#basic set

I was looking back through the feed and I can’t understate my surprise when I found I had never posted about the 1981 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (or its sibling, which you’ll see tomorrow). What a bonkers oversight!

Anyway, this is Tom Moldvay’s revision of the Holmes Basic Set (1977), tidied up to coincide with  the release of the brand new Expert Set. It is a significant revision, essentially rewriting and expanding the original Dungeons & Dragons rules. The end result is something far more polished (and well-organized) than the preceding iterations. It draws a clearer distinction from AD&D as well. Probably most importantly, the rules lean into Holmes’ idea of teaching people how to play by reading the rulebook, something OD&D and AD&D do not do at all. Moldvay’s sample dungeon, a haunted keep, it a bit better suited to this than Holmes’s nebulous cavern complex. This is reinforced with the inclusion of B2 – The Keep on the Borderlands (though I still think B1 – In Search of the Unknown is a better teaching module).  

This week on the podcast, we're talking about the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, the iconic red box. We also chat about the Mixtape Massacre board game and the indie TTRPG distro/publisher Exalted Funeral.

Listen here! 

I’m tackling the classics this week, starting with the original Dungeons & Dragons basic set from 1977.

Unlike Tom Moldvay’s 1981 Basic Set, which was its own self-contained system, this box of rules was born out of the White Box rules and, though not 100% compatible, was intended as a gateway to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which saw its first release, the Monster Manual, the same year. Aside of the charmingly crude cover art by David C. Sutherland III, it is short on memorable illustrations, though there is a side view cutaway of a dungeons that looks like something out of a science text book from the period that I absolutely love.

My copy is from 1979, which you can tell because instead of dice, it has an insert of numbered cardboard chits. Cut ‘em up, put ‘em in a container and draw your number at random. There’s a coupon included to purchase actual dice – apparently, there was a shortage going on at the time.