I was digging around my old D&D stuff, and came upon all my Basic D&D
materials. I thought people might be interested in reviews of the
B-series of modules and sets. Many of them are still available for
relatively cheap prices, and it is handy to know something about them
before you buy. Since I'm probably going to get rid of most or all of
these soon, I might as well write up a review of them before they
disappear.
Below is the review of the Basic Set in its two incarnations that I own -
1981 and 1983. The others will follow soon.
Basic Rules Set (1981)
This single booklet was produced in 1981 by TSR Hobbies with 64 pages.
The editor is credited as Tom Moldvay, and there is a picture of a sea
dragon rearing out of the water facing two adventurers: a male fighter
with spear and shield and a female mage with a torch and a glowing green
ball.
This rule-book was designed to cover characters from level 1 to 3. There
were eight chapters: Introduction, Player Character Information, Spells,
The Adventure, The Encounter, Monsters, Treasure, and Dungeon Master
Information. The rule-book actually does a surprisingly good job in
covering everything you need to know to run a game.
One thing that struck me is the instructional nature of the rule-book.
Essentially all of the interior illustrations are designed to elucidate
certain points. A good example is the alignment section. It describes
Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic, and then shows a picture of a black-clad
thief about to kill a goblin prisoner. A white-clad dwarf is attempting
to stop the thief, while a grey-clad fighter ignores the scene. These
characters are supposed to be iconic alignments.
In addition, there are many examples of correct play. There is a
step-by-step example of creating a player character, a full-page example
of combat (which contains an amusing use of bribery by a Lawful
character), a small sample dungeon with map, and another full-page that
describes the beginning of a standard session.
Another interesting facet of this rules set is the gender identification
of the illustrations and how it meshes with the text. In the
illustrations, the female characters are usually mages or elves, and in
the character creation section, a woman chooses a mage while a man
chooses a fighter. In contrast, in the play examples, the fighter and
cleric are female, while the dwarf and elf are male. It is pretty clear
that the artists conceived of fighters as male and wizards as female,
but the writers seemed to have a different idea.
At the end, there is a full-page of inspirational source material, a
glossary, and a good index.
The game really is just Dungeons and Dragons. The section on DMing has
a number of steps to create an adventure. Step B is Decide on a
Setting. The choices are Castle or tower, caves or cavern, abandoned
mine, crypt or tomb, ancient temple, and stronghold or town. Four of
the six are dungeons, and the rest are essentially set up to be that
way. Step E is Stock the Dungeon, which consists of putting in
monsters, treasure, and traps. All six dragons are presented in the
monster section, and they are pretty difficult to defeat, ranging up to
14 hit dice for a gold dragon.
The game is also hack-and-slash. XP is gained by totaling "the XP from
all treasures recovered plus all monsters defeated". The interaction
and role-playing as presented happens within the party, not really
between the party and others.
This rule-book was very self-contained, and had a lot of examples to help
the DM and players along. It still is a pretty well-designed
rule-book. It came packaged with B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, which
I will cover in a separate review.
Basic Rules Set (1983)
In the 1983 version, TSR took a different tack. They split the rule-book
up into two parts: a 64-page Players Manual and a 48-page Dungeon
Masters Rulebook. Both feature a red dragon on the cover attacking a
warrior with a horned helmet swinging a glowing sword.
The Player's Manual contained a six-page choose your own adventure style
introduction with you playing a male fighter venturing into caves after
Bargle the Infamous. You fight a snake, scoop up treasure, meet a
friendly female cleric, fight goblins, and try to resist Bargle's magic.
You can either succeed or fail. Though somewhat limited, this adventure
has the classic elements: combat, danger, interaction with others,
magic, and treasure. It's still a good introduction to the game in its
essence.
There is also another, larger adventure that you can play in the same
style later, where it asks you to map as you go along.
Other than this, the manual just presents the various character
classes, spells, and miscellaneous items. This is exactly the same
rules as the 1981 rule-book.
The Dungeon Master's Rulebook has a large sample adventure with boxed
text that is ready to run. I still remember getting creamed by the carrion crawler in the beginning. After that come various procedures with
explanations for abilities and spells, monsters, treasure, and tips on
creating dungeons.
The content was mostly the same, but all the introductory and reference
material was expanded to more gently introduce people to the game. They
also used essentially two artists throughout: Elmore and Easley, which
gives the product a more unified and better presented look. In
addition, the production values were a lot higher, so it is much more
enjoyable to read. On the other hand, it did lose some of its vibrancy
and quirkiness - the alignment chapter reprints the text but loses the
funny illustration.
Conclusions
At this point, these are only of historical value, since third edition
contains examples of play much more extensive than those described here.
If you really wanted to get your hands on original D&D, I would
recommend the Rules cyclopedia, still the best single game product D&D
has ever produced.
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(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)