Back in the 1980’s, when I was the kid hanging out around my mate’s house and roleplaying, we used to play Dungeons & Dragons.
My edition was the 1983 Red Box but my buddy owned the 1981 B/X edition. At the time, we had no idea that they weren’t just different printings of the same game. I don’t think we ever really analysed the books enough to notice the differences.
My enduring memory of playing Dungeons & Dragons was that it was a lot of fun… right up until we got the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rule books, after which, the game became more complicated. It wasn’t long before we graduated to Rolemaster and other complex systems.
This afternoon, on a whim, I took my copies of B/X Dungeons & Dragons to the school club. We created some characters and started an adventure. In fact, I ran the same dungeon I wrote about playing solo at the weekend. In a one and a half-hour session, with two players and me as Referee, we not only created the characters but also ran through four combat scenes, some searching and exploration, and a lot of fun moments. In short, the game was easy to play and very much faster than I realised it might be.
These are a handy resource to have at the table!
I am left with the sense that maybe one of the reasons that Dungeons & Dragons (B/X and BECMI) was a lot of fun when I was a teenager was because it is very easy to play and consequently very fast. You can get a lot done in a session. That feels good and leads to good times. As Referee, it’s a low cognitive load: easy to remember stats, easy to resolve situations, loose enough to encourage rulings on the fly. That feels good.
While it’s cool to have a lot of tactical detail in the combat scenes, those details tend to slow play. Certainly that can be entertaining and I’ve had many years of good times with detailed tactical combats. And yet… tonight’s play was high-paced and entertaining in spite of some very simple game rules. This is making me wonder whether I might have more fun if I run my adventures using these older game rules.
I’m not making any quick decisions but I am minded to consider that my recent Games-mastering burnout had a lot to do with having a high-cognitive load each session. Adding to that a heavy dose of prep between games meant that it became a chore rather than a joy to run games.
Would using the older, lighter systems of B/X help make my gaming more manageable? I don’t know… but I am going to give it some consideration.
Game on!
BECMI was my own introduction to the game. I found that once you started adding in the different rules and systems from the Companion and Master sets (especially things like weapon mastery) that it was a more robust game than AD&D was. We tried AD&D but decided to stick with “regular” D&D. Until 2e came out anyway.
Definitely. Give it a chance. There are so many resources out there to support old school play now that populating a sandbox can be a breeze.
I enjoyed this post. I went from games like 3.5 D&D and Rolemaster in the last decade & a half to choosing to use OD&D & B/X D&D based clones recently as I like the openness and quickness that comes from them; plus the shear hackability of these rules.