D&D Essentials Kit Review

tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons can be a bit daunting for newcomers to the Hobby this is one of the reasons these introductory boxes like the D&D starter set are pretty popular but I think there is some room for improvement and apparently Wizards of the coast thought so too because they just released a new box called the DMD essentials kit and today we're gonna be taking a look and seeing if it delivers hi everybody my name is Nate and you are watching WASD 20 a channel about tabletop RPGs and fantasy maps and today we are going to be digging into the newly released D&D essentials kit for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition throughout this review we are going to be kind of comparing and contrasting with the starter set that I mentioned in the introduction because I think that's the big question a lot of people have is what is this offering in comparison to that and is it worth the extra money because this does retail for $24.99 whereas the starter set retails for $19.99 and is widely available for much less something like 10 or 12 dollars on Amazon at times so first off let's just take a look at the box briefly here we've got some really nice box art the box is quite glossy and a little more durable in its feel than the original starter set and it is noticeably heavier so it's a good thing it's a little more sturdy feeling than that so we open it up here take a look got a set of polyhedral dice this one is kind of red translucent and they do have 2d 20s for rolling with advantage but they are the same color so it's not going to be good for something like you know to hand fighting where you've got your your regular weapon in your offhand or something like that but it'll be just fine for rolling with advantage and disadvantage so that's a nice feature that they include 2d 20s they also do have 4d sixes which is nice for many things including rolling up your character and speaking of that rolling up a character is something that's actually included in this box that is not included in the original starter set pictured here I am on vacation right now I picked this thing up I do not actually have my starter set with me but I'm very familiar with the product fact I own like five of them because I actually use them in the RPG class I've taught so you've got this kind of one page welcome adventurer thing that goes through some of the basics learn to play develop your story and then you know expanding on that on the back here you do get some coupon codes if you want to go ahead and put these in first-come first-serve on these I don't need them now I've opened this and looked at the product in pretty good detail so these aren't all in the same order as they came in but they're in the order I want to talk about them anyway you've got the essentials kit rulebook here so this is pretty much just the the basic rules printed out the only difference between this and the one that came with the starter set is that it does have rules for character creation and I can't remember if the starter set actually had bard I think it just had cleric fighter rogue wizard and maybe it didn't have entertainer so it does have a little extras there are still just four races in here you've got dwarf elf halfling and human probably the same number of spells I'm assuming but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong than that guys so that's the rulebook in addition it does come with some blank character sheets there are six of these and there are no progenitor characters so that is something to note here that was something that was a nice inclusion but I think it was kind of a bummer that it did not include rules for creating your own character alright now we get to the adventure here the dragon of i-spire peak ice spire peak I struggle to say that so this is a adventure that will take players level one through six is kind of the idea there's some big differences between this and the lost mine a fan delver adventure that came with the original starter set so we'll talk about that a little bit more detail in a moment but let's finish going through what's in the box here you actually get a DM screen with this one this is definitely something that was not included with the starter set and it has been included with other D&D box sets over the years from what I remember so you get the basic kind of reference that you would probably want on a DM screen and you get some nice art here and I do like the art on the DM screen I think it's really nice it's pretty flimsy cardboard definitely come paired to the actual DM screens you can buy for 10 or 15 bucks but I'm sure that helps keep cost down and I'm not complaining because they're actually including one this time and it's definitely something that could serve you well for years to come another cool thing they include here is an actual map so here you have a hex map of the Sword Coast the region that this is set in the adventure is set in pretty much the same area as lost mine of fan delvar that is of course centered around the town of FanDuel in here but they do include a lot of new locations and features to really flesh that out so that's one thing that I actually do really like is that this is definitely something that you can combine with the starter set adventure the lost mine of fan delvar these two adventures can actually work pretty well in conjunction with one another and you can kind of mix and match at the same time there is very little by way of overlap between the two so I think that's really cool so a map of the town of FanDuel in this is not something that came with the starter set and it is a really handy reference especially given the sandbox nature of this adventure here for players to have a map and be able to say hey let's go check out that area or let's go over here and have the freedom to do that and an adventure that supports that that's really cool and the same is true of the town obviously you know just being able to see that we can go over here or here and of course in this book there are some DM versions of the map that include more detail also in the box you get a lot of reference cards here and a little case to actually hold those but I just going through what the basics are here you've got these initiative cards you still roll for initiative but then these are just cards you can hand out to remind players of what the order is seems like that might be moderately useful but I'm not totally convinced on that you do have these quest cards here which give a brief synopsis of quest and there's actually kind of a job board in the town of FanDuel inand so these make it easy you can actually just put out like yeah I won't show them too much here the three or four quests that are on the job board and say alright here they are and players can look at them visually and then take the quest card of the quest they want to accept then you've got also these magic item cards there are quite a few of these potions of healing because those are common one this is a really cool inclusion because when players get magic items you can actually hand them a card physically and if that's an expendable item or if they sell the item then the DM can actually take it back when it's used or traded or whatever you've also got these condition cards and these combat cards which are really handy so I really like that they have these and just being able to you know give one of these to each player would be really nice more of these conditions here so these you can just give out to players if they are grappled can hand them that card it tells them what it means and when they're no longer grappled you can take it back and then lastly here we do have this sheet that has some sidekicks so this is an interesting feature of this adventure these are actually little cards here that give some basic information on each of the sidekicks the actual stat block for each can be found in the back of the rulebook when you play this adventure if you are playing one DM and one player they are actually encouraging you to have that player have a sidekick that can be either controlled by the DM or by the player and it just makes the game much more playable when you're doing a one-on-one session and that's one of the things I absolutely love about this boxset here is that it really is designed for two to six players so yes you can play this with one DM and one player that's something that can be a little bit challenging when you're used to playing with bigger groups but what that does is it makes it so much easier to jump into a game of D&D I can absolutely see lots of parents just running adventure for their kid to try to learn the game and introduce it to their child I can absolutely see this working with spouses you want to get into the Hobby you don't have to get a big group of four or five people together which can be really challenging giving adult life and schedules you can actually just jump into playing right away with just a DM and a player I think looking back years from now there will be so many people who got into the Hobby with this essentials kit because it was so easy to get into because of the low player requirement getting back to the actual cards it took about five or ten minutes to break them part and put them in this handy little box now for the rest of the review here let's just jump into some of the basics of Dragon of i-spire peak now one thing I've note is that when you open the box it's not really super clear to a total newcomer like what these different books are I have found that a lot of box sets actually have some kind of sheet like this that says like hey here's a brief description of what each of these products in this box is and who should look at what you can have easily open that up and this does say that this book is written for the dungeon master and things like that but it's sometimes it's handy to have just a sheet reference that kind of talks about the different parts of the box I also noticed that some boxes I think my Star Wars adventures for example say read this book first read this book second this book is for the dungeon master only and things like that so that's something that would have been handy but I think for most people it will be pretty clear what is for what so the intro to this adventure you do have an overview some information about the role of the dungeon master this is pretty much the same as the one in the starter set although there are some minor differences in the wording of some things I think that these DM tips are really great especially things like when in doubt and make it up modify the adventure to suit your tastes these things are just really helpful pieces of advice that this game is meant to be made your own and played a little bit loosely it's not a matter of knowing the rules perfectly in here you do get some description of the various parts of the box so that is nice and then you get an intro to the Forgotten Realms some information about the map and the different locations in the sword Coast the way that this box is designed the first session is actually supposed to be character creation and because there are no pre generated characters that really is kind of a necessity here so it says you know plan to just create characters the first session and maybe you'll get a little bit of gameplay it's worth noting that you can absolutely go download pre-generated characters for free on their website and many other websites so if that's something you want to do that's fine so there's this note here on running for one player now the way that that works in terms of different parties of different numbers is that often in different locations they will say there will be in this area one or per player character or something like that or for parties of two or more players there will be two of these creatures for parties of one or less or one and a sidekick there will only be one or something like that so the big thing about this adventure is that it's meant to be kind of a sandbox you just kind of jump right in they assume that your party will have some connections they give some suggestions for how the party might know each other there's some information about FanDuel in here and here's the job board and this kind of provides the basic structure for the adventure in your first session the players might be exploring FanDuel in a little bit and then hopefully checking the job board and getting to one of these first three quests page 22 page 26 or page 43 you can absolutely explore some of these follow up quests as well they give recommended levels for each and all of these quests are in some way related to the presence of a young white dragon that has taken residence in this area and so you get into some smaller kind of side stories here one thing I really like about this structure is that it's definitely possible to kind of slot these in in the starter set adventure lost mine offend elver or honestly in a lot of your homebrew stuff a lot of these locations they're just like 2 to 4 page storylines so we have acts home here for example it's 1 2 3 4 pages and then you're on to the next one which is butter skull ranch and you get the idea so there are maps for each there's different descriptions of the location basic storyline and they're in some way at least loosely related to that overall storyline of this white dragon so the disadvantage is that it's not really one continuous story line that has the kind of ups and downs that you're gonna get in something like lost mine if fan delver but you are also getting much more of a sandbox style of play here and it's much less railroad II than a lot of other adventures will be so overall I think that's great I'm really excited to run this adventure and try to play with that style I'm not sure I'm gonna run it for my kids or run it for some friends but I really do want to run this looks really really cool the adventures themselves are pretty varied some of them are very roleplay heavy and don't involve much combat at all some of them are gonna involve lots of combat there's you know wilderness areas there are dungeons there's just a really good variety and as I was reading through it I just found a lot of fun things like there's one where you're rolling on a wild magic chart every time you cast a spell in a certain area there's just a lot of general fun things like that there are a lot of iconic monsters too they really put great care into selecting some awesome monsters as with the starter set what I often recommend new players do is just snap some photos of these and keep them on your phone or put them paste them into a Google Doc or something like that so that you're not having to flip to the back of the book all the time to look at the various monster stats while you're running the adventure now some of you might be wondering what about maps and minis or some kind of tokens or something like that this adventure is still designed to be played theater of the mind maybe you draw some of these maps on graph paper show them to players or maybe you get out you know a big battle mat which you can get for fairly cheap and you actually use some kind of tokens or minis but this is a design to be played still theater of the mind you do not need Maps and minis to play this game I think that's a misconception a lot of newcomers do have is they're thinking wait it doesn't come with maps and mini so I'm gonna have to buy those things no you absolutely do not have to - have a great time with this adventure that is one way of playing but it is absolutely optional I'll put a link up top to an older video or I talk a little bit more about the place of maps and minis in these games all right now to provide a summary and my closing thoughts on the product I do think that the layout could be a bit better for new players I think that DD 5th edition has a really nice looking clean kind of classic format but I think it could be more appealing how about some for example rules reminders peppered throughout the actual adventure book this is something that I've seen in some of the Star Wars beginner boxes that I've really appreciated in the Pathfinder beginner box I just found that the visual appeal and the way it's laid out is just soup newcomer friendly there's just lots of little reminders and aids and the way things are organized is really helpful in addition I do think that pre gens would have been nice I think that that will be a barrier for some people because character creation can be daunting and difficult I personally think it's worth trying I think it's a lot of fun and it's an important part of the game but I think that could be a barrier for some people who just get kind of stuck and never end up actually playing the game because of that yes there are pre gens available for free in many places online they're very easy to find but some people will not even think to look lastly I do think that some might actually prefer a more on the rails adventure like the lost mine offend elver so we'll talk more about that in a moment now on the more positive side and I do think there's a lot of positive here for sure I think this is an excellent product and I definitely recommend it character creation so yes you don't get the pre gens but you do get rules for character creation in here and if I had to choose one I would want the rules for character creation I don't see why they couldn't include both without really adding anything to the cost it's just four or five sheets of paper but having a way to create characters and kind of encouraging a session zero in which you do actually sit down and do that together is great secondly the adventure is an awesome sandbox it's a toolkit it's a fantasy RPG playground and I think it's great I'm really excited to run it myself it may not be a huge sandbox but I just love the idea that I can run this once for one group and they can approach it one way and then I can run it again some groups might choose to skip certain quests and really the overall narrative is gonna be much more in the hands of the players in this adventure which i think is a great way to introduce them to this hobby and kind of the the wide open options that it provides now getting back to why some might actually prefer a more on the rails adventure like lost mine offend elver I do think that lost mine offend elver provides a really deep through narrative with ups and downs and that's absolutely something that you could get in the dragon of ice aspire peak but I do think lost mine offend over is really good and I wouldn't be surprised if there might be some people out there who prefer it another really positive thing about this product is all the the extras the map the DM screen the cars there are just so many aids that make it more fun and make it a smoother experience at the table and a little more beginner friendly also these goodies are not things that expire once you go through the dragon in my spire peak rather they actually are useful for years to come afterwards and I'm probably gonna use a lot of these little cards in my homebrew stuff so overall to summarize I do think this product is a big improvement over the original starter set and you would hope so it's been four or five years and they've had a lot of time to think about it and reflect and put out something that addresses some of people's criticism so is the starter set still a valid product is it ever worth buying the starter set now that the essentials kit is out well first off its really only available at Target stores in the u.s. at this time so that's kind of a bummer but once it becomes more widely available I'll be interested in seeing how much cheaper it gets either way I think that whether it's five or ten dollars more than the starter set I think what you get here makes it worth it there might be some people who want to get the starter set because they really like the pre gens and want to get right into actually playing the game and there might be some people who prefer lost- and elver over the dragon of i-spire peak but I do think the essentials kit is going to be a better option for most people and I highly recommend it alright that's gonna do it for this one everybody I want to thank you so much for joining me I would love to hear from you down in the comments below let me know what you think of the D&D essentials kit and whether or not you think it delivers what fifth edition needed as always I want to give a huge thank you to the WASD 20 patrons patrons or people who support this channel on a monthly basis and they keep this content coming I couldn't do without them so I want to thank them so much for their support and if you want to join with them in support of my work just a couple bucks a month can get you some pretty great rewards so go check it out at patreon.com slash WASD 20 alright thanks again everybody take care you'll see me again very soon [Music] [Music] you

Channel: WASD20

Views: 306,194

Rating: 4.9475079 out of 5

Keywords: d&d, dungeons and dragons, 5th edition, essentials kit, dungeons & dragons, tabletop, ttrpg, role playing game, tabletop rpg, dnd, dnd essentials kit, dungeons & dragons essentials kit, essentials kit review, essential, wasd20, review, starter set, dnd starter set, beginner box, d&d starter set, how to start d&d, buying d&d, chris perkins, wizards of the coast, dungeon master, beginners, game master, dm, icespire peak, box set, dnd beginners, getting started, learn d&d, 5e

Id: bdNc-mpWYZ8

Length: 20min 14sec (1214 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 02 2019