Adept Play
Adept Play
Tag: Dungeons & Dragons B/X
(Title: Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Adventure Game) A fantasy game including the components Basic Set by Tom Moldvay and Expert set by David “Zeb” Cook (therefore “B/X”), published by TSR (TSR Hobbies) in 1981.
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On the hegemony of Moldvay’s B&X in the D&D culture of play today
Today, at the discord, I express my curiosity about why Moldvay Basic D&D catalyzed so much the attention today, instead of Mentzer’s BECMI or Holmes’s D&D. Ron recommended checking this with Sean who has the experience of the presence of Moldvay’s version. Sean reacted and triggered a conversation with contributions from James Nostak, John Wilson […]
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Stuck in the Dunes
I’ve been DMing a game of Moldvay/Cook B/X Dungeons & Dragons with Robbie and Sean using the module Slumbering Ursine Dunes by Chris Kutalik. We’re 10 sessions in: the main party has just walked into an ambush, and so the next session may prove critical in answering the question of how much longer we’ll be […]
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Keep to the Path: Knavish Adventures in Keep of the Borderlands
This is my most recent experiment in playing a system in pure referee-style, six three-hour sessions of Knave in the famous B/X module Keep of the Borderlands by Gary Gygax. Previously, I attempted forty hours of a 5e West Marches Campaign which was a mixed experience. My sense of “referee style” is to stick adamantly […]
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The Lost City Session 2
The link for session 2 is embedded below, and we played session 3 tonight. Originally we were going to play 4 sessions total but we may go to 5, depending on how things go with the next session. Here is the thread for session 1, which also has observations from a one-shot that was played […]
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Dungeon Adventure: The Book of Moldvay
I am going to run an adventure using the 1981 D&D Basic Set. There have been a number of conversations that hit on directly, or indirectly, this set of rules and as it was my first RPG experience, I want to take a look back. More than a look, I want to run the game […]
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Conversation: D&D play culture
This conversation runs parallel to the recent post-play conversation among the participants of my Lamentations of the Flame Princess game. Jon wanted to discuss similar things in terms of his own decisions about titles to play, so we took some time for that. For orientation, here’s my position: that the cultural presence of “D&D” in […]
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D&D as habits and culture
This really could have gone into Seminar instead. I edited it as an epilogue to our Lamentations/Ottoman playtest and included it in that YouTube playlist, and it does fit and make most sense that way, but as an idea, it’s probably going to generate Seminar-style discussion. Maybe not the most serene discussion. I can’t think […]
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Conversation: Introducing Role-playing
Ken Oswald is a game and comics retailer in Alabama, who’ll be giving an ambitious introduction to role-playing later this summer, He contacted me for sort of a brainstorm, let’s compare notes session. The question is, how might a non-role-playing, or sorta-semi, heard-about-it audience be best oriented? Without manipulating toward specific products, and without falling […]
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Conversation: Reflections and dissections
Here’s a conversation with Ivan, following up on his comments (and video) in the Finding D&D series. I split the last bit off to join the SFTV RPG seminar too, so this was sort of an all-over-Adept-Play discussion. It’s divided roughly into some “how we met D&D” talk, thoughts on fantasy in role-playing and fantasy […]