Retro RPG review 10: Part 1 - Basic D&D

Comments · 213

• IN

  @IndyMotoRider · 9 years ago

  As a kid who had Basic, Expert, Companion, Master and Immortal sets this video brought back very fond memories. I was in fourth or fifth grade and though only had a couple friends to DM once in a blue moon, I'd spend hours crafting dungeons on graph paper and filling them with monsters and traps.  Sometimes I hear a song from the 80's and nostalgia washes over me...sitting on my top bunk, head buried in these books, dreaming of another world, one vastly better than the one I was living in.  Thanks for this video.

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• CA

  @CainLatrani · 10 years ago

  I remember that red box set. My step mother got it, hoping it would be a thing she could do with my brother and me, but couldn&apos;t figure it out and gave it to me. I was about ten at the time, and just fell in love with it. I managed to get the next two sets before my mother caught wind that it might be devil worship and wouldn&apos;t let me play it anymore. She did let me keep them, though, but them up on the highest shelf in my closet. It wouldn&apos;t be until high school I&apos;d get to start playing AD&amp;D, but that was at a religious boarding school, so we were pretty limited on what we could have in terms of rule books. My friends and I began developing our own systems, based on the D&amp;D and AD&amp;D rules we had access to to fill the void, since nobody ever looked in our notebooks to see what we were writing, just assuming it was homework.<br><br>A friend of mine developed a really awesome game based on feudal Japan that these days makes me think of Inuyasha. That was back in the late 80&apos;s. I worked out a sci fi game that used fantasy races in place of aliens.<br><br>After high school, White Wolf was all the rage, and I played a lot of Vampire and Werewolf. I got back into D&amp;D when 3rd Edition came out, and my girlfriend and I lost a lot of weekends with out friends doing that for a lot of years.<br><br>It&apos;s funny how a game can come to be such a big part of your life. D&amp;D inspired me to become a writer, and I now have my own fantasy novel published. Can&apos;t image what my life would be like without having been handed that red box over 30 years ago now.

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• LI

  @Liofa73 · 6 years ago

  I loved the artwork on the 1983, Red, Blue, Black and Gold D&amp;D manuals.

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• JD

  @JdrD30 · 12 years ago

  Basic... that&apos;s where my heart is!

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• DA

  @DaVeO52 · 7 years ago

  I cut my RPG teeth on these original sets. Eventually we switched to AD&amp;D because that is what everyone else was playing, but I tell &apos;ya, my most fond memories were those adventures in Mystara. Especially after I obtained a slew of those Gazetteers and the Hollow World campaign set.

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• KR

  @kristypolymath1359 · 6 years ago

  I remember my cousin and I staying up for TWO DAYS (at his house) trying to make our very own Monster Manual. &nbsp;He was doing all the drawing, and I was making up the attributes of the monsters. &nbsp;Nothing ever came of that, and I believe it may have been the end of our D&amp;D playing days, but it is a fond memory. &nbsp;I believe that was in 1985 or 1986, I was a teenager.

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• WO

  @Wolfogre · 7 years ago

  My oldest sister introduced me to the Red Box set and I remain ever so grateful to her for that to this very day.

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• AN

  @andy10121984 · 5 years ago

  I started in 3.5 and incorporated a lot of d20 books into my homebrew campaign. Pathfinder rules is now the foundation of my world but find older books have no end to ideas and inspiration. I really like your series&apos;.

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• KA

  @kazebaret · 6 years ago

  When you showed the Basic, Expert, Companion, and Master sets (I actually bought the last one very late because it was translated in Italian many years after the Companion set), I&apos;ve been overwhelmed by a tangle of emotions and nostalgia... I remember that, when a friend of mine went to London on holidays, I obliged him to buy the Master box and, when he brought it back, a friend of mine and I started to translate it every day after we finished our homework... Thank you very much for this video!

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• IA

  @IamE0N · 10 years ago

  What seems weird to me in retrospect is that in the 80s I really played D&amp;D and AD&amp;D as if they were a single game. &nbsp;Somehow it made sense to me.

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• NO

  @NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself · 8 years ago

  Isle of Dread was my first module. I ended up only using bits and pieces of it in my own created campaign world, but it and others from that era really inspired me to make creative encounters. <br><br>AD&amp;D 2e and Forgotten Realms is where it really took off though.

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• XA

  @xaer0knight · 11 years ago

  great retrospective... Glad someone does a great history lesson on it. I&apos;ve been playing AD&amp;D 2nd since 1994 and played AD&amp;D 1st since 1999... the more and more I&apos;ve played, I enjoy the simple games like Swords and Wizardy (just adding in the Cyclopedia Rules)

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