Starter Sets

[aramis erak]

The beginner box for the latest edition of Legend of the Five Rings retails for $40. It does come up a set of dice which retail for about $15 (I think), a starter adventure, some pre-made characters & sheets you'll probably never use again, and some cardboard gaming tokens of dubious value. The main rulebook retails for $60 but odds are you're going to want the proprietary dice for the game so we'll call the total $75. The beginner box is of very limited value in my opinion and I don't think it's worth the cost when you factor in having to buy the main book as well. That said, I did purchase the beginner set, main book, and an extra set of L5R dice because I'm an L5R fanatic. But I didn't think the beginner set was a great value for what I spent. But I knew what I was walking into so I don't feel cheated or anything.

The map is quite useful; one side is the Rokugan map, the other is the Palace of the Emerald Magistrate. Given that the L5R 5e corebook includes an option for gridded combat, the tokens are actually rather useful. I've used the starter set adventure with players who had played the beta and others who had not; it's a well set up whodunnit and makes used of the included palace map. It's a good introduction to the mechanics, both for new to the system and new to gaming.
The follow-on adventure is a download, and needs nothing new. It even gives some feel of the experience system.

 

[John Desmarais]

Mongoose’s starter set for 2nd ed Traveller is pretty great. Nearly the entire rule set, plus a pretty good starter campaign (in the form of a series of linked adventures).

 

[darjr]

I've run A LOT of free rpg day mods, and bought a lot of games because of it. One of the things that I find very strange is when the game as presented in the Free RPGDay offering plays better than the full fledged game. There have been a few. Granting that those offerings don't offer longer term play.

Although a couple of them would have worked very well for longer term play. Strangely, some of the WH40K ones were among those, if you were willing to just play the pregens and make up all the adventures yourself.

 

[MGibster]

Mongoose’s starter set for 2nd ed Traveller is pretty great. Nearly the entire rule set, plus a pretty good starter campaign (in the form of a series of linked adventures).

It's not really a starter set in the traditional sense. Unlike the starter sets for Cyberpunk Red, Legend of the Five Rings, or Alien, the Traveller starter set was a whole complete game.

 

[aramis erak]

It's not really a starter set in the traditional sense. Unlike the starter sets for Cyberpunk Red, Legend of the Five Rings, or Alien, the Traveller starter set was a whole complete game.

The Classic Traveller Starter Traveller was a complete edition of Classic Traveller - it replaced the minis game ship combat with a range band system, and was missing the "drugs" page. It uses the layouts from The Traveller Book, but organized differently, with some being updated/errata-corrected. It's the only CT set that tells the difference (aside from price) in Bk2 combat terms between Pulse Lasers and Beam Lasers. (Two shots instead of 1.) Many pages are simply "replace the page number" from The Traveller Book, which is essentially CT2.1
(CT 1.0 is the 1977 LBB US printing, and is the GW UK :BB edition; 2.0 is the 1981 US version; 2.1 is The Traveller Book, and 2.2 is Starter Traveller. There is a reprint of 2.0 - the big floppy version, and I don't know which edition Hunter used for the QLI reprint of CT, but I suspect 2.0. The QLI reprint was primarily for the GRIP VTT Traveller edition.)

So, MGT2 Starter being a nearly full game is nearly an homage of CT's