Review: D&D Starter Set
I recently created a Dungeons and Dragons character for a campaign my honey boo is going to be running. While it’s fun to create your own character, it’s also very confusing and frustrating when you’ve never done so before and don’t really know what you’re doing. I got a headache like I’d been studying for a chem test. A friend, who is an experienced player, was helping me and he’s like, “You need to roll your strength, dexterity, charisma, and etc, etc, etc.” Um, okay. I know what strength is, I know what dexterity is, I know all the words, but in the context of the game, what do they mean? You can only use so many points to set up all those attributes for your character and without understanding the advantages and disadvantages of having one higher or lower than another, you’re really just guessing. As a beginner, you really have no frame of reference for character creations. But with this Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set, you get 5 pre-generated characters so you can pretty much just jump into the game. While you’re playing, you get better acquainted with the characters and what everything means so that in the future you’ll better understand all the differences and could create your own character more easily. So, that’s terrific for beginners.
The set itself is very basic. It contains a rule book, the adventure, 5 pre-generated characters, and a pretty nice set of dice. There’s nothing more to it, but there isn’t really supposed to be as it’s a starter set. Though it’s really more fun and easier to keep track of everything if you play with miniatures. We have a variety of minis from other D&D games we have like Dungeon Command and Wrath of Ashardalon that we can use and you can also pick up the corresponding miniatures for the starter set if you were so inclined.
Being a newb myself, I can’t really make comparisons between this and other D&D products, but I definitely see this as a worthwhile purchase if you’re looking to get into the game. My fiance and I ran through the “Lost Mine of Phandelver” adventure. He’s an experienced player and his opinion of the adventure is that it’s a great adventure, but it’s not good for someone with no Dungeon Master experience. Being a DM requires a fair amount of imagination. The adventure book gives you the basic things to say, but you have to make other decisions on your own, and that’s not really the best thing for someone who’s new to running the game. So, his overall opinion is that the starter set is great for beginners who have an experienced DM running it.
