I have a friend who has just started playing D&D who has 3 children (ages 13, 9, and who all want to play D&D with her. She has very little experience with the game and I was going to give her a copy of a beginner's version of the game.

Now, I was going to give her a copy of the Basic D&D and Expert D&D books. However, I'd like to hear people's opinions on this because I considered the D&D 5E Basic download, but decided against it because it is not very conducive for self-teaching and I wanted that to be a large aspect of this.

So tell me if I am making a good choice here and let me know why it is or is not a good choice.

I think you want to get her off on the right foot with a 'teach her to fish' design, not a 'give her a fish' design. Something that makes it easy to create and run her own adventures. 5e as currently constituted does not do that, though the Starter Set is decent for a 10 session mini-campaign.

For playing with my son (7) we have found, especially as he moves into GMing himself, that the best thing is the Pathfinder Beginner Box plus the pages on dungeon creation from Moldvay Basic - especially page 52 on room contents & treasure. The PBB goes levels 1-5 like the 5e Starter Set, but unlike the SS is a complete game with full rules for creating PCs, creating adventures, great encounter tables etc. Bill uses the map tiles from Descent to create a dungeon, stocks it with the Moldvay and PBB tables, and it works really well. You can equally draw out dungeons on the flipmat in the PBB, or just on sketch paper. So that's my recommendation.

If you won't consider the PBB, then I would recommend Moldvay Basic, with Cook/Marsh Expert later, but I recommend her house-ruling starting hit points for less lethality. I've been using 'hit die roll + full CON attribute' for starting hp in Labyrinth Lord recently, and that works extremely well.

D&D 5e being the extant official, in-print version of D&D, I'd be somewhat inclined to go with 5e Basic. And I say this as a huge B/X and BECMI/RC fan.

There's the ease of finding other players, and the aesthetics which hew closer to the pop culture they're being exposed to, and all sorts of not immediately game-table-relevant circumstances that I think weigh the decision in favor of 5e.

In any case, if they find 5e too complicated, I'd pull out a copy of LL. And if they like 5e, still, I might hand them a copy of LL before even handing them the 5e PHB/MM/DMG, because I'm a bad person.

BX is still for sale on the WOTC shop as PDFs so at least it and some of the modules from it and BECMI  are still availible in that format.

Personally Id go with BX for its absolute ease of getting into and about zero pressure on having uber stats or any of the baggage we have accumilated up to 5e.

5e as it stands is hard to say if its going to be totally viable on the levels of BX and AD&D. Both had about all the system requirements to run as far as you wanted. Once we know just how robust or anemic the DMG is we will have a better idea.

One thing to keep in mind is that BX is incomplete without Keep on the Borderlands and to a lesser degree Isle of Dread as both are extensions of the rules. Keep has more DMing pointers and Isle has the world map and some base info on each kingdom. The rest was left up to the PCs to flesh out.

I don't think there is any better D&D for beginners than B/X if you include learning to DM and construct adventures and a game world.

The Pathfinder beginner box is also a great tool to teach players but B/X wins on DM instruction.

My vote would be for BX.  Just a little less involved than 5th to me.  If you did go the 5th route, I'd say start them off with the starter box.

I concur with B/X, the D&D 5e Basic may be a good substitute when they get to Version 1 but right now they function more as a functional preview and try it before you buy product.

5e Starter set is very good as a beginner set for 5e.  That said, for younger new players?  IMO you can't beat Mentzers Basic.  The walk thru adventure (damn you Bargle!) does an excellent job teaching how the D&D game works.

The 5E rules in the Starter Set are only marginally more complex than B/X, and the adventure included is good for at least a half-dozen sessions. I wouldn't assume someone who is raising three young kids has the time or inclination to make up her own adventures right off the hop.

Quote from: Haffrung;801672The 5E rules in the Starter Set are only marginally more complex than B/X, and the adventure included is good for at least a half-dozen sessions. I wouldn't assume someone who is raising three young kids has the time or inclination to make up her own adventures right off the hop.

That true but the issue is not the complexity but the advice on "How to do things" when getting started. For now B/X has better material something that I expect will change when the Version 1 documents are released for Basic D&D.

B/X. I'm a fan of 5E (It's what I currently use for my own game), but B/X is a far better game for beginners.

I was kinda shocked by how kid/noob-unfriendly the dense 5E starter box set was. The ball on that one was dropped hard at some point.

Does it have to be D&D or is that just the general term the kids are using for RPGs? There are easier RPG to jump into than D&D if no one knows or cares about the brand name.
If it had to be some form of actual D&D I'd probably go with Labyrinth Lord... cheap and easy with lots of support.

I recommend the experience of off-loading the player workload to behind the GM screen and let the players imagine. So less rules niggling and more interaction with the imagined space. If I remember correctly dan buter, jibba jabba, and or daztur has had considerable success this way with new students young and old.

Given that, I would probably recommend either B/X or 5e Starter set (it's actually very solid!).

Of the two... depends. Some people resent getting old products that have no current relevance to the market (thanks for the Laser Disc player and rare discs...). But others appreciate the content and the medium more than being mechanically current for new product.

As for ease of play for children, and her GM preparation, probably B/X. It"s just more 'scribble it up and let's go!' than 5e. WotC has made a nod to older games, but it is still WotC in execution. If you want her to savor that liminal dream-space of childlike wonder before the competitive drive of legalistic rules interpretation pillow-faces it, I'd have to recommend B/X.

Quote from: Simlasa;801687Does it have to be D&D or is that just the general term the kids are using for RPGs? There are easier RPG to jump into than D&D if no one knows or cares about the brand name.
If it had to be some form of actual D&D I'd probably go with Labyrinth Lord... cheap and easy with lots of support.

If I had an extra copy, I would give her the d6 Star Wars Introductory Adventure Game. I consider it to be the best intro RPG ever written.

I recently ran B/X D&D for my 5 and 7 year old daughters. Though it is simpler than D&D5e and great because of that, I found that the underlying assumptions in D&D that I take for granted kept clashing with their concepts of fantasy based on various current media (and plenty of older media TBH). Clerics with no magic at level 1, wizards with just 1 spell and a rather limited spell list proved underwhelming, thieves who weren't very competent. It was also deadlier than I would have liked.

D&D5e on the other hand is likely cleave closer to a young person's conception of fantasy IMO. Especially if the players are in their early teens.