I must admit that when I read the 1st Ed. rules alot of them left me completely mixed up.
I couldn't even get past the character creation. It seemed to me that you needed to know either D&D3 or D20 inside out. I have since found a guide to character creation on the net but it does not say much about the rules if you need to search the net to actually work out what the rules are going on about!
Not very intuative for someone who is not a D20 player, I was very disappointed. I've decided I will probably use the background fluff etc. from the Mongoose books, but go back to using my modified TSR Conan rules.