movies and looked them up. The Hobbit and LotR released in 77 and 78. We never saw them on our home TV, but at some time in the 1980s WGN had them on semi-regular rotation because I remember seeing them at my grandparents a few times.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'm not sure it was a great idea to run with race as class past the X book. I might have put a 4 or 8 page transition guide to AD&D in the X box instead of doing CMI (but that's probably because that's what I did instead of BECMI, and given some of the art in 1e might not have been a wise move for TSR).

So, my opinion has greatly shifted over time on this.

As a threshhold issue, I think the greatest mistake of BECMI was stretching out the levels. B/X has enough levels. More importantly, while it screwed over a few classes ... it just devastated the Thief. The B/X Thief is ... fine. The BECMI Thief is unplayable. Having a simple "C" to cap off B/X and have "domain" play would have been more than enough. IMO.

As far race-as-class (aka, archetype), it helps to remember that these aren't all the race- just the sample "adventurers" for that race. The whole point of B/X is to avoid complexity in character creation. You roll, and within 5 minutes (after you know the rules) you're adventuring. Easy. There is no mini char-gen game.

It's the distilled essence of play. I really appreciate that. If I want more complexity, I look to AD&D- I can add all the complexity I need. But when I just want to get down to the core "fun" bits, B/X might be unsurpassed.

 

[bpauls]

So, my opinion has greatly shifted over time on this.

As a threshhold issue, I think the greatest mistake of BECMI was stretching out the levels. B/X has enough levels. More importantly, while it screwed over a few classes ... it just devastated the Thief. The B/X Thief is ... fine. The BECMI Thief is unplayable. Having a simple "C" to cap off B/X and have "domain" play would have been more than enough. IMO.

As far race-as-class (aka, archetype), it helps to remember that these aren't all the race- just the sample "adventurers" for that race. The whole point of B/X is to avoid complexity in character creation. You roll, and within 5 minutes (after you know the rules) you're adventuring. Easy. There is no mini char-gen game.

It's the distilled essence of play. I really appreciate that. If I want more complexity, I look to AD&D- I can add all the complexity I need. But when I just want to get down to the core "fun" bits, B/X might be unsurpassed.

Yes. It's important to remember the starting target age for B/X was 10. One of many reasons the Moldvay Basic set was so successful was because it gave pre-teens a rule-book they could read and understand in an afternoon, then immediately start playing with their friends. In the current era of complex character builds, the value of quick char gen is under-appreciated--perhaps because most newer players have never experience it.

 

[Voadam]

The B/X Thief is ... fine.

The Moldvay Thief is still pretty terrible. d4 HD and terrible thief skill success chances means they are flimsy and terrible at their niches. Using any weapon in a backstab is little consolation.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The B Thief is still pretty terrible. d4 HD and terrible thief skill success chances means they are flimsy and terrible at their niches. Using any weapon in a backstab is little consolation.

Well, all the TSR-era thieves (in the core rules ... absent homebrew, 3PP, or Dragon) are varying degrees of terrible. 2e comes closest to making them decent-ish.

But B/X is bad ... and then BECMI stretches the bad across too many levels, so it takes you forever to get to "almost mediocre." It takes a bad class, and makes it nigh unplayable.

 

[Mannahnin]

The Moldvay Thief is still pretty terrible. d4 HD and terrible thief skill success chances means they are flimsy and terrible at their niches. Using any weapon in a backstab is little consolation.

Thus Thief being a usual main target of house rules, perhaps third behind "max HP at first level" and "M-Us and Elves can add found spells to their books".

I like replacing the percentages on all the skills with the Hear Noise x-in-6 mechanic, and giving climb sheer surfaces a +2.

 

[Voadam]

Thus Thief being a usual main target of house rules, perhaps third behind "max HP at first level" and "M-Us and Elves can add found spells to their books".

I like replacing the percentages on all the skills with the Hear Noise x-in-6 mechanic, and giving climb sheer surfaces a +2.

I am a fan of Necrotic Gnome's B/X Rogue variant where percentage thief skills are replaced by feat like abilities.

It could use some more higher level gated abilities so that it does not fall into the diminishing return problem of taking the coolest ones first and only adding on increasingly lesser choices as you level, but overall a big conceptual improvement over standard percentage thieves in my book.

 

[bpauls]

The Moldvay Thief is still pretty terrible. d4 HD and terrible thief skill success chances means they are flimsy and terrible at their niches. Using any weapon in a backstab is little consolation.

I allow B/X thieves to backstab at range, since the rules don't prohibit it--but I also remind a player who decides to play a thief that, at first level, they're basically "a backstab guy and a climb walls guy." Sort of like a B/X magic-user at first level is either a sleep caster, a magic missile caster, a charm person caster, or a read magic caster hoping to find some bangin' scrolls during the adventure.

 

[bpauls]

I am a fan of Necrotic Gnome's B/X Rogue variant where percentage thief skills are replaced by feat like abilities.

It could use some more higher level gated abilities so that it does not fall into the diminishing return problem of taking the coolest ones first and only adding on increasingly lesser choices as you level, but overall a big conceptual improvement over standard percentage thieves in my book.

Thanks for the tip. I just bought a copy and will check it out!.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I disagree with your numbers because you include The Black Hack et al as derived from OD&D. If you look at the rules, the claim that it uses the original rules as a base is pretty farcical. It has nothing that makes it closer to OD&D than any other non race a class rules version of the time. To me it is inspired by the era, not a specific rules set (unlike OSRIC, White Box, or S&W). There is no DnD that only had human character rules, yet that is black hacks default, for example. I would personally leave it out as too generic for a specific edition.
B/X is so very close to OD&D anyway. A key feature of the box edition OD&D is d6 for hit points and damage. Black Hack doesn't have that. But if you add in supplements that do have that, and the thief, then Black Hack is missing all the other extra bits and classes that make supplement OD&D very very close to AD&D!
Nice article tho, but the lack of concrete differences between those editions makes counting very hard. But maybe this is a point you'll be getting too in part 2