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Message: <blockquote data-quote="T. Foster" data-source="post: 3011219" data-attributes="member: 16574">The first D&D Basic Set (blue-book set released in 1977, edited by J. Eric Holmes), used material from the original 1974 set, some material from D&D Supplement I: Greyhawk (1975), and some material from then-in-the-works AD&D (apparently the latter was all added to Dr. Holmes' manuscript by Gary Gygax in the editing stage). So the Holmes book includes, for instance, the thief class, different hit-die types for different classes, magic-users' "% to know" spells chart, some spells (magic missile, shield, etc.) and some monsters (bugbears, rust monsters, carrion crawlers, gelatinous cubes, etc.) from Supplement I (but does not include some of the other rules from that supplement, like exceptional (percentile) strength, demi-human thieves, the paladin, the half elf, variable damage by weapon type, or the weapon vs. AC chart), and includes some spells (such as Ray of Enfeeblement and Tenser's Floating Disc) that weren't in OD&D at all but would show up in the AD&D Players Handbook a year later. The Holmes set also uses a "5-prong" alignment system (lawful good/chaotic good/neutral/lawful evil/chaotic evil) that was introduced by Gary Gygax in "The Strategic Review" (predecessor to Dragon magazine) and is implicitly mentioned in D&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry (1976), but wasn't incorporated into the actual rules until AD&D (by which time, of course, 4 more alignments had been added -- neutral good, lawful neutral, chaotic neutral, and neutral evil).The 1981 version of the Basic Set (red book w/ Erol Otus cover, edited by Tom Moldvay) for the most part retains the same material as the Holmes set (human thieves and different hit dice by class are still included, demi-human thieves, paladins, and the weapon-vs-AC chart are still excluded) but removes the AD&D-isms (alignments are back to the 3-prong system of the original rules, Tenser's Floating Disc becomes simply "Floating Disc," no references to "see AD&D for more info") and makes a couple of key changes which are, in most people's minds, what really sets Moldvay and after apart from OD&D and Holmes: 1) in place of the ad-hoc bonuses and penalties from ability scores in OD&D and Holmes (i.e. Dex 13+ gives +1 to hit with missiles, Con 15+ gives +1 hit point per die, high Wis gives no bonus at all unless you're a cleric) Moldvay went to a "universal" bonus/penalty chart that applies to all ability scores (so a score of 13-15 always gives a +1 bonus to whatever that stat affects, a score of 16-17 always gives a +2 bonus, etc.); and 2) in place of having dwarves and halflings be races that were always members of the fighter class and elves be a race that's always a member of both the fighter and magic-user classes, Moldvay cut out the middle man and declared "dwarf," "elf," and "halfling" to be classes in and of themselves. Another, smaller impact, change that Moldvay (and Steve Marsh and David Cook, who co-edited the companion Expert Set) did was to standardize the number of magic-user/elf and cleric spells at each level -- in OD&D and Holmes the progression was irregular (8 1st level m-u spells, expanded to 11 in Supp I; 10 2nd level expanded to 16 in Supp I; 14 3rd level expanded to 18 in Supp I, etc.), Moldvay/Marsh/Cook standardized this at 12 spells per level for magic-users/elves and 8 spells per level for clerics, which meant adding spells in some cases, deleting them in others. Another thing perhaps worth mentioning is that the Cook/Marsh Expert Set is actually much closer to the original OD&D set than the Basic Set is, because it doesn't include anything from Supplement I or AD&D that wasn't already included in the Holmes and Moldvay Basic Sets -- so while the Expert Set includes rules for thieves of 4th+ levels and continues to follow the Supp I hit-die procedure (1 die per level up to "name" level, then a fixed number of hp per level thereafter) it doesn't include any of the higher level spells (7th+ for magic-users, 6th+ for clerics), monsters (liches, titans, beholders, metallic dragons, etc.) or magic items (+4 and +5 weapons and armor, Deck of Many Things, Sphere of Annihilation, magical books and tomes, etc.) from Supplement I.The 1983 versions of the Basic and Expert Sets (red and blue boxes, Larry Elmore covers, edited by Frank Mentzer) follow the 1981 rules very closely -- the only differences are that some of the progressions (spells, saving throws, thief skills, etc.) are slowed down a bit (the 1981 progressions tend to "max out" at 14th level, whereas the 1983 progressions are intended to carry on through to 36th level). The later sets in that series (Companion Set in 1984, Master Set in 1985, Immortals Set in 1986, Gazeteer series starting in 1987) added much new material that isn't based in the OD&D rules (such as the proto-prestige classes and new weapons and armors from the Companion Set, weapon mastery from the Master Set, and the skills system and assorted new/variant classes from the Gazeteers) and if you integrate that material (as was done in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia (1991)) the result will be quite a bit different from OD&D. But as long as you stick only to the Basic and Expert sets, the rules are quite similar to the 1974 rules (plus about 1/3 to 1/2 the material from Supplement I). Certainly closer than either set is to AD&D.</blockquote>

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