A self-admitted frustrated grognard posted on MeWe today that he was unsatisfied with the label "Original D&D" for the early brown and white box editions. He was partly making fun of himself and partly grasping for a better term, as a fan of the original. It set me on a track of thinking that resulted in this:
All editions and variations of D&D are "D&D" - that is the collective. When making a clarification, we should use
- '74 D&D (three books)
- '76 D&D (seven books, for all practical purposes this is just an earlier, messier version of AD&D)
- Basic D&D (further clarified as Holmes, BX, or BECMI)
- Advanced D&D (further clarified as 1e or 2e)
- Modern D&D (further clarified as an edition 3.5, 4th, 5th)
Here was my train of thought.
[In response to the root post.] Everything else has a name. Basic D&D (Holmes, BX, BECMI), Advanced D&D (1e or 2e), or a modern edition (3.5, 4, 5). I'd say that Oe should just be called "D&D", but that's not realistic. All Corvettes are Corvettes. But then we add a year when we want to talk about a specific model (and sometimes other labels, like Stingray). So I guess this version has to have a label. I've seen Original D&D, Three Little (Brown) Books (TLB or TLBB), Whitebox, etc. I kind of like 1974 D&D, but even then there are distinctions. Three-book 1974 D&D is quite different from seven-book 1976 D&D. I guess maybe that's the answer for me: '74 D&D, '76 D&D, Basic (Holmes, BX, BECMI), Advanced D&D (1e or 2e), or a modern edition (3.5, 4, 5).
Am I missing something. Do I have all the right bays designated for the Corvettes? My only dissatisfaction with this scheme might be the slightly pejorative connotation of the word "Basic."
Variations gets even murkier when you take into account the late changes to 1e (UA & survival guides), 2e (Player's Option series), and 4e (Essentials). Also muddying the waters are the very late Basic sets: "The New Easy-to-Master Dungeons & Dragons Game" and "The Classic Dungeons & Dragons Game". That's what, 16 different rule sets or flavors of D&D? Seventeen if you peel the RC from BECMI.
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