The Tao of B/X
Welcome to my blog (my mogblog, if you will). For my first post I would like to show a little love to my favorite fantasy RPG: B/X D&D.
Like many roleplaying game fans of a certain vintage, I was first introduced to the hobby through the Moldvay D&D Basic set, and then quickly dived into Cook/Marsh Expert expansion. Those slim boxes transformed my world, and opening my mind up to ideas and stories I never could have imagined. I loved the glossy red and blue books with their exotic American-style three hole punches and their cleverly linked cover art. I remember those plain, blue plastic dice and the weird little crayon for bringing out the numbers. I remember the pictures, the maps, the stats, the modules, and I remember how I felt discovering this new world.
Looking back now, I think we only played B/X for about six to nine months. One day my older brother came home with the heavy, garish hardback AD&D books, and declared we were moving on up to real D&D! I fell hard for those core rule books at the time. There was just so much new stuff: new weapons, classes, alignments, races (you could be different races and different classes - who knew?) It seemed like everything we had played before was just kids stuff! And yet…
Was AD&D better? It was certainly more complicated. Character creation took hours instead of minutes, combat began to crawl in comparison, the pages and pages of niche rules, magic items without end, tables upon tables covering every possible situation, while fun to peruse on long summer vacations, seemed less helpful at the table. If I am honest, I think my 13-year-old DM self was, dare I say it, just playing B/X with a few extra classes and weapons? I couldn’t keep up with all the rules, and so I think I reverted to the gameplay that got me hooked in the first place.
As the 1980s rolled on, we played many other games: Traveller, Paranoia, Warhammer, Bloodbowl, and Car Wars, to name but a few. We bought into AD&D 2e, also, but as the decade waned, girls and alcohol and football started to push those things into the mists of time. I got a job, I got a car, and like so many I went into RPG deep freeze.
But it was not the end…
Thirty years later, and now living on the other side of the pond in Missouri, USA, I stumbled upon a few D&D podcasts. Wow, is this thing still going on? My wife knew a couple who played, and we got pulled in to two years of an enjoyable 5e campaign with a few new friends. It was fun, but…
Look, I am the very last person to get involved in edition wars. It does not interest me to get into the endless rounds of putting stuff down that other people like just because it isn’t quite what I like. I had fun in those games. I did. But it wasn’t my D&D. It seemed overly complicated. Characters seemed almost heroic at first level and took an age to create. The heavy reliance on balance and fairness made the whole thing feel a bit sterile. The individual combat rounds that lasted over an hour while seemingly every single character class fired off a cluster bomb of spells became very boring to me. It all got a bit much. And then, I found it…
The OSR (Gygax be praised)
God. Damn. I realized my D&D was still alive and kicking (while also finding new expression for the old ways). It felt familiar! It felt exciting! It felt dangerous! It felt like adventure! I was back, baby! Except I wasn’t back to AD&D. I was back to Basic.
I fell in love all over again with simple rules, simple races and classes, simple weapons and armor, and fast-paced combat. When I picked up Gavin Norman’s wonderful Old School Essentials I was hooked. But it was really telling that when OSE lurched its OSR juggernaut into AD&D “Advanced Fantasy” mode, my heart said “No”. I stuck with “Classic Fantasy”, and I have no intention of getting pulled out of what I love most a second time.
The reason is simple: quite apart from limiting the game, I find the simplified framework and limited choices of B/X actually encourage players to try things they never would in more complex games. No one gets paralyzed by what they can (and therefore “can’t”) do according to their eight-page character sheet. Instead they discuss, they debate, they plan, they negotiate chances of success, and they find ways to succeed. As for me as a DM, I don’t get drained in an ocean of rules and tables and charts and $50 splat books, but instead have a light, clear framework for enabling great games. I love it.
Today, my wife and I host a bi-weekly in-person B/X campaign in our home in eastern Missouri (the East Missouri Artifact Reclamation Taskforce, or EMART for short). The players that come are manly 5e players who love the change of pace and the simplified gameplay. I will always try new games and have fun doing so. I will never run another game down, but for me, B/X is king. It cannot be beaten, and it will forever be my go-to game.
Cheers, Mog
#B/X #OSE #OSR