Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game: An Essential D&d Starter (4th Edition D&d) [Game]

For a starter like me, I wanted to know more about RPGs, but to the extent of understanding the basics principles, rather than reading EVERYTHING about it; ironically around that time, the Red Box was announced that defines that need.

I give the product 4 stars for meeting my needs, for being cheap, efficient, and entertaining, for the quality for most of its contents (6 dices (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20), 2 instruction books, monster and character tokens and battle map) and the approach it takes when introducing the Red Box; specifically, the `Player's Handbook' is provided that literally tells you to `Read First' for a good reason, not only does it introduce the DnD concept simplistically, but it provides a step-by-step guide on playing and developing your own character as the provided story develops in terms on how you respond to the plot, rather than discussing each entity of the character sheet and what they do, and then expecting you to have a group of fans ready to play on the dot like a pro. That and the artworks and designs are delicious.

However the product is not perfect, hence forth the 1 star; one problem I was aware of is that because the game involves introducing the RPG concept when playing, it tells you all that you need to know, not all that there is to know, which limits features like races and monsters and capabilities and so forth. Another problem I had was setting the game up in terms of getting the info cards ready; they feel more like paper than cards, which makes them feel vulnerable, and because there were 9 sheets that had 9 cards attached to each of them, this would mean that there were over 80 cards that I had to remove by hand carefully to avoid ripping, which was annoying and frustrating. Other problems would involve some of the contents within the books, for example, it told me to calculate and write the passive insight value (10+ insight) and the passive perception value (10+ perception) within the provided cells from the character sheet, which is not printed, and apparently an encounter card can only be used once every 5 minutes? Even though keeping the instructions brief was my expectations, unless its specific enough, it can be too brief and you could end up doing something that's wrong.

Other than that I am really pleased with this product and can't wait to try it out to the fullest, my conclusion; if your an RPG fan that is new to the concept and wanting to understand the basic principles of playing DnD fast, then I recommend buying this.

For those old school RP gamers this will no doubt bring back memories and i am glad to say you get a lot more in this box than the original had. The players and DM book of course, the set of dice you need to play, although these already have the numbers coloured in and don't include the wax crayon for you to do it yourself like the original set had. You also get some card tokens to represent your characters, some card tokens to represent the monsters you meet in your early adventures, a double sided poster size map and an assortment of cards with powers, abilities, items, etc. on them and some character sheets to start you off.

The Players book helps you make charcters by running you through a solo adventure and making your character based on the options you pick, a cool idea and i love that, especially usefull to get new people in to the game, basically you start playing as soon as you open the box, after having a good nose through the contents of course. The DM book is only needed for those that are going to be a DM of course but again is well laid out and includes the follow on adventure from the solo one in the players book, you need a group for this one though. It explains how the monsters are likely to act as they are met, describes the areas each encounter is set in what happens after the group overcomes each section, note overcome does not always mean "kill the monsters" which is something some DM's AND Players should remember *wink* has a useful selection of monsters at the back to use in your own adventures and is generaly easy to read. It does not go in to all the details and information you should know to be a good DM but teaches you enough to get you up and running without bogging you down to the point you don't want to read any more, useful. The counters are on good card stock and well printed, with gold rings for the players and silver for the monsters, the assorted cards are on much thinner card though so would benefit from card protector sleeves if you can get some but are well printed.

Now the BUT...

There are only enough cards for one of each class of the four classes and one of each of the four races (actually three, one of the races does not have a card), this means that if you have more than four players, or they want to play the same class or especially the same race, there are not enough cards to go around! There does not seem to be a PDF of them on the main Wizards of the Coast site to download more of them either. The card monster tokens, although good quality, are double sided with a different monster on each side, this may not seem a problem untill you are trying to find the right monster in the middle of an encounter, a lot of game time is wasted while you flip through all the counters looking for the one needed now while your players sit twiddling their thumbs! another set of tokens would of cost little more but made it so much easier to find the one you need, as well as bringing it in line with the way they do them in all the follow on sets! Finally the worst part of the whole set, the characters! The idea behind how you make them is fantastic, don't get me wrong, and is much easier and way more fun than reading through a normal rule book and hope you understand enough to not make mistakes and ruin the character, leveling up to 2nd level is also easy to do and well laid out, assuming you have seperate characters and races as noted above, the problem comes once you want to go to 3rd level and beyond! You have to re-make your character! ok so maybe not exactly re-make but most certainly re-write! When you get the book you need to level beyond 2nd level, yes you have to buy another book and this box set becomes obsolete, unless you want to make a new character again, you also have to adjust your character, changing abilities and powers, even to the extent of being told you may find it a good point to make a new character using the new book rather than this box set! Why oh Why did Wizards of the Coast do that? This set is aimed at bringing old players back in to the D&D game and introducing new players to role playing games as well, who thought it was a great idea to make characters that have to be re-written on reaching 3rd level? Now i admit Wizards of the Coast have made a free download available on their web site to help you convert them, but it is not the easiest thing in the world to find and should not be needed at all if they just made the characters properly in the first place! I'm sorry Wizards but this has dropped what should of been a 5 star product down to a 3, the idea of telling a new player, just as they are learning how to play the game and their character they have to forget half of it and learn something new... just stupid in my opinion, teach them what the need to know from the start, don't make them learn it over again part way through!

This like many was my first step into the worlds of D&D. I'd setup a night with my friends to go over it and play our first game. But on opening the box I found 2 player books but no DM guide.
As I am a total noob there was no way I could magic out any kind of group game so that sucked a bit. Emailed WOTC with no reply so all in all pretty weak. All being well though and this prob a fluke of having a small team and two identical covers for the different books the set offers an amazing start into the game.
It blends the tutorial session with an essence of gameplay similar to how good intro levels in games are done. It may take some time for certain things to set in but I found setting up the first encounter on the map helped put everything in perspective.