Wizards of the Coast uploaded a new teaser trailer for its upcoming Dungeons and Dragons starter set on Monday, promising the “biggest and best DnD starter set ever”. From the footage shown off in the trailer, it looks like the upcoming Heroes of the Borderlands starter set will certainly be bulging with handouts, player aids, tokens, and useful knicknacks.
Justice Ramin Arman, lead designer for the new DnD starter set, says that every part of it “has been designed so that you can open the box, start playing, and learn as you go”. WotC has previously announced that the set will hit the DnD release schedule on September 16.
Starter sets have to be written assuming that none of the players have any experience with roleplaying games, not even the DnD Dungeon Master. The more support a set gives to all the players, the more successful it will be.
From the trailer, it looks like WotC is using handouts and custom player aids to do a lot of the heavy lifting. For example, instead of a stack of pregenerated DnD character sheets, there will be separate player boards for each of the DnD classes included in the set, with lots of supportive text and all their key rules.
Spells, magic items, and other changeable abilities get their own rules cards, which players can socket onto spaces on their player board. Likewise, there are spaces to socket cards for the different DnD races and DnD backgrounds you might choose.
For the DM, there are reference cards for the monsters and for NPCs. The monster cards are double-sided, with a picture on one side and the stats on the reverse. Likewise, the back of the NPC cards have short notes on how to play the character. There are tokens for monsters and players to use in combat, and several maps.
Arman states that “you’ll be able to play Heroes of the Borderlands again, and again, and have a different experience every time”. Some of that will simply be because you’re not writing on any character sheets: hitpoints and other expendable resources are tracked with tokens.
The classic Red Box of the 1970s and 80s DnD editions was the entry point to roleplaying games for so many people – perhaps Heroes of the Borderlands will be the same thing for another generation. It’s tricky to get starter sets right, since they’re not just trying to teach a set of rules, but a whole style of gameplay with large social elements.
For an example of an RPG starter that addresses the challenges of running your first ever game surprisingly well, check out this feature on the Final Fantasy RPG starter set.
Source: Wargamer
