D&D 5E Comment on the negative article by John Dodd

[variant]

The Starter Set is $20. It's only $12-19 if ordered in advance from a website. Impulse purchases and last minute buyers seldom purchase from a website with delivery. That's an entirely different audience.

You must not have heard of Amazon Prime and all those people that sit over on those deal websites that just buy whatever is cheap. Also, it makes me wonder if you paid any attention over the last ten years to all those people that just sit on Ebay all day and buy random junk.

It's a lot easier to impulse buy when it's a click of the button.

 

[GrumpyGamer]

People keep saying this but I think it's a bogus distinction. They're both introductions to their respective games and aimed at new players, aren't they? Or do people really feel that the Starter Set, for some reason, isn't intended to play that role? I'm pretty sure that's exactly the role the Beginner Box is intended to play.

I suppose I could see an argument that the D&D Starter Set is more aimed at re-attracting the D&D market as a teaser product. But I think that would be a very short-sighted role for the product. It may be a good marketing strategy for WotC - after all, even I bought one and I'm skeptical it meets the $20 value in the face of the Players Handbook's much greater utility coming out only a month later.

You quoted me with this response, so I feel obligated to respond.

Why did you skip over the part of my post where I clearly explained the distinction as one being built around a module (5e) and the other built around a simplified rule set (PF)?

If you want to compare the Starter Set + 5e PHB + Fe MM to PFBB + Souls for Smuggler's Shiv (My favorite Starter AP module for PF, even if I would not continue the group down the rest of the AP) then you might be on more firm ground.

What people keep making here, including the original review, is a false equivalence fallacy. The two products, while both targeting new players, are not designed to work the same way and do not contain the same set of component parts.

 

[Loki-lie-Smith]

Mostly new here but I have a question: let's say they put the same group to choose between PBB and the Mouse Guard box or Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers box. Will they still pick the beginner box based on their criteria?

 

[fanboy2000]

I'm probably weird, I tend to skip two kinds of reviews on Amazon.com: 5-star and 1-star. As far as I'm concerned, a 5-star review is usually a biased behind-kissing, while a 1-star is biased the other way towards being a rant. Do some reviews break this mold? Of course they do, but I generally find that people are more honest in the 2-4 star reviews and actually review the product not just "I liked it" or "I hated it". Those reviews give better information with which to formulate my purchase decision.

Randall? Is that you?

Agreed. I intend to buy the Big Three books the instant they hit the shelves at my FLGS. I hardly ever run prefab adventures and have no real need for the Starter Set. But I went out and picked one up anyway, out of a combination of curiosity and Red-Box nostalgia. I would not have done that if it were $35-40. And I've got a good salary and no kids; I'm not hurting for disposable income.

I bought the starter set the Sunday after it came out, read the rules, and then read the Basic D&D rules. I was quite impressed. I do think that this starter set, coming out a month (little more) before the PHB and the rest of the system gives it additional purposes that the PFBB doesn't have because it's a product that was released latter in game's life. The PFBB's only job is to get new players into an existing system. (I'm right because I bolded two words. )

The SS is pulling additional duty. It's supposed to tide people over until the PHB comes out. It's also supposed to jumpstart Organized Play. The Adventurer's League Handbook specifically calls it out as an evergreen adventure that a store can run at anytime as part of the program. These secondary concerns will diminish as 5e comes into it's own. Wizard's often puts out a new starter set when the edition gets a revision. That set will, if 3.5 is any indication, be more comprehensive like PFBB.

 

[Jester David]

You must not have heard of Amazon Prime and all those people that sit over on those deal websites that just buy whatever is cheap. Also, it makes me wonder if you paid any attention over the last ten years to all those people that just sit on Ebay all day and buy random junk.

It's a lot easier to impulse buy when it's a click of the button.

They're not the target audience. They might provide some nice extra sales, but they're not a reliable source of income to sustain the company, grow the brand, or sustain the hobby. Not unless every D&d product is going to be "random junk".

 

[Jester David]

With the free pdf, a GM will be able to do an entire 1-20 campaign. You can't do that with Pathfinder's Box. Bringing new players and showing them two products isn't very fair but they will not understand the differences and the fact that after one, you have to purchase another product. After the other, you have the option of having everything for free.

Basic is pretty sweet, but if the value it provides is considers part of the Starter Set we need to consider the PFRD site and all the online content for Pathfinder as well. And the expansion documents for the Pathfinder Beginner Box which provide a fifth class, an addition adventure, and more class options.

 

[billd91]

You quoted me with this response, so I feel obligated to respond.

Why did you skip over the part of my post where I clearly explained the distinction as one being built around a module (5e) and the other built around a simplified rule set (PF)?

If you want to compare the Starter Set + 5e PHB + Fe MM to PFBB + Souls for Smuggler's Shiv (My favorite Starter AP module for PF, even if I would not continue the group down the rest of the AP) then you might be on more firm ground.

What people keep making here, including the original review, is a false equivalence fallacy. The two products, while both targeting new players, are not designed to work the same way and do not contain the same set of component parts.

You don't think that taking the whole 5e PH + 5e MM would skew the bias in the opposite direction of the bias you're complaining about? Do you see what you're doing here? You're replacing the bias you think the review has with one of your own. How do you think you're doing any better than the reviewer?

Personally, I think the reviewer at least has a better starting point - comparing entry products for new players. Since that's what both ostensibly are, I don't think he's comparing apples with oranges. The choices the publishers have made may have led to one being a honeycrisp and the other a red delicious, but they're still apples.

 

[GrumpyGamer]

You don't think that taking the whole 5e PH + 5e MM would skew the bias in the opposite direction of the bias you're complaining about? Do you see what you're doing here? You're replacing the bias you think the review has with one of your own. How do you think you're doing any better than the reviewer?

Or we could just accept that comparing a product where you open the box and almost immediately start playing a 30 hour adventure arc is different from one where you open the box and create a starter campaign and/or buy an additional adventure is an apples vs oranges comparison? They are different beasts. One is designed around quick highly integrated play and the other is designed around creativity.

To answer your question directly adding the PH and MM to the starter set would almost certainly skew it in favor of 5e until we say, wait doesn't that cost a small fortune more? Cost is a great way to see if the comparison you are making is fair.

 

[Jester David]

One final point on why price is not everything: the D&D core rules will cost $150 on release. Pathfinder costs $90 for the same rules. Pathfinder costs 3/5 as much as D&D. Even if you add the Game Mastery Guide to compare with the optional rules that make up much of the DMG PF is sitting at $130.

It would be grossly unfair to just dismiss any review claiming 5e is better with the comment "yeah, but Pathfinder is cheaper."
When I review 5e I will look at the actual quality of the game and compare the design of the two and not just the price tag.

 

[delericho]

People keep saying this but I think it's a bogus distinction. They're both introductions to their respective games and aimed at new players, aren't they?

Yes they are.

But it is fair to say that they go about it in very different ways.

The Pathfinder box is, essentially, a complete (albeit very limited) RPG. For that reason it has very little pre-gen adventure material, but it does include character generation (in addition to pre-gens), monsters not in the adventures, and some guidance for the DM as to what to do next. A group could, in principle, buy that and then play indefinitely with nothing else - though I suspect they'd get bored before too long.

The D&D box, by contrast, is essentially a fairly big adventure with some surrounding materials. It's approach is basically to provide the DM with "My First Adventure", and then guide him on to Basic and/or the "big three". (That shouldn't be a controversial statement - Mearls basically said as much.)

So, which is better?

Well, I'm in the happy position of having both and liking both, and my opinion is: it depends. It depends on who you are and who the gamers around you are.

If you're an existing gamer, the D&D set is better, but... you should get it if and only if you intend to run that adventure (or, I suppose, if you really need monsters, and can't wait for the update to Basic later this month). The thing is, Basic includes everything in the rulebook, the pregens can be downloaded in PDF form, as can the blank character sheet. So the only thing in the box other than the adventure is a set of dice.

If you're a new gamer (who, somehow, can't just join an existing group or find someone to teach you), you should look around at the groups near you. If they're Pathfinder guys, go for that; if they're D&D guys, go for that.

And if you're a new gamer and there are no groups around you (and yet you're here; not sure how that works )... I don't know. My gut feeling is that the Pathfinder set makes for a better first step*, but that D&D (rather than the Starter Set) has a much easier jump to the 'real' game.

* I do need to note that there may be a bias at play here - the Pathfinder set much more closely resembles the Red Box I started with, so I know it can work.

About the price: Yes, the Pathfinder set is considerably more expensive. It also includes many more reusable components - a strudy battlemat, character pawns, etc. Indeed, these may be sufficient justification to buy the set even if you never intend to use it as a starter.

But, actually, I would argue that the price isn't that important a factor, because the value of either box is so dependent on other factors - if you're aiming to have a nephew join your D&D game, there's no point in getting him the Pathfinder set (or vice versa). Or if you're not intending to use the specific adventure in the D&D set, there's no point in getting that set, regardless of price. And, finally, some people will just learn better with a how-to guide, and some will just learn better with a single extended example - the former would do better with the Pathfinder set; the latter with the D&D set.

(Personally, I'm much more likely to use the D&D Starter Set; if I were buying for my nephew, though, I'd get him the Pathfinder set. And, yes, I know that's not terribly helpful.)

Finally: A few years ago, we had gone more than a decade without a good starter set at all - there had been plenty produced, but they'd been pretty awful. We now have two (or four, if you include Star Wars and Dragon Age). I like to think that's a really good thing.