This is where it all began for me: the D&D Basic Rules Set. When I opened this book in 1983, I had no idea that it would change my life. Back then, if you told 11 year-old me that I’d be 36 and wiping tears from my face because reading it brought back so many joyful memories, he would have called you one of the names the cool kids called him for playing it. (Don’t judge him too harshly; he’s only 11.)
My original D&D Basic set was a garage sale casualty, but the book in this picture is a first printing that I bought at a game store about ten years ago. It’s perfect in every way, except for a missing character sheet in the middle, which I printed from the PDF copy I bought from Paizo last year.
The Keep on the Borderlands module beneath it belonged to someone named Randy Richards, who wrote his name and phone number (as we so often did in those days) on the cover. I don’t know who Randy Richards is, if he cares, or if he’ll even read this, but if he does, I want him to know: your book is in very good hands, Randy, and its current owner loves it as much as anyone could.
I’ve been on a real D&D kick lately (blame the Penny Arcade podcast, and how much I love 4e) but I hadn’t actually gone back to the beginning and read the Basic Rules for a very, very long time. So late last night, after my family went to sleep, instead of watching TV or reading blogs, I went to my bookshelf and grabbed the Player’s Manual you see in this picture. I read it cover-to-cover for the first time in over 20 years, and played the solo adventure, which was the very first dungeon I ever visited. I named my fighter Thorin, just like I did when I was a kid. I made a map on graph paper, rolled dice on the floor, and felt pure joy wash over me. I scared off a Giant Rat and killed the remaining two before I failed – like I did when I was 11 – to solve the riddle of O-T-T-F-F-S-S, losing all my treasure. I tried to talk to the Goblins … before I killed them and took their treasure: 100 sp and 50 gp. I battled the Rust Monster, who was just as tough and unreasonable an opponent for a first level fighter as I remember. Thorin eventually managed to defeat it with some … creative … trips back to town to replace his armor and weapons, just like he did a quarter century ago. Luckily for him, the Rust Monster didn’t heal between battles … just like the last time he faced it. I decided to leave the skeletons for another time, and walked back to town with my 650 gp and 100 sp. When I calculated my XP, I had earned 1084 … not too shabby. I closed up my book, and went to sleep happy.
When I was a kid, the D&D Basic Rules Set was never just a game to me; it was my portal into a magical, wonderful world that I still love. Now that I’m an adult, it isn’t just a couple of books to me; it’s a time machine.
The world I live in is filled with uncertainty and occasionally-overwhelming responsibility, but for an hour or so last night, I was 11 years-old again, and I went back to a world where the biggest problem I faced was trying to save up for a Millennium Falcon. When I read “You decide to attack the goblins before they can get help…” I could hear my Aunt Val tell me “That’s a game that I hear lots of kids like to play, Willow. It’s dragons and wizards and those things you liked from The Hobbit. The back says you use your imagination, and I know what a great imagination you have.” I could feel the weight of my Red Box, which I carried with me pretty much everywhere I went, and how huge the thing felt in my tiny arms. I could feel it get heavier as I added modules and characters, and my own dungeons, drawn on graph paper. I could hear the snap of the thick green rubber band I eventually had to wrap around it, and I could see the yellowing scotch tape I added to the corners.
I enjoyed it so much, I’m going to reread the Dungeon Master’s Rulebook next, and run the Group Game adventure it contains, “for use by a beginning Dungeon Master.” Then, it’s time to go back to the Keep on the Borderlands, using just the Basic Rules, where Magic-users can’t wear armor, Fighters have 8 HP, Dwarf and Elf are classes, and everyone dies at least once before finally taking a character to second level, because that’s where it all started for me, and sometimes you just have to go back to your roots.
Actually, Wil, with all due props, that’s not a first printing. It is, at minimum, from the 12th printing.
http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/basic.html
But the “block-frame” TSR logo was a dead giveaway for me, because I knew that my basic set growing up had the older/uglier “man in the moon” logo. But reading the revision history, I think I only had an 11th myself.
Hm, that wasn’t MY red book…
Aha!
http://www.hmtk.com/wp-content/uploads/basic9rule-228×300.jpg
That was mine. No idea of the differences.
Last weekend my kids, husband and I went to Ottawa for the day. The last time we had been there; just before going to this Japanese restaurant we like to go to; we walked past a store which my husband all but licked the glass. It was a game store. UNFORTUNATELY it was closed at the time, and he told our kids (who were almost as disappointed as he was) then that the next time we came back we’d come early enough so that we could go inside and look around. Well, this time… we did. It was a gamers delight and haven. There was a gentleman there speaking to the cashier (owner?) regaling him of an adventure he had been on; while we browsed the store. The shelves were packed with various RPG modules and books; standee’s, models and paints of course to go with them, and games, complete with a gaming room downstairs.
Our oldest daughter; who has always been just as much of a ‘geek’ as we are; came home recently and asked her father if she could use his dice as she and her friends had taken to playing D&D at lunch and during spares. I think I saw him turn away and wipe a tear as he proudly handed her a set of his dice. Well, upon entering the store she found a set of her own dice as well as a bag she liked and bought it. Sunday morning when we woke up, she had returned his dice to his dresser while we slept.
I am proud to pass our geek torch onto the next generation. May they have as much fun as we did (do) on their many adventures!!
That and because 4th Ed. sucks. Seriously, it sucks. I know you love it but quite honestly, it sucks. The organziation of the books is *horrible*. Horrible. And an index? Bah – who needs an index, really? The classes all kind of suck in the PHB I. Everyone is just as good as everyone else with weapons. The wizard has the same BAB as a fighter. What? Anyone can perform a ritual. Teleport is a ritual? It takes how long? The classes are getting a little better but it’s all just to sell more books. The online space still isn’t ready ot anything.
Honeslty, 4th Ed. sucks. It really, really does.
The Red Book wasn’t my gateway to roleplaying but rather it was the boxed set of MERP. Well truth be told it was the “Fighting Fantasy” gamebooks but MERP was the first full-blown rpg I purchased on my own. I still have it and it generates the same kind of memories you wrote about in your article. The corners of the box are held together with masking tape and the rulebook is dog eared and tea-stained but when I open it I’m 13 again. thanks for the article.
Keep on the Borderlands was the first module I ever ran. I was 13. I got the set from my uncle, who had it, but had never played it. The dice hadn’t even been “crayoned” in yet. This was back when the box looked like this: http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/setscans/basic5th.html
This post brings alive memories for me, even though my first game was probably 6 or 7 years ago watching my roommate play 3rd edition. He had a Bag of Holding and they got me involved by letting me play the little man who lived in the pocket universe who would hand out whatever was needed at the time. When he wasn’t fetching swords, he was tending to the vast fields and livestock to provide food for his master… I can still see it in my mind’s eye.
You’ve inspired me to finish my D&D remembrance blog entry. Thank you for inspiring us all.
Ah, the memories. That is the exact same boxed set I started playing with back in the early 80s. I expect we were similar ages.
I brought Bargle back for my current D&D campaign, where I set him up as the arch-nemesis of one of the PCs. Good times!
Recently, I purchased the Rules Cyclopedia version of those rules and was struck how simply elegant they were. I realized that sometimes, the lack of character options isn’t stifling; it can actually stimulate your imagination.
Game on!
Nice! I”m on my own joy-ride back in time – I’m working on reviving an old piece of software I wrote in 1983 on a lowly Commodore VIC-20. I get misty thinking about it!
I remember the first character I made before my folks bought me the shiny red boxset that became my traveling companions for decades to come. Rancor; the greatest fighter ever, lived in a hobbit hole, slew werewolves…
Then I got the red box back in the 80s and the whole world opened up to me. I even remember thinking I got a special set as mine came with TWO D10s instead of the 1 I thought it was suppose to. And with those 2 red books (And the 4 sets to follow), my social career as a GM was secured.
I recall guiding friends (Never family though. I was the ONLY gamer geek in my house) through the world of Mystara with the old Gazeteers, getting my first Dungeon magazine in the mail, and feeling inspired after seeing the original D&D cartoon on TV (Especially after finding some of the shows minor characters stated out in The Red Dragon Inn)
I still have most of the books too. Unfortunately the covers on my basic books are gone (Save the one that had the dungeon key in it. That one is safely secure in a sheet cover to keep it intact). I even kept a copy of the Rulecyclopedia which became the know-it-all dictionary of my fictional travels.
The nostalgia of the old days, which is probably driving my need for D&D gaming forward these days, came back when I picked up my set of the 4th edition books and I saw they reprinted the map key from the old days.
Oh happy days!
My first sets (Basic & Expert at the same time) was actually the printing before this one. I got it as a b-day present from my cousin when I was 10 in July 1983. I’m guessing that the Red Box set was introduced at GenCon in August of ’83, just a month or so later. Several years ago I found both the Basic & Expert sets in perfect condition at a used book store. They still had the original modules (B2: The Keep on the Borderlands and X1: The Isle of Dread) and advertising fliers in them; all they were missing were the original dice. I immediately bought them. My original copies of those sets I cut up and put into a binder many years ago (they were pre-punched for that!), and that stills sits on my shelf too.
I never played 1st Edition AD&D simply because I found the “Classic” (I did eventually move to the Red/Blue/Teal/Black/Gold editions) D&D so much freer for my imagination. Also, the rules were actually readable and not the mismash unorganized mess that was 1st Ed. AD&D. Running those games and playing those characters was so much fun in the 80’s.
In 5th Grade my teacher wrote a note on my report card: “I’d like to see less of the D&D books.” I’d bring modules to school and read them during recess or run adventures during lunch, but didn’t pull them out during actual class time. Still, for a private Catholic school in a small town it could have been pretty controversial. My mother wrote back “We’ve looked at the books and, while there are some fantasy elements that we don’t always agree with, there is a lot of math & mythology that we think is important. As long as it’s not disrupting his school work we’re okay with them.”
That’s the only report card I still have.
This was mine too! And the corresponding blue book Expert Set to go with it.
My brother later picked up the 1983 printing Red Book, which I have since confiscated. And got the Blue, Teal(green), & Black boxed sets. I never did get the Gold Immortal set, but I never got characters up to that level.
I have that exact book. Mines not a first edition, but it’s pretty old. I think I got mine in 1980 or so. I was about 8 years old when I was introduced into the D&D cast. I bought my AD&D stuff when I could afford it and since then moved into 2nd edition, which I have stayed with since 1990. In the early years it was all about that red book and then the light blue book for higher level characters. The memories are so vivid it’s pretty creepy. My best friends older brother would turn down the lights and take us through a dungeon or have us fight our way out of a corrupt town; it was all good.
We should all post pictures of our D&D hoard someplace to show them off. That would be pretty fun.
Thanks again for the memories.
Michael
I still have my old red books here on the shelf, but the box disintegrated a long time ago. I can still remember the first adventure my father put me and my cousin through way back in the early 80s when we were little kids. It was The Palace of the Silver Princess. We were too little to understand everything but it was AWESOME. Several years later I could grasp the rules by myself and started playing with friends. We worked our way up through the different colored box sets (Expert, Master, Companion, etc.) and eventually moved on to AD&D 1st, then 2nd edition. But there is nothing like looking at the older red Elmore cover that brings back the original thrill.
I haven’t played in years, but these recent podcasts have revived my interest. I’m sure 4th Edition D&D is fun, but I find the “old school renaissance” growing on various blogs and forums to be very compelling. You should google up some of the new retro-clone “OD&D” (for “original”, ie. even earlier than the BECMI box series by Frank Mentzer). Most are available in free PDF form. Check out Labyrinth Lord, Sword & Wizardy, Microlite74, and many more.
I do have to say that those shiny modern dice look out of place next to the old Player’s Manual. As, uh… “AItOawkA” said above, the original dice were made of some cheapo plastic and the numbers needed to be filled in with a crayon. Good times.
That would be cool. I don’t think my older books are packed away in my storage shed. At least the Forgotten Realms collection is not. Hmmmm, maybe i’ll have to dig those out this weekend…
So here’s the thing: Because of the D&D stories that you’ve been writing combined with my step daughter (who’s a big D&D player) moving in with us, I’ve become a D&D player again (actually a Pathfinder RPG player). Just 2 weekends ago I played 6 hours of D&D 3.5 with friends on Saturday evening (in addition to a 90 mile round trip commute to the game and back) and another 6 hours of Pathfinder (with me as the GM) on Sunday.
I gave my big purple Paizo d20 a workout.
We’re building new memories at the same time that we’re recalling stories of old games. It was especially fun playing with my step daughter and her boyfriend. As we took our meal break we told stories of past games we’ve played, talked about the world she’s developed for her game (which has werewolves on a planet with 2 moons) and laughed at stories of past conquest and failures (“Remember the time you had your clay golem throw the goblins to the ceiling instead of throwing them to the floor? They took damage from hitting the ceiling and then took additional falling damage when hitting the floor. That was brilliant.”)
I know of no other game that maintains a bond between the players like this after the game has finished.
Dark Dungeons? *shudder* That’s just mean. I prefer DD, MST3K style.
http://www.rpglibrary.org/inspiration/darkdungeons/
I remember that. They even gave you a crayon in the basic set. I still have my original dice (minus a missing d10). The d20 is so worn now it’s almost round.
I just wanted to add that I’m sorry to see only one hit for “Gygax” in this comment thread, who is the grandfather of the whole D&D world. He died just over one year ago. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson published the very first D&D set back in 1974. I wish we had some podcasts of those first games…
This Wikipedia article gives the complete history of D&D editions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editions_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons
I too still have my glorious red book. It, like my blue book, has been three hole punched (by a pencil) to fit into a huge binder I used for my D&D stuff…good memories.
I remember those dice. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have any of the originals anymore 🙁 But I do make it a tradition to buy 1 new set evety year around Gen Con (Since I stopped going after it left Milwaukee)
I feel that just remanicing about ones D&D days as a joyful time does honor to Gygax’s name even if he’s not directly mentioned.
I never really thought about how many of us play D&D, until I listened to Ken Levine’s keynote at PAX last year. He talked all about how comics and D&D made him want to be a writer, and he drew a short line between playing D&D and writing Bioshock.
John Rogers is another successful writer who loves D&D – and he even wrote a bunch of material for the Manual of the Planes.
Anyway, thanks for commenting and reading. Roll twenties, man.
I never played D&D when I was a kid, but I want to learn to play it now! It’s funny – a lot of my female friends seem to be really into it nowadays, and I wonder if I didn’t play it when I was younger because it was a “guy thing” (like lots of geekery back in the day). But now, I know so many women who play, and it’s seems like a lot of fun, and really social! What’s interesting is that one female friend of mine who lives in MI tried to start a D&D tournament at the bookstore where she worked, but when mostly guys showed up and saw she was running it, they assumed it was going to be lame and left. Meanwhile, I’m thinking “THIS IS WHY YOU DON’T HAVE GIRLFRIENDS!” 😉
That’s the thing. A lot of stuff that I’m into now (like comics, for instance) I didn’t have a lot of exposure to when I was younger, so I had to FIND it as an adult. It was never given to me. It was “weird” enough that I was into sci-fi. As a girl, you’d try to talk to the little boys about it, and they’d shy away. You’d try to talk to your girl friends, and most of them wouldn’t be into it…It makes me glad that geeky things are more mainstream now. Maybe little girls today can grow up and have it be OK and not weird for them to like D&D, or comic books, or sci-fi. You might have gotten beaten up for liking what you liked, but at least you weren’t seen as an aberration in your entire gender! 🙂
Randy Richards is me. You can find out about me at http://www.Dreadmire.com. Thanks for keeping my book safe. It got me through many a childhood adventure too!
As I often say to my wife:
You had me at “Roll for initiative.”
g
Oh, that’s interesting. Inside the front cover of my books, it says “First Printing – May 1983” and the copyrights go 1974, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1983.
That page you linked says that the book I have now came in a box that did not have The Keep on the Borderlands, but the box from 1981 did. This could mean that I actually didn’t start playing in 1983, but in 1981, because my Basic Set came with The Keep on the Borderlands.
Wow. That’s cool.
I loved those Fighting Fantasy books SO MUCH.
I think I carried a character through three or maybe even four of them.
I’m blaming you and the Penny Arcade D&D podcasts for my recent resurgence of role playing interest! I had the Basic set oh so many eons ago too, and spent a summer figuring out the rules, creating and running dungeons with my cousin (and doing things like forgetting in the excitement of the battle that one of our characters had fallen into a pit…). Some days I think I’ve sort of forgotten how to imagine new worlds like that and really bring them to life, and that makes me sad.
I picked up the 4th Ed. Player’s Guide last night and rolled up a couple characters. There’s a group that runs a weekly game at the office, I think I’ll start exercising my imagination again…
Hey Wil,
I thought that red book looked familiar and sure enough my husband (who is also 36) still has his original D&D stuff in the red box (with it’s friends blue box and purple box) in our game closet. It’s filled with all kinds of notes and drawings from the kid he once was. It’s awesome. You guys could make such a trip to nostalgia land. Can you come over and play at our house when you’re in Romulus in May? My mom says it’s ok.
-mimi (melissa)
Steve Jackson of the Fighting Fantasy series also wrote a great series called Sorcery! The first book was titled “Khare: Cityport of traps”
I had all 4 and in my opinion they were the ultimate evolution of the Fighting Fantasy style choose your own adventure.
Gems if you can find them:
http://www.tk421.net/sorcery/
I was inundated with e-mails today, from my fans and otherwise, if I am the Randy Richards in Wil Wheaton’s blog. The only way to know for sure is to compare the phone numbers. Without that info, we can only look at the clues. I am a published Dungeons & Dragons author (www.Dreadmire.com), I owned a copy of said book as a child, I used to write my name and phone number on the D&D books I took to school, and my mom says we sold some D&D books in a garage sale one time. The odds are that its my book, but if its not, its an amazing coincidence!
~Randy Richards
Wow, Keep on the Borderlands brings back some memories. My regular D&D group from years back actually worked that mod into a 3.0 game setting, and we kept it – using that whole town, and the dungeon for years afterward. Good times.
Well, I’ll be! If it isn’t little Wesley! I was a ST fan from when the original episodes were on *network* TV (Thursday night, NBC, 7 CT–and yes I wrote a letter!), but while I have always loved Mr. Spock dearly, TNG turned out to be my favorite overall.
I saw your _Criminal Minds_ episode (twice), too, as that is one of my present regular shows, but would never have recognized you in a million years! I did, however, think, despite the diabolical character, “My goodness, what a handsome young man!” Hope to see you soon in something a little more light-hearted. 🙂
Congratulations on everything, especially on knowing that a grown-up who is scared to let his little child peek out now and then isn’t really a grown-up after all. How delightful to find you well and happy! Best wishes!
This may sound utterly bizarre, but I also started playing D&D in 1983, and, I was -technically- 11 at the time. I turned 12 later, but since I hadn’t when I started, 11 counts. 🙂
It makes me wonder how many other people got into D&D around then that were in that 11-12 age range? It seems most of my gaming friends who are in their mid to late 30’s had similar experiences. Or maybe I’m just trying to invent a pattern where there is only coincidence?
Oh, and I’m another lurker who finally got up the nerve to post, so hi!
Plenty of people never left classic D&D versions, Wil. We are out there and we are legion:
http://www.thedelversdungeon.com
http://www.knights-n-knaves.com
…for just a couple of examples. (Top one’s mine!) Come back to the fold! 😀
Ok, you made me do it. I’ve finally bought the D&D rules book set to read.
I’ve been following the Penny Arcade podcast, and it’s a blast. Good work early on catching those hints with the thunder.
I’m surprised how entertaining it is to listen in. Part of that is that the recording, informal as it is, is such high quality.
Holy nostalgia. Just seeing that cover is enough to make me fight tears. For me, it’s remembering being seven years old and playing with my dad and brother. We played the same frigging adventure at least five times in the space of a year, and every single time my brother talked me out of picking up a magic ring because he said it was cursed. And every time, dad would tell me afterwards that it wasn’t cursed and I should have picked it up.
Thanks for the memory, Wil. You brought a smile to my face and a tear to my eye.
Bless you Wil. Just downloaded this.
Harold Shaw: … I need to find a group of like-minded guys and start playing again….
Yes, you should. I started DM-ing a once every 3-4 weeks group at work in January after Wil got me reminiscing. Also jumped in as a player in a game at my local hobby shop. Having a blast.
Awesome post, Wil. I remember my first Basic game, which was the red book right before your edition, and I remember B2, as a player and a DM, quite well 🙂
In a nice coincidence, a D&D commercial with the 1983 Basic edition was posted to YouTube yesterday. The poster also operates a Web site of classic Chicago television and puts up plenty of old commercials; I wonder if he read your blog and dug this up. And yes, I think that is Jami Gertz …
This brings back a metric ton of memories. The hour after hour of playing in some friends basement, the Monty Hall DM’s, the kid that had the purple crown royal cloth bag to hold their dice, the lead miniatures that we used, the detailed (to us) maps of each adventure that we drew out square by square, the epic (again to us) stories.
I took a look at the paizo site and more memories, I will pick up a couple to just read and enjoy.
Not sure what it is but the posts here by Wil and others have made me think about how the kids today will look back in 20 or 30 years on their internet generation… I wonder what they will fondly remember, tea-baggin’ some noob?
I love how Gabe at PA is picking up D&D and had a friend play remotely, http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/2/2/
Not sure about you guys but I sure miss playing around a table with a bunch of friends, anyone here start up the game again?
Thanks Wil! Roll 20’s, naturally…
Old-school (A)D&D? You need to pay us a visit at Dragonsfoot.org:
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums
We have a thriving old-school D&D community; we publish D&D and AD&D fan-created modules, and discuss the entire breadth of the pre-2000 D&D world. We also support the various “retro-clone” or “simulacrum” game systems like OSRIC (mentioned previously), Basic Fantasy RPG, Labyrinth Lord (which is VERY MUCH like the game you are remembering), and Swords & Wizardry. We have an open Workshop forum where adventures and other game materials are being created and posted all the time.
We’d love to see you there!
There’s a part of me that would like to geek-out more often. Reading the way you describe it, I can almost small the combination of pencil shavings and rubber eraser – two important tools in dungeon mapping.
D&D for me is sitting in a friends’ parents small apartment on the floor just after math tutoring (sidebar: my dad traded music lessons with my friends’ mom for math tutoring for me – they turned out to be well respected musicians. Me, I’m a drummer – the only thing I can count on is drool! *da Dum!*)
D&D rocked every Saturday afternoon as we crawled through dungeons, blasted kobolds with magic missile and tried valiantly to hack n slash with a rusty 1d6 short sword.
I think you’ve inspired a lot of us to roll for initiative one more time.
Thanks.
I too was one who was banned from all things fantasy by a fundamentalist Christian upbringing (no fault of my parents, they were gullible hippies in the mid-60s and “found” religion). But in 1980 when I was 14 we took the annual trip back to their college town and my birthplace of Moscow Idaho, and went to the college bookstore. I had just somehow managed to talk my Dad into letting me buy books 1-3 of the collected Elfquest (Shock!, since even Disney fantasy was frowned on, but I had just finished reading LOTR and they were into cutting me some slack. “Besides Dad, it’s only a comic book.” ;P). When there I saw it, the game that changed my life and I too spent the rest of my days doomed to follow all things geekish. It was the green box I spent the next two hours reading on the floor of that store. No way was I even going to attempt asking to buy it because I could tell all the pictures would stress my parents tolerance, and the wizard class would buy me a first class ticket straight to Hell. I went home that summer and created my own game from scratch; graph paper maps, character sheets and classes, and all. I could only use 6-sided dice, but I was well on my way. Five of my friends and I got together that Fall in school and nothing was the same after that. The next year we were joined by a kid who had all the Advanced D&D rulebooks of the time. Including the rare original Fiend Folio… I think I was in love with the drawing of Bast. Maybe that led to my fantasy involving a female intelligent Kzinti (TMI). I didn’t have my own books until I went to college in Boise (W00t!! out to DarkHorse Games! “No Dad, Dark Horse is the name of a used bookstore where I get my textbooks. Just authorize the charge.”) That winter of my freshman year we completed the first 4 modules of Dragonlance that had just come out. I even had a cartoon-crush on Kitiara, especially Elmore’s version.
Now, sadly, all those books are gone and the only gaming I can find time for is the occasional Xbox or PC game. I do find time to paint my Flames Of War miniatures, but haven’t done a D&D game or miniature in years. Might be time to visit the local gameshop again and check out 4ed (W00t!! out to Hastur Hobby and Games in Salt Lake!)
Thanks Wil, for all the reminiscing. But curse you! CURSE YOOOU!! My checkbook will probably not survive this. Not to mention my already cramped reading and writing schedule. People give geeks a hard time because we never have a date. My take on that is who has time or money to date?
Thanks so much for writing this and sharing the podcasts.
I started on the blue basic rules book and my first character was a hobbit thief just like Bilbo. Got him to 21 level before moving on to Runequst because the rules would not let me be lawful good.
Jayzus effin…
It must be our age, pal. I’m hearing a lot of nostalgia posts about the blue and red boxes…
And why not. They changed our lives.
If TSR hadn’t gone all hardcover I might have stuck with ’em. Instead I went obscure paths, and ensured I’d never have a solid game around me. Idiot.
I have the rock, though.
Wil: What would you recommend as a solid introductory core to play 4EDnD? The Basic Set, books, and this DungeonDelve? I’d be interested to hear your opinions. I’m an old school 1st Ed D&D guy who actually still owns a PH with two thieves pilfering the gem eyes of a statuesque demonic Yoda. I want to translate a lot of these old modules into 4E and DM some of them for friends. Suggestions?
I am so with you. I recall going through the “Keep” and a very wiley Dungeon Master using his skills to make us believe the hermit was to be trusted. Don’t trust the hermit!
The Keep on the Shadowfell is designed as an introduction to 4E for players and DMs.
Be warned, though, as a lot of people have pointed out: it’s lacking in some areas, especially index and some important explanations (for example, they refer to [W] damage, but never tell you what it is. It stands for [Weapon] so if your character has proficiency with their weapon and get a bonus, plus the weapon is enchanted, [W] would be that much damage. At the same time, if my character is using an improvised weapon, my [W] damage with the same attack would be less. They also talk about “recharge” powers, and never make it clear that you’re supposed to roll dice at the end of each round to see if that power has “recharged” or not.)
I’d still suggest starting with it, though, just spend some time online looking for some fan-written errata or FAQs.