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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 5308440" data-attributes="member: 32164">Yes, but there's a difference between the "Red Box" and Blizzard's free trial cards for WoW. The Red Box isn't FREE!"Get them hooked with a super-limited experience" is a fine marketing idea for a free product. It is a terrible, sneaky, underhanded tactic for a product people shell out good money for.We can debate the value for money that D&D offers until the cows come home. I think it's spectacular. But the point is that to get someone who's never played to truly understand that, you have to convey that D&D offers an unlimited game experience that is infinitely replayable. To properly convey that, you need to offer some level of that repeatability in your introductory product. Without that, it's a piss-poor representation of what D&D is, which is what a Starter Set should tell people.By offering no (or very limited) character creation rules and super-limited magic items, with one, maybe two adventures, you're inviting the comparison of D&D to a video game. All the Starter Set offers is "a few hours" of gameplay, once, with no graphics. It comes across as less replayable than Monopoly. Does that give a fair representation of what D&D is? Sure, if it were free, it would be fine. But it's not free.Full character creation rules and enough variability in magic items and monsters that the DM could run an infinite number of 3-level (or even 2-level) campaigns out of the box would convey, very solidly, what D&D offers. The value for money it provides would be made obvious to anyone who was inclined to try it. Not everyone would move on to further products, but far more would than will do so from the super-limited trial the box currently provides. As is, the only people who will move on are the ones who are predisposed to "get" the game. And most of those people are already playing it. New customers will compare it to the latest video game and think: "That's all I get for $20? Meh, no thanks." You can tell people until the cows come home about all the great stuff "the full D&D experience" offers, but unless you show them, they won't GET it.D&D isn't like most conventional games, because it's an experiential product. Most people don't really "get it" until they play. And the more you play, the more you get it. That's why it becomes an addictive hobby game for most of us who play it. Trust me, by offering a richer experience in the Starter Set, it would mean more people would buy the subsequent products, not less (as long as those products offered options and levels than the Starter Set lacked). It baffles me that WotC doesn't seem to get this.The new "Red Box" does a great job of explaining the game, and a pretty good job of conveying the gameplay experience, and for that I give it kudos. But if it also did a great job of conveying the game's infinite replayability, it would be perfect.</blockquote>

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