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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1254611" data-attributes="member: 151">More complex than earlier editions, no.  Not complex at all?  I'd argue that's a relative thing.  Is D&D really that complicated at it's core?  Not at all, I'd agree. But to a 10 year-old who's never played before?  All the necessary concepts to absorb is quite a bit, and it's intimidating.  The rules can be esoteric, even in 3E, where everything is relatively consistent across the board (an 18 stat gives you a +4 bonus, regardless....and there is no 18/00).  The fact that we have a rules forum, and that folks are still discussing rules ambiguities 3 years later (and I've seen plenty of discussions where people discover that something worked under 3.0 the same way as 3.5, but they missed it) means that there's plenty of room for confusion. You may say that you weren't confused by anything in 3.0 from the get-go, but many of us, who are long-time gamers, were.  AoOs took two sessions to really understand, and only then because some cat named Eric Noah had a cool website that explained them more clearly than the first printing did (wonder whatever happened to him?).  Things like Bull Rushes, grapple checks (especially with monsters with Improved grab or trip attacks) and dispel checks all are examples of where things start to get complicated.   And while you don't need all that right out of the box, the books show so many options over the space of 320 pages that it can be very intimidating.  Now add into that the fact that you're not ready to play, yet.  That novice DM has to either buy some modules or the Monster Manual, and unless you know how to run a game, you'll really need the DMG to learn how to run a game...or you may end up quitting before you've run more than a game or two. Why do I use 10 years-old as the baseline?  Because that's when almost everybody I've ever gamed with started, with the exception of my wife and my female players in high-school, who started a couple of years later.  And of those players both past and present, almost all of them started D&D with the Red Box, and then graduated to the AD&D tomes when they were ready.  3.5e is much less intimidating, I agree, but I still see a new Red Box as a great idea for the above and other reasons.</blockquote>

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