#firstrpg #rpgaday As you may have known, my first RPG was Holmes Basic. What's surprising is that this was in 1982, well after the next Basic Set (Moldvay) had been released in early '81. My neighbors who I first played with had the same set, with B2 and chits (ad for this version below, scan by Allan Grohe). So its influence lasted longer than just the publishing dates would suggest. As late as 1986 you could still buy the Holmes set from the TSR mail order hobby catalog.
Holmes' influence never quite vanished. I've played for ages - and still do - with a few rules I firmly believed were D&D and didn't appear anywhere else, even when I switched to AD&D.
ReplyDeleteAgreed! And TSR was still selling the OD&D OCE sets through 1984 or so (when I bought my original copy, sold long ago to Jason Zavoda who resold it I'm sure), and the AD&D core books and T1-4 well into the 2e era as well.
ReplyDeleteMy first as well!
ReplyDeleteMy first in '77 and still my favorite. I have two of these, one with B1 and one with B2, both with dice.
ReplyDeleteApologies for commenting on an old post but I'd no idea. I assumed your love of Holmes came from experiencing it within it's 'era'. As you've read before my first real 'touch' of D&D was Holmes but during the 'Mentzer era' (and the first D&D books I owned were B/X). So Holmes was certainly still reaching out to potential D&D fans at least by way of 'hand-me-downs' from older brothers, etc. as late as Fall of '86 (my first real gaming by way of Holmes).
ReplyDeleteFunny that I felt I was being left behind by the newer and better versions of D&D until much later when I realized how much I loved those I'd first grown with and why (long after my extended affair with the RC, and "better" more "sophisticated" games... which I began to see really just bored me to tears). :)