D&D “Essentials” as a product line = making it less daunting to get into the game?

[Harlekin]

The difference between the classic red box and the new one is, the original just has more game. This isn't really about the level range, but the support for that level range.

I believe, this perception is influenced by the fact that you got the original red box when you knew nothing about what else is out there, but today you are comparing the new red box against all possible available material.

Try building 5 characters using the new red box. You'll tear your hair out. I think the 'walk through a character creation' is great, but they should have included a few pages of a more standard character building process. Old red box had a 'how to play' walk through, but you could skip it and just go to the character creation section. Plenty of replayability, even with only a few basic classes.

I agree that having a sheet that tells you how to build characters without the solo adventure would have been nice, but I don't think building characters with these rules is as arduous as you make it out to be. It's not necessarily something you would do for fun, but it is serviceable. Moreover, the new red box gives you a much larger variability in the characters you can play.

Second, how many monsters are included in the new red box?

34

How many magic items?

7, not a whole lot but magic items are less of a focus in the new edition.

Does it have tips on creating your own dungeon?

6 pages plus 2 pages describing a world to set the adventures in. It even has suggestions how to reuse the original map to create new layouts.

Classic Red Box was a game. It can be expanded, and often was, to either the Expert box or AD&D. Essentials Red Box is a demo, with limited replayability. For that you need the DM Kit and a Player's book.

I can say when I was young I only had the B1-9 collection, and I don't think I played D&D beyond 3rd level until 3rd edition. (I did wander off to play other games including Palladium Fantasy, Warhammer, and Talislanta in between.) I still remember each of those old adventures fondly.

You can of course do the same thing with this box. If you look on the DDI, there are tens of adventures you can play with this box, as well as the excellent Slaying Stone. And as 4ed adventures are self-contained, you don't even need monsters used in the adventure to be in the box.

I'm not saying the new red box is perfect, the rules inconsistencies with the Essentials line is very annoying and the large number of editorial errors makes this less useful to beginners than it could be, but framing a product that by itself allows for tens of hours of replay as a demo is unrealistic. Moreover comparisons with the classical red box generally do not generally account for the fact that the first RPG will always look different; thus they overrate the classic red box.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

KotB is one of my favourite modules. But, as a starter module for someone completely new to the game, it's not very good. It tells you to fill in the blanks, but then gives you no guidelines as to how to fill in those blanks. Which is fine if this is not your first time playing D&D, but, for a complete newbie can be far more difficult that it appears.

Keep doesn't really have blanks - maybe you're thinking of B1 In Search of the Unknown. Keep has a statted out base area, a nice wilderness/area map, and a dungeon broken dowen into bite-sized chunks all in one area. It's actually a very good beginner module and many people did start with it back when.

I've played KotB lots of times, both as a DM and as a player. Frequently KotB is nothing but one long slog fest of killing monster after monster with no actual reason for doing so other than there are monsters in need of killing.

Monsters in need of killing because they threaten a local village is pretty much the classic D&D scenario. I don't ever recall seeing the keep as a grind and running it for a couple of kids now they don;t seem to feel that way either.

Yes, it can be turned into more, but, in order to do that, I think a lot of DM's had to make all sorts of rookie mistakes, fumbling their way to making this a great module.

There's really not much needs to be done with it. names for the NPC''s maybe but it's perfectly playable as is.

Honestly, I would say that The Lost City (which was the first module I ever played or ran) was a much better beginner product.

I liked Lost City but it's a slightly different flavor - buried city in the desert with a faction war vs a castle and evil monsters lurking in the countryside. TLC is very Conan-esque but I'm not sure it's the best intro adventure for a first-time DM.

If you're going to have beginner products, they really need to educate the user. Expecting a user to just fumble his way through, and not get frustrated and give it up, is not a particularly effective means of bringing in new players.

Thousands and thousands of people started playing D&D with B2 - it's the most successful intro adventure and most-printed adventure period for any RPG ever going by sales numbers. I'm not sure how you see it as this huge failure but it's a view I haven't encountered before at least.

Besides, Keep on the Shadowfell is the 4E adventure I mentioned and it really has no relation to KotB. I do think it's better than the Red Box intro adventure we have now. Why not use it?

 

[Beginning of the End]

Keep doesn't really have blanks - maybe you're thinking of B1 In Search of the Unknown.

I don't think he can be talking about B1, either. (At least not accurately.) Although it requires you to place the monsters and treasure, the adventure is fully-keyed and does provide guidelines for how to place the monsters and treasure. That is, in fact, the entire point of B1: It teaches the DM how to key a map.

 

[Hussar]

No blanks in B2? Really? No named NPC's for one. No actual storyline going on, just a random mish mash of stuff thrown together. Y'know what, Mike Mearls does a much better job of explaining things than I do.

The fact that KotB was the best selling module had a lot more to do with the fact that it was bundled into the old Mentzer Basic box - probably the single best selling RPG product of all time. At a time when you could slap the D&D logo on anything an it would sell.

I started with this too - well, I started with The Lost City, but, this was right up there along with Isle of Dread. I kept playing D&D despite this module, not because of it.

But, I know right now, that this conversation isn't going to go anywhere. All classic products were examples of perfection and no criticism is ever possible, so, feel free to have the last word on this.

 

[unnatural 20]

It's not easier for me. I just came back after being away from the game for nearly a decade. On a whim I bought the rules compendium and Eberron campaign setting.

I suppose if you are going to play a standard game or the generic D&D setting it is, but looks like I will need at least the DMG, PHB, and MM of 4e.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Except it's not WotC's term to do with as they please. They weren't even, AFAICT, the first company to use the term to refer to their core rulebook(s). (Nor was TSR.)

Are you serious? You really believe this word "Core" has some sort of all-encompassing importance that people aren't allowed to do whatever the heck they want with it?

I got news for you... it's a word in the English language. And unless it's been registered or copywrited... people can use it any way they darn well please.

And I find it ironic that your final paragraph says that my "scheme" requires thinking customers as idiots... whereas your whole point is that people aren't smart enough to determine what books they need to play unless they have a cute little starburst sticker on them that says "Buy this one! Buy this one! It's Core! It's Core!"

 

[unnatural 20]

True enough. Admitedly, my purchase was made out of ignorance. I hope DDI will have an article to "patch" Eberron.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

No blanks in B2? Really? No named NPC's for one. No actual storyline going on, just a random mish mash of stuff thrown together. Y'know what, Mike Mearls does a much better job of explaining things than I do.

This is what's known as a "sandbox". Many people like them, obviously some people don't. A lack of named NPC's didn't matter to me then and it doesn't matter now - if someone asks, you make one up. I think today's 13 year old can pull it off just fine. You think Mearls opinion on this might have changed since 1999 now that he works for WOTC?

The fact that KotB was the best selling module had a lot more to do with the fact that it was bundled into the old Mentzer Basic box - probably the single best selling RPG product of all time. At a time when you could slap the D&D logo on anything an it would sell.

That's my point - it was included in the Basic set at the time. An entire adventure module. Not just 1 level's worth of encounters.

I started with this too - well, I started with The Lost City, but, this was right up there along with Isle of Dread. I kept playing D&D despite this module, not because of it.

Lots of people liked Isle of Dread too. Again, another sandbox.

But, I know right now, that this conversation isn't going to go anywhere. All classic products were examples of perfection and no criticism is ever possible, so, feel free to have the last word on this.

Wow, hyperbole much? That's what you took from this? Sheesh.

At the time, a lot of people liked a lot of the early B/X adventures. looking back 30 years, sure, there are things that have come since then that were better but AT THE TIME those were good. Among the topics in this thread is that we have a new basic set box that despite all that has been learned does not measure up to the set from 1981. One of the reasons, I think, is that the included adventure doesn't measure up. Putting in a "real" adventure would be an improvement. Not "put in Keep on the Borderlands from 1980" but "put in a modern day equivalent of what they did back then."

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

I agree that having a sheet that tells you how to build characters without the solo adventure would have been nice, but I don't think building characters with these rules is as arduous as you make it out to be. It's not necessarily something you would do for fun, but it is serviceable. Moreover, the new red box gives you a much larger variability in the characters you can play.

Old Basic Box had 7 character classes. New Basic has 4 + 4 races or 4 classes X 4 races so it is better there in a sense, but equipment and powers are very limited so it's not as great a change as it could be.

Second, how many monsters are included in the new red box?
34

81 Basic set had 69 counting by type where Dragon = 1 entry. If we go by individual types there are 100. They range from 1/2 hit die kobolds to 11 hit die gold dragons.

You can of course do the same thing with this box. If you look on the DDI, there are tens of adventures you can play with this box, as well as the excellent Slaying Stone. And as 4ed adventures are self-contained, you don't even need monsters used in the adventure to be in the box.

The difference is that you can only go to 2nd level - then you're done. Additionally you can't pick up different equipment, you can't pick up different powers, you can't do much to advance or personalize your character within the rules. Now the old basic set was not a great example of character customization but it had more options in many ways than this set does and shouldn't we be able to do better than that nowadays?

I'm not saying the new red box is perfect, the rules inconsistencies with the Essentials line is very annoying and the large number of editorial errors makes this less useful to beginners than it could be, but framing a product that by itself allows for tens of hours of replay as a demo is unrealistic. Moreover comparisons with the classical red box generally do not generally account for the fact that the first RPG will always look different; thus they overrate the classic red box.

Kids used to take the basic set, make up characters and run them through B2 or B1 or B3 or B4 and some would be at 3rd but some (Elves and M-U's typically) would not be. So the kid that played a fighter this time might roll up a cleric and the group would continue into the next B-whatever adventure the DM picked up, or another kid would run things while the previous DM made up a character and ran through this new adventure with his friends, or one of them might finish out the map for the Haunted Keep and they would play through that. A lot of people did play it that way back then until someone in the group got the Expert set and then things advanced.

If they're trying to draw in the younger generation, well, I don't think the younger generation is going to get a $10 a month DDI subscription when they start playing and they may not even think to look online for stuff about it. So errata, expansions behind the paywall, and DDI adventures are not anywhere near as useful as getting it right the first time and giving them a good amount of content to get a regular game started. Including 4 races/4 classes is fine but put in a real chargen system, make it go to level 3 and give them some actual power and feat choices at each level. Put in a real mutli-level adventure. Put in some we-started-it-you-finish-it dungeon maps like the skull mountain dungeon in Holmes basic or the haunted keep in Moldvay basic - those things can get someone's imagination started up.

Think about this: I'm a guy who remembers this set well and I have kids old enough to start playing. If it's a retro-appeal thing then when I read the reviews it sounds terrible because it's $20 and it's not really comparable to the old set - I can just buy the book for about the same $$$ to play D&D and skip this. If it's supposed to be a strong introduction to what 4th edition is all about then I think it fails there too - 2 levels out of what is now 30? Limited powers and feats? Is that how 4E goes? If it's aimed at kids then they don't know what the old boxed set looked like anyway so who cares? If I am the target audience and think it's a miss in these major areas then who thinks it's a win?

So yeah, it is a sub-par product - they could have done much better than this. It's a shame because the Essentials books I have seen are really good. This critical piece though seems rushed and badly thought out. If it ends up selling like mad then great, we have more people getting into the game and that's good for all of us but I wish they had just taken a little more time to get it right. I would like to think that some people will pick it up cold and jump in and have a good time and then get more into it, maybe even starting a group of their own - but think how much better it could have been.