Lee Gold's review of Holmes Basic D&D in 1977

Those steeped in historical RPG lore will know of Lee Gold, one of the most influential of the earliest dungeon masters. Based in Los Angeles, she helped organize science fiction fans who were getting excited about D&D in 1974 and 1975 by launching an APA about the new game. (An APA is basically a round-up of zines that all respond to each other, like blogs on paper). Starting in June 1975, it was called Alarums & Excursions, and it's still going today.

In another D&D APA organized in the Bay Area, called Lords of Chaos, Lee Gold contributed a zine called Archilowe. In the third issue of LoC, assembled 1 December 1977, she includes a review of the brand new Basic Set of D&D, the one known today as "Holmes Basic." Prior to that time, everybody had been using the first three original D&D books and the supplements like Greyhawk and Blackmoor (1975) and Eldritch Wizardry (1976).

Lee was among the earliest adopters of Dungeons & Dragons. These gamers understandably developed a degree of disdain for the highly disorganized and opaque original D&D rules, mixed uncomfortably with their adoration of the new species of game. They responded by developing their own rules and basically expanded and repaired the game for themselves through creative exchanges of ideas. By the time the first D&D Basic Set came out, they had enjoyed a few solid years of play. Would they heed the new set, or would they even need it?

Of course not.

This perspective is necessary to understand Lee Gold's review of "Holmes Basic." Here's what she had to say after her trip to Gen Con West, which took place 3-5 Sept 1977 in San Mateo, California.

I have acquired a copy of All the Worlds' Monsters, The Arduin Grimoire and D&D Revisited - Basic Set. Maybe someday when all the copyrights have expired some genius cum computer will be able to integrate them all and produce something relatively easy to use.

Yes, she typed a strikethrough to indicate that she regarded the new set merely as "D&D Revisited," indicating at the outset that she found it superfluous after a couple of years of playing D&D nearly weekly with her friends and at conventions and D&D parties, and publishing plenty of house rules in A&E contributed by players across the country.

With those initial remarks, she also inadvertently predicted an aspect of the commercial side of the OSR ("Old-School Revival"), in a way, by guessing that computer savvy people would one day come along to organize the rules a lot better than TSR was able to do. (I'm thinking especially of Old School Essentials.) As it happened, the rules were made "Open Source" rather than liberated from their copyright, but it amounted to the same: even very recent players have been seeking to organize the earliest rule sets better.

After addressing other matters, she spent a solid single-spaced page worth of her zine discussing Holmes Basic. Here's what she wrote.

On returning from GenConWest, I found on my doorstoop a copy of D&D: Basic Set (sent by a loyal and trustworthy A&E subber, not by TSR). As most people know this is 8.5"x11". It has few of the old typoes (though TSR still believes in paralyzation rather than paralysis) and fewer new typos. Its organization is spotty. Monsters are now alphabetized, but there is no overall chart as there was in D&D Bk II giving a general summary of monsters by AC, HD, % in lair, etc. Spells are now alphabetized within spell levels (and there are numerous new spells).

There are also quite a few things to nitpick. This kit among other things says that the Kobold chieftain fights like a gnoll but omits anywhere to mention what gnolls fight like. // It says "Magic users, of course may be either good or evil, lawful or chaotic" and thereby gives the impression that they can't be Neutral. There are quite a few tidbits about various monsters/spells tossed in through the book but not found in the listing of that spell or monster, as for instance the fact that sleep requires a grain of sand to throw or that zombies are poisoned by salt.

Some tidbits of information: Dwarves detect traps, etc. 1/3 of the time, not invariably. // Thieves are as likely to steal from their own party as from others. // A tinder box costs 3 GP. // Common is the language spoken in common by Elves, Humans, Dwarves and Hobbits; even most other humanoid monsters don't know it. // A melee round equals 10", a melee turn 1'; a non-melee turn 10'. // Magic swords shed light. // DM should roll for wandering monsters every three turns. //

Magic system is Greyhawk style. So are EPs and HP. BUT all MUs may make scrolls of spells they know at a cost of 100GP and one week per level of the spell and carry these scrolls down into the dungeon. Such scrolls can be used only once but don't need Read Magic to use. Most of the old spells remain the same, but DETECT EVIL now detects an "evily enchanted object," CURE LIGHT WOUNDS now takes only one round and so can presumably be thrown during melee, HOLD PERSON holds victims "rooted to the spot unless released or spell wears out." One of the grossest new spells is a 2nd level Clerical KNOW ALIGNMENT which tells exact alignment on the four-fold path and also lets the cleric know how lawful, chaotic, good, evil a creature is... and which way a neutral person is leaning.

There is a detailed and useful section (p. 19) on Fire/Burning Oil and Holy Water. // Light weapons may be used twice/round, normal once, and heavy every other round. Crossbows take twice as long as standard bows and apparently do equal damage.

The parry is introduced as an option, and rules on retreat are codified. // The melee phase system of EW [the Eldritch Wizardry supplement of 1976] is not introduced. Standard order within a combat or melee round is prepared magic--missile--melee. Missiles seem to be forbidden once melee is joined, or at least the DM is encouraged to have them hit all combatants at random.

Quite a few more treasure types are given, but as before there is no explicit rationale as to what sort of monsters get what sort of treasure. (See Tantivy [Lee's zine] in A&E #26 for my own attempt to give some sort of system or rationale to treasure types.)

Scrolls are now given the option of having potion, ring or wand spells on them. Aside from that I didn't notice any new treasure types.

Note that the old-style D&D (currently renamed Original Dungeons and Dragons, Collector's Edition) is to be sold for $14.95, so if anyone wants a spare copy (for a friend perhaps) of the old rules we have all grown familiar with, it would be wise to get them now if you can still find them at $10.

My general impression of D&D: Basic Set was that it was very pretty if you care for such things (I don't). The dice supplied with the set were sufficiently rotten that I threw them out. They had bubbles on the vertices, bumps and depressions on the faces and not much ink on the numbers. The organization of the booklet is rather better than that of the original set, but needed information is still scattered about and not cross-referenced so that I'd judge it very difficult for a total beginner to use this without guidance from an experienced player.

I think it's fair to call this a negative review. Most of her remarks are those of an experienced player who, like all D&D players by 1977, had struggled with the vague wording and lack of clarity of the original rules and had come up with their own answers. Whatever answers the Holmes Basic Set could provide were likely to go against long-established house rules. Players who saw the new Basic rules were already independent of them. The tone of this review is to say, "We already do things our own way. This doesn't help that much, and it may cause new confusion."

Today, there are some "old-school" retro gamers who idealize the Holmes Basic set as the best iteration of the D&D rules. Sometimes that is for the sentimental and nostalgic value of the game set that was their gateway to adventure. For some, it's just the rule set that makes the most sense: simple and straightforward and fun. Each will have a preference based on personal experience. But it's interesting to note that some players, exemplified by Lee Gold in 1977, were already veterans by the time Holmes Basic was issued. Players like this could not have been impressed. They had already developed their own way to play and had already in some cases attempted versions of fantasy role-playing games that they'd prefer to the original D&D (like Tunnels & Trolls and Chivalry & Sorcery or The Fantasy Trip: Melee or D&D variants like Warlock or Arduin or the Stanford System). Holmes' Basic Set was not for these players. Its appearance drew in a new crowd of players, though, many of them young, who would quickly outnumber the earliest players. This created a slight generation gap between (1) the very independent-minded earliest D&D players, who had to make do with the poor original materials at the beginning, and did so with sometimes zany creativity, and (2) the D&D newbies of the late '70s and early '80s, whose experience was more organized and who did not remember the time before the adventure module boom that started in '78.

These very earliest players were earlier than the "Old-School" game that is idealized today. There was a lot of variation between them in expectations. When I corresponded with Lee Gold, she told me that she never bought a game setting but always designed her own. She's still playing today that way. Contrast that with the players like me, who started relatively late, in 1981. I was given Moldvay's Basic Set, which came with the adventure module B2 Keep on the Borderlands. I did not have to design my own dungeon in order to start playing, and I had rules that were clear enough not to require lots of my own decisions about how it was "supposed to" work. On the other hand, you could say I had no choice. The game came with an example of what play was supposed to look like in the form of B2.

The earliest Dungeons & Dragons games that people actually played were full of weird variety. The game would be gradually and increasingly homogenized iteration after iteration, eventually becoming itself the definition of a kind of generic fantasy emulated in other media. Even attempts to recreate the freshness of early D&D rely strongly on a canonical idea of what is "truly old-school" that misses most of what was once there. There was no way for the first Basic Set to avoid homogenization and reduction of variety. That was its necessary purpose. Perhaps what players today find so fresh about it is just that it was the beginning of this standardization process, rather than its present state--whether by present state we mean the Fifth Edition or the clones yearning for the years 1977-1981.