Welcome to Immortality - Going beyond maximum level in BECMI Dungeons and Dragons 

they ascend into level 1 5E characters.

I use the immortal set to run my dieties. I keep track of their power points and everything. There is a great forgotten realms novel called "finder's bane" which follows the adventures of a newly immortal character and his fight against Bane. It's my all time favorite FR novel.

As what feels like a brave attempt to mutate D&D into what amounts to a Jack Kirby cosmic supers game, this is an enduring curiosity to me. Have I ever wanted to actually play it? No. But the part of me that admires the utterly gonzo for its own sake is still glad it exists.

True names would need a lore mechanic of some kind. Something like "When an immortal gains a true name, it is recorded in the Tome Astronomica", or some such. Then there is a way to learn a true name, but it would require an epic set of quests to get to the Libra Quasicolis, after finding the Keys of Light and Shadow, proving your worthiness to Mondiband the Guardian, and all that jazz. If a character finds out that someone is searching for their true name, said character needs to send an avatar to deal with that shit, leading to a possible entire campaign.

This has been a great series. I love my BECMI box sets. The whole concept of advancing levels and being promoted to the next box set each with a cover more epic then the last was very inspirational to me in the late 80's. The expanding perspective of the worId map with each box was also awesome. I never bothered with Wrath of the Immortals. My Immortal character totally redesigned Hollow World and then eventually battled through a lot of the entries from Gods, Demigods and Heroes. For me BECMI is my favorite edition but I do add lots of things from 1E, 2E and external sources. Mystara is still my favorite setting. My 3.5e and 5E books sit untouched and unused.

I've played Dungeons & Dragons since I was twelve, and I'm now almost forty. I started with 2nd Edition and then spent a great amount of time playing 3rd Edition (arguably not even real D&D), but when I found a rough used copy of Moldvay Basic and then borrowed a friend's Mentzer Basic and Expert rulebook, it was then that I felt I had found a way to play what felt like, "Real D&D."

I could see these rules being especially useful for running custom deities for OSR warlocks in a more crunchy interactive way

On the topic of true names, the Dresden Files series addresses it quite nicely. True names in the books change with the passage of time and are related to how the person sees themselves. They must be obtained from the individual in question before they can be passed down further, and parts of true names are sometimes exchanged for favors or information among the immortals.

25:34 *50 years of a single campaign later* DM: “What do we do now?” Elder Immortal: “What do you mean? Now we can finally play the game.”

This is awesome. I love low-level D&D and probably always will, but I also love the idea of actual mechanics for becoming an immortal and interacting with one. Some people say it's bad to give Gods stats because then players will want to kill them, but come on! That's awesome! Sounds like a low-level initiate could easily function as a "local God" which even higher-level "expert" characters might be able to take on. Now that is totally something I could use in my games!

Box Set Rules: "The character needs the sponsorship of an immoral in order to begin their quest to become one themselves. " The First Immortal: "Am I a joke to you?"

“Well if you have the time you go for it”. Lol I completely lost it here!

Pretty good series. Can't wait for you to cover the Rules Cyclopaedia too

Aj pickett mentioned you in a live stream, and im glad he did. Good video.

The Immortals Box has been the only BECMI box that has never been released in german language, so we dediced to directly use the Wrath of the Immortal Rules instead back then. And the Wrath Campaign and the living history of the Known World the Almanacs continued afterwards was way better than playing an Olympean in 80ies New York anyway. (-;

I gotta say, this series is great. I've enjoyed every single video, and, together with Captcorajus' stuff, they have made me want to play BECMI so much! I've never been able to yet, since I started off with AD&D 2E...I'll just have to DM a campaign as soon as I end up getting all the Gazetteers I need. 😉

Very ambitious but I can see why it was probably the least used of the sets. I probably would have kept them to demi-god status, like Marvel's Thor-level of power. To remain relatable.

Well first off: I wish I'd learned about BECMI sooner, based solely on this box set. Imagine a game centered around a bunch of Level 5 heroes who accidentally stumble into Immortal-dom way too early - and the other Immortals say, "Okay _normally_ we don't let noobs in, but we have a problem that only lower-end heroes are able to handle due to the fact that you won't be noticed. So if you help us, we'll let you keep the Immortal status for as long as you're helping us out. If you succeed, we'll bring you back home, and we'll keep a seat warm for you if you can get to a high-enough level of skill and notoriety to _actually_ join us. Sound good?" Two: I am more convinced than ever that you could use your voice for audio books as a side hustle, if not a living.

With regards to truenames. They don't need to be explicitly defined. They are given to the head of a pantheon to ensure they would not move against the authority of the pantheon head. This would be a precondition of joining. Also as Immortals go up in rank, and gain more Truenames, the control over the members of their pantheon diminishes accordingly. Which hs how you can get misenthropes like Loki. Odin can physically stop him, when he is in his presence, but cannot stop him from scheming out of hs presence because he only has one of his truenames. Also the Hierarch of the Sphere would need to know the True name of the immortal to elevate them to the new rank. Ensureing Immortals would not move against the Full Hierarch of their Sphere. Once again, a great review.

Thanks for this whole series on the BECMI boxed sets. It brought back good memories of my early role playing days in the late 1980s and introduced me to a set (Immortals) which I never knew existed.

Interesting presentation of the rules... many thanks.

Re: true names… in the Dresden Files immortal beings would bargain with each other extracting favors for knowledge of their true names. Need help moving through a hostile plane? Exchange one piece of your true name for safe passage.

I wonder if anyone in the world honestly was able to get a character to max immortal then “prestiged” and leveled back up to max immortal. I have doubts.

Many bought it, not many used it and most ignored Wrath, given the lateness of it's release.

Thank you for this. :) Now, about that Weapon Mastery video? ;)

lmao i just imagine someone does a prestige and starts back at lvl1 and makes there way back immortal+ to finally talk to the old great ones, which they respond thru an answering machine that is finally accessible, telling them to become a old great one they must sleep in the Bed of infinite comfort which they must create and take the ultimate nap of eternity. then after one eternity they wake up groggy and amnesiac. there is nothing the multiverse has ended, it it complete darkness and nothing, but not knowing this instinctively they open a metaphorical curtain which creates the entirety of the multi-verse with the beginning and end of time static in its entirety, the beginning and end, then they sit in the chair of infinite satisfaction and watch some tv with a bottomless mug of everything and a plate of every flavor, as any Great Old One should.

Never gotten anywhere remotely close to playing this set lol. Interesting vid, and an enjoyable series overall👍🏻

I missed out on these rules when they came out. After watching this series I'm really kind of interested in trying out BECMI again. I realized a long time ago that most D&D games (and clones) stop around levels 5-7 but it's really nice to know the game system itself isn't what's going to kneecap your game later on. Might interest viewers of this video to know that the very first product Wizards of the Coast put out was The Primal Order (its product code is WOC0001). I got a copy of it I think in the late 90's. It contains a system for adding power points and divinity to any game system along with some rules for how that can work. It had translations for 20 different systems of the time (at least a third of which are still going today) but I expected AD&D to be in there and it wasn't. I always assumed they were afraid of TSR suing them but I guess it was really because a better system was already in play. And I think it may have been the inspiration for their book in the first place.

Thank you so much for reviewing the Immortal set. It's the only box set that wasn't released in my country/language so i never got it and just heard stuff about "becoming a god" etc. Very interesting to see what's behind level 36!

Great work. Thanks a lot for this trip down nostalgia avenue 😉

This is where my group and I stepped away from BECMI back in the 80's ....

I tend to think of the Immortals set as D&D supers.

I couldn't agree with you more, Berserker! Thank you so much for your work on bringing these vintage products back into the limelight. I have all these sets but never got to explore the Gold Box's material. I really appreciate your assessment if it and the other BECMI core sets.

I never really run a Immortals campaign. I use the Rules Cyclopedia, and if a player succeeds in their quest to become an Immortal, they more or less become an NPC. My players and I feel the quests to become Immortal are actually more fun than actually playing as one. I did have one character of mine become Immortal. She was a member of the Plateau Tribes that are based on American Indian and First People(she was part of the coastal tribe that are like the Induit). After she succeeded, she became one of their many Hero Gods and was retired as a PC.

Great video. Cool to see some love for the Immortal rules.

I think true name is a good mechanic however i think you would need to have the immortal swear in his true name at a formal gathering of some of his peers as a form of checks and balances in the case he goes rogue. I think it could make for some Olympian style drama.

Been waiting on this one! Settles in to listen. : )

Great deep dive on the Immortal set, Berserker 🤘 Late response, as I haven't had a chance to watch much lately. Will you be going into different mechanics introduced in the BECMI series as well, and how they could be retroactively introduced to starting characters and game play? Most people have this weird perception that BECMI is a basic version of d&d, not understanding that it was released in a way to gradually introduce new rules, mechanics, etc, as you played, then could use those rules from the start of a new character later on. I know you have pointed this out in your excellent series on the game, but maybe it's something to drive home? Just a thought. Great job, man. Keep up the good work 🤘

Great stuff as always!

So running a normal campaign isn't hard enough, now the dm has to figure out how to make a compelling story line when each player can have multiple instances of themselves in multiple locations simultaneously. A lot of those rules seem very cool but I'm not surprised they weren't played very much. Overall a great and very interesting series. I've heard a lot of people throw around BECMI and the other terms people use for this edition but none of it made any sense until now. I wonder though if the dm guide of Immortals or any other supplement helped a dm at all try to make adventures for immortals to do that actually helped.

I'm excited for your takes on RC and WotI... at least the crunchy first book, as the adventure and setting material are controversial and often seen as bad.

The old ones option feels like prestige mode frlm call of duty.

Huzzah

The original death by powerpoint

Systems sounds interesting. We actually got to these levels but didn’t have immortals so never played this. Would love to know if anyone did and how it went?

:)

Bought this right when it was released and purchased all the Immortal published adventures, but it just never clicked for us. Just too complex and free form for us. Still have my original books, though. And WOTI is, was, and will always be trash of the highest order. After all the cool stuff they introduced in the Gazetteers they go and destroy both the world and the established chronology? Simply unacceptable. I got the WOTI boxed set in the early 2000s on Ebay, but flipped it a few years ago. Still have all my gazetteers (full set) including the fan-made ones, though I never picked up the Champions of Mystara set.

This would be cool to use in 5E

Does anyone know if someone has recreated this for 5e?

You did a great job with this rules set with the way you break it down. Congratulations on another great video. As for me, this rules set just does nothing for me. But still you gave a good presentation I'm just not feeling it.

Very different indeed. Immortals was a almost completely different game. Plus the ridiculous math . Not a fan.🤷

So, nonsense is what it is. Noted.

Jeez, what a mess. Great overview, terrible system.

Is this AI speaking? If so it's crazy how human it sounds