Great news: The "B" of "B/X", the rulebook of the 1981 D&D Basic Set, commonly known as the Moldvay Basic, is finally available in print-on-demand (POD) from DrivethruRPG, 13 years after it originally appeared in PDF, and three years after its partner "X" (the Expert Set rulebook) POD was released.
Find it here:
Moldvay Basic rulebook on DrivethruRPG
(all links to DrivethruRPG include my affiliate number)
The B/X ruleset has become extremely popular in recent years as the source of rules for the Old School Essentials retroclone, but now you can get an official reprint of the original.
While this site is primarily devoted to the Holmes Basic set, I am also a big fan of the Moldvay Basic rulebook, which took Holmes' pioneering work as a base and developed it further. And I love the Sample Dungeon, The Haunted Keep, which I've written about here.
The module that was included in the Moldvay Basic Set, the 1981 revision of Gary Gygax's B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, is already available in POD, so together these products constitute the printed contents of the 1981 Basic Set (no dice and crayon, of course).
Find it here:
B2 The Keep on the Borderlands on DrivethruRPG
While this is great news for availability of this particular rule set, the Holmes Basic rulebook frustratingly remains completely unavailable, either in PDF or print, for unknown reasons. The newly available Moldvay Basic POD means that they are still releasing/updating the available products, so this does give a bit of hope. Perhaps they are saving it for the 100th anniversary in 2077?
See also these previous posts on the Zenopus Archives related to Moldvay Basic:
Original Known World Campaign Documents (2022)
Chronology of D&D Sample Dungeons: The Haunted Keep by Tom Moldvay (1981) (2020)
M1 Blizzard Pass: Dungeon Design (2020)
Zargon Beckons (2015)
Ur-Known World (2015)
Expert Set rulebook: PDF notes (2013)
It's about time! Long overdue. It's been a long source of confusion for me why it hasn't been available; directing folks to it has been nigh impossible and I've naturally resorted to sending newbies to Labyrinth Lord and experienced gamers to OSE. I have always loved B/X and I genuinely feel like the pair of books, while outmoded as far as table reference goes, provide an incredibly good on-ramp of instruction and is written in a way that aids retention so long as the books are read completely through and digested in that manner. Even today, if the B/X books are approached as something you will read cover to cover instead of skipping to the "character generation" page in a hardcover and then bouncing here and there, it does a good job of explaining the game of Dungeons & Dragons. Aaaanyway, long-winded, glad to see this finally available in POD. Hopefully, as you say, Holmes is next - even longer overdue!
ReplyDelete