I found the set of Basic/Expert Dungeons and Dragons books on Amazon. This edition is also referred to as Moldvay/Holmes. It antedates Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, but isn't the same as the Original Dungeons and Dragons.
 |
| B/X D&D |
I wanted to try it because I had been reading a lot of OSR blogs. The odd gestalt appealed to me. It seemed darker and closer to the Appendix N roots of D&D than 3rd Edition, upon which I and most of the people I had played with cut our teeth.
3E was functional for us. But a few things bothered me. There was too much power creep. There seemed to be an assumption that each PC was "special;" worth writing a long backstory for and making a little sketch of, before the character had even begun play or survived a single adventure.
For a while, I believed that these character building exercises were well and good. But as I saw it in practice, I grew to feel that it tended to be awkward, and detracted from the basic challenge of raiding a dungeon and getting away with it.
At the same time as immersion and depth of character were emphasized in character creation, it seemed to leave the actual play of the game: The rules of AD&D reminded players that their characters were part of a demanding world; with Druidic orders and Thieves' Guild, and that characters were expected to hire henchmen and build strongholds. But these immersive elements were absent in 3rd Edition. The joke of describing PCs as Murder-Hobos exemplifies this shift.
Especially as new materials (official and otherwise) came out. The power creep and opportunities for mindless self indulgence grew. I thought it was in bad tastes, and I liked it better when we kept to basics.
Yes, 3E cried for improvement. But it turns out this is true of any edition of D&D.
The most obvious difference between Basic and newer editions is that player characters are much more fragile, and much less powerful. It is also much simpler to generate a character; a matter of minutes. These fellows are obviously meant to be expendable.
This seemed the obvious antidote to the issues I had with later editions. My mistake was thinking hat everyone else would also enjoy this level of brutality.
Not only are characters weaker, but they are also less effective; even at things they should be good at. Players are actually hindered from interacting with the environment. Which means they are hindered from playing in the game I painstakingly crafted for them.
Thieves have pitifully low percentages to perform thiefly action, and the poor player can expect to fail rather than succeed. The restrictions on spell-casting prevent magic users from casually reading arcane inscriptions or detecting magic. Clerics at least have the comfort of being competent fighters, since they can't cast spells until second level.
So imagine me, hoping players will feel the thrill of being relatively vulnerable. But instead they are merely frustrated.
B/X awards experience for treasure recovered from dungeons. 1 gp = 1 xp. I was excited about this change. I figured it would create a very different, pragmatic playstyle.
Also, monsters are tough and will appear in quantities well beyond the capabilities of a 4-member party. I figured this was alright. since the idea is to grab treasure rather than grpple with monsters. Except the characters were so incapable of interacting with the environment and the players were so discouraged that they missed most of the treasure!
One thing to be said about B/X is that combat moves quickly. Since there aren't a lot of feats or special maneuvers to calculate, players don't have to wait long between turns, and the round can go so fast that it kind of sneaks up on you if you're used to waiting half an hour for your turn to come around. Characters however, are low on hp. And a single round worth of damage can easily destroy a low level character. Also, there are no rules for unconsciousness or saves vs. death or incapacitation, so zero HP is dead.
With one game I ran, the party went from full to a sole survivor in two rounds. The survivor wisely chose the moment to escape. This dead-before-you-know-it thing might be "realistic." but it makes for a lack of agency which ruins the player experience.
What's worse, my instinct as a DM is to feel slight remorse, and fumble around awkwardly, thinking of a way to save the character. Especially if that character's player is one of the more active or talkative of the group and their death hinders the narrative.
One attraction of B/X was that it was "simpler," ie. the rules were less extensive. But I found that we did not act more simply as a result. We still wanted to consider things like attacks of opportunity, or cover, or holding actions. We could not un-train ourselves from the things that later editions had conditioned us to consider.
When I asked for input at the end of the game, I was told that the game suffered exactly because I had eschewed the narrative fluff that I thought was hindering the game.
I had the players roll their stats In Order, and build characters on this because I felt that this was the "Old School" way to do it. Supposedly, players will get the challenge of trying some thing new, or the thrill of playing against type. But in reality, most players have a type they enjoy. And they will simply play better if they can fulfill the role suitable to their temperament and playstyle.
I also omitted the awkward part wher the players meet and find common goals and get plot-hooked together. I said "You already know eachother, and like and trust eachother reasonably well. Now get to it."
I figured that a good character name would serve as the spark of life. But I made the mistake of printing off a random name generator, and my players used it to create meaningless names that they didn't have reason to care about..
I thought I was cutting fat, but it was more like kneecapping.
A player commented that the characters lacked motivation because we didn't go into backstory or have a segment where we meet and introduce the characters.
So it seems that the backstories and prologues actually served play more than I gave credit for.
But I can't blame B/X as written for that last mistake. I was copying a way that I had seen it played. Nowhere in an any official DMG has it ever said, "allow a segment where we can get a grasp of the characters and their goals. Wrangle them together, and unify their purpose. But once you've got that investment going, make sure that they don't just fucking die right off."
I don't think I'll be running B/X again. It seems to stand as an intermediate step between war-gaming and the character-centric RPGs my generation is used to. Certainly, it was an improvement on whatever came before. But the brutal quirks of B/X D&D are easier to appreciate in theory than in practice.
Now I have to wait for the bad taste to leave my player's mouths.
