tankschmidt
Explorer
Betote said:What I'm looking for is, mainly, the simplest form of D&D for some folks who have played and enjoyed HeroQuest and the latest D&D boardgame. What're your suggestions?
Thanks in advance
There have been a lot of good suggestions in this thread. My two cents is this: the RC is challenging to start with. There's a lot of material in there and not a lot of context for people who are not familiar with D&D. There's too much emphasis on high-level play for a beginner, and the treasure tables are not well-balanced for low-level hoards. There are some balance problems here and there (the mystic for example is ridiculously unbalanced), but you can clean a lot of that up with some work. Aaron Oliver wrote a companion document (available here: http://web.newsguy.com/a_doom/RCerrata), which does some of that leg work for you. That said, I think the book is excellent - a fitting culmination of the best product line TSR ever produced. If you want to go the way of the RC, start off with either Moldvay Basic, Mentzer Basic, the 1991 black box set, or Labyrinth Lord. Then once everyone reaches level 3-5, launch into the RC in its full glory.
If you are a unified-mechanic guy, C&C is a great game as well. They have a print magazine, and they are constantly putting out new adventures and supplements. The rules are much simpler than the RC (with all its weapon specialization, shield weapons, general skills, and wrestling ratings), perhaps as simple as basic D&D alone. The nicest thing about C&C is if you're not a stickler for details, you can play any adventure from any D&D edition (or even Hackmaster) with on-the-fly conversion. It's easy to find the books for cheap, so you can play with something physical in front of you. C&C has a strong AD&D flavor, so if you are more of a classic D&D guy, that might turn you off a little.
As for 1974 OD&D, it's a beautiful system if you don't mind putting the work into figuring out what you want some of those rules to mean, but I wouldn't recommend it for beginners unless you yourself are very comfortable with what you want it to be.
I guess my recommendation is this: if you want honest-to-goodness classic D&D, start with LL, and see where it takes you. If you're an AD&D guy in the mood for a simple game, C&C will fit you like a glove.
). In Spain, it's almost impossible to get your hands on a Spanish basic D&D which, IIRC, has been out of print for almost 15 years. It's a group with whom I've already played eurogames (they never say "no" to a game of Catan 
) and some rpg-ish stuff like Zombies!!! or HeroQuest. With HQ, I began creating new characters, monsters and plots, and they had a blast, so I guess they'd enjoy a good, old-fashioned dungeon crawl.
