D&D 5E Why I'm Buying the Starter Set

[Hussar]

I did. My First D&D was the Moldvay Basic Set, so I first ran the sample dungeon in the Basic Rules book, and then ran B2.

Yeah, me too. Li Shenron's claiming that people's first experience back in the day was different than what is being offered now. I disagree. It's largely the exact same thing. Yup, you have pregens now, but, in Moldvay Basic, your only real choice points were equipment. And, after first level, you had pretty much no choice points to make. So, I'm really not seeing a large difference here.

"Create characters to play in your adventure" wasn't what we did back then and I'm not sure why it should be different now.

 

[Iosue]

Yeah, me too. Li Shenron's claiming that people's first experience back in the day was different than what is being offered now. I disagree. It's largely the exact same thing. Yup, you have pregens now, but, in Moldvay Basic, your only real choice points were equipment. And, after first level, you had pretty much no choice points to make. So, I'm really not seeing a large difference here.

"Create characters to play in your adventure" wasn't what we did back then and I'm not sure why it should be different now.

Eh, I can see both sides of the argument.

Basic D&D's chargen is largely random, and for the most part folks make characters based on how the dice roll, so I agree that there is little fundamental difference between rolling up a character in Moldvay or Mentzer and playing that compared to selecting among pre-gens. Either way, the idea was get a character in the player's hand and get them to play. This was particularly a feature of Mentzer, where you basically went through the Aleesa/Bargle intro and the solo adventure with your pre-gen fighter before you got into character generation. And with the pre-gens of other classes, there was definitely an impulse to get you up and playing in the adventure before making a character.

That said, the very randomness of chargen in the Basic set makes it distinct from pre-gens, IMO. Particularly when melded with the option to choose a class relatively independently of ability scores. And while the distinction may largely be a psychological one, the act of rolling a character up can create a stronger tie to a character than one gets from selecting a pre-gen, at least in the beginning. Every action the player takes for that character, be it rolling dice to determine ability scores and hp, selecting equipment, or in-game actions, serves to strengthen the bond of "ownership" and investment in that character.

Now, all that said, I think it's better to think of a Starter Set as being distinct from a Basic Set. A Basic Set is a self-contained product that presents a complete, though simplified form of the game. A Starter Set is basically the first 22 pages of the Mentzer Player's Book and the first 13 pages of the Mentzer DM's Rulebook expanded out to its own product, with the goal of taking the player(s) from zero to gaming is as short a time as possible. And I think such a product should exist, distinct from a Basic Set!

When comparing Moldvay to Mentzer, two things are commonly heard: Mentzer is better at getting new players up to speed on the game. Moldvay is the better reference. So I think it's beneficial to literally split the difference. Put out a Starter Set, the sole purpose of which is to get players gaming as soon as possible, at the expense of chargen, and then put out a Basic Set that provides that same simplified ruleset, but in an easy to use format with no extraneous "intro" material. Of course, it's still all speculation, but this seems to be the plan with 5th Edition, per Mearls' tweet:

The stuff we haven't talked about yet is where DMs and players go next - there's a step between the Starter Set and the Big 3

 

[Li Shenron]

The thing to remember is that Tyranny of Dragons has always been promoted as a standalone product. As in - don't need the starter set.

Based on what they've announced since then, tgisbdoesnt sound true. Is it possible that the WotC representative either misspoke or was misquoted? (i.e. was actually talking about the Starter Set?)

Might be worth confirming with Mearls over Twitter.

I think what [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] says may still be right in the sense that you don't need to buy anything else to play ToD. And that's at least because the Basic rules are free for you to download, so if you factor the free Basic rules in then basically every adventure published is "stand-alone" in that sense that you need not buy the Starter Set, the PHB, the DMG, the MM or anything else than the adventure itself.

It doesn't mean that the ToD adventure will contain a reprint of the Basic rules.

Yeah, me too. Li Shenron's claiming that people's first experience back in the day was different than what is being offered now. I disagree. It's largely the exact same thing. Yup, you have pregens now, but, in Moldvay Basic, your only real choice points were equipment. And, after first level, you had pretty much no choice points to make. So, I'm really not seeing a large difference here.

"Create characters to play in your adventure" wasn't what we did back then and I'm not sure why it should be different now.

I am not claiming much about "back in the day" because when I played the first time it was already in the mid-90s

Although, the first time I've ever played D&D, the very first thing I was told to do was to roll for ability scores. That IS character creation, and we were playing BECMI, which means that besides the 6 scores, there was nothing else to choose except class, but choosing class is in fact not that far from picking a ready PC from a list where each of them is a different class. Still, I don't understand if you think that rolling stats is not character creation, or is not different from picking ready characters from a list. To me they feel fundamentally different... With rolling stats (or even just point-buy them) you are generating (or in the other case designing) something new each time, and that gives me a very different feel than having a list of finalized characters to choose from, even if it's a long list, which is the pre-gen way.

Then I said that personally I have never played a pre-gen character, and the only time I've seen people do that is in organized play, which is a minority of games compared to games played at home. I've always heard people doing character creation at home, but I suppose someone doesn't. That's why it feels a bit weird to me that character creation was excluded from the SSet.

EDIT: just noticed that [MENTION=68644]mechascorpio[/MENTION] wrote a quite complete recap of (almost) all D&D boxed set in another thread, and apparently none of them had character creation, so it must be a plan. To me, playing D&D without creating your characters still feels largely incomplete, to the point that if I am to explain RPGing to someone, I always mention the idea of creating your own PC as one of the main reason to play the game. And that's what I've seen practically everyone doing, so if I were to design an introductory product, I would never leave that out.

 

[mechascorpio]

EDIT: just noticed that @mechascorpio wrote a quite complete recap of (almost) all D&D boxed set in another thread, and apparently none of them had character creation, so it must be a plan.

Just a super brief summary of what I posted:

- Obviously the Basic games up to and including BECMI included character creation
- 3.5 "Dungeons & Dragons Basic Game" set (2004?) did not. Included pregens, covered 1st Level characters only
- Same with the updated 3.5 Basic set released in 2006
- Same with the "Roleplaying Game Starter Set" for 4E released in 2008; Included pregens, covered leveling up to Level 2
- The 2010 red box "Essential D&D Starter" set for 4E let players create characters, but I seem to recall it was extremely limited and that the characters may not have been compatible with the full game (in terms of leveling up as it was presented in the PHB or the Essentials "Heroes of..." books)
- I've never seen the '91 or '94 "Easy to Master" black box sets, but from what I've read, I think those were stocked with pregens as well

So basically, we've been "here" since 1983. Between the 5E Starter Set and what's being hinted at as online extras, it looks like this is more than has been offered in a long time.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ter-Set-and-online-tools/page24#ixzz32lMxyEMk

Now, all that said, I think it's better to think of a Starter Set as being distinct from a Basic Set.

Absolutely agree, even though the naming convention has been inconsistent.

 

[Hussar]

Chargen in the earliest starter sets could be pretty easily replicated. Randomly assign the pregens.

I mean, that's effectively what you did back then too. Roll your stats, pick the class that fit those stats. This time around, roll a d6 (with a 6 being players choice) and choose a pregen. Not seeing the overwhelming difference here.

Is it a psychological thing that rolling that 16 for your Int for your wizard is that massively different than picking the wizard with the 16 Int?

 

[Agamon]

The thing to remember is that Tyranny of Dragons has always been promoted as a standalone product. As in - don't need the starter set.

Are you sure the Starter isn't a part of ToD? I thought that was what the adventure was, the beginning of ToD.

 

[Morrus]

Are you sure the Starter isn't a part of ToD? I thought that was what the adventure was, the beginning of ToD.

I just asked Mearls, and he says ToD is standalone "in that if you buy it the resources needed to play it are available for free".

 

[Agamon]

I just asked Mearls, and he says ToD is standalone "in that if you buy it the resources needed to play it are available for free".

Right...but what constitutes ToD?

 

[Iosue]

Chargen in the earliest starter sets could be pretty easily replicated. Randomly assign the pregens.

I mean, that's effectively what you did back then too. Roll your stats, pick the class that fit those stats. This time around, roll a d6 (with a 6 being players choice) and choose a pregen. Not seeing the overwhelming difference here.

Is it a psychological thing that rolling that 16 for your Int for your wizard is that massively different than picking the wizard with the 16 Int?

Yes, absolutely. I never felt as invested in the Mentzer pre-gens as I did with the characters rolled up and scribbled down in my notebook. The stats of a pre-gen are just there. If I roll a 16 for Int, I rolled that 16. Before the game has even started it represents the gods of fortune smiling on me. There's a whole process here: I know nothing about the character, and I learn something new about them with each roll. Each result provokes a flash of creativity as I start to figure out what those stats mean, what kind of person would have those kinds of stats. The roll of a d6 to determine which pre-gen you use hardly has the thrill of rolling a d6 to see how many HP your character will have.

That doesn't mean, IMO, that chargen must be included in a starter set. The important thing is the game, and once that pre-gen has been through some adventure, investment comes.

But by the same token, rolling up a character Moldvay/Mentzer style isn't the same the same as picking a pre-gen. Setting aside the psychological impact of rolling stats, the choosing of class (not necessarily so clear cut when rolling abilities scores as with pre-gens), spells, and equipment, etc, ability scores could be adjusted after they were rolled.

I agree that the chargen is not so involved in BD&D that a starter set is crippled without it. But equating BD&D chargen with just selecting pre-gens is staking a claim a little too far out, IMO. The loss might be negligible, but there is loss. The more interesting question, I think, is whether that loss provides benefit, if in this case less is more.

 

[Morrus]

Right...but what constitutes ToD?

An adventure. Rules are available free.

I think there's a picture developed over the last week. There's clearly gonna be a free game of some kind. The specifics aren't clear, but that's the resounding message.