This article isn’t a comparison between 5e and Basic/Expert OSR rules from 1980, at least not directly. Instead, I’m going to talk about why the concept of basic D&D in general, regardless of era, may be better than the current batch of 5e and 5.5 from WotC.
Gaming Systems
I was watching a YouTube video where Ben of Questing Beast interviewed Mike Mearls, the co-designer of 5th edition D&D. Mearls spoke a bit about systems and how he felt the latest edition of D&D, commonly called 5.5, has gotten so complicated that it’s become more of a system than a game. At least that’s my interpretation of what he said.
Mearls brought up a good point about gaming systems and it made me realize something about basic D&D from the early 1980s. Here’s a numerical example of what I’m talking about.
The 1981 edition of Basic D&D, the purple boxed set with a fighter and magic user facing off against a green dragon, contained a 64-page booklet and a campaign module called “Keep on the Borderlands”, which has gone on to become the best-selling D&D module ever printed. Apparently there were over 1 million copies printed.
64-page Booklet vs 988 Pages of Books
Let’s talk about the booklet. This entire volume contains everything a D&D player or Dungeon Master needs to not only play the game of D&D, but learn how. It describes how to roll up characters, how game-play is conducted, how to create a dungeon, and even includes a decent selection of monsters that span all the trope-heavy genres: dragons, humanoids, the undead, and so forth.
Here’s another numerical way of contrasting the difference. The 1981 rules booklet, that contains everything you need to play D&D, whether you’re a player or a DM, has 64 pages. That includes monsters.
The 2014 version of 5e is three books that total 988 pages.
If you’re new to the game, which is a better way to go?
Starter Sets
I’m not saying the old-school rules are best or the only way to go compared to the current stuff. My point is about starter sets in general, and about systems vs. the fun of the game specifically.
Starter sets are nothing new. TSR, of Gary Gygax fame, and then Wizards of the Coast, have released starter sets. These are a great idea, with the concept of putting everything you need into one self-contained box to learn how to play and how to create adventures of your own. These publishers always make expanded content available, but that expanded content can be argued to be optional.
This begs the question… once you get the basic set and learn the fundamentals, do you really need to graduate to the more rules-heavy systems like AD&D back in the day or the three core rule books of 5e and 5.5?
Maybe not.
Balance Between Systems and Game-play
Regardless if you want expanded content and options or not, my point about all this is about the balance between systems and the game, between rules and play. Nothing seems to exemplify this contrast more than comparing 1981’s basic rules to today’s monstrosity of 5th edition.
When talking about basic D&D and the OSR rules of the late 70s and early 1980s, there was something implicitly beneficial about the way the game was structured. It gave you enough to enjoy the game without the game itself getting in the way of your fun.
Today’s modern D&D, especially with the 5.5 edition that came out in late 2024 and early 2025, has gone so far into options and rules for everything that I think even Gary Gygax himself would say, “Whoa, bring it down a notch, Scotty!”
Game Publishing is a Business
I should point out that publishing a table-top role-playing game is almost exclusively a business first and foremost. If you are a game publisher, your revenue is what enables you to continue writing, producing, marketing and selling your product, thus getting it into the hands of as many gamers as possible. The problem is, when you have some giant corporation like Hasbro running the show, led by people who care more about spreadsheets than character sheets, you get a product that serves only one customer: the shareholder.
Shareholder value and all that entails will always without fail get in the way of producing something that is player-centric. It will be about revenue and market share and not about enjoyment of the game itself.
Considering this, remember that Wizards of the Coast doesn’t make money by selling one book to one player or dungeon master and then stopping there. WotC doesn’t want to teach you how to fish, they want to sell you a hundred fish and then get you to subscribe to their digital fish delivery service.
Profit Motive
It’s in WotC’s best interest to sell you a big book and then sell you several more books and so on and so on. It’s in their best interest, not yours, for things to be complex.
And when a game gets complex, you can tell that it’s not gamers who’ve written the rules, it’s bean counters and boardroom executives who look at spreadsheets and probably have no idea what a character sheet even is.
A Simpler Way to Play
So let’s get back to the original premise of this article, and the title itself: Is Basic D&D a perfect version of the game? No. Far from it. Is it better than what you can currently buy from the publisher of the game? Maybe, depending on your preferences. I would argue that basic IS better but not because of how it handles initiative or hitpoints, but because it gives you enough to play the game without getting in the way of the gameplay.
For this reason, I think basic D&D, and the concept of a self-contained set of minimized rules in general, is a better way to go. It gives you what you need to learn how to play the game, it gives you what you need to run the game, and what you need to expand on it as a dungeon master. The rules themselves cover the fundamentals of exploration. social interaction, and combat without being so complex that you must refer to the rules multiple times during a game session.
The Joke Isn’t Funny
Throughout my professional career, I have learned a valuable lesson about simplicity. To put it in terms of an Instagram-worthy quote, if you have to explain a joke, it isn’t very funny. Think about that in terms of a table-top role-playing game. If you must have an entire session just to roll up characters, relying on a complex set of charts and dozens and dozens of pages of reference material, the joke isn’t very funny.
If you need dozens of pages to describe how to conduct a simple combat sequence, the joke isn’t very funny.
If you are a game publisher and a potential customer walks into a game shop or visits your online store and says to themselves, “I have no idea where to start!” then your joke isn’t very funny.
A Final Question
I’m not going to end this article with advice or my attempt at whatever wisdom I think 45 years of playing this game has somehow granted me. I have my opinions, of course, as do you. What I prefer may not be what you prefer, and I 100% respect that. Ultimately, play what you enjoy. That’s really what D&D is all about. But I am going to finish by asking one question:
If you spend more time studying and consulting the system than you do actually playing the game, is it really a game at all, or is it just your contribution to the shareholder value of a giant corporation, run by people who’ve never rolled a d20 in their lives?
