Ok...
Now I've read and re-read the package a few more times, and start feeling a bit more optimistic.
Here's the thing: I'll be going to some holiday resort for the xmas week with friends, and they've asked me to run a D&D adventure because they want to know what the game is about. This is not the same group of friends which I've played before, and except one person, everybody else have NEVER played a RPG and some don't even know yet what a RPG is about! They are less than casual player, they are practically clueless.
First I thought I was going to run a BECMI game, since the characters are super-simple, but then it might be more difficult for me, and I fear that the math and tables for everything will look too boring for these players.
Thus I decided to try 5e. But I'm trying to simplify the characters, so here's my plan about what to use for this game:
Races:
NO. As odd as it sounds, we don't really need mechanical differences. I'm going to tell them that they can be a human, elf, dwarf or halfling, but the difference is only in the look and the culture. (I am not yet 100% sure of this, I might still give Low-Light Vision and maybe toss in ONE additional ability: Listen&Spot for elves, bonuses vs poison for dwarves, 1 reroll/day for halflings, and +2 to one score for humans). Nothing else.
Classes:
YES. No change, all features, but obviously we play 1-st level PCs, and I really don't think we'll get very far, thus I removed everything in the class description that relates to after level 3. Fighter, Cleric, Rogue and Wizard only.
Class features:
LIMITED. I will probably reduce the number of Fighting Styles, Rogue Schemes, Cleric Deities and Wizard Traditions available, keeping only the most "iconic" ones. I am open to suggestions here.
Feats and Specialties:
NO. In a normal game, they would be very nice and not very complicated, but I'm skimming everything and these are the easiest to drop out.
Skills:
YES, because the Rogue class depends on them so you cannot really drop them out of the game.
Backgrounds:
LIMITED, because once you have skills, backgrounds actually make them easier to choose. I am not sure if I should leave the Traits... most likely we'll play a dungeon crawl, so the Traits won't be used much, which on one hand means I could just remove them, on the other hand they could be left there harmlessly. I will definitely reduce the number of backgrounds presented however.
Rules:
LIMITED. I am going to try and present only the very basic before we start, basically I'll hand out not more than 10 pages for reference and prior reading. I've slimmed down to 1 page for abilities, 1 page for skills, 2 pages for exploration, 3 pages for combat, 1 page for magic.
I hope we can handle all this... wish me luck.