Gateway (drug) to adventure!
I played a hell of a lot of D&D back when I was in high school, but I never actually played much Dungeons & Dragons. What I mean is that I played D&D knockoffs, and tabletop roleplaying games that built upon D&D’s foundations to take the experience in new and interesting directions. We played superhero games, and games set in a cyberpunk future, and this thing called “Ninjas and Superspies.” But even back then, even to nerds as big as me and my friends, the actual Dungeons and Dragons game (ADVANCED Dungeons and Dragons was the current version, I believe) seemed so old school and arcane. We played a few times with people who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules (freeing us from having to figure out how to calculate THACO), but mostly we stayed away from the hard stuff.
Dungeons & Dragons just seemed like it was for people who were WAY too into it.
In the years since then (decades, I guess — Jesus, how old am I?) the game has been through several major updates, becoming further and further streamlined to keep up with the times. I’ve been led to believe that the current edition has borrowed elements from card and video games to be more accessible to those with much shorter attention spans. Hey, that sounds like me! Could it be time to give D&D another try? Maybe, but aren’t there still like a dozen different books you need to buy just to figure this thing out?
That’s where the new $20 D&D Starter Set comes in. Retro-styled to evoke various D&D rules kits from days of yore, the box includes everything a complete noob needs to start playing D&D, presented in a way that a twelve-year-old can understand. Read the Player’s Booklet first — it takes you through a little Choose-Your-Own Adventure style (you know how I feel about those, right?) solo story that will build you a character as you go along depending on the decisions you make. You’re attacked by a goblin! Do you choose to punch it in the face? Congratulations! Your class is “Fighter”!
At first I railed against this approach — how could I know if I wanted to punch the goblin in the face if I didn’t even know what my stats were yet? But trust me: if you’re too good for the CYOA character building thing, just go buy the standard 4th Edition Player’s Handbook and get down to brass tacks. Otherwise, play along, embrace your inner twelve-year-old, and by the time you’re through you’ll have a character built and a pretty good grasp on the basic combat rules. Then you’ll be ready to dive into the Dungeon Master’s Booklet — this is where you’ll learn how to run a game for other people, and in an ideal world you’ll be passing around your copy of the Player’s Book to various friends so they can get up to speed with their own characters. (Also, convince one of them that they want to be a CLERIC. I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH.)
Then comes the full-blown nerdgasm: choose one among you to be the DM and pick up a bag of Funyuns on the way home from work, because it’s D&D time. The game is much more miniatures-based than I remember it as a kid, with the encounters all happening on a map, and pieces representing your characters moving through it almost like a board game. This lets you easily keep track of your surroundings and gives you the ability to position yourself for a tactical advantage. Also, in a nod to modern video games, characters get something called “healing surges” in between battles to regain health. We didn’t have any of that back in my day, let me tell you. What I’m trying to tell you here is that D&D has gotten less torturous and quite a bit more fun.
Granted, it’s still D&D. Even with a streamlined rule set and a starter kit as easy to understand as this, the first play through is going to feel a little bit like work as you keep double-checking to get the rules straight. But if you’ve ever wondered if Dungeons and Dragons was for you, this is a nice, cheap way to find out. And by the time you hit second level, you’ll know. Either you’ll scratch out the number on your character sheet under “hit points,” shrug, and replace it with a slightly larger number, or you’ll be completely caught up in this magical new world, celebrating your victory against the Goblin Hex Hurler and fantasizing about all the ways you can utilize your new level-two attack power to get the drop on whatever shows up in the next room.
I think you can guess which side of the fence I landed on.
The Red Box (as it’s affectionately called) has only one goal: to seek out those who have never played D&D, or who haven’t played in years, and get them hooked. And make no mistake: it’s very much a gateway drug. The adventure presented here takes place in a dungeon, and features a dragon, and if you’re craving more when it’s over you’re absolutely going to have to buy at least one more book, because the starter set doesn’t give you rules for advancing your characters past level two. As a matter of fact, the box includes an ad pimping at least five or six additional books to flesh out the game, plus dice and tile kits to make your own dungeons. And that’s just the streamlined “Essentials” line. Technically, there are slight rule differences between the Essentials line and the general 4th Edition version (which includes I don’t even know how many books, but I’m pretty sure it’s dozens). My understanding is that you only need one or the other, though, and can mix editions pretty easily — and if you come up with conflicting rules, just decide which you prefer and get on with your day. You and I, we don’t need to fixate on minor technicalities. We aren’t those people.
Correction: We aren’t those people yet.
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As a recent convert to desktop gaming this has a lot of appeal. I’ve always avoided D&D, but this could be a way to get into it.
There’s some reading and set up time, but it’s really fun.
Wow. I wish I’d had this when I was 14, instead of the old starter set. I remember being so excited when I bought it, and then soon… so confused.
I remember playing D&D in the paperboy’s basement. I was 10, he was 14, and he wore a cape. His friends just wore T shirts. I remember a LOT of graph paper.