D&D: 1981 Style (Moldvay Basic)

hello there and welcome back to Daddy roll the one I'm Martin and this is another video in my series on the history of early tabletop role-playing games including Dungeons and Dragons and one of the companies that published them tactical studies rules later known as when it's of its descendant companies TSR Hobbies today I'm going to be talking about this version of the game Dungeons and Dragons the basic set for Dungeons and Dragons fantasy Adventure game this was released in 1981. the reason I'm talking about this it's a little bit of a special treat for everybody but this is the first d d product that I ever owned my mom gave this to me as an Easter gift in 1982. I'd started playing the game with my friends in the fall of 1981 but I didn't have my own books I would borrow them from them or from the library so my mom gave this to me and so this is my first product and this is the exact one that I had like back in the day I still have it so I'm doing this as a special thank you for all of you helping me reach a thousand subscribers on the three month anniversary of my channel which happened last week and I just I can't thank you enough the fact that I had a thousand subscribers in just three months is amazing and uh so I just thought this would be fun you can see the game that I started with and talk a little bit about about it so we are going to talk a little bit about how we got to this Edition and why it exists um but I would highly encourage you to watch my video on the history of DnD editions to understand a little bit more that video is by far the most popular video on my channel it's got about twice as many views as the next most popular video so I would recommend checking that out so that you can understand how that we got to this Edition I'm going to talk a little bit about the rules in this and how they're different or why they're different from previous editions or later editions but if you want to know more about that and delve into this please let me know in the comments and I can do a whole video just on the rules in this and then uh last I'm just going to talk about a little bit and this will be sprinkling throughout the way it's like but why I like this game why I'm using it to run the campaign and run for my daughter so really quickly we have this version of the game released in 1974. this is the original Three book Edition this is a much later printing but the original game was these three books and uh it started to get a little bit complicated they had more and more rules developed and it was getting a little bit cumbersome and so then you have this version of the game created this is 1977. this is a basic set you see it says right here on the box this is the basis that people will call this version of the game homes basic because it was edited by a man in professional homes and what he was intending to do was clean up all those rules from the original version of the game that had started to get a little bit cumbersome with all the supplements and things that had come up since the original game was was produced but you see here he specifically says that if you want to keep playing this game past third level you have to refer to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and so the problem with that was that this game was released and well the mouse run was released in 1977 this player's handbook was released in 1978 and it says Advanced D but the problem was Gary gygax was claiming this was a separate edition of the game so you get into all these legal mudlings because he didn't want to pay Dave arneson one of his co-creators for original d d he didn't want to pay Dave royalties on Advanced DND and so um there's many more legal Maneuvers in here we're not going to go into that now it gets pretty complicated but just know that one of the reasons that there were two editions of DnD was because of issues over royalties and that brings us to getting to this version of the game so this is a revision in a way of the homes basic but it is really completely separate so there's a lot of things in this game that are very different from additions that had come before and that'll be different from Advanced DND a lot of that is by Design so what is happening at this time was that um d d was growing and the company TSR was growing and so man by the name of weren't Shick it gets hired by TSR he had been playing d d with his friend Tom moldway since 1974 when the game first came out they started developing a campaign setting you'll um learn more about that if you watch my video on the history of early tabletop role-playing game settings but they creating they created a setting which we would Now call my stara back in 1974 and Lawrence gets hired in a high level executive position and he hires his friend Tom wolfvay as well as another man by the name of Dave Cook you'll recognize Dave Cook name Dave Cook's name if you watch my video on the history of skills and DND but Tom moldway is hired by Lawrence Schick and you're starting to get the first group of people coming into the company just six years after the game's been developed but the first group that's coming in that played the game first before they got hired as opposed to The Originators of the game who you know originated it so they couldn't have played it before so you have people being hired Tom moldvay is one of them so he's hired to work on this game so we're going to jump in here is the Box the cover art classic cover art by Errol Otis and he is still doing art today for different games in the role-playing game industry so right off the bat you'll notice these are my dice this is the original set of dice that came with my game and you see they're very light blue and the numbers are kind of hard to read um and so they gave me these crayons and so these are all of my crayons across different boxes that I kept over the years different box sets I just throw them all in just this box but the idea was that you would take one of these crayons and you would color the die and the crayon would go into the little grooves where the numbers are and then you would use like a paper towel or cloth and wipe it off and you'd be able to see these numbers I never did that because I was a kid and I was very scared that I was going to somehow ruin my Dice and so I never colored on them but that was the intent that you were supposed to do with these another just quick fun aside there's only one d10 in here so in this particular case what you would do is roll it twice so that was your uh tens roll and then this is your um one's rule so that particular rule would have been a three right or three percent if you were using percentages now some versions of different box sets would give you two d10s but they weren't numbered as tens and ones they were numbered just like this zero through nine and so what you do is you color one of them with their white crayon and one of them with a black crayon and then you would specify which one was the tens and which one was the ones all right but that's just kind of fun I still have my original Dice from this game so here you've got your rule book 64 Pages everything you need to play this game is in 64 Pages that's it that's all you needed um it's one of the reasons I really like this game you don't need three big chunky books you can run a campaign with 64 pages right here uh goes into the introduction you've got your player character information you've got spells you've got the Adventure Time movement encumbrance light doors retainers you've got encounters combat you've got monsters treasure magic items dungeon master information how to create and stock a dungeon how to draw a map how to run a game uh you know running a session and um you know what to do with like you know little things that might come up that you know aren't covered by the rules and how to how to deal with that so you see here again edited by Tom mulday he writes in the introduction this revision was designed to be easily read and used by individuals who have never before played a role-playing game so that was very specific because Tom moldway was understanding that at this point the audience for the game was changing so they were running out of these like experienced players that kind of knew what they were doing because most of them had already come into the game the ones that we're going to anyway so he understood that the new audience that they were going to get the the the most people that they were going to be able to bring into the game were going to be younger people so you see here it says ages 10 and up three or more adults ages 10 and up so very specific language to help little kids feel more grown up feel like they're special because they can play this game that is designed for adults but it says tenor up right but that's how he was writing this game and so this book is designed everything about this is designed to help new players he acknowledges his boss here Lawrence Schick you also see he indulges uh Frank Metz I always stumbler's name Frank menser Frank menser is going to end up designing the next version of the basic set that's released just two years later but this game you see its three-hole punched or this book and that's because you see these numbers here they have this B on them every page has that okay that was because this was intended to be followed up by a basic set which does come out for levels 4 through 14 and then a companion set for levels 15 through 36 which does not come out for this version of the game the companion set won't come out until the version of basic that is developed by Frank metzner okay but the idea was that the pages in the expert book are numbered as x three as an example and you could take this book and cut it apart it tells you to do that use scissors or straight edge cut it apart fit the pages back together for both basic and expert and then put them back together in a book like a three ring binder clearly I never did that I didn't want to do that but that was something you could have done but it goes to the introduction you get in here okay so what's the same well first off let's talk about player character information this tells you how to create a character all in one page everything you need to do and not just in one page they also show you an example written on this fake notebook paper kind of lines that we would have done back in the day because we didn't have official sheets or anything like that and a summary so all that so what's the same well you've got you're writing your your ability scores down you're generating a score for disability scores you're writing down your class and character abilities you're picking your spells if you're a spell Caster you've got ability score adjustments you've got bonus and penalties experience points hit points alignment money equipment weapons Armor class your attack rolls your saving throws all that's the same across all these different versions of the game I mean people focus a little bit too much on what's different about the different editions rather than what's the same that's just me so you get into your ability scores this has the traditional list uh and it nowadays starting with Third Edition we do physical scores and we do mental scores if the original list was strength intelligence wisdom dexterity Constitution Charisma and it tells you how these scores affect you they all have a little bit of impact but nothing like they do now in modern editions so intelligence in this game just affects how many languages you know and whether you can read or write them that set doesn't affect anything else the one thing that all ability scores do is um each class has what's called a primed requisite so um for Fighters it would be strength or for clergers it would be wisdom or for magic users it would be intelligence for example and if you have a higher score in your crime requisite you earn experience points faster and that was a key element of this game I know it seems weird it almost seems like counterintuitive like you're already good why are you giving them an extra bonus because they're going to do better but the point of this was the way that your character got better was by advancing through levels ability scores while they do have some impact it is less of an impact again than than they have now and the way that you got better was by going uh through experience levels gaining experience levels and so you wanted to have a high score in your primary requisite so that you could Advance faster than um other characters so you have that then you have your description of your character classes so this game has seven the core four you're gonna know right away it's cleric fighter magic user which we now call Wizard and then Thief uh which we would Now call a rogue however it does have three other classes dwarf elf halfling so in this game this is the classic game that makes a huge change from every Edition that had come before so different from the original dungeons of dragons different from homes basic and different from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons this game has what's known as race as class which that what that means is that you don't play a dwarf cleric or dwarf wizard you play a dwarf and your dwarf it tells you here what your abilities are and that's what you get so um I know a lot of people don't like that there are pros and cons we're not going to go into that now I can if you would like me to expand on that in a further video let me know in the comments below but because dwarves in this game are essentially Fighters but they get extra goodies that other characters don't get it's explained here in their special abilities so because of that it takes them more experience points to advance the second level a dwarf needs 2200 experience points to get to second level whereas a fighter only needs two thousand and elf needs four thousand because all else in this game are combination magic user Fighters they're the only class in this game that is what we would call a multi-class so they're getting the benefits of being able to use any weapon wear any armor and cast any Arcane magic user spell and they're the only class that can do that so it costs them twice as many experience points to advance in level as it does a fighter and even a magic user only needs 2500 so they got extra bonuses for that thieves have terrible abilities as picking locks like look at third level 25 chance to open a lock but look at their experience points it only takes them 1200 experience points to get to first level by far the lowest of any class you'll notice that clerics do not get a spell at first level that's because in this particular version of the game a clerk needed to prove themselves to their deity and then their deity would bestow a spell upon them starting with second level you'll also notice level titles that could almost be a whole video in and of itself but this particular game uses level titles it goes back to the war gaming Roots so the idea of that is that um if you again watch my videos some of my videos on early tabletop role-playing game settings are also the early editions of DnD but there's a there's a big war gaming routes to Dungeons and Dragons and in a game like say chainmail uh that came out uh prior to DND in chainmail characters were based on like how many men were they worth so a hero was worth four men and a superhero was worth eight men so hero and superhero become title so that you could easily say like this person is as powerful as for human men and a superheroes is powerful as eight human men so those titles get ended up use some of them in like their fighter level titles as you go on okay so those are Level titles here you talk about your different character classes and what they can do you got your three alignments watch my video alignments to talk about why there's only three in this game but those are the original Three it's law neutrality and chaos you've got your equipment and then you've got your character sheet so just as a fun aside here I didn't have the official sheets so I had to make my own back in the day and this is my original sheet that I did and I tried to make it look like you know the official one have all my stuff I just you know wrote in pencil so I've had this sheet for you know 40 some years at this point so that's the rule book again it goes into you know you've got your monsters your spells were back there your equipment your treasure this is your DM information how to draw a map how to stop the dungeon there's this fun little section here what's an example of play and then specifically there's a thief named black doogle and the DM tells him hey roll you know you're you know are you looking for traps in the the characters of the player says yes I'm looking for traps the DM rules for the player and sees that the player has failed and so tells them later says hey uh you found that you missed a tiny discolored needle in the latch roll saving throw versus Poison and Dougal says missed it and the DM says black doogle gasps poison and falls to the floor he looks dead and then immediately without missing a beat this player another player says I'm grabbing his pack to carry treasure in there was no mourning and no funerals for the characters and no whining or anything like that like this character died this other one grabbed his bag to put stuff in and they just keep going so chances are if there were more of this um the player who was playing black Google will have another character ready to go we'll just jump in just a different style of Play Dungeon mastering is a fine art this is a great section that's applicable to any version of the game uh so that's not in the rules or everyone's here to have fun everything is balanced there's always a chance your character doesn't know that like player you know knowledge versus character knowledge there's a section on uh grudges and how to help with that if your players are arguing with each other all great applicable stuff for any version of the game you've got this great source of uh list of source material inspirational Source material for those of you familiar with the dungeon Masters Guide for first edition D there's the famous appendix n this is essentially the appendix end of basic Dean Diva you've got young adult fantasy fiction and young adult nonfiction you've got adult fantasy fiction adult nonfiction and short story collections a great list of classic fantasy literature here and that's it you've got that book this box set also came with this classic introductory module this module has been printed more than any other one they were called modules but it's an adventure right so this one's written by Gary gigax and um this is the module that I'm running my daughter through right now keep on the Borderlands this is the one I started with which is the reason I wanted to use it for her and um so there's your adventure so back in the day you had the map came separate like this so you could use it as a DM screen you know you'd put it you'd put it up and then you'd roll your dice on this side and your players couldn't see that map so that was a design for all these Adventures back in the day comes with this fun catalog the gateway to Adventure 1981 TSR Hobbies of all the different things that had been published by the company during that time period and you've got an ad here for Dragon magazine got an ad to join the role-playing game Association and then uh your application which I clearly never filled out I still have my envelope I never mailed it in so that's the box set here's the back cover and then the follow-up to this was this version of the game this is the expert set I never had the box for this I acquired these pieces separately later but the expert set came in a box just like this and you see this cover art I love this you have this wizard casting a spell and he's seeing what's going on from this version of the game but you've got your expert rule book and again you see the page numbers here are marked with that X number and then this is the special module that came with the expert set X1 Isle of dread just like B2 keep on the Borderlands came in this so that's my quick look at this version of the game I hope you enjoyed that and again if you want more details on anything in this version of the game definitely leave a comment let me know what you would like to see me cover more um let me know if you've played this version of the game and if you like it or don't like it um you know let me know what you think about races class I know that's super controversial but um in general I just again want to say thank you to everyone for helping me to have gone to a thousand subscribers and uh thanks for sharing my videos and thanks for commenting I love getting comments and you all of your comments have been great I love chatting with you about them so that's it for this look at the 1981 basic uh Dungeons and Dragons box set that came out and my you know original first d d copy so uh thank you for watching and I will talk to you next time bye

Channel: Daddy Rolled a 1

Views: 6,158

Keywords: dnd, D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, Basic D&D, Moldvay Basic, B/X D&D, D&D History, DnD History, OSR

Id: p7y6yg6PR_Q

Length: 19min 15sec (1155 seconds)

Published: Wed May 17 2023