My Experience with B/X #DnD Back in the 1980's

#OSR #BECMI #dungeonsanddragons #B/X

Going back to the 1980's from an old timer who who was there. How were the red/blue Basic/Expert sets received in their day? Nowadays they are remembered fondly, but was that the case back then?

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[chameleondream]

I was 11 in 1982 and that's exactly how it happened.
I started with B/X and jumped to AD&D just as soon as I could. We all saw B/X as a kiddified version of the better game that was AD&D - until we played it.
AD&D modules were great, but the rules were all over the place. Segments? Psionics? Bards? It got annoying trying to keep track of what we were using and what we were choosing to ignore.
Unearthed Arcana came out and between that and an ever growing stack of Dragon magazines our game had slowed to a crawl, and that's where my friends and I lost interest in it.

So even back then, by 1985 I was longing for the simpler funner games that we had started with back in 1982. I didn't want to admit that I wanted to go back and play B/X (because I was fourteen and that just wouldn't be cool) I kinda did. As an adult? I have no interest in AD&D aside from the adventures. While it's always good to have stuff to play with, ultimately less is more when it comes to the rules of an RPG.

[elliotvernon]

Props for getting Erol Otus’s epoch defining work! We played B/X at lunch break at school because that is what everyone had. Outside of school I played AD&D. We spent a long, cold winter term going through X2 Castle Amber - It is still one of my favorite modules.

[KabukiKid]

I remember being excited to move from B/X to AD&D, but we retained some things from B/X that we liked better... like initiative, for instance. :-) For us, it has always been an amalgam game of AD&D 1e and B/X. :-) Still is!

[joelkurowski]

My favorite modern artist and one of the only ones that comes close to the style of Erol Otus is Peter Mullen. He does a lot of work for OSE and Dungeon Crawl Classics.

[RodBatten]

Started with Moldvay/BX and it kind of grew into a weird hybrid as I picked up the AD&D books. Today I have rediscovered an appreciation for the BX style rules, it's the simplicity and balance of them. I picked up the Rules Cyclopedia a while ago, too, but I still prefer the Moldvay rules.

The mural is hella cool!

[Michael-Has-Opinions]

My problem was I bought the boxed sets, then the 2E AD&D Player's Handbook. But then for some reason the only bookstore in my city that sold them decided to revert back to 1st edition AD&D. So I had a complete hodgepdodge of rules. In my mind they all blended into one game.

[chrisg]

Your story is almost identical to mine. I started with Holmesian Basic and then in the Fall of 1980, I met a guy in junior high who played and told me, Basic is for babies; you need to get Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. And the rest is history. Love hearing these stories from fellow old school gamers.

[ARKavli]

I loved that basic set. My cousin Tammy was my first GM. Later when playing with friends, that d4 confused us--we didn't know which numbers to read so we lifted it up and added the numbers on the bottom. LOL. That cover is epic, but as a kid I always remember thinking, "Why's he fighting a dragon with a weapon that only does d6?" Good times.

[Tabletop_Epics]

I originally started playing through 2nd Edition when I was 12, after years of fawning over the amazing art from the D&D comic ads and hearing about how my family believed such games to be evil. It wasn't until 2006, when I was 21, that I found the Moldvay Basic manual in a used bookstore.

One night, while taking a break from an unfortunate series of chaotic 3.5 sessions, I blazed through a reading of that Basic manual and whipped up a quick adventure based around an abandoned outpost used as bait for a band of murderous goblins. Me, my wife, and our friend played for hours, and we found that it was so much smoother and more interesting than what we had been experiencing in our 3.5 game.

That night was a valuable lesson for me, and it was the beginning of the end of my interest in new games. At least an end for the feeling of compulsion to want to buy the new cool thing, because when it comes to tabletop roleplaying games it seems clear that older is better. I have yet to be shaken from this belief.

[dalethompson]

I started playing with some friends in high school in 1977. One friend had Holmes Basic, and I was in that group for a few months as we played the included adventure. Then some other friends invited me to their group. Our DM had a copy of the White Box. I still have my set (just completed it with Gods, Demigods and Heroes a couple of years back). We were a bit confused when we got the AD&D Monster Manual since many stats were different. This game we played for 4 years. The DM wrote 100% of the material himself. Later he wrote a novel manuscript from our adventures. I don’t think this ever went anywhere, but our adventures seemed pretty epic to us! 😊

[tartisan]

This experience in the video pretty much matches every group I knew in the early 80’s. Once we went to AD&D, we never went back. Didn’t play B/X again until I taught D&D to my kids.

[fleetcenturion]

I started with AD&D when I was about 12. Our group of dumb kids was kind of the opposite, keeping the same characters for years, rarely if ever changing them out, and never bothering to look up half the rules.

[ryannilsson]

WOW! Love the mural! Such a great idea in your game space.

I’m really glad that B/X is finally being appreciated for what it is. I didn’t grow up with it; I only discovered it later in life, but I definitely caught the bug, and am an Old School Essentials man.

[patricksanders]

Great video. I loved seeing the stats for the Dragonlance characters as I was also reading the novels. BTW, technically the boxes you discussed are the B/X sets and not BECMI, which came later.

[jeframdenkar]

Honestly my biggest regret was having to sell my older books.

Looking back it was clear they were amazing products.

[stevenfoster]

My experience was a little different than the normal gamer. I was 23 in 1978 when I first picked up the blue box. By the 80's we had a regular group of mid 20 somethings that were all married, employed and some of us had children. So for us, we could buy about anything we wanted. So D&D fell by the wayside and we played other games. Chivalry & Sorcery became our main game.

[BockwinkleB]

I started playing in 3rd grade, 1980 or so. Even then I thought BX was like junior DnD and was jealous when my friend got the ADnD books.

[solitaryrpg]

The 80’s is when I started playing. The older kids played Advanced while we played the box sets. Some of my best memories is just sitting around the table playing our games. Keep up all the great videos

[surlyunicorn]

That gaming room artwork is freaking awesome! I’m partial to the Larry Elmore cover myself as I grabbed the red box edition in 1985 and love his style, but man there is definitely something about that early art on the covers and also the B&W art inside the modules and manuals. Thanks for sharing that.

[thatsnotoneofmeatsmanyuses]

I still remember my brother's frustration:
Brother: "What race do you want to be?
Me: "Elf"
Brother: "And what class do you want to be?"
Me: "Elf"
Brother: "It doesn't work that way anymore"
Me: "What choices do I have?"
Brother: "You can be any of the classes on this list"
Me: "OK I want to change my character, then"
Brother: "Fine, what race?"
Me: "Dwarf"
Brother: "And what class?"
Me: "Dwarf"

In my defense, I might have been all of 6.