Re: For the Love of Basic and Boxed D&D

Posted by MortiS-the-Lost on Feb 22, 2010; 12:04am
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/For-the-Love-of-Basic-and-Boxed-D-D-tp4599510p4609412.html

Ah great stuff! Looks like this is going to be a popular thread with us gaming nostalgia junkies.

So I guess now it's my turn to contribute some pictures to the beginning of this celebration of Basic and introductory D&D games


as you can see my collection of the Basic, Expert (and so on) D&D books is rather lacking consisting as it does of the Player's Manual, Dungeon Master's Rulebook (1,2 and 3 respectively).
Dungeons & Dragons: Caves of Shadow (4) is an introductory game that either came free with Dragon Magazine or was a freebie that game stores handed out (I don't remember which). The games is entirely D6 based, I assume to make it more accessible to new players and feature 3rd edition's mascot line up of Regdar, Mialee, Jozan and Lidda. The whole 'game' was one booklet consisting of some basic rules character sheets and a short adventure. The aim of the booklet was to get you to want to buy the “Dungeon and Dragons Adventure Game” which I believe is the game Big Cat started out with (not to be confused with the 'Dungeons and Dragons Fantasy Adventure Board Game' or any number of other similarly named D&D products).
Admittedly I don't have much to show in the way of Basic D&D stuff, my collection of D&D books mainly consists of a huge hoard of 1st and 2nd edition AD&D books (including the revisions of both 1st and 2nd!) and related modules. So far as D&D goes I was always more into the complex rules offered by AD&D. However there are a few Basic/Expect/ect gems in my collection of modules



CM1 Test of the Warlords (5) I won't spoil the plot here, but it's very good adventure set in a land called Norwold with plenty of action, Royal intrigue and barbarians. The book has really good artwork and some nice maps through out (I believe this module is an old favourite of ScumDog47).

X1 The Isle of Dread (6) what can I say ... a jungle island with a mysterious ruined temple, populated by natives and dinosaurs. Not really to my taste but an interesting adventure none the less.

M2 Vengeance of Alphaks (7) another adventure set in Norwold with the PC's trying to stop a huge war breaking out between rival factions, a war which may destroy both sides.

M1 Into the Maelstrom (8) flying ships, Star Kingdoms and a swirling sea in space, a little too close to SpellJammer for my liking, but the naval combat rules are interesting.

XS2 Thunderdelve Mountain (9) a very nicely written Solo Adventure (with options for running with a small low-level party) unlike a lot of other Solo Games this adventure is free roaming and allows you to go back on your self, which means you can explore the dungeon in any order you like. An Event Record (based on ticking off a chart of letters) keeps track of what you have encountered, any major characters or monsters you've killed and what events you have triggered in doing so. This means that the actions you perform may effect what's happening elsewhere in the dungeon. For instance killing or not killing a creature in one room will effect weather you run into the same creature again later or what an NPC might being be doing when you encounter them or go back to the same room several times. Having the letter based system to keep track of events rather than asking direction questions about what you have done (like in FF books) also prevents any cheating! The art work is great and the book also contains a lot of interesting 'handouts' which give you clues at various stages of the adventure.



Dungeons and Dragons Fantasy Adventure Board Game
Although rules wise it's more akin to HeroQuest than it is to D&D I feel the Dungeons and Dragons Fantasy Adventure Board Game is worth a mention here as the flyers included in the box make it clear that it's intended to get people hooked on playing fantasy games with the hope they would later want to purchase D&D 3.5 rulebooks to continue gaming.

Dungeons and Dragons Game
The so called 'Easy to Master' Dungeons and Dragons Game, was the first D&D set I owned. It was released around the same time as HeroQuest and intended for the same sort of age group. However the basic D&D rules are a lot more complicated than HeroQuest.


the Rule Book contains pretty much all the rules you need to play low-level (1-5 ) games. It's some-what like an abridged version of the Players Manual (minus the solo adventure) and Dungeon Masters Rulebook from the Red Box rolled into one. The book covers Character Generation, the Game rules, Spells, Treasure, how write Adventures and even contains a fairly long list of Monsters, like I said it covers pretty much everything in one book. What makes this different from others is the 'Dragon Card Learning Pack' – a pouch of loose pages attached to what claims to be the Dungeon Masters Screen (and as such prevents it from standing up and being used as the DM's screen). This thing a nightmare and most of it's troubles stem from the fact it seems to have been designed by someone who had their head stuck in filing cabinet ... it's supposed to take new players through the D&D game step my step, first teaching them about the 'funny dice' and then taking them on a solo adventure through the basic rules of play and then running their first couple of games. The loose-leaf format hinders rather than helps here and is made all the worse by the solo adventure being printed on one side of the pages and the introductory guide to the rules in a Questions and Answer format being printed on the other. Let me reiterate that for you: 2 different sections of text are printed literally back-to-back on alternate sides of the same pages ... and god help you should you accidentally drop the thing and all the pages fall out ... I quickly learned not to touch the Dragon Card Pack after having to figure out what order the pages were supposed to go in one too many times. And that is how I learned to play D&D!  


By far the nicest thing in the box is the Zanzer's Dungeon map/floor plan. It's a rather nice little dungeon with prison cells, a small mine and a rock sorting room with hand-driven conveyor belts, among other features. The game also came with a bunch of A-shaped little card stand-ups of various monster - some with a different creature on each side for some reason -  for use with the map, but this didn't really bother me at the time as I already had the miniatures from my HeroQuest set and a box full of old Citadel AD&D miniatures I had been given. I've actually used the dungeon map for WFRP and Mordheim more than I have for D&D.

DragonStrike
Feeling brave tonight? As Mr Babble pointed out I also own Dragon Strike which again is intended as an introduction to D&D. I picked up Dragon Strike second hand off a collectables/gaming stool at an indoor market around about 2003/4 not really knowing what it was at first (I have a compulsion to buy anything with the TSR logo on it!) but realising it was supposed to be a competitor to HeroQuest and had something to do with D&D (it shares some art work with my D&D boxed game). The rules aren't much like the D&D rules but the basic principals are the same. Most people know Dragon Strike for it's (im)famous VHS, but the game itself is worth some attention on it's own merits. In fact I think Dragon Strike probably deserves it's own thread, so I won't go on about it here.

However what might be of interest to this thread is the flyer that was included in the box advertising other TSR games available at the time.






I've always found it some what amusing that the advert for the Easy to Master Dungeons & Dragons Games, kinda implies that the aim of the game is to hunt and kill dragons.