D&D 5E (2024) Hellfire Club Starter Set

[Stormonu]

It tells you how to play and you can play it without the core books?

Yes, it has a condensed rule book covering the basics of play. There's no character generation or advancement rules as your expected to use the included pre-gens (which are prebuilt out for level 1, 2 and 3). But it comes with a small selection of monsters (on cards) and the adventures hand-hold the DM through running the game.

If you want to play beyond the included adventures, you'd need to pick up the core books. But if you're not bothered with advancing the characters any further past 3rd level, you could make up some of your own adventures to squeeze more out of the boxed set if you wanted to.

But it's really designed that once you play through the four enclosed adventures that by that time you should pick up the core books at that point to continue on.

An element I miss from the old B/X and BECMI set was that there was enough there you could stop anywhere on the way and had enough material just in those sets for endless hours of play (as long as the DM was willing to make/buy more adventures). This set is more geared toward introducing and teaching the game than being a "complete" subset of the early game.

 

[Remathilis]

An element I miss from the old B/X and BECMI set was that there was enough there you could stop anywhere on the way and had enough material just in those sets for endless hours of play (as long as the DM was willing to make/buy more adventures). This set is more geared toward introducing and teaching the game than being a "complete" subset of the early game.

The Essentials Kit did that: it let you build simple characters and gave them six levels of stuff to do. What I've didn't do was hold your hand on learning to play. Ideally though, it was a good intermediate product between the starter and full PHB.

 

[Audiomancer]

I got it for Roll20. Going to make some modifications first. I am running it with the ST kids in 1984, and and they go on the D&D ride at the new Hawkins Fairgrounds. There, they get sucked into the module/boxed set and meet Dungeon Master (yes, like the cartoon) and have to complete quests to escape from Greyhawkins and get back to Hawkins. So they'll play their alter-ego PCs from Eddie's games, but be Will and Dustin and others at the same time. I need to figure out what happens if a PC dies though. This is only a multi-session one shot though.

This is a great idea!

If it were me, I’d have them meet up with the kids from the 80s cartoon, then they all have to find their way to the only roller-coaster/dimensional-portal in Greyhawkins that can take them all home.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Essentials Kit did that: it let you build simple characters and gave them six levels of stuff to do. What I've didn't do was hold your hand on learning to play. Ideally though, it was a good intermediate product between the starter and full PHB.

Yup. This is a product that's designed to be playable without any other D&D products. But it's not specifically designed to teach people D&D.

Note, there is a lot to suggest that this product is largely being paid for by Netflix, as part of an absolutely massive Stranger Things based advertising campaign. Which is why it couldn't be bumped to free up print capacity for the Eberron book reprint or avoid clashing with the Starter Set. It's not a WotC initiative to recruit new players.

 

[Nebulous]

This is a great idea!

If it were me, I’d have them meet up with the kids from the 80s cartoon, then they all have to find their way to the only roller-coaster/dimensional-portal in Greyhawkins that can take them all home.

Maybe the coaster is broken once they enter Greyhawkins, and the purpose of their dungeon delving through the 4 quests is to find parts/knowledge to fix the coaster to get back to the fairgrounds.