When we played the first session of Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set/Expert Set (1981, styled “B/X”), I didn’t present any. I had gravitated to northeastern Africa via the dungeon map I wanted to use, which in turn affected my monster picks (crocodiles, baboons), but there wasn’t any context or presentation in play about it. I chose the leading image after playing the first session, when Nils was having none of this “it’s just a fantasy town” nonsense and asked what the architecture was like.

The guys I’m playing with (Filip, Nils, and Neo in the first session) have been through some intense system-aware play, also as they’ve moved into their older teens: 3:16, EABA, and most recently The Mountain Witch. Their standards for the most basic possible play, for everyone at the table, are considerably higher than those presumed by the B/X text, which is frankly written for a single adult to manage, via DMing, a gaggle of distracted twelve-year-old boys.

Orienting regarding the text begins with publication history. This diagram shows that there is no “first edition” D&D, especially not as a cultural or play phenomenon. By my count there are five distinct core rules texts, and “basic” is a specific reference, preceding “expert,” inside a particular line, and has no relationship with “advanced.”

[During the Williams ownership phase, imagined as a page of its own to the right, both lines continued: at the top into a nearly-entire system reboot for Advanced D&D 2nd edition, and at the bottom, into four more boxes to complete levels 1-30 and a series of consolidations that would end with The Classic Dungeons & Dragons Game in 1994.]

Regarding personal history, it may interest you to know that I never once saw a copy of B/X in the wild and was unclear about its contents until about 2010. As a young/mid teen, I’d played Holmes (1977), the reprinted Gygax et al. (1978), and AD&D (1977-1979) in varying combinations and stepped away from D&D sensu lato around 1981. I bought and briefly played Mentzer (1985) when I was working at a neighborhood center in the mid-late 1980s.

For a big sector back then, however, B/X was the primary D&D, so I’ve been preparing to play it for a while for my own education. Also, the guys wanted to “play some D&D” and I have no interest at all in 5th edition, so this is what we chose.

Preparation

I’ve said many times at the past that early D&D made no sense to play prior to 4th level for the characters, but that was strictly in reference to Advanced D&D, which is a completely different game. Although still a bit tough on them, this system is by contrast functional from the start. Here are the notes and then the sheets for our starting fellows, at which point, too, I had prepared nothing much beyond some scribbles.

Quick footnote: Neo changed his dwarf character’s name to Gromlim before play started.

My preparation stayed with the instructions in Basic, glancing at a couple of things in Expert but not planning to implement them fully until and unless we get to 4th level characters.

An important aspect is to start with a dungeon and expand outwards through later development, as we ask questions like “what’s ‘town’ anyway” and travel elsewhere (these instructions are common to many contemporary games, especially AD&D and T&T, and heavily implied in RuneQuest).

Here’s the archeological evidence for my dungeon preparation, with some attention to the instructions. It’s all Basic content except for the crocodiles, and I also dropped the cube to three hit dice as per the text’s instructions for doing so.

You can see that I skated considerably on situational context/content – no idea why the noble elf guy had quested into the vicinity, no idea what the cultists wanted or did besides worshipping a pool full of goo, no idea who the undead even were … the only NPCs I had a good feel for were the baboons, in that they knew the cultists were killing and goo-ing people and actually were trying to warn the characters away from the place, non-lethally, for their own good. (They aren’t above eating someone who insists on being a doofus and trying to kill any of them, but it’s not their primary goal.) I had some usable details, like the water’s placement, to serve as my foundation for filling in content as needed after the first session, but as you will see, the players outstripped my laziness right from the start.

Session 1

Thoughts on the play experience

• This game, as with the related titles, does not include attribute rolls. If you’re smart enough to know, then you know, agile enough to do it, then you do it. In this case, Intelligence differed greatly between Nils’ smart thief Seth and the other two rather doltish characters; there are many examples, but note these especially
  • During the stirge fight, I say “you didn’t know” and “you do know” in quick sequence, which in audio-only makes no sense, because I’m speaking to Filip and Nils respectively
  • Nils’ character’s head is sort of my portal for data, as with the deductions I provide “into” it when they are traversing the upper walkway; however, this was more syncretic than it sounds because Nils indicated nonverbally that this kind of observing and thinking is what his guy was doing
  • And as a contrast, although Neo’s dwarf Gromlim is generously described as challenged, he is basically an observational genius regarding architecture and dungeon-y design relevance, so I did the same for those variables more or less constantly upon arrival there
• Sides-initiative vs. individual initiative turned out to be pretty easy; same concept throughout all of early D&D shares the concept that you do sides-based initiative when sides are fighting as teams, and then “zoom in” on individual ordering when paired or subset-group outcomes are independent
  • The specific procedures for the zoomed-in ordering differ greatly across AD&D, Holmes, and B/X, as do the time-units for a combat round
• If/when Basic and Expert are distinctly different for a given thing, then at present anyway, I’m using Basic; however, if Basic offers options, we consider them fully, e.g., individual weapon damage instead of universal 1d6
  • For perspective, the range of individual weapon damage in this system is much more narrow than the crazy wide spread across AD&D weapons
• Each player feels their way into their character, so that the flighty Elduin (rattled by nearly being killed), the keen and cautious Seth, and the lit-stick-o-dynamite Gromlim all take shape, including quirks of dialogue.
  • You can see them working out how stupid is stupid, i.e. the dial spins a bit for them as we go along
  • Laughed out loud during editing the inadvertent intrusion into the baboons’ hidey-hole (dialogue among players only): “Get out of there!” “Will we attack?” “No!” “… What?” as the players were entirely aware of the different degrees of information and different attitudes among their characters
• Note the casual, shared narration authority, e.g., Nils providing sound effects upon my sound effects for the first splattered stirge
• Play seems to get hitchy when combat starts at the “baboon door,” but that’s because Neo had to step out for a phone call, so we’re just waiting for him to get back, hence the chat about baboon capabilities and possible options for the characters out in the corridor
• I didn’t get my monsters’ morale checks right; I’m used to doing them only when things go badly, but this phrasing has them every round, with penalties when things go badly
• Having prepared for five characters and playing only with three, it’s a minor miracle that Filip’s guy lived through the stirge fight

That led to a window into the ordering system, which I think is flawed compared both to Holmes (1977) and to Mentzer (1983/85). It might even be a writing and editing artifact because I have a hard time believing anyone actually designed and played it as written.

• Given sides-based initiative, you conduct full missile, magic, movement, and melee for a whole side before the other side gets to do any of it – which makes neither fictional nor strategic sense
  • In Holmes, you go side-then-side for each of these phases, which I think is what Moldvay and Cook must have intended, and didn’t quite write right, unless they were just dumb (which I don’t think they were)
  • There are no instructions for parsing these things for individual initative ordering, although the implication is that each “guy” would have these steps in full, per go, which is not quite as nonsensical but is also conceptually 100% incompatible
• I ran into a specific difficulty when Gromlim’s individual initiative preceded the baboons’, when he intended to withdraw from the fight; the rules specify a reactive strike when you withdraw, but they also permit full movement and other activity before the other side does anything, so I went with the timing intead of the reactive strike; I kind of think I should have granted the strike, but I want to call out the instructions as contradictory

No setting, fine, but we need situation

Not to put too fine a point on it, the players were having none of this lazy sketchy “dungeon only, no reason” bullshit and played as if I did in fact have the responsibility to play everything contextually. At one point I say “can’t we just go into the dungeon?” which was a joke, but it’s also a little plaintive as I realized I couldn’t skate at all, not even the little bit I’d allowed myself.

As planned, but more quickly and a bit shame-faced, I put some content-work into session 2, including regional maps.

It’s probably not clear from those pages, but the scribbles correspond to content in my head about the noble elf questing guy, the contrasting two cultures of western swamp and eastern forest elves, the undead in the dungeon, the modern-day cultists, conditions and relevant people in town, and related matters. It’s true that the dungeon was already its own little situation in strictly tactical terms, but now we have a somewhat bigger situation with a backstory in which the dungeon is embedded.

I made sure to have a real answer for Nils regarding the town!

And finally, some reflection/reminders to myself regarding the system.