AD&D was already out for years before the Moldvay edition, so on what do you base this claim?If you were to look at the sales figures for Isle of Dread and the DMG, which do you think would be higher?
Well, considering the Moldvay edition is the highest selling RPG product of all time, I'd say that the Isle of Dread probably was seen at more tables than a 1e DMG because it came with the boxed set. Same reason for the Keep on the Borderlands.
So, yeah, I do believe that lots and lots of gamers came to AD&D through the boxed sets.
The Cook and Marsh Expert D&D set included expanded monster and treasure stocking tables for dungeons of 8+ levels. It is rather curious (to say the least) to conclude that dungeons so deep were somehow incompatible with the simultaneous existence of a wilderness to explore, complete with castles, caves, ruins, wizards' towers and assorted little labyrinths.
Yup, 1 page out of 64 is devoted to dungeons. How many pages are devoted to designing a wilderness?
Y'know, people accuse me of misrepresenting their arguements, but, only at certain times. I wonder why that is? What am I getting wrong? You said that the standard of play in 1e is the mega-dungeon, true or false? You said that Q's ideas don't reflect how the game was actually played because of this. Again, am I wrong here?
My point is, the mega-dungeon was not the way the game was played back then because most people came from Basic/Expert where the mega-dungeon most certainly WASN'T the baseline expectation of a campaign.
To me, Q's appraisal of how the game was played follows pretty well how a great many people played AD&D. The poll I put up is still in its infancy, but, out of 12 votes, not a single person has voted for mega dungeons. Certainly not conclusive by any stretch, but, do you think that mega-dungeon play is going to top that poll?