D&D (2024) What's In D&D's New Starter Set?

There's a new Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set, titled Heroes of the Borderlands, coming in September. WotC has given us a quick peek at what's inside! The set is designed to be replayable, and comes with maps and cards, which are presumably part of the tile-based character creation system WotC has hinted at recently. The video doesn't reveal much else, but we should have more information over the coming months.

 

[MerricB]

Oh, wow, they are really going with some full board game design and components, here. Nice.

Let's see what the quality of the components is - because Hasbro have a very, very nasty habit of cheaping out on cardboard quality.

 

[Clint_L]

While I agree that there is also room for a new all-ages starter set, similar to the original Phandelver set, I love the look of this as a way of introducing the game to young players, and plan to order several sets for our school club.

 

[Azzy]

It looks neat, I might pick it up.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This looks great, but I have a feeling it might be a lot more expensive than the previous 5e starter sets.

 

[michaeljpastor]

This video shows footage of the actual set being previewed at the New York Toy Fair. (Hopefully this link previews OK.)

This Starter Set is totally unlike anything WotC has released before. I love it. You might hate it. But it's not for us. It's obviously meant for people who have zero--ZERO--experience with TTRPGs.

I think it's a great move and long overdue.

Yeah, this is very much like the Return to Dark Tower playmats and cards. It actually looks even better. I really like those dice (like I need more).

As kids, I was the oldest of four, and the only one into D&D and geeky stuff. However, we all shared Star Wars and board games, especially Dark Tower. Now there are step- and -in-law sibling, and they are majorbigtime board gamers. My brother got the Return to Dark Tower game and they all tried to play it once before and didn't do very well with it. I joined them for a game Christmas Eve and we played it for 7 hours (still lost).

They're going to eat. this. up.

 

[mearls]

This looks great, but I have a feeling it might be a lot more expensive than the previous 5e starter sets.

I don't see any plastic components (the stand ups look like they have cardboard bases), so the price might be relatively low.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't see any plastic components (the stand ups look like they have cardboard bases), so the price might be relatively low.

Getting Reaper Bones minis of the most common PC types would be a pretty cheap upgrade for people at home as well.

 

[Stormonu]

I don't see any plastic components (the stand ups look like they have cardboard bases), so the price might be relatively low.

I wonder if they could get away with a sheet of acrylic stand-ups (maybe just for the heroes) in the box - that'd be neat.

If they are doing cards, I hope they have finally gotten the issues worked out that hit them with the Deck of Many Things - and they're not the perforated type that was in the past sets. It seems so odd with them being under Wizards that they don't tap the Magic team to advise/help them with any card components (or that was what I was told in the past).

 

[darjr]

Hopefully they are planning a set of minis, even more hopefully a set of unpainted and those flats too.

Edit: I meant as a later add on product. I’d rather see the box be more affordable than include plastic.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I don't see any plastic components (the stand ups look like they have cardboard bases), so the price might be relatively low.

Hopefully they are planning a set of minis, even more hopefully a set of unpainted and those flats too.

I'm currently in the research stage for mini cost for a boxed set, and one of the first things I noticed was that there were no minis there. For a large run like WoTC will have, injected minis per box wouldn't be that costly, Whereas they would be for me (at a less than 1000 print run lol). But the bigger thing that tells me is that box space is a premium, and a bag of minis uses a lot of box space. The difference between a 1.5 inch box height and a 2.5 inch box height. And on a large scale, that's logistically important.