OSR Why B/X?

[Campbell]

The reason is Tom Moldvay. Not only was his edit the most consistent and clear text with straightforward play procedures - he also was responsible for many of modules that are held up as a gold standard in the OSR community (Castle Amber, Isle of Dread, The Lost City). His approach to refereeing and adventure design (that is concerned with being both challenging and mostly fair) are foundational to the community.

To a fair number of people in the OSR community Moldvay is D&D.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The reason is Tom Moldvay. Not only was his edit the most consistent and clear text with straightforward play procedures - he also was responsible for many of modules that are held up as a gold standard in the OSR community (Castle Amber, Isle of Dread, The Lost City). His approach to refereeing and adventure design (that is concerned with being both challenging and mostly fair) are foundational to the community.

To a fair number of people in the OSR community Moldvay is D&D.

I know I'm a big fan of his work. The first of his seminal undead-themed articles for 1e was published in Dragon #126, the first issue of Dragon I ever bought.

 

[deganawida]

The reason is Tom Moldvay. Not only was his edit the most consistent and clear text with straightforward play procedures - he also was responsible for many of modules that are held up as a gold standard in the OSR community (Castle Amber, Isle of Dread, The Lost City). His approach to refereeing and adventure design (that is concerned with being both challenging and mostly fair) are foundational to the community.

To a fair number of people in the OSR community Moldvay is D&D.

It takes a special kind of genius to not only condense an art form into a brief but eloquent synopsis, but to lay a framework for others to use to expand for decades to come.

When anyone asks me what D&D is, Moldvay’s Basic is what I point to. It’s First Principles stated as cleanly and clearly as anything you can find elsewhere.

 

[TwoSix]

Core 2E wasn't so much "more medieval" as it was "more paperback medieval fantasy." There was a recursive relationship between D&D and paperback fantasy in the 80s and until the more experimental 90s both hewed pretty close to the same sets of tropes and aesthetics.

It was also a case of the game catching up and adapting to the current mainstream in fantasy. The post-Tolkien paperback fantasy books most of us grew up with didn't exist when D&D started in '74; they didn't become a fixture in bookstores until Del Rey started publishing Shannara, Thomas Covenant, and Xanth in '77.

You can definitely see a cause-effect relationship between the monster success of the Dragonlance Chronicles (first published in '84), TSR's subsequent focus on novel publishing, and 2E's change in focus to heroic, story-driven play (or "Hickmanization").