What I Liked About Old School Basic Dungeons & Dragons
An old blog post from an old defunct blog that I had...
When I used to play Dungeons & Dragons years ago, there was already a great divide in the game. I embraced the basic game that needed a pen, paper, dice and an imagination. The miniatures and other extras weren't required. It came in one box for something like $10 or $20. It was called Basic Dungeons & Dragons.
This is because Gary Gygax was trying to distance the game from the man who really inspired it, Dave Arneson . Gary added lots and lots of stuff to Advanced D&D, don't get me wrong, but it still stemmed from what Dave was doing before he even called Gary to tell him about it.
This is not an article to bash anybody, because I respect what both men did for table top top role playing games. They really made them happen. Those computer RPG's owe much to what these two pioneers did some 40 years ago.
Gary felt that Basic D&D was a good place to start to get new players in and eventually bring them to the advanced game. Dr. Eric Holmes donated his time to create the first rule book. Then, Tom Moldvay and Frank Mentzer were hired back in 1980, and both made the basic line fly to new heights. It became it's own game.
Moldvay and David Cook did the Basic and Expert rule books that you could play for months with just those two boxed sets. We're talking all you need for somewhere between $20 and $40, and a whole new game every time you played. Both did much for the franchise.
By the time Menzter got his hands on things, he simplified and made Basic D&D so easy a child could play, which was the point. He followed up with rule books for Expert, Companion, Masters and Immortal. It's affectionately referred to in the community as the BECMI line, and fans are still devoted to it to this day.
The reason I liked these games was they were simple and easy to understand. Mentzer Basic D&D even had you playing the game before you know all the rules. I didn't like the advanced line with all of it's rules that felt like you were at school studying for finals or something. You could be up and playing very quickly with the Basic line.
When they dropped this line, the game became more complicated with need of expensive miniatures and other accessories. That is far away from the roots of this game, and many people who might play will look at all of that and turn on their computers to play there instead.
That's a real shame, because if you get a group of people all playing their characters and working together on an adventure, no computer can beat the experience. A stand alone basic game that allows people to continue playing with just those rules would help the cause in my opinion. They need to bring it back.
