If you thought AD&D was to complicated then Pathfinder is probably not your game. There are rules for everything. Or you could use it as a frame work and do your own thing with it.
I've looked at the Beginners Box and it looks like a good gateway - but a gateway into what? Is PF the streamlined system of the original, or is it the overly complicated madhouse of the latter?
I started playing PF with my own kids (and some of their friends). It is not a simple game. The setting is well done but could fit the description of "everything that is the least bit fantasy."
That being said, the rules while plentiful are also more uniform than prior editions. If they are too much you could stick with the beginner box and still have many hours of play.
You might want to look at full Pathfinder rules here, for free.
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Frogimus, check out Labyrinth Lord by Goblinoid Games. It's a clone of the Basic rules. The no-art version of the rule book is free.
There's also Basic Fantasy, but I'm not as familiar with that system.
Or Adventurer Conqueror King, which plays on the concept that the PCs will want to be ruling their own domains.
Personally, I'd start with Labryinth Lord.
I would agree that Pathfinder is no way as simple as Basic D&D was. I too started on Basic and moved to AD&D. We only switched over in 2000 when 3rd edition came out and have since moved to Pathfinder.
AD&D was more complicated than D&D (this is what we called Basic) but it is not nearly as structured as 3.5/Pathfinder is. I personally still like AD&D for the freedom it allows in not codifing every single action and movement.
I am not sure that you will be happy with Pathfinder if AD&D was too complicated. Now, they have gotten rid of charts and THAC0 and such and everything is a d20 roll against a certain number, such as Armor Class (AC) or Difficulty Check (DC).
Do you have any more details as to what exactly you are looking for in your D&D game?
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I would look into Castles and Crusades RPG, basically a throwback game to basic D&D.
Another option would be Microlite20 LINK. It is a beautifully stripped-down RPG that makes me think of Old School Basic with more intuitive rules and easier rules to understand.
Now my kids have found the Basic Rulebook and want to try it out. Unfortunately, this is all I still have of the original D&D (we won't count the stack of AD&D boat anchors).
Wow! Some really good feedback here. I appreciate the honesty in every reply.
From what I'm reading, I think I'd enjoy the Beginner Box, but not so much the Core Rules. That's a shame, because I like that Pathfinder has a large library of well written Campaigns and Modules, as well as a great community.
Since your original question was in the context of your kids trying it out, you might want to ask yourself what they will enjoy most. Obviously they won't have a good time if you are not, but my 11-year old son loves the complexity and system mastery aspect of the full Pathfinder rules. He can go on for hours about the relative merits of great swords, much to the annoyance of his mother :)
Just because PF has more rules than the old D&D, it does not mean you have to use them all.
You could for example only use the rules for battle and do the rest of the adventures through RP if that is more your style.
Or only use the most common skills (For example Perception and Stealth) and RP the rest.
By restricting more complex classes you can also make 1 page character sheets. A fighter or barbarian does not have any spells and only few abilities which makes 1 page more than enough to note all his stuff down.
Consider a Sorcerer instead of Wizard and an Oracle instead of a Cleric as they have less spells to keep track of.
With a few choices you can reduce PF to a level of your liking. It may be a bit of work though sorting through the material and finding the stuff you want to keep and the stuff you want to leave out.
PF and 3e will probably be too fiddly for you. I started with AD&D 2e and welcomed 3E for even more options of PC customization, more products and more comprehensive rules.
Check out the retro clones and OSR in general (Old School Rennaissance). 3rd Edition rules went open source and several people rebuilt older D&D rules from that. The genius is that you can publish rules, modules for those and it is being done.
Google:
Labyrinth Lord
Red Box Hack
Swords & Wizardry RPG
Old TSR stuff is also becoming available officialy in PDF form again on DrivethruRPG. Plus there's always eBay or Nobleknight Games.
P.S.: WotC also publishes a reprint of the OD&D wood grain box...
Also check out how the rules have changed over editions and a bit of history here.
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To further the discussion . . . .
I personally run a Castles & Crusades game for some young teenagers. It's mostly compatible with 3.x/Pathfinder, more like AD&D without all the tables. From this system I also run Basic/Labyrith Lord modules.
So, to introduce your kids, use LL. It's what you're familiar with, the rule book is free, and there's lots of support for it (including the original Basic modules from TSR available on pdf). If you want to expand to C&C, it's not a big leap system wise, but you'd need to spend some money on books and such.
Or stick with LL. There's an "Advanced Edition Companion" that mimics AD&D rules (haven't seen it yet, so can't comment on how good it is), and there's a growing comminity of "Old School" games and gamers that can point you in the right direction for more cool stuff.
That said, you could use the Pathfinder Beginner Box as is. There's at least one company producing modules for it (0one Games - that's 'zero-one'). Lots of cool fiddly bits, too.
The great news is that there are way more games available today, for all different play types and skill levels, than there were back in the early 80s. Heck, I came across "Hero Kids", which is an rpg for younger kids (mine can't read yet, so I've got time).
There's also a large online community that do reviews of all sorts of products, so pretty much any product you want to know about, you can find someone who has a review of it.
@Frogimus: ironically I've had the opposite impression of 3x/PF. I started off in basic/expert sets (blue and red), and then went on to AD&D. I found the same thing that you did with AD&D; so many rules and into 2e they added more. Plus, if for some reason you tried to handwave some the game became so bogged down in gray area you spent half your time rules lawyering.
Then in 3x I found feats streamlined a lot of gray areas and gave suggestions for rulings on others. Oh sure, skills became more complicated but for a while I just handwaved those in favor of "roleplay or roll a stat check" until I got the hang of using them. Overall though I found the rules a lot more "snapon" meaning I could customize a lot more and get back to the roleplaying.
Now in PF I find an even MORE streamlined bunch of "snapon" rules. I've created a whole homebrew, used variant races, reskinned monsters, and really had the freedom to customize my game as I've seen fit. My players show up at the table with 2 pieces of paper; a character sheet and the map.
As for running the game that's definitely in my wheelhouse. I know what you mean about the GM being a "bookeeper" in AD&D and a lot of that still exists with PF unfortunately, so in that respect you may lose out if you transition to the core rules. If you stick with the basic box however I'm sure you can still have a lot of fun.
I will say though that my duties as GM are a lot easier in PF than in 1e. I no longer manage everything as a lot of the rules are in the CRB and all my players have access to that at the table. Now that my group is a few sessions into it we've got the swing of advanced combat and spellcasting. As for charts and graphs and such those are more guidelines now in PF, like the Wealth By Level chart or the Settlement stat blocks. A lot of these are meant to give you some direction to craft your own stuff from.
But that's the thing; when I went off the beaten track in AD&D I always seemed to contradict some rule and trip over things with my players. It got so tangled with rules, charts and such that the game was all numbers. PF is STILL all numbers, I'm not going to lie to you, but there's a streamlined symmetry to the game that allows the GM to customize their game for what they want and leave out or modify the rest. At least, that's been my experience.
That said I too would still encourage you to give the PF Beginner Box a try. Its an awesome value for its price and a great intro to PF proper. Also the PF core rules are available online for free (d20pfsrd, paizo prd) so give them a read through. The PF Core Rulebook is available in PDF for $10.
The Open Game License breathed a fresh bit of life into D&D and you will find that there are lots of games derived from it available now. The new rules support supporte reverse engineering/ fiddling/customizing them yourself.
Also there are a lot of 3rd party publishers for 3e and PF that want to bring the great flavor of old school D&D into the new game.
And lots of people put lots of thought into analyzing old school D&D and more modern indie RPG thoughts. It's a wide RPG world out there...
Pathfinder is probably one of the most complex editions of D&D ever (it depends a bit on how you look at it). Basic D&D was simple, offered little choice in character creation, and got you started quickly. There's not a lot the system does for you, and it requires lots of GM calls. But that also means that the focus is on the story and personalities, rather than the rules and mechanics.
Pathfinder's character creation offers tons of options on top of tons of other options, and then you get another pile of options. Half of the discussions in the Advice section here are about how to build characters. And that is really all rules. People aren't putting a lot of discussion in interesting background stories here.
d20 (what Pathfinder is based on) is definitely more of a system than the ugly patchwork that AD&D2 was, but the feat selection puts quite a lot of focus on how you build your character, and Pathfinder cranks those options up to 11.
If you like the simplicity of Basic D&D, I think PF is about the opposite of what you're looking for. If you like tinkering with character creation options, it's pretty great.
If you want something reminiscent of Basic D&D, you could look at either the retroclones (Labyrinth Lord, Adventurer Conqueror King, OSRIC, Swords and Wizardry, or Lamentations of the Flame Princess (though the latter may not be very appropriate for kids)); or you could have a look at the D&D Next playtest material, which is still very much in flux, but it looks like it's doing a pretty good job of unifying the flexibility of d20 with the simplicity of Basic. Not much support for it yet, but that will come eventually.
Or you could have a look at Dungeon World, which uses a completely different "story game" system but does a very good job of emulating that classic D&D feel.
Would you like for your kids to love role-playing games the way you did? If so, does it matter what system (or even genre) it is? It is possible they will feel the same about Pahfinder that you did about that old blue book.
I think it might be worth a try at the Beginner Box. Maybe by the time we've completely explored the BB world, 1.) there will be more content for it (official or not), or 2.) I'll have an appreciation for PF that lets us delve into the Core.
The BB world is the same as the PF core world: Golarion.
Paizo will probably not produce material which explicitly support BB rules, but you can play many core modules with BB rules. BB is basically a very well presented version of the Core rules with some reduced options (only a few classes, races, spells, feats , rules subsystems and only up to level 5) and some iconic options prechosen.
Paizo provides some addons here, fans provide
more BB rules (more races, classes) for BB here and 0one games provides some adventures: basic path iirc.
That's a fair question. My daughter enjoys story telling and would eat up the RP side of the game. She plays tabletop games with me (Infinity, Hordes, Dust, Blitzkrieg Commander, etc) and handles herself very well for an 11-yo. My son doesn't like any game that requires measuring, consulting charts and rules, or aught else that interrupts the gameplay.
My 10 year old daughter was originally attracted to the game because of its similarities to the fantasy books that she was devouring. I was surprised when her voracious reading was suddenly directed toward rules compendiums once she played Pathfinder. She loves dwelling over the Bestiaries in particular.
My kids and their friends were much more familiar with computer RPGs and MMOs before they tried Pathfinder. Once they played the game, they sought out the rule books (and online discussions) the same way they gobble up video game guides and strategy documents.
I will just like to say that complicated rules do not preclude good roleplaying, or elaborate backgrounds. I had run 3.0 sessions that had barely any dice rolling and no chart searching.
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As someone who read the Basic D&D box sets voraciously as a kid and who now teaches role playing games (specifically Pathfinder) to middle-school students, I actually recommend the Pathfinder Beginner Box to the OP, while not including certain parts of it that I say more on below.
I think that your dislike of complexity is dislike of a particular sort of complexity, since you specifically are comparing Basic D&D to Advanced D&D.
I see two concerns about complexity in your original post.
First, reference to a myriad number of charts. While it is true that Pathfinder has added many more options for character creation, the basic mechanic of resolving attacks and saving throws is simplified.
AD&D took the basic approach of Basic D&D -- creating a separate table to determine an action's outcome -- and applied it to many more and more-specific situations (i.e., item saving throws versus specific effects, different charts for resolving various unarmed-fighting attacks). However, D&D's approach from 3rd edition forward (including Pathfinder) is to make it so that you refer to a chart ONCE -- at character creation, or whenever you level-up -- to assign your character a static bonus to carry out an action, and a static number to defend against that same action. So to resolve a basic attack, you roll a d20, add your attack bonus, then see if it meets or exceeds the opponent's DC. The "work" comes in when you create your character sheet, or update it. Thereafter, you just look at the number on your sheet without needing to flip pages for a chart.
Saving throws are simplified in this fashion as well. Additionally, it's a bit easier to figure out which saving throw to apply in a situation, since it's now based on the manner of defense versus the manner of attack: Fortitude, Reflex, or Will. (Before 3rd edition, it was confusing which saving throw to use against a "Death" magic "Spell" that was cast out of a "Wand," for example.)
However, Pathfinder IS more complex in different ways than AD&D was. First, certain specific actions have rules for them that previously didn't. For example, if you play Pathfinder you might not want to use the Skill rules for Diplomacy (rolling a d20 vs. a number), and roleplay that instead. Or, you might want to have players talk through how to find and disable a trap instead of roll their Perception and Disable Device skills.
Also, if you go beyond the Beginner Box, you'll see that the full Core Rules have something called Combat Maneuvers -- rules for tripping, grappling, and so on, that by their inclusion imply that you CANNOT do those actions otherwise. A number of these and other things are systematized/reified in full Pathfinder that you might prefer to remain more freeform and talked-through in a gaming session.
Your second concern against AD&D's complexity, that "[e]verything that was in the least bit 'fantasy' related was crammed into the game," I'm a bit unclear on. Do you mean the addition of new classes like the barbarian and the ninja in Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures, respectively? Is it that you preferred a specific western/medieval flavor for the game, or that in AD&D there emerged a much larger variety of options that gave players and GMs more to wade through?
I have to say, though, that a number of my students LOVE the complexity that comes with having a large number of options for creating characters. They LOVE thinking about and experimenting with new character classes, like the ninja, the oracle, and the gunslinger, or races in the Advanced Race Guide like the orc and kitsune. I think that there would be a near consensus among my students that they wouldn't like Basic D&D, if they tried it out, because of the small number of character classes, that race = class, that every member of one class is too much like the next member of that class without the ability to specialize within that class, and how the game is relatively fatal for low-level characters.
I highly recommend at least checking out the Beginner Box and read the rules yourself! :) Otherwise, you might miss out on an experience that you could pretty-easily tailor to your own gaming preferences, by ruling out certain skills (and feats) that reify aspects of the game that you'd prefer as more freeform.
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Frogimus, your question inspired me to write an article/review on my blog, in which I most decidedly come down on the side of the Pathfinder Beginner Box. Of course, it is only my opinion. But reading it should help you form a more-considered judgment. I hope it helps, and enjoy! :D
Frogimus, your question inspired me to write an article/review on my blog, in which I most decidedly come down on the side of the Pathfinder Beginner Box. Of course, it is only my opinion. But reading it should help you form a more-considered judgment. I hope it helps, and enjoy! :DFirst off, I want to thank you for a well-thought and well-written discourse. That and the other replies I have received was exactly the kind of comparisons I was hoping to elicit but feared I wouldn't since this is, after all, an internet forum.
I have ordered a physical BB and have purchased the PDF from here so I can begin reading and have an e-copy on my tablet. It is much better than I had hoped. Visually engaging and well planned, it should hold their attention. BTW, whoever did the art on the Wizard must know Larry Elmore pretty well since he looks exactly like him other than hair length.
Since you've made a transition from BB to Core with kids in the same age group, do you have a written plan you used? Or is the gap between BB and Core not so large?
I'm glad you found it helpful! Yes, the BB is a great primer. If you look at the history of posts my blog, it actually was the Beginner Box and the prospect of exposing Pathfinder to kids that got me excited to blog in the first place lol.
I plan to write more about transitioning to the Core rules, but I basically said the basic outline in that article: the kids ran ahead of me in terms of character options, and I had to catch up with them when it came to the rules! :) Attacks of Opportunity was the most immediate thing. Another thing that has come up is knowing the actions one has during a turn (1 standard action, 1 move action, 1 quick action, unlimited free actions). That is one place actually where a lot of Pathfinder's complexity comes in. Since I think there'd be interest, I think I'll do some "going to the full rules" articles as part of the series as well.