Very much enjoyed the personal approach here! Looking forward to hearing how it's going now. And good to have you back to the hobby! Been at it myself more or less since the late 80's. More or less active as the years went by. It's been quite the ride but I'm also back to old school D&D as well as other games. It's a pretty cool time in the hobby now.
BECMI in middle school is also when I started, money was always tight so my collection got built up bit by bit bouncing between buying "Basic" D&D and Advanced D&D and my 1E AD&D game was heavily mixed with the stuff from my 5 BECMI sets. When 2E AD&D came out my game was a mix of BECMI/1E/2E until the 2E splat books started coming out and I leaned more into using the 2E material instead of homebrew mixing from the older editions, but I still used a lot of the BECMI/1E books to solidify my 2E game. I liked that BECMI, 1E, and 2E were so compatible with each other that you could essentially triple your selection of monsters to throw against the party, triple the selection of adventure modules, and have enough inspiration from BECMI Mystara, 1E Oriental Adventures/Greyhawk/Dragonlance, and 2E Dark Sun/Al-Qadim/Ravenloft/Spelljammer settings to create your own D&D world with almost a plug-and-play aspect able to use anything from those 3 versions of D&D with just a bit of tweaking. That compatibility gave a lot more return on investment for the money spent on three different editions of D&D.
@@RichardtheDungeonCrawler Mechanically the games are nearly identical and 2E AD&D was pretty much like 1E AD&D but much more refined in both organization and presentation in comparison. The various classes of 1E were streamlined into four groups: Warrior (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin), Wizard (Mage, Specialist Wizard), Priest (Cleric, Druid), and Rogue (Thief, Bard) and some 1E classes (like Barbarian, Assassin, and Acrobat) were converted into "kits" for one or more of the 9 main classes. Proficiencies were organized into 5 groups, one for each class group (to reflect the particular strengths and focuses of those class groups) and a "General" group that all classes have access to. One of the best changes was the Thieves Skills, they are still the same mechanically, but instead of a fixed table you had a pool of discretionary points at each level that could be assigned to Thieves Skills individually. Two human 1E thieves with the same stats would be no different in regards to Thieves Skills if they're the same level. In 2E AD&D a pair of human thieves with the same stats and at the same level can be very different in regards to Thieves Skills. One could be more assassin-like putting points into Move Silently and Hide in Shadows, while the other can be real good with his hands able to Pick Locks and Disarm Traps, but neither of them could Pickpocket a purse if were lying on the ground because they put no point into that skill. You can drop a BECMI or 1E monster into a 2E encounter with little to no tweaking. Converting a BECMI character can be done easily enough, but converting a 1E character into a 2E character could take some considerable modifications, especially for 1E Acrobats, Assassins, Barbarians, Bards, Cavaliers, Monk, or the Oriental Adventure classes (Samurai, Ninja, Wu-Jen, Sukenja, etc.). Spells could get tricky to adapt bringing them from BECMI or 1E into 2E, but weren't that much different to employ. Cantrips presented in 1E Unearthed Arcana (requiring a separate additional spellbook and limiting casting to 4 cantrips per 1st-level spell slot used to memorize them) were replaced by the 1st-level Cantrip spell that allowed unlimited effects for the duration of the spell, but it was rather vague and overly general in it's description. I just combined the two versions and made all the 1E cantrips from Unearthed Arcana as the list of effects the Cantrip spell in 2E can create.
Yesterday (sun 12 nov) we finshed a short BECMI campaign in Greyhawk. Orlane, valley of the mage & the Pharoah trilogy (sea of dust). The system works anywhere you want to play it. These were all highschool kids who only played 5e before. Once they got used toit, they all preferring BECMI over 5e.
nice video, it was cool to hear your history with the game. the audio mixing was a little off in this video, though, and it's hard to hear what you're saying sometimes.
Very much enjoyed the personal approach here! Looking forward to hearing how it's going now. And good to have you back to the hobby! Been at it myself more or less since the late 80's. More or less active as the years went by. It's been quite the ride but I'm also back to old school D&D as well as other games. It's a pretty cool time in the hobby now.
Welcome back!
BECMI in middle school is also when I started, money was always tight so my collection got built up bit by bit bouncing between buying "Basic" D&D and Advanced D&D and my 1E AD&D game was heavily mixed with the stuff from my 5 BECMI sets. When 2E AD&D came out my game was a mix of BECMI/1E/2E until the 2E splat books started coming out and I leaned more into using the 2E material instead of homebrew mixing from the older editions, but I still used a lot of the BECMI/1E books to solidify my 2E game. I liked that BECMI, 1E, and 2E were so compatible with each other that you could essentially triple your selection of monsters to throw against the party, triple the selection of adventure modules, and have enough inspiration from BECMI Mystara, 1E Oriental Adventures/Greyhawk/Dragonlance, and 2E Dark Sun/Al-Qadim/Ravenloft/Spelljammer settings to create your own D&D world with almost a plug-and-play aspect able to use anything from those 3 versions of D&D with just a bit of tweaking. That compatibility gave a lot more return on investment for the money spent on three different editions of D&D.
I have never got into 2E. How compatible is it with 1E?
@@RichardtheDungeonCrawler Mechanically the games are nearly identical and 2E AD&D was pretty much like 1E AD&D but much more refined in both organization and presentation in comparison.
The various classes of 1E were streamlined into four groups: Warrior (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin), Wizard (Mage, Specialist Wizard), Priest (Cleric, Druid), and Rogue (Thief, Bard) and some 1E classes (like Barbarian, Assassin, and Acrobat) were converted into "kits" for one or more of the 9 main classes. Proficiencies were organized into 5 groups, one for each class group (to reflect the particular strengths and focuses of those class groups) and a "General" group that all classes have access to.
One of the best changes was the Thieves Skills, they are still the same mechanically, but instead of a fixed table you had a pool of discretionary points at each level that could be assigned to Thieves Skills individually. Two human 1E thieves with the same stats would be no different in regards to Thieves Skills if they're the same level. In 2E AD&D a pair of human thieves with the same stats and at the same level can be very different in regards to Thieves Skills. One could be more assassin-like putting points into Move Silently and Hide in Shadows, while the other can be real good with his hands able to Pick Locks and Disarm Traps, but neither of them could Pickpocket a purse if were lying on the ground because they put no point into that skill.
You can drop a BECMI or 1E monster into a 2E encounter with little to no tweaking. Converting a BECMI character can be done easily enough, but converting a 1E character into a 2E character could take some considerable modifications, especially for 1E Acrobats, Assassins, Barbarians, Bards, Cavaliers, Monk, or the Oriental Adventure classes (Samurai, Ninja, Wu-Jen, Sukenja, etc.).
Spells could get tricky to adapt bringing them from BECMI or 1E into 2E, but weren't that much different to employ. Cantrips presented in 1E Unearthed Arcana (requiring a separate additional spellbook and limiting casting to 4 cantrips per 1st-level spell slot used to memorize them) were replaced by the 1st-level Cantrip spell that allowed unlimited effects for the duration of the spell, but it was rather vague and overly general in it's description. I just combined the two versions and made all the 1E cantrips from Unearthed Arcana as the list of effects the Cantrip spell in 2E can create.
Yesterday (sun 12 nov) we finshed a short BECMI campaign in Greyhawk.
Orlane, valley of the mage & the Pharoah trilogy (sea of dust).
The system works anywhere you want to play it.
These were all highschool kids who only played 5e before.
Once they got used toit, they all preferring BECMI over 5e.
Great job! Are you going to continue to campaign in Greyhawk?
nice video, it was cool to hear your history with the game. the audio mixing was a little off in this video, though, and it's hard to hear what you're saying sometimes.
Got it. Thanks so much for your feedback. I'll work on the sound mix.
This is exactly what I'm looking for..fresh start to getting started with D&D. What are your thoughts on 3D printing characters and monsters?