I played D&D many years ago
Many many years ago I used to play Dungeons and Dragons, commonly known as D&D. When I say many years ago, it probably means long before most readers here were even born… it was the 80s. (Remember, I’m the old-school side of Woodward Games)
I used to be a Dungeon Master (DM) when I played D&D with my cousins in our garage on top of an old broken washing machine that had been turned on its side. That was our gaming table top. I was a teenager, well, we were all teenagers, playing Dungeons and Dragons and I have very fond memories of that time of my life.
Recently I thought, well, I’d like to have a go at playing D&D again, but with my own boys since they’re around the same age I was back then. I’d like to set their imagination alight with D&D and hopefully create fond memories for them as I do.
My first step – The New D&D Manuals
So, what was my first step? I thought I would buy the boxed set of manuals with the current edition of Dungeons and Dragons.
It comes with a Player’s handbook, a Monster Manual, and a Dungeon Master’s Guide. These are quite heavy and contain A LOT of information. (It comes with a Dungeon Master screen too)
I bought this boxed set and when I started flicking through the player’s manual my first reaction was WHOOOAAA! There are SO MANY new things to learn. You have more races and more character classes and a load more new rules about magic and everything.
I learnt how to play Dungeons and Dragons when it was just in its 2nd edition… when things were a lot simpler. From memory I had the D&D Basic Set 1, the red boxed set with a cool dragon on the front and with a set of dice where you had to color the numbers on them with a crayon!
In this basic set, they only had a cleric, a fighter, a magic user and a thief (these were humans) and there were the demi-humans, a dwarf, an elf and a halfing and that was it.
There was no mixing of dwarf clerics and halfling magic users, it was just one or the other, just a dwarf or just a cleric. So the 2nd edition, or at least the basic set, was quite simple.
Now in D&D, which is in its 5th edition, you currently have 9 races and 12 classes and as I understand, you can make a combination of these but not only that, I also noticed that rules seemed to have changed quite a lot with so many things to learn. My initial thought was WHAT? Where do I start again? How am I supposed to learn all of this?
The D&D Essentials Kit
Then I learnt that an Essentials kit was about to be launched worldwide. This kit is supposed to help new players learn the ropes of D&D, well I hope this is what this boxed set does. So, I preordered it and here it is.
This boxed set was only released here in New Zealand this week around the 20-something of September (2019), so I had to wait quite a while to be able to put my hands on this box whereas the guys in the US had this a couple of months ago. Yes, I just had to wait patiently. I finally go it this week! Yeah!
So what I’m going to do now is do an unboxing of the Essentials kit and see what is inside of it, to see if this will help me re-learn the rules and everything about the world’s greatest roleplaying game.
Dungeons and Dragons Essentials Kit Unboxing
This boxed set was only released here in New Zealand this week around the 20-something of September (2019), so I had to wait quite a while to be able to put my hands on this box whereas the guys in the US had this a couple of months ago (via Target). Yes, I just had to wait patiently. I finally go it this week! Yeah!
So what I’m going to do now is an unboxing of the Essentials kit and see what is inside of it, to see if this will help me re-learn the rules and everything about the world’s greatest roleplaying game.
This is what is included in the D&D Essentials Kit: (See the video for more details)
- 64-page rulebook that teaches you how to create characters of levels 1-6 and how to play the game of Dungeons and Dragons.
- Dragon of Icespire Peak – an introductory adventure to play (also 64 pages).
- Double-sided poster map – This is a map of the Sword Coast on one side and the town of Phandalin on the other.
- Dungeon Master’s Screen – So the players don’t know what the DM has planned and just how close they are to getting eaten by something monstrous.
- 6 blank character sheets – Nice quality, I’m excited to get to fill these with life.
- 11 polyhedral dice – These are nice translucent red dice: These are 1x 4-sided (1d4), 4x 6-sided (4d6), 1x 8-sided (1d8), 1x 12-sided (1d12), 2x 10-sided (2d10 – one is a percentile dice), 2 x 20-sided (2d20). You can never have enough dice 🙂
- 81 cards – These describe magic items, sidekicks, conditions, initiative and more. There is also a foldable cardboard box to keep these in.
As a bonus there is a sheet that contains:
- a discount code of 50% off the digital version of the Player’s Handbook.
- a product key to unlock a digital version of the Dragon of Icespire Peak adventure.
- access to supplementary content for Dragon of Icespire Peak.
In some videos in the future, I’m thinking of teaching others the basics of Dungeons and Dragons.
Have an awesome day!
