1983 & Beyond: Defending Basic Dungeons & Dragons

This excellent article at Grognardia convinced me to finally get round to writing brief defence of, what to me is, the original Dungeons and Dragons.

 

The 1983 set's focus on self-teaching and simple language probably made sense from a marketing standpoint. Given how well the set supposedly sold, I can't really fault TSR for going in this direction. At the same time, though, there was clearly a shift happening, away from adults and teenagers as the target audience and away from initiation as the means of entering the hobby. Likewise, the adoption of a unified esthetic (all Elmore and Easley artwork) that, while attractive, seemed to narrow rather than broaden the scope of the game. In short, the 1983 Basic Set marked a definite change from what had gone before. (James Maliszewski)

 

I briefly discussed my initiation in D&D here. In short as a person in my very early teens I got the red box Basic Dungeons & Dragons after reading an advert at the back of Proteus magazine. Fighting Fantasy for me was my gateway drug to nerd heaven.

 

[caption id="attachment_544" align="aligncenter" width="439" caption="D&D Basic Set (Source The Acaeum http://www.acaeum.com/)"][/caption]

Return to RPGs VI: Everything Retro Is New Again

I have had a bit of a splurge on some retro clone games recently. Yes I have spent actual money on PDFs that I can legally download for free.  The first one I got was Dark Dungeons, mainly as it was a restatement of the all in one rules for a basic version of the worlds greatest fantasy roleplaying game :) Then I got the Basic Fantasy RPG by way of comparison, also I had some good money off codes for Lulu :)

I will discuss these together.

The Gizmondo As A Modern Handheld Console

Right then a slightly bigger write up of the Gizmondo scene as it is today. After a thorough few days of investigation.

Firstly these things still seem to be fairly easy to buy from both Amazon and eBay. Funnily enough Amazon does seem to be slightly cheaper. I got mine for about forty quid as I was aware that at least there used to be a homebrew scene once people learned how to run unsigned code.