Fate of the (New) Red Box

[MrMyth]

If you run the actual math, it turns out that Essentials was more expensive than buying the PHB/DMG/MM. It was significantly more expensive if you actually bought the Starter Set and everything else WotC told you to buy (instead of just the books you actually would need to get a complete set of rules).

Not really true, though. It had a higher overall potential price, but a potentially lower start price.

Previous: DM gets PHB/DMG/MM. Everyone else gets PHB. Non-discount price for a 5 person group: $240.

Essentials: DM gets RC/DMK/MV. Everyone else gets their preferred Heroes book. Non-discount price for a 5 person group: $190. Or $210 if they pick up the Red Box beforehand.

Combined with a very confusing product line-up (with inconsistently overlapping content), conflicting information from WotC about which books you actually needed to buy, and a Starter Set that suffered from the same problems that every pay-to-preview boxed set has suffered from for the past 20 years the result wasn't pretty.

I do think they could have done the release better and made it clearer who needed what items. And while I don't think the Starter Set suffers nearly as much as the Alexandrian thinks (similar to his price assumptions), I do agree that it could have been so much more than it is.

I mean, I agree, absolutely, that they could have done a better job with how they handled Essentials. But some of these criticisms seem more... complaints for the sake of complaints, rather than honest reflections of the situation. It had its issues, but it also was successful for many folks, and did present a cheaper/simpler entry into the game than we had before.

 

[darjr]

Should more people get the RC?

I meant in the example above.

I'm not sure I care a bunch but i'd want more than one, at least, in a group of five.

 

[Stormonu]

While I certainly cannot prove it, I think the RC had a negative impact on the red box. I know if I had been aware of it at the time, I would have gotten it instead of the red box.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Given how strongly the Dragon Age box set continues to perform, I suspect that ate up a lot of the market for a beginner rpg in this fornat.

 

[MrMyth]

Should more people get the RC?

I meant in the example above.

I'm not sure I care a bunch but i'd want more than one, at least, in a group of five.

You certainly could get extra. But my experience has largely been that one of the Heroes books gives a player 95% of what they need to play the game. The RC answers lots of fiddly areas of the rules and is great to consult when a conflict comes up - but compared to past editions, my group only very rarely finds the need to consult a reference in game, and one RC is usually enough for that.

A group certainly can expend more (and, again, I think this is where WotC did a poor job of delivering expectations on what a group would need to buy.) But they did set a cheaper minimum threshold for a group getting what they need to really get into the game, from what I can tell.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Not really true, though. It had a higher overall potential price, but a potentially lower start price.

Previous: DM gets PHB/DMG/MM. Everyone else gets PHB. Non-discount price for a 5 person group: $240.

Essentials: DM gets RC/DMK/MV. Everyone else gets their preferred Heroes book. Non-discount price for a 5 person group: $190. Or $210 if they pick up the Red Box beforehand.

Based on what you're saying, Essentials was marketed at:

(1) People who make game-purchasing decisions based on the amount of money spent by the group. (Although always cited by people trying to defend ludicrously expensive games, I've never actually met someone who priced games like this.)

(2) DMs who don't want to know the rules for the PCs and players who don't want to know all the rules required to actually play the game. (Another group of people so rare I've never even seen one online.)

You certainly could get extra. But my experience has largely been that one of the Heroes books gives a player 95% of what they need to play the game. The RC answers lots of fiddly areas of the rules and is great to consult when a conflict comes up - but compared to past editions, my group only very rarely finds the need to consult a reference in game, and one RC is usually enough for that.

This, BTW, is why I find your entire comparison somewhat ludicrous in its arbitrary selection of books: Your hypothetical group is comfortable with everyone sharing an RC, but everybody needs their own copy of a Heroes book (except for the DM for some reason)?

Maybe I'm a special snowflake, but when my friends try out a new game we don't all immediately go out and buy a copy. We buy one set of rules for the group, see if we like it, and then other players may (or may not) purchase additional copies of the rulebooks.

The minimum set of books to have a complete set of rules for playing the Essentials version of the game is more expensive than the PHB/DMG/MM trio. (Significantly so if you include both Heroes books and the Starter Set.) This means that an entirely new player without any preexisting group, basing their purchasing decision on price, is going to find the PHB/DMG/MM cheaper.

What about players joining existing groups? Won't they find it cheaper to just pick up one of the Essentials Heroes books? Maybe. But that's pretty much totally irrelevant.

(1) A new player usually isn't going to buy any of the rulebooks until after they've played the game for awhile.

(2) When they do buy a new rulebook, they'll buy the same rulebook everybody else is using.

 

[OnlineDM]

On the "what do new players buy" question, I'll chime in with some actual experience.

This summer, I ran a table of D&D Encounters most weeks at my friendly local game store. I had at least three separate completely new players at my table over the summer who enjoyed the game but owned nothing for it (except dice in some cases). I spent time talking to them about what they should buy if they want to play more.

In every single case, I said two things:
- Buy one of these two books (Heroes of the Fallen Lands or Heroes of the Forgotten Kiingdoms) to get all of the rules on building a wide variety of characters. See how you like it.
- If you decide you want to keep on playing beyond that book, buy a DDI subscription, and MAYBE a Rules Compendium (but only if you want the details on how everything in the game works).

This is a much better entry point for this particular type of player than the PHB/MM/DMG. I tell them to buy one book at a price of $20 instead of $35. That's not a big investment, and they were all willing to do it. If they wanted more, I pointed them to D&D Insider rather than buying all of the Player's Handbooks.

Yes, if they want to become a dungeon master they're going to have to spend more money (Monster Vault + Dungeon Master's Kit + Rules Compendium). But it's not a lot more than Monster Manual + Dungeon Master Guide. And you know what? The Rules Compendium is so good that I would tell people who go the Monster Manual + Dungeon Master Guide route to buy a Rules Compendium as well.

Note that I didn't mention the Red Box anywhere. No one should buy that except completists or nostalgia buffs.

 

[Wolfshead]

None of my local Walmarts carried the Red Box. The local Target did, and they sold out of all of them. I don't know if they ever restocked or not, but I do know the box was on sale for only $11.99 at one point.

I purchased the 4e Red Box last year from my FLGS and finally put it to use for the first time last night.

A friend of my wife's decided she wanted to play D&D after watching the episode of Community that featured a D&D game. She had never played before and thought it looked like a lot of fun. Her husband had played fantasy computer games but had never played a tabletop RPG. So they went to the FLGS and they picked up the Red Box. My wife suggested to her friend that I could teach them how to play, so they asked me to do so.

So last night I ran my wife and this couple through the Player's Book adventure. Yes, it is designed for one person at a time, but I ran all three of them together and it went very well. It definitely served its purpose of introducing the mechanics of the game while creating a character. My wife's friend thought it was very cool and lots of fun. At the end of the night, they asked if we could play again next week.

The Red Box just brought two brand new players into the D&D world, who will most likely go on to purchase one or both of the Heroes of.... books. They've already purchased dice, and intend to buy more, and they are now shopping for miniatures for their characters. I call this a success.

Randy

 

[Maggan]

Given how strongly the Dragon Age box set continues to perform, I suspect that ate up a lot of the market for a beginner rpg in this fornat.

But WotC is ranked higher? Maybe the sales of the Red Box makes up a large chunk of WotC sales, maybe even larger than Dragon Age? And maybe Dragon Age suffered because Red Box ate up a lot of market?

No way to tell, I think.

/M

 

[Ahnehnois]

But WotC is ranked higher? Maybe the sales of the Red Box makes up a large chunk of WotC sales, maybe even larger than Dragon Age? And maybe Dragon Age suffered because Red Box ate up a lot of market?

No way to tell, I think.

/M

No there's no way to tell (thus the word "suspect"). The way I've framed it is based on my own observations only, but there's no real data to look at. That's pretty much inherent in these kinds of threads.