#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]

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.  

[dndprofessor]

[solofighterblog]

More of Hroarr's adventures are coming soon. This is just a quick note I'd like to share.

A lot of my inspiration for a Norse-themed Ironsworn campaign came from The Northern Reaches, a gazeteer written by Ken Rolston, published by TSR in 1988 for the Basic Dungeons & Dragons game. This is a photo of my copy of the gazeteer that I've had since the early 1990s.

[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?

[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

[oldschoolfrp]

Flight to the Star Kingdoms -- The party commands a fleet of ships at sea, passing through a magical storm into a void between worlds (Valerie Valusek, D&D module M1: Into the Maelstrom, TSR, 1985)

[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…

[dndhistory]

532. Aaron Allston - GAZ1: The Grand Duchy of Karameikos (1987)

Unlike the worlds in which AD&D is set, be they Greyhawk, Dragonlance or soon enough The Forgotten Realms, the world in which BECMI D&D was set was never really fleshed out in any systematic way. In fact it was usually known as "The Known World" without having a name settled for it up until 1991 when the name Mystara will first appear in print. 

This and the upcoming Gazetteers will do much to flesh out the world in which BECMI is set by giving in-depth information about all kinds of areas of the world. In this volume of around 65 pages, we get everything we need to know about Karameikos, a place in which several published adventures have been set and which can serve as a good starting point for new players. We get  details on geography, history, politics, economy as well as notable characters in the Grand Duchy.

All this would have been invaluable information for DMs who wanted a world which felt lived in and in which every detail was thought out. This is the kind of treatment that BECMI players deserved, good world-building supplements, instead of having to divine everything from tidbits of information spread around a number of different modules and sets. 

[lord-soth-dk]

Based

[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!!