The new Basic Set was the first D&D rule set to include a solo adventure, intended to make it easier for a player to learn the game even if he didn't know the rules yet. This is thus the "Red Box," to differentiate it from the "Magenta Box" edition, which was the previous edition edited by Moldvay. Some people like to classify the D&D boxes by color.
However, it's also very obvious in the Menzter Basic D&D, which is full of attractive graphic design (for the era), as well as artwork that's all by iconic D&D artists Larry Elmore and Jeff Easley.Ĭolor-Coding the Boxes. You can best see their work through the upgrades to the trade dress of D&D that occurred in 1983. Mentzer's Basic D&D took advantage of the new "Product Finishing" Department at TSR, whose goal was to make TSR's books look as good as possible. Mentzer also had three general goals for the new Basic D&D: it should be fun, playable, and true (i.e., to the spirit of D&D).Ī New Art Design. Mentzer's Basic Set is thus laid out almost as a tutorial, with new rules and concepts being introduced to players very carefully the rules about GMing are then introduced only after all of the basic player concepts have been discussed. Menzter's first two goals for the new Basic D&D were to make the game approachable by beginners and to make it learnable from the rules. Mentzer's version of Basic D&D thus made some large changes to how the game was taught and presented. Mentzer claimed that the main reason behind this new edition of Basic D&D was that previous versions "were not 'revised', merely 'reorganized.'" He clearly wasn't talking about the mechanics, which demonstrably had been revised in Moldvay's version of Basic D&D, but instead how the game and its rules were structured.
BECMI would also be the most long-lived edition of Basic D&D, lasting almost eight years from the publication of the this Basic Set until it was superseded by The New Easy to Master Dungeons & Dragons Game (1991) and the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia (1991).Ī New Introductory Game. The second was edited by Tom Moldvay (1981) it was the first truly standalone version of Basic D&D, and the start of the short-lived (but well-known) "B/X" edition.įrank Mentzer's version of Basic D&D, which would come to be called the BECMI edition (1983-86), was thus the third edition - or fourth, if you count original D&D as part of the sequence of games. Eric Holmes (1977) and was essentially an introductory set for the original D&D game (1975).
By 1983, Basic D&D had gone through two major editions. The D&D Basic Rules Set (1983) by Frank Mentzer was the third and final iteration of the boxed Basic Rules for Basic D&D. This is the 1983 edition of the D&D Basic Dungeon Master's Rulebook, part of the "BECMI edition" Red Box Set.