Hey Vetolopi, hey Rerednaw <– your name definitely checks out for an old school AD&D player ;) No issue if you can't make every week, in fact that's part of the point. It's less hassle on everyone to just let players drop in and out as their schedules allow. Vetolopi K. said: Well this sounds fun. I offer my blood to bowl -------------- I have played 5e for about a year now. What do i need to know? What do i need to read? Do i make a char or assigned one? Compared to 5e, Basic D&D is very simple and streamlined. So easy, in fact, that you really don't need to read any rules at all. If you've played at least kind of D&D, you already know enough to feel comfortable. It's definitely a rules-light, 'roll the dice and move on' sort of game. If you're keen, though, you can check out the rule books, they're really slim and fun to read (they're long out of print obviously, but they do sell PDFs on the cheap): 1981 "B/X" edition: ( Basic Set ) ( Expert Set ) 1983 "BECMI" edition: ( Basic Set ) ( Expert Set ) Either of those will do you, since they're about 95% the same. We use B/X for most things, plus BECMI for the extra spells and the odd tidbit. I'd say that BECMI is the better choice to learn the ins and outs of the rules, but B/X is the better choice as a rules reference. You can also download Labyrinth Lord ,
which is a 'retroclone' of B/X. It's meant to replicate that edition as closely as legally possible, just with the serial numbers filed off, mainly so that people can continue to publish new B/X adventures without having to reference B/X. There's the odd rule change here or there, but I've had players use it without problems. Rolling up Characters In
Basic D&D, once you learn how to roll up a character you can literally do it
in 1-2 minutes. Still, I've found that on Roll20 it takes people much
longer (especially picking equipment), so I've streamlined
the equipment part to just rolling on a table of stock adventuring kits. This is what character creation looks like: 1. Roll for your
six ability scores, using 3d6 for each ability (If you type
#new-character into our game chat it'll do all that for you). 2. Pick
a class (Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, Thief, Monk, Dwarf, Elf, or
Hobbit/Halfling). You'll notice that even races like 'elf' and 'dwarf'
are just a single class. You don't pick 'elf fighter' or 'elf
magic-user', just 'elf'. Broad strokes, simple and to the point. 3. Roll one die for your starting hit points. The size of the die depends on what class you are (e.g., magicians start with 1d4, fighters with 1d8). 4.
Roll 1d10 to see what equipment kit you start with, from the table I've
posted in the game. Magic-users can also pick their starting spells from a small list. 5. Pick your alignment. There's just Law, Neutrality or Chaos—like I said, simple and streamlined. And
that's it. Everything else gets fleshed out in play. Very simple. Sometimes when I'm bored I'll get a
pencil, notepad and some dice, and roll up three or four characters at once in 2-5 minutes, then have them battle each other to a conclusion in another 2-5 minutes.
