D&D Starter sets

[Stormonu]

I thought I had played through the majority of the 2ed era - and yet I do not recognize most of their starter sets.

A full system for the The 3.5 starter came with the second box set. It contained dice, character sheets, and a soft cover of the PHB. I don't remember if anything else came with it.

That was actually a player set, not a "starter" set - it was designed to give a new player all the equipment he needed to start his/her trek into D&D. I'm not near mine right now, but I seem to recall it did come with PC minis. My 9-year-old son has claimed our copy as "his", and he uses the dice from the set (we'd use the PHB, but we're currently playing 4E).

 

[Stormonu]

I have an early '90s (1992) Basic intro set that's not listed here - called Dragon Quest. It has Ral Partha minis and tons of interesting stuff, like monster and item cards. I think they were foolish not to call it Dungeons & Dragons though, it uses essentially the Mentzer rules.

If I remember correctly (and my memory is pretty bad, as this thread has shown), Dragon Quest was a game system originally produced by another company. TSR, if I recall correctly, bought the game to bury it - they put out the one set, then I never heard about it again. It's one of the few 2E era items I could never lay my hands on, so all my recollection of it is second-hand.

I also didn't include the Dragon Strike game, basically because it was a stab at a Heroquest-like boardgame and wasn't really designed to be a lead into a full D&D game.

 

[Echohawk]

A full system for the The 3.5 starter came with the second box set. It contained dice, character sheets, and a soft cover of the PHB. I don't remember if anything else came with it.

As Stomonu pointed out, you are probably confusing the Player's Kit with the starter sets. They were three distinct products:

• 2004 Basic Game: Dungeons & Dragons Basic Game | RPG Item | RPGGeek
• 2006 Basic Game: Dungeons & Dragons Basic Game (revised) | RPG Item | RPGGeek
• 2006 Player's Kit: Player's Kit | RPG Item | RPGGeek

The softcover PHB was in the Player's Kit, but unlike the two "Basic Game" boxes, the Player's Kit did not contain any minis.

 

[Joshua Randall]

The (first) 4E starter set was actually a decent value, just for the dungeon tiles and the monster tokens.

 

[Echohawk]

As a side note, I've never seen the contents of the 1999 Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game set with the black box and red dragon (not to be confused with the 1991 Black Box Basic set) and don't know exactly what the rules in that game are. I don't know if it's another reprint of the 1991 set or if it's an intro to 2e.

The 1999 set is very different from the earlier D&D sets. It seems to be a streamlined version of the 2nd Edition rules, and refers to the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monstrous Manual as the progression path once you've played the three adventures in the "Adventures Book". Despite this, the box is titled "Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game", and doesn't make any reference to "Advanced" except where it mentions what products you might like to buy next.

 

[doctorhook]

The softcover PHB was in the Player's Kit, but unlike the two "Basic Game" boxes, the Player's Kit did not contain any minis.

Are you sure about that? I thought the Player's Kit was the one that was sold with an attached DDM booster pack from the Aberrations set. What am I thinking of?

 

[S'mon]

If I remember correctly (and my memory is pretty bad, as this thread has shown), Dragon Quest was a game system originally produced by another company. TSR, if I recall correctly, bought the game to bury it - they put out the one set, then I never heard about it again. It's one of the few 2E era items I could never lay my hands on, so all my recollection of it is second-hand.

This particular "Dragon Quest" is just Mentzer Basic D&D rules (with pregen PCs). It's not that other "Dragon Quest". I guess TSR bought the game and just used the name?

 

[Dimitri Mazieres]

Are you sure about that? I thought the Player's Kit was the one that was sold with an attached DDM booster pack from the Aberrations set. What am I thinking of?

There was a number of Player's Kits that were sold with a bonus DDM Aberrarions booster attached, as you say, but the Player's Kit itself didn't contain any minis.

 

[doctorhook]

There was a number of Player's Kits that were sold with a bonus DDM Aberrarions booster attached, as you say, but the Player's Kit itself didn't contain any minis.

Ahh, that sounds correct. Perhaps that's where the confusion about minis in that set comes from -- the fact that minis were bundled with that set, in some (many?) cases.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

There was also 1994's First Quest intro to AD&D 2e with an audio CD.