But, back in issue #77 (September 1983) of Dragon, the reviser of the 1983 version, Frank Mentzer, made his case for why we needed a new Basic Set. It's a really fascinating article, both because it suggests that TSR obviously felt some need to justify the release of yet another Basic Set and because of the things that Mentzer says in his piece. It is, I think, a fascinating snapshot of the end of the Golden Age, making it well worth a read if you're at all interested in the history of this hobby and how it changed over the years.
The very first thing Mentzer mentions in his criticism of previous editions is that "you had to find someone to show you how to play." He notes that, in fact, learning from others who had figured out how to play on their own was the norm previously. That's because the game had "a devoted following, people who taught newcomers the ways of roleplaying." Mentzer is absolutely correct about this, as I've noted before. In those bygone days, you entered the hobby by initiation, aided by someone who'd done so before you. In my case, it was via a friend's teenaged brother; I, in turn, taught others how to play. That was the order of things in the late '70s and very early '80s. The 1983 edition is thus an attempt to correct this "flaw" of expecting that you'd learn to play from others.
Mentzer then notes that
the previous editions were not revisions. They were new attempts at using the same methods of organization applied to the original data plus evolution. They were not "revised," merely "reorganized." This one is different.That's an interesting statement. I regularly point out that Holmes isn't really an introduction to AD&D at all, despite the claims inserted clumsily by TSR, but rather a new edition of OD&D that retains much of the original text of the LBBs. Moldvay is, I think, more of a revision than Mentzer gives it credit for. That said, it's also largely consonant with the LBBs, again retaining verbiage to be found in the 1974 game. The 1983, on the other hand, is even more than a revision; it's a rewriting of the game, using new language to express many of the same ideas. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but the language is very simple and clearly geared toward children, which wasn't the case with the Blue Book I first encountered in 1979. Consequently, I recoiled upon reading it and it only further solidified my notion that the D&D line was for kids.
The 1983 set's focus on self-teaching and simple language probably made sense from a marketing standpoint. Given how well the set supposedly sold, I can't really fault TSR for going in this direction. At the same time, though, there was clearly a shift happening, away from adults and teenagers as the target audience and away from initiation as the means of entering the hobby. Likewise, the adoption of a unified esthetic (all Elmore and Easley artwork) that, while attractive, seemed to narrow rather than broaden the scope of the game. In short, the 1983 Basic Set marked a definite change from what had gone before.
I'll be honest: I was somewhat reluctant to write this particular post. I've gotten a surprisingly large number of requests from readers asking me to touch on the issue of the differences in philosophy between the 1981 and 1983 Basic Sets. But I also know the fondness with which many remember the Red Box and the profound influence it had on them as younger people. So, I hope no one takes this as a knock against the '83 boxed set, even if it's not to my cup of tea. I'm sure there were guys who started with the LBBs who looked at the Holmes set with disappointment, too; that's the way these things go. At the same time, I don't think it can be denied that 1983 marks another change in the history of both D&D and the hobby.
I started in Australia in 1985 with the 1983 red box, which meshed nicely with the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks I'd been buying, reading and playing. I occasional saw the older 1981 set about, and once actually saw a Holmes blue book, and borrowed and photocopied the best bits from both of them (new monsters, dungeon maps, etc) to add to my 1983 set and collection of photocopies Dragon magazine articles. Happy times! :-)
ReplyDeleteI’m not 100% why, but I loathed the Mentzer edition (BEMCI - 1983). Holmes was cool, it captured my imagination, but Moldvay/Cook brought it home.
ReplyDeleteSome of it, for me, was the art. I never liked Elmore or Easley. Gimme some Otis & Willingham any day!
Another thing was the super-high level play that was expected (?). 36th level? I want to meet those Monty Haul players! The rise of PC’s to deity status? Yuck.
Finally, it all felt just… clinical. It didn’t feel like there was any soul behind the rules. Simply was not my bag.
I played tons of B/X before moving right into AD&D.
"Given how well the set supposedly sold..."
ReplyDeleteBefore we start praising the Mentzer rewrite of Basic D&D as something profoundly popular, let's first understand that it was the first D&D set translated (officially) into other languages and sold overseas. While the 1E PHB and DMG were (eventually) translated into French and German, Mentzer's version of Basic was translated into French, German, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Korean, Spanish, and Swedish. For many countries outside the United States, Mentzer's Basic was the seminal, defining version of the D&D game.
But sales generated by marketing to a broader (previously untapped) audience should not be taken as a sign of popularity, nor excellence of design.
Sorry, James: I was not "mentored" by anyone. I taught myself how to play D&D by reading the Moldvay Basic book and the B2 module included with the set. I then taught my friends how to play. Without parental help of parental supervision. I was nine years old at the time. When we discovered AD&D a couple years later, we were able to switch over to THAT game (by reading the books, using the foundation of knowledge we had from B/X)...all, again, without mentoring.
Being introduced to the game, and learning from others may have been more common in the central parts of the U.S. and Canada (i.e. he areas closer to Wisconsin and Minnesota where the game first developed) but that wasn't my experience growing up in the Pac NW.
I think the Mentzer basic set WAS an absolutely amazing piece of work. The game it portrays is powerful and nuanced. In my opinion that Box deserved every sale it got. Where BECMI falls off in my opinion is the expert set. While the classes, spells, monsters and treasures work ok as an expansion to the basic set it feels diluted in a way basic does not. And when carefully compared to X the deficiencies are glaring across all sections of the book. Companion and master rules are more of the same. To echo the sentiment further down in the comments ultimately the split was a very dumb thing to do. While I think AD&D is the superior product, BX is clearly in my opinion the superior expression of the rules. I like to think that had that split not have happened what we would have gotten was the best of both worlds - something that approaches OSE: Advanced Fantasy. For my experience being introduced to the hobby: there was an older teen on my street that taught his brother (the oldest of my peers) to play - he introduced us to the game - that is showed it to us - and played a very short game that got nowhere. First proper game was a camp counselor but we only played one session. There was no real mentorship by the late 80s in my world.
DeleteWhen I started rebuying some of my favorite stuff many years ago as well as stuff I’d always wanted but was never able to find (fortunately just before the jump in prices on eBay) I bought the Mentzer “red box”.
ReplyDeleteI have always been out of touch with just about any community I’m in, and that included D&D. I grew up in a *very* rural area with no game store and the only people I knew who gamed were (a) the people I gamed with, and (b) the legends of those who had once gamed with them but had moved away.
I didn’t know that there were two boxed sets; I’d assumed “red box” meant Moldvay. The first B/X I picked up was the Mentzer version, and on reading it was very confused. It was dry, matter-of-fact, bland, and rather than a sense of “that didn’t hold up well over time” I couldn’t understand how I’d ever been inspired by this version. Even the graphic design seemed harsh.
It didn’t take long to realize I had the wrong book. I do find it fascinating how much of a difference a few years make.
"Being a Holmes man who'd "upgraded" to AD&D sometime in 1980, I had no need for either of the Basic Sets released subsequently" - this describes my situation also. I eventually bought the Mentzer basic books cheaply years later.
ReplyDelete"The very first thing Mentzer mentions in his criticism of previous editions is that 'you had to find someone to show you how to play.'" In my (small) home town, we had no one to teach us the game, but Holmes was sufficient to get us playing (though we were doing many things wrong at the start) without any teachers.
We taught ourselves too. My friend and I first encountered D&D at summer camp. Someone in another cabin had the Monster Manual. Later we saw some counselors playing. The next year we picked up Moldvay and learned on our own. I recall the examples of play being our guide. Poor Black Dougal….
DeleteI've always thought TSR's bifurcation of the product line between D&D and AD&D was a mistake. I understand the historical reasons (or purported reasons) for it: Gygax's ego, the Arneson authorship problem, etc. But, viewed as a business matter, it seems like a needless overcomplication of the product line. It would have made far more sense to follow the short-lived plan to have Holmes serve as an intro to AD&D.
ReplyDeleteObviously some revision of the 1974 game was necessary for expanding OD&D beyond the confines of committed hobbyists. Gygax was right when he called it an "un-game" -- although it does give players a lot of interpretive freedom, I don't think that was entirely intentional. There's a very clear relationship between OD&D-plus-supplements and AD&D, and I see AD&D as the game Gygax wished he had written in the first place.
The Mentzer revision's use of programmed instruction is actually a sound idea -- and one used very successfully in Avalon Hill's Squad Leader in 1977. The problem is that such an approach should have been used in Holmes or Moldvay, if it were purely a matter of finding the "best" expression of the rules. I think James is right that there was a shift happening at TSR, and I think it was a conscious business decision.
Mentzer's version seems like a "professional" product in a way that earlier versions did not. Not just in terms of the words on the page, but also in terms of artwork and trade dress. Although Holmes and Moldvay were big improvements over the Brown/White Box, they were still aesthetically a bit outre. Early D&D just seemed amateurish, and fantasy fiction in general had a strong hippie association, even though Gary himself was a middle-aged insurance underwriter. By the 1980s, TSR was clearly trying to make its products more "respectable" for a wider audience that had certain (bland) aesthetic expectations.
(Incidentally, I do think there must have been some behind the scenes reason for so many revisions. It certainly seems like someone, or several someones, at TSR really had a gnawing desire to "perfect" the original game, as unnecessary as that was.)
Like other commentators, I wasn't exactly initiated: an older kid on the school bus gave me his photocopy(!) of the Holmes rules because he saw me reading fantasy novels on the bus and was "graduating" to the new AD&D. He never showed me how to actually play and I wound up teaching myself.
ReplyDeleteAnother possibly eccentric aspect of my early years was that I got the Expert box before getting into AD&D, and was briefly playing that with Holmes Basic even though it wasn't really a compatible ruleset (something that puzzled me at the time but now seems obvious; I was similarly puzzled to discover the Basic rules I had didn't naturally flow into AD&D despite the implied promise of "Basic" and "Advanced" and the suggestion in the Holmes rules that Basic was an introduction to AD&D, another thing I now understand).
It did seem to me even at the time that the Moldvay and Mentzer revisions lacked an elan that the Holmes rules had, though I didn't understand anything about the authorship or marketing choices being made at the time. And ironically it does seem to me now that the BECMI game (or at least the BECM part of it) is actually a more cohesive, coherent, and robust game than what AD&D wound up being. (A thing young me would've been shocked to see old me saying: I, too, believed as a young teen that AD&D was "real" D&D and that Basic, etc., was "for babies'.)
My introduction to the game was a single session of BX from a DM who had the Cook/Marsh expert book. A couple of weeks later I bought the Moldvay Basic & B2 books off another participant. I read it and then ran a few B2 sessions (very badly). About a month or so later my friends bought Mentzer Basic sets and then a pal and I also bought the Mentzer Expert set and about 6mo after that another lad bought the Mentzer Companion set.
ReplyDeleteWe copied out scraps of AD&D rules, mainly spells and classes, from a jotter that had itself copied out scraps of rules and played that as a mash-up.
All self-taught.
I had the Moldvay Basic set, read it a few times and stumbled through B2 with another friend who was interested in playing. He ended up buying the Expert set and we played B/X for a summer until we discovered AD&D.
ReplyDeleteWe eventually had a couple of semi-regular players that joined us, they were self-taught as well. This was in a small town in east Texas, there wasn't exactly a thriving gaming scene to draw from.
I had to be initiated into D&D, because I had no idea it even existed in 1984. Like many, I started with the Moldvay basic set and Keep on the Borderlands. It didn’t take at first, but I gradually got into it with my first book, the Cook Expert book (mine was used). Later, with a desire to own a copy of Basic, I purchased the Metzner Basic set. The differences did somewhat confuse me, but I figured it was all TSR after all, and now I had a copy of Basic.
ReplyDeleteI do want to note that I enjoyed the upgrade in graphic design—even if I was always fond of the typeface used in Moldvay/Cook.
I didn’t play any AD&D until years later when I lived on Adak. I don’t think I started collecting AD&D books until 1988.
Mentzer takes great offense at the idea that his edition was bowdlerized "kiddie D&D", and is not intellectually honest in his defense of it. For example, he claimed that this can't be the case because BADD wasn't founded until 1985. That date is correct, but irrelevant. The first "TSR Code of Ethics", which mandated a Hays Code-style self-censorship of subject matter and began the process of sanding the rough edges off the game in a doomed effort to placate the Moral Majority, was from 1982 and clearly heavily influenced the Mentzer edition of D&D.
ReplyDelete