5e Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set Review

Image stolen from EN World

I’ve been really craving a chance to chuck some dice lately and I’ve really wanted to see what D&D 5e has to offer for sometime now. Thus on a whim I picked up a copy of the 5e Starter Set this week and I was surprised by what a great product it was. Like some kind of RPG prophet, I felt compelled to write this review and spread the good word.

What you Get

64-page adventure book (Lost Mines of Phandelver)
32-page rulebook
5 pre-generated characters
1 blank character sheet
6 really boring dice

The Physical Product

The box itself is solid and can be used to store notes, pencils, a handful of miniatures and whatever else (a box of Junior Mints, a cigarette for that time when you TPK the group, shark repellent, a peanut butter and jam sandwich…you get the point), you might want to store away for your next game session. As for the contents the production values are top notch. The pages are glossy and thick. (make sure you take good whiff of that new book smell). The art full color and what you would expect from one of the leaders in the RPG industry. The cartography is both functional and beautiful, I particularly like the inclusion of the hex map in the adventure booklet. The set of dice included are nothing special. It would have been cool if Wizards would have put a special symbol on the d20 like they do for the Magic: The Gathering life-counter dice.  

The Rules

The rules seem to cover pretty much all the major things you would expect to do in an average D&D session. The text is very much presented in a language meant to convey how to play and adjudicate the game to new players. I can speak from experience that learning to play earlier editions of D&D was a challenge. I feel like the rules and presentation succeed at helping to teach and learn the game if you don’t know people who already understand the basics of how to play an RPG. I like that the rules seem to be consistent with the actual published rules. Too often I’ve seen intro sets try to simplify the rules so much that it is as if you are playing a completely different game and therefore you’re left just as confused as to how to play the actual game if you do decide to buy the core rules. My biggest gripe is that aside from the five pre-generated characters that are included, there is no way to actually make a character. You are stuck advancing from levels 1-5 based on what is presented on those character sheets. This might not be the end of the world but it does limit the number of players to a maximum of six (five players + a Dungeon Master) and the re-playability of the box unless you download the basic rules online or buy the Players Handbook.   

The Lost Mine of Phandelver Intro Adventure

The starting adventure is what makes this product so great. The adventure is set in the Forgotten Realms some time around 1489 Dale Reckoning (the calendar system of setting). With the exception of a foray into Ravenloft, the Realms seems to be the default campaign setting for 5e and they take this more seriously than they did back when Greyhawk was the default setting of 3e. The Lost Mines starts off fairly linear but does branch off in the third chapter providing a more open world to explore. The adventure provides a great starting village of Phandalin and an enterprising DM could easily build off of the material provided here to continue a campaign for a long time. Another thing that I really like about this adventure is how easy it is to use as a starting point for any of the hardcover campaign books that Wizards has put out over the years. The only real issue is that characters would be starting those campaigns at levels higher than expected. This can be mitigated somewhat and one of the fun parts of running a game is modifying things to fit your group. Also from what I’ve seen the campaigns that follow are meant for experienced players and Dungeon Masters so starting at a higher level might not be a bad idea for novice players.

Conclusion

Over all I think that the 5e D&D Starter Set is a worthwhile purchase for anyone who wants to test out the 5e rules, or as a great place to launch a new campaign. I’ve seen a lot of starter sets for a lot of different RPGs and this is by far one of the better ones. I’d argue that the Pathfinder Basic Set is better, because it provides the tools to make your own characters and other tools (monster tokens, a reusable battle map, etc.), but if you’re looking to play 5e D&D this is still a great place to start. I think the Lost Mines provides a great framework for new DM’s on how to go about creating their own material for future adventures or as an introduction to Wizards follow up campaign storylines like the Tyranny of Dragons, Elemental Evil, Rage of Demons and so forth. As someone who plans to introduce the game to fresh meat for the Prince of Demons a group of noobs I think this is a great

Stealing from Sanderson: The Shattered Plains

As I wrote earlier I’ve been reading Brian Sanderson’s The way of Kings. It’s the first book in the Stormlight Archives an epic fantasy that looks as if it may rival Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. One of the things I noted while reading was about how so many fantasy series have a built in area for D&D adventures. For example, Tolkien’s “Mordor”, Jordan’s “The Blight”, Martin's "Beyond the Wall" . Even the Legend of the Five Rings RPG has “The Shadowlands’. In the Way of Kings, we have “The Shattered Plains”. Sanderson’s adventuring wasteland has a few interesting aspects that make it particularly ripe for use, at least in part, for a Keep on the Borderlands style campaign.

A staple of Fantasy, the unexplored borderland. Art from the Game of Thrones wiki

The Shattered Plains are essentially ground zero for some sort of apocalyptic event in the World of Roshar’s (the name of the planet) ancient history. From what I’ve read thus far and have been able to determine (I’ve read about half the book now) this was once a battle ground used to keep an evil known as the Voidbringers at bay. The way I have envisioned the topography of the Shattered Plains in my mind is as follows. Imagine a large patch of mud that had dried out leaving it cracked creating small islands of mud divided from each other by miniature crevices. Then zoom in and imagine that each one of those crevices are like the deep canyons. Each little mud flat is a rocky plateau. Most of the plateaus are crossable by someone who is capable of pole-vaulting across (in the book Alethi scouts do this), or in the case of the barbarian Parshendi people who have a unnatural ability to leap across them with their own legs. Typically, the Alethi Military use bridges they use either permanent or portable ones they use to cross.

Art taken from Brian Sanderson's The Way of Kings showing a stylized map of the Shattered Plains

In the present day the Shattered Plains is still a war zone. This time between the Alethi and the Parshendi. The while the two sides fight each other, the true battles tend to be over the birthing pods left behind on random plateaus by monsters known as Chasmfiends. When a birthing pod is discovered on a plateau, each side races to claim the gem stone that grows in it. The Chasmfiends themselves also have enormous gems inside them. They however, tend to fight back. For example, “[The King] ripped free the beast’s gemheart – the enormous gemstone that grew within all Chasmfiends. It was lumpy and uncut, but it was a pure emerald and as big as a man’s head. It was the largest gemheart Adolin had ever seen, and even the small ones were worth a fortune” (Sanderson, 210). In terms of stealing this for a D&D campaign, the hunting of Chasmfiends or their birthing pods could be reason enough for adventurers to brave the dangers of your campaign worlds own borderland area. Additionally, you now have built in adversaries who are also competing for these precious gems. These adversaries could be rival adventurers to barbarian natives, or perhaps other creatures who feed on the gems to gain magical powers or just requires the sustenance provided.  

A Chasmfiend - Art taken from Brian Sanderson's The Way of Kings 

Another example of how the Shattered plains can be used is the canyons that divide the plateaus. The plateaus while relatively large are still limited in space. Some plateaus are larger than others and some have features that make them treacherous to fight on. As a result, many warriors fall off and land at the bottom dead taking whatever valuable they had with them. Often the need to harvest the gemheart and leave quickly precludes the chance to recover these bodies (if at all) until later. To complicate matters dangerous and violent thunderstorms assault the land on a semi regular basis. This causes the canyons to fill with torrents of rushing water that scatters these bodies to distant places in the network of canyons. Unlucky work crews are occasionally sent on canyon duty to recover whatever salvage they can. One account in the book describes it like this; “It was like barrow robbing, only without the barrows…They carried sacks, and would spend hours walking around, looking for the corpses of the fallen, searching for anything of value. Spheres [equivalent to gold pieces], breastplates, caps, weapons” (Sanderson, 391).

Chasm Duty - Artist unknown 

Brian Sanderson’s The Way of Kings offers many great ideas that can be stolen for use in a D&D campaign. In particular, the dangerous race to steal gemhearts and salvaging valuables from dark and haunted canyons that are something in between a dungeon and the depths of Underdark in a more traditional D&D campaign. It lends a new sense of danger and exploration that could boost the fun and excitement of your campaign. The Way of Kings offers even more to steal and I hope to write about some of the other things I think would be perfect for use in most D&D campaigns including monsters, and magical weapons and armor like Shardblades and Shardplate.