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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Korgoth" data-source="post: 5301989" data-attributes="member: 49613">My first box was the Moldvay magenta box with the awesome (still my favorite piece of fantasy art) Erol Otus green dragon cover. That (due also to the interiors) will always be the "Erol Otus edition" to me, and it really shapes what I find interesting and cool in fantasy. Weird. Mercenary explorers in a fantasy / sci-fi nightmare world delving ever further.The Mentzer red box (Elmore cover) was the one that, as a youth, I really "got" in terms of how to play and run the game. The solo adventures put you right into it... "this is how a D&D adventure actually plays" was the feeling you got from it. First you're in a dungeon with Aleena going up against Bargle and the undead. Then you do a second solo in which you explore the rest of that dungeon, complete with a secret door, a riddle puzzle, a rust monster, goblins, undead, you name it! And you learn the fundamentals of mapping as well.That's what it did right: fundamentals. There were actually some holes in the rules (no rule for natural healing was ever included). But it felt polished and it gave you a good sense of how to do the basic things. I think anybody of the appropriate age and decent intelligence could sit down with those materials and get up to speed quickly. The DM materials included a sample dungeon that you could expand, and it also had a lot going on in it and showed you how you were supposed to be writing these things up.The Elmore art gave an interesting vibe to the series. It was heroic and upbeat. Whereas Otus is eerie and phantasmagorical (and I appreciate him all the more in my adulthood), the Elmore art really caught the spirit of heroic / epic fantasy. It was very romantic in nature.While I actually prefer the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh B/X series (magenta and cyan) both aesthetically and as a tighter game, the Mentzer series (red, blue, green, black, gold) was powerful. An heroic / epic feel, an epic scope (36th level plus Immortals) and an absolute first rate introductory regime make it a true classic of the genre. I think people's love of the red box reflects that, especially in its introductory materials which really held your hand while being engrossing at the same time.Plus I'm sure my teenage hormones were in love with practically every woman Elmore ever drew.</blockquote>

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