The new Essentials line is designed to make that really easy… for standard Generic Fantasy (which is 99% of D&D games anyways). It’s a streamlined selection of races and classes (all hearkening back to the late 70s).

The key selling point is that the Red Box Starter Kit is literally a COMPLETE Starter Kit, it contains everything you need to start playing with an entire group, for several weeks.

It has character creation, DM guidelines, combat rules…
But it also has a pre-written adventure PLUS heavy cardboard tokens for players and all necessary monsters PLUS preprinted battle maps of the areas in the adventure. Oh, and a set of dice.
This gives you all the STUFF you need to start playing. To advance past Level 2 (which the starter adventure takes you up to), you will need the Heroes book and DM Kit. (The DM kit comes with 2 more adventures, more monster tokens, and more maps on top of it all). The Monster Vault is also recommended (and comes with hundreds of more monster tokens).

This is a far cry from the old entry point for the game, which was the 3 core books… and then you had to find your own dice, make your own maps, supply your own minis or tokens and come up with your own adventures.

Overall, if you’re looking to play “classic” D&D with heroes, castles, dragons and treasure… Essentials is absolutely PERFECT for starting out. Best thing they’ve done in years.

DARK SUN is a bit tricky. The best way to look at it is that Dark Sun is an “Advanced Setting”. Unlike most other settings, it is not a typical swords and sorcery kind of settling. Magic is rare, clerics don’t exist, and psionics are common. This turns the standard D&D assumptions on their heads.

Players Handbook 3 includes Psionic classes, which are strongly recommended. In DS, psionics have almost completely replaced magic in the population – many native creatures are psionic as well – including things like unintelligent animals and PLANTS.

I’d recommend playing “vanilla” D&D first to get a handle on the rules and style before diving in to Dark Sun.

To get the most from Dark Sun, you would want Player Handbooks 1, 2 and 3, Monster Manual 1, Dungeon Masters Guide 1, the Dark Sun setting book, and the Dark Sun monster book. Which is a lot.

Honestly, Dark Sun is being marketed to experienced players only.

Essentials is being marketed to new players, as well as experienced ones interested in some of the new directions they’re going. It’s “vanilla” fantasy because, quite frankly, that’s what everyone wants.

The previous settings released are still fairly vanilla. Forgotten Realms is PURE vanilla. Eberron is French Vanilla… it’s still the same swords and sorcery, but with some action-adventure and pulp “theme” baked in.

Dark Sun is just completely different.

First, let me say, i’ll not judge your motives, or call you names.

You concerns/complaints are, for the most part, quite valid. Some though, are more or less based on hearsay, and bad hearsay at that.

First, yes, WotC has done a poor job of being clear about what you need or don’t need to play. To their credit, part of the problem is that they’ve given us much of what WE ask for. We cried for inclusion of more classes and races. They listened. We wanted more monsters, more settings, more powers. Yes, yes, and yes. Unfortunately, all this content they’ve been spoiling the fans with has confused the issue of the core game

Second, no, the errata it not the problem the raging min/maxing nerds on the net would have you believe. I’ve NEVER paid attention to the errata. My group plays regularly, and most recently we’ve started a Dark Sun campaign. I couldn’t even tell you what errata exists and yet we play just fine. We carry the PHB to game night and THATS IT! We use no other books or errata for rules and we’ve had zero issues other than a few mild points of confusion from some questionable word choices. All of which, we simply made an agreement on what we understand the meaning to be and move on. Let me be clear….

You can play purely out of the 3 core books and you’ll be fine.

Third, you DO NOT need a DDI sub to use the character builder. It’s free to everyone as long as you only create characters from LVL 1-3. But if you’re just starting, this is all you need anyhow. Once you create a character, adding the powers/feats/ changes as you level is super easy. So don’t worry about getting a sub, just use the free version.

Lastly, essentials is pretty cool. As an old school player, I still prefer the AD&D ruleset to anything that has come before or since. Like Orion says, it’s the only version that the rules were invisible in the gameplay. Everything else has gotten needlessly overcomplicated. IMO, 3.5 was the worst of the bunch. My biggest gripe with 4E is that you pretty much HAVE to play with minis and a battle grid. The way the powers are designed, you simply have no choice. This is not how I would like to play. I like to play with a graph paper map, or something similar printed out to help visualization with the battle being played out verbally with each PC explaining their actions rather than moving a mini on a mat. I may be wrong, but with essentials, I think this may again be possible. We’ll see.

Anyway, in summation.

Just buy PHB, MM, and DMG.
Then get the Dark Sun Campaign and creature catalog.
Use the free character creator.

Then have a blast. If you like the game enough, THEN worry about errata, but don’t even consider errata until you know if you like the game enough to bother. And even then, for the most part, the errata can be ignored or followed depending on your ability to notice it or not. Personally, I’ve not really noticed the issues. Most of the errata I’ve seen has been for clarification rather than actual rule changes.

There’s a much cheaper solution though – buy a one-month subscription for $10, install all the software, update it, and then start playing. Download all the Dungeon & Dragon content while you’re at it. Then in 6 or 12 months, if you want the up-to-date info (which most home groups have little need for unless they’re compulsive optimizers or rules fanatics)’ just buy another one month subscription. For as little as $10 you can have everything DDI has to offer, at least up to that point.

I can tell you now, my best campaigns were in Basic/Expert/AD&D because the rules didn’t interfere with the fun.
The worst was 2nd. It started out decent, and then quickly went down hill with the constant flow of new handbooks that really threw things out of whack from the core books. This is pretty much where I knew 4th edition was headed immediately when they dropped some core classes and said they would be in PHB2. Looks like I was right.

3.5 was great for defining abilities and customizing your character… but some of the rules really get in the way compared to AD&D. eg: Do I really need skills to define some obvious heroic course of action? Hey look, as my skills go up, so do the skills of the NPCs and monsters… I still have a 50% chance of success no matter what level I am. etc… As a DM, mitigating the above scenarios in a campaign is an extra and tedious task I never had to deal with in the first place in AD&D.

Along comes essentials. Now I am thinking. I will pick up the essentials line, and not worry about a boat load of errata and munchkin add-ons.

I dunno…. sounds great for my situation, but I also realize alot of people got hosed by 3.0 and 4.0… dunno what to say except learn from the experience like we all did in 2nd. (man, for the entire group combined, we spent a hell of alot of money for a lesser experience over the core AD&D books)

Uhhhh….. I’m also just so random guy from the web, and landed here looking up essentials info… soo I dont follow this site and have no political motivation other then to share my point of view.

PHB 1, PHB 2, PHB 3 (psionic classes), Darksun Campaign Book, Darksun Creature Catalog

Nice to haves
Rules Compendium (if you want to play with the latest updates… some would move this up one)
Psionic, Martial and Primal Power Books
MM 1, 2 & 3 (you can re-skin and lot of monsters in 4th easily to make new darksun versions)

Do you need DDI? no, but it’s nice.

I heartily recommend that you try the Keep On The Shadowfell free download, and the free version of the Character Generator to see if you like playing 4e.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/TryDnD.aspx

It is a very different system from what you’re used to, and its not everyone’s cup of tea.

You will have enough issues with just trying to get used to the new game, but if you like it, you may change your mind about whether its worth investing more in. (All that being said, you really don’t need the Power Books if you use the character generator.)

PS. The pregen’s suck. I mean.. really really suck. Well, the Dwarf survived…

I think you are just ranting….

I’m not. That is to say, I am not just ranting.

Did it occur to you to post in the WOTC forums?

It occurred to me to post it somewhere that I already had an account, and that I knew would hit the radar of some smart, well-informed gamers (since I know there are smart, well-informed gamers who read my Twitter stream and/or the RPG Bloggers syndication service).

As with many gamers out there, its also obvious that you don’t get 4e.

Considering that a large chunk of the point of this post is “I can’t figure out what I need to get started with 4e”, it should be obvious!

The crux of this entry is that WotC has produced a lot of material, and it isn’t clear what you really need to get started in it.

Now, bringing out a new campaign setting and the essentials range back to back led me to expect that the two would team up nicely. However, WotC aren’t running campaigns about using them together, which gave me pause — especially give that Essentials is supposed to be a clear path for new players into the hobby. I was surprised that there wasn’t some clear guidance saying “Get Dark Sun and the red box and you’ll have everything you need”.

Now you, and others, have said that since Dark Sun is psionics heavy, and you really need the PHB3 to make the most of it, which goes against what I expected.

Or do you need rules to do anything?

New system. New setting. That is quite a lot to digest. I’d like to minimize the amount of stuff I have to change from the outset.