The classic 1981 edition of the D&D Expert Rulebook is now available to own in fresh print form once again, now that it’s available via print on demand option at the Dungeon Masters Guild website. It had long been available there as a legal PDF download ($4.99).
The Dungeons & Dragons Expert Rules by David “Zeb” Cook were released simultaneously by TSR in 1981 alongside the second edition Basic Rules by Tom Moldvay, itself the first standalone edition of what became known as “Basic D&D.” It expanded on the Basic game to allow leveling up to levels 4-14. (This is different from the first D&D Basic Set, introduced in 1977 and written by J. Eric Holmes — after which TSR pivoted more to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or AD&D for a time. The original D&D rules came out in 1974 — and the game is now on the cusp of celebrating its golden 50th anniversary with a new edition in 2024.)
A softcover, standard color reproduction of the Expert Rulebook is currently priced at $8.86, not including shipping; the price currently is the same for the print + PDF bundle.
This release was notable for introducing the “Known World” of Mystara, complete with hexagonal maps and a Grand Duchy of Karameikos gazetteer, and taking players outside the simple subterranean “dungeon crawl” environment of the Basic set or “underworld” to the “wilderness” outside, introducing rules specific to travel in the great outdoors and tips for running expansive wilderness campaigns. This world adapted Lawrence Schick’s and Moldvay’s shared-world D&D campaign to give TSR and its customers a different world from Gary Gygax’s Greyhawk campaign setting they had known since the early 1970s.
The Expert-level Basic D&D wilderness adventure module X1 The Isle of Dread is also available separately, as a PDF or softcover book or both.
The Basic Set rulebook by Moldvay is, so far as of this post time, only available as a PDF.
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