This is my first real review for A Noob's Guide and I wanted it to be something that seems very daunting to most people, Dungeons and Dragons. Now it is very important that I specify that I'm reviewing D&D essentials line which is Wizards attempt to introduce new players to D&D 4th edition.
I've had no experience with D&D aside from the stereotypical views that most of us grew up. D&D is only for hardcore geeks, it's too complicated, you need libraries of books to play and everyone role-plays like their at the Renaissance festival. Most of these view were completely smashed as soon as I began my research.
The first thing I did was go to a near by game shop and ask the people working there what I needed to buy to get started. Now you can go out and buy the books and dice and anything else you need separately but if you really want to learn buy the Red Box. This box has everything you need to get started. Before you look at the cards or the game pieces and get freaked out I'll tell you this, I had no idea what to do with the cards or anything else, and there are a lot of cards.
After the initial shell shock of the amount of stuff I settled down and began reading the players guide, and I have to say Wizards of the coast know how to speak to noobs. Instead of the standard rule book that most board games give you this thing is a choose your own adventure booklet, much like the ones that used to be everywhere.
For those of you to young to remember choose your own adventure books where simple books that told a story and every so often you were given a choice. One choice made you turn to a page and the other lead to another page. There history lesson done.
The guide walks you through choices that slowly build your character. A choice like healing you fallen comrade made you a cleric or if you choose to hit a goblin with a heavy object that made you a fighter. The following choices determined the rest of your details filling in you characters back-story as well as their stats, all the while teaching you how to fight and move in D&D.
By the end of the booklet I had a full-fledged D&D thief ready to go. Another thing that the Red Box does is those cards i mentioned earlier. Relax there is no card game like component to D&D, these card simply describe actions that your character can do and how often they can do them. I makes it so easy for me as a noob to keep track of my options by laying out the cards in front of me while i play as a quick reference. When you use a power simply flip it over until you can use it again.
The box also comes with a game mat, tokens that represent characters and monsters as well as a Dungeon Master's staring guide with several adventures. So if you ever have friends over and they are interested you can pull this box out and in ten minutes you can be playing D&D.
I personally couldn't get enough people together to try this with me so i began my second part of my review, finding a group to play with. This was as easy as buying the box, because the same game store that sold it had weekly D&D games for free. All I did was show up and introduce myself. I told everyone playing at my table that this would be my first time playing and the response was completely positive. Unlike online games where noobs are constantly being ridiculed D&D players are more than happy to share their knowledge and help you learn as you play. The main factor that allows this is that D&D is very much a team based game with everyone going against the DM. As we played I noticed that unlike what I originally thought role-playing was not very important. We played like most people play a board game after a while you just start acting like your character without forcing it. Just like when you play Monopoly after a while you act like big shot buying property and building hotels. Some of the most fun was actually trying to go around a town robbing every one I could while one of the other character, who enforced the laws of the town, tried to stop me.
All in all learning D&D was a fun and easy experience and for $20 I have had well over 10 hours of entertainment, which beats most video games I've purchased. If you have the time I recommend trying it out by yourself or with a couple friends, its worth your time.
Noob rating
(8/10) Pick up and learn it in less than an afternoon
Total rating
(7.5/10) Games are fun but after your first character it is a bit of a pain to try and build more unique ones.
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