The "Basic" Game

The Blue Book
About the time TSR was working on AD&D they also decided to run a parallel product line they termed "Basic". My understanding is the 1st edition of Basic D&D, the Holmes Blue Book, referring to author/editor J. Eric Holmes, was written using the original 3 Little Brown Books and Supplement I as reference. I didn't have the Holmes edition until many years later, but I suppose it was the gateway for many into the hobby. Rereading Holmes over the weekend I can see how certain aspects of the game are more clearly explained in this Basic rule book than in the 3 Little Brown Books of the White Box, but there is a lot that's left out and some new stuff that seems puzzling. According to Basic, a PC armed with a dagger gets two attacks, each doing a d6 damage if they hit.  Weapons like the battle axe, pole arm and two-handed sword get to attack every-other-turn and still do one d6 damage. Power gaming hadn't come into its own in 1978, but who wouldn't equip their character with a dagger under these rules? A friend who ran some adventures I played in used the Holmes Basic as his rules of choice and I don't believe that's the way he, or probably most referees played Basic. The real genius of Basic in my opinion was in marketing. The Basic box cover illustration was colorful and it could be found everywhere it seemed. Until the arrival of Basic, I rarely saw D&D product in a store. (My own White Box had been mail ordered.) By the time of the release of Basic, the White Box had probably acquired a reputation of being difficult to learn and rightly so. The Basic box included a starter adventure as well as the blue rulebook. Over the various print runs, the included adventure would change, but all of the B series adventures were written as teaching tools targeted at first time referees. The Basic rules make frequent reference to AD&D and it is assumed that players will eventually move on to the AD&D game. A "Basic" version of the game implied it would be easier to pick-up and more suitable as a gift or for someone starting out and I am guessing that was true. Ease of entry and availability almost everywhere in an eye-pleasing box...that was "Basic". I call that a great idea and I am pretty sure it helped grow the hobby. I wasn't real sure where that left me with my White Box. The new AD&D hardbacks were coming along, released one a year or so through the late 1970's and Basic was available and the latest printings of White Box were labeled "Original Collector's Edition" and contained some minor changes mostly due to copy rights such as changing hobbit to halfling. I purchased the AD&D Players Handbook shortly after it's release.  The PH had a lot of new material in it, but lacked the essential "To Hit" tables that would appear later in the Dungeon Masters Guide. So I continued to run my game from my White Box, often with the PH unopened, but at the table. Other referees I played D&D with seemed to use a hybrid of White Box and AD&D, but I didn't play at a table where there was even an attempt to run AD&D with the RAW until some years later. Meanwhile, I just quit pretending I was playing AD&D and returned to White Box where things have come full circle, finally making sense.