Black Box Basic Set

I have been playing a lot of old school roleplaying games in recent years, both original TSR versions of D&D, and a number of retroclones/modern OSR games. The version of D&D which introduced me to the hobby was the 1991 “black box” basic D&D set. Despite selling half a million copies in the early 90s, this version of the game seems almost forgotten by the OSR community today. Probably OSR gamers are slightly older than me and got into D&D with earlier boxed sets and thus don’t have nostalgia for this one, but the Rules Cyclopedia remains very popular and the black box came out at the same time. Another potential reason is that it doesn’t cover as complete a range of rules as Mentzer Basic, even though it covered levels 1 to 5. Whatever the cause, the 1991 black box had a lot to commend it.

This is the box which contained “Dragon Cards” in a small red combination DM screen and folder. The Dragon Cards taught the game in small, digestible chunks. In addition, there was a conventional rulebook, full-colour fold-out map in the style of modern “battlemaps”, a complete set of fold-up figures for player characters, NPCs, and monsters, and of course, a set of funny-shaped dice. I bought this box set with money I had for my birthday as a kid, with no prior experience of D&D or tabletop RPGs, and the contents of the box were sufficient for me to teach myself how to DM, and to teach my friends too.

Incidentally, for years, I secretly worried that we weren’t doing it right because everybody who gamed with me had learned how to play from me and this black box!

I am planning a new “black box” campaign to introduce my children and their friends to D&D. I am also preparing a virtual table top Basic D&D game to introduce the game to some adults too. The virtual table top game will probably be shorter, and I want to give the players an authentic feel for what Basic D&D was/is as opposed to the more modern versions of the game some of them have played before. To get this feel right, I am leaning towards running B1-9 In Search of Adventure, a module which combines most of the best bits of modules B1 through B9.

I plan to post on this blog about how preparation and play for each of those campaigns progresses, among many other gaming topics and thoughts.