<< your best bet is probably to pick up a copy of Baldur's Gate 1, which is probably $10 now too. It came with a fat manual that covered pretty much all the basic pen & paper rules.
BTW, I must disagree that hardcore Pen & paper players would be most interested in the hack-n-clash crap that is PoR. They are generally the ones who are looking for good story and oportunities to "role-play" their characters. Seems to me the people who think that final fantasy is somehow role-playing are the ones who like hack-n-slash games.
Not bashing FF, either, I like the game a lot, but there isn't any role-playing in it at all. It's an adventure game with stats. Console games raised this whole generation of people who think that if there are stats it's role-playing...hehe, back when I actually used to play P&P games we used to call people who were more concerned with their stats than who their characters were ROLL-PLAYERS instead of ROLE-PLAYERS.
j >>
Crowdog probably has the BG1 manual... he mentioned he already tried playing that game. But if the manual has the info, that would be a good reference. I know it can be a bit bewildering to understand the roolz of D&D when starting out.
BTW, I mentioned that I felt Pool of Radiance would be of most interest to die hard pnp D&D gamers NOT because it is a hacknslash dungeon crawl. I think Pool of Radiance suites them the most because die hard D&D players will be more able to TOLERATE the slow turn based combat style used in Pool of Radiance. I've been playing 3rd ed pnp D&D for over a year now, but I am far from a die hard player. And I can say that I don't really have much patience to wait when a group 6 skeletons slowly, one by one, gather around my fighter/cleric, and each take their 6 second turn swiping, then my f/c takes his turn and misses, then wait for each of the six skeletons to take their 6 second turn again. over and over and over... then my f/c gets killed. I reload and repeat. There are endless battles like this in the underground dungeons. You get the picture. The "turn based" combat style is just too too slow for me. But for die hard pnp players who are used to this from gathering around a table, they somehow have more patience for it. Pool of Radiance is supposed to simulate the "around the table" pnp D&D experience. Which is fine for those who like that, but it's not for me.
If Pool of Radiance could have the combat style option to be "non turnbased" added, then it would satisfy a larger audience. But in the dog eat dog of present day computer gaming, games like Pool of Radiance will not sell well and justify future products, if they can't offer options which satisify a larger audiance. Simply adding an alternative combat style to the game would make a big difference to me and many others.
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