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Post by thegreyelf on Dec 21, 2018 6:52:34 GMT -6
Latest blog, in which I examine the evolution of so-called "Basic" D&D and how it's really just OD&D continued. It's a wild understatement to say that Dungeons & Dragons has gone through a lot of iterations, forms, and incarnations over the years. One of the first big schisms in the game came very early on, when the original version of the game evolved into Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I admit to being a bit fuzzy on the specific details of this evolution; it's possible that TSR originally intended to continue publishing OD&D alongside AD&D (otherwise, the need to clarify that the new game was "Advanced" seems superfluous), or it could simply have been a branding change. Regardless, around this time, they also decided that it might be a good idea to offer a "Basic" version of the game, to introduce new players. Enter Eric Holmes, and the beginning of what would become the first "Edition Wars" in the history of the game. These edition wars continue even down to today's fans of the game, many of whom are starkly (and harshly) dismissive of the various versions of BD&D. Many players dismiss the various basic versions of the game as targeted at children, being juvenile or purile, or any number of other value-judgement-based insults. I find these insults to be shortsighted and largely untrue, but that's really not the point of this blog. My good friend Tim Brannan over at The Other Side is working on a blog about just that issue, and I recommend you follow him if you're not already. What I would like to do here is take a brief look at the actual, mechanical evolution of D&D as it applies to those basic games. wastedlandsfantasy.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-evolution-of-basic-d.html |
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Post by chicagowiz on Dec 21, 2018 11:11:25 GMT -6
It must be Holmes week, because I was just flipping through my blue book again. Nice post on the various Basic versions and a high level overview of them.
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Post by Stormcrow on Dec 21, 2018 11:51:34 GMT -6
Many players dismiss the various basic versions of the game as targeted at children, being juvenile or purile, or any number of other value-judgement-based insults. I think people who want to defend the "basic" line largely imagine that people are insulting it. There certainly used to be a perception that the "basic" line was simpler and targeted at kids, but that perception largely ended when the "basic" line ended, and was never really insulting, just "Advanced is better though, right?" I think you're defending the game against a straw man. |
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Post by Falconer on Dec 21, 2018 18:51:38 GMT -6
I do think the 1983 revision of the Basic Set proper was, indeed, written with a young audience in mind. But I literally mean just that one version of just that one product, not the whole brand (D&D without the A) nor necessarily any other given product. That said, why wouldn’t TSR want there to be a kid-friendly game? One thing that baffles me about nerd culture in general is the dismissal or scornful view of child-friendly things. Anyway, a few years back a family with young kids at my church wanted to get into D&D. I gifted them with a 1983 Basic Set and a revised B2 that I found on eBay. (This was during the Next Playtest era when there wasn’t anything “current” that I could get them; anyway,even the 5e Starter Set wouldn’t have been the same.)
Something to consider is the fact that throughout 1977 to 1980, the Advanced, Basic, and OCE versions of the game were all available for sale. One way I like to look at it is that the product which finally replaced the OCE is the Expert Set (1981).
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Post by thegreyelf on Dec 22, 2018 17:10:39 GMT -6
Many players dismiss the various basic versions of the game as targeted at children, being juvenile or purile, or any number of other value-judgement-based insults. I think people who want to defend the "basic" line largely imagine that people are insulting it. There certainly used to be a perception that the "basic" line was simpler and targeted at kids, but that perception largely ended when the "basic" line ended, and was never really insulting, just "Advanced is better though, right?" I think you're defending the game against a straw man. Soooo, I IMAGINED people recently saying to me on groups that it was designed for teenie-boppers and was a joke that was built to be an insult to "grown up D&D players?" Huh. Interesting. Never knew I was delusional. |
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Post by waysoftheearth on Dec 22, 2018 21:04:44 GMT -6
I think people who want to defend the "basic" line largely imagine that people are insulting it. There certainly used to be a perception that the "basic" line was simpler and targeted at kids, but that perception largely ended when the "basic" line ended, and was never really insulting, just "Advanced is better though, right?" I think you're defending the game against a straw man. Soooo, I IMAGINED people recently saying to me on groups that it was designed for teenie-boppers and was a joke that was built to be an insult to "grown up D&D players?" Huh. Interesting. Never knew I was delusional. C'mon Team; it's Christmas. Besides which there are board rules aimed at facilitating a respectful discourse, even where we happen to disagree. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 23, 2018 4:09:14 GMT -6
"God bless us, every one!" - Tiny Tim
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Post by Stormcrow on Dec 23, 2018 7:41:58 GMT -6
Soooo, I IMAGINED people recently saying to me on groups that it was designed for teenie-boppers and was a joke that was built to be an insult to "grown up D&D players?" Huh. Interesting. Never knew I was delusional. No, dude, but that sort of thing is definitely not the norm. The way you describe it, it sounds like you were just trolled big-time by people who know what triggers you. |
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Post by thegreyelf on Dec 23, 2018 7:59:03 GMT -6
Soooo, I IMAGINED people recently saying to me on groups that it was designed for teenie-boppers and was a joke that was built to be an insult to "grown up D&D players?" Huh. Interesting. Never knew I was delusional. No, dude, but that sort of thing is definitely not the norm. The way you describe it, it sounds like you were just trolled big-time by people who know what triggers you. Here's the thing--because YOU haven't seen it, doesn't mean it's not out there, nor does it mean it's not common. These people didn't even know I liked this version of D&D, and the comments weren't even exclusively directed at me--one of the inspirations for this blog was the litany of vitriol I was seeing flung about all over social media groups and forums (mostly dedicated to AD&D first edition, a sizable minority of whose fans, I have discovered, tend towards some of the worst kind of "one true wayism" I've seen amongst gamers) that were specifically targeting the childish nature of B/X. Comments were mostly directed at me AFTER I posted the blog. I don't appreciate, however, being told that I'm just making things up (which is what you did, by telling me I was "defending a strawman.") If you haven't seen it yourself, that's fine. But it's out there and it's common. Is it MOST AD&D fans? No, of course not. But it's definitely a large and vocal enough segment to be self-propogating and affecting newer gamers who are starting to ask questions like, "I'm interested in B/X, but I've heard it's just for kids and insulting/condescending towards grown-ups. Is that true?" I believe that you haven't seen it. I'd ask that you extend the same courtesy towards me and believe that I have seen it, and commonly enough to respond to it, instead of trying to intellectualize why I'm making things up. |
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Post by Finarvyn on Dec 23, 2018 9:45:55 GMT -6
Maybe that's why so many boards talk about "Classic" D&D instead of "Basic" since the term basic does give the impression that it's not as sophisticated as advanced, but I think that all of the original blends of D&D (OD&D, AD&D, B/X, etc pre-WotC) are all pretty much the same game with some different flavors mixed in. Too bad that some idiots don't see the beauty in B/X, for example.
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Post by Stormcrow on Dec 23, 2018 10:16:41 GMT -6
If you'd like to argue that I haven't seen what you're talking about because I haven't happened across everything out there, that's fine. But by the same argument you can't claim to have a complete overview of social media either. Your experience is as anecdotal as mine.
Someone on this board lobbing accusations of One True Wayism at other boards strikes me as particularly funny. This board has more One True Wayism than most I've been to (I'll reserve the top spot to Ruins of Murkhill).
In any case, I didn't say you were delusional, and I don't doubt that you've experienced what you say you did. I do think you're looking at things through a distorted lens, attributing more significance to your experience than it objectively warrants. I called your argument a straw man not because your experience was false, but because I think you've overgeneralized your experience.
In general, people don't go out of their way to villify "basic" D&D the way you describe. When they dismiss it, I believe they usually do what I said: consider it insignificant.
Have you got a link to any of these conversations where people diss D&D this way? Especially the ones you were involved in. I'd like to see the context in which these reported accusations were made.
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Post by Zenopus on Dec 23, 2018 11:05:51 GMT -6
This thread is getting into edition warring and discussing other forums, neither of which serve this forum well. Please continue the discussion over on Jason's blog.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2018 0:07:57 GMT -6
Since this is only the latest in a series of recent incidents involving the same user, the team has decided to ban Stormcrow from this website until March 31st, 2019.
Don't be a jerk.
Don't behave arrogantly, and don't behave overly confrontational with other members.
Don't pick fights with other members.
Don't insult or antagonize other members.
Don't repeatedly disrupt or derail threads.
Don't write comments that seem designed to annoy.
Don't test us on whether we're willing to enforce this rule.
The thread is open again. Everyone, please feel free to continue discussing the original topic in a more civil manner than Stormcrow decided to do.
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Post by Vile Traveller on Dec 24, 2018 4:03:01 GMT -6
Well, going back to the OT - I feel the big departure from pre-Greyhawk OD&D (and Holmes) was the introduction of stat bonuses for everything. To my mind quite apart from any mechanical impact, their psychlogical effect was to elevate PCs to the superhuman. They were "better" than monsters, hero material even before gaining levels or filling that golf bag with magic items.
Of course there was an ongoing quest to codify things, to try to get to that universal mechanic which 5E still has not managed, but to me that's just incremental tidying up. Stats in Holmes are mainly atmospheric, giving a great character synopsis without extensive background generation, so in a way the evolution is to make them even more important as "self image".
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Post by thegreyelf on Dec 28, 2018 5:46:21 GMT -6
Well, going back to the OT - I feel the big departure from pre-Greyhawk OD&D (and Holmes) was the introduction of stat bonuses for everything. To my mind quite apart from any mechanical impact, their psychlogical effect was to elevate PCs to the superhuman. They were "better" than monsters, hero material even before gaining levels or filling that golf bag with magic items. Of course there was an ongoing quest to codify things, to try to get to that universal mechanic which 5E still has not managed, but to me that's just incremental tidying up. Stats in Holmes are mainly atmospheric, giving a great character synopsis without extensive background generation, so in a way the evolution is to make them even more important as "self image". That's a very solid observation, and not even one with which I disagree. That's why I say that AD&D is an evolution and expansion of the OD&D system, while "Basic" is a new edition of OD&D. Some people seem to willfully be missing the subtle difference between the two. I do disagree that 5th edition hasn't managed a universal mechanic, but that's not a discussion for this thread. |
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Post by solfe on May 12, 2019 11:44:57 GMT -6
When I was a kid in the 1980s*, I seemed to have no awareness of the purpose of D&D vs. AD&D. It wasn't terribly uncommon to see all kinds of games books right on the same shelf, with zero explanation as to what they were or how they were connected. To the best of my ability, I tried to combine the two. Racial classes from D&D were standard background characters in AD&D, as if that character did nothing to deviate from the norm of their culture. I did have to make players roll stats as if they were playing AD&D, because the baseline stats were different. Somehow, I didn't quiet "evolve" from a D&D basic player to an AD&D player. I had a whole set of house rules that made the two work together.
Where everything fell apart was when Unearthed Arcana came out. I didn't know what to make of it and ignored it as much as possible. What is funny is, in the 1990s, I found Rules Cyclopedia and loved it. My favorite two parts were weapon skills and general skills. No more single paragraph descriptions. However, being a decade and a half into my own type of game play, I didn't jump from what I had to RC, but incorporated into what I was happily calling "AD&D". I should have called "Basic Plus".
*The 80s was when I started drawing an allowance and didn't have to rely on parents to purchase stuff for me. That's when I became my own gamer.
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Post by bigjackbrass on May 13, 2019 0:30:14 GMT -6
Where everything fell apart was when Unearthed Arcana came out. Which is ironic, given that Unearthed Arcana was itself notorious for falling apart. |
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bexley
Level 4 Theurgist
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Post by bexley on May 26, 2019 17:40:27 GMT -6
i enjoyed this take. i think there is a lot there. i dont think teenybopper should be taken as an insult though. there is a lot of good qualities of pop and i think basic is a good example. clear, concise, and fun.
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