Let's Read B/X: The Moldvay/Cook Basic and Expert Sets for D&D

[Digitalelf]

This is all well and good, but the newer editions also get a lot of stuff right. It's often different stuff - which comes down to what you're valuing in your gaming.

I totally agree with that, otherwise, I would not have stuck with 3rd edition or Pathfinder for as long as I did,

It's just that I valued quite a few things from the older editions that did not get transferred over to 3rd edition or Pathfinder, so while I embraced the newer ideas and rules that I liked, I also kept those ideas and rules from the older editions that I thought should have remained in the game.

I disagree with the overall premise. 4e was trying to (and largely succeeded at) fixing 3e's balance problems, which ended up with a different balancing point than AD&D but still a very capable one.

I never played 4th edition, I read the rules, and it was clear from the start that it was not a game I cared to play.

[1337 b4k4]

The real problems, IMO, started when the folks designing 3e didn't pay close enough attention to the significant changes they were making to the game. A glaring example? Hit points vs. damage. The designers took 2e, tried to make everything more unified, fixed some subsystems, and played the game like it was 2e. They didn't fully understand the checks vs balances working behind the scenes, and didn't step back to see what kind of system they had actually made.

Another example is spell casting. While D&D has always had the quadratic wizard advancement, it's very clear that the way the check and balances worked out, a high level Wizard in pre-3e was not in a complete league of their own. The biggest check being (in AD&D anyway) the minutes per spell level for spell memorization. IIRC, it was something on the order of 10 minutes per spell level to memorize a spell. Meaning a high level wizard would need to spend a full day memorizing spells to get all their slots back, in addition to their 8 hour rest period.

I never played 4th edition, I read the rules, and it was clear from the start that it was not a game I cared to play.

It's probably worth playing at least once or twice. For what the game actually is, it's a very well put together game. It's just not traditional D&D. And frankly speaking, even without being traditional D&D, the fighter class is far an away the best fighter implementation in D&D and I really need to get around to stealing it and backporting it to B/X

[obryn]

I never played 4th edition, I read the rules, and it was clear from the start that it was not a game I cared to play.

It's worth it, for some perspective. It's a game which you can't really understand just from reading the rules, due to the way all the parts interact with one another when there's a whole party of PCs. It's set the bar for what I, as a DM, expect out of my prep time, too.

Another example is spell casting. While D&D has always had the quadratic wizard advancement, it's very clear that the way the check and balances worked out, a high level Wizard in pre-3e was not in a complete league of their own. The biggest check being (in AD&D anyway) the minutes per spell level for spell memorization. IIRC, it was something on the order of 10 minutes per spell level to memorize a spell. Meaning a high level wizard would need to spend a full day memorizing spells to get all their slots back, in addition to their 8 hour rest period.

Yep! Unfortunately, this kind of adds to the 'balance through annoyance' that AD&D can often veer towards when it comes to spellcasting. Nitpicky tracking of material components is another one. Yes, it helps balance the game. But man, it's a terrible way to go about it.

And frankly speaking, even without being traditional D&D, the fighter class is far an away the best fighter implementation in D&D and I really need to get around to stealing it and backporting it to B/X

You know, I found that the Weapon Mastery subsystem is really capable in this regard. You have the 'despair' effects, for example, and some quite potent special effects with high mastery.

[Yora]

Comparing with Rules Cyclopedia

As I said, it might be interesting to look at later editions of the game for how some of the major complains I have with B/X got adressed.

Charisma
Charisma now gets you a +3 modifier for an 18 and a -3 modifier for a 3, just as for all the other ability scores.

Clerics
I actually didn't mention it, but the spell progression for clerics in the Expert Set is highly irregular. You get both your first 3rd level spell and your first 4th level spell on 6th cleric level, and the 5th level spells on 7th cleric level. In the RC it's just as irregular as for wizards. (Except the 7th and highest level spells, which you get 4 levels after you'd expect.)

Magic-users
Wizards get only daggers as weapons by default, but there are several suggested additional weapons that GMs might allow them to use. Including blowgun, sling, flaming oil, and thrown rocks. And whips. Sure, why not?
They still only have one spell per day at 1st level, but they get two spells in their spellbook, of which it is very strongly indicated that one should be read magic. That adresses one of my biggest complaints.
New spells are given by the GM/teacher only until 4th level. After that the wizard has to find them from scrolls. There is no chance of the scroll getting wasted and it always works. And you can have as many spells in your books as you like.

Demihumans
Dwarves, elves, and halflings do get more things at higher XP, but those things are not technically levels. Not quite sure how those things work, but they get something.
Villages of these races also get a magic artifact that allows its keeper to act like a cleric. They can't have traveling clerics, but it's an interesting way to adress the problem of healing magic being exclusive to humans.

Reversed Cleric Spells
Here it is presented as Lawful clerics generally preferring not to restoring to reversed spells (though in the case of darkness, I see no harm of doing it), while Chaotic clerics tend to use non-reversed spells only on their friends (which is: for selfish reasons). Neutral clerics are given completely free reign to cast the spells whichever way they want. This is more a thing about alignment, it's not an actual restriction on casting.

Wizard Spells
Magic Missile now has a duration of 1 round, which is even more confusing and makes less sense. Aside from Labyrinth Lord, all B/X clones I know use instantaneous duration for this spell.

ESP is considerably speed up. Instead of concentrating for 10 minutes before you can start reading and another 10 minutes to silence all minds except the one you want to concentrate on, it now takes 1 minute each. Which makes the spell much more useful and practical.

Lower water now comes with the mention that any ship inside a lowered area is stuck and can't move out of the hole. When the spell ends, the collapsing walls of water will do some damage to the ship. Alright, now this spell has a function. A pretty narrow one, but it's a start.

Part water doesn't exist anymore.

Cursed Items
The chance for a cursed potion is only 1 in 20 and for a cursed scroll 1 in 10. Still a problem, and still bad, but not quite as bad as in B/X. But at 6th level every cleric should have neutralize poison prepared, so by that point it's no longer a problem if you do the identifying at the saftey of your home. (Which also works in unmodified B/X.)

--

Many of the biggest problems I've found with B/X did get adressed in later versions. The terrible chances at thief skills for thieves below 10th level is still there, but other than that most of the biggest problems have been fixed.
Which means it wasn't just me who thought them to be having problems and there was some degree of consensus that something needed to be done with them.

[Straybow]

TLDR (well, not the second half)

The to-hit tables had two very interesting features. First, they aren't linear. For very low (very good) armor classes, the 20 gets repeated five or six more times. Therefore it was possible to hit things that a straight "Target 20" system would not reach. Second, above that it continued up to 25 or so, explaining that anything above a 20 required a natural 20 and a +n weapon. So now it was possible to hit things that would be well out of reach in a linear system, but not quite a 20 autohit.

The linearity of d20 tends to make things "swingy." It seems too easy to raise AC to unhittable levels, or to buff attacks to unmissable levels.

[hamlet]

Regarding "story", my approach is not to start a campaign with saying "there are thousands of people in the world who want to become heroes, even though most of them fail. Let's see what happens to these 4 randomly selected people".
Instead I start with "Of the thousands of people who want to become adventurers almost all fail. Let's see how these 4 most promising of them are doing."

The outcome of their adventures is still entirely in the open. They might still all die on the way to the first dungeon, depite all the promise they had been showing.

A novel or skript writer of course does know the outcome of the story and therefore knows exactly which of the millions of people in the world are the most interesting to follow around. Which any decent GM would not.
But I like to increase the odds that the campaign we're playing is with one of those fee groups who make the jump to becoming heroes. I want to minimize the chance that everyone is playing five or six Basic Level characters before the group finally makes it to Expert Level range. Playing at Basic levels is fun, and that's where the vast majority of sessions I ran took place. (With several different groups.) But once a group of players has played at those levels for 10-20 sessions, I want to progress to higher levels and do different types of adventures instead of going through several PCs per player before we get there.
And I think with B/X as written, the odds for that are much lower than I would personally prefer. Always being vulnerable is good (and even more than the workload for GMs, that's my main problem with 3rd edition), but being that extremely vulnerable at 1st to 3rd level is too much for my taste. Maximum hit points at first level, 3 or 4 spells per day for 1st level wizards (even if that includes scrolls), ranged weapons for wizards, thief skills that start at 50% chance, and no instant death traps when trying to identify magic items (with a 1 in 8 chance!) is really all I am asking for in this regard.

But I am interested in what fundamentally different concept of sandbox campaigns hamlet might have.

OK, I'm keeping this brief lest it suddenly devolve into edition warring, which I simply do not want.

1) You are coming at the game with ideas different than what the original creators put into it. Let's start, maybe, with the idea of heroes. In it's original inception, the player characters were not heroes: destined, fated or otherwise. They were pretty much nothing more than wandering scoundrels who are out to locate and abscond with treasure. They're looking to get rich and to have an adventure. Basically, the entire game was originally conceived (by Gygax or Arneson or whoever, pick your religion) as the characters delving into various dungeons looking for valuables that would make them richer than an honest hard day's work. The idea of heroics grew into it later on (possibly with the expert set, maybe not till a bit later) when people started asking for stuff that would act as webbing to string the dungeons together. It wasn't until the late AD&D stages that the idea of heroism and overarching stories really got going.

2) Sandbox. The annoying stereotypes on both sides as to sandboxes or plots really are annoying me. To the point where I'm developing a twitch. Since this one specifically is a misconception about Old School, I'm confining myself to it.

The idea that the dungeon(s) existed in a vacuum, devoid of meaning or connection to the campaign at large in a "true sandbox" is a vast and foolish misconception, one developed in reaction to the idea that all post AD&D D&D games must have this intricate overarching railroaded plot to work. In old school, all the dungeon locales had a reason. A purpose. Many, if not most, were also connected in some way to the overarching world and the activities of the PC's and the local NPC's. Just because there isn't a rigid plot doesn't mean that things aren't happening around the PC's, that their actions have no effect on the world, that they have no reason to go anywhere except for idle curiosity and murder-hobo urges. A sandbox is not just "here's the world, interact with it or don't, I don't care." It's a balancing act between creating avenues of entrance and interaction for the players and leaving it wide open enough so that if they choose to do something else, that they aren't constrained, inhibited, or otherwise stopped because they've wandered away from what the DM thought they were going to do at any given moment.

Also, there's no such thing as a "true sandbox." It's different from group to group. I've run one for a group that needed hand holding to get them to simply leave the inn every morning. And then I've run one for a group that spent their entire time exploring and couldn't care less about the world occurences around them. The true key to it is whether or not the players actually have agency independent of what the DM originally planned. It's the antithesis of the "adventure path" style of gaming, which is just fine in and of itself: was even pioneered in AD&D, or Basic one could argue.

3) None of this has to do with age or how long one's been gaming or whether somebody's "doing it wrong." It's really all about the expectations one has when approaching the game. What do you want out of it and whether or not the game actually provides that. Basic (and Expert to an extent) simply do not, in their original conception, provide for the group of fated heroes, stars of their own story, etc. It's about scoundrels looking to get rich quick at the risk of their own lives. It's about looting tombs, swindling goblins, solving riddles, etc. It's not about "the big bad guy" or anything like that, though a "big bad guy" might, in fact, exist. It's almost certainly smarter and more profitable to go around him, trick him, or even to bargain with him instead.

4) I'd be curious about how a thread where an old school gamer reading the 3.x PHB/DMG would go.

[Yora]

The idea that the dungeon(s) existed in a vacuum, devoid of meaning or connection to the campaign at large in a "true sandbox" is a vast and foolish misconception, one developed in reaction to the idea that all post AD&D D&D games must have this intricate overarching railroaded plot to work. In old school, all the dungeon locales had a reason. A purpose. Many, if not most, were also connected in some way to the overarching world and the activities of the PC's and the local NPC's. Just because there isn't a rigid plot doesn't mean that things aren't happening around the PC's, that their actions have no effect on the world, that they have no reason to go anywhere except for idle curiosity and murder-hobo urges. A sandbox is not just "here's the world, interact with it or don't, I don't care." It's a balancing act between creating avenues of entrance and interaction for the players and leaving it wide open enough so that if they choose to do something else, that they aren't constrained, inhibited, or otherwise stopped because they've wandered away from what the DM thought they were going to do at any given moment.

Yes, and Cook wrote that down for the Expert Set in 1980. And I felt that it is so important to mention that I quoted the actual sentence.
You still see people arguing about this, and here you have the book that is widely regarded as being the first one to present the basics of the concept to a wider audience (beyond the circle of personal connections from which D&D originated), which even back then already emphazised that it should not be a static overland map with a handful of static dungeons.
A few years back there was a certain crowd advocating "A good GM should prepare nothing but dungeon floorplans and never tailor anything to the party" and presenting it as the way it had originally always been done. Which just is not the case, as many people remember from experience, and goes very much against what Cook wrote when he presented the concept.

The bold highlight is not mine. That was how Cook had written it. For my point, I would do it this way.

Most important, the characters in the wilderness campaign do not exist in a vacuum. The DM should have events going on elsewhere that may affect (or be affected by) the actions of the players. There may be any number of "plots" going on at once, and the DM should try to involve each player in some chain of events. These should develop logically from the actions of those involved. It is important not to force the action to a pre-determined conclusion. The plot lines can always be adjusted for the actions of the players.

[obryn]

TLDR (well, not the second half)

The to-hit tables had two very interesting features. First, they aren't linear. For very low (very good) armor classes, the 20 gets repeated five or six more times. Therefore it was possible to hit things that a straight "Target 20" system would not reach. Second, above that it continued up to 25 or so, explaining that anything above a 20 required a natural 20 and a +n weapon. So now it was possible to hit things that would be well out of reach in a linear system, but not quite a 20 autohit.

The linearity of d20 tends to make things "swingy." It seems too easy to raise AC to unhittable levels, or to buff attacks to unmissable levels.

This is handled in Target 20 by making a nat 20 = 25.

By and large, though, this seldom matters in practice.

[Yora]

The attack tables in the Expert Set even go up only to ACs of -3.

[hamlet]

Yes, and Cook wrote that down for the Expert Set in 1980. And I felt that it is so important to mention that I quoted the actual sentence.
You still see people arguing about this, and here you have the book that is widely regarded as being the first one to present the basics of the concept to a wider audience (beyond the circle of personal connections from which D&D originated), which even back then already emphazised that it should not be a static overland map with a handful of static dungeons.
A few years back there was a certain crowd advocating "A good GM should prepare nothing but dungeon floorplans and never tailor anything to the party" and presenting it as the way it had originally always been done. Which just is not the case, as many people remember from experience, and goes very much against what Cook wrote when he presented the concept.

The bold highlight is not mine. That was how Cook had written it. For my point, I would do it this way.

I know those people who argue the "A good GM should prepare nothing but dungeon floorplans and never tailor anything to the party" argument and I call them fools. Even Gary didn't do that, and in the end, his campaign was largely people just exploring Castle Greyhawk for most of the time. It wasn't until a while later that he found the need to expand upon the world until Greyhawk itself started to take shape because his players started to wonder what was out there.

My point is that, originally, way back in the OD&D days, white box and all that, the intent of the rules was dungeon crawling. Outside of the dungeon just wasn't covered by the rules until years later. Either the DM had to do it himself, or, frequently enough, the group just devolved into "you're standing outside the entrance to your next dungeon, what do you do?". Not that that wouldn't be fun, I've had a few like that, but still . . .

If I had time, I'd seriously like to do a "Let's Read" of the 3.x books, but things being as they are, I use my free time to do such petty things as sleeping. Four hours a night. Works well.

[1337 b4k4]

A few years back there was a certain crowd advocating "A good GM should prepare nothing but dungeon floorplans and never tailor anything to the party" and presenting it as the way it had originally always been done. Which just is not the case, as many people remember from experience, and goes very much against what Cook wrote when he presented the concept.

I would argue the idea of never tailoring to the party is not the same as pure unconnected random occurrences in a vacuum. To my mind, "don't tailor to the party" has long been exemplified in B2. First of all, the module is sandbox in that while there are things to do, there's nothing that requires the players to encounter things in any order. Now let's talk about some of the areas and monsters that show up in this adventure for 1-3 level adventurers:

Area 5 has 17 kobolds. Even assuming a large party of 8, that's still 2 vs 1
Area 10 has 12 Orcs
Area 22 has a freaking Ogre, who admittedly can be bribed, but still it's a 4HD monster!
Area 33 has 3 grey oozes
Area 34 has an Owlbear with 5HD and 3 attacks per round
Area 45 has a Minotaur
Section K has a continual threat of encountering wandering 8 zombies with protection from turning (turn as if next strongest monster)
Area 52 has 12 skeletons with protection from turning
Area 57 has 40(!) monsters in it, 20 skeletons and 20 zombies, all with protection from turning
Area 62 has a Wight
Area 63 has a gelatinous cube
Area 64 has a disguised Medusa

None of that is "tailored" to the party, but all of it makes sense in the context of the world produced in the adventure. But for example, I honestly can't see a modern day (3.x or 4e) D&D module throwing 40 monsters at a level 1 party in a single room.

[DDogwood]

My point is that, originally, way back in the OD&D days, white box and all that, the intent of the rules was dungeon crawling. Outside of the dungeon just wasn't covered by the rules until years later.

OD&D definitely included rules for wilderness adventures (infamously recommending that DMs buy a copy of the game "Outdoor Survival" for the map). I understand that Gygax's early game was about dungeon exploration, but wilderness adventuring was in the core game by the time it was actually published.

[Thrudd]

OD&D definitely included rules for wilderness adventures (infamously recommending that DMs buy a copy of the game "Outdoor Survival" for the map). I understand that Gygax's early game was about dungeon exploration, but wilderness adventuring was in the core game by the time it was actually published.

Which, if anyone knows that game, is absolutely brutal. It should be called "slow outdoor death". If you used the actual rules of Outdoor Survival for wilderness travel, keeping track of encumbrance, knowing exactly how much everyone can carry and how much food and water vs equipment and treasure to take would be an important part of the game.

[caden_varn]

OK, I'm keeping this brief lest it suddenly devolve into edition warring, which I simply do not want.

1) You are coming at the game with ideas different than what the original creators put into it. Let's start, maybe, with the idea of heroes. In it's original inception, the player characters were not heroes: destined, fated or otherwise. They were pretty much nothing more than wandering scoundrels who are out to locate and abscond with treasure. They're looking to get rich and to have an adventure. Basically, the entire game was originally conceived (by Gygax or Arneson or whoever, pick your religion) as the characters delving into various dungeons looking for valuables that would make them richer than an honest hard day's work. The idea of heroics grew into it later on (possibly with the expert set, maybe not till a bit later) when people started asking for stuff that would act as webbing to string the dungeons together. It wasn't until the late AD&D stages that the idea of heroism and overarching stories really got going.

I am looking at my Basic set, which appears to be circa '83 (the most recent date in the copyright section. 9 years after the first copyright date, so I admit things could have changed, but Page 2, What role shall I play - '<stuff I can't be arsed to type> Imagine: you are a strong hero, a famous but poor fighter. Day by Day you explore the unknown, looking for monsters and treasure. The more you find, the more famous and powerful you become'

This suggests strongly that the idea of being a hero was firmly in the basic set 32 years ago - I suspect from this that the idea of being a hero has been in the game for the vast majority of the lifespan of D&D. This date is halfway through the 1E publication if t'internet can be trusted, so at the very least the idea of being heroic was halfway through it's period.

I can certainly say that when I started in '83 we played it as heroic. MNay well ahve bee due to our DM (a teacher), but that is what stuck with me. I hear a lot of talk about having to sneak around & avoid monsters and steal treasure to level, but I don't really recognise this style of play, despite playing pretty continuously (in various systems) since 1983. This may well have be related to our age (I was 11), or my early DMs, or group preference, I don't know, but we got to be reasonably heroic. Sure, we died a fair bit (not every session by any means, but it happened). If we had needed to sneak around and try to avoid any fight we possibly could for the first 4 levels or so, I seriously doubt I would still be playing.
That said, I suspect our DMs fudged a lot to keep us (mostly) alive. I kn ow I did when I was DMing. Maybe there is a slpit there - the groups where the DMs fudged the 'unfun' results, and the ones where they did not, leading to a more or less heroic feel (and probably some bad habits in either camp, I know I picked some up).

Also, I have now discovered that I COLOURED THE PICTURES IN! At least the first few pages, I assume I got bored after that. You'd have thought by 11 I could have stayed within the lines (and maybe picked appropriate colours, why the fighter got a green and red helm I do not know...)

[Yora]

A 1st level fighter starts with better hit chance and saving throws than a "Normal Man" and also has a Constitution score. And Normal Man is the stats for all regular soldiers, mercenaries, and bandits. Right from the start you are better than regular professionals.

[thirdkingdom]

Wayne Rossi has some pretty fascinating stuff to say here about the original OD&D setting and some of the things it implies (this is the setting using the aforementioned Outdoor Survival Map).

[DDogwood]

This suggests strongly that the idea of being a hero was firmly in the basic set 32 years ago - I suspect from this that the idea of being a hero has been in the game for the vast majority of the lifespan of D&D. This date is halfway through the 1E publication if t'internet can be trusted, so at the very least the idea of being heroic was halfway through it's period.

I don't think D&D ever assumed your character wasn't a hero, but I think it used different assumptions about what a "hero" was. Newer versions of the game use something closer to a hero from a high-octane action movie or a fantasy superhero - your character is significantly above average and can do amazing things right from the start. Old-school D&D assumed a hero was more like the characters from the early Lethal Weapon films or Game of Thrones - possibly above average, but their heroism came from taking on lethal risks and surviving them.

I think that sneaking around the dungeon and avoiding every fight is an exaggeration, for sure. Certainly I've never heard of any group avoiding fights altogether - but that's not the same as "avoiding fights unless you're sure you can win." THAT'S what old-school D&D really encourages, and not just at low levels.

I'm a teacher, and I run a games club at my school. This year some of the students asked me to teach them old-school D&D, and the game was popular enough that I had 12 players at a time for a while (in a school with fewer than 200 students, I might add!). I had students ranging from 11-18 years old.

At the beginning, they definitely took a "kick down the door and kill the monsters" approach. This worked, to an extent, but they suffered high casualties and rarely had the resources to search for much treasure, so their advancement was brutally slow. Over time, though, they started figuring it out - by the end of the year, they talked to every group of monsters they encountered, trying to avoid a fight unless they figured they could end it quickly. Undead became scary because you couldn't talk to them (except when the Antipaladin realized he could command them, and undead suddenly became a resource rather than a threat). They started spending a LOT more time searching for treasure and traps.

The campaign also ended in a TPK because they carelessly got into a fight that they weren't prepared for. They all loved it, though, and even enjoyed how it ended. Certainly most of them didn't get bored or give up; in fact, the danger of everything seemed to attract them more and more. I wouldn't say that their characters weren't heroic; in fact, since they were pretty much constantly over their heads in danger, I'd say they were MORE heroic than any of the characters I played in 3.x/PF over the years.

[Yora]

The Isle of Dread
(Obviously spoilers)

This is one of the most famous Dungeons & Dragons modules, after Keep on the Borderland and The Tomb of Horror. To my knowledge, it was part of every version of the Expert Set and so lots of people did have it. It works by itself, but it's main purpose is really to give GMs an example for how to use the guidelines for creating a wilderness environment for an Expert level campaign. The Expert rules are the theory, The Isle of Dread is doing it in actual practice. Just like Keep on the Borderland did for the Basic Set.

I have the BECMI version of the module, which has an orange cover while the original B/X version has a blue cover. But to my knowledge the content is pretty much identical except for the art. It's amazingly short. Excluding the map it's only 22 pages and of those 4 are monsters and another one a quick primer on a continental map of the Known World that eventually would become the Mystara Setting. The island itself is only 14 pages, which seems just tiny.

Introduction
The introduction begins with stating the purpose of this module. It's an "example of what a wilderness adventure may be" and another tool to completment the expert rules. The adventure is designed for six to ten characters of 3rd to 6th level. Even though the GM is asked to be impartial, it also makes the point to make the game survivable for the party. Which to me sounds a lot like a recommendation to fudge a bit here and there, at least when it comes to wandering monsters and how agressive enemies are played.

Wandering Monsters
There are three tables for wandering monsters. One for the small southern islands where the characters start, one for the southern half of the main island, and one for the northern half of the main island. The southern islands, where most of the friendly human native live, are relatively safe with mostly animals, humans, or weak undead being found. Which makes sense as people would avoid the most dangerous areas and drive out the monsters near their homes. The further north the party travels, the bigger the monsters become and the greater the chance is for encountering the worst of them.
The southern part of the main island is where the wild humanoids live and you can run into rakasta, phanatons, lizardmen, neanderthals, and aranea. The north is dinosaur country and there's almost no humanoids except for a few hill and stone giants, which the players might never encounter.
These are not random encounters. The wandering monster tables have been constructed to reflect the background of the setting and local differences of habitation. You could easily have just a single "warm forest" encounter table for all the islands, but this really is a lot better. But the advice goes even further than that. "If you feel that the monster rolled still does not logically belong in the terrain the characters are in, roll again or chose a different wandering monster. If the monster rolled is either much too strong or much too weak for the characters, you may change the number of monsters appearing, or you may reduce the monster's hit points to provide a more balanced encounter." And a bit later "Also try to avoid letting unplanned wandering monsters disrupt the balance of the adventure."
See that? "Balanced." "Disrupt." Here we have the first formalized example of sandbox campaigns and it outright tells us not to run the game completely blind and letting the players live or die by the chance of die rolls. Wandering monster tables are tools to help the GM bringing the world to life by giving suggestions for what the players might run into. But he's still supposed to tailore the adventure to the situation and the capabilities of the party to give them good chances at survival and success.

The Continent
The adventure doesn't start with the characters stranded on an unknown island, but with them preparing for and setting out for an expedition. This means they have to begin their sea journey somewhere and also a place to which to bring all the treasures, riches, and exotic items they find. At another point the module even mentions the possibility of establishing trade between the islanders and the mainland, and if the players want to build a stronghold on the island they are probably going to want to hire some engineers and mercenaries. Though they also might want to recruit their followers entirely from the natives. But the important part is that they need to have options to chose from and so your starting sandbox does need neighbors. This page lists 16 other countries, which I believe was the first iteration of the Known World/Mystara setting. On a single page.

Background and Preparation
The Isle of Dread is not simple there and waiting for someone to explore it. The adventure hook is that the party comes into the possession of a secret map and letter that describe the location of a remote island and how it had been discovered by an explorer who died 30 years ago. However, he lost most of his men during the journey and had to return home to hire more people for a proper expedition to the island. But if the players do some research on the man, it turns out that he was killed in an unrelated fight before the expedition started, and presumedly nobody has made the journey to the island since. The report of the explorer says that they had heard stories about an ancient hidden city in somewhere in the center of the island, that supposedly is full of treasures, including a huge black pearl. While the module is a sandbox, it starts with a pretty obvious goal. Find the city and recover the treasure. However, unlike most modules that were released later for D&D, and pretty much all adventures for any game ever since, there is no predetermined route how the party is going to get there. The map shows where the island is located and where the friendly natives had their villages, but that's all the clues the players get. Visting some of the villages to ask the locals for more information seems an obvious first course of action, but the module doesn't actively steer the players towards that. If they want to go to shore the first time they see land on the dinosaur infested northern coast, that's entirely their own descision. Perhaps a few disastrous encounters might convince them to get back to their ship and try to find some helpful locals, but it's also possible that they find the city all by themselves out of dumb luck.
Doesn't matter how, it's a sandbox! They get the map and the short description of the locals and the hidden city, and what they are going to do with it is entirely up to them, as far as the module is concerned. If the GM wants to send them on specific quests, that's how own business, but the module doesn't do anything to steer GMS towards that. From what I am able to tell, it doesn't advice against it either. You could simply use the module as a small campaign setting, but I think at that time the idea of scripted adventures had not really been around, at least in published material.

Maps
There are quite a lot of maps. First a hex map of the main island and the smaller isles that surround it. This is the GMs map that shows terrain and the location of villages and fixed monster lairs. The same map also exist as a players map, which shows the coastlines of all the islands, but except for the southeastern isles inhabited by the human tribes, only the coastal hexes are filled in with the interior being blank. That is to be filled in by the players as they explore the island. Having the coastlines to start with is pretty handy, as it lets the players have some degree of orientation and a general idea of where they are and in which direction they need to head if they want to get somewhere. That's better than starting with a completely blank map.
The next one is the map of an average human village, of which there are seven. There are also smaller maps for a Pirate Lair, a rakasta camp, an aranea lair, a phanaton settlement, and two generic caves. Because you never know when you might need to spontaneously set something in a cave, like the lair of a wandering monster. Another map shows the central mountain region in the heart of the main island in greater detail, and another one shows the hidden eighth village near the mysterous ancient city. The "city" is shown as a small dungeon with three levels, but I'll get to that in much more detail later. And finally there's the map of the continent and the ocean, which is a 30 mile hex map for long distance travel. In total there are 14 maps in 30-mile hexes, 6-mile hexes, 50 feet squares, 10 feet squares, and 5 feet squares. These seem like good illustrations for what purposes make which grid and scale the best choice.

The Locals
A whole page is spend on the main village on the island, Tanaroa. It is located next to a big stone wall that separates the peninsula inhabited by the human tribes from the main part of the island. There are no maps for individual houses or specific NPCs. Instead we're told that each of the seven villages has about 300 people on average and consists of four clans that have a male chief each. The village as a whole is ruled by a female leader. The sixth leader of each village is the priest, who is called the Zombie master and a cleric or magic-user of at least 5th level. The villagers would like to trade, but don't have ships for long distance travel and if the players are getting ideas of trading goods from the mainland it improves their standing with the locals and they can make some decent profit from it. If they sell their goods from the island on the mainland, they get double the value of the goods they traded in and for that first shipment they get the profit fully counted as XP. After all, this is the money they brought back from an adventure. (Though repeating it only gets gold but no XP, because that's no longer an adventure.)
The wall of Tanaroa completely cuts of the penisula from the main part of the island and there's some information on how many warriors are guarding it and what defenses they have in place. By default there isn't anything that's going to try to assault the wall, but one never knows what kind of trouble the player might stir up in the wild, so it's good to have that information at hand.
The players can hire guides for expeditions south of the wall and into the southernmost third of the main island. I don't really see what good it would actually do as there isn't really much to find there, but for the first steps into the unknown, it might not be completely pointless to have a local bring them to the most important landmarks and let them update their map. As this is expected to be the first time ever the players are going on an outdoor adventure, that might not be a bad start.
They might also be ably to hire 2 to 12 villagers to carry stuff for them, but these will only come with them beyond the wall if the party consists of at least 30 capable fighters. The the local warriors never hire on as mercenaries. So you could get these workers beyond the wall, but then you would have to bring your own mercenaries from the mainland. If you want to build a stronghold in the jungles, that might become important though...
This is all getting terrible complex and we havn't even started going into the jungles yet. Already this is so much more than simple dungeon crawling to get treasure and XP and there's more roleplaying potential than you get from most published adventures.
One of the smaller island has a small pirate base which is the home to 41 pirates who attack ships passing through the region and sometimes raid villages for slaves. Already you have a wonderful adventure hook. Maybe one time the party returns to Tanaroa to resupply they learn that pirates have abducted villagers and the local leaders plead with their new heroic friends to save them. Of course, that means the players would first have to find where the pirates have their lair. Maybe someone in the other villages knows something, or perhaps even some of the humanoids who live in the jungle? This is so much more than "Look, a random pirate camp. Let's kill them and take their stuff."
There's also a tribe of rakasta, who are nomadic cat people who ride on sabretooth tigers. There's only 19 of them in the camp that's described in a fixed location, but there's a 3% chance of encountering hunters as wandering monsters in the main jungles and they would have a camp of 3 to 30 people somewhere nearby.
Another group of people who live in the jungles are the phanatons, who are small fyling raccoon-monkey people who have their homes high up in the trees. There is a 5% chance of encountering a group of 4 to 16 phanatons in the jungles and the village marked on the map seems to be one expample of these.
Lizardmen are also encountered with a 5% chance and also have one lair in a fixed location. The 14 lizardmen of this lair have some kind of war with the nearby neanderthals.
Neanderthals have a 6% chance of being encountered, and like the other humanoids, have one fixed camp of 18 people on the map.
And finally there's a lair of 3 aranea, who are intelligent spiders who cast spells like 3rd level magic users. They have a 3% chance to be encountered.
There's also a 1% chance to run into centaurs.
Added together, the chance of running into any of these peoples instead of monsters is 23%, which is quite considerable. Random encounters are rolled one per day with a 50% chance for an encounter, and once per night with a 33% chance. Since a party is probably only going to make 12 miles per day, you're probably going to run into these people a lot. Only the aranea are chaotic and the neanderthals and phanatons are actually lawful. The lizardmen, rakasta, and centaurs are all neutral. So almost all of them could become allies or enemies of the party based on how the first encounter plays out. And there could be a lot of different tribes of each race on the island and they don't have to be friends with each other either.

The Island
The island has a size of roughly 200x100 miles, which is roughly the size of Ireland. It mostly consists of jungles and mountains and has a couple of monster lairs, but also a fixed locations where the players are guaranteed to find a humanoid village of each of the humanoid races. There's also a cave with 5 ogres, which don't show up on the random encounter tables at all. What are they doing on this island? Could be interesting to find out. The group of 17 troglodytes is explained to have recently arrived on the island because they think it's a pleasant place to live as lizards. Okay.
Most locations on the map are really just example monster lairs that are no different from what you'd expect from the homes of creatures you would run into as random encounters.

The Mountains
In the middle of the island is a large mountain range and in its center a large open valley. It has its own encounter table, which consists pretty much entirely of animals. And a 3% chance for earthquakes.
Here the party can discover a vein of gold which they could possibly mine for 15,000 gp. But that would take a quite a lot of time and work. But it's an option. And could be expanded on by the GM by letting the party search for more veins in the area and possibly attempt to set up a permanent mining opperation. Which then could lead to all kinds of adventures as they have to try to keep it running in such a hostile environment and getting the gold to ships on the coast. There is also a small forest inhabited by treants who go to considerable lengths to keep their existance hidden while protecting their forest.
The major discovery is a volcano in the middle of the valley and inside it is a 5 mile wide crater dominated by a large lake. On the shore of the lake is the village Mantru. The village is inhabited by 50 humans who are lead by two old men. A 4th level fighter and a 6th level cleric. The chief is only an interpreter for the stone idol that is regarded as the true leader of the tribe. The two men are friendly (being Lawful characters) but are both in no shape to go on adventures and into battle. Which is why they need the help of the party. A group of tribespeople has split off and turned into headhunters and cannibals who make their camp in the ruins on the island in the middle of the lake. When the player arrive they are welcome and invited to stay and a feast will be held to greet them. After a while, the two leaders will ask them to go to the island and destroy the evil humans, as the people of their own tribe are forbidden by religious customs from setting foot on the island. As outsiders, that doesn't apply to the party.

The City
The island and the ruins are only shown as a single small dungeon. At 4 pages, it is still a quarter of the whole island description. It's not a particularly exciting dungeon either. But in ancient times, the island and the city on it where the capital of the kingdom of the kopru, a race of intelligent aquatic monsters. They probably would go along well with illithids or aboleths. (Or wouldn't because they would try to destroy each other to gain control of the region.) As shown here, there are only two kopru left and there is no direct mention of a connection between them and the cannibals.

Overall, there is not a lot of content here. But it's still wonderful and often considered among the best modules for good reason. This is neither an "adventure" as we understand it now, nor even a "dungeon" as they were published for AD&D. The term that would be most applicable would probably be "campaign setting", though an extremely lightweight one.
What it really is is a "tool". It's an example of how you can begin creating a sandbox setting by creating both a landscape and a a cultural environment. And it does it so well that you're very likely to not just want to make something like this, but to actually build your setting on this exact foundation. There is not a lot of culture for the humans and almost none for the rakasta, phanatons, lizardmen, neanderthals, and aranea, and the pirates, kopru, and cannibals are also pretty much blanks. I would even argue that you can't play The Isle of Dread out of the box. If you do, all you have is random encounters with dinosaurs and humanoids and a pretty boring dungeon.
But to start building a setting, it's really great. You got five humanoid races inhabiting the islands and three groups of villains. And a very interesting selection of wildlife. I think one of the greatest strength is that it is actually quite limit in what you can find there. There are no orcs and goblins or native settlements of dwarves, elves, or halflings. No mention of rust monsters, owlbears, or displacer beasts. There are also no cities and no castles, and unless the party brings them with them from the mainland, no plate armor, halberds, or crossbows. It's a great example of what you can do with the tools presented in the rulebooks by selecting only those options that work for the theme of the setting. I also like how the choices that have been made attempt to create a setting that tries to appear like a real world. People use the term Gygaxian Naturalism to describe how Gygax often tried to come up with explanations how the many strange creatures in his dungeons would live together in such confined spaces. But this goes much beyond that. This is not what happens when a bunch of monsters are let out of their cages and allowed to roam around for a few years. This is an attempt to create a world that could have evolved naturally, which I really like. And which is a bit odd, considering that the Known World ended up as one of the weirdest D&D setting this side of Planescape and Spelljammer.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Would you consider putting a table of contents in the first page? Even if just to list what you've covered lately? The massive walls of text are a bit daunting, but I'm interested if you've done The Lost City yet, as I'm updating it to a more modern version, and I'm interested to see another's take on the module.

[Yora]

No, I only did Moldvay Basic and Cook Expert. This Isle of Dread post was kind of an appendix to the Expert Set since it came bundled as a single package and directly elaborates on the Expert wilderness rules.

I had been thinking about expandix the Lost City myself but havn't done anything in that regard yet. If you would make a thread about it, I would certainly give it some input.

[Khedrac]

The Isle of DreadI have the BECMI version of the module, which has an orange cover while the original B/X version has a blue cover. But to my knowledge the content is pretty much identical except for the art.

There are two main differences, but I may have missed some since I haven't looked at either in years:

1. One of the set encounters in the Blue (cover (old) version is with some Sea Dragons. These monsters did not make it into the newer Expert set (they are in the first Creature Catalog) so they have been replaced in the orange cover (newer) version.

2. In the ruins on the hill there is a map and a room description change. it probably doesn't matter but I think it's worth spoilering:

Spoiler

Show

In the original version there is a large relief of a head on the wall - about 20 feet tall. The open mouth is actually the entrance to a passage leading into the complex. Above the passage is another room with the eyes forming windows into the outer room.
On the map the passage appears to dead-end at the wall of the room above it so there's a little picture showing how it looks so that one can see where the passage goes.

In the newer version they shrunk the head so that the passage runs under it - it's now only about 10 feet high and 10 feet off the ground.
The illustration of how it then connects has been removed (because the head has shrunk).

So what? Well my DM at school (so he was 16 or 17 and quite bright - last seen going to to university) missed the room description (probably because we were coming up the passage and assumed it dead-ended in a wall... The picture made that room junction so much easier to understand and they removed it.

[Lord Torath]

I must say, this is one of my favorite modules. I have both the blue and orange versions. The new version also replaces a shark encounter with crocodiles. To my knowledge, most crocodiles are fresh-water critters, so it seems unlikely that they'd be in the bay just off Tanaroa. The sharks in the central city dungeon have also been replaced with giant crabs. I suspect sharks are another monster that didn't make it into the new version of the Expert rules.

The reefs near Area 3 have a gap in them in the original, but in the newer version, the gap is closed.

There's a pair of gnolls under the aranea lair, so I added a tribe of gnolls in competition with the Rakasta. Where the Rakasta ride Sabre-Toothed tigerscats, I gave the gnolls hyenadons to ride.

And the Zombie Master Revolt was a fun hook to expand.

[Yora]

Well, the accepted common term for the largest species of crocodiles is "Saltwater crocodile". It's native to pretty much all of Southeast Asia and nearby coastal regions. Some have even been seen in Fiji and Japan, which means they must have crossed huge distances of open ocean. They are completely appropriate for the setting. I believe sharks have been moved to Companion in BECMI for some reason, but that shoulldn't have stopped them from just reprinting the stats in the module.

The adventure hooks are all good. But instead of chosing one, I would drop all of them on the players pretty much at once. That should get you a very nice sandbox kickstarted. The Lost City and Dwellers of the Forgotten City (which is also by Cook) are similar in that they are really much more for idea mining and a starting point for building a sandbox than something that looks fun to play out of the box.

[Lord Torath]

Well, the accepted common term for the largest species of crocodiles is "Saltwater crocodile". It's native to pretty much all of Southeast Asia and nearby coastal regions. Some have even been seen in Fiji and Japan, which means they must have crossed huge distances of open ocean.

Huh. Learn something new every day. Thanks, Yora!

I've also got plans of having a Lycanthrope Uprising the next time the PCs return to Tanaroa. They befriended a trio of Were-Tigresses earlier, and it might be interesting to have them show up.

In the Lost City, I've got the Kopru just starting to rise back up (after charming a curious young red dragon and recruiting some Salamanders).

[Grac]

[Edit] Since you read Basic, maybe do a lets read of B2 :D [/edit]

About the strength of magic users: http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com.au/...gic-users.html

I think this entry is good on the subject of MUs, and as a DM I demand players roll for their first level spell (read magic is free, because it's necessary for scrolls, and is great for identifying magic items). This has very rarely made MUs useless.

This doesn't mean players are satisfied with their daily burst of awesome. For that, I like the random tables for subclasses over at Dyson's: https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/...random-tables/

But by the book, MUs are still great :D

[Telok]

I remember learning to play with Basic abd B2. I still write campaigns that way. Make an area or region, populate it with interesting people and masses of plot hooks, run the npcs like real people, then at the players loose with the scent of treasure to lure them on. Then you get people playing who learned on video games or one of the recent editions. Quest giver, shop, beat the monsters with your face until one side runs out of hit points, rinse and repeat.

In 3rd the complexity and prep time are hideous but you have real options both as dm and as a player. In 4e so many options went away that we found ourselves playing a combat board game with brief lulls of freeform rp between combats. 5th feels like a wierd ad&d/4e hybrid with a menu of options and everyone but the fighter is a magic user. I do enjoy the old way where blind aggression and all magic all the time aren't the default. I like to just do or try things without having to worry about if the character has a high stat and is trained in a skill because that's the only way to succeed. Buy finding people to play with who aren't crippled by the assumption that they can only do what's on their character sheet is a rarity.

[runeghost]

Telok notes one of the reasons I still love B/X D&D: low complexity and low prep time. A full monster stats block is like two lines. As someone who doesn't have nearly as much time as I once did, that's invaluable. Also, by not giving the players an endless series of flavor or optimization choices the way 3.x does, it speeds things up on that end. The best way to "maximize" B/X is by roleplaying well, and that really appeals to me.

[old school man]

Wow!

Well done Yora.




John

[CE DM]

Moldvay/Cook Basic was my first D&D game book. I'll go through your comments in full soon.

[SmokestackJones]

Hi Yora,

Good article. I've always enjoyed B/X along with Mentzer, 1E and 2E.

About combat rolls. I agree with you when you say:

There is no excuse. Don't use it! Ever!

That's why THAC0 was invented.

It's almost like you hate descending AC....Oh, wait, you mentioned 3E...nevermind.

-SJ
Lover of THAC0, Host of the THAC0's Hammer podcast (see where I'm going with this?) :D