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

[Theo R Cwithin]

Yes! Red Box Basic was my first.

I got it for Christmas when I was 10, after I was smitten by my older cousin's 1e Monster Manual during Thanksgiving of that year. Of BECMI, I also had a Companion set, but not Masters or Immortals. (My Expert set was from B/X.) Also had a handful of B and X modules, (I had a little crush on Rahasia, I think) which I ran as one-offs back then. I only had an irregular group of players, and the idea of a coherent "campaign" hadn't really sunk in yet.

I still remember going to my cramped and dingy little FLGS to get Horror on the Hill, only to discover (to my horror!) that my fistful of dollars was two bucks short. The guy who ran the place was cool and let me take it anyway, on the promise that I'd bring the difference next week. And I did.

Many years later, after college, I bought a Rules Cyclopedia at a used book shop. I love that book, but have never actually used it to game.

Right now I'm kind of semi-stranded because of the pandemic, and practically all my earthly possessions are locked up faraway in storage. But one thing I do have with me are my trusty, lumpy, yellowing dice from that old Red Box Basic set:

 

[CleverNickName]

@Theo R Cwithin I have that exact set of dice, right down to the crayon color. (Mine are in the same shape, too.) Good times, good times.

Remember getting your first set of Ice Dice, and being the envy of your classmates?

 

[Reynard]

Aleena: my first media crush at 10 years old.

Damn you, Bargle.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

@Theo R Cwithin
Remember getting your first set of Ice Dice, and being the envy of your classmates?

I just bought all my dice one at a time out of my FLGS's fishbowl of singles-- for years! But I admit I was very proud of my first crystal d20.
Oh how she gleamed, like a diamond from heaven!

 

[Zardnaar]

Still one if the best editions maybe the best.

The only edition that works ok much past level 10.

Very good adventures as well, some if the best if all time.

B/X was my first followed by the RC campaign 1994.

 

[Bacon Bits]

The first several months I played was either BE (no CMI) or B/X. I'm not sure because I didn't own the books then. It was fun and got me into the game, but ultimately it's not a particularly good version of the game to play. Class balance is all over the place, the mechanics are chaos, and it's really not well suited to a modern role-playing game.

I say it in every one of these thread, but the truth is that it took until 3e to shed the major design flaws from OD&D. I've got all kinds of nostalgia for my early games of D&D where everything felt more mystical and esoteric, but it felt that way because the game had a completely incoherent design that was patched together over a dozen or so years and authors. The game felt arcane... because that's just what it was in the bad sense of the term. We just didn't know any better. We felt like that's how it was because the mechanics were trying to be evocative of the mystery and adventure of the game world. Nope. It's just lack of design.

 

[dave2008]

I think the Immortals set that was released for the RC was Wrath of the Immortals and the set released for the BECMI sets was simply the immortals set. They had some differences between them, but as I ever really studied one of them (I think it was the immortals set, which had different levels of immortality which you gained) I can't say the differences between them off the top of my head.

Yes, RC only included BECM of the original boxes. Wrath of the Immortals covered set 5. It simplified/streamlined the Immortal Rules a bit, expanded the number of Immortal levels (from 30-36), and tweaked a few things, but they are very similar.

 

[dave2008]

I started with the red box and the MM. Didn't realize they were different games. Soon after got ECMI and the MM2, PHB, & DMG. Didn't realize until we started playing 4e (20+ years later) that we were using two different systems for one game.

 

[atanakar]

View attachment 120323

My d20 was so damaged that it didn't stop rolling until it fell off the table. In this case it is a good thing they don't make them like they used to!

 

[CleverNickName]

I admit, it would drive me crazy to try to run a long-term Basic D&D campaign, and I'd need a hundred pages of house rules just to make the attempt. The BECM rules don't have a lot of the elements of a "modern" RPG...all the different races and subraces, all the classes and subclasses, the backgrounds, the feats--and that's just on the players' side of the screen! A (mostly) balanced Challenge Rating system for the monsters and a single, unified dice mechanic are just the tip of the iceberg.

But while I'm being honest: you know what BECMI also didn't have? It didn't have rigorous board-game rules for movement, flanking, board position, and line of sight. It didn't have Advantage, inspiration, reactions, opportunity attacks, and other arguments-waiting-to-happen. There was no such thing as a "power combo" or "optimized build." It didn't have ten different ways to cheat death, with half of them available at 1st level.

Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't give up the modern RPG game design of 5E and switch back to the Basic D&D rules. No way, those days are long gone. But history became legend, legend became myth, and some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. I miss the days when my players cared more about the story we were all telling, and less about their position on a grid or how many times they get to reroll the same die.