Dungeons & Dragons’ New Starter Set Wants More Players to Experience the Whole Game

D&D‘s latest revamp of its core rulebooks were designed knowing that, without a starter set immediately available, they would be the jumping-on point for legions of new TTRPG players. A “show, not tell” approach wove itself through the new Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide to provide better onboarding for players of all experience levels. But now that a new starter kit is actually on the way, Wizards of the Coast looks like it’s going to leverage that nascent familiarity with the ruleset to expand what this kind of kit usually teaches players.

Over the past weekend at New York Toy Fair, Wizards revealed Heroes of the Borderlands, the latest iteration of the Dungeons & Dragons starter set. Inspired by the classic 1979 adventure The Keep on the Borderlands, the new set will contain three adventure booklets for players to work through, including ways to enhance their replayability for multiple playthroughs, alongside the usual accompanying maps and other helpful items like dice, tokens, and more. But most interestingly in a move away from most traditional starter sets published over the game’s long lifetime, Heroes will forego pre-generated characters for players to choose, replacing them with a modular, tile-based system that introduces elements of character creation that were otherwise largely handwaved over in the introductory sets.

It’s a neat idea, giving players not just only the chance to get a better sense of ownership over their first characters–deciding background, class, equipment, spells in the relevant classes—but also exposing them to the rudimentary building blocks of character creation further amplifies the set’s replayability. Even if some players who grab Heroes have already been thrown into the proverbial deep end of full character creation if they picked up last year’s Player’s Handbook revision, the starter set is regularly one of Wizard’s most successful and popular D&D products, so introducing an even wider audience to the fundamentals that past kits of stepped over is a great idea for onboarding them to the full experience.

According to Polygon, that introduction to the broader D&D ruleset also applies to Heroes of the Borderlands‘ approach to educating would-be Dungeon Masters. Heroes‘ adventure booklets, like the revised Dungeon Master’s Guide before it, will include tips and tricks for multiple aspects of game management, from player interaction to worldbuilding ideas, as well as explicit encouragement that multiple people around the table should switch into the position, helping to provide familiarity with D&D‘s most intimidating role. Not only does that give the assigned DM a break (and a chance to play the game from the other side), giving more players DM-ing experience helps boost the knowledge base of the whole table—which should hopefully make Heroes engender better tabletop experiences for all.

Heroes of the Boderlands is set to release this September, but Wizards of the Coast has yet to reveal pricing details (and, beyond digital availability through D&D Beyond, if players will get access to that version through the physical set, or if they stay separate purchases). According to Polygon however, Heroes will cost more than prior starter sets, which have usually retailed for around $30 due to the increased amount of materials inside—hopefully it won’t be too much, which would otherwise defeat the purpose of a low-barrier-of-entry experience.

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