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

I would be interested to see how quick the character creation was for new players.

For the life of me, I don't understand why starter sets don't come with dice with a different color for each die. D8's and D10's look a lot alike for new players. Its much easier to go "roll the D8, the blue one".

Mournblade94 said:

This seems more akin to DUNGEON than D&D. My 11 year old knows how to play well now. She may be to advanced for this now.

Didn't like how they insinuate that the slight amount of math in regular D&D is "pesky". I think they oversimplified this.

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If you're aiming at kids, having a little math is great. Games are a perfect way for kids to strengthen their math while having fun, and it won't scare them away.

$50 is just inside the price range for birthday gift. I don't think it will scare the target audience away, but if they could get it to under $40 that would get into impulse buy and b-day give for kid's friends b-days territory.

SlyFlourish said:

$50 for the core books feels almost like a loss leader. These books are huge, high quality, and were really expensive to produce I bet. Same price as the smaller ones from 2014.

Edit: the core books aren’t likely a loss leader but they certainly provide less of a profit margin with the $50 price tag than other books or products. $50 MSRP at a FLGS means $25 back to WOTC which has to cover the entire production of the book, art, physical production cost, shipping, and more.

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As a graphic artist who managed large print runs, I can tell you since we do not know the quantity printed, we cannot estimate profit margin. The price per copy goes down the more you print. For the PHB, the most popular book, the numbers must be very high (100,000+). WotC has said the quantities were so large they to use 3-4 different printers to get the books out at the same time. Also at those quantities, they use continious rolls of paper instead of off-set single sheets. Which also brings the price down. Large print machines have paper rolls that can print 24 to 48 pages per book binding section, another saving. It’s called economy of scale. We don’t have enough info. We are guesstimating at best.

Jefe Bergenstein said:

For the life of me, I don't understand why starter sets don't come with dice with a different color for each die. D8's and D10's look a lot alike for new players. Its much easier to go "roll the D8, the blue one".

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When Paizo did this with their 2e starter set i initially was like "what in the multi colored hard candy is this crap?" But then after a moment of thought it made SO much sense. And you're right all starter sets should be following this idea.

Mournblade94 said:

This seems more akin to DUNGEON than D&D. My 11 year old knows how to play well now. She may be to advanced for this now.

Didn't like how they insinuate that the slight amount of math in regular D&D is "pesky". I think they oversimplified this.

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It depends on how the adventures are. Nothing in the set at all glance looks like it’s changed from the core game other than simpler character creation.

ShinHakkaider said:

When Paizo did this with their 2e starter set i initially was like "what in the multi colored hard candy is this crap?" But then after a moment of thought it made SO much sense. And you're right all starter sets should be following this idea.

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On that's neat! I just had the PF2 PDF of the PF2 starter (which is quite good).

I've taught a fair amount of kids/new players, I give each of them a set of these.


They have to get their own crown royal bag though.

Jefe Bergenstein said:

For the life of me, I don't understand why starter sets don't come with dice with a different color for each die. D8's and D10's look a lot alike for new players. Its much easier to go "roll the D8, the blue one".

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It's not like there isn't precedence. The first set (Holmes basic) were all different colors. Then again in the 90s they had a boxed set that were all different colors.