This review originally appeared at dndloremaster.com and is reprinted here with permission.
The Stranger Things Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set takes the idea of the original D&D Starter Set (2014) and applies a pretty slick tie-in to the Stranger Things by including demogorgon minis and an “adventure by Mike Wheeler.” Unfortunately, a few of these conceits end up working against the set. While it still provides everything you need to jump into D&D, the adventure has a couple minor hiccups that compare poorly to the (admittedly exceptional) Lost Mine of Phandelver that anchored the original Starter Set.
Rating: Content 3/5 and Form 4/5
Find out where to buy it here.
Read on for the full review!
Summary
The Stranger Things Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set is a new boxed set release designed to get fans of the Netflix show up and running with a D&D game in no time. The boxed set includes:
- A 40+ page rulebook
- A 24-page adventure book, Hunt for the Thessalhydra
- A set of dice: 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12, and 1d20
- Two demogorgon miniatures, one painted and one unpainted
- Five level 3 pregenerated character sheets
Credits
Adventure: Stan!, Ben Petrisor
Cartography: Stan!
Rulebook: Jeremy Crawford
Editing: Christopher Perkins, Chris Sims, Michele Carter, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, Kim Mohan, Philip Athans, Kate Welch
Disclaimer
I picked this up at The Perky Nerd for $24.99.
Unboxing
You can watch the unboxing video here, but note those are my first impressions. The review below comes after a thorough read-through, which changed my opinion on some aspects.
Content 3/5
We’ll tackle the props first, and then the books.
Dice
These are the exact same dice as the original Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set. Those were perfect, therefore these are also perfect.
#ObjectiveTruth
Miniatures
When you provide minis, it’s weird to me that you only provide two because D&D has a host of minis available. And before someone says, “that’d be too expensive,” my preemptive response is D&D also has the art files for about a billion die-cut cardboard tokens. These things saw a fair amount of use in the D&D 4th edition days. It comes off as a gimmick to sell this Starter Set to some audience that wants demogorgon minis (not a small audience!), but then fail to take into account for the folks using a battlemat and minis. Especially when you could do so very cheaply. Pathfinder Pawns and the freely available paper minis from folks like Trash Mob Minis show just how easy it would be to add a little more prestige without much additional cost.
I dinged it one star for that.
Pregenerated Characters
The five included pregenerated characters are level 3, with all of the information you need to level them up to level 5. Starting at level 3 isn’t much more complex than level 1, so that seems fine. As a result, the characters can take a bit more punishment, which is useful in the one-shot scenario included. These characters don’t have much individual background information (unlike the previous Starter Set), but they do have plenty of description of their class, race, and background, so you have a good deal of roleplay information.
The pregens are:
- Hill dwarf bard
- Wood elf cleric
- Human paladin
- Half-orc ranger
- Half-elf wizard
The Rulebook
The rulebook is about 10 pages bigger than the one included in the original D&D Starter Set, primarily because the Stranger Things one includes magic items and monster stat blocks referenced in the adventure book, The Hunt for the Thessalhydra. In the original set, those things showed up in the back of the Lost Mine of Phandelver. Additionally, the spells included in this set include a wider range of classes: bard, cleric, paladin, ranger, and wizard. The original set only had cleric and wizard spells.
Otherwise, this rulebook is simply a re-styled version of the previous one. That means you receive:
- Pretty much the entirety of the Combat and Equipment sections from the Player’s Handbook.
- Everything you need to understand ability scores, skills, the basics of adventuring, and spellcasting.
The Hunt for the Thessalhydra
The included adventure is 24 pages. It’s designed to look like a DM’s personal notebook adventure, specifically Mike Wheeler’s notebook from the show. There’s some great formatting to achieve this: minimal art done in a “simplistic” style, basic line-art maps, and a handwritten-style font.
The good news is plentiful. The Hunt for the Thessalhydra is a straightforward adventure overall, but includes a fairly large amount of roleplaying- and exploration-based encounters, as opposed to copious amounts of combat. There are several traps and hidden doors, too. Additionally, the monsters throughout the adventure have simple but effective ecology notes and goals all their own. This creates situations where morale and faction alliances will certainly turn potential combat encounters into roleplay encounters or chase sequences. There’s even opportunity for the adventurers to convince one of the largest factions of monsters to view them as heroes or even demigods. This of course can lead to all sorts of fun (and trouble). All of the situations presented feature multiple possible ways to advance through the adventure: failure is not an end-game in most circumstances. That’s nice to see.
There are some bad (or at least wonky) issues with the adventure. It’s a one-shot (at most an 8 hour game), and therefore replayability doesn’t even come close to comparing with Lost Mine of Phandelver. The players are provided with level 3 characters, so while they aren’t terribly complex, it does beg some questions about this being called a “starter” set, I suppose. The formatting is such that it leads to overall page bloat compared to…well, anything else that Wizards of the Coast’s team publishes, so that feels a little shaky given this is a higher price point. Arguably the minis offset that issue. Finally, there’s a moment late in the adventure that’s a nod to Eleven from the Stranger Things series, and in that light, it’s pretty cool. However, outside of that context, this character appears as a deus ex machina that simply feeds you information to get to the next scene, rather than being a more interesting ally for a final confrontation, or having a role that lasts beyond the one scene.
These issues are arguably minor, so I dinged it one star. I could see some folks looking at this adventure in comparison to Lost Mine and easily taking off two or even three stars for the fact that it’s shorter, gimmicky, and has storytelling weaknesses not apparent in Lost Mine. I caution folks who are “in this for the adventure” to really pay attention to that facet. But if the adventure is not your main focus, you’ll be fine.
What Could Have Been
Ultimately, I wish this release had been more experimental with its adventure. Maybe it could’ve been like a Stranger Things twist on the old D&D cartoon, wherein the players run themselves or “real-world” stand-ins that cross through the Upside Down and thus become the D&D characters. Maybe that’s a stupid idea, maybe not. But it seems like a lot of brilliant tie-ins given what Stranger Things is, what the Upside Down could be used for, and the fact that the D&D cartoon is an iconic thing from the 1980’s. More importantly, the obvious “this character is Eleven” moment basically steps on its own toes, being a set piece scene that serves as a simple information dump, rather than being a potential puzzle to solve, or carrying any potential consequence into the subsequent scenes.
But I’m not holding all of this against the release, since that’s complaining about what this product isn’t, rather than what it is.
Form 4/5
Editing and rules language is great through and through, even regarding the change to an even more “natural language” style in The Hunt for Thessalhydra to reflect the conceit that it’s a DM’s personal notebook.
The conditions reference page is the final, inside page of the Starter Set Rulebook, unlike in the previous D&D Starter Set, where it was the back cover page. That seems like a minor miss, requiring you to have the book open and taking up more space to keep that reference handy. It also forces you to flip between that reference and any monster stats when running the adventure, which wasn’t a problem in the previous set because the monster stat blocks were in the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure book, instead. But in that case, you might be flipping between location info in the adventure and monster stat blocks, so this is not something I’m going to ding a star for.
There are no page numbers in The Hunt for Thessalhydra, which in my opinion is a major miss, even despite the relatively small page count. Worth a one star ding.
The two demogorgon miniatures are both made of a different material than standard D&D minis, which feels flimsy, yet somehow doesn’t seem like it will deform permanently except under the most extreme circumstances. You know how some minis will have a sword or something that’s permanently bent out of shape because of how you threw it in a box to carry it to game night? These aren’t likely to have that issue…but they feel bendy and weird all the same. It’s not a problem, and thus I won’t ding a star, but it’s something to note. It’s just different.
Conclusion
Content 3/5, Form 4/5. This averages to 3.5, and as always with D&D, we round down for a final result of 3: I like it!
Resources
- Pick up some additional Level 3 pregenerated characters from Wizards of the Coast.
- Read about Dungeons & Dragons‘ role in the Stranger Things universe at the Stranger Things wiki.
- Watch Stranger Things on Netflix. (As if you needed me to link you to it!)
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