#BECMI

[oldschoolfrp]

Special characters, the bad guys -- Zarak the Half-Orc Assassin Thief, Raven the Cleric, Kelek the Magic-User, Zargash the Cleric, Skylla the Magic-User, Fox Fingers the Thief, and Warduke the Fighter (D&D/AD&D toy characters by Tim Truman, Jeff Easley, and Larry Elmore, statted as NPCs in AC1: The Shady Dragon Inn by Carl Smith, TSR, 1983) Since this book gives only BECMI D&D stats it does not use AD&D classes, thus Zarak is described as an assassin but has standard thief abilities.

[vintagerpg]

Tarrasque? Pfft, that’s nothing. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we’re looking at CM4: Earthshaker (1985), the BECMI module that pits players against a 1,280-foot-tall robot run by an entire clan of gnomes. Well, not exactly, the gnomes run the robot as a tourist attraction, the players have to deal with the evil NPCs who try to hijack the robot. And they better win, because, well, the tarrasque is just 50 feet tall.

[dndhistory]

543. Allen Varney - M4: Five Coins for a Kingdom (1987)

With a cover by John and Laura Lakey featuring a very familiar enchanter (it looks exactly like Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail) this is an adventure for Master level characters, from levels 28-32 in the BECMI system. 

As usual for adventures at such high levels this would either be played with the pre-rolled characters included or not played at all, as very few people went organically from level 1 to 28, I'm sure some did, but surely most players stayed at the Expert level or somewhere around there. 

Plotwise, the party finds itself in a city market when the city itself vanishes and the titular five coins fall from the sky, each coin stands for a powerful imprisoned wizard which the party must free in order to restore the city. As they do that they must fight off an army and towards the end travel into the sun to save the city. Later this same year the adventure featured here would be adapted into the 15th volume of the AD&D Adventure Gamebooks under the title The Vanishing City. We'll get to that soon enough!

[dndprofessor]

[minis-and-magic]

My Review of All D&D Editions Part I: Original D&D (1974)

I played them all so you don't have to. In honor of THAC0, low scores are better.

Where it all started.

This is the primordial soup that the game we know and love crawled out of to take it's first shaky steps on dry land. The system itself is an eclectic mess delivered in classic Gygaxian prose (read: big fuckoff paragraphs with important game mechanics buried in the middle). It's less a complete game and more of a bolt-on modification for an existing game (Chainmail) which happens to be where you'll find most of the actual combat rules. Considering that the wilderness exploration section of booklet 3 boils down to "Use the rules and map from this 3rd party board game with our house rules", it has the feel of a very enthusiastic homebrew rather then a real product.

This game was made on a shoestring budget and a dream and it shows. The formatting is particularly challenging, even in my "White Box" version which has been revised and cleaned up from the first printings. It should go without saying, but very little love and care is put into the visual design or artwork. Important information is rarely visually emphasized, the tables are cluttered and the order and arrangement of information can cause a serious headache. Do not expect any helpful sidebars or neatly columned spell lists.

That said, the game itself can be pretty enjoyable. It does not feel like what I'd consider the expected D&D experience; it is at it's heart a tabletop wargame more than a roleplaying game. There are few mechanics or opportunities to develop your character outside of combat or sweet *sweet* looting. But even in this earliest iteration you can see the nascent ideas that really defined the game to come. You probably would find the spells, monsters, character races and classes very familiar outside of a few name oddities (Not Fighter... Fighting MAN)

Fuck the dragon entry, blow the art budget on a sultry amazon! -G. Gygax, probably.

Truthfully, its biggest sin is that it doesn't live up to its own direct descendants. All versions of the Basic rules (and their infinite OSR clones) are much simpler and cleaner, AD&D is a far more complete experience and all of them have a much better play experience at the actual table.

All in all I would say it's still playable in this day and age but definitely chore-adjacent. It will almost certainly feel clunky and unintuitive to anyone who grew up playing 3e onward and suffers heavily from a painful lack of streamlining. Later products like Greyhawk massively improve the flow of play, but it is pretty clear that this was an unfinished and unrealized version of the game.

FINAL REVIEW: Chart-a-liciousness: Moderately Chart Heavy Sleaziness: Someone lend her a shirt! Formatting: I had to get my glasses for this one Ease of Play: Hope you have two other out-of-print games FINAL SCORE: 9

[vixensdungeon]

(I'm not including the Denning and Stewart versions because they're basically just BECMI in new packaging)

[1-50thofabuck]

I wrote up a character background for a BECMI Mystara game I'm joining tomorrow. I recently suspended a 7-8 year campaign in Mystara I was running using heavily modified(homebrewed) 2nd Edition AD&D rules. I'm looking forward not only to getting to play in Mystara myself, but getting to play BECMI again, in particular, getting to use my POD R͟u͟l͟e͟s͟ C͟y͟c͟l͟o͟p͟e͟d͟i͟a͟!

The character, Zolfatara, is related to one of my favorite characters in another game, a homebrew system called I͟g͟n͟o͟t͟a. The character in that system in named Kratr. This is the "Red Sonya" to my "Conan," not that either character is modeled on either of those two. The background was only supposed to be a few paragraphs but I got carried away!

Art is not mine and is being used for a personal game only. The oc tag only reflects the story and personality. Art is for reference.

[foobaryoyodyne]

[adventuresandshopping]

Dungeons & Dragons Cyclopedia, 1991, TSR - PDF and Print

" Whether you're a player or a Dungeon Master, the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia is now the comprehensive sourcebook you need for the original fantasy roleplaying game! For ages 12 and up, the Cyclopedia contains the compete game system and hundreds of features, including the following:

All the rules from the D&D boxed set series, including Basic, Expert, Companion, and Masters

Guidelines to develop and play characters from levels 1-36

Comprehensive lists of weaponry and equipment

Expansion rules including optional skills and talents

An overview of the Known World and the HOLLOW WORLD game setting, the official D&D campaign world; and Rules to convert D&D games and characters into AD&D 2nd edition game statistics and back again "

[black-hedron]

How can anyone not love this?

[downtobaker]

Dungeons & Dragons, eroi e draghi che non muoiono mai

di Vanni Santoni (articolo apparso in origine sul Corriere della Sera del 24 ottobre 2024) L’illustrazione di Alberto Dal Lago per l’album di figurine Panini da collezione che si rifà a quella storica di Larry Elmore Dungeons & Dragons compie mezzo secolo e Lucca Comics & Games — ma potremmo dire: il mondo — lo celebra. Non solo perché ha cambiato per sempre il mondo dei giochi e…

[oldschoolfrp]

Special characters, the good guys -- Elkhorn the Dwarf, Strongheart the Fighter, Mercion the Cleric, Peralay the Elf, Ringlerun the Magic-User, and Figgen the Halfling (A collage of characters by Tim Truman, Jeff Easley, and Larry Elmore, all linked to the D&D/AD&D toy lines, given stats in AC1: The Shady Dragon Inn by Carl Smith, TSR, 1983) The text describes Strongheart as a paladin, but that class was exclusive to AD&D rules so he is statted as a fighter for this BECMI D&D supplement.

[lord-soth-dk]

Based

[dndhistory]

504. Tom Moldvay - M3: Twilight Calling (1986)

In 1986 we seem to be getting some names that we hadn't heard from in a long time... Tom Moldvay had been kind of removed from module creation since 1982's The Lost City but he is back now with a Master Set module for D&D, a rare thing in itself. Might the return of these names have something to do with the rearrangement of people in TSR? The fact that Arneson published his Blackmoore module this year is definitely a result of Gygax having left the company (they weren't best buds, let's say), but its interesting to see some other names showing up again. 

So, this is one of the few Master modules, as I've mentioned, and they seem to kind of work together with previous modules as a campaign. Here Alphaks returns to mess with the party. This time players have to enter the plane of nightmares to get to Carnifex castle but not before retrieving seven keys from seven pocket universes.

The pocket universes do give some variety to the gameplay as the fight against Alphaks, the clear nemesis of Master level players, continues his nefarious plans.  

[shaneplays]

Released in 1987, GAZ 1 The Grand Duchy of Karameikos was the first in a series of fourteen Gazetteer (GAZ) supplements from TSR for Basic (BECMI) D&D that detailed the world of Mystara, previously called "The Known World." Each entry provided more information on the setting but there was no metaplot or advancing timeline. And that's a grand entry… on THAC0 Thursday!!

[jeffs-gamebox]

TTRPG Done Well.

Remembering Dungeons & Dragons back when I first started. It had a simple formula both in its play style and creative concept. A small, simple team of guys made a beautiful product in a box.

Yesterday I said we would explore a successful TTRPG and look at how it is built. Way back in 1983 I had this red box that came with a full set of six dice and two fairly thin books. The game was called Dungeons & Dragons, and the box was the first in a series referred to as the BECMI edition. (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortal.) This game is where a lot of us first fell in love with…