I grew up with the 1980 red boxed set, and have more recently introduced nephews and a couple of friends with the 3rd Ed Basic boxed sets (black dragon and blue dragon).
Minis, tiles, and pre-gen characters have great visual appeal and easy to start playing straight out of the box. I agree the rules need to be engaging to sustain continued play, but minis, tiles and pre-gens should not be dismissed.
There need to be rules for character generation and levelling up from 1-3. There need to be enough variety of spells and monsters to spur their imaginations and keep them playing beyond the first adventure.
To keep things simple, D&D Basic should contain limited options - four races, four classes, a narrow selection of weapons, skills, feats, spells, monsters etc, enough for 1-3 level play - but the rules should not be dumbed down. If Initiative is a bonus to a dice roll in 4th Ed, then it shouldn't be a static number in the Basic Set. Differences like this confused me teaching the game to others, because they didn't work the way I expected them to. If 4th Ed is as streamlined, easy to learn and fast to play as claimed, then there shouldn't really be any need to dumb anything down.
The Basic set needs to be complete enough that players aren't required to purchase all 3 core books as their next step. Maybe they want to purchase some low-level adventures to run their pre-gen characters through. Or maybe the DM wants to run an adventure using some new tiles and a booster pack of minis he just bought. Eventually they may purchase the PHB or MM, not necessarily in that order. But the point is, make it easy for them to add to the game, in any order they choose, not replace it.
Minis, tiles, and pre-gen characters have great visual appeal and easy to start playing straight out of the box. I agree the rules need to be engaging to sustain continued play, but minis, tiles and pre-gens should not be dismissed.
There need to be rules for character generation and levelling up from 1-3. There need to be enough variety of spells and monsters to spur their imaginations and keep them playing beyond the first adventure.
To keep things simple, D&D Basic should contain limited options - four races, four classes, a narrow selection of weapons, skills, feats, spells, monsters etc, enough for 1-3 level play - but the rules should not be dumbed down. If Initiative is a bonus to a dice roll in 4th Ed, then it shouldn't be a static number in the Basic Set. Differences like this confused me teaching the game to others, because they didn't work the way I expected them to. If 4th Ed is as streamlined, easy to learn and fast to play as claimed, then there shouldn't really be any need to dumb anything down.
The Basic set needs to be complete enough that players aren't required to purchase all 3 core books as their next step. Maybe they want to purchase some low-level adventures to run their pre-gen characters through. Or maybe the DM wants to run an adventure using some new tiles and a booster pack of minis he just bought. Eventually they may purchase the PHB or MM, not necessarily in that order. But the point is, make it easy for them to add to the game, in any order they choose, not replace it.
