I posted this at WotC's boards, but figured why not post it here too. I agree and disagree that this is a good release. I think it could have been an EXCELLENT release for new players, with a few adjustments. One of those as already stated, is something to make the character creation easier after the first time going through. It's easy enough to make a character, but after a couple times it starts being a pain. Even a simple short summary that runs down what options you have as a character. As such I even made one for when I use this set to introduce others. I'll post it onto this, though it won't make much sense to those who haven't read it I imagine...those who know 4e can make sense of a lot of it, but it still won't give them the intricate nuts and bolts beyond a simple spoiler.
If there is a problem with the summary, I'll edit it out (when I read here next, or someone else can mod it if they have the ability)
Okay, looked over the Starter set...and...I'm in shock slightly. It's NOT GEARED towards newbies really. It is...but it isn't. Let me explain.
It has a really good introduction in the Player's Book, or what you should read first. That's a good thing. It has the new player start reading through a choose your own adventure. This is a VERY GOOD idea and a VERY GOOD WAY of introducing roleplaying to someone brand new to the game.
However, there the problems start. It appears as if someone forgot some basic editing...at least from my read through of it. It isn't just misspelled words. I have plenty of those, which you'll notice in this post. I even have a ton of grammar errors. I can understand that, and normally don't mind the minor mistakes in any of the Books WotC has put out. These are a little more than minor. For example, the fighter may NEVER learn what his Constitution score is. There is a portion in the book where it asks you to make a roll. If you hit you go to a section which explains your Constitution score. If you miss, you NEVER go to that section...EVER.
In addition, it tosses around terms such as 1d4, 1d8 casually as if a reader should know what that means automatically. I know what it means, but how about some youngster with no prior experience in this...they may just look at that and try to figure out what it's telling them!
The biggest complaint I have other than that, is that it's made for creating one character only. If your character dies, you have to go read through the ENTIRE BOOK AGAIN just to create a new character. This may be fun the first four or five times you go through it, but after that, it's going to get tedious.
They advertise Heroes of the Fallen Lands in the DMB (Dungeon Master's Book) and that's acceptable, but if they don't have a way to create characters on your own...then your still stuck reading through the Player's Book every time you want to play.
That's a pretty BIG slap for the Essentials line, in my eyes. Not that great.
Furthermore, there is no real comprehensive list of the powers. This could be a bonus, or a minus.
Instead of a listing in the book, you get some cardstock that's perforated into cards. These are like the powercards that you can buy, but for the characters in the set. All your powers are written out this way. You are given a few of the power abilities in the book for you basic start, but after that you have to search through the cards to find your power. You then take the power card to learn what you can do.
Some will find that a great idea and think it's the greatest thing since sliced Pie. I'm not too fond of this by itself. I'd rather have a list in the book from which players can copy their character powers onto something else first. I wouldn't mind if they had BOTH a list in the book, and the cards, but I don't like the idea of cards only. This is only a personal preference though, and some will REALLY like it.
Another gripe is they discuss Initiative and initiative modifiers, but really don't discuss how you get it. That's not all that great. As it's written without that information, the monsters will almost always have the advantage of initiative. Not as bad as somone never figuring out what their Constitution is (unless of course they cheat and start reading the choose your own adventure as a book straight through instead of turning to the relavent section), but still, kind of irksome.
A little editing would have shown these problems on the first read through. I noticed them on my first perusal of the book. Maybe I'm blind and didn't notice these things in the book, even after going back and trying to find them...which could be possible, but if I'm not blind, I kind of find it appalling such obvious things would be missing.
On the bright side, I think the choose your own adventure format is excellent in introducing players...but they may have a few obstacles in getting through it.
The DMB on the otherhand is excellent. They have a ton of information in it, all crowded into one book which will basically allow a DM to create as many adventures as they desire. It allows characters to advance up to level 2, and though no XP is given, tells them that they can advance to level 3 even.
It covers all the essentials not covered in the PHB, from skills, to combat, to adventure design, and more. It also has a lot of encounters to get your hands wet, and then a nice little monster manual at the back. It's like they had two different writers. One for the PB, and one for the DMB. The DMB is superior in EVERYWAY to the PB. I would rate the DMB excellent and it saves the set.
With this set, people can create character after character after character, and keep playing for a while. If people can get through the character creation, I would rate this as the best introductory set since the 3.5 Black Dragon Basic set. It's a very good set overall, and can allow people to play for hours, days, weeks, months, etc. with just this set alone.
That said, it will take some dissecting for the new players to understand things at times, especially those items explained in the PB.
The items that come with it, are the aforementioned PB and DMB, 4 character sheets, a large map, 56 tokens, with 12 character tokens, 5 action point tokens, 36 (different monsters on front and back) monster tokens, and 3 large tokens representing a black dragon, a white dragon and what I think is a horse with a zombie, gelatinous cube, and Dire wolf on the back of those three tokens.
You get 6 black dice with whhite numbers.
Seven cardstock sheets perforated with 9 cards apiece (for a total of 63 cards, some of the cards are treasure cards however)
A piece of paper the size of an index card with a code for your free solo adventure.
And finally a sheet advertising the essentials line with the Dungeon Master's Kit, the Rules Compenium, the Dungeon Tiles, and the Monster Vault.
So that's the preview for you who haven't gotten it, or those just visiting looking for more information.
Finally, I'm posting an Aid to character creation and some essential stuff that SHOULD have been included in the set. Note, this is ALL abbreviated overall, but should be understood easily by someone who has actually read the PB in the starter set. If it is too much, I suppose Wizards could take out that part, but as I said, it's just an abbreviation and will be useless overall to someone who doesn't have the set...and for those who already know the rules well, it won't be of any use. For many of the items, such as the powers, they are MORE FULLY explained on your powercards, this list is just a reminder of what you are looking at when creating your character. Your powercards are the items that you need to use to get the full information. The same goes for some of the other information.
I would hope that Wizards would actually create a support page. They can even take the stuff I've typed out here and modify it (I haven't really checked over the spelling or grammar) and post it on the site somewhere for new players to grasp some of the ideas better, as well as having an easier time making their second or third character. The first time is fun reading through the adventure...after that....
Anyways, onto the guide...
The URL (
