On (Re-)Discovering D&D (Where I'm Coming From, Part 1)

Yeah, that's the one.

So it's 1986 (too old for true Old School credit, I suppose) and I'm ten years old and over at a friend's house, the parents down stairs visiting, and he pulls out this red box with an amazing picture of a guy charging a great red dragon with the title Dungeons & Dragons written in elegant font across the top and asks if I'd like to learn how to play. After quickly making sure it was cool with the folks (D&D had a reputation even back then) we broke out the three thin books and set of dice he had within and began rolling up my first character, Argos the Acolyte.

I had enjoyed the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon (I don't think I even knew it was based on a game) and had just discovered J.R.R. Tolkien a few months before. (Previously, I'd been working my way through my dad's old Heinlein and Asimov novels, as well as whatever sci-fi I could find in the library.)  D&D opened up to me a whole new world of imagination.

Within the week, I'd acquired my own Mentzer Basic boxed set and within a month I'd also bought the Expert rules. I started running an after-school game with my brother and a couple of friends my mom took care of while their mother was at work. It wasn't a problem, as long as we got our homework done first. I'll freely admit that I went from player to DM way too fast and my first campaign was Monty Haulish at best. After all, it was called Dungeons & Dragons--so surely there must be a dungeon and a dragon in pretty much every adventure, right? Our first characters burned through the levels at a ridiculous pace through a world that looked like Middle Earth via Fantasia from the Neverending Story, with a bit of Greyhawk as read through Gary Gygax's first couple of novels thrown in for good measure. It was glorious, if ultimately silly and shallow, fun.

Eventually, I "graduated" to AD&D, but still often re-read my old BE(CMI) rulebooks. At some point I misplaced my Basic books (during one of my many moves as an adult), but I held onto my Expert rulebook and an old copy of Holmes' that my aunt and uncle had stashed away.

Fast forward a whole lot of years . . .

So, yeah, I've played AD&D 1st and 2nd edition, D&D 3rd Edition, and briefly played 4e. And in the process I've discovered a few things:

1. It's really hard to get other adults, or young children like my daughter, into the complexities needed for a 3rd Edition campaign.
2. I myself just don't have the time that it takes to run a 3e game anymore.
3. Nor do I have the free cash to pick up 4e, even if it's what I was looking for in a D&D ruleset (it isn't).
4. There are all of these wonderful OSR blogs, sites, and games out there to pick up.

So I spend a lot of time playing with rules-sets, design philosophy, and even making a couple of abortive blogs. But nothing really seems to be coming together.

And then WotC (or Hasbro, I guess) finally does something I've been wanting without knowing how much I wanted it: They re-released the Marsh/Cook Basic/Expert D&D rules.

Despite the aesthetic differences, this is the exact rules set that I started with 27 years ago. And they're back in a perfectly legal form that my players can buy for themselves (those who want to have their own copies).

You know, I think I'm going to play some honest-to-goodness D&D.