There’s this super-secret Black Book edition of the B/X Rules out there. They are printed up using Lulu or LSI by various gamers using the very very clean PDFs of the 1981 Basic and Expert rulebooks sold by Wizards of the Coast via DNDClassics.com / OneBookShelf. I had mine printed up during the latest 50% off sale at Lulu and they look GORGEOUS (except of course that my name is printed on the lower left side of every page, but beggars can’t be choosers and all that).
But I figured this Black Book deserved a boxed set just like my red and blue book editions have. It took a bit of shopping around, but I finally settled on the RISSLA boxes from Ikea for the final production. The boxes are nice, feel almost like they are made of leather, and close using a magnetic clip on the cover/side. Also cool, the box comes with two smaller boxes inside – a tad too small to use to hold digest-sized stuff unfortunately, but I’m already planning on how to make specialized character sheets designed to fit inside them along with equipment cards, dice, and so on.
When opened, the box looks pretty, with the dice at the top and the cover of the B/X hardcover looking up at you. But there’s more in this lovely box than that… I recently acquired a pair of copies of the B/X rule books still in their original shrink wrap, and it was just too much to pass up on including them in here.
So here’s the full contents as it currently stands:
- Two copies of the B/X Hardcover
- Mint copies of the B & X softcovers
- Gateway to Adventure catalog / booklet
- 12 B/X Character Sheets
- Black Gamescience dice & metal d20
Now I need to get my hands on mint copies of three adventures to make this “really” feel complete to me: B1, B2 and X1.
Dyson's Dodecahedron 
Niiiiice.
Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.
Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.
Those… are… AWESOME! I must have! I must own! I don’t suppose you could update this post by providing hotlinks? My fingers are trembling at the prospect of obtaining these for their own.
The PDFs are available from http://www.dndclassics.com/
Basic – http://www.dndclassics.com/product/110274/DD-Basic-Set-Rulebook-B-X-ed-Basic
Expert – http://www.dndclassics.com/product/110792/DD-Expert-Set-Rulebook-B-X-ed-Basic
Prepping them for printing requires a bit of work and is illegal in the US under the DMCA because it involves stripping the no-password encryption from the PDF. Once the encryption has been stripped (if you live in a country that allows you to do so, like Canada), you use Acrobat Pro to remove the covers, put the two books into one PDF, and then “print” the PDF into a new PDF at 8.25 x 10.75 inches.
Then I uploaded the file to Lulu along with the cover file from here: http://peoplethemwithmonsters.blogspot.ca/2013/06/cover-files-for-bx-d.html
I also found a fan-made index for the compiled books and put that in the back, along with copies of two of my B/X D&D character sheets.
The box is from Ikea: http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/90246154/
I do live in the US and was wondering where the links are for the Black Book editions, since you posted this, they aren’t “super secret” now 🙂
So awesome! Thanks!
The Black Cover file is no longer available it seems. 😦
You may have been looking in the wrong place. Go to: http://peoplethemwithmonsters.blogspot.ca/2013/06/cover-files-for-bx-d.html
Both perfectbound and hardbound covers are still available. Make sure to read his notes regarding the extra page count.
Nevermind. I thought the files were hosted on site, not Google docs. I’m blocked at work.
Thanks for the reply!
Are the cover pdfs supposed to be have squares of grey and black around the text?
Nerdboner! That’s a pretty bit of gaming goodness right there! I can imagine whipping that out at the game table, to awe the players with sheer might of the presentation alone.
Sadly, this is something we’re not allowed t do in the US. I still wish for an edition of B/X with all the rules integrated in one volume (something like what they expected you do by cutting up the booklets and using a 3-ring binder, though I don’t know if that would actually work). I guess Labyrinth Lord sort of does that, but not quite.
Yeah, unfortunately the US has allowed copyright holders to control the laws making this kind of thing illegal.
This would be one of the only D&D products I’d be willing to pay for. A seamless integration of the Cook/Moldvay rules, tables and monster list – like Rules Cyclopedia, but without all of that Mentzer BECMI baggage – would be amazing.
I have thought this very thing. If I ever lose my job or win the lottery I think I would attempt this. You can copy and paste from the PDF so I figure a few week spent with publisher and I could get I done. The monster stats would take the most work as they require reformatting. Sure it would be illegal, but damn would it cool.
I was just thinking how cool my own collection was … and then I see this! That “Black Edition” makes my B/X PDF copies look pretty weak. I think I have Book Envy, if there is such a thing. Now I just have to figure out a way to accomplish the same thing in the US.
This is simply awesome! Would the same copyright/DMCA issues persist if somebody wanted to print a single pdf off of dndclassics through Lulu (as opposed to combining different pdfs)? I am wondering whether I could print Rules Cyclopedia as a hardback… 🙂
Unfortunately, all OBS PDFs are sold with encryption (a no-password encryption mind you) which means that by law in the US removal of said is illegal under the DMCA – and Lulu can’t print from encrypted files.
That is sweet! I’d love to do the same with my B/X PDFs. Maybe add in Blackrazor’s B/X Companion.
Those boxes are nice. And the “Black Box” version is pretty cool.
I did something similar, I just printed out my copies and then three hole punched them for a binder. I merged the Basic and Expert chapters as was suggested in the books. So I have all character creation rules in one place, all monsters, and so on.
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/06/i-cut-up-bx-books.html
I used that Black Box Basic as my cover too.
Since you’re stripping the encryption, why not get rid of the watermark as well?
Stripping the encryption takes less than four seconds. Removing an element from every page of the book takes significantly longer.
So, at the heart of it, because I’m lazy.
Being rather stupidly obsessive-compulsive, I do this for a lot of watermarked pdfs I own. Luckily my collection isn’t that large; also, I’m reasonably profficient with Acrobat and it takes me less than a minute (less than half of that, probably) to remove watermarks from a 70-page document. Less than it took me to post these two comments.
Any pointers to the fan-made index? I’m not having any luck finding it
Here’s Paul Gorman’s Index: http://quicklyquietlycarefully.blogspot.ch/2014/06/bx-combined-and-expanded-index.html
Thank you muchly!
Mine arrived today, thanks for the instructions.
https://plus.google.com/118273843394420326536/posts/LEXsxFbbETH
I also removed the Watermarks and added title page. I found the most difficult thing was resizing the PDF. Mine has a lot of white space around the printed sections.
Fine craftsmanship.
Great blog. Using the details here to create my own D&D B/X hardback. Many thanks for sharing