If you were going to expose people to the D&D fantasy genre, and you wanted to show it in all of its glory; what system, edition, setting, options, adventures, etc. would you run?

Quote from: Razor 007;1142150If you were going to expose people to the D&D fantasy genre, and you wanted to show it in all of its glory; what system, edition, setting, options, adventures, etc. would you run?

The system I'm writing; because if I didn't believe it was the best possible system why the heck would I be spending all this time actually writing and testing it.

I don't know about best, but for people that haven't seen it all, a dungeon using the Basic/Expert sets with lots of character deaths would be difficult to top.  It's not perfect, but it straight-forward to run and to understand, while getting to the core of the experience as rapidly as possible.

I did this with my son as his intro to RPGs. After some experimentation we settled on Mentzer Basic-Expert DnD; I used the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, a high fantasy tone (PC started as an M-U 4 riding a white dragon!), and a bunch of Basic Fantasy RPG adventures, as well as The Isle of Dread. Campaign ran for around 4 years with more players joining later. I screwed up re a couple of those players, but the basic idea was very sound.

3rd edition, cuz that's the one all the grognards hate, with all the bells and whistles right out of the gate: options everywhere! And extra feats to get even more options! Multi-classing mandatory--but only good multi-class combinations to get the most power-builds possible! With all humanoid races available as PCs. No humans allowed! Drow-Tiefling/Vampire Cyborgs welcome!

In all fairness I don't even know WTF the most "pure" D&D fantasy genre experience is. I know I hated Basic D&D when I was introduced into the hobby and that most people who seem to think they know what the purest form of D&D is love it, so depending on what people mean by it, I may not really care about "pure" D&D fantasy. I also don't like any classic D&D fantasy settings other than Dragonlance, which I don't necessarily consider the "purest" form of D&D. I only like Dark Sun, Planescape and Spelljammer (and maybe Ravenloft, with some reservations), which are non-standard fantasy. I also like Mystara, though, so maybe that setting is "pure" D&D fantasy.

I wasn't being entirely sarcastic about 3rd edition, though. Despite all its flaws (and there are many) I still tend to think of it as the best edition of D&D ever made, at least in concept, though, the implementation sucks! I would revamp feats and make them useful, reduce "feat taxes" and eliminate feat requirements to attempt most actions. And I would place a level cap on skills (around 10 ranks or so) to mitigate the arms race to constantly max out skills and force characters to diversify. And also eliminate "class skills" to simplify skill progression, and perhaps replace it with a flat bonus (+2 perhaps) to class-related skills, but max skill ranks would be Level +2, max 10 (class bonus doesn't count towards max).

I would also make caster levels a universal feature all classes contribute to (kinda like BABs) to make multi-classed spell-casters more viable (levels in caster classes would still be necessary to access spell lists), but also improve non-caster classes to make them more viable compared to casters.

But, would that be "pure" D&D? IDK, probably not. But it'd be better than Basic.

So in summary*:
- Modified version of 3e
- Dark Sun, city of Tyr
- Everyone starts out with multiple characters at the arena fighting for their lives!
- Characters who survive get to be PCs
- King Kalak dies at the end and PCs get to run away to their freedom in the chaos and start out their adventures surviving in an unforgiving desert world.

*yeah, I didn't cover most of this in the post, but... long post

Dark Sun!!!

Dark Passages!

I would take the OSE Rules Tome and run B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. After that it's all custom campaign content.

Holmes or Moldvay Basic edition, with B1 or B2 module.

What's odd is I remember Holmes the most, and B2 the most. But B2 came with Moldvay and not Holmes, so I don't know why my memory tells me it was Holmes (blue cover) played with B2. Maybe that's just how we did it anyway? Though I remember B1 as well, and own both. I just thought I bought B1 separately later.

Edit - Ah, I see. It WAS B2 with Holmes. "printings six through eleven (1979–1982) featured the module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands instead". 1979 is about right.

And now I think I need to dig through my collection and read through Holmes Basic again. Boy did I play the crap out of that game when I was young.

Quote from: Mistwell;1142192Holmes or Moldvay Basic edition, with B1 or B2 module.

What's odd is I remember Holmes the most, and B2 the most. But B2 came with Moldvay and not Holmes, so I don't know why my memory tells me it was Holmes (blue cover) played with B2. Maybe that's just how we did it anyway? Though I remember B1 as well, and own both. I just thought I bought B1 separately later.

Edit - Ah, I see. It WAS B2 with Holmes. "printings six through eleven (1979–1982) featured the module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands instead". 1979 is about right.

And now I think I need to dig through my collection and read through Holmes Basic again. Boy did I play the crap out of that game when I was young.

I agree with this, but I'd use Mentzer because Red Box was my first game.

Quote from: Razor 007;1142150If you were going to expose people to the D&D fantasy genre, and you wanted to show it in all of its glory; what system, edition, setting, options, adventures, etc. would you run?

The fanciest looking 20-sided die is the setting. That's all most D&D players are interested in.

System: my modified Swords & Wizardry: White Box rules.
Setting: a homebrew
Adventures: short arc campaign with plenty of dungeoncrawls.

I never burden new players with rules.
I want them to get into the roleplaying ASAP.
And showcase the coolest part of being the DM is the freedom of creation and imagination.

I think it'd be Greyhawk and 1e. Mostly because it was sloppily defined, sandbox as hell, but had iconic things like Vecna, devils, demons, assassins, bards, paladins, druids, deck or many things and so on. It sort of really first defined a lot of what became standard D&D later.

I'd run 1e AD&D (and probably use Greyhawk). To me, that's the de facto standard for "this is Dungeons & Dragons."

Quote from: Spinachcat;1142210System: my modified Swords & Wizardry: White Box rules.
Setting: a homebrew
Adventures: short arc campaign with plenty of dungeoncrawls.

I never burden new players with rules.
I want them to get into the roleplaying ASAP.
And showcase the coolest part of being the DM is the freedom of creation and imagination.

I'm in this camp as well! And I love the OP's question, because it's verily the primary goal of my own homebrew rules -- all the essence, tropes, etc. of the canonical "D&D experience" distilled into super-simple game rules and fast character creation. About the same level of complexity and detail as S&W, plus a bit more uniformity a la B/X.