D&D Starter Set Arrives!

So we got the D&D Next Starter Set in the mail today.

Color me a little underwhelmed, my expectations were admittedly higher for this release. First off, this is one of those "big box with a divider making it look like more than it actually is" type of products. It's two booklets, some laser-printer-looking character sheets, a bag of dice, and a waxy flyer for D&D Encounters. With the exception of the dice, most of this could have fit in a thick module. A smaller box would have been nice, as I am not a fan of packaging that feels like it's designed to take up shelf space and look big. It's wasteful, and it is a disappointment to see most of the box taken up by a spacer.

I remember the old TSR Boxed games that were almost packed solid with cool stuff, like Gangbusters or Star Frontiers.

What was I expecting? Well, the 4th Edition starter set came with a nice poster map and some pogs, and those are always welcome for helping new players visualize things. The map and movement rules in this game are light, which feels right, but I do miss the map based focus of previous editions. The question then becomes, is this set a good introduction to the 5th Edition rules?

I don't want to confuse this review with the review of 5th Edition D&D - this is not that game.

It does make me sad to see so many 5-star reviews for this set, it is really a middling product in the terms of quality and what you get, and in some ways less than other sets for D&D that came before it. For me, it is hard to give this one a perfect score since it doesn't feel like the best introduction to this game that I felt it could have been.

People coming into the game expecting a 5-star introduction are going to be missing things like races, classes, character generation, and all the other fun bits of the game that could have hooked them in. There's information on the character sheets for religion, classes, races, and advancement that should have been in the main book. The information on monsters and magic items is very limited. Oh, and the dice are non-standard too, on some of them the sides do not add up to the same number as proper dice should.

Oh, and for a game that uses advantage and disadvantage paired d20 rolls so frequently, please, please, please include two d20 dice in the set. Otherwise beginners are going to see these rules as having to roll one die twice when the intention is to save time by throwing two at once and take the higher or lower as needed. As something that introduces this new gaming concept to make things simple, I feel this is a huge mistake since it makes things more tedious if you just live with one dice set (as a beginner would).

But part of me thinks pure value and low cost  shouldn't have been a consideration here, I would have paid more for a better introduction and sandbox experience. This is, after all, 5th Edition D&D. It's a big enough name to attract attention no matter how much the beginner box costs.

A game that could change things this much needs an incredible introduction that blows new players away. I don't feel that here, and it's possibly due to cost concerns and to get this out as widely as possible. Still, I feel there's a lot more that could have been done, and yes, that means including basic character creation, races, and class choices. This needs to be more of a playset that gets people creating their own characters and little worlds, toys and pieces to start building level 1-5 characters with to get those seeds of adventure planted in a fresh and fun sandbox.

So we get a 32-page main book and a generous 64-page adventure. Back in the days, designers often wrote complete roleplaying games in a single 64-page book, so I feel more could have been done here to provide a more complete level 1-5 world. So the focus is less on the rules and more on the adventure. We even get a campaign map of Neverwinter that I feel isn't up to the adventure potential of the 4th Edition sample setting, the included map is too sparse and focused on one city to support a balanced exploration and points of interest outside of Neverwinter. I would have liked a great map of Neverwinter as well, so that feels like an omission since the city is so central to the sample campaign.

Still, the adventure is nice, and includes full-color maps, art, a starting town, and all sorts of locations to explore. It looks fun, so that is a positive. I want to playtest this and get a feel for the rules and the introductory experience, and cover that in a later post. The rules themselves and the beginner experience deserve another post, so another post they shall get.

And I'm not going to go all out and compare this to the Pathfinder Beginner Box, that type of flame-tastic battle is worthy of a humorous and nonsensical Cage Match. I may just include some surprise contenders in there to mix things up.

To me, this doesn't feel like the best it could have been. Something this big, the 5th Edition of the D&D rules, deserves a better introduction, something epic, something stand-up, take notice, and to be cool by owning. Really, this is for completeists only.

Like myself.