The core books to play Adventures Dark & Deep are the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary. This is the original Pathfinder 2 setup, where the game should be able to be played with one book purchase for all player-facing information and a second book of monsters. Asking groups to buy three books versus two is a huge ask these days, and conceivably, you could play ADAD with just the Core Rulebook plus any first-edition monster book.
I love my first-edition gaming even more than the second edition because the game still has that arcane and mysterious feeling, something that ADAD does well - while still being very nicely organized and easily referenced. The ADAD Core Bestiary includes all the classics, including Orcus, so all your gaming memories and classic bad guys are included here. These two books are over a thousand pages of gaming goodness, a first-edition retro-clone going in a new direction, complete with all the parts of the first edition that seemed strange at the time. Still, once you give them a chance (initiative system), they become integral to the experience and a part of the game's tactical play.
I would pick up the Book of Lost Tables next. This book contains random terrain, dungeons, encounters, towns, and many other random tables packed into one fantastic book. These three are the heart of the game, and the tables book is an incredible resource for idea generation.
Swords of Cthulhu is a referee-focused book for Lovecraftian lore and is one of the best treatments of the subject, including classes for the evil cultists of these beyond-space and time beasts. If you want your game to "go there" and have these monsters or just focus a campaign on these monsters and sects, this is the book to get. If you aren't interested, then skip this book.
Swords of Wuxia is another tricky recommendation, but only if you like the Mystic China fantasy setting and if you have fond memories of the old Oriental Adventures book for AD&D. This is a fantastic book that treats the entire subject and genre with respect and research, and is well worth a look if you are into this fantasy genre, or like to see cross-overs. This is another "skip if not interested" book, but still worth it for opening your eyes to the genre.
Three "Darker Paths" books on DriveThru are worth checking out (PDF-only) for the optional necromancer, witch, and demonolater classes. These make for great enemies or options for evil campaigns. I hope these books get updated and compiled into an "Even More Dark and Deep Arcana" volume with expanded content and character options.
A first-edition expansion for ADAD is still worth picking up: the Adventures Great and Glorious expansion for high-level and domain play. This is a good book to check out if you are into mass combat and domain management.
The publisher also has Castle of the Mad Archmage, a mega-dungeon hardcover featuring a multi-level dungeon and cave crawl. Any adventure written for OSRIC will work without any modifications. Most B/X adventures written for Labyrinth Lord, Old School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, or other similar system will also work without needing many changes (just make sure to know if the unarmored AC base is 9 or 10 in the original game to convert the monsters correctly). Also, any classic AD&D first-edition adventure module will work without needing changes, and the D&D ones will work well. There are many classic first-edition adventures on DriveThru; some also come in print.
You have decades of adventures to play between the classic and new adventures written for OSRIC or any other B/X-style game. You will not be short of things to do.
If you are new, download OSRIC (for free) and check out the style of play since the games are very similar. If you want more, jump into ADAD with the first two books, which expand the first-edition play of OSRIC and take it in fantastic new directions. If you already know AD&D, you will have a good understanding of what you are in for.
Ask yourself, would I want a more in-depth game than this, with more options and modifiers?
Most will be happy with rules-light B/X, I will be honest. This game delivers layers of complexity and depth as you cut through the cake, and I can see many rolling their eyes at the number of optional rules, like the to-hit modifier for blowguns against full plate armor.
Some twisted souls will smile and know, "This is what the first edition is all about."
When the goblins with poison blowgun darts are firing out of their murder holes, and your plate mail armored nut tank with a shield walks through the hail of lethal darts as if they were harmless flies, laughs, and pulls them from their hiding spots to deliver swift death to them with multiple attacks per turn, you will know why unmodified, flat B/X would have been a deathtrap, but first-edition ADAD delivers the goods.
Some games are so simplified they produce unrealistic results, and the numbers become meaningless, targets to roll against for very little rhyme or reason. As someone who depends on a weapon in melee combat, I need to know what types of armor my weapon does well against. As someone who depends on a specific type of armor, I need to know what weapons are more effective against my protection. This isn't "too much detail" - this is what soldiers have been doing on battlefields for thousands of years, and even today.
Roleplaying games make you stupid about weapons and warfare when it is serious business with lives in the balance. Yes, the modifiers can be too much for some, but for those serious about the subject, games like this are amazing and get closer to modeling the ideal of reality we seek in wargaming. And there are situations where B/X is far too simple to model anything complex, and the abstraction breaks reality.
Unlike 5E or Pathfinder 2, ADAD does not require many expansion books. The core books are really all you need. One I mention is a "book of lists," which is arguably a referee resource. Two of them are specialized campaign books. One is a high-level dominion play guide. Three are extra-class PDFs. The final is an adventure.
You only need two books, the Core Rulebook and Bestiary books.
Also, ADAD is not rules-light, as it considerably expands upon the first-edition gameplay. If you want rules-light, stick with Old School Essentials or even Shadowdark. If you want depth, options, and fantastic expansion books, ADAD is the best first-edition experience.
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