What Is The Vibe Of Your Edition, Pt 1

Something I've been thinking about for a while is how each edition seems to have a specific feel and default setting which sets it apart from other editions. Getting back into AD&D and revisiting the old books have really driven this home for me. It got me thinking so I looked back at the core books and flagship products of the different editions to see how the feel changed over the years.

My interaction with D&D has only been for about half of its history so 1st Edition AD&D and BECMI D&D are familiar to me through historical study like any other history. I don't know what it was like to see the Beatles for the first time just as I don't know what it was like to play D&D straight out of the Holmes set in '77. This lack of first hand familiarity made me think way too long on how to write a post about this than it probably should have. I considered starting with my beloved 2nd Edition but ultimately settled on chronological order. After all I can still say what I think of the Beatles when I hear A Hard Days Night.

Whatever you call it (BECMI, Basic, B/X, OD&D, Holmes, Mentzer, etc) BECMI D&D had a longer lifespan than any edition. Depending on how you count it it started either '74 or '77 and went all the way to the Rules Cyclopedia in '91 with a few last gasps in the Thunder Rift line and some boxed "learn to play" style games that you could find in toy stores that were marketed as gateway products into AD&D. I don't want to recount the long history of the BECMI D&D product line but the short version is that TSR seemed to simultaneously look at it as an introductory product and a parallel game that shared the same DNA as their flagship system

I characterize BECMI's vibe as across between the 70s Hobbit movie and other Saturday morning cartoons of the 70s and 80s. BECMI had a distinctive lighter tone than AD&D which is probably attributed to its original intent as an introductory product aimed at younger players. Strangely enough it was also more in line with the classic fantasy tropes that we know now. When the Mentzer boxes (Red, Blue, Teal, Black, and Gold) established The Known World as the de facto campaign setting they doubled down on this. The Known World was divided up into kingdoms based on either fantasy races or obvious stereotypes from real world history. It's assumed that you'd start in Medieval Europe kingdom which borders Roman Empire Kingdom, Halfling Kingdom, and Elf Kingdom. Not too distant for mid level characters is Dwarf Kingdom, Renaissance Italy Kingdom, Wizard Kingdom, and Arabian Kingdom. Yes I know none of these names are the actual names but I use them to make the point that BECMI D&D stuck to simple, easy to digest tropes for people that didn't want to fret about or wouldn't understand a complex game world. Later product lines that expanded on the Known World or the Thunder Rift line continued to be pretty straight forward but were a lot less on the nose stereotypes. 

So what is the "vibe" I get from BECMI D&D? In all I'd use the old expression "good clean fun". In their original form I'd say the majority of BECMI D&D products presents material that falls somewhere between 80s fantasy movies like Princess Bride and Saturday morning cartoons like Thundarr The Barbarian. Sure you kill monsters, take treasure, and rescue various damsels in distress but none of it would really qualify as dark and gritty. The product visuals are often excellent, but are always standard fantasy guys in armor fighting dragons and orcs and what have you in front of wizard towers or out in the wilderness. The official setting of BECMI, The Known World, is generic in the extreme so that it would be easy for young players to digest and could be described in short "read aloud text boxes". The endurance in popularity of BECMI is rooted in this genericness (generity? generitude?), its like wrapping yourself up in a fleece blanket and eating chicken nuggets and Cambell's soup, nothing mind blowing but it reminds you of better and simpler times. On top of that a good DM can make this system sing since it has such loose tolerances it really hands itself to hexploration and improvised play. 

I can't suggest BECMI enough despite never really having played it. Grab yourself one of the many excellent retro clones out there and have some good, clean fun!

-JDB

Hanson's Kraal

Hanson’s Kraal stands in a relatively level stretch of country near the main tradeway. At a distance it appears to be a large, prosperous town surrounded by a formidable wooden palisade. Upon entering the Kraal it becomes apparent that the settlement’s best days are behind it, if they even happened in the first place. Hanson’s Kraal looks like it could comfortably house several thousand people but the current permanent population is barely more than 200. The town is full of empty and half complete longhouses and vacant sheep corrals. The founder of the settlement, Hanson Windrunner, was given leave by Baron Helmaur himself to build this trading post. Hanson had bigger plans however and envisioned founding a city that could be a base from which settlers could tame the highlands while acting as a trading hub. The reality crushed Hanson’s dreams when the land proved too dangerous for settlers to maintain herds and farmsteads needed to fuel the town’s growth. 

Hanson refused to acknowledge the facts and kept spending his fortune earned in the southern wars to expand the town and its defenses. Ultimately Hanson died a shell of himself alone in his hall, having sent his family away after years of failure. The town remains a valuable stop along the trade way though it could suffice as a fortified camp a tenth of its size. Recently Hanson’s young daughter has returned to the Kraal, not in an attempt to build it into her father’s dream but simply to use it as a base of operations for her own expeditions into the wilderness. Alisa Windrunner was the first of her family born in the Craglands and unlike her mother and sisters she was hardened by this land, adopting the life of a ranger rather than southern gentry. She technically has a claim to govern the Kraal but has shown so far nothing but apathy for leadership and town living.

Is AD&D hard?

I'm starting up my AD&D 2nd edition Craglands campaign this month and have been working to prepare the players for both a play style and rule set that is foreign to them. Several of them have been dragging their feet on character creation and I had assumed this was just a mix of adulthood getting in the way of gaming and good old fashioned procrastination. But as I talked to some of them I learned that there was legitimate difficulty understanding the process. This led me to asking myself if AD&D Second Edition (henceforth I'll just say AD&D) was harder than I remembered.

I started playing AD&D way back in 1995, about half way through its lifespan. I was in middle school at the time although for years I had been attracted to that back corner of Walden Books that had row upon row of D&D books. Even at a very young age I was super engaged in the thoughts of wizards and warriors having epic showdowns with monsters and I could tell that somehow these books were the way to get there. 1995 was the year that the Introduction to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons boxed set was released and I was THE target audience. It was at the top of my Christmas list that year and once I unwrapped it I began studying the contents of the box in great detail over and over again. The story of my initial steps into TTRPGs is a story for another day but suffice to say that at the age of 12 I was all in on AD&D.

Are the rules for AD&D internally consistent? Absolutely not. Since I entered the hobby well after the switch from first to second edition, and with a significant amount of time before the days of d20 it was pretty much all I knew so I just accepted that the rules worked the way they did and didn't question it. Lower AC is better? Sure ok. Roll initiative on a d10? Why not? Exceptional strength? You bet I want my fighter to be exceptional. Doing some pre-algebra with THAC0 every time I roll to hit? That's just how its done.

In my early teens I spent countless hours pouring over the books and reading them again and again so that I could spend pretty much every weekend with my friends rolling dice until the wee hours of the morning in goofy adventures that were a mix of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Conan, and whatever anime one of us was able to pick up at Suncoast Video. My point being that the rules to AD&D can't be that hard since by the age of 13 I had mastered them.

Or had I? 

30 years later as I start up a game of AD&D for a group that mostly has never played any TTRPG before the 2010s I'm starting to realize just how arcane the system can be. Partially because it's a goofy mess of artifacts from Gygax's system that was cobbled together from the wargames and crazy ideas that he and Arneson had in the 70s. These rules rarely had much internal consistency because as far as I've been able to gather a lot of it was made up on the fly during actual play. Eventually these rules took on a life of their own and combined Gygax's love of complexity with what seems to have been the opinion that the DM should have a semi-antagonistic relationship with the players. When Gygax was forced out and AD&D given a second edition it was absolutely an improvement (blasphemy to many but I'll talk more about that at length in another post) on the system but it was overburdened with sacred cows that TSR didn't want to get rid of. 

I find myself again pouring over the rulebooks although now with much less energy and free time that I did at 13 and frankly I have never mastered these rules. Not once in the 5 years of weekly AD&D play does it appear we ever did initiative right, which is interesting since there are 3 similar but distinct ways of determining it detailed in the Player's Handbook. I learned for the first time in 2025 that spell casters lost their dexterity bonus to AC while casting, and that you have to roll to hit with a touch spell against a friendly target that is engaged in combat. It seems like every page has a rule on it I missed. To be fair I'd like to think my ability to digest information is a bit better now than as a 13 year old (not sure that's true though) and I am using the superior presentation and editing of the For Gold and Glory rules as my primary point of reference. Regardless of all that AD&D is not the easy breezy system I remember.

All this to say that I'm cutting my players more slack than I initially wanted to. My gut was telling me that AD&D was an easier system to play than modern D&D, and certainly more than Pathfinder 2E. This might be true even but while the rules may not be more complex they absolutely are less intuitive.

 

Welcome to the Craglands

The Craglands are a roughly defined area on the northern marches of the Great Kingdom. Though the Great Kingdom has long claimed this vast wilderness it has never been more than if a man claimed the stars in the night sky such is its remoteness and danger. None lived in these haunted, rocky barrens other than foul orcs, wretched goblinoids of every stripe, and worse yet. These savage humanoids and monsters fought and scrabbled over these blasted wastes far removed from more fertile and welcoming lands.

All thought this would be forever more until Lord Helmaur the War Rider claimed them. Helmaur was a fell handed warrior of the Great Kingdom. Not of noble birth there are many conflicting legends of his background and pedigree. What is known is that he was a brutal and brilliant warrior both with sword and shield and when commanding men at arms. Helmaur lead lightning assaults, grinding sieges, and vicious decapitation strikes. Helmaur shattered the Golden Legion at Ekthon's Reach, razed Rivenstone Citadel to the ground, and slew Archon Idukash with his bare hands after his sword and mace both shattered during the duel. Helmaur earned many titles; War Rider, Storm Browed, and perhaps most importantly Dwarf Friend after leading his cavalry squadron on a seeming suicide charge to rescue a group of mercenary dwarven sappers that had been unable to keep up with a retreat from an overwhelming counter attack.

Due to his legendary service, or perhaps because the king feared Helmaur as a threat, the Great King offered Helmaur a barony of his choice. It was not uncommon for the constant wars with the Empire to leave lands lordless requiring their bestowing to some landless minor noble or hero. Helmaur had his choice of many rich and desirable lands throughout the kingdom. He shocked all when he chose the Craglands. Much of the king's court did not even recognize the name due to its obscurity, those that did considered the lands part of the Great Kingdom purely because it made the nation look larger on a map and that it required no defense from other states because it was essentially untamable. Helmaur was adamant however that this should be his land. Thus Helmaur became Free Baron Helmaur War Rider of the Craglands.

Soon after Helmaur set off north with his retainers, settlers desperate to escape war and serfdom and get land to call their own even if it was rocky, unforgiving, treacherous land. Also setting off with him was a large band of Blackstone dwarves lead by the captain of the sappers he had saved years before, Ukhan Blackstone. Helmaur and Ukhan had a plan long in the making. Ukhan had told Helmaur of his clan's lost mines deep in the mountains, mines that contained untold wealth. Helmaur was uniquely positioned now to control the only trade roads that could lead south across the steppes between the Craglands and the Great Kingdom. 

Quickly, though not easily, Ukhan and Helmaur carved a path through the monsters and marauders of the north. They tamed the Longshadow Lowlands and built a fortress from which to launch their campaigns. The pair lead their forces to cut a swath through the Red Hills and Tamaka Highlands, creating fortified supply posts in a chain to the hidden pass of Ukhan's ancestors. Finally in an eight day bloody battle they shattered the orc horde that blocked the ancient entrance into the secret dwarven delve. On that Day Helmaur and Ukhan made a pact. Forever until the mountains turned to dust and ash Ukhan's clan alone would have rights to the wealth of the mountains while Helmaur and his heirs would be their sole trading partner, having a monopoly on the mineral wealth and fine dwarven craft flowing to the rich southlands.

Now 50 years have passed and the Craglands are both a changed land and as they have always been. What were once forts and defenses have become towns and trading posts. Helmaur's fortress has become a thriving city protected by the mightiest defenses outside of the southern heartlands. Settlers continue to flow north to escape the brutal oppression of the Empire and hopeless serfdom of the Great Kingdom. Helmaur is now ancient by human standards, his body crooked and withered though his mind and eyes are still cold and sharp. The time is now for the brave and foolhardy to tame this wilderness and build a free land where a strong arm and strong heart can become rich beyond wildest imaginings.