Basic D&D: Christmas Nostalgia

My maternal grandmother, affectionately called "Nanna," was a wonderful old lady who had practically helped raise me from an infant since she lived so close to us. For my eleventh Christmas she selected a present which she was told was "all the rage" among kids my age. I am speaking of the Moldvay Basic D&D boxed set. I fell in love with the artwork on the box cover instantly and ripped it open to see how to play. There was no game board... Gee, the dice look funny... And check out how long the rulebook is! We'll be here all night trying to learn how to play this game. And nobody wanted to learn how to play a game with a 64-page rulebook that had an index and chapters.... So, after perusing the rulebook for a few hours, and then looking at B2: Keep on the Borderlands, the module that came with the boxed set, my mother made the executive decision that the game was a little too mature for me at that time. I disagreed vehemently, but realized that without anyone to play with, the game would simply sit in my closet until it was given away to one of my cousins or sent to the thrift shop with the other older toys.

The following week, my mother and Nanna took me to Toys 'R' Us in Massapequa, NY to return the opened D&D Basic set and find something a bit less challenging to buy. I checked out the aisle where all the board games were kept, but my eyes kept wandering back to all the TSR boxed sets and rulebooks nearby. In the end, I settled for something of comparable price which looked just as cool (but had a game board and normal tokens and dice, as well as cardboard chits) - the DUNGEON! boardgame. Now this was much more our speed, and I have spent many happy years playing this fun game with my family. In fact, some of my friends and family specifically request DUNGEON! every now and again.

But, I was still intrigued by the D&D game. Later that year, for my birthday in 1982, I received yet another copy of the Basic D&D game (along with my 3rd box of Tri-Trac <sigh>). I had no idea who I would play it with - my siblings were all much younger than I, and my parents had no idea how to play a game without a board and weird dice. I started reading, creating characters, drawing my own maps, and generally trying to figure out how the hell to play this game. It was so intriguing, yet so elusive since I had no idea where to start, or even how to start. The following autumn I found myself in middle school, surrounded by a number of new kids from the neighborhood that I had never met. I hit it off with some guys from down the block and we decided to join a school-sponsored D&D club. The club was not very successful (due to the negative publicity from the 700 Club), and I don't remember going more than a couple of times. I had gotten a diorama set for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS from my uncle over the summer, and now had the boxed set AND some plastic miniatures to play the game. These were all promptly stolen out of my locker shortly after I joined the club. I gave up. It seemed I was never meant to play this game after all.

Then, the guys I had met at the game club came calling at my door one weekend. They convinced me to go over one of their houses and play D&D with them. I said sure (after being torn away from my Saturday morning cartoons), and soon I was falling down the rabbit hole into a life of role-playing. We weren't very good at playing the game - the rules were all there, but we were too impatient to read them all before we started. All I remember about my first session was the purple cover of B4: The Lost City and playing a Fighter or Dwarf (can't remember which) and entering the metal cylinder ladders that would take us into the dungeon. We didn't last long. We encountered a white ape that pretty much took us all out. But I was totally hooked! The premise of the game, the time period, the monsters, the character types, the artwork - all of it! It was like playing DUNGEON! without being stuck in the same dungeon trying to get those 10,000 gp and heading back to start before the others. We had to cooperate with each other in order to overcome obstacles (some of us understood that better than others).

Since that time, I became lifelong friends with the others at that first gaming table. I later slaughtered giants as Bruno Nogard the Fighter in G1-2-3: Against the Giants (which was also my first time co-DMing an adventure), and later plumbed the depths of Oerth against the Drow, then entered the Abyss to take on the Spider Queen herself. After our initial romp at high levels, we dumbed things down, back to 1st level, and this time I got to play my first elven fighter/magic-user (Lantwynn Ruman) in the U-series of modules (Saltmarsh) which was utterly amazing! Every summer of middle and high school we would binge on AD&D, getting better and better, and then eventually creating our own AD&D campaigns and heading off to college where we really started gaming seriously.

But, I always came back to Basic/Expert D&D. Although we no longer cared about this older version of the game, I couldn't shake it. It was my "first love" after all. I kept up with all the rulebooks and supplements for B/X D&D, and later BECMI D&D, then the Gazetteer series, and all the new modules. There was something magical about that initial run of D&D that gets me, even now. Every Christmas time I break open the box and carefully read through my copy. Although my Expert Rulebook has fallen apart, the Basic book is still in good shape (I purchased multiple copies so I always had one). I've since typed the rules into my computer to better search and correct errors in the originals. But I still love looking at this rulebook, and re-reading the excellent advice by Gygax in B2: Keep on the Borderlands. The original dice from my box set were lost long ago (or cracked and broke over the decades of playing). I have a set of solid yellow dice with black numbers that are strictly used only for Basic D&D characters and module creation. I even re-purchased the diorama set that was stolen all those years ago, even though I detest plastic miniatures.

But, I have no one to play the game with anymore. Anyone who would even deign to humor me is now 3,000 miles from where I live. Sure, we could play over the computer, but it's not the same. And besides, all my friends prefer the shinier D&D 5E rules or the complexity of AD&D 1st edition. Race as class just doesn't appeal; neither does limited spells or magical items. But I grew up with this form of D&D and I will continue to love it until I die (or at least until I can't read the numbers on the dice anymore).