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The original Dungeons & Dragons was published as a boxed set in 1974 and featured only a handful of the

elements for which the game is known today: just three character classes (fighting-man, magic-user and cleric);

four races (human, dwarf, elf, hobbit); only a few monsters; only three alignments (lawful, neutral, and chaotic).

The rules assumed that players owned and played the miniatures wargame Chainmail and used its measurement

and combat systems. An optional combat system was included within the rules that later developed into the sole

combat system of later versions of the game. In addition, the rules presumed ownership of Outdoor Survival,

an Avalon Hill board game for outdoor exploration and adventure (an unusual requirement, since Tactical

Studies Rules was never in any way affiliated with rival Avalon Hill until two and a half decades later, when

Wizards of the Coast - the purchaser of TSR's assets and trademarks - merged with Hasbro, which then owned

Avalon Hill). D&D was a radically new gaming concept at the time, but the rules provided no overview of the game

 so it was difficult, without prior knowledge of tabletop wargaming, to see how it was all supposed to work.

D&D's three rulebooks covered the spells, equipment, monsters, and combat system necessary to run a

campaign centered around exploration of a giant dungeon. Four Player characters gain experience points

for defeating monsters in combat and gathering treasure, and in this manner they gain levels, with each level

corresponding to an incremental increase in power and ability.

Characters do not gain experience points for peacefully interacting with the world, but the rules do suggest

a world beyond the dungeon, even if they don't spend an enormous amount of time offering suggestions to

the DM regarding how to handle its exploration. To get  a hireling into service, for example, characters

are expected to post notices at inns and taverns, send messengers to distant lands, or frequent public places,

but the rules framework provided by the manuals focuses on the financial cost to the character rather than

on social interaction.

The most revealing window into the way D&D was meant to be played comes from the fact that the

Dungeon Master was called “The Referee” and one player in the group was appointed as “Caller”

- a player designated to speak on behalf of the group.  

While the idea of a single player monopolizing the referee's time may seem strange from the perspective

of a modern gamer, it must have been a necessity for a rules system that suggested an optimal

player-to-referee ratio of 20:1. The assumption of such a large group of players came partly from

the game's wargaming  roots, but also from the enormous popularity of Arnesons and Gygax's campaigns,
each of which consisted of more than a dozen active players at their height.

           Blackmoor                          Greyhawk          Gods, demi gods and heroes    Eldritch Wizardry

              Box set Cover                        Basic Rules

The Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, a larger, more visually attractive boxed set that sought to introduce
new players to the concept of role-playing by focusing on only the first three levels of play, thereafter
directing interested players to the much more expansive Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game, forthcoming
from Gary Gygax and TSR. Writer J. Eric Holmes revised the original Gygax and Arneson manuscript to make the
rules far more accessible to children of age 12 and above. Unlike the arcane manila booklets of 1974, Holmes's
attractive rulebook opens with a compelling description of play:

Each player creates a character or characters who may be dwarves, elves, Halflings or human fighting men,
magic-users, pious clerics or wily thieves. The characters are then plunged into an adventure in a series of
dungeons, tunnels, secret rooms and caverns run by another player: the referee often called the Dungeon Master.

The dungeons are filled with fearsome monsters, fabulous treasure, and frightful perils. As the players engage
in game after game their characters grow in power and ability: the magic users learn more magic spells, the thieves
increase in cunning and ability, the fighting men, Halflings, elves and dwarves, fight with more deadly accuracy
and are harder to kill. Soon the adventurers are daring to go deeper and deeper into the dungeons on each game,
battling more terrible monsters, and, of course, recovering bigger and more fabulous treasure! The game is limited
only by the inventiveness and imagination of the players, and, if a group is playing together, the characters can
move from dungeon to dungeon within the same magical universe if game referees are approximately the same

in their handling of play. The introduction carefully contextualizes the original rules and provides the best
description to date of what happens in a Dungeons & Dragons game, limiting the focus exclusively to the

dungeon environment. The 1974 edition's rudimentary guidelines for wilderness play are notably absent, along
with the rules handling upkeep of baronies and strongholds

(presumably made irrelevant by the game's focus on low-level characters).

The Basic Set's rules for non-player characters parrot those of the original game, adding nothing to an element

of gaming that would see great expansion with future editions.

If the Basic Set's innovation lacked breadth, it certainly delivered in depth.
A section entitled "Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art" suggests using graph paper to map out vast dungeons
composed of "interlocking corridors, passages, stairs, closed rooms, secret doors, traps, and surprises for
the unwary". A cutaway illustration depicts a seven-level dungeon built into a mountain carved into a giant stone skull.
The rulebook also includes a brief sample dungeon (complete with a full-page map), and starting with the fourth
printing in 1978, the boxed set replaced two booklets of maps, encounter tables, and treasure lists with In Search
of the Unknown, a 32-page adventure "module" describing a dangerous cavern complex of empty rooms meant to be
stocked by the Dungeon Master using provided random tables. The game might only be about dungeons, but at least
the dungeons were getting a lot more interesting, and an element of play-acting first took stage.

     Basic set Box Cover             Basic rules lvl 1-3          Expert set Box cover          Expert rules lvl 4-14

In 1981, the "basic" version of Dungeons & Dragons was revised by Tom Moldvay and split into several versions.

The Basic and Expert sets are sometimes referred to as "red-box" and "blue-box" D&D.