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Both D&D basic sets in the late 70s and early 80s tried to simplify D&D but of course at the time, what we now think of as “Original D&D” (OD&D) meant the original three Little Brown Books (3LBBs) plus all of the supplements. Chief among those was the first supplement Greyhawk, which changed the game fundamentally into what we recognize today as “core D&D” – four base classes including the thief, variable hit dice and weapon damage, higher level spells, attack routines (claw, claw, bite) and d8 hit dice for monsters.
Moldvay Basic D&D (B/X) in 1981 was an attempt to clarify even further what Holmes Basic had done in 1977, but still used OD&D at its core (both authors were clear at the time on their intent to clarify OD&D). Now, most OD&D clones start with either the 3LBBs as a base (Swords & Wizardry White Box, Delving Deeper, Full Metal Plate Mail), or the 3LBBs plus Greyhawk (Swords & Wizardry Core, Iron Falcon), and work forward, adding some rules and changing others. I think it would be interesting to start with B/X and work backwards to the 3LBBs. To 3LBB afficionados, this gives them the best of both worlds – an essentially complete and coherent base rule system, walked backwards in time to revert some of the ‘Greyhawk-isms’. Or, to put it another way, what if Greyhawk had never been published? How would B/X have been different?
Here is what I envision a “no-Greyhawk B/X” would look like:
- No variable hit dice – standardize hit dice for all player classes and monsters to d6.
- Remove the thief class.
- All weapons do d6 damage (which is already an option in B/X).
- Monsters no longer gain attack routines. Multiple attacks are fine where sensible (e.g. a five-headed hydra still gets five attacks per round, but a ghoul would do just 1d6 damage as an abstraction for clawing or biting multiple times).
- Reduce ability score bonuses/penalties to mostly +1 or -1.
Everything else can stay the same, including race-as-class, which is not all that different from forcing demi-humans into one class option. I should mention that Labyrinth Lord Original Edition Characters (LL OEC) does something like this in that it starts with LL as a base and changes the player options to be more like OD&D – but as I noted in my review of LL OEC, it has an identity crisis and keeps much of the trappings of Greyhawk.
So what are the advantages to doing this? You may ask, “Sure Doug, that’s great and all, but why not just play 3LBB D&D”? It’s a valid question. I see B/X as a solid and complete base that fills in the gaps and clarifies many of the rules from OD&D. So why not use it as-is and just tone it down a bit to get to a place I and other 3LBB fans are comfortable with?
Smoldering Wizard 
I started with the red box Moldvay Basic set, but I find the simplicity in what a “regression” has to offer to be very appealing. I like moving towards using d6’s and d20’s for most rolls. I also use d6 for monster hit dice. I can’t do with thieves in my game, but everthing else is where I’m centered.
This idea came when I realized I tend to “downgrade” all my games, whatever the system, to some sort of White Box game. And I agree – using mostly just d6 and d20 is appealing in its simplicity.
I like this approach, but I am also one of those 3LBB fans (although I love B/X as well). You might be able to get the same mileage out of a well-done LBB retroclone, although you would then be dealing with other authors’ interpretations of the originals. In addition to what you noted, I’d be tempted to alter the B/X combat sequence a bit as well. I’m thinking of the spilt and alternating movement found in Chainmail. While the sequence in B/X is fast & simple, the current full move, shoot, cast, and attack sequence is a bit off-putting for me at times. Anyway, nice post!
Thanks! I also don’t use the B/X sequence (in my current LL OEC game for example, which by default is supposed to use the core LL / B/X sequence), I use a simpler phase-free approach of just allowing one action per round. I think the Chainmail approach would be interesting. Nice blog by the way, it’s new to me but I have added it to my reader feed (edit to add that I tried – but it seems there is no RSS feed – the wordpress reader tells me there are no posts!)
Thanks. I’ll have to try the phase-free approach in my game and see how that goes.
Yea, not sure what’s going on with the default RSS feed access. It’s a relatively new site, so perhaps I messed up something when I set it up (I’m also WordPress). I can get the RSS feed to show up by adding “?feed=rss” to my main url address. For example,
https://ramblingcleric.com/?feed=rss
Let me know if that works. Peace
Thanks. Interesting, I can subscribe to your blog feed in Liferea (desktop feed reader on Linux) but in WordPress’s own reader, I still see no posts.
Thanks for that feedback and for alerting me to the issue. I think I finally got it fixed. Peace. And again, I enjoyed your post.
Doug, you wrote, “I see B/X as a solid and complete base that fills in the gaps and clarifies many of the rules from OD&D.”
This. Definitely. I do the same thing with the Holmes Basic set, too. I think that the trick — at least for me — is to keep some of the ambiguity that is in OD&D versus the “clarifications” that came later. A great example is a potion. In MONSTERS & TREASURE, Arneson and Gygax wrote, “All potions come in a quantity sufficient to perform whatever their end is, although a small sample can be taken without effecting the whole.” Holmes, at least in the published version, “clarified” this: “If the characters lack a detect magic spell, they may dare a tiny sip to see what the result may be.” And “sip” is what would later appear in Moldvay (“A potion may be sipped to discover its type and then used later.”).
I’d argue that the wording “a small sample can be taken” allows for far more interpretation by each Referee. It could be sipped, sure. But a sample could be poured on the back of one’s hand, sniffed, snorted, smeared on a wall, you name it. It opens up possibilities rather than narrow them. Of course, an enterprising Referee using Holmes or Moldvay could still allow this flexibility, but I’d argue that the language used in these later “clarifications” tends to close possibilities rather than open them.
Now, I realize that there are areas in the game that the ambiguity is a problem (examples include the Elf, demi-human infravision when used as a player/character, etc…). I like using Holmes and Moldvay to fill help fill in those gaps. Hell, I like using CHAINMAIL for combat, too. Especially CHAINMAIL’s ‘Move/Counter Move’ System for Initiative.
What drew me to OD&D, especially from LABYRINTH LORD and SWORDS & WIZARDRY, is that very ambiguity. To me, at least, there’s something magical (in the best sense of the word) about it. It fires my imagination in a way that both later editions and various retro clones don’t.
Thanks for the comment, there is so much to think about there, and an especially interesting example with the potion! I suspect the word “sample” used in that way was an example of Gygax using flowery language where simple or more direct language would have sufficed (I don’t think Arneson wrote that way, at least judging from the FFC). In his head he probably thought of someone taking a sip of a potion to see what effects it had, and that sentence came out on paper :). I think the whole of the 3LBBs (really anything Gygax wrote or edited) is like that. That doesn’t diminish your point, just to say that the wonderful ambiguity of the 3LBBs was probably an accident, as opposed to future D&D versions and clones, and that is what makes it special. In the original S&W White Box, the ambiguity was deliberate. It’s my favorite retro-clone, but it still doesn’t top the accidental genius of the 3LBBs.
Yup, I definitely think it was accidental ambiguity, but I still really like it. End result versus intent and all that.
And I agree about WHITE BOX. Definitely! But yup, out of everything I’ve read (certainly not a complete reading of every version of D&D and the clones), I like OD&D the best (and by that I mean the LBB, not the supplements). There’s just something about it, despite it all, that really resonates with me.
Doug I love the idea of using BX as a chasis for an OD&D style game.
Monsters no longer gain attack routines. Multiple attacks are fine where sensible (e.g. a five-headed hydra still gets five attacks per round, but a ghoul would do just 1d6 damage as an abstraction for clawing or biting multiple times)
Are there any other changes? I know HD is a d6.
Just what I list above, at least as far as a 3LBB experience, so it’s a pretty short list. B/X has far more in common with OD&D than not. I do think restricting ability score bonuses is one of the key things, B/X with its +/-3 leads to stat inflation (which really started with Greyhawk, but became the norm after that).
Doug, you noted “I do think restricting ability score bonuses is one of the key things…”
Interestingly, this was the start of what eventually led me to OD&D (from B/X and LABYRINTH LORD). As I tweaked and continued to tweak the rules, I realized I was making them more and more like OD&D. So why not just play OD&D, and use B/X as well as Holmes (plus other OSR sources) for clarifications? Doing that has made me much happier with the game.
Von I’m kind of in the same boat. I love BX but I love the uniqueness and quirkiness of OD&D. I especially love using a primarily a d20 and a d6. Doug, in FMAG some monsters do 1d6+1 damage or even 2d6. With BX monsters would I simply treating everything as 1d6 damage? Man I wish there was monster manual for White Box. My biggest hurdle is how to treat monster attacks.
Hey Chuck,
There was a Reddit thread from about a year ago that discussed exactly this. You might find a few useful tidbits there.
This is exactly what I needed. I’ve always been confused on how to determine monster damage. Thanks Von!
Yes, that is a great discussion. They key I think is that the 3LBB damage is d6-based, not 1d6 only. So Ogres do 1d6+2 damage due to their strength and size. Some giants hurl stones for 3d6 damage. As long as you keep to the d6 scale you will be fine.
Here’s what I’ve picked up thus far when converting say 3X monster damage back to a d6.
1d4 = 1d3
1d6 = 1d6
1d8 = 1d6
1d10 = 1d6+2
2d8 = 2d6
3d6 = 2d6
4d6 = 2d6+1
5d6 = 2d6+2
6d6 = 3d6
Here’s an example from my OSE book. Let’s take a Panther:
AC 4, HD 4d8, Att: 2 x claw (1d4), 1 x bite (1d8) THACO 16
OD&D version:
AC 4, HD 4d6 Att: 1 claw (1d6), 1 x bite (1d6) ?
3LBB OD&D never had attack routines like this, so I would have the panther do just 1d6 damage. A larger or a giant panther might do more damage, maybe 1d6+2 or 2d6. A smaller panther might do 1d6-1. It’s up to you based on the situation and what you think might be a challenge for your players (that includes using claw/claw/bite attack routines if you want).
You are right. I totally forgot about that. So the only monsters that would have multiple attacks are ones where it makes sense such as a Chimera or a Hydra right? Another idea I came across for determining damage is as follows:
WEAK: 1d6-1
AVERAGE: 1d6
STRONG: 1d6+1 or 2
DEADLY: 2d6
I guess its all about eyeballing it.