I had the Mentzer Red Box, and went from that to AD&D. Somehow or another I over the years I managed to acquire the 64 page Moldvay Basic Rulebook, though I never used it, just read through it briefly. I've never seen Holmes.
So other than the art, which i meaningless to me as far as liking a rulebook, what sets these 3 rulesets apart from one another in some meaningful substantial way?
Not much. Holmes Basic could be considered an after-the-fact intro to OD&D, while the other two are designed as intros for the later D&D game. In most cases, folks have a fondness for whichever of these boxed sets they started out with, and the differences are easily reconciled in a later retro-clone like Labyrinth Lord for instance.
In Holmes, initiative in combat is done by dexterity order where highest dexterity goes first.
Moldvay and Mentzer does group initiative.
The Holmes rules are far more OD&D based- all weapons do d6 damage, there's hardly any attribute bonuses, some spells are different (magic missiles roll to hit), etc.
Moldvay and Mentzer rules are almost the same but the Mentzer rules are written more towards an younger audience.
Are you looking for a complete list of differences, Joe?
The mechanical differences between Moldvay Basic and Mentzer Basic are negligible. The monster lists are different, so you could end up facing different foes. Presentation-wise I have long felt that Mentzer is a better introductory manual but the tone speaks down to the reader a little more.
Holmes is different enough that the connoisseurs can find lots of little differences, but as a practical matter few of them make as big a difference as the initiative thing already mentioned.
Quote from: Kellri;359391Not much. Holmes Basic could be considered an after-the-fact intro to OD&D,
I must respectfully disagree with the good senator from Cambodia!
Holmes Basic is a direct introduction to
Advanced D&D - the rules mention time and again that for more information on given topics, AD&D should be where the player looks.
AD&D is the "Expert Set" for Holmes Basic (although the Expert rules for the Moldvay edition of B/E tell you how to use the "new" Expert rules with Holmes basic).
Holmes was intended as a bridge
between OD&D and AD&D.
To the broader question of the original poster, Holmes Basic had the best art, Moldvay/Cook had the second best art. The art in the Mentzer sets and the RC was just awful.
Your dead on DD. Except for the art. Thats just a matter of taste. Because I feel the opposite. I Like the Elmore Cover. Course I also prefer the Sutherland, over Erol Otus. I will definitely agree though that the art inside the RC is pretty stinky.
Quote from: Joethelawyer;359387So other than the art, which i meaningless to me as far as liking a rulebook, what sets these 3 rulesets apart from one another in some meaningful substantial way?
Mark Bertenshaw's D&D Review Guide (http://www.mbertenshaw.plus.com/Mark/RPG/rules.html)
Quote from: thedungeondelver;359417I must respectfully disagree with the good senator from Cambodia!...Holmes was intended as a bridge between OD&D and AD&D.
The Holmes text definitely aims the reader at AD&D, but my understanding is that those references were added by Gygax after the initial drafts were completed. And Holmes definitely worked from the OD&D texts as his source.
Looking at the text and the Holmes rules, I think Holmes is OD&D rules with a few variations, here and there. Playing Holmes is more like playing OD&D with a few house rules than like playing AD&D, or even B/X.
In the past I've played some one shot games using the Holmes basic D&D book, where we didn't bother rolling for the character ability stats. With a few minor changes, such as using a group initiative, Holmes D&D was actually completely playable without any character ability stats.
The monster selection in Holmes includes a great overall selection including monsters that are much higher than 3 hit dice. That makes it easy to play up to more levels using a few pages of expanded charts (such as Meepo's pdf) and is a very compact D&D in one book. Note this is where I started playing D&D so I am biased. :pundit: I managed to get past not being able to play a Halfling Thief my first session and kept on playing. ;)
There was a page in Expert for those who went from Holmes Basic to Expert. It's mainly name changes and "use these stats in this book instead".
Mentzer is written more in the manner of regular games, step 1-10, do this, here's that, take this out of the box now, etc..
In Holmes D&D there was also a rule for parrying, which I don't recall offhand seeing in the 1E AD&D books.
Quote from: ggroy;359498In Holmes D&D there was also a rule for parrying, which I don't recall offhand seeing in the 1E AD&D books.
I think AD&D has parrying, it was just in the PHB, and never gets mentioned in the DMG. At least, that's what I remember from my last read-through.
Quote from: Peregrin;359503I think AD&D has parrying, it was just in the PHB, and never gets mentioned in the DMG. At least, that's what I remember from my last read-through.
Back in the day, we didn't even bother using any parrying rules in our D&D/AD&D games.
Holmes has a more freeform approach, similar to OD&D. It has a bit on you can play anything including a witch, samurai or dragon. The other two increasingly locked that down to present a more set rules approach. Funny, cos Holmes was a bridge to AD&D which forbade playing monsters and in general was not for deviating from the presented rules.
tl;dr in Holmes this is a viable character option:
(http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z60/clan_mum/Lizard_Rider.jpg)
teh Lizards! I CAN SEE FOREVER!
USC professor, occasional novelist, and (apparently) D&D fan Dr. J. Eric Holmes, as legend has it, took the OD&D rules (including Supplement I: Greyhawk), his own understanding of how some of the more cryptic parts were supposed to work, and possibly some common house-rules (it appears he must've had at least second-hand knowledge of "The Perrin Conventions" -- a set of combat house-rules used at Bay Area con games from 1976 on and eventually published in vol. 2 of Chaosium's All the World's Monsters), and decided on spec to re-edit the whole thing into something that made better sense and was more comprehensible to beginners, and then approached TSR with his manuscript and said "want to publish this?"
As this occurred right around the time D&D was beginning to really take off in popularity, and while Gary was immersed in is own attempt to compile OD&D+supplements into a more comprehensive and comprehensible game (AD&D) they took him up on his offer. Gary Gygax "revised" Dr. Holmes' manuscript and made a few changes -- mostly inserting plugs for the upcoming AD&D game, but also inserting a few tidbits from the working drafts (a couple spells, a couple monsters) -- and TSR released it as the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Basic Game Set in the summer of 1977, both as a stand-alone book and in a boxed set together with copies of TSR's already-released Dungeon Geomorphs Set 1 (a set of blank maps), Monster & Treasure Assortment Set 1 (tables of pre-rolled encounters & treasure-lists) (Judges Guild hadn't yet proven to TSR the potential popularity of pre-designed dungeons, i.e. modules), and a set of dice.
Unsurprisingly, given its genesis, this was a strange set -- it includes some (but not all) of the new rules content from Supplement I (thieves are included, but only for humans (whereas SuppI allowed all races to be thieves); the convoluted chance-to-know spells by Int stat table is included for magic-users, but not the combat bonuses by Str table for fighters; variable attacks and damage are included for monsters (e.g. ghouls having 3 attacks for 1-3 damage each) but not characters (so all weapons do 1-6 damage regardless of size), and so on), its advancement tables only cover levels 1-3 but there are numerous unexplained references to higher-level characters and spells and a lot of included monsters (giants, dragons, vampires, trolls, etc.) that are way-overpowered for level 3 characters (not to mention the tables in the Monster & Treasure Assortment which contained numerous monsters, level 4+ character-types, and magic items not described in the rulebook), and the combat rules (which were largely absent from OD&D -- each individual referee was expected to cobble something together from Chainmail and his own common sense) don't bear much similarity to any TSR edition of D&D before or since (including anomalies like that each combat round lasts 10 seconds but 10 combat rounds equal a 10-minute exploration turn, that initiative order is determined by Dexterity score (which requires assigning Dex scores to every monster encountered), the fact that (even though all weapons do 1-6 damage) daggers attack twice a round and two-handed weapons attack once every 2 rounds, and that flaming oil is WAY better than any other attack form (doing 3d8 damage across 2 rounds)).
However, despite all this, and even after the AD&D books were released and had significantly-enough different rules from OD&D to render all those references Gygax had inserted incompatible, this set was popular enough to be reprinted about a half-dozen times over the next 2 years (including "upgrades" to the boxed-set version to include full modules -- first B1: In Search of the Unknown, later B2: The Keep on the Borderlands -- instead of the geomorphs & tables, and a downgrade when TSR ran out of dice sets and started including a sheet of "chits" instead).
Finally, in 1980, TSR decided to finally take the old OD&D whitebox (which had been sold as a legacy product, the "Original Collector's Edition," since 1977) out of print and replace it with a new, mass-market-friendlier edition (rumor has it TSR's legal settlement with Dave Arneson, who received co-author credit and royalties on D&D products but not on AD&D products, was also a factor in this decision -- that they were required to keep the former in-print, and distinct from the latter, to keep him from suing). This ended up being two sets, the Basic Set (a new revision of the Holmes set by Tom Moldvay) and the companion Expert Set (filling in all the gaps from the OD&D rules that weren't included in Basic, edited by David Cook and Steve Marsh).
Tom Moldvay's Basic Set is clearly based on the Holmes set -- it includes all of the same classes (including human-only thieves), most of the same spells (including Gygax's added AD&D spells like Remove Fear and (Tenser's) Floating Disc), more-or-less the same monsters and magic items (including those drawn from Supplement I like rust monsters, stirges, carrion crawlers, and gelatinous cubes that had no basis in pre-D&D literature or mythology) -- but the rules are considerably cleaned up and streamlined, with a lot of the weird little anomalies eliminated or made to fit more logical patterns. For the first time with Moldvay's set, the D&D rules actually worked and made sense as-written, without requiring each individual to essentially co-author the game.
The Cook/Marsh Expert Set was a direct sequel/companion to Moldvay's set that was also usable with the Holmes set (including a page of conversion notes at the front covering the main differences between the two), covering levels 4-14 (not sure why that particular number was chosen -- perhaps because it looked aesthetically pleasing on the book cover, or because that's where the thief's abilities max out in Supplement I) and including all of the "missing content" from the OD&D set -- the expanded advancement tables, higher level spells, more (and tougher) monsters and magic items, and the rules for wilderness adventuring (which had been completely glossed-over in the Holmes set) and castle-building (the original "endgame" for D&D) -- all slightly tweaked to fit and be compatible with Moldvay's revision of the system. Interestingly, nothing from Supplement I -- neither spells, nor monsters, nor magic items -- is included in the Expert set unless it had already been included in Holmes and Moldvay. So the Expert Set doesn't include, for instance, the Monster Summoning spells (or any spells above 6th level), the tougher Greyhawk monsters like ogre magi, umber hulks, and beholders, or anything from Greyhawk's extensive magic item lists (except for those couple of items -- bag of devouring and rod of cancellation -- that Holmes, and therefore Moldvay, had included).
These sets were also on the market for about 2-3 years (from late 1980 to mid 1983) and proved even more popular than the Holmes set (these were the "D&D fad" years, with 1982 apparently being TSR's all-time high water mark) and it was eventually decided to make an ever more beginner and mass-market friendly version of the game, and simultaneously "complete" it with the level 15+ rules that had been hinted at in the Expert Set (as the "D&D Companion") but never released (or, from what I understand, written). This job fell to Frank Mentzer, who had already had success overseeing TSR's line of choose-your-own-adventure "Endless Quest" books.
Mentzer's Basic Set is ruleswise almost identical to Moldvay's (there are a couple small differences, but nothing a casual or even moderately-dedicated player would notice) but radically different presentation-wise. Moldvay's book is organized as a straight-forward reference book; Mentzer's is a step-by-step instruction manual, including a (presumably Endless Quest-inspired) choose-your-own-adventure intro that takes up the first 20 pages of the book and lets the reader "play" D&D before actually presenting any of the rules. The result is that the same amount of rules now fill up double the page-count, and are much easier for beginners and young players (the boxed recommends ages 10 & up, down from Holmes' "adults ages 12 & up"), but are less convenient for in-game reference and have an authorial voice and tone that comes off as mildly condescending.
Mentzer's Expert Set is really just a reorganization of the same content as the Cook/Marsh version to better match the organization and look of the new Basic Set, and with some of the progressions slowed down at the upper levels to allow more "room at the top" for the planned Companion & Master sets. In addition to slowing down characters' saving throw advancement, thieves' skills, and cleric & magic-user spell acquisitions, a couple of the more powerful spells, monsters, and magic items are also held back and (IIRC) the castle-building rules are less detailed. Instead, we get a detailed sample base-town, and a couple pages discussing in-town adventures (something that OD&D had covered very briefly in a couple paragraphs and Cook & Marsh had ignored completely).
The D&D Companion Set (released in 1984, a year after the revised Basic & Expert Sets) was also written by Frank Mentzer, and includes both more complex optional rules (new sub-classes, new weapons with special effects (like nets and bolas), rules for wrestling and jousting) and extensive rules for higher-level (15-25) characters, focusing mostly on the establishment and administration of Dominions. There were also a set of abstract mass-combat rules, and some new, tough monsters. In retrospect this is where the line between mass-market-friendly D&D and hobbyist-oriented AD&D began to blur -- with the former becoming in some ways more detailed and complex than the latter (which never had an equivalent "High Level Campaigns" book in this era, and pretty much petered out after about 18th level) -- and the two lines began to look less like alternate approaches to the same general game and more like two distinct, competing games.
In the Holmes era, it was explicitly spelled out that you were supposed to play with the Holmes set until you hit level 3 (which was envisioned as taking about a dozen up to maybe 20 sessions) and then you'd switch over to AD&D. The Moldvay-Cook-Marsh sets don't actually say that (possibly because they couldn't because of their settlement with Arneson), but this still seemed to be the way they were actually used in practice -- start out with the Basic Set, play it up to level 3, get an Expert Set and play it for awhile, but eventually "graduate" to AD&D. I know plenty of people who played up to about level 6 or 8 (i.e. about 6-9 months of play) in Expert D&D before switching gears to AD&D, but I didn't know of anyone at the time who actually stuck with it all the way up to 14th level (which would, at the assumed advancement rates, take at least a year of play, possibly more like 2-3).
Thus, the Companion Set seemed weird, like it was saying that you weren't supposed to switch over to AD&D and were instead supposed to stick with this game for a multi-year campaign (which was reinforced even further with the release of the Master Set (covering levels 26-36) in 1985, and the Immortals Set (essentially a whole new game for characters who have "won" Master Set D&D and become immortal) in 1986 -- to actually get to use either of these in play would require several years of dedicated, regular play, which was (as we had always thought) what AD&D was supposed to be about, not the mass-market kid-friendly version).
I'm convinced TSR simply never thought this through, never considered that they were setting these games up not to have the mutually-beneficial symbiotic relationship they'd had in the Holmes and Moldvay days (start with the simple set, spend a few weeks to a few months playing through it and learning the game, then move on to the Advanced game which you can (at least theoretically) continue playing for years) but to be in competition against each other -- that by encouraging players to stick with D&D through the Companion, Master, and Immortal levels they were no longer adding to but taking away from sales of their flagship game.
But then, considering that this was the same era when TSR began introducing multiple different AD&D campaign settings and marketing each one as, essentially, a separate game -- that Dark Sun and Ravenloft and Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms (and, ultimately, more than a half-dozen others) didn't really overlap and characters or adventures intended for one couldn't really be used in the others, meaning that casual fans would pick one favorite setting and ignore product branded for use with any of the others, thus hopelessly fragmenting the customer base and ensuring that nothing would achieve the kinds of sales levels that "universal" products and adventures saw back in the early 80s -- I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised...
(tl;dr version: the OD&D, Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer sets are all pretty close to the same, especially if you compare A to B, B to C, and C to D instead of A to D; TSR made a dumb mistake from 1984 on by ceasing to use the D&D line as a de-facto introduction to AD&D and instead trying to make it into a complete stand-alone (and thus competing against rather than feeding into AD&D) game)
Wow, your living up to your signature!
FWIW, T. Foster typed up the Perrin Conventions over at the K&K Alehouse. In case anyone's interested, dump to PDF version (http://www.box.net/shared/fuj3cuzbib). And if that's not cool with you, T. Foster, I'll unshare the document.
Quote from: Casey777;359542FWIW, T. Foster typed up the Perrin Conventions over at the K&K Alehouse. In case anyone's interested, dump to PDF version (http://www.box.net/shared/fuj3cuzbib). And if that's not cool with you, T. Foster, I'll unshare the document.
Since the page with the Perrin Conventions is one of the sample pages of
All the World's Monsters, vol. 2 at RPGNow (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=2&products_id=1713&it=1&filters=0_0_0_0_0&manufacturers_id=2) so anybody who wants it could get it for free (albeit with a watermark saying "Sample Page") I don't feel too bad about having shared this. That is, unless/until I hear otherwise from Chaosium...
Quote from: T. Foster;359543Since the page with the Perrin Conventions is one of the sample pages of All the World's Monsters, vol. 2 at RPGNow (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=2&products_id=1713&it=1&filters=0_0_0_0_0&manufacturers_id=2) so anybody who wants it could get it for free (albeit with a watermark saying "Sample Page") I don't feel too bad about having shared this. That is, unless/until I hear otherwise from Chaosium...
Thank you all for the info. Esp. T. Foster for that enlightening history. I didn't know all that.
Yes. Thank you, T. Foster. That was a proper thread-ending post. If that doesn't answer the question, the next step short of playing them is getting all three versions and sending them off to a laboratory for analysis. :p
Quote from: Ronin;359516Wow, your living up to your signature!
Yup.
The most important difference is still approach and presentation. Here, I suspect Mentzer would be the best for a complete newbie at, say, the age of 8-10; the Moldvay-Cook Basic+Expert combo is the best as a practical alternative to more complex rules, and Holmes is mainly for the jaded AD&D hardcore who think the latter variants are faggy hippy stuff. It has some evocative material, however, and together with B1, presents a somewhat different view of the game's creative approach than Moldvay + B2 + Cook + X1. I don't completely understand the genius of Monsters&Treasure Assortment, but it's supposed to be an important historical artifact.
I like the Monster & Treasure Assortments for a variety of not-quite-rational reasons. I like them because they include art by my favorite TSR artists (David Trampier, David Sutherland, and Tom Wham). I like them because they're one of the few artifacts (along with the Dungeon Geomorphs and Judges Guild's blank dungeon level maps) of the era when it was assumed each individual DM was creating his own multi-level "megadungeon" and the job of was the publishers was to provide tools to help make that task easier (like blank maps or lists of pre-rolled encounters and treasures) rather than smaller, pre-written, ready-to-play "adventures" which changed the way people looked at and played the game, IMO not necessarily for the better. And I like them because they provide an insight into what TSR at the time felt were appropriate challenges and rewards at various levels -- I think it's interesting, for instance, that the upper levels include a fair proportion of non-evil monsters (perhaps for adventuring parties to make friends with, or perhaps allowing equal opportunity for evil-aligned adventuring parties) and that the low-level treasures are generally pretty poor (a lot of them nothing but copper coins) but that there are a few "unbalanced" treasures thrown in there -- valuable gems and jewels and powerful magic items; on the lower levels I think it's interesting how tough monsters are mixed in with large numbers of weaker monsters (so on, say, dungeon level 7 or 8 you can still run into a group of 30 gnolls or 50 giant rats in addition to manticores, gorgons, giants, etc.) and that the lower-level treasures are really rich, with thousands of coins, masses of gems and jewels, and tons of magic items, including lots of cursed items.
These products feel to me, especially when taken in combination with the Dungeon Geomorphs sets (or the Judges Guild maps) like a window into the early, less-documented, days of the hobby, the more do-it-yourself oriented, less self-serious, and more game-y approach that was pretty quickly thereafter pushed aside (see, for instance, Gygax's exhortations against "funhouse"-style dungeons in the AD&D DMG, even though that's what D&D had been pretty much all about just a couple years prior).
Note, for the truly obsessive-compulsive (i.e. me) even the 1980 revised book version of the M&TAs doesn't provide quite the same feel as the original 1977-78 versions (which weren't even bound, they were just a collection of loose cardstock sheets). The booklet version removes some of the original artwork and "moderates" some of the more extreme table results, especially at the higher levels (plus it replaces the monsters from the OD&D supplements and early Dragon magazines that weren't included in the D&D Basic & Expert sets, taking away some variety and making the whole thing feel a little more bland). The magic was lost, man! ;)
You and the guys at the acaeum have done a through job of making feel guilty at replacing all my original AD&D stuff with the later versions. :duh: I had the original Monster and Treasure assortments and then replaced them with the booklet version.
At least I still have all my Dungeon Geomorphs.
Quote from: estar;359626At least I still have all my Dungeon Geomorphs.
Me too! And my Rogue's Gallery.
Quote from: Thanlis;359646Me too! And my Rogue's Gallery.
Used mine tonight to jump-start a new player just joining the game!
Gotta love a book of pregens.
Quote from: T. Foster;359622
Not a bad explanation; I have the booklet version, and the art is pretty good - my favourite piece, which gets too little recognition in discussion, is the plate mail-wearing fighter confronting three (?) ogre magi. That's one of the better things DCS did.
But from a practical standpoint, if I wanted to showcase really-really old products with great value for the wordcount, I would always choose one of the original Judges Guild booklets - where the M&T assortment is mostly raw data, JG products are overflowing with really brief but really evocative ideas worth entire game sessions to build around. Early TSR's products are probably too utilitarian and too flavour-neutral - while the really awe-inspiring stuff (like the various smallish RJK dungeons that were auctioned off on eBay over the years) was never, ever released, and will probably never be seen except by the collectors.
Did Moldvay always comes with B2 and did Mentzer always just have the solo adventure included in the manuals? I never had either Basic back in the day (Holmes Basic + Cook Expert + looked at Mentzer in the shops for me).
Also Holmes Basic has a bare skeleton of a wilderness (or at least non-dungeon) setting which except perhaps outside of Holmes novels (if they are the same setting) was not further developed, while the other two are IIRC just dungeons with a chart or two for providing why go there. The Expert sets are tied into a much more developed setting, The Known World (Mystara).
On Holmes as an intro to AD&D: didn't someone here once point out that the original Monster Manual is more in line with Holmes Basic than AD&D? If you look at it there aren't any (or barely any, I forget which) Neutral Good/Evil or Lawful/Chaotic Neutral monsters in the Monster Manual... and Holmes presented a 5-alignment system, where NG/E and L/CN didn't exist.
Quote from: Warthur;359689On Holmes as an intro to AD&D: didn't someone here once point out that the original Monster Manual is more in line with Holmes Basic than AD&D? If you look at it there aren't any (or barely any, I forget which) Neutral Good/Evil or Lawful/Chaotic Neutral monsters in the Monster Manual... and Holmes presented a 5-alignment system, where NG/E and L/CN didn't exist.
So Holmes had 5 alignments, Magic Missile was roll to hit... I dunno, I've been taught that those were signs of a heretical, non-D&D-like D&D. ;)
Quote from: Thanlis;359693So Holmes had 5 alignments, Magic Missile was roll to hit... I dunno, I've been taught that those were signs of a heretical, non-D&D-like D&D. ;)
The Holmes Heresy. Ended when Gygax and Holmes faced off against each other on the flagship of Holmes' fleet, in the midst of the Chaos invasion of Holy TSR...
Quote from: Warthur;359695The Holmes Heresy. Ended when Gygax and Holmes faced off against each other on the flagship of Holmes' fleet, in the midst of the Chaos invasion of Holy TSR...
I'd run that game.
Quote from: Warthur;359689On Holmes as an intro to AD&D: didn't someone here once point out that the original Monster Manual is more in line with Holmes Basic than AD&D? If you look at it there aren't any (or barely any, I forget which) Neutral Good/Evil or Lawful/Chaotic Neutral monsters in the Monster Manual... and Holmes presented a 5-alignment system, where NG/E and L/CN didn't exist.
Correct. If you look closely there are lots of little things in the MM that place it ruleswise closer to OD&D (and by extension the Holmes set) than to the other 2 AD&D books -- there are only 5 alignments represented (LG, CG, N, LE, and CE only)*, there are no monsters with AC 10 and monsters assumed (or stated) to be wearing leather armor have AC 7, there are references to spell-names that were changed in AD&D (e.g.
raise dead fully vs.
resurrection), the max. levels listed for demi-human leader-types match the level limits in OD&D (AD&D's are usually 1-2 levels higher), and there are references to casting-level equivalents that match the OD&D rather than AD&D tables (which is significant for clerics who in OD&D get 5th level spells at 7th level but not until 9th level in AD&D).
This makes sense, of course, when you remember that the MM was published about 9 months before the PH and 21 months before the DMG.
*This is the same system used in the Holmes set, but Dr. Holmes didn't invent it. It first showed up in an article in
The Strategic Review (TSR's precursor to
The Dragon) about a year earlier (issue #6, Feb. 1976) and all of the TSR (and Judges Guild) D&D stuff released after that point assumes the 5-alignment breakdown, so Holmes was just following standard TSR practice of the time (or, possibly, Gygax re-edited that part of his manuscript to match standard TSR practice of the time).
Quote from: Casey777;359681Did Moldvay always comes with B2 and did Mentzer always just have the solo adventure included in the manuals? I never had either Basic back in the day (Holmes Basic + Cook Expert + looked at Mentzer in the shops for me).
If you bought the Moldvay set in a box it always included B2 (and the Expert box always included X1), but both books were also sold stand-alone, for $6. The Mentzer Basic Set never included a module, but in addition to the solo adventure in the Players book it also had a partially-designed sample dungeon in the DM book (level 1 fully stocked, including step-by-step instructions for how to run the first session, map and suggestions for level 2, suggestions only for level 3). The Mentzer Expert Set still included X1, but with redone art and layout (http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/modpages/modscans/x1red.html).
QuoteAlso Holmes Basic has a bare skeleton of a wilderness (or at least non-dungeon) setting which except perhaps outside of Holmes novels (if they are the same setting) was not further developed, while the other two are IIRC just dungeons with a chart or two for providing why go there. The Expert sets are tied into a much more developed setting, The Known World (Mystara).
The solo adventure in the Mentzer book talks a bit about "town" and has an in-town scene where you haggle with a shop-keeper over the price of some new armor, but the town doesn't get a name or map until the Expert Set (where it becomes Threshhold, located within the Grandy Duchy of Karameikos in the Known World/Mystara setting).
I have all 3 sets. Personally, I adore the Mentzer edition the most since it does the best job of explaining to an interested person who DOESN'T have people teaching him or her how to play.. how to play these RPG things.
I love the text type, I love the Elmore art (anyone who says the art in the Basic/Expert Mentzer is inferior can suck my dick. Y'all bitches be smokin some dank ass nugz! :P), I just heart the damned HELL out of it.
Companion and Master are useful resources, but not really something I expect anyone to ever USE in its entirety. Most campaigns never reach name level anyhow. Not even in 3.x. One campaign I was in with nearly weekly play reached level 5. In TWO YEARS. A campaign I ran for 6 months made it to level 6 with similar levels of play.
Though for purposes of usability, I have Moldvay/Cook in a binder. The 3 ring setup is so damned USEFUL.
Actually, this is the contents of my D&D game binder, ready for quality RPG fun in a moment's notice: (If anyone cares how I do it.)
Homemade GM screen with the Black Box DM screen put on a more usable cardboard foldout.
Some slightly modified player copy charts from chapter 2 of the M/C Expert rulesbook.
Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert books. (Yay ready for spiral binder!)
My 1 page houserule page including:
Class ability minimums for the 9 allowed classes
Fighter Attacks Per Round
Class HP/Level
Thief Backstab Damage Multiplier
Dwarven Axe Specialization
Halfling Thief Skills
New Magic User Weapons
My binder copies of the Player Character Information Charts
My version of Mystara's Gods. (4 good, 4 evil, 4 neutral)
Hex maps of Karameikos & Mystara courtesy of Thorf.uk.
The Dungeon Map Key from Mentzer Basic.
New classes modified from the AD&D 2nd ed CDROM 2.0 DOC file printouts of Bard, Druid, Paladin, and Ranger.
Printed out from Rules Cyclopedia Mystic class.
The New Armor and Weapons page from Companion.
The Druid spells from Rules Cyclopedia.
The Mass Combat & Dominion/Stronghold chapters from the RC.
A buttload of character sheets.
The PDF printed out versions (Thanks for getting rid of something GOOD WOTC.) of B1, B3, B9, and the Judge's Guild module "Glory Hole Dwarven Mine". Because the name is just WRONG by modern terms, meaning its the bad joke that KEEPS ON GIVING.
A bunch of graph & lined paper.
I could also slip in my copy of X1 into the back sleeve if I wanted to.
Its like a "Bug Out Bag" except for RPG fun as opposed to essentials you need in a major emergency where you need to leave your home for an extended period.
Some very interesting posts from T. Foster. :hatsoff:
Even though I started with Holmes, Moldvay has always been my favourite of the three versions. The text is the most straightforward (although Mentzer is better for absolute beginners, Moldvay is more useful in actual play). Also, I like the level range covered by Moldvay/Cook D&D (levels 1-14). The 1-36 level range covered by BECM/RC always struck me as too much (and required introducing clumsy devices like 'attack ranks' for non-human classes). I prefer an 'endgame' of setting up a stronghold and becoming a ruler (as per the Cook Expert rules) over the 'endgame' of BECM/RC (becoming an immortal). Thieves' abilities max out at level 14 in Cook, whereas they are stretched out in Mentzer (yes, Mentzer made thieves suck even more). Finally, I think that the art in Moldvay/Cook is the best. I love the Otus covers, which convey a kind of 'weird fantasy' ethos. The interior art is also, for the most part, top-notch. (I did like much of the interior art for the Holmes set as well, given that Trampier is tied with Otus as my all-time favourite D&D artist. I also love the Tom Wham stuff. However, the Sutherland cover never really appealed to me. As for Mentzer, I never liked Elmore or Easley.)
FWIW, since I didn't actually mention it in my previous posts, I like the Mentzer Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert Sets best because those are the ones I started with and have setimental attachment to (whereas my best friend had the opposite -- a Moldvay Basic and Mentzer Expert Set -- clearly I won and he lost, though I'm sure he felt just the opposite ;)). I also like the Holmes set because of its art (Tramp + DCS + Wham = my holy trinity of D&D art) and because IMO it's the only Basic Set that maintains the DIY spirit of the original. The later iterations are a little too buttoned-down and polished for my taste -- they work so well and smoothly as-written that I don't feel the same implicit invitation to muck around with them.
Which is to say that with the original set and Holmes set (and 1E AD&D to an extent) the rules are so obviously just cobbled-together collections of whatever seemed like good ideas at the time (with occasional post-hoc handwaving justifications) that it feels like a completely natural progression for the individual GM to continue adding to and modifying them in his own image -- these aren't rules, they're just collected examples and suggestions. Conversely, the Moldvay/Mentzer/RC versions feel more like a well-oiled machine, a complete game, and that you shouldn't try to fix something that ain't broke. This is, of course, what you want for a casual mass-market game, but feels staid and hollow to my hardcore hobbyist self (which is, I suppose, a testament to the importance of presentation since OD&D and the B/E sets are about 95% identical ruleswise, but reading the former I feel like it's saying "this is a starting point for you to create your own fantasy campaign," and reading the latter I feel like it's saying "this is the complete game for you to start playing").
While Moldvay or Mentzer would probably be my choice to introduce the game to a kid or to show a non-gamer friend what it's all about (though I might go with Holmes, especially for an adult), I couldn't see myself ever running (or even playing in) an actual long-term campaign of them; for that I'll always go with OD&D or AD&D (depending on how much Gygax Flavor I want).