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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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When the 4th edition D&D Starter Set (aka “the new Red Box”) was announced back in the summer of 2010 I had mixed feelings about it: the early details, particularly the fact that it only covered levels one through two, were a bit of a let down. On the other hand, the use of the same Elmore art that graced the original D&D Basic Rules Set from 1983 (aka “THE Red Box”) certainly piqued my interest. In the end I decided to pick up the box set for Christmas for my eight-year-old son, preordering it off Amazon and anxiously awaiting its arrival. Though he was a little on the young side (at least according to the set's 12+ age recommendation), he reads at a much higher level and had been playing RPGs - including some D&D - with me since he was six, and I thought the set would be a great way to get him hooked plus bring my nearly 30 years in the hobby full circle, and like many with a new toy just sitting there in the box, in the end I couldn't wait until Christmas to open it.
The box arrived in September and the desire to open that fat box (about twice the thickness of the original edition's box) was killing me. Instead I turned it in to a father and son activity. We spent the next two weeks playing through the adventure, along with the stuff released online through DDI. He also played it with his friends once – both seemed to enjoy the experience although not without difficulties (more on that later). Since then the box set hasn't seen much use. It's sat on my shelf for most of that time, aside from a few weeks during which a friend borrowed it to try with his son (in the end they didn't play it more than once). I had been wanting to write a review about the set but decided to hold off and let my experiences ferment a little longer and then take some time to reexamine its contents. Thus, more than 12 months later I sit here writing this review.
The Contents
The first thing one notices upon opening the box is that it's mainly filled with air: a cardboard filler takes up half the space with the rest taken up by two saddle-stapled, full-color magazine style books (the Player's Book and the Dungeon Master's Book), a double-sided sheet of hero & monster tokens, four character sheets, a set of power cards for each class, a double-sided battle map, and 6 polyhedral dice.
In terms of quality, both books are decent enough: the paper isn't particularly thick, including the cover which is the same thickness, and they're certainly not built to last. However, they are printed in full color and sport a bunch of attractive art (most of which is recycled from earlier products) making them at least attractive to look at.
The Player's Book, which has 32-pages is almost exclusively filled with a Choose-your-own-Adventure (CYOA) that leads a new player through character creation and an introductory adventure. The adventure is your common fare and works well for teaching a new player about the game and creating a character at the same time.
The Dungeon Master's Book, which at 64-pages is double the length of the Player's Book, contains a stripped down version of the 4E rules, advice for the budding DM, and an introductory adventure that springboards from the CYOA of the Player's Book. It also includes information on how to level a character up to 2nd level, accomplished through a small section dedicated to each of the set's four classes (fighter, wizard, rogue, and cleric). The last third of the book provides some information on how to construct your own adventures along with 16 monsters. The book finishes up with some information about the Nentir Vale, much of which is identical to what appears in the original 4th edition Player's Handbook.
The double-sided map match the encounters that occur in the set's adventures and is attractive but not of a lot of use once one is done with the set. The tokens are also useful but poorly designed because different monsters appear on each side limiting their flexibility, not to mention making them a pain to find what you want.
As for the rest, the character sheets are decent enough and in full-color but only a few are included. The power cards are junk, having been printed on flimsy, thin-gauge card stock and containing enough errors and incompatibilities that they have almost no use outside use with the Starter Set. The dice are solid and easy to read – they're just black with white ink – and that's about all that can be said about them.
Play Experiences
Unfortunately the D&D Starter Set has limited play possibilities. My son and his friends quickly grew tired of playing through the CYOA in order to make a character (there are no character creation rules in the set), nor how inflexible that process itself is: there are few options available for you to choose to customize your character and my my son became frustrated when he discovered that there was no way to equip his elf rogue with a short sword or a bow instead of the dagger the CYOA gave him. He spent half an hour fruitlessly searching for an equipment list or stats for either weapon before giving up.
In addition, the set's lack of real information for character advancement and 2nd level limit means that owners of the box are very quickly forced to buy into the full 4E line in order to keep playing and once they do they are likely to be severely disappointed to discover that the characters created by the Starter Set are largely incompatible with the rest of the 4E rules – they're utterly incompatible with pre-Essentials builds and even the Essentials stuff isn't the same. Worse yet, the testing and proofing of the set was so poor that numerous typos and errors crept into the set forcing the need for errata for the set to be released almost immediately after its arrival on game store shelves. For example, the magic missile spell detailed in the set is quite different than either of the versions that appear in the full rules (original and post-Essentials). The CYOA also has a number of errors in it that can cause some serious confusion for a new player (e.g., it's possible for a fighter to never learn their CON score). I guess quality control, in the form of play testing and proof reading, were not a high priority.
In the end, neither my son nor I found the set particularly inspiring which is in sharp contrast to my experiences with the original Red Box D&D set which served as the springboard for more than a quarter century of roleplaying for me. My friend and his son had a similar experience, having abandoned the game after finishing the first adventure (played as a solo adventure). In the months since I purchased the set, my son and his friend have pulled out the original Basic Rules set when they want to play D&D. When I asked “Why?” they told me it had “more monsters and magic items and stuff, plus you get to make maps.”
The Verdict
The D&D Starter Set is a still-born product in my opinion. It's neither a good introduction to Dungeons & Dragons - because of the incompatibilities and lack of a clear upgrade path thanks to WotC's dissociative product line – nor a good game on its own because as an actual starter set it does a really poor job of equipping a “group” with the ability to sit down and really play the game. Similarly, failing to include actual rules on how to make a character, and instead forcing players to repeatedly use the CYOA solo adventure, for a game meant to be played as a group is just dumb. Even my eight-year-old recognized how boring and time-consuming it was going to be for him to make characters with his friends - it's too bad nobody at WotC either recognized or, more likely, cared that the starter set has so little replayability. Instead, the Starter Set is nothing more than a fancy version of a one-shot, quick-start rules set which were intentionally designed to be neither complete nor to be used on their own (which is why most quick-start rules are free). As such it doesn't live up to WotC's own claims of it being, and I quote, “The best way to start playing the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game”
In addition, it's not really clear who the Starter Set was/is being marketed to: it's clearly meant to be an introduction to 4th edition D&D, and seems to be written for a younger audience. Contradicting this is the fact that the front of the box proclaims it is “For 1 or more beginning to intermediate players.” What intermediate player wants an incomplete game?
Then there's the issue of the cover art and the material used in the marketing campaign (including the pictures of the pregen characters for the Starter Set Game Day which used Mentzer-era illustrations) suggesting it was aimed at “old-school” players. On the other hand, if the set is aimed at people new to D&D and RPGs in general - which the contents themselves suggest - then the art seems out of place. While the Elmore cover holds up well, the art on the pregen cards is a pretty poor match for the rest of 4E art and the halfling is completely wrong – they used the chubby, hobbit-based imagery rather than 3/4E's slimmer, kender-derived imagery. I'm left with the impression that there were at least two competing, and ultimately pretty clueless, factions who took part in the development of the set, the result of which is a product which sends mixed and ultimately misleading messages to the consumer.
In the end I cannot really recommend this iteration of the D&D Starter Set to anyone. For a product that wants to harken back to TSR's golden age of D&D, the set is neither a return to anything that vaguely resembles the original D&D rules nor is the game complete like the original Mentzer box was. Compared to the original red box it's trying to emulate, the Starter Set completely misses the point of that set: it was a complete game that started you on the road to adventure after which you bought other products to continue. That is not possible with this set.
If one takes a look at the Players Manual of the 1983 Basic Rules, you'll find a similar format but a lot more actual content. This includes:
 An actual explanation of what roleplaying is, the difference between characters and players, how group play works, and at least a hint that the game can be about more than killing monsters and taking their stuff. Granted some of that shows up in the DM's book but that means most players are never going to see it.
 A complete explanation of the races and classes. The Starter Set, in contrast, only instructs the reader to choose a race and assign a STR based on that choice. What is a halfling? There's a picture but since there's no size comparison, it looks just like a guy with a pony tail. How about a dwarf? Apparently a dwarf is just a female that carries around a green and black ball.
 A step-by-step, 2-page summary of how to create a character, followed by multiple pages dedicated to the process. The new Starter Set's CYOA0only approach is deeply flawed for party creation – it's very time consuming and conceivable that four new players playing through it will end up with four dwarf fighters.
 A way to use the Players Manual as a reference. It includes all the info about each class need for the first 3-levels of play. The new book is nothing but the CYOA. Any info it does contain is buried in the text, or in rare cases, a sidebar. In addition, the lack of that single level (i.e., 3rd) is very important in my opinion because many of WotC's published introductory adventures are designed to span levels 1-3 which means the starter box is not actually usable to play them in their entirety. It's also important to remember that character advancement was a lot slower in the early versions of D&D (particularly with the B/X version of the game) so that those original 3 levels potentially represented weeks or even months of play time. By comparison, anyone having completed the short adventure included in the Starter Set's DM's Book will have reached 2nd level (and thus the end of the road with this set) by the end.
 Real choice, right from the start. It's not about the lack of an equipment list, it's about the fact that if you're a fighter you can use a "sword" (what type?) or a great axe but nothing else. You wear scale armor. If you are a rogue, you use a dagger and wear leather. There are no missile weapons, no armor choices, and no alternatives for melee weapons. The whole game truly plays more like a CYOA book rather than D&D.
Incidentally, a side by side comparison of the cover art from the new Starter Set and the original Set 1 Basic Rules reveals some interesting differences: the original box's art is much crisper and vividly colored, despite my copy being nearly 40 years old – the Starter Set's illustration looks out-of-focus and muted in comparison. This extends to the red of the box itself which is noticeably more saturated and colorful than the newer Starter Set. Hence, even though I entitled this review “The cover is the best part” even that clearly pales in comparison to the original red box.
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Cracky McCracken
United States
Ohio
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Yup. A buddy of mine picked this up just to check out and we thought it was pretty bad.
They had a real good 4e starter box in '08. One of the best ever next to the originals imho...Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Starter Set. In fact, it was damn good, too bad they let it go by the wayside. 
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DMSamuel
United States
Ithaca
New York
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Great Review. I felt much the same as you did, but I wasn't sure if my thoughts about the set were too extreme or not - after all, I am not exactly the target audience for the product (far from new player, I have been playing D&D for 30 years).
But over the months since its release I have had more clarity in this respect - even though I am not the target audience, I should be able to find something in the product that would make me feel it was a worthwhile introduction to the game.
As a long time player, I feel that I am also a steward to the hobby... perhaps I could use the box to introduce some young new players, or perhaps I could use it to introduce some players that have always heard about D&D, but never got the chance to play it, or perhaps I could just recommend it to someone who wants a well written yet easy to read and understand introduction to a game I have a long history with....
Alas, no... I feel that none of these groups would get much from the red box. It would be better for me to sit with them and explain things and run through a short scenario, and then give them my own little 20 page pdf write-up that explain the basics of the game. And that, to me, says everything about this product.
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Steven Robert
United States
Altadena
California
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It's ironic that every one of your complaints is directly addressed by the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box. Different game, of course, but I get the feeling Paizo looked very carefully at the starter set and learned some lessons.
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DMSamuel
United States
Ithaca
New York
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vestige wrote: ...get the feeling Paizo looked very carefully at the starter set and learned some lessons.
Yes - looking around and evaluating what works and changing course or changing products if necessary is something that WotC is not good at.
Also, it is interesting to note that Paizo is coming out with a new monster token box set, using standees matching the form factor of those that came with the beginner box... they are creating a product similar to the monster vault, which is one of the few 4e products that have really been lauded for quality and price - i.e. Paizo once again looked around and saw what worked, put their own spin on it, and are probably going to have a smash hit product as a result.
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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vestige wrote: It's ironic that every one of your complaints is directly addressed by the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box. Different game, of course, but I get the feeling Paizo looked very carefully at the starter set and learned some lessons.
A review of it, including a playtest with my son, his friend, and my friend (all 3 of whom are mentioned in this review) is coming - we have a play date set for Jan 1st. Paizo also play tested the game wi actual children, something I'm sure WotC never even considered doing.
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Freelance Police
United States
Palo Alto
California
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Did you play through the adventure? I've played it three times so far, with different newbie groups, and found it had a good selection of different types of encounters: outdoors, diplomacy, traps, tricks, etc. The result is a random jumble of rooms, but the variety is better than I expected.
OTOH, The rest of the box is junk. We only had so much time for the adventure, so I went with downloading premade Encounter characters off the 'net. No way would I go through the Player's Book with each player individually. Ended up sleeving the cards, but never use them.
EDIT: Oh, yeah. Chess room. PITA. There's also a TYPO that can screw up the encounter if you don't play it right. Skip this boxed set and go right to the DM's Kit!
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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Yes, both I and my friend ran the adventure. I found it was decent enough (though the chess room is a hassle), especially as an introduction to the game.
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The box-set was a total disappoint for me. We got halfway through character creation, realised what was happening (as in, the actual process of creation was being completely obscured) and decided to call the whole thing off. Perhaps a little premature, but at that point we'd played enough games to know that the bizarre CYOA set-up would be a waste of time.
How was this product ever sent to print?
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Mark Chaplin
United Kingdom
Nottingham
Ice-choked tower, Mondavia, Nanglangka.
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Agree with the review. Came to the conclusion that D&D, in this mutation, is no longer for me.
I have now migrated to Legends of Anglerre.
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Maurice Tousignant
Canada
Windsor
Ontario
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Excellent and thorough review that pretty much matches my feelings on this one.
The only thing I would add, is that WotC has released conversion rules for converting your Red Box characters to Essentials. While I think it's absurd that such a thing needed to exist it does make the box slightly more useful as an intro to the game.
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Freelance Police
United States
Palo Alto
California
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happysmellyfish wrote: How was this product ever sent to print?
We're not the target audience, though WotC will happily take our money thanks to the nostalgia trip of the box art. I imagine the idea is that uncle veteran gives junior newbie the set, and junior spends Christmas day generating characters -- I'm sure some marketing guru at WotC noticed how many customers *bought* the game, but didn't *play* it, preferring to either read the books or only generate characters. Further suits emasculate the product so that it's only a step towards buying future product.
And, of course, when it was released, there were no other Essentials product, though the Rules Compendium came soon, iirc. I think had the Player's Handbooks come *before* the 4e Starter Set, our 4e money would have gone elsewhere.
Me, I had a 40% off coupon at Borders and thought I'd be using the tokens. And I would say the Red Box Starter Set is *much* better than the "three encounters and no explanations of parcels" Starter Set released several years before.
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