One thing I loved about Holmes and Moldvay /Mentzer red boxes was having a set of rules that didn’t overwhelm new players with lots of material that they won’t need until later.

I know that most osr games are rules light enough that it isn’t too much, but I was wondering if there are any systems out there that seperate out the ‘basic’ and ‘expert / advanced’ levels like that?

A particular peeve of mine is that spell descriptions seem so often to be presented alphabetical so that the 10 spells that might matter are lost in a bunch of pages. But even just class descriptions or saving throw tables that cover the whole range make level 1 look like a stepping stone, rather than a satisfying place to play many an adventure!

Any suggestions?