Just curious, I've always pronounced each letter individually but I've recently watched a few videos where they pronounced it "Beck Me" as if it was a word. How do you pronounce it?
I spell it out. But I usually refer to it as Basic D&D.
as one word.
I don't see it as an acronym and don't pronounce it at all.
I pronounce it, 'Bee-ecks,' or on occasion, 'Moldvay-Cook'
Beck-Me
Beck-Me. Sometimes "color box series."
I say each letter individually; Bee E See Em I.
"Oh. My. God. BECMI, Look at her butt!"
People call it Beck-me, or Basic Edition, Moldvay-Cook for the two authors, or just Basic Expert.
They're all synonyms.
Spelled out. B E C M I. or Mentzer edition
Not to be confused with B/X which is Moldvay/Cook
or the Rules Cyclopedia which is Aaron Allston.
Holmes is easy, it's just his name for his edition.
Beck-Me
The big question is whether you consider it an acronym or an initialism.
The former is generally when you try to make it something roughly like a real word.
"What does SHIELD stand for?"
"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division"
"And what does that mean to you?"
"That someone really wanted it spell SHIELD."
A real world example would be FEMA or NASA.
An initialism is just a grouping of the initials and pronounced as the letters because it doesn't look like a word... ex. FBI, CIA, DOJ.
For me BECMI feels like an initialism (I think mostly because you never see a C next to an M like that in English) so I pronounce it as such.
If you read it in Italian, it is "Beck Me".
But we also call the CIA the "Chi-Ah"...
However, for some reason, FBI is spelled with the original English spelling even in Italian.
Beck Me.
Do you also say "Fro-drick?"
Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 19, 2025, 02:18:00 AMI spell it out. But I usually refer to it as Basic D&D.
1977 Basic, 1981 Basic? B/X and BECMI are different enough things, and saying "Basic D&D" doesn't even really specify what OP is talking about, as the ECMI that OP refers to goes way beyond any of the level or adventure range that any basic version gets to.
Quote from: Venka on January 20, 2025, 02:52:24 PMQuote from: Ratman_tf on January 19, 2025, 02:18:00 AMI spell it out. But I usually refer to it as Basic D&D.
1977 Basic, 1981 Basic? B/X and BECMI are different enough things, and saying "Basic D&D" doesn't even really specify what OP is talking about, as the ECMI that OP refers to goes way beyond any of the level or adventure range that any basic version gets to.
Any D&D after "white box" but before 2nd edition that wasn't AD&D. All of the D&D's in that time frame were pretty indistinguishable, just adding more rules as the ECMI went along.
Until you get into Immortals which I think was such a dramatic departure that it's no longer D&D and becomes some kind of god simulator. But it's in the acryonym because it's technically part of the line.
Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 19, 2025, 02:17:32 PMPeople call it Beck-me, or Basic Edition, Moldvay-Cook for the two authors, or just Basic Expert.
They're all synonyms.
Not the same game, or at least not the same version Moldvay-Cook is BX. BECMI is Mentzer
Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 20, 2025, 05:02:47 PMAll of the D&D's in that time frame were pretty indistinguishable, just adding more rules as the ECMI went along.
But we
aren't in that time frame anymore, and B/X and BECMI (or any subset of BECMI, even just the BE) are
quite distinguishable these days. There was a relatively tiny time window when "basic" referring to multiple rulesets at once was a good enough distinguisher, and we are well past it now.
Quote from: Venka on January 20, 2025, 09:16:17 PMQuote from: Ratman_tf on January 20, 2025, 05:02:47 PMAll of the D&D's in that time frame were pretty indistinguishable, just adding more rules as the ECMI went along.
But we aren't in that time frame anymore, and B/X and BECMI (or any subset of BECMI, even just the BE) are quite distinguishable these days. There was a relatively tiny time window when "basic" referring to multiple rulesets at once was a good enough distinguisher, and we are well past it now.
I find that "Basic D&D" is a useful appellation when talking about OSR games, particularly for someone like me who isn't intimate with the differences between B/X and BE (The CMI part is easier to spot). If you're talking to someone about an OSR game they haven't played, or trying to compare two OSR games, the distinction between a game based on some version of Basic and a game based on Advanced is very useful. The distinction between which version of Basic it starts from is less useful.