BECMI D&D is overrated

[Dumarest]

The D&D Basic Set as an intro to AD&D was literally how it was created and marketed and intended to work in 1977-80 (the Holmes-edit Basic Set). But in the wake of the Arneson lawsuit and need (for legal purposes) to differentiate D&D and AD&D TSR decided to keep D&D as a separate and distinct game, so in 1981 the Basic Set was revised and instead of pointing to AD&D it was made to point to the new D&D Expert Set which updated and replaced the OD&D “Original Collectors Set” (the 1974 rules) which was finally taken out of print, and the two lines coexisted in a weird and confusing parallel.

The 1981 BX sets never mention AD&D as if it didn’t exist, and it was only in the 1983 Basic Set that they finally added a paragraph in the back explaining that AD&D was a separate game with more detailed rules for tournaments that could be safely ignored because with these sets you’re playing “the original game” (and only in the Rules Cyclopedia in 1991 that they finally published official guidelines for how to convert between the two to run AD&D adventures with D&D rules and vice versa).

This separation also had the weird side-effect that after 1980 (until, like, 1999) there was no introductory starter set for AD&D. So almost everybody still started with the Basic Set but then had to choose whether to “graduate up” to the Expert Set or to AD&D. Almost everybody chose the latter, which is kind of surprising since the books themselves told you to do the former (but I guess the hardback rulebooks and way bigger supply of modules were too tempting for most kids to resist - that plus Dragon magazine being like 90% AD&D content).

Everybody I knew mixed and matched material from Basic, AD&D, and Dragon magazine, and didn't take much notice about whether an adventure module was intended for one version or the other. My understanding is this was pretty common, at least in the early 1980s when I was playing with my and my older brother's friends from school.

 

[Moonglum]

Everybody I knew mixed and matched material from Basic, AD&D, and Dragon magazine, and didn't take much notice about whether a module was for one version or the other. My understanding is this was pretty common, at least in the early 1980s when I was playing with my and my older brother's friends from school.

Agreed; during the era when 1E and B/X were both in print, I don't believe anyone took seriously the idea that you would treat them as different game systems. I and everyone I knew mixed and matched materials, though I would say by default people were playing something loosely based on 1E, and just used material from the B/X line when appropriate. Although, I would say I always liked the B/X morale rules and used them all the time (in fact, I still do). Another thing I would do was just use B/X if I was traveling, or just didn't want to haul my hard backs to someone's house for a game. I know it sounds crazy if you focus on the various mechanical differences between the games, but frankly who honestly cares when it comes to play at the table?

 

[T. Foster]

Maybe because I was young enough to have started with the 1983 set with it’s “don’t play AD&D” blurb, or because I was the kind of kid who mostly followed the rules, I didn’t really mix and match D&D and AD&D. When I started out playing the former using the Basic, Expert & Companion sets I only used D&D-branded modules (the B, X, M, and CM series). And when, after about 6 months of that, I moved on to AD&D, I moved on all the way: the old boxed sets and modules got filed away and it was only about the AD&D rules and adventures. We did eventually transfer over some favorite characters but even with those we acknowledged that we were translating them - we used the AD&D stat adjustments, rerolled their hit points, changed their spells and magic items, etc.

I had assumed that was what everybody did (mostly because nobody I played with in the 80s ever used D&D rulebooks or characters or modules in AD&D games - I know most of the other kids owned at least the Basic Set but they were never seen or used) but from what I gather more recently that was actually pretty unusual and way more people than I was aware of at the time were mixing and matching pretty freely.

 

[Voros]

Although not perfect I like the domain, mass combat and weapon mastery systems. They really opened up my mind about what was possible in a D&D game.

I do agree that the 36 levels was excessive, although I'm not the opponent of high-level D&D play that it seems many others are, and of course the thief is still pretty borked.

The RC is definitely the best way to access the system, a really cool book.

 

[ffilz]

While I had BECM (was never interested in Imortals), I picked up BX later. I tend to agree that BX is probably a better foundation for a campaign. Since I never delved that deeply into BECM, I never noticed the slowed down thief progression. That seems like a big mistake. The real problem is that thief abilities aren't really set against varying difficulty levels, so you need to squeeze all the advancement between 0 and 100. With varying difficulty levels, you could easily accommodate 36 levels of thief. I also really can't imagine playing for 36 levels though. I forget just how high level my high school AD&D game got, at least level 12, maybe level 16. I think the level 8 and 9 spells that were added past Men & Magic do add to the game, and with their existence, it seems reasonable to allow play to reach a level those spells may be cast, but it won't be much beyond that it seems like play will run out of steam.

In Cold Iron, magic users up in those levels are relevant to have some of the more interesting magic items made, but I'm not sure I'd even expect to run PCs up to those levels. In my first campaign, I did have a 16th level magic using dragon NPC that always popped in to save the day, but these days I consider that horrible GMing. So yea, my Cold Iron campaigns may have a 16th level magic user out there, but now I'm even inclined to make the PCs really have to quest to find it.

On mixing and matching versions of D&D, I freely borrowed adventures for AD&D (and other games) and monsters. Maybe even a magic item or two from the books. I never really looked at the rules of anything other than AD&D once I started running AD&D until 2007 or so when I got on the OSR bandwagon.

 

[Mankcam]

Everybody I knew mixed and matched material from Basic, AD&D, and Dragon magazine, and didn't take much notice about whether an adventure module was intended for one version or the other. My understanding is this was pretty common, at least in the early 1980s when I was playing with my and my older brother's friends from school.

I think this was a pretty common approach amongst D&D fans in the 1980s. I can't speak for the adult crowd, but it was pretty much how things seemed in the adolescent crowd down here.

By the mid to late 1980s most D&D fans were quite aware of TSR running two different yet very similar gamelines under the D&D umbrella, yet the care factor was pretty low regarding staying in one's lane.

Actually, the concept of NOT mixing and matching rulesets was contary to the vibe of the hobby back then, despite what TSR wished.

Every DM seemed to have folders of house rules, often a mix of handwritten scrawls as well as photocopied paragraphs or pages from the AD&D books and Dragon magazine.

It wasn't all that unusual for rules to be ported from non-D&D rpg sets.

I think things kinda became much more organised in the 1990s. By that time there was a clear distinction between people using AD&D 2E and those using D&D RC.

AD&D 2E brought with it a proliferation of cool and more unusual settings, so this may have possibly had something to do with it.

 

[Dumarest]

The concept of NOT mixing and matching rulesets was contary to the vibe of the hobby back then, despite what TSR wished. Every DM seemed to have folders of house rules, often a mix of handwritten scrawls as well as photocopied paragraphs or pages from the AD&D books and Dragon magazine.It wasn't all that unusual for rules to be ported from non-D&D rpg sets.

Or for publishers to print rules to replace sections of D&D. That's all Rolemaster's various "Law" books were before they turned it into its own RPG. "The Perrin Conventions" were alternative rules for D&D before evolving into RuneQuest. We didn't have any of that stuff, though. I didn't encounter Rolemaster until I bought MERP one fine day at the local comic book shop in 1984/85. They also carried Arms Law, Spell Law, Character Law, and all the other lawbooks, but I didn't ever look at them until years later. Probably the titles were off-putting with "Law" sounding so serious. Now I love reading all that material and old articles in Dragon, Different Worlds, The Space Gamer, and White Dwarf. I've still never played Rolemaster so it's on the list.

 

[Silverlion]

I played B/X before BECMI, but I couldn't get B/X books at the time only BECMI, and I played it as its own thing for a few years. Eventually, I managed to pick up AD&D PHB at a toy store, and the DMG at a store that was cutting all their old department store stuff to become exclusively a jewelry store. (I got the DMG for 1.05 that's a dollar and a nickel in tax, they didn't have other books.)

I still mostly ran BECMI, though I did play AD&D. I am not sure when I first ran AD&D, but it wasn't too long before 2E came out. Did I mix and match? Not a lot, I don't think. I certainly don't recall doing much of it.

 

[Voros]

My brothers and I had the BECM boxsets, the B/X and 1e AD&D books. I don't think I realized they were different rulesets until my late teens.

 

[Toadmaster]

I actually never played B/X or BECMI. I was introduced to D&D in the summer of 1978 and went straight to AD&D supplemented with some OD&D books which were still available at that time. Starting with AD&D I kind of bounced off of Basic, might have been a nice starter, but seemed a step backwards to 11-12 year old me. Traveller was an alternate by 1980 and by 1981 I had Runequest (2nd ed) which led to a whole host of other games pushing D&D off to the side. I don't think I played D&D at all between 1982 and 1988 being far too busy with all the other games I had found. I pretty much missed the heyday of BX/BECMI in a haze of MERP, RQ, CoC, Rolemaster, Aftermath, The Morrorow Project, Stalking the Night Fantastic, HERO, GURPS and many others.

After high school I got in with a "D&D" club at college and AD&D was one of the common games within the group, switching to a mismash of 1E and 2E as the 2E stuff came along. We just looked at the 2E stuff as extra rules rather than recognizing that there was a difference between editions.

I think I've only played 1 actual game of Basic and that was in the early 90s. It was the old classic blue cover (Holmes?). I think it was mostly the GM just had the old set from back in the day still basically mint and wanted to give it a try. After a few sessions and finishing up the adventure we were back to the regular AD&D game.

 

[TristramEvans]

I liked the Rules Cyclopedia. I can't remember where that falls in this division of D&Ds.

 

[Mankcam]

I liked the Rules Cyclopedia. I can't remember where that falls in this division of D&Ds.

That's the TSR D&D lineage ('Basic D&D') - as opposed to the TSR AD&D lineage
So after B/X boxes, it went to BECMI boxes, then after that to RC book.
It was around pretty much the same time as AD&D 2E, give or take a year.
I loved the cover of the D&D RC

 

[TristramEvans]

RC had a good setting in that series of Gazateers

 

[Sharrow]

AD&D2 came out in '88, IIRC. The RC came out in '91. It was essentially the same content as the last printings of BECM (earlier printings had a few differences, like the spell progression of Elfs being a little different from that of MUs, and in later printings the Elf and MU progression was made identical), but didn't include Immortals. I don't recall if BECMI had the stronghold, mass combat, and magic item construction rules that the RC had (and am too lazy to check).

 

[Triumvir]

I don't recall if BECMI had the stronghold, mass combat, and magic item construction rules that the RC had (and am too lazy to check).

Pretty sure it did, because 10-yo us only had BECMI (I think BEC at this stage), and we decided we wanted to give the stronghold construction rules a try. So my DM let me find an intelligent sword and then sell it to a local shopkeep for 200,000GP, which was enough to build a castle and hire an army. While also causing a kind of economic singularity, but we were 10.

I still distinctly recall the DM roleplaying the transaction as the shopkeeper. We were having a laugh about it not so long ago. I would love to be able to say the campaign is still in progress, but alas it isn't.

 

[DeadBob]

In B/X there were castle costs and costs for mercenary forces, as well as various hiring/maintenance costs for useful or required NPCs, siege engines, and ships.

Companion (I didn't bother buying BE, since I already owned B/X) gave you territory income and kingdom building rules, and the Warmachine system for fighting battles with those armies in an abstract way (rather than tabletop battle).

I don't recall item construction rules, TBH, but X did have some broad concepts about researching and creating spells.

 

[Mankcam]

AD&D2 came out in '88

Apparently it was a year later in 1989
(Although I don’t remember seeing the AD&D 2E books much before the early 1990s)

 

[sharps54]

I was out of D&D prior to the 2E or the RC.

 

[Gabriel]

Apparently it was a year later in 1989
(Although I don’t remember seeing the AD&D 2E books much before the early 1990s)

Yes. It was in 1989 over the summer. The core releases were staggered out one each month.

Before that, there was the little blue preview pamphlet which was out for a month or a few beforehand. I recall actually using that little pamphlet to start playing 2e in the months before the PHB hit stores.

 

[Andrew J. Luther]

I find it interesting that so many people combined Basic and AD&D rules back in the day. Living in Toronto, I never knew a single person who did that, and in fact hadn’t even heard of anyone doing that until internet forums became a thing.

Everyone I ever met who played D&D picked their specific game and ran that, and there was no mixing and matching.

So while I believe it was the standard in some areas, it was probably only common in others, uncommon in some, and pretty much unheard of in some.

Having said that, house rules were often implemented, but they were usually things like settling on a standard way to do initiative in AD&D, or giving PCs max hit point at first level, or adding custom monsters and spells, that kind of stuff.

 

[Sharrow]

What I saw was using modules written for one set with the other. Of course, groups also used modules written for a game with a completely different game (like Star Frontiers modules run using Space Opera), so using a module written for one D&D with another was a fairly minor thing.

 

[Gabriel]

My experience was everyone played a game that was effectively Basic with AD&Disms shoehorned in, but you couldn't admit you had anything to do with Basic because that was a game for babies. It was all about those AD&D hardcovers. They were the holy texts, and like most holy texts the followers never read them, but only cherry picked them.

Most people learned D&D via oral tradition. AD&D was cool. Basic was shunned.

Basic and Advanced modules were used interchangeably. There was no prejudice about that. It was just the core B/X sets which were considered anathema.

 

[Dumarest]

Apparently it was a year later in 1989
(Although I don’t remember seeing the AD&D 2E books much before the early 1990s)

Yes. It was in 1989 over the summer. The core releases were staggered out one each month.

Before that, there was the little blue preview pamphlet which was out for a month or a few beforehand. I recall actually using that little pamphlet to start playing 2e in the months before the PHB hit stores.

I have clear memories of seeing this ad on the back cover of so many comic books in 1989.

​

Now I find it a little off-putting to advertise your new edition by insulting your prior edition.

I remember we played some 2nd edition AD&D for a while but even then incorporated material from both Basic and AD&D and Dragon. I don't think I've ever treated any version as a unique game not to be muddied with DNA from its fellow subspecies. That was also the last version of Dungeons & Dragons I ever bought for myself.

Wish I still had it. Gave it away when I went to college. Only played a handful of sessions of WEG Star Wars over the next 10 years before getting back into RPGs. Fortunately the rest of my games collection was still largely intact.

 

[Dammit Victor]

It's nice to know WotC eventually learned their lesson here.

 

[Voros]

I find it interesting that so many people combined Basic and AD&D rules back in the day. Living in Toronto, I never knew a single person who did that, and in fact hadn’t even heard of anyone doing that until internet forums became a thing.

Everyone I ever met who played D&D picked their specific game and ran that, and there was no mixing and matching.

So while I believe it was the standard in some areas, it was probably only common in others, uncommon in some, and pretty much unheard of in some.

Having said that, house rules were often implemented, but they were usually things like settling on a standard way to do initiative in AD&D, or giving PCs max hit point at first level, or adding custom monsters and spells, that kind of stuff.

For younger players I don't know how conscious the mixing was, we did a lot of it because we didn't actually read the complete 1e PHB and DMG but just assumed that initiative, for instance, just ran the same as it did in Basic.

When I did discover 1e had different initiative rules it only took one read to decide to nope-out on that and stick with Basic's approach.

Funny enough I see that a lot with 5e still, many haven't actually read the PHB/DMG that carefully and assume that the 3e rules they are familiar with are still in place...and then complain about the non-existent or changed rule, or complain about the absence of a rule or tool that does exist. A recent example of that is the repeated claim that the Spelljammer set doesn't have ship-to-ship combat rules when it clearly does.

 

[Dumarest]

I would have thought mixing and matching was inevitable as a result of things like someone owns the original D&D ('74) and/or (more likely?) Holmes Basic (July '77) and buys the AD&D Monster Manual (Dec. '77)...there's nothing else you can use it with as AD&D wasn't "complete" until the Dungeon Masters Guide was published in '79. And then you confuse matters with Moldvay Basic ('81) and Mentzer Basic ('83) with all that material for earlier/other editions still on the shelf. Factor in younger players entering a hobby that had heretofore been more adult-oriented and kids asking their parents to buy them books: how many moms and dads could tell a Marvel comic book from a DC or Whitman, let alone which D&D products "go together," especially when the names are practically the same? You'd just have to use what you got regardless of the publisher's intentions.

 

[Akrasia]

For younger players I don't know how conscious the mixing was, we did a lot of it because we didn't actually read the complete 1e PHB and DMG but just assumed that initiative, for instance, just ran the same as it did in Basic.

When I did discover 1e had different initiative rules it only took one read to decide to nope-out on that and stick with Basic's approach.

That definitely was the case with me. Aside from a few really obvious things (e.g., fighter and thief hit dice, ACs going to 9 vs 10), I assumed that the core rules (e.g., how combat worked) were all pretty much the same.

Confusing matters was that the Holmes Basic Set explicitly referred to itself as a starter kit for AD&D.

So when I said earlier that I used a mishmash of Holmes Basic + Moldvay Basic + Gygax AD&D rules, I should've said that I thought of myself as playing AD&D, but was really unwittingly importing all kinds of "Basic" rules. It wasn't a conscious blending of rules (at least until I later discovered certain differences, and then made a decision about what to do, invariably going with the "easier" option).

 

[Triumvir]

...Everyone I ever met who played D&D picked their specific game and ran that, and there was no mixing and matching...

I wasn't in any kind of RPG "scene" around the turn of the 80s/90s; it was just a few kids at school. I remember a big discussion about whether we wanted to take a step up to AD&D around when 2e came out, implying there was no thought of mixing and matching.

 

[T. Foster]

There are certain obvious differences between D&D (original 1974 set and various Basic etc sets that followed) and AD&D - what adjustments each ability score gives, what size hit dice each class has, class-as-race vs multiclassing, # of alignments, spell lists (and how many spells clerics get), to hit & saving throw tables, etc - and in my experience everybody used the AD&D versions and would never even consider mixing and matching in material from the boxed sets.

Then there was less immediately obvious mostly procedural stuff like how surprise and initiative and morale and closing to melee range work, how often to check for wandering monsters, how XP for treasure is divided (evenly vs to whoever keeps it), whether magic users have to roll a chance to know each spell, material spell components, and so on. In my experience almost everybody used the simple D&D rules for those instead of the more complex AD&D versions, but nobody did so consciously or with the intent that they were mixing versions, they were just continuing to apply the rules they already knew and weren’t even really aware that the rules in the AD&D books said something different.

And at least IMO all of that is fine and fits within the scope of AD&D - the AD&D complex procedures for those things are effectively optional modular rules for people who want more detail and tactical complexity but are not required - the game still works about 95% the same whether you use them or not. I’m pretty sure I never played in or ran a game that actually used the AD&D segment-based surprise system until about 2003 at the earliest, but that doesn’t mean I “wasn’t really playing AD&D” the way people online nowadays try to claim.

And that’s why “hybrid” clone versions like OSE Advanced Fantasy don’t appeal to me at all, because they hybridize things in a way we never did - keeping 3 alignments and race-as-class and d8 hit points for fighters and short spell lists and everybody having the same chance to hit at levels 1-3 (and level 6), and so on. All of that stuff is, to me, taking a step backwards and reintroducing bad rules that AD&D fixed, and I don’t feel any need or desire to acceot all of that just so I can also have “official permission” to use a simplified surprise and initiative system and roll 2d6 instead of d% for reactions and morale.

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

I was in a small town, so D&D started and stopped with how I ran things. As far as I know, there was only 1 other group of players in my town and I didn't discover that until after I had already been GMing for a year or two. I never mixed my BE books with my AD&D 2nd edition rules.

 

[Baulderstone]

I was in a small town, so D&D started and stopped with how I ran things. As far as I know, there was only 1 other group of players in my town and I didn't discover that until after I had already been GMing for a year or two. I never mixed my BE books with my AD&D 2nd edition rules.

AD&D 2E is written clearly enough that there really isn't any need for that mix-and-match approach.

 

[Andrew J. Luther]

I started in 1980, so the core three AD&D books were already out.

A couple of kids got the Moldvey Basic set and introduced a bunch of us to D&D. I immediately went out and got the basic set.

But shortly after, a few kids got the AD&D books (and some of them never owned the red box). And because it was “Advanced,” the kids I knew shelved their basic boxes and started collecting the AD&D books because the basic set became the “kids” game.

I ended up getting the Expert set in 81, but also got the three AD&D books from my dad over two Christmases and a birthday. But no one I knew wanted to play anything but AD&D after that. And within another year the books and boxed sets were all taken from me by my mother because of religious fanaticism, so it became moot.

But I never ended up meeting another person who would touch B/X or BECMI until I was an adult.

 

[Fenris-77]

I started in 1980, so the core three AD&D books were already out.

A couple of kids got the Moldvey Basic set and introduced a bunch of us to D&D. I immediately went out and got the basic set.

But shortly after, a few kids got the AD&D books (and some of them never owned the red box). And because it was “Advanced,” the kids I knew shelved their basic boxes and started collecting the AD&D books because the basic set became the “kids” game.

I ended up getting the Expert set in 81, but also got the three AD&D books from my dad over two Christmases and a birthday. But no one I knew wanted to play anything but AD&D after that. And within another year the books and boxed sets were all taken from me by my mother because of religious fanaticism, so it became moot.

But I never ended up meeting another person who would touch B/X or BECMI until I was an adult.

This is a familiar story I think. No real teen geek would be caught dead admitting to enjoying the B/X rules when there's an 'Advanced' option. We're geeks, of course we play the advanced version. I couldn't assert my geek mastery otherwise.

I got lucky, I only owned Moldvay and a friend of mine had advanced so I tripped merrily along playing B/X far longer than a lot of people.

 

[Voros]

AD&D 2E is written clearly enough that there really isn't any need for that mix-and-match approach.

Yeah 2e fixed many of the issues I had with 1e ( bards, assasins, more options for XP) and B/X (thieves) so we switched over immediately.

It was years later when 2e had acquired too many options and complexity that the relative simplicity of the Rules Cyclopedia started to appeal to me.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

AD&D 2E is written clearly enough that there really isn't any need for that mix-and-match approach.

I knew people who tried lol. But most of the actual mixing in 2e was with 1e stuff. I remember a lot of that

 

[Dumarest]

AD&D 2E is written clearly enough that there really isn't any need for that mix-and-match approach.

Yeah 2e fixed many of the issues I had with 1e ( bards, assasins, more options for XP) and B/X (thieves) so we switched over immediately.

It was years later when 2e had acquired too many options and complexity that the relative simplicity of the Rules Cyclopedia started to appeal to me.

I knew people who tried lol. But most of the actual mixing in 2e was with 1e stuff. I remember a lot of that

​

 

[Vargold]

This is a familiar story I think. No real teen geek would be caught dead admitting to enjoying the B/X rules when there's an 'Advanced' option. We're geeks, of course we play the advanced version. I couldn't assert my geek mastery otherwise.

I got lucky, I only owned Moldvay and a friend of mine had advanced so I tripped merrily along playing B/X far longer than a lot of people.

Actually, I exclusively ran B/X during middle and high school in the 1980s, preferring the system to AD&D (which my friends ran).

 

[Baulderstone]

Yeah 2e fixed many of the issues I had with 1e ( bards, assasins, more options for XP) and B/X (thieves) so we switched over immediately.

It was years later when 2e had acquired too many options and complexity that the relative simplicity of the Rules Cyclopedia started to appeal to me.

I completely ignored 2E at the time. I was playing games other than D&D at the time it came out. BedrockBrendan got me to take a look at it, as he is a fan. It's a good version of D&D if you careful about what supplements you allow.

 

[Endless Flight]

If you stick with just 2E core it’s a great game.

 

[carpocratian]

To be honest, the rules of the various editions of D&D (Holmes up through 5E) all sort of run together in my head sometimes. In the last 5E campaign I ran, which went on for 5 years, I had two players at the table who I used as a "what's the 5E rule on that" resource when I was too lazy to look something up.