Dungeons and Dragons Basic
D&D Basic was the first edition of the game that actually felt like a role-playing game, rather than a supplement to a traditional figurine-based battle game. I have no experience of Original D&D, so I will not do it a disservice and talk about it here, as if I do.
This edition of Dungeons and Dragons offered several ways to get your foot through the door. The Red box, and Red box revised were obvious choices for those of us who were fortunate enough to get our greedy little hands on them. I owned a copy of the BECMI edition, with the revised rules by Frank Mentzer, the evocative cover by Larry Elmore and the internal art of Elmore and Jeff Easley.
What a great product. Two books separated the material for players and dungeon masters, and a handy group of dice and counters rounded out the contents. A nice introductory adventure helped you learn the basic rules of the game as you went along and this got you straight into the action, which was great. This was entry level D&D and I'm sure no end of players my age cut their teeth on this set.
Later additions to the line included a companion set, followed by expert, master and immortal boxed sets, each adding fresh rules to the game as your heroes gained levels of experience. This was great if you could get them. Not so much if you lived in a small city with only one toy store with any interest in stocking TTRPG's at all. #BOO!
That's where the Cyclopedia came in. What a book! As a fan of old school style roleplay, it's a fantastic resource from cover to cover. The awesome Aaron Allston (RIP) collated the information from each of the boxed sets into one hefty tome. An amazing cover showed a knight on horseback being chased down by an evil-looking black dragon, another masterpiece by Easley. Internal art was handled by Terry Dykstra.
I honestly miss the days where projects were handled by one artist like with the Cyclopedia. Modern book publishers could learn a thing or two from the giants who's shoulders they stand upon. I understand the risk: If the artist isn't to your liking, then the book is sullied. However, I believe one great artist trumps several great works with a smattering of mediocre and even poor work, which is the risk you take when hiring a dozen artists for a book.
The Cyclopedia allowed you to create a variety of classes but was very quirky in how it did so. Let me break it down for you:
The human fighter, upon reaching 9th level, could become holder of a domain, a lordling basically. He could eventually become a King of his own lands. However, if he chose to forgo this option she could become a Paladin, a Knight with a liege lord, or an Avenging hero. Each option had requirements to meet and offered perks to the character. The Paladin seemed best though, as at 9th level he'd gain the spells and abilities of a third level cleric on top of his own mighty fighter traits.
The Cleric can choose to rise up the ranks of his holy order or travel to smite foes of his god. Not as inspiring as the fighter, but flavourful certainly.
The thief had options to become a guild member, rise up the ranks to owning their own guild. Or, become a rogue, which offered chances to find random treasure maps on a weekly basis.
The wizard gets to build a tower should they wish. Or they can go work for a lord as a Magist, for a salary, or strike out on their own as a Magus, attracting many strong heroes to their side.
I like the concept, but it's a little clunky. I never played long enough to get to the levels required anyway, so I can't really comment on how they felt to play. Typically, with the older editions, heroes stood more chance of dying, at least that's how it felt to me, so we never really got to that level before we were looking to build other heroes.
If the DM allowed, human characters could also be a Druid (after min 9 ranks of cleric) or a Mystic, which is essentially the origin of Monk with all the unarmed nonsense that the Monk class has today, including a touch of death once per day. I imagine this class was banned in most households.
Where the book really gets quirky is in its treatment of demi human races as character classes. Elf, Dwarf and Halfling. Take your pick. Elf is a warrior-mage. Dwarf is a fighter. Halfling is a thief. Each demi-human would eventually be outpaced by their human counterpart. For example, the warrior would get more hit points, the mage would have access to more and better spells and so forth. The book assured the reader that this had been balanced out by their unique class abilities, but it always felt a bit off to me. I can see why this gets dropped in later editions.
The rest of the book takes you through spells, advanced levels of play, and has a neat monster section, which was further enhanced with the Creature Catalogue as a later release.
This edition of Dungeons & Dragons was well supported with lines of adventures, supplemental gazetteers and other cool nuggets. Gazetteers were great for lore, each detailing a chosen race or tribe, such as the Shadow Elves. Some of these races don't exist in modern versions of the game, so it's neat to see something "new". Again, if you were fortunate enough to have a good hobby store, your collection would have been a vast and much desired wonder to behold!
I can't recommend this edition of the game to modern gamers. It's a blast to play if you are looking for a hit of nostalgia, but it's really clunky and I do not like how it handles things like demi-humans. I'm not sure many players of more modern titles would either. More class options would have been welcome, but I must temper my thoughts and remember this is Basic D&D, and more options are presented in its bigger brother, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Much as I personally love it, I know that most of my love comes from nostalgia. The art is so evocative, but the system is super clunky and really isn't something you can just pick up and play.
If you want to explore the old school, there is no better place to start, just be prepared to read and re-read. Or get your hands on the red-box PDF and give that a go. It's super cheap to get into this version of the game. Lots of great PDFs, great lore for you to soak up and amazing art. Old-school fans may find something they like, I know I love it. ENJOY.
Thanks for reading and may your dice always roll 20's.
