BTW:

Quote from: jrientsOther adventuring parties are rare in my games.  They usually are meant to be major rivals of the PCs, like Belloc to Doctor Jones.

Exactly.

Yeah, when I say Basic/Expert I mean the Moldvay edit of the Basic Rules and the Cook/Marsh Expert set.  Those two books are the only version of the game to get only a Basic rulebook and an Expert rulebook.  The previous Basic Rules edited by Holmes had no Expert rules.  (Holmes directs players to AD&D for further info.)  And Mentzer's 1983 edition is often called Basic/Expert/Companion/Masters/Immortals, often abbreviated to BECMI.  the Rules Cyclopedia is a compilation and slight re-working of BECMI.

The differences in the core rules from Basic/Expert to BECMI to the RC are niggling and of no concern to most players.  The optional rules that Mentzer introduces (skills & weapon specialization, some proto-prestige classes) take the game into new places though.

Quote from: Sosthenes... BTW, is the adventure pack worth buying? Are the adventures purely introductory, or could you use some of the for further episodes?

I think it's worth getting.  Most of the adventures are aimed for levels 1-2, although they give 'scaling' recommendations for level 3, and some for levels 4-5.

Since I don't run 3.5, I'm not planning on using them 'as is' in any case -- rather, I plan on tweaking them, and using them for my own campaign (I'm running True20 right now).  

There are plenty of cool ideas in the book IMO (and some mediocre ones, of course).  I like short adventures.