D&D General Veteran fans - did you think of Basic D&D and AD&D as completely different games?

[Deset Gled]

As a kid at the time, more than anything else I remember the separation between D&D and AD&D being confusing.

 

[dragoner]

Holmes said to buy the AD&D books ...

 

[LordEntrails]

We assumed AD&D was just an advanced version of Basic. That once you had AD&D you could start using those rules as an enhancement or extension to Basic. Once we had the AD&D PHB, that's what we used for character creation. But all other resources were interchangeable.

No, to us, they were not different games.

 

[nevin]

I've been randomly pulling PDFs out of my DriveThruRPG/DM Guild collection to read lately, and just finished 1982's Polyhedron #8. (Which is no longer on DM Guild, alas - I suspect their Polyhedron issues were pulled due to some unforeseen rights issues.)

In Frank Mentzer's Q&A column "Dispel Confusion", he makes the following comment, after an answer on rolling ability scores in D&D vs. AD&D:


Presumably this was the official TSR line (though I'd be interested to hear if there were contradictory statements). But is this what veteran players really assumed back in the day? A wall between Basic D&D and AD&D, with nothing meant to be used interchangeably?

Yes

 

[Jer]

Not a wall, but there IS a separation. Even between 1E and 2E there is the same separation, despite 2E being deliberately designed to be exceptionally backward-compatible.

Hilariously I remember real anger from folks over 2e being "so different" from AD&D 1e that it might as well have been a completely different game. Oh if only I was still in touch with those folks when 3e came around...

 

[Willie the Duck]

Holmes said to buy the AD&D books ...

Until it didn't. Later printings instead suggested switching to oD&D after 3rd level. IIRC, it was the first book the make a change based on the Arneson legal dispute.

 

[dragoner]

Until it didn't. Later printings instead suggested switching to oD&D after 3rd level. IIRC, it was the first book the make a change based on the Arneson legal dispute.

Sure, and when I bought the expert book, it was like "this is weird", because it was trying to be a different system it felt like. Which meant I probably should have bought basic again, though I didn't. By the mid- to late 80's everyone had a home ruled system anyways.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Growing up, we considered Basic and AD&D to be different games. Once we started playing AD&D, we didn't go back to Basic. But one thing that clicked for me in a Plot Points podcast was the statement that some people were playing AD&D with a Basic engine under the hood. And that resonated with me. Our understanding of how to play the game was very much by way of Basic; we were more likely to ignore stuff that added too much complexity to that baseline.

 

[Lanefan]

Hilariously I remember real anger from folks over 2e being "so different" from AD&D 1e that it might as well have been a completely different game.

As do I, but IME that anger was more to do with the change in tone (i.e. sanitization) of the game rather than any rules changes.

 

[pogre]

Presumably this was the official TSR line (though I'd be interested to hear if there were contradictory statements). But is this what veteran players really assumed back in the day? A wall between Basic D&D and AD&D, with nothing meant to be used interchangeably?

Not for us. We mixed and matched all the time. We were aware they were different sets of rules we just chose to use what we liked. It was part of coming from O-D&D where you mixed all kinds of things in - heck the rules even referenced other rule systems and games like Chainmail and Outdoor Survival.