Essentials Kit

Lately I have been getting questions by parents on how to get started playing Dungeons & Dragons. My go to response is always to check out one of the starter boxes for any of the current edition or the edition they are looking to play. When I was just getting started, I had the 3rd edition starter kit and fell in love with the game and now spend almost every waking moment thinking about it and other games. My goal here is to give a quick run down of each published book for this edition as well as help new gamers get started in this hobby make it easily approachable.

5th edition has a few starter sets, the first one had a green dragon on the front of the box and has the Adventure, The Lost Mines of Phandelver. The second set was the Essentials Kit with the adventure Dragon of Icespire Peak. The third version was the Starter Set: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. They also made both a Stranger Things and Rick and Morty starter set, but I have not had a chance to read through one and hunt down the other.

Last time I talked about the 2014 Starter Set, would like to talk about the 2019 Essentials Kit today. When it released, the Essential kit was $25 and had some extra bits the normal starter kit lacked. There were cards, a small deck box to keep them in, a DM screen with relevant rules on the back, a map of the region the adventure takes place in, and even more dice. The cards were interesting because they had a mix of magic items as well as new NPC henchmen or sidekicks that were introduced in a new system for helping players in smaller groups have a character to follow the party with a less robust character sheet.  

The adventure, The Dragon of Icespire Peak, is less straight forward than the Lost Mines of Phandelver, It is a sandbox adventure, meaning the events of the adventure are more free form. the adventure is set up in a way that allows for more exploration with player agency and helps showcase the Forgotten Realms in an accessible way, small chunks.

With many of the Fifth edition adventures they started the characters higher than first level, meaning there needed to be a option for players and dungeon masters that could help prepare the characters for the later levels. The Dragon of Icespire Peak is slated as a 1-6 level adventure, which was a great solution for groups that had already played the Lost Mines of Phandelver but still wanted an intro adventure.

I have not had the chance to run this adventure yet but I have read through it a few times now. Of the entire box set, my favorite thing is the simplified sidekick system, which was further enhanced in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. As someone that has run for both large and small groups, the sidekick element is something I will be bringing to more games I run whenever the party needs extra muscle or healing.

As a part of my hoarding issues, I have picked up a few copies of each of the starter sets as a way of helping new groups get started up and spreading the love.

Happy Gaming!

-Rob the Book Gnome