OD&D Edition Experience: Did/Do you Play BECM/RC D&D? How Was/Is It?

[CleverNickName]

My mom is visiting from out of town, and she arrived bearing gifts! I am now the proud owner of "The Isle of Dread: A Fifth Edition Conversion & Classic Homage" by Goodman Games. This is my favorite adventure module ever written, bar none. (And if you haven't heard of their Original Adventures Reincarnated series, you should definitely check them out.)

Now I am seriously jonesing for some B/X adventure. With all the talk about the Old School Renaissance and "old school" gaming and etc., I'm seriously considering a rerun of the old BECM rules.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

BECMI is awesome! If you don't have your old BECMI boxes/rules or your RC, you can get them off DriveThru...or you can pick up for free the "Dark Dungeons" retroclone. I love the retroclone so much I bought 6 softbacks and 1 deluxe colour hardback for myself; then gave 5 of the softbacks to my players. TOTALLY worth it!
( Lulu for the Softback )

As an aside, I also absolutely love the "GG Classic Homage" hardbacks they've done. I've bought every single one, and have the current Temple already pre ordered. Even at the ASTRONOMICAL price to get it to me (the first 5 clock in, after Canadian conversion and S/H, at about $175 EACH...and 'more' for the 'double-slipcase' #6 ToEE). Expensive and all that, but the quality is top notch! Easily worth it to me to have on my shelf...right next to all the originals.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[David Howery]

I tried the original 'blue box' set back in 1980, but the people I gamed with quickly switched over to AD&D cuz 'everyone else was doing it' (peer pressure, ya know). It wasn't so terribly different from AD&D that I noticed, although there were some quirks (clerics can't use spells at first level?)...

 

[CleverNickName]

I tried the original 'blue box' set back in 1980, but the people I gamed with quickly switched over to AD&D cuz 'everyone else was doing it' (peer pressure, ya know). It wasn't so terribly different from AD&D that I noticed, although there were some quirks (clerics can't use spells at first level?)...

I had a similar experience with AD&D, but it kinda backfired: instead of switching over to it, I ended up avoiding it for all time.

And that's a shame really, because it was one of the most successful editions of the game and had a huge amount of content. I missed out on a lot of classic D&D adventures because of my bad bad intro experience to AD&D.

 

[Michael Linke]

I tried the original 'blue box' set back in 1980, but the people I gamed with quickly switched over to AD&D cuz 'everyone else was doing it' (peer pressure, ya know). It wasn't so terribly different from AD&D that I noticed, although there were some quirks (clerics can't use spells at first level?)...

The Blue Box wasn't compatible with BX/BECMI. Its rules differed in a lot of ways, and AD&D would have been a natural next-step from there. BECMI wouldn't even exist for another year, or three, depending on whether you want to distinguish between Moldvay's B and Mentzer's B.

 

[CleverNickName]

The Blue Box wasn't compatible with BX/BECMI. Its rules differed in a lot of ways, and AD&D would have been a natural next-step from there. BECMI wouldn't even exist for another year, or three, depending on whether you want to distinguish between Moldvay's B and Mentzer's B.

Yep, there were three different flavors of "basic" back in the day, which still causes a bit of confusion on the forums. To help clear things up, I've created separate links for each of them on Page 1 of this thread (and below, for your convenience).

Basic D&D
B/X D&D
BECMI / Rules Cyclopedia

 

[Yaarel]

Regarding Basic, I never played it.

I am curious about its Mystara setting.

I prefer to see a 5e version of it.

I have no interest in old school gaming mechanics, except how its thematic flavor might be relavent to the setting.

 

[David Howery]

The Blue Box wasn't compatible with BX/BECMI. Its rules differed in a lot of ways, and AD&D would have been a natural next-step from there. BECMI wouldn't even exist for another year, or three, depending on whether you want to distinguish between Moldvay's B and Mentzer's B.

uh... whoops. Yeah, I forgot about the change in direction with Basic that happened after a while...

 

[CleverNickName]

Regarding Basic, I never played it.

I am curious about its Mystara setting.

I prefer to see a 5e version of it.

I have no interest in old school gaming mechanics, except how its thematic flavor might be relavent to the setting.

If you're interested in the Mystara setting (it's my favorite D&D setting, mostly for nostalgia reasons), DriveThruRPG has all of the Gazetteers in both .PDF and Print-On-Demand format.

My collection is now complete!

They range in price from $5-10 for PDFs and $9-26 for print copies.

The "Gazetteer" series never really caught on, which is unfortunate. I preferred it to the "everything everywhere all at once" format of other campaign settings because it allowed me to set the focus: if I intended to play a Viking-themed campaign, for example, I didn't need hundreds of pages about the entire world: I could just pick up GAZ7 and it would have everything I needed.

My advice for someone just looking for an introduction to the Mystara setting: pick up module X1: The Isle of Dread for $5, and/or the Rules Cyclopedia for $10. Both of these books have a brief writeup about these different regions, kingdoms, and territories--once you have an idea of which ones interest you the most, you can go back and order the Gazetteer(s) most relevant to your game.

 

[Yaarel]

If you're interested in the Mystara setting (it's my favorite D&D setting, mostly for nostalgia reasons), DriveThruRPG has all of the Gazetteers in both .PDF and Print-On-Demand format.

View attachment 344723
My collection is now complete!

They range in price from $5-10 for PDFs and $9-26 for print copies.

The "Gazetteer" series never really caught on, which is unfortunate. I preferred it to the "everything everywhere all at once" format of other campaign settings because it allowed me to set the focus: if I intended to play a Viking-themed campaign, for example, I didn't need hundreds of pages about the entire world: I could just pick up GAZ7 and it would have everything I needed.

My advice for someone just looking for an introduction to the Mystara setting: pick up module X1: The Isle of Dread for $5, and/or the Rules Cyclopedia for $10. Both of these books have a brief writeup about these different regions, kingdoms, and territories--once you have an idea of which ones interest you the most, you can go back and order the Gazetteer(s) most relevant to your game.

I prefer this "regional setting" approach as well.