Ask me anything about Holmes Basic D&D (1977)

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What would your thoughts be on a potential horror-themed game that's directly based on the Holmes rules?

I've been thinking of giving Holmes Basic a second look and I think it's unique inclusion of high-level monsters in an otherwise low-level game system could lend itself well to a survival horror campaign (or even a full OSR variant game, if one were inclined)
 
K_Peterson said:
Does Holmes BD&D exist in PDF?
Unless I'm mistaken, it seems like it's the only version of D&D that's not on DTRPG. (You've got your OD&D, B/X, BECMI, Rules Cyclopedia, 1E-5E, but not this version of BD&D).
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You are correct. It's a weird omission, particularly since Wizards used to sell a pdf of it back in an earlier iteration of the pdf program (when most of the pdfs were terrible). I don't know whether it's an oversight, a lack of a good scan, or there's some reason they don't want to release it.

I asked about it once on the En World DMs Guild thread but didn't get a response. I support Vile's effort to request it from Wizards (and just submitted a new request to them). At least the Sample Dungeon is available as a free if poorly scanned pdf (see link above).
 
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Bunch said:
I had an odd personal experience with Holmes. It was the first boxed set I ever played with. We'd already encountered OD&D but we only owned parts of the books as odd as that sounds. When the PHB came out we just integrated AD&D bits into Holmes.
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I can relate. I started with Holmes, but late - it was 1982 and went pretty quickly to AD&D, getting all of the rulebooks in about a year, but I really kept playing "D&D" the same way I'd learn with Holmes, like using the simplified combat rounds of Holmes rather than switching to the detailed combat procedures in the AD&D DMG.

Decades làter I found out a relative was a close friend of Holmes during the period he was writing it. He apparently played it regularly with his kids.
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Holmes' son Chris is a regular at the NTRPGCon every June, and I've played in some of this games and gotten to know him and heard a lot about the games with his father in the '70s. They started out playing OD&D using the Warlock supplement and didn't switch to more standardized D&D until he was working on the Basic rulebook.

Two of Chris' very first characters were Boinger the Hobbit and Zereth the Elf, whose Holmes later immortalized in several short stories in Dragon magazine and the novel the Maze of Peril, which is based on their actual early adventures. This fiction has been collected in Tales of Peril, available from Black Blade Publishing, for which I contributed a bibliography of Holmes' writings.

Would Chris have known your relative who knew J. Eric Holmes? If your relative has any stories or reminisces that they'd care to share, I'd love to hear them.
 
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Zenopus said:
I can relate. I started with Holmes, but late - it was 1982 and went pretty quickly to AD&D, getting all of the rulebooks in about a year, but I really kept playing "D&D" the same way I'd learn with Holmes, like using the simplified combat rounds of Holmes rather than switching to the detailed combat procedures in the AD&D DMG.



Holmes' son Chris is a regular at the NTRPGCon every June, and I've played in some of this games and gotten to know him and heard a lot about the games with his father in the '70s. They started out playing OD&D using the Warlock supplement and didn't switch to more standardized D&D until he was working on the Basic rulebook.

Two of Chris' very first characters were Boinger the Hobbit and Zereth the Elf, whose Holmes later immortalized in several short stories in Dragon magazine and the novel the Maze of Peril, which is based on their actual early adventures. This fiction has been collected in Tales of Peril, available from Black Blade Publishing, for which I contributed a bibliography of Holmes' writings.

Would Chris have known your relative who knew J. Eric Holmes? If your relative has any stories or reminisces that they'd care to share, I'd love to hear them.
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I don't know. They might but I'm not going to ask more about it at this time for unrelated to Holmes reasons.
 
Bunch said:
I don't know. They might but I'm not going to ask more about it at this time for unrelated to Holmes reasons.
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No problem. Thank you for the quick reply.
 
Edgewise said:
Isn’t Expert the standard next step here?
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Using the "X" from B/X is a fine choice; I even made a Holmes Basic + Cook Expert reference sheet at one point, which is available on my Holmes Ref page.

As an aside, there is some evidence that the Expert set started development simply as an expansion to Holmes; in Dragon #35, Gygax wrote:

"Design is now hard at work on the second boxed D&D game, the Expert Set. It will take players through at least 12th level of experience, tie in the best of the “Original” material, and actually add some new classes, spells, magic, monsters and so on."

There is no mention here of revising the Basic set; so the reader at the time would just assume that this Expert Set was going to be an expansion to Holmes. The material is also quite different from the Expert Set that actually appeared which suggests a shift in design priorities at some point.
 
Doc Sammy said:
What would your thoughts be on a potential horror-themed game that's directly based on the Holmes rules?

I've been thinking of giving Holmes Basic a second look and I think it's unique inclusion of high-level monsters in an otherwise low-level game system could lend itself well to a survival horror campaign (or even a full OSR variant game, if one were inclined)
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Just going by the monster list it should be pretty straightforward. Aside from the Hammer House of Horror stuff like the plethora of undead and lycanthropes (and slimes), one of the most disturbing lines is hidden in the entry for purple worms: "These huge and hungry monsters lurk nearly everywhere beneath the surface of the earth."

Having such high-level monsters in a low-level character game is very similar to the concept behind Call of Cthulhu, so if you can get your players to adopt that mindset instead of thinking they have to kill everything they encounter you should be fine. I did run a short campaign along those lines, with the characters being very young surviving family members of a shipwreck (caused by a shoggoth black pudding). It was short because it worked a little too well, the theme of children in a survival horror setting got a bit too grim to be fun.

Like all level-based games, though, it might be difficult to keep up the tension if the campaign went beyond the 3 levels in Holmes.
 
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Akrasia said:
Cool thread! I started with the Holmes box set (the "chits" version) back around 1980 and still think fondly of it.

There isn't a lot of art in the Holmes basic rules. But I like what little there is, especially the Trampier pieces.

The Trampier illustration of the evil magic-user casting "Web" on p.16 is a favourite, as is the picture of the lizardman riding the lizard (with a tiny lizard on his helmet) on p.3 (not sure who did that one, but based on the style I think Sutherland?).
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Yes, the lizard-riding lizardman is by David Sutherland. He even customized a similar mini using a Dragontooth Saurian miniature.
I wrote up the lizardman, as the desert-dwelling Regal Lizardman, for a Holmes zine, Fantastic! Exciting! Imaginative!

What are others' favourites?
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It's hard for me to pick. I have an Artists of Holmes Basic page here that might be of interest. The art actually changed some between the 1st edition and the 2nd/3rd editions. Three images were removed and several others were added; and the alignment diagram was replaced with a new version.

Others that I Iove besides what you mentioned:
-The title page battle by David Sutherland, showing three adventurers (Magic-User, Fighter, Cleric - the three original characters) battling orcs.
-Wizard and Gnolls by Tom Wham
-Manticore with a very human face by Trampier (2nd edition only)
-Purple Worm battle (1st edition only) by Sutherland, also showing three adventurers in battle
-Wizard's Treasure by Sutherland
-Sample Cross Section of Levels aka Skull Mountain by Tom Wham
-Warriors versus Sarcophagi Skeletons by Sutherland

The book is dedicated to "Jeff and Chris". I assume that these were Dr. Holmes's sons?
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Yes, his two older kids; he had two others later. Holmes' earliest D&D games were with his sons, Chris more so, and some of their friends.
 
Zenopus said:
Yes, his two older kids; he had two others later. Holmes' earliest D&D games were with his sons, Chris more so, and some of their friends.
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And in his article, he mentioned that his sons introduced him to the game :smile:.
 
Zenopus said:
Good catch; I'm not sure if I've ever thought about what he was saying there. I just double-checked and the same language is in the manuscript that he wrote for the rulebook. It certainly sounds like he says to make the attack rolls in advance! This is why I love having fresh eyes look at the rulebook.

The exact language is: "The Dungeon Master should have all this completely mapped out, hit points and attack die rolls calculated and recorded, so that the game will proceed most rapidly at the exciting moments when the enemy is encountered".

In modern years I have heard of a technique where the DM makes a row of 50 (or more) d20 rolls and then checks them off as each monster attack (or save) is made. I wonder if this is what Holmes meant, or whether it was just some awkward language for having the monster hit die ready for use on the combat tables? I'll have to keep my eyes open going forward to see if there is anywhere else that Holmes mentions something like this.
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I'm always betting on awkward language unless I have reason to believe otherwise. It's not like other TSR editionswere examples of clarity:shade:!
 
Zenopus said:
In modern years I have heard of a technique where the DM makes a row of 50 (or more) d20 rolls and then checks them off as each monster attack (or save) is made.
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I can see this making sense given that the original version of the game had chits instead of dice. I three orcs attacks, with chits you need to pull a chit out the cup, read it, put it back, rattle the cup around, then repeat the process two more times. It's more involved then just picking up a die and tossing it (or tossing three at once). Having a long string of ready-to-go random numbers could be a real time saver.
 
Akrasia said:
There isn't a lot of art in the Holmes basic rules. But I like what little there is, especially the Trampier pieces. [...] What are others' favourites?
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My favourites actually hail from the Games Workshop UK print, where a lot of the art was replaced with work by "Fangorn" (Chris Baker). I've always had a soft spot for his art, because my introduction to RPGs was via an article in Space Voyager magazine featuring some kind of muscular fairy with butterfly wings (also showed up on some back covers of early White Dwarfs).
 
Arminius said:
Not so, Holmes came with dice from the 1st through 4th printings, according to The Acaeum.

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Okay, so I am wrong. Rather than simply admit it, I am going to try and justify my error. Perhaps because Holmes previous played with chits, he included advice in his game based on making the game work better with them.

That's the best I can do.
 
Baulderstone said:
Okay, so I am wrong. Rather than simply admit it, I am going to try and justify my error. Perhaps because Holmes previous played with chits, he included advice in his game based on making the game work better with them.

That's the best I can do.
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I think the chits advice was added at the same time they were unable to get dice shipments. I have the Chitty version and no dice blows.
 
It is kind of a funny thing, but I have the most inexplicably positive associations with Holmes D&D, despite the fact that it is just a simple version of the same game I've played with other rules sets for 43 years. This thread got me nostalgic enough I had to crack out my original 77 set and order a soft-cover version of the latest Blueholme...
 
Baulderstone said:
Okay, so I am wrong. Rather than simply admit it, I am going to try and justify my error. Perhaps because Holmes previous played with chits, he included advice in his game based on making the game work better with them.

That's the best I can do.
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Baulderstone, you may be on to something here! While the chits included in the Basic Set were added several years after Holmes wrote the text, ironically his original manuscript did refer to using chits in one place, and using playing cards four times. See what I wrote here back in 2013 when I was going through the manuscript:

"This is the fourth location in the manuscript where Holmes suggests using cards if dice are not available. See also Part 2, Part 4 and Part 9 of this series. Chits were also mentioned in the first of these locations."

Holmes probably included these references to other randomizers because the original D&D set did not include a set of dice, and he wasn't sure if the Basic Set would either. At the time it was still difficult to find polyhedral dice, so he anticipated that some kids would get the Basic rulebooks but not have the dice.

TSR edited the manuscript to remove the references to everything other than dice, at least until later when they added back a section on how to use the chits.

So it is possible that Holmes' reference to having "attack die rolls" calculated ties into this idea that players might be using chits or playing cards. Although at this point the use of the word "calculated" makes me lean towards it just being unclear language for understanding what each character needs to hit each AC, including any modifiers. There aren't many in Holmes, but he may have been thinking of the Strength modifiers in Greyhawk.
 
Moonglum said:
It is kind of a funny thing, but I have the most inexplicably positive associations with Holmes D&D, despite the fact that it is just a simple version of the same game I've played with other rules sets for 43 years. This thread got me nostalgic enough I had to crack out my original 77 set and order a soft-cover version of the latest Blueholme...
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Wow! :thumbsup:
 
:sad:

Why, oh why, is Gary Con scheduled during the semester?!?
 
Ask you anything? Ok, what happened to the copy I purchased way back in '79? Did one of my brothers appropriate it from me? Did my mom toss it out? Where did it go?!? (I still have the dice)
 
Supervisor194 said:
Ask you anything? Ok, what happened to the copy I purchased way back in '79? Did one of my brothers appropriate it from me? Did my mom toss it out? Where did it go?!? (I still have the dice)
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Dad stole it.
 
Supervisor194 said:
Ask you anything? Ok, what happened to the copy I purchased way back in '79? Did one of my brothers appropriate it from me? Did my mom toss it out? Where did it go?!? (I still have the dice)
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It was filched by the kobolds living in the first level of the forgotten crypts under your house. They started with the Zenopus dungeon and have been running a D&D campaign for almost 40 years now!
 
Now, to me that looks like it could serve as a Portown Pricelist. :smile:
 
Well, the working title was "Portown Provisioners"...! But I eventually decided it should be more generic.

But perhaps I will put up another version with the alternate title!
 
Love it. This doubles as a quick reference of what shops to put into a village that will interest the players.
 
Holmes%2BPortrait%2Bby%2BDavid%2BCrawford%2Buncropped.jpg


A portrait of Holmes in an imagined study, drawn by fan David Crawford!

Read more here:
zenopusarchives.blogspot.com

Holmes Portrait by David Crawford

zenopusarchives.blogspot.com zenopusarchives.blogspot.com
 
It bothered me, and I didn’t don’t fully know, the difference between standard rations and iron rations. Also, silver vs steel mirror?

ISTR in OD&D caltrops were also on the list—another item that baffled us even after we kinda knew what they were. I suppose in game terms they’d cause some damage and make you fall down if you failed a save.
 
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