Re: OSRIC 3.0 announced

On Tue, 21 May 2024 06:26:35 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 5/17/2024 1:37 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 16 May 2024 09:11:07 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:
 
By the time the BECMI system was fully developed, it was almost as
complex as its AD&D counterpart.
 
What set Basic apart wasn't so much its rules system, but how it
introduced the game system to you bit by bit. The Moldavay - and
especially the Mentzer books - were just better written tomes. Had
they done the AD&D rules, I think TSR could have skipped the entire
AD&D/Basic division.

>
True, Mentzer was amazing for the intro in the basic set.  Also while
somewhat of a pain once you were familiar that they were broken up into
levels and introduced new mechanics in higher level books helped a lot.
At least the last one also had the Rules Cyclopedia eventually that put
all the rules in one book.

Although at a cost to readability and its learning curve.

Don't get me wrong; I loved the "Rules Cyclopedia", but that's because
- by the time it came out - I was well familiar with the BECMI system
and having all the rules (and much of the setting) all in one handy,
convenient tome was incredibly useful. No more rooting through
multiple box-sets looking for a specific spell or monster!

But the individual books - especially, as you noted, the BASIC and
EXPERT systems - were designed to kickstart new players into the game.
Everything -from the writing to the pacing to the fact that the books
themselves were three-ring hole-punched- made it seem like the game
was meant to be taken up piece by piece.

Compare this too AD&D, where three huge, hardback tomes were dumped on
you all at once... Gygax's game was intimidating in comparison.

BECMI really started getting weird at higher levels, though. The
Immortal rules were completely unsatisfying, and even Master felt odd.
Our group rarely played BECMI, but when we did we very rarely played
anything that required more than the Expert set (past level 14). D&D
(of any variety) starts to lose its focus once players levels reach
two digits...