A Paladin In Citadel: 4E

Showing posts with label 4E. Show all posts

Monday, May 28, 2012

Absolutely Enchanting

Sometimes the artwork attached to an ADnD spell description is just ever so slightly incongruous. The Dave Trampier illustration attached to the spell, Enchant An Item, is one of those situations.

While it's true that the illustration shows an item being crafted -- one of several steps involved in making a magic item -- it would make more sense for the illustration to show the spellcaster interacting with the item, and somehow imbuing the item with the desired dweomer, rather than a weaponsmith busy with his more mundane tasks.

The last two paragraphs of this spell description fall on the next-following page in the ADnD Players Handbook, and I think it is easy to forget that the process of enchanting items came with some unpleasant risks, chief among them the chance of losing a point of constitution while casting Permanency on an enchanted item.

Does the same circumstance threaten magic-users in 3E and 4E? I suspect, like many other game design features inherent in early versions of DnD, all of the advantages have been transferred into subsequent rule sets, while the risks have been discarded as "not fun" for the players.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Grognard H8te Cr1mes

Overheard on the WOTC DnD Forums, in reaction to the release of the DnD:Next open playtest materials ...

4E Fan 1: "Hey, we're just trying to have a good time, Grognard. Why do you want to destroy us?"

4E Fan 2: "Don't commit your h8te cr1mes here! H8TE CR1MES!"

Thursday, April 19, 2012

DnD Spell Cards

Over the last two years, I've seen several putative variations of DnD spell cards.

My interest in spell cards is quite simple: i've been tinkering with the idea of a card-based Dungeons and Dragons accessory, where all of your game resources are in card form, and can be swapped in and out of a three-panelled sleeved booklet, as you aquire and spend resources.

Those card-based resources would include, treasure, magic items, spells, equipment, relationships, and other trackable items.

In addition to the home-brew spell cards featured by several old and new-school bloggers, Wizards created a card-based accessory for 4th Edition, tied into their AEDU system, by issuing decks of powers cards. I really loathed those cards, for a couple of reasons: one, they lacked artwork; two, the 4E powers themselves were too mechanical; and three, WOTC ignored all the other in-game resources.

On the other hand, Paizo published decks of item and treasure cards, featuring lush illustrations, but the related game mechanics were absent from the cards, as were resources like spells.

One of the things I loved about the ADnD Players Handbook was the inclusion of artwork accompanying the spell descriptions. Case in point is the spell, below, Dancing Lights.

Although uncredited, I believe this spell features a Dave Trampier ilustration. It would be lovely to have the above artwork in color, though the black and white version is perfectly serviceable.

Yes, the spell description is probably sufficiently clear that an accompanying illustration is unnecessarily decadent, but having an illustrated set of resource cards like this would be a dream come true for this old-schooler.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Prediction Of Carnac The Magnificent

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Fatigue In The Magic Realm

August 23, 2009 is a date significant to me only because it was the day this blog was established.

At that time, the stated purpose of this blog was to discuss several game systems: Thomas Denmark's Dungeoneer; Metagaming's The Fantasy Trip; Dragon Warriors RPG; Dungeons and Dragons; and Avalon Hill's Magic Realm.

While I have ranged somewhat further afield, I don't think I have wholly neglected Magic Realm, particularly over the last several months.

Magic Realm has an innovative combat system that includes a system of recording combat fatigue.

In Magic Realm, each character has 12 cardboard counters (called chits) that operate in many ways like DnD`s hit points. For example, the above 12 chits are for the Black Knight (one of 16 available Magic Realm characters).

Imagine that each of those carboard chits represent 1 hit point (more properly, a wound point, since each successful attack inflicted on a character results in a single wound). So each character has 12 hit points. In addition to representing a hit point, each chit also has an ability attached to it, either a move, fight, spell or special ability.

The top row of Black Knight chits represent various moves that the Black Knight can make. I have republished that first row of chits, below.

In the first row of Black Knight chits there is a medium move, with a speed of 4, which is somewhat fatiguing (a single effort-star). The next chit is a medium move, with a speed of 5, which is easy, as it includes no effort-stars. The third chit is a heavy move, with a speed of 4, which is very fatiguing (two effort-stars).

To use a DnD 4E analogy, think of those character chits as follows: two effort-star chits represent daily powers; one effort-star chits represent encounter powers; and no effort-star chits represent at-will or utility powers.

Further consider that each round of Magic Realm combat is equivalent to a DnD 4E encounter. That means you can play a maximum of one effort-star per combat round (one encounter power) without penalty.

However, if you want to play two effort-stars (a daily power, to continue the 4E analogy) you must set aside one of your single effort-star chits in payment for the fatigue you suffer in performing that fatiguing maneuver.

For example, the Black Knight may play the following combination of chits during the first Magic Realm combat round:

In this instance, the Black Knight has played a move chit with two effort-stars, thus suffering some fatigue. However, the Black Knight still wants his Move H4** chit to be available for future combat rounds, so he sets aside another one of his single effort-star chits, in this case the one below:

As a result of the sacrifice of the Move M4* chit, the Black Knight now has 11, rather than 12 hit points remaining. However, he still has access to the Move H4** chit (the Magic Realm equivalent of a DnD 4E daily power) for later re-use, as the Black Knight sacrificed an analogous encounter power chit to play the daily power chit.

During the second combat round, the Black Knight again decides to play two effort stars, this time in the form of two, single effort-star chits (the equivalent of two DnD 4E encounter powers):

Again, because the Black Knight plays two effort-stars, he must set aside another single effort-star chit to pay for the fatigue he has suffered. Since he has two Fight M4* chits, he chooses to set one of those two aside to pay for the fatigue. He does not need to use that particular chit, any chit with a single effort-star will do, to pay for the fatigue:

The Black Knight is now reduced to 10 hit points. During the third combat round, the Black Knight decides to play only a single effort-star, as follows:

Since the Black Knight is allowed to play a single effort-star (single encounter power) each combat round without penalty, he suffers no fatigue this round. Thus, the remaining 10 hit points continue to be available in the fourth combat round, during which he can again choose whether to suffer fatigue in exchange for playing a powerful Fight or Move chit.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Combat Fatigue and the Failure of Gygax

Travolta: That's how Ali took the title from Foreman. He beat him with a rope-a-dope. Don't you remember?
Slater: I don't remember what day of the week it is.
Travolta: Everybody thought Ali's arms had run out. That he's running on empty. But he's just setting Foreman up. He's letting Foreman burn himself out. And then, in the eighth round, here comes Ali; and poor George has nothing left.

-- Broken Arrow, 1996

Dungeons and Dragons does a lousy job of emulating combat fatigue. And i'm not just talking about fourth edition. We're talking every single edition.

It would be tempting to blame Dave Arneson for the failure of DnD to emulate the effects of combat fatigue. After all, he is the author of the hit point concept.

Arneson's hit point concept eventually became DnD's aggregated measure of luck, skill, stamina, concentration, life-blood and endurance. In fact, after all these years, it is still argued that only the last few character or monster hit points actually represent the life-blood of the combatant. For the most part, inflicting hit point damage represents the whittling away of your opponent's stamina, the sapping of his will and skill, and the gradual theft of his luck. In a word: fatigue.

But nowhere in DnD's combat system do the effects of fatigue reveal themselves. A character's combat abilities do not wane as his hit points decrease. A figher's speed and combat prowess are undiminished, despite having suffered a 50%, 75%, or even 90% hit point reduction. And in a perverse twist, 4E actually provides combat bonuses when some players and monsters become "bloodied". If you can imagine, as one becomes "bloodied" (fatigued), combat ability actually improves.

While it is true that Arneson first implemented the concept of hit points in his pre-DnD games, it took Gary Gygax to unthinkingly promulgate their hybrid use, as a combined luck, skill, stamina and endurance measure, when publishing the earliest versions of DnD. And to this day, hit points in all versons of DnD, including 4E, continue to function just as they did in 1974, as a rather ghoulish goulash of combat capability measures.

Gygax should have known better. As an avid reader of pulp fantasy literature, he had myriad sources available to confirm that pulp fantasy role-playing games absolutely require some sort of combat fatigue emulator.

Even something as simple as the loss of a single hit point during each combat round due to exertion would have provided some reminder to the players that fatigue is a serious matter in battle.

My clucking and finger-wagging at Gygax applies equally to those DnD game designers who came after.

You need look no further to see that continued failure, than to study one of the so-called "marvellous innovations" of 4E, the AEDU system. The 4E AEDU system gives each character at-will, encounter, daily, and utility powers, and is a rather uninspired effort at combat fatigue emulation.

It posits that there are certain daily and encounter powers that are so exceptional, and fatiguing, that they can only be attempted once per day or encounter. That AEDU system has been roundly and justifiably derided, as riven by disassociated mechanics. Most importantly, it eliminates an important component of player choice, since it prevents players from re-attempting a daily power, accompanied by some equally significant sacrifice elsewhere.

There's really no justification for the absence of combat fatigue emulation as a feature of DnD combat. That few, if any, have recognized and rued its absence is the real tragedy.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

The More I Post At WOTC, The Stoopider I Get

I can objectively demonstrate that posting on the WOTC D&D fora actually reduces your intelligence.

To wit:

Einstein and Hawking are two of the smartest guys that ever lived.

They never posted on the WOTC D&D fora.

Therefore, we assign them a score of 0, for no posts.

The more a person posts on the WOTC forums, the less time they have to become an Einstein or Hawking. Therefore, the WOTC poster's potential for genius is inversely proportional to their number of posts.

Thus, we take the inverse of the WOTC poster's posts to represent their potential for genius.

Since Einstein and Hawking have 0 posts on the WOTC fora, we take the inverse of their posts, which is 1/0, so they receive an infinity score on the genius potential scale.

For me, i'm up to post 37, which means i'm already down to 1/37 on the genius potential scale, or 0.027.

I'm getting stoopider by the minute.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Things You Can't Say On The WOTC Fora

I have discovered, from sorry experience, that you cannot talk about the following things on the WOTC Dungeons and Dragons fora.

Nine-fold Alignment System

Realism

Save Or Die

World Of Warcraft

Random attribute generation

Vancian Magic

XP for GP

Fragile entry-level characters

Role-playing

Player-skill challenges

Narrative combat

Heterogenous classes

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Actual Play Report From The Belly Of The Beast

Every so often, it's valuable to visit the belly of the beast, to see what is being digested.

With the secret play-testing of an alpha-version of 5E still fresh in his mind, one blogger on the WOTC site decided to take a spin with Original Dungeons and Dragons. His OD&D play reports can be found here, on his WOTC blog.

I thought that some of this blogger's comments were worth reprinting here:

"We ran out of time [with OD&D] at this point. I asked the players what they wanted to do. Move on to the blue box, for the second version of AD&D? No way, they said. Both women said [OD&D] was the most fun they had ever had with D&D! The optimizers, used to crunching lots of numbers? These guys also wanted to keep playing and experimenting. These are guys that, before the session, said on their podcast "I expect to not enjoy the game at all". They were amazed by how great a time they had. So, yeah, more White Box this week! After that, my hope is that we can continue to climb the version and edition ladder.

We had gone from expecting to just ridicule OD&D to actually having a lot of respect for how D&D started. More incredibly, we wanted to play more. Some of the playtesters have been allowed to share that they see the versions of old in D&D Next. And they are having a lot of fun."

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Type V Will Be Awesome

More evidence that Dungeons and Dragons Type V will be the most awesomest Dungeons and Dragons ever.

I mean, have you seen the related images for Types I through IV? Do you really want to play a version of the game that is represented by a boar-headed goat-man?

I'm holding out for Dungeons and Dragons: Succubus Edition.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

5e: This One's Real, So Believe The Hype

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Because Inquiring Minds Need To Know

Yesterday's exciting announcement from Wizards Of The Coast, that the next iteration of Dungeons and Dragons is under development, promises to open all sorts of new vistas and avenues for creative types (like those found in the Old School Renaissance) to influence the direction of official D&D.

Vital, important questions will be explored in our quest to create the ultimate D&D version. As with all such development projects, we are obliged to start with the most critical and pressing design decisions, and work our way down the list.

You can't even begin to imagine my state of mind therefore (which bordered on delirium) when the design group posed their first question to the gathered masses.

In case you're curious, I voted kobolds.

I can't wait to participate in further acts of community engagement.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Playing DnD 4E

Yes, it's true. I played DnD 4E on Sunday. The occasion? Some friends purchased the new "Essentials" line of DnD products for their son, and were looking for some players to try it out.

Here is a picture of the easel pad sheet taped to the wall, providing the rules for character actions. Having that sheet taped to the wall as a reference felt a little like being in a brainstorming session at work.

There were three 200-page rule books at the table (the Rules Compendium and two different Player's Handbooks) and I believe our friend also purchased a Dungeon Master's Kit. Having not already been familiar with the contents of those three books, it was a touch overwhelming, and we seemed to spend a fair amount of time refering to the rulebooks during combat.

We played through 3 combat encounters, and visited the local town for rumours, all in four hours of gaming time.

I enjoyed spending time with our friends. The DnD experience itself? Sure, i'd play the game with them again, but I find 4E to be too mechanical and combat-centric for my tastes.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Card-Based Dungeons And Dragons

Though not precisely old-school, A Pack Of Gnolls is one of the blogs on my reading list, as Sully makes some interesting observations and seems to appreciate the old-school aesthetic.

He recently published this Magic Mouth spell-card, which was designed for D&D 4E. In that version of the game, non-combat spells seem to have been reclassified as "rituals", which can be used on those rare non-combat situations.

It seems like a year or more since I last blogged about my D&D resource cards project. That project was my attempt to create small, 1" x 1.5" cards that could be used for resource management at the game table. Those cards included magic items, equipment, spells, rumours, and spell components.

I have not spent much time on that project of late, but the recent developments with 4E have me thinking again about this.

Would I love to have a set of spell-cards for Dungeons and Dragons, similar to the one designed by Sully, and accompanied by old-school artwork and descriptions of the spells? Absolutely. It would be great fun for the players to actually play the cards when they want to cast the spell, flipping it face-down when that spell has been used.

I think 4E adherants misunderstand the objections of many old-schoolers to the recent 4E resource and ability cards distribution. It's not the idea of cards at the table that has many of us shaking our heads. It is the blind, collectible format, where players must spend significant amounts of cash to ensure they collect the ultra-rare cards. The inevitable rebuttal from that crowd is that the cards are optional. Today, perhaps. The same can probably be said of M:TG cards. After all, I suspect it is not too difficult to print a copy of a rare M:TG card and place it in your deck, if you're simply playing a friendly Magic game with your friends.

If someone designed a set of D&D spell cards, for old-school tabletop gaming, i'd be all over those. I'm just not interested in buying them in a blind, collectible format.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

DnD Minis Sets Cancellation And 5E

I've been on hiatus for the last six weeks, so I missed this news, about the cancellation of the DnD Minis sets. I'm reprinting the news here, simply because I find these news-content pieces often get moved or archived, and I have a hard time finding them later. This news item is taken whole-cloth from the Examiner.com website, and is credited to Michael Tresca.

Wizards of the Coast has announced that it will no longer release prepainted Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures sets. According to Bill Slavicsek in Dragon #395:

"We have made the decision to depart from prepainted plastic miniatures sets. Lords of Madness stands as the final release under that model. We will continue to release special collector’s sets (such as the Beholder Collector’s Set we released last fall), as well as make use of plastic figures in other product offerings. Check out the Wrath of Ashardalon board game next month for the latest example of this. Moving forward, we will continue to explore more options for players to represent characters and monsters on the tabletop, including Monster Vault and other D&D products that feature monster and character tokens."

Scott Thorne at ICv2 is not entirely surprised:

"I can actually understand the cancellation of the miniatures line. The rise in oil prices has driven up the price of plastic and the D&D Miniature line is not as hot a seller as it when the company promoted and supported it as a stand-alone product line. Though sales have remained respectable, with some stores I know reporting sales of several thousand dollars a year of the product line, movement of the product is nowhere near as large as it was two to three years ago."

What Thorne objects to however is an announcement buried further in Slavcsek's article:

"The Heroes of Shadow product, originally scheduled for March and presented in digest-sized, paperback format, is moving to April to accommodate a change to hardcover format. Additionally, three D&D RPG products have been removed from the 2011 release schedule—Class Compendium: Heroes of Sword and Spell, Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium, and Hero Builder’s Handbook. While this means fewer books, we plan to deliver just as much great content for players this year through other formats, including board games, accessories, and digital offerings. I’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest releases each month as we go along."

"Say what?" asks Thorne:

"Cancellation of an entire product line and three planned releases for the D&D line is something that should get announced to retailers directly, not second or third hand through a buried article on the WOTC website...The problem is the lack of communication. Retailers did not have any indication of this turn of events. During WOTC’s presentation at the Alliance Open House last fall, every indication was full steam ahead on the D&D Miniatures line, with a release of a new set of miniatures once a year and a full slate of D&D book releases. Now, less than 4 months later, no more miniatures line and a third of the promised D&D books will not hit the shelves until 2012 at least. This could be a good thing, if it increases demand for the scarcer releases but is also worrisome."

The new Dungeons & Dragons film was also announced in the Ampersand article:

"We just wrapped up a contest tied to the new Syfy Original Movie Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness. We’ll announce the winner shortly, and that lucky individual will get to play his or her D&D character in the film. Our own Dungeon Master to the Stars, Chris Perkins, has been consulting with screenwriter Brian Rudnick and helping to get the D&D details right."

The drastic change in Wizard of the Coast's production schedule has sparked speculation that the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons is on the horizon. George Strayton, a D&D blogger and closely affiliated with WotC as playtester, and co-writer of the new D&D film mentioned above, speculates that 5th edition will be announced on GenCon this year and released in 2012.
Strayton admits this is largely conjecture, but his opinion carries some weight due to his credentials:

"As for a source, I honestly don’t have one. This is my conjecture based on having worked as the high levels of a big RPG company, the current state of affairs of the hobby (with the splintering of the game), my knowledge of Hasbro (including all my work on the TRANSFORMERS films), the recent announcement by Bill, and my gut feeling."

I'm not shocked by the cancellation of the D&D Miniatures Sets line. The fact that they cancelled the D&D Miniatures game reduced the demand for the miniatures, in the prior blind, collectible format. That was compounded by the subsequent and confusing changes in the delivery method, release delays, a perceived drop in value/quality and increases in price-per-mini. Is it possible they will be re-tooling and selling the minis as themed sets, for specific adventures? That's something I would be interested in seeing, depending on the implementation.

The random painted WOTC D&D minis were convenient, if you could purchase them from re-sellers who broke apart the cases, but there are other minis out there, like the Reaper pre-painted minis line, and unpainted miniatures. This announcement will provide additional impetus to get back to painting my several hundred unpainted minis!

As for speculation that 5E is in the works, i'd like to believe that a system re-boot would be an improvement over 4E, but if the new fortune card-based system is any indication, 5E will be even further removed from the type of Dungeons and Dragons i'm interested in playing. Thank goodness for the OGL and the OSR.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Gaming and the Canadian Exchange Rate

I was looking at the recent Dungeons and Dragons 4E Essentials release schedule, and couldn't help notice the following product line-up information.

Dungeon Master's Kit
An Essential D&D Game Supplement
James Wyatt and Jeremy Crawford
Awesome tools, rules, and adventure content for every Dungeon Master.
If you’re a Dungeons & Dragons player interested in taking on the role of the Dungeon Master, or if you’re an experienced DM looking for more game advice, tools, and adventure content, the Dungeon Master’s Kit has exactly what you need to build your own Dungeons & Dragons campaign and excite the imaginations of you and your players.
This deluxe box contains rules and advice to help Dungeon Masters run games for adventurers of levels 1–30. It also includes useful DM tools such as a Dungeon Master’s screen (with tables and rules printed on the inside), die-cut terrain tiles and monster tokens, and fold-out battle maps.
Game components:
256-page book of rules and advice for Dungeon Masters
Two 32-page adventures
2 sheets of die-cut monster tokens
2 double-sided battle maps
Fold-out Dungeon Master’s screen
Item Details Item Code: 244640000Release Date: October 19, 2010 Series: Essential D&D Game Supplement Format: Box Price: $39.99 C$47.99 ISBN: 978-0-7869-5630-2

As of September 14, 2010, the exchange rate on the Canadian dollar is roughly $0.97 US. At that exchange rate, the pricing on the Dungeon Master's Kit should be $41, not $48. Hopefully Canadian retailers will not be forced to charge those exorbitant prices, and will get a break on the wholesale price from WoTC. Here's an even more extreme example.

Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms
An Essential D&D Game Supplement
Mike Mearls, Bill Slavicsek, and Rodney Thompson
Exciting new builds and character options for the druid, paladin, ranger, and warlock classes.
This essential supplement for the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game presents exciting new builds for the game’s most popular classes: the druid, the paladin, the ranger, and the warlock. Each class comes with a set of new powers, class features, paragon paths, epic destinies, and more that beginning players can use to build the characters they want to play and experienced players can plunder for existing 4th Edition characters.
In addition to new builds, this book presents expanded information and racial traits for some of the game’s most popular races, including dragonborn, drow, half-elves, half-orcs, and tieflings.
Item Details Item Code: 247510000Release Date: November 16, 2010 Series: Essential D&D Game Supplement Format: Trade Paperback Page Count: 352 Price: $19.95 C$35.00 ISBN: 978-0-7869-5619-7

At $35 Canadian, compared to $20 US, that's an exchange rate of $0.57, compared to the current $0.97. I trust this $35 Canadian price is just a typo, or a placeholder for the correct price.

Monday, September 6, 2010

2010 WOTC 4E Red Box: A Review

Would it be vain to suggest that the old school community is having a measurable impact on the marketing efforts of Hasbro and Wizards Of The Coast? While its certainly comforting to imagine that the design and distribution of the new 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons Essentials Starter Set (4E Red Box) is a reaction to the blossoming of the old school community, it is just as likely that the look of the new 4E Red Box is simply a clever marketing ploy by WOTC, to get those parents who fondly remember D&D to buy a copy of this new D&D game for their kids.

Whatever the reason, the announcement of a new 4E Red Box several months ago provoked old-school and new-school fingers to race furiously across keyboards. Those groups alternately predicted that the 4E Red Box heralded the end of civilization, or a new golden age of role-playing.

Having recently purchased a copy of the 4E Red Box, I thought some might find it useful if I shared my thoughts regarding this product, now that the game is "in-hand."

The 4E Red Box is $20, is 9" x 12" , and is 2" deep, but don't let the depth of the box fool you into thinking you are getting 2" worth of gaming materials. WOTC could have made the box 1" deep and still have provided all the materials in the box. A 1" high, sloped, cardboard boxliner (sloped so the dice fit inside) reduces the interior depth of the box, so the enclosed materials won't flop around. Inside, you will find two 8.5 x 11" booklets (a 32-page players book and a 64-page dungeon masters book), a set of black dice with white numbers, a sheet of cardboard counters representing characters and monsters, a double-sided battlemat, four character record sheets, and several sheets of power cards.

The production quality is top-notch, as one would expect from Wizards of the Coast. The booklet artwork is full-color and bleeds to the edge of the pages. The cardboard character and monster counters feature art typical of 4th Edition D&D. WOTC has recycled the crossroads battlemat, appearing in other 4E products, but the reverse battlemat reveals a dungeon, designed specifically for the 4E Red Box. While only four character sheets are provided with the game, WOTC gives permission to photocopy the character sheets for personal use.

The Players Book is simply a two-column choose-your-own-adventure book consisting of 100 entries (with the manual being 32 pages, that works out to 3 entries per page). In making several adventure decisions, those 100 entries take you through 4th Edition D&D character creation. For example, your first choice, upon being ambushed, is to determine whether you wish to cast a spell, heal a comrade, sneak around the attackers, or confront them in mortal combat. Depending on which choice you make, this determines your starting character class. During three in-book encounters (two combat and one information gathering), you make additional choices about your alignment, starting weapons and equipment, ability scores, healing surges, and powers or spells. Once you finish the Players Book, you are encouraged to gather three or four friends, and have them walk though the included adventure to create their own characters.

There appears to be very little resource management in the 4E D&D. Neither the Players Book nor the Dungeon Masters Book provide any lists of equipment for purchase. Every character is assumed to have all of the materials he or she needs for adventuring (rope, torches, etc.). The resource management in 4E is all in about your hit points, healing surges, and powers.

The 64-page Dungeon Masters Book provides additional encounters and advice on how to run encounters. By the end of the encounters outlined in the Dungeon Masters Book, each of the characters should reach 2nd Level.

Is this boxed set worth $20? If you are interested in playing 4E D&D, and have never played Dungeons and Dragons (or any role-playing game) before, it is, and may be the product for you. But, while the contents of this boxed set are quite nice, if you have played role-playing games before, you don't need to buy this product. The character generation in the Players Book is oversimplified, and you don't need 32 pages and 100 entries to accomplish this exercize. It should take someone, with even a passing familiarity with role-playing games, no more 2-3 minutes to make the choices that might take 15-30 minutes following the examples in the Players Book.

If you are someone who played D&D 20 years ago, and want to get back into the "most recent" version of the game, this product is still probably not for you. Wait for the other more comprehensive D&D Essentials game materials. Understand though, that this is not the D&D you played in the 1980's, or even the D&D you played in the 1990's. 4E is an "encounters-based" game, with experience doled out for completing quests assigned by the referee, battling monsters, and participating in "skill-challenges", where you roll dice against a certain skill, in order to continue the adventure.

Did the 4E Red Box convince me to play 4E? No. It reminded me why I lost interest in 4E to begin with. But that doesn't mean that it is not right for you. If your favorite part of D&D was engaging in combats, participating in heroic quests, and obtaining magic items, and least favorite was role-playing your character, solving puzzles, exploring abandoned ruins, and managing your material resources effectively, then 4E is worth checking out.