Quote from: SettembriniI'd like to know, when specific rules were brought into the BD&D game line, and how people actually played. I`ve heard several accounts of people who played BD&D and used AD&D as a rules-quarry. Can anybody counter or support this?

In the 80s when I was learning and getting into RPGs.  There was a pretty strange phenomenon going on.

First off, "Basic" D&D was looked down on as a vastly inferior game.  "It's for babies," as one early group said to me.  AD&D was the "real" game.  This attitude persisted through most groups I encountered as I did my initial wandering in the hobby.

The way people actually played was more or less as a variant of Basic D&D with additional rules from AD&D.  For example, people used the classes, attribute modifiers, races, spell lists, and things of that sort from AD&D.  But they'd more or less use the rules from Basic D&D for the basic conduct of the game.  In short, Basic D&D was the core rules, and AD&D provided extra fiddly bits.

In my experiences, the way AD&D2 core was written was the way people actually played.  It seemed very ironic to me that some people would complain about AD&D2 while spouting the virtues of AD&D1 when they weren't even playing AD&D1.

The "Basic" D&D Companion and Master sets pretty much went by without notice by the "hardcore" AD&D gamers.  TSR really didn't give much enthusiasm to the line either.  In fact, Dragon Magazine occasionally made little jabs at the "inferior" nature of basic D&D.  So, when the Rules Cyclopedia came out, most people missed it.  (Which also explains its collectible desirability today.)

Since AD&D wasn't released all at once, I incorporated its elements as the books came out. This wasn't entirely fair to the players since the hit dice of PCs were higher in AD&D than in White Box ODD, but I didn't realize that until the player's handbook came out, which was a few months after the monster manual. I remember being very excited about the release of the DM's guide and in retrospect, I think there was a lot of good stuff in there in terms of tables for random encounters, treasure, even things like castle building and siegecraft. But it was impossible to reconcile everything let alone use all the systems (such as unarmed combat IMO, or the detailed initiative system), so I took it for granted that the thing needed to be used as a sourcebook and applied selectively.

Also I do remember the attitude Gabriel mentions, where "Basic" D&D was looked down on, because that's exactly how I saw things. I remember a friend showing me one of the boxed sets and me handwaving it away dismissively, on the assumption that it was just a cleaned up and watered-down version of the white box. Watered down because it didn't cover all the levels. Aside from that I don't know if my attitude was merited at the time; obviously D&D grew into something fairly sophisticated by the time RC was published. But AD&D was an advance over the original game in a lot of ways such as inclusion of the Ranger class IIRC. Essentially there was more to play with, but my attitude was that it had to be edited to match an individual GM's vision for a given campaign. One of the things that turned me off about AD&D was that the campaigns I ran into hadn't been subjected to this sort of critical editing.

I talked with a guy who had learned with D&D and when running a game, started dealing with players who had AD&D books.  He pretty much let them play whatever they wanted to, and was suddenly stuck dealing with a Gladiator and other bizarre (to him) pc's.  So the gladiator got a dream visitation from a diety, offering him the chance (which the player jumped at) to be this dieties cleric.  Over time he more or less transformed the group of AD&D pc's into a group of D&D pc's that he knew exactly how to deal with. A great guy, I wish I knew his e-mail address.

I started on the Eric Holmes basic set. Barry at Simulations sold me on AD&D, and we played it pretty much by the rules. Most of my additions were just that: additions to the rules rather than restructurings. I never tinkered with the combat system, for instance (we even ran unarmed combat as written!). It was stuff like a new bard class, new races and monsters, additional skill rules etc.

I was out of the D&D loop by the time 2nd ed. came around.

I like 2nd Edition.

I think that the 2e of D&D tried to appease the anti-D&D crowd by making in illegal to play evil characters, assassins, etc.

They were trying to appease people who wouldn't have settled for less than banning all gaming altogether, a foolish move but one that could, perhaps be almost forgiven.

Thankfully the new owners don't try to appease fanatics.

Quote from: ZalmoxisI like 2nd Edition.

It's where I started for D&D in general, and I enjoyed it.  The scary thing was that, at the time, Paladium Fantasy 1st ed struck me as a better system as far as options for pc's. (and 2nd ed even more so when it came out)

Quote from: ZalmoxisI like 2nd Edition.

I like First Edition.

And I really like the in-depth of TSR... where the heck are you getting all this,
MythusMage? It's awesome!

*I* though 2E came about because there was a fire sale on cyan ink in Wisconsin...

Quote from: droogI started on the Eric Holmes basic set...

I started with that set as well, and slowly moved onto AD&D (my friend -- the first person with whom I ever gamed -- had an older brother who already had the books).  I remember trying to stay up late in grade 5, reading the PHB under my covers ...

Other friends I gamed with picked up the Moldvay Basic Set and Cook Expert Set (both of which I found attractive; I was already a fan of Erol Otus).  I eventually purchased them myself, but by and large we played AD&D.

After a couple of years, though, we moved on to other games.  Although we experimented a fair bit (CoC, Runequest, Traveller, etc.), MERP eventually became our main game (and, to a lesser extent, Rolemaster 2e).  

I didn't think about D&D again seriously until the mid-1990s, when I picked up the RC.  (Although I did play in a single Basic D&D session while an undergraduate, around 1989.)

Quote from: cnath.rmIt's where I started for D&D in general, and I enjoyed it.  The scary thing was that, at the time, Paladium Fantasy 1st ed struck me as a better system as far as options for pc's. (and 2nd ed even more so when it came out)

Palladium Fantasy was (and is) far better than AD&D2 as far as options for PCs. It had more interesting races (wolfen, trolls, hobgoblins!) and it had more interesting classes (the diabolist! The summoner!) It had a skill system and other innovations.

Heck, it had better illustrations, half the time.

I even think the mindset of  Palladium Supplements with all the new options, spells and classes to empower players to let them play what they want and strikes them as kewl was an inspiration to the 3.x mode of publication.

Palladium supplements? Nah, AD&D did well with splatbooks ("Complete Marsupial"), Rolemaster had a brazillion companions and White Wolf basically wiped the floor with all of them. Not a very unique idea. Considering that rules/crunch sell more than adventures, it's only logical from a financial perspective.

QuotePalladium supplements? Nah, AD&D did well with splatbooks ("Complete Marsupial"), Rolemaster had a brazillion companions and White Wolf basically wiped the floor with all of them. Not a very unique idea. Considering that rules/crunch sell more than adventures, it's only logical from a financial perspective.

Might well be.

But to me OCCs are just Proto-Prestige Class, Proto-Feat trees and Monsters. Add to that the healthy dose of Hardware and Spells in each book, that at least there is a similarity. Just a theory and could well be wrong.

I think Unearthed Arcana originated a lot of those concepts. You had a book with additional classes and spells, most of them of a less generic nature than the base versions. The Thief-Acrobat could be called the first "prestige class", with a rather similar mechanism. (cf. RC druids, avengers)

Most class-based systems go beyond the basic variants, as this usually sells books. I'm not very familiar with Palladium Fantasy 1st ed. books (and I'm too lazy to google for them right now), but most Rifts splat-books originated classes in a special context, which is something WotC isn't doing enough, simply because they're not as setting-based as TSR was in the days of yore.

Quote from: SosthenesThe Thief-Acrobat could be called the first "prestige class", with a rather similar mechanism. (cf. RC druids, avengers)

I think the earliest proto-prestige class would actually be the paladin from Supplement I: Greyhawk.