Another package waiting for me today when I arrived home from work; the D&D fifth edition starter box. A bit of an impulse buy when I ordered it, but as it cost me just over a tenner, it won't break the bank.
Initial impressions are that it's pretty standard fare; two A4 books, a 32 page rule book and 64 page adventure book, five pre-generated character sheets, one blank character sheet and, of course, a wee bag of funny sided dice! The books are of decent quality; I do like the new art style they've taken and the dice are, well, dice. The character sheets are just printed on cartridge paper, but as people are bound to copy them first, that's no big loss.
I haven't played D&D in a loooong time, so haven't the foggiest how the rules have changed, still seems pretty straight forward though. There's a murmur going around our gaming group that we'll try and run the introductory adventure as a one off, so I'm holding off opening the adventure book for the moment! Getting a roleplaying session in was one of my gaming resolutions this year, so fingers crossed we'll sort something out.
To be honest, I'm a little underwhelmed by the starter box, but I suspect that's because I have the Star Wars: Edge of Empire starter box, which has a) a lot more stuff in it and b) is a more polished starter product, in the sense that there's a clear logic to what to read first, what to do next and where to go to get more info (such as a second adventure from their website.) This box is a very simple "here's your character, off you go" kind of affair. Having said all that, the SW box retails at close to double the price of this one, so it's not an entirely fair comparison.
Happy enough with the box, not sure if I'll pick up any of the hardback rulebooks or not though, time will tell.
Also, why did they change this D&D to plain "fifth edition?" D&D Next was such a better name!
