MSH is an awesome game. Personally, it's not hard for me to understand but there are just some annoyances that I have with it.

Quote from: RPGPundit;752601Commercial evidence suggests that the best starter set was the Mentzer red box.

I thought I saw somewhere that the Holmes basic set sold the most copies. Is that not so?

Quote from: Larsdangly;752685I thought I saw somewhere that the Holmes basic set sold the most copies. Is that not so?

Mmmm... maybe. Red Box/Black box sold a very large quantity as well, though. Holmes Basic is my favorite B/X set.

I've got no opinion on 'best' but I really like Chaosium's free quickstart for BRP. It's a bit gimped in that, BRP being a universal/generic core book, there's no specific call outs to fantasy or scifi (though there are 7 short genre specific adventures included).
The GURPS quickstart is also nice.

This question might get interesting given we now know 5e's full planned rollout.

There is a Star Wars introductory set for the old W.E.G. version that was nifty.

MERP had a starter set as well though if memory serves the system was a bit different than the boxed sets. I think I still have the MERP basic set on my shelf...hmm...will have to look when I get home.

BRP has a long history starting with a Basic RPG booklet that was meant as an introduction to fantasy/dark ages themed gaming. I think I got one in my CoC 1st. ed. boxed set.
Don't have that one anymore.

These all seemed to do the job though very stripped down.

Quote from: Larsdangly;752685I thought I saw somewhere that the Holmes basic set sold the most copies. Is that not so?

There is little to no hard information on this question, but from what is available: not even remotely close. You'll have to do some digging if you want specific numbers, but there's an interesting article on the Arcaeum that has numbers for Mentzer Basic in 1989 (six years after it was released!) that show something like ~1,000,000 units sold. If you dig up numbers for the early years, they're way higher. It's staggering, but it was released when D&D had become a fad, and was distributed so widely at retail that people have even reported buying it at the local hardware store (not as crazy as it sounds - I've seen M:tG show up in the same place). We also know it was in many of the major chains. The numbers suggested for Holmes in a single year are nowhere near this, and it had a way shorter lifespan. Even the revered Moldvay box isn't really within spitting distance (plus way shorter shelf life), though, to be fair, there doesn't appear to be any mainstream tabletop RPG product (that I know of) that has ever come near these numbers.

The Moldvay and Mentzner basic sets weren't starter sets. They were the first modules in standalone games. You couldn't play the full B/X game without them.

Holmes was a starter set. And not an especially well-designed one, as the OD&D books often weren't available where they were sold, and the AD&D books they alluded to weren't released for another 1-2 years.

Quote from: skofflox;752883There is a Star Wars introductory set for the old W.E.G. version that was nifty.

It's not bad. It uses the revised and expanded rules.

Quote from: skofflox;752883MERP had a starter set as well though if memory serves the system was a bit different than the boxed sets. I think I still have the MERP basic set on my shelf...hmm...will have to look when I get home.

You're probably thinking of the Lord of the Rings Adventure game. It was actually an entirely different and much lighter system, basically identical to the Tolkien Quest and Middle-Eart Quest Gamebooks. There were conversion notes for going between MERP and LotRAG, and many of the MERP 2nd edition supplements were statted for LotRAG, too. There was actually a starter box released for MERP, but it was just the standard rulebook with a module and some cardboard standups.

Quote from: Haffrung;752956The Moldvay and Mentzner basic sets weren't starter sets. They were the first modules in standalone games. You couldn't play the full B/X game without them.

While it's true that these were actually the start of standalone games, dismissing them as "starters" is disingenuous. An awful lot of people went from playing Basic D&D to AD&D. Just based on sales numbers alone, I am willing to bet that Mentzer players were probably the single biggest cohort to enter the hobby.

Quote from: Bobloblah;752960While it's true that these were actually the start of standalone games, dismissing them as "starters" is disingenuous. An awful lot of people went from playing Basic D&D to AD&D. Just based on sales numbers alone, I am willing to bet that Mentzer players were probably the single biggest cohort to enter the hobby.

No doubt you're right. But that wasn't part of any roll-out or marketing plan on the part of TSR. There was a huge demand for D&D out there, and people saw an affordable and simple version of the game packaged in a box so they bought it. And let's not pretend there wasn't any confusion about the relationship between B/X and AD&D, because there was (I couldn't figure out what ML was in the B/X module stat blocks).. So those sets helped grow the game in spite of TSR's design and marketing strategy, not because of it.

But WotC has no intention of designing a whole game, chopping it in half, and putting each half in a box to sell. Not when the three core book model has become so entrenched in the game. Dragon Age did use the B/X box set model, and it didn't exactly set the RPG world on fire (though I think it's a very good game).

To your point about Dragon Age, the only sales data I've seen suggest you might be mistaken, however, I don't know if that necessarily has anything to do with the format. I doubt it hurt.

Back to the B/X & BECMI split from AD&D, you're right that there was no doubt plenty of confusion, and TSR didn't set it up as an intentional marketing strategy, but that doesn't change the fact that it worked as one, in spite of the problems. No one here is suggesting they split D&D back into two games, but instead use the starter model, while correcting the problems that existed with the Basic/AD&D divide. Much like Paizo did.

Quote from: Haffrung;752956The Moldvay and Mentzner basic sets weren't starter sets. They were the first modules in standalone games. You couldn't play the full B/X game without them.

A set that doesn't become worthless when the next product hits the shelf doesn't mean that it does not function as a starter set. Unless of course your definition of starter means 'money that would have been better spent on an actual game'.

The first Dragon Age boxed set is a starter. It does a fine job of teaching rpg play to a newb without becoming worthless once box two was released.

Quote from: skofflox;752883There is a Star Wars introductory set for the old W.E.G. version that was nifty.

Yep, The Star Wars Introductory Adventure Game. It did the job pretty damn well, too.

Advanced Marvel Superheroes by FASA (the blue box).

Red box MERP (basically MERP Revised)

Either to Mold. or Metz. D&D sets.

And the Dragon Age box set is solid as well (though lacking rules for Grey Wardens in set 1 was... an interesting choice).