D&D General Revisiting the Red Box.

[Basic Expert]

I am much more familiar with Moldvay Basic than Mentzer Basic, but my first gaming experience was with the dungeon in back of the Mentzer book. That's the game where the clerics used lightsabers since they weren't technically "edged weapons" and we had a whole session where we wandered around the empty dungeon as we had already killed everything and the DM didn't know he could repopulate it. Ahh, to be a ten-year old gamer again...

My impression on reading Mentzer after having played a ton of Moldvay that is was great at instruction, but lousy at reference. I couldn't locate any rules that I was looking for or find really anything in it. That might have changed with more study and familiarity, but it was a bit of a barrier.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

I believe Chaosium and Free League offer their own take on this approach with their boxed sets. So yes, it would work.

Ooh, what are they called? You have piqued my interest.