Heroes of the Borderlands, the new D&D starter set, wants you to play the game without having to worry about what a hit point is.
RPG Starter Sets have a very difficult balance to strike. On the one hand, they need to get people playing the game by making it easy and fun for people sitting down at the table to try it out. On the other hand, they have to also teach the rules and hook you in for the long haul. After all, what’s the goal of a D&D starter set like Heroes of the Borderlands if not starting new players down the road to D&D.
It’s like a demo for a video game. You want to get enough of a sense of how the game plays to know if it’s worth sinking a few more hours into. Then if all goes well, that handful of hours becomes hundreds, or even thousands of hours—enough to keep you playing again and again. That’s the beauty of D&D. And in the new starter set, Heroes of the Borderlands, WotC looks to be employing a lot of board game techniques to try and smooth out the game.
One can’t help but wonder how that will help or hinder new players/DMs who take those first steps beyond the box. Let’s take a look!
Heroes of the Borderlands – A Preview of Pieces
One of the big marketing points of the Heroes of the Borderlands is that it’s D&D’s “biggest starter box ever.” And that means it comes with a ton of bells and whistles. Or, as is the case here, it comes with tokens and cards. You’ve got cards for all your items. Cards for your gear. Big cards that represent your character sheet—all of which seem like something out of board games like Wingspan or Galaxy Truckers.
In a recent preview on D&D Beyond, we got a closer look at some of the tokens and other elements in the box. Along with an emphasis on “physical components to help introduce players to the game and immerse them in their sessions.”
And it makes sense. One of the first big stumbling blocks for people is the sheer amount of numbers that you have to wade through in order to get a sense of who your character is. I ran a session for people who had never played D&D before using just simple pregenerated characters and the first reaction, almost unversally, was some shade of “whoa that’s so many numbers.”
But in the Heroes of the Borderlands starter box, each character sheet has its own board to help lay out the game:
“Each class’s bard teaches essential game mechanics using tactile elements, such as Hit Points andsp ell slot tokens, or equipment and spell cards. It also empowers players to make meaningful choices as their character grows and discovers new gear.”
And it makes sense, right? Visually represent these abstract concepts. Take some damage? Remove your hit point tokens. Spend some gold? Spend your tokens. The boxed set does a lot of the heavy lifting (and thinking) for you:
“These cards keept he game flowing smoothly. Players won’t have to flip thrugh books to find what spells they have or what attacks their character can make; they’re sitting in front of them on their character boards! These cards also hel you create modular characters by swapping out equipment and spells to customize your hero.”
Setting Expectations
In fact a lot of the preview for the Heroes of the Borderlands talks about how little you have to worry about the rules. “Players don’t worry about what Point Buy is or what a Hit Die does.” Instead they just pick a class board and go—which might be the quickest route to getting people to actually play the game.
But it also cuts out one of the best parts of D&D—which is making your own character. That was the purpose of the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle and its accompanying starter set; here was a box that could get players dreaming up their own heroes as part of the first session. Though, again, that’s wading through even more numbers and rules before you play.
I don’t think the starter set is inherently better or worse for all its physical components. But I do think that if you’re getting into the game for the first time, you might think D&D is more like a board game. There’s always a point when teaching new players when they realize there’s no “objective” no “win condition” outside of everyone having fun.
So DMs running their friends through the box might want to help set the expectation that not every game of D&D comes with its own full set of tactical maps and little miniature tokens for every encounter. It’s a deluxe experience, but it’s not usually the norm – that all falls into the realm of the imagination. At least until you can upload your creativity directly into a virtual tabletop. But if nothing else, the new Staert Set looks like it can be a bigger, more accessible stepping stone than ever.
Heroes of the Borderlands releases September 16th!
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