Be Fair

The Most Important Rule!

The Basic Rules edited by Frank Mentzer remain THE outstanding introductory game, at least this is so in my estimation. No product that I have encountered does the "introduction" job as well when it comes to explaining the concepts of adventure gaming, the role of playing a character in the game, and what a referee/DM/Gamemaster does to setup, facilitate and oversee a game session and campaign play. The Red Box Basic accomplishes all this in a brief and accessible manner in two thin booklets - in which the author also manages to include a solo adventure and a starter dungeon for use by the novice DM to run their friends or family through.

The Red Box is packed with good advice from "Be Fair" as the guiding principal to running/playing the game to "play monsters as they would behave". Advice that today can be found elsewhere, but I first encountered it reading the Red Box text. Looking back on the boxed set today, I can see many examples of how the Red Box has influenced the hobby going forward.

An example of just how concise and easy to use the basic rules as presented in Red Box are is to be found when looking at the following "Order of Events" tables. 

By simply following the above tables, the aspiring DM can "manage" play at the table in a logical and organized manner. Mr. Mentzer has gone a long way toward demystifying some of the more obtuse and difficult to grasp concepts and procedures that once bewildered new players and hindered accessibility. I argue that the growth of today's widespread popularity of the tabletop role-playing hobby owes a great deal of credit to Red Box and to the generation of gamers who first delved into tabletop adventure following the guiding text of Mr. Mentzer's Basic. We build upon what came before.