Review copy courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.
Pros
- Includes a comedy adventure that can be a lot of fun. It’s a dungeon delve style where each encounter has some comedy element to it.
- Whoo, more dice!
- Quite a lot of Rick & Morty style art. If that’s your thing. I always like new art. It even extends to the Dungeon Master’s screen (contains all the same rules that previous screen included).
Could Go Either Way
- It’s the basic D&D rules as you’ve seen before. You can even find them for free on the website. What you’ll be missing is the comedy included along side them. This is again a double edged sword, because you need to be aware that the blurbs are entertainment, and not necessarily good advice. Can be very dangerous for the wrong new Dungeon Master.
- There’s not really any extra reusable.
Cons
- This is a comedy adventure. Comedy is fun the first time, but if you’re the kind to get bored when hearing the same joke a second time, running the same joke is probably even worse. That's assuming you found it funny the first time, as comedy is subjective.
- No PDF*
* Denotes nitpicking.
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| The set in all of its glory. |
Introduction
Like
D&D? How about Rick & Morty? Well, good news for you! There
was a newish D&D starter set released that is heavily
influenced
by Rick & Morty. In practice that means that the adventure is
written like it’s actually made by Rick, and the rules themselves
have blurbs of
“advice”. Much of this I wouldn’t actually follow but it’s
there for the entertainment value. That’s
the high level overview. Look
below for a closer look.
The Adventure
New Player Options
I mean, it’s a starter box. So no.
Closest we have to new player options is 5 new pre-made character
sheets.
New Monsters
Once again the
answer is nope. The descriptions for many have been Rick &
Morty-ified, but that’s about it. And when I say that, I mean
there’s more humour in them. It’s not that they’ve been
massively changed in terms of gameplay. Because they haven’t.
What You Need to Play
You
know how I always complain that you need to refer to the Monster
Manual for adventures? Well, all
of the creatures are included! The basic rules? Are included! Dice?
Included. It is a starter
set, so this is what I’d expect.
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| Nice looking critter, eh? |
The Adventure Itself
The
adventure itself takes the form of a dungeon delve. You enter and go
from room to room, experiencing encounters that all have some comedic
twist. Some involve combat,
some less, but there is generally some joke or punchline to every
room. I ran through it with
some friends and we had quite a few laughs. That said, in the nature
of D&D, quite a bit of that laughing wasn’t written in the
adventure’s script. It was spontaneous because a bunch of friends
were playing D&D.
Now,
this being a humour adventure, I think it’s very hard to describe
and talk about. Humour is
very subjective. However,
because of how it’s structured, I don’t think it’s very
repayable. If you do, it’s more like going through the same stand
up comedy set. This is in opposition to adventures
such as the classic Ravenloft,
where elements would be randomized, and as a result allowing you to
replay it every year at Halloween if you so wanted, with differences
every time.
Alright.
Fine. You won’t run it more than once for the same group probably.
Well, I think most Dungeon Masters wouldn’t run it more than once
for that same reason. They don’t want the same jokes again, and it
doesn’t have a creepy atmosphere you could use for Halloween, or to
see how someone new would go through Mines of Phandelver.
If they do, it’s to be a
joke teller like I described before. That makes it more niche than
many other adventures. That said, there’s not many adventures in
this niche, and basically no official ones. At best you’ll find
traces of it in the full blown adventures.
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| Example of the what the new art looks like. |
The Art and Book Build Quality
The pages
themselves are the thinner type we’ve come to expect from starter
sets. If you saw the original starter set, you know what to expect.
It’s glossy and thin, unlike the full hardcover books. This also
extends to the screen. It’s not thick card like the one from the
Christmas set a little while back, which felt like it was made from
book covers. It’s thinner card.
The art itself is a
mixture of art from previous work, and new art in the style of Rick &
Morty. The old art still looks good, but anyone who has been around
this edition for a while wouldn’t get exited from seeing it again.
It’s limited to only the rules section of the book. The new art is
quite common, both throughout the
Price
It’s the standard start set price of $29.99 USD. No surprises here.
What I felt was Missing
As far as low priced starter sets go,
it has just about what I’d expect. What I would really like to see,
however, is something reusable in general campaigns like dungeon
tiles. Here, you can reuse the screen, and dice obviously, but some
more would go a long way. Here’s an idea: let’s have a big zip of
random stuff to help Dungeon Masters prepare. One example would be
pages you can just add text to for handouts. Just print it out, and
write on it with black pen. It’d go a long way if a starter set
also helped players with the building blocks of their campaign for
elements such as battle maps and handouts.
I’d also like to have seen some
handouts we could show our players so they could see what the room
looks like. Some old TSR era adventures did this, and given that it’s
in the style of Rick & Morty, it’d be great to be able to show
scenes to players in that style. Instead, a lot of it is in the rules
and adventure itself, which will probably end up only seen by the
eyes of the Dungeon Master.
Free Stuff
Nope.
Summary
There we have it. It’s a self
contained box that has everything you need to run the adventure. The
adventure itself is a dungeon delve where each encounter has a
comedic twist or punchline to it. This makes it unique and fit a
different niche, but I’m afraid that the replay value isn’t as
high as other published adventures for this edition. As a general
recommendation, I’d still suggest the original starter set to new
players. That said, there’s enjoyment to be had here if you’d
prefer a more comedic game. The other thing is that comedy being subjective, it's hard to say if a particular person or group will find it funny. I just wish it had more replay value, and
more tools were provided for the Dungeon Masters of the future who
pick it up.
