This inclusion would kick off the Cook era of the Known World (1981-1986), when it was still a pretty wild and unpopulated place, before the Gazetteers filled it in more (and dramatically increased the population). The rulebook contains a one-page describing the Grand Duchy of Karameikos (along with some of its inhabitants) followed by a single-page hex map. The Expert Rulebook's other historical first was its introduction of the Known World of Mystara.
AD&D's biggest push into the area, the Wilderness Survival Guide (1986), was never nearly as successful as Expert D&D's wilderness exploration.Įxpanding the 'Known World'. In the mid-80s, wilderness adventures occasionally snuck into other game lines - including adventures like the Basic Set module B8: "Journey to the Rock" (1984) and AD&D's N2: "The Forest Oracle" (1984) - but those adventures tended to be constrained railroads rather than the wide-open hex crawls of some Expert modules. The Expert-level adventures would all be largely wilderness focused, highlighting a category of adventure that wasn't seen before or afterward - at least not at the same level.
The resulting "hex crawls" would be very different from the "dungeon crawls" that D&D was built on. The Expert Rulebook went against all of these early expectations by saying bluntly, "Adventures will take place outside the dungeon." It goes on to provide tips for conducting a wilderness campaign and specific rules for wilderness travel of different sorts. Moldvay's Basic Set didn't just keep with that dungeon-delving trend, but offered it up as the norm, saying in its introduction, "At the start of the game, the players enter the dungeon…" The only real exception was the eponymous T1: "Village of Hommlet" (1979), and that was a far cry from the wilderness hex exploration suggested in original D&D. The original D&D divided adventuring between "the underworld" and "the wilderness," but prior to the release of the Expert Set, almost all published D&D adventures focused on dungeons, caverns, ruins, and monstrous lairs. Though halflings, elves, and dwarves are limited to 8, 10, and 12 levels, respectively, that's not necessarily a big deal when the game only went up to level 14.Įnter the Wilderness. However, they make a lot more sense in the "B/X" presentation. Levels limits for demihumans were a point of contention in both Basic D&D and AD&D. Instead, that desire would have to await the Frank Mentzer revision of Basic D&D, which began in 1983.Ībout Those Level Limits. Gygax had also planned for a "D&D Companion Set," which would carry Basic D&D characters from levels 15-36, but that would not appear under the Moldvay/Zeb "B/X" edition of Basic D&D. When Gary Gygax first announced the upcoming Expert Rules in The Dragon #35 (March 1980), he said they would include "new classes, spells, magic, monsters, and so on." There were indeed magic item, monsters, and spells, but sadly no new classes. Ironically, this controversy caused sales of Holmes' Basic Set to soar and resulted in a new directive for the newly created Design Department at TSR: supplement Basic D&D (which only covered levels 1-3) with Expert Rules that would allow players to play "through at least 12th level of experience." After that, TSR didn't put any more work into the Basic D&D game, instead focusing on AD&D (1977-1979).Įnter the "James Dallas Egbert III affair" (1979), where a college student disappeared and D&D somehow took the blame in the media. Eric Holmes simplifying the original D&D rules (1974) as the first Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1977).
For the first time ever, it offered the opportunity to achieve levels 4-14 in TSR's introductory game.īeyond Basic. The Dungeons & Dragons Expert Rules (1981), by David "Zeb" Cook, was released simultaneously with the second edition Basic Rules (1981) in January 1981. This is the 1981 edition of the D&D Expert Rulebook by Dave Cook, which was sold as a counterpart to the Moldvay D&D Basic Set.
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