To the best of my knowledge, The white box is the first version of D&D but isn’t really the same game as what was published as AD&D. It has no number, but I suppose it could be called D&D .5 since it was really kind of a beta version of the game.
The Expert Set was likewise not the same thing as AD&D and was called D&D. It was an expansion for the Basic D&D game, also known as the Red Box. It doesn’t have a number that fits in, because it’s an expansion, not a new addition. According to a D&D Guide source When WotC bought TSR, they renamed the game to simply D&D because they had no intention of having both an Advanced and Basic version of the game. So to make the brand cleaner they dropped the Advanced part and just called it D&D.
I rarely put monsters in my dungeons for other folks to use. So they are rather generic. I have the beige booklets, and the 1e hard covers. I don't have the boxed versions.
As someone who started out with those three beige booklets in the white box, Original D&D as I've long considered it, I have to take issue with the "beta version" view!!! When it was published, there were NO OTHER RPGs of any sort. Nobody even knew then (mid-late 1970s) what RPGs WERE! And I speak as someone who spent a lot of time explaining to others back then what I thought it meant ?
To these three were added four more supplementary RPG booklets, Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry and Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes. After these, the Basic Set was released while TSR were working on AD&D, as a sort-of stopgap, as the three main AD&D rulebooks took a couple of years to all appear (1977 to 1979 according to Wikipedia, which tallies with my recollection; the Basic Set was published in 1977 apparently - see this page).
I don't think this Basic Set was the same as the later (1981) Basic and Expert Sets, however. I don't know personally, as I went down the AD&D route, because that was closer to the version of the rules the expanded white box set + supplements provided at the time, and by the early 1980s, I was moving-off into other systems, including my own D&D variant anyway. Back in the late '70s, the idea was the Basic Set would guide beginners into AD&D; I was never sure how well that worked, as only one person I knew back then tried it, and found it a little limited.
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Thank you.
To the best of my knowledge, The white box is the first version of D&D but isn’t really the same game as what was published as AD&D. It has no number, but I suppose it could be called D&D .5 since it was really kind of a beta version of the game.
The Expert Set was likewise not the same thing as AD&D and was called D&D. It was an expansion for the Basic D&D game, also known as the Red Box. It doesn’t have a number that fits in, because it’s an expansion, not a new addition. According to a D&D Guide source When WotC bought TSR, they renamed the game to simply D&D because they had no intention of having both an Advanced and Basic version of the game. So to make the brand cleaner they dropped the Advanced part and just called it D&D.
I rarely put monsters in my dungeons for other folks to use. So they are rather generic. I have the beige booklets, and the 1e hard covers. I don't have the boxed versions.
As someone who started out with those three beige booklets in the white box, Original D&D as I've long considered it, I have to take issue with the "beta version" view!!! When it was published, there were NO OTHER RPGs of any sort. Nobody even knew then (mid-late 1970s) what RPGs WERE! And I speak as someone who spent a lot of time explaining to others back then what I thought it meant ?
To these three were added four more supplementary RPG booklets, Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry and Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes. After these, the Basic Set was released while TSR were working on AD&D, as a sort-of stopgap, as the three main AD&D rulebooks took a couple of years to all appear (1977 to 1979 according to Wikipedia, which tallies with my recollection; the Basic Set was published in 1977 apparently - see this page).
I don't think this Basic Set was the same as the later (1981) Basic and Expert Sets, however. I don't know personally, as I went down the AD&D route, because that was closer to the version of the rules the expanded white box set + supplements provided at the time, and by the early 1980s, I was moving-off into other systems, including my own D&D variant anyway. Back in the late '70s, the idea was the Basic Set would guide beginners into AD&D; I was never sure how well that worked, as only one person I knew back then tried it, and found it a little limited.
I actually started with Chainmail before the first three booklets (which weren't in a white box at the time.
Added a few trees. A broken path to the cave. And I noticed, no shadows... those are added now.