Miscellany: The D&D Basic set

I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was a kid, but the first D&D product I ever actually bought with my own money was the "Classic Dungeons and Dragons Game" way back in 1994 (the seventeenth reprinting of the Basic Set). Until then I had mostly survived by borrowing other people's AD&D Player's Handbooks and Dungeon Master's Guides, so I wanted to start out proper.

Unfortunately, I didn't know at the time that the D&D rules were a split entity. You see, AD&D had its own rulebooks, while the boxed set was meant as a primer to the D&D "Rules Cyclopedia," hearkening back to the original basic versions of the game before many of the changes of AD&D. "Elf" was a class, for instance, and low-level magic users were incredibly vulnerable (I hope you use your level 1 magic missile when it counts, cause that's all you're casting for the combat). Characters even advanced in level at different rates in order to balance them, which seems crazy nowadays.

The set was fairly complete, though - you received dice, a DM screen, a map, miniatures for the PCs, cardboard cutouts for the monsters, and a fairly comprehensive 128 page rule booklet. The starting adventure was great, too. You were a prisoner in Zanzer Tem's dungeon, and the opening encounters had a "choose your own adventure" format that had a big influence on how I think about DMing. All in all, it was a great package.