Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set (Holmes edition)

At last we come to the Holmes Basic Set.  As I said in the last post, this is one of the most pivotal products in the history of D&D, because this is effectively where Basic D&D and AD&D split from one another.  The two lines would remain related but separate for over twenty years until TSR was bought out by Wizards of the Coast, who brought the game back to a single line with D&D 3rd edition (although they didn't merge the two so much as just kill off Basic D&D).

So how did this happen?  Well, even though it is the very first Basic D&D product, the Holmes Basic Set was never originally meant to start a new product line.  It was originally intended to just be a cleaned up version of Original D&D (the original boxed set plus the supplements) that would introduce people to roleplaying and get them to go on to AD&D products (even though the 1st edition Player's Handbook was still a year away).  This is made clear by the preface which explicitly says so, and then the rest of the product refers to the AD&D rules several more times throughout (this would be a common tactic of TSR for years to come - there would be several more "intro to D&D"-type products).

But as the AD&D line took off, TSR continued to sell both this product and the Original D&D products because, well, they sold well.  There was a marked difference in the philosophies of the two games which obviously appealed to different kinds of players.  AD&D was a highly polished system with lots of rules covering every possible aspect of the game (which is how Gary Gygax felt it always should have been).  Original D&D was a much looser, free-form kind of game where a lot was left up to the DM and players.  Seeing that they had two economically viable customer bases - one committed to AD&D, one committed to the Holmes rules / Original D&D products - they decided to keep supporting both.  Support for Basic D&D was scant at first - really only consisting of modules B1 and B2 over the next four years - but they committed to the line in earnest in 1981, revising the Holmes rules into a new Basic Set and creating the Expert Set as a companion to cover levels 4-14, then both expanding the B series of modules and creating the X series for Expert-level characters.

But to bring it all back to where we are now in the timeline, this product was just meant to capture customers who were new to the whole roleplaying experience.  Let's jump in and take a look at the highlights:

• The purpose of this book, as discussed above, is evident from the way it teases the things to be found in the upcoming AD&D products.  Want to take your character beyond 3rd level?  AD&D.  Want to play something more than just a fighter, thief, cleric, or mage?  AD&D.  Want to have psionic powers?  AD&D.
• In discussing additional classes available in AD&D, it lists paladins, rangers, monks, druids, assassins, illusionists, and witches.  Yes, witches.  I'd be interested to know if this really was an intended class for 1st edition, and if so why it got dropped.
• The time and movement section is quite amusing.  First it states that an armored man can cover 120 feet per turn underground.  The very next sentence then informs us that a turn takes 10 minutes.  For those of you doing the math, that's a whopping 5 seconds per foot!  There's cautious and then there's come on.  But don't worry - an unarmored and unencumbered person doubles that rate.  And the game takes these rates very seriously, as it then informs us that a party must rest 10 minutes out of every hour from this break-neck pace.
• I just find the concept of measuring all weight in gold pieces naively charming.  In fact, the centrality of the gold piece to this rule set gives it such an unabashedly "all about the benjamins" kind of flavor.  When gold pieces not only translate directly into experience, but are also the common unit of measure of weight, you've basically created a game centered around avarice.
• The treatment of doors in dungeons is just hilarious.  It's one of those areas where it's clear the designers just threw realism out the window for the sake of making the game harder.  First, no door can just be opened automatically - they have to be either picked or smashed open.  Apparently every door in this universe is either locked or stuck really hard.  You would think this would make life hard for the monsters who live in dungeons, but the rules explicitly state that monsters can open them normally!  Keep in mind that a "monster" in this game can be just a normal man like a bandit.  So you can be chasing a bandit down a corridor, and if he comes to a door he can just open it and go through without a problem, but when the party gets there they have to smash the thing open.  But wouldn't the door still be open after he goes through it, you reasonably ask?  No, because all doors in this universe automatically close.  Keep in mind that self-closing doors were only invented within the last two hundred years, but every door in a dungeon must be deliberately spiked or wedged open.
• There's a small section devoted to the multiple uses of the word 'level' in D&D terminology - player level, monster level, dungeon level, and spell level.  This brings up two soapbox items for me.  First, why did the game drop the term 'level' for monsters in favor of hit dice?  I'm guessing it's to avoid confusion, since monsters don't 'level up' like players, but to me, '5th level monster' just sounds better than '5 HD monster'.  Second, I've never understood why spell levels couldn't be the same as player levels.  Sure, it would make for a lot more levels if 9th level spells became 18th level spells, 8th level spells 16th level, and so on, but for one mages wouldn't have to consult a table to find out what spells they could cast, and it would give a lot more granularity to spell levels, since let's face it, there is a lot of disparity in the power of spells within a single level as it is.
• It's becoming clear to me in reading these early products that the vast majority of a magic user's power and utility in these early times was meant to come from magic items, not from his memorized spells (because let's face it, there's nothing more pathetic than a 1st level magic user with his 1 piddling first level spell).  The game intended for magic users to always have a wand or at least some spell scrolls on hand that they could use without having to worry about hoarding them too much, because there was probably more around the corner.  I don't know if the game lost this sensibility through the years (while retaining the hideously slow Vancian progression) or it was just the DMs I played with, but it certainly was never that way for any of the mages I played.  I don't think any mage I ever played ever owned a wand.
• At last we come to the (in)famous mini-adventure at the end of the book - the tower of Zenopus.  Aside from the Temple of the Frog outlined in Supplement II: Blackmoor, this is the very first published D&D scenario.  I can't help but wonder how many players had their first experience wandering these halls.  The dungeon makes no sense whatsoever as an actual place, but it's charming in its simplicity.

Reading this product for the first time provided a fascinating glimpse into the history of the game at a turning point in its development.  I'm eagerly anticipating analyzing the divergence of the two strands of the game, but also how I'm sure they cross-pollinated one another.  I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have.  We return to The Dragon for the meantime, as products are still scarce.  I'll see you there.