BECMI vs Rules Cyclopedia vs Castles & Crusades

[tankschmidt]

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.

 

[Betote]

Thanks a lot for your answers. I think I'll check out Labyrinth Lord and Castles & Crusades, and see which one has the right balance between simplicity and flashy stuff

I don't plan for anybody on that group to read through any rulebooks, mostly because they're mainly non-English readers (as you can figure by my profile and my awful grammar ). 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.

The simplicity issue is, mainly, because it'll be a game which I'll have to teach without anybody elese reading anything, so I'd prefer if it were something I could teach in no more than 10 minutes.

And, as I am abusing your kindness here, what would you say it'd be a good starting adventure? I'm thinking about a conversion of NG's Crucible of Freya, maybe tied with Temple of Elemental Evil. Any other suggestion?

 

[Geron Raveneye]

If you have Crucible of Freya and plan to use it, maybe get the free The Wizard's Amulet as an introductionary adventure. And if you want some dungeon crawling afterwards, I can recommend looking for Tomb of Abysthor afterwards, as that is set in the general vincinity of Fairhill, and even has a few connections to it...and is a nice dungeon crawl, too. Of course, the Temple is an everlasting classic.

Got to say, in the case of that kind of cross-conversion, I'd recommend C&C over the classic D&D. Less problematic to convert 3E stuff to C&C, really.

 

[Tashtego]

I'd simply opt for C&C, mainly because it has the d20 roll high mechanic and the number you roll in combat is the AC you hit (which was always the issue I had with BECMI, despite my collection of Basic modules and the RC.) I found C&C a system easy to teach new players to.

There's a few free adventures for it here:
http://www.trolllord.com/newsite/downloads/pdfs/knight.pdf
http://www.trolllord.com/newsite/downloads/pdfs/cclion.pdf

 

[Goblinoid Games]

Thanks a lot for your answers. I think I'll check out Labyrinth Lord and Castles & Crusades, and see which one has the right balance between simplicity and flashy stuff

You'll definitely find that Labyrinth Lord is simple. I like advanced games too, but what I like most about LL is that you can focus on the actual game play without too much extraneous detail. You can be just an "elf" or just a "halfling" and get on with killing orcs in the dungeon.

If you like science fantasy, we have another game finishing playtest that is based on the rules from LL, but is reworked in the style of old-school science fantasy games. It will have a conversion for running a mixed game from low to high level with Labyrinth Lord.

So, between my support and support by other publishers Labyrinth Lord is looking to be in pretty good shape through this year. From what I can tell, Labyrinth Lord is gaining players all the time. In fact I just attended a local convention where someone else ran a game, so of course I had to join in!

 

[S'mon]

You can flip ACs in BECMI/RC/LL etc and make them ascending very easily; the Basic Fantasy RPG for one does this and is worth checking out - see: http://www.basicfantasy.org/

For simplicity I'd go for Moldvay B/X D&D or one of its retro clones, Basic Fantasy or Labyrinth Lord. Do give max hp at 1st level though - and I recommend death at -10 hp instead of 0 hp.

 

[S'mon]

If you like science fantasy, we have another game finishing playtest that is based on the rules from LL, but is reworked in the style of old-school science fantasy games.

Hmm, sounds fascinating, and something I've been looking for for years!

 

[JoseFreitas]

There are many good options for low level adventures. Crucible of Freya is good, but I would recommend the tie-in to Temple of Elemental Evil to come in at a slightly later moment (ie. levels 3-6), in my experience the potential adventure in Hommlet and Nulb exhausts itself a bit before the PCs are ready to tackle the Temple. Unless you're less stingy with xps than I am !

In any case, you must go here:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/downloads

Scroll down to Secret of Bone Hill. Despite the fact it's nominally set in an island, it can be dropped in any place since it's little more than a 10-20 mile area with a city and some wilderness, and even a (smallish) dungeon. It makes an excellent base of adventure and I'm sure it would mesh well with Crucible and Temple. Plus it's free! There's actually plenty of great stuff in there.

Some of the old D&D modules are among the best, Night's Dark Terror in particular would be a great campaign for a party of lower level PCs. C&C has some nice products too. Castle Zagyg: Dark Chateau, a low level introductory adventure can be refitted to almost any campaign with ridiculous ease.

[edit: I just saw that they had the original version of Palace of the Silver Princess for download too. This is a low level adventure that's reasonably good, too. Change some of the monsters, they're weirdish, for something more challenging.]

 

[kensanata]

If you have Crucible of Freya and plan to use it, maybe get the free The Wizard's Amulet as an introductionary adventure.

I'd advise against the Wizard's Amulet. It's nothing but two or three encounters on the road to Fairhill and as such not very interesting. Perhaps you can take the background story leading to Crucible of Freya, establishing one of the party as the leader, hinting at Eralion, and use the basic idea of Vortigern and zombies at the farmhouse to create a cool first encounter. I tried to run it as written with newbies that didn't know roleplaying games at all, and it didn't work out.

 

[tankschmidt]

I'd simply opt for C&C, mainly because it has the d20 roll high mechanic and the number you roll in combat is the AC you hit (which was always the issue I had with BECMI, despite my collection of Basic modules and the RC.) I found C&C a system easy to teach new players to.

There's a few free adventures for it here:
http://www.trolllord.com/newsite/downloads/pdfs/knight.pdf
http://www.trolllord.com/newsite/downloads/pdfs/cclion.pdf

Those are both excellent suggestions for launching a C&C campaign. Personally, I would start (and have started) a campaign with the Beacon of Enon Tor, available here: tower.newcenturycomputers.net/temp/beacon.pdf

It's a short expedition to a wizard's tower that will probably involve only one session. Then launching into something like Rising Knight (linked by Tashtego) will provide you with a great campaign location. Rising Knight is continued by the A series of adventures: five adventures in total with a couple mini-quests thrown in as well.