The new D&D Basic Game

Dungeons and Dragons Basic Game (Wizards of the Coast, £17.99)

One sunny autumn day when I was twelve, I was introduced to the idea of Dungeons and Dragons by a classmate who used it as his topic for a talk in English class. I was excited by the idea and spent three days cadging bits of money to add to the remains of that week's pocket money. I rushed home from school once I had gathered together the required £8.99, then cycled into the centre of Southampton to the only shop that sold the wonderous game. The Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set for Levels 1 to 3. I didn't understand the levels bit at that time, but remember the box, red with white lettering, the picture on the front of a red dragon swooping in, that box enchanted me. Opening the box was even better, two thin stapled booklets in the same red as the box, one for Players and one for the Dungeon Master, a collection of platonic solids to use as dice and a flyer for all the books and boxes you could buy next, all coming out of Lake Geneva (Winconsin not Switzerland).

Twenty years and about one month later, I've been playing for twenty years and DMing for eighteen. There have been various new reincarnations of the red box version and I think I have bought them all to teach newcomers to the hobby. But none have been called D&D Basic and this one is. I cannot bring to it the same eyes as my studious and socially retarded twelve year old self but I have playtested it at the club with Adam, Dave C, Joseph and Rob.

Production Values - The cover has a dragon, but it's not as bold and eyecatching as the original. Inside however, are lots of models, sixteen in all, a set of dice, four double sided map boards and the rulebook. Actually that's not all, there's two tiny (about A6 size) booklets, one for the players with a very basic rules set and one for the Dungeon Master with his first adventure.

These are very good, and the adventure, fighting a couple of kobolds to retrieve a ring of the Baron is well balanced and fair. The adventure could be a springboard to an entire campaign, that's the Baron's Seal on the ring, why would the kobolds want to steal that, were they working for someone, what will the adventurers do with it, use it to thwart the Baron and so on. But the Basic Set doesn't help with that, it's on through the next door and more baddies.

The playtest group had fun with it, so perhaps I'm a bit harsh on the set, but I prefered the Adventure Game's (the previous version, published in 2000) way of setting the adventures, they had seven, each one more long and complex than the last, reflecting the way that the party's reputation was growing in their small town. There's a lot more opportunity to roleplay then.

That said, the rules do make it very easy for novice players and a novice DM to learn to play the basics. It just doesn't give enough insight into what roleplaying can really be about. And for any D&D DM, it's worth getting just for the painted figures (Human Fighter, Dwarven Cleric, Elven Sorcerer, Halfling Rogue, 4 Kobolds, 2 Skeleton Warriors, 2 Orcs, Troglodyte, Dire Rat, Skeletal Wolf and Black Dragon) alone.

Rating for existing players 4/5 buy the box, hoard the models.
Rating for novice players 3/5, the Adventure Game (Wizards of the Coast £6.99) is better but out of print and you'll like the models too.