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Preface: It's been awhile since I wrote a review for RPG.net, and it was quite awhile between playing a session of D&D 3.x and D&D 4e at the Worldwide Premier Event. With less time for gaming, I'm an erstwhile roleplayer, and now a boardgamer, playing games such as Arkham Horror and Descent. I have been picking up the 3.x Basic Sets, and, as an impulse buy, picked up the D&D Roleplaying Starter Set. I have not played H1: Keep on the Shadowfell, nor have I purchased the D&D Core Books, though believe I know enough of these products to write a review for this one.

Content Overview: The D&D Roleplaying Starter Set comes with a Quick Start Rules, a so-called Dungeon Master's Book, tokens, dungeon tiles, and a set of dice. The Quick Start Rules is a 16-page booklet that describes combat and has stats for five pregenerated characters. The DMB is a 60-page booklet that has the same combat rules, a short three-encounter adventure, dungeon master advice for creating adventures, and several classic monsters from level one to level five.

Component Overview: The booklets are printed on slick glossy color magazine paper. While it's a standard, for play, I still prefer the sturdier cardstock covers with stiffer black and white paper. The token sheet and tiles are printed on thick coated cardboard. The token sheet contains 50+ double-sided color tokens, of classic monsters, plus the pregenerated characters. The three tile sheets are printed on the same sturdy cardboard, with about 2/3 generic dungeon tile, and 1/3 specialty tiles, including a prisoner's pen. The token sheet and tiles are impressive and would be great as a standalone product. Unfortunately, while WotC does have its D&D Dungeon Tiles (which I highly recommend), it doesn't have token sheets, which are far more economical and easier to store than miniatures. The dice are mono-colored dice, perfectly functional, but hideously crayon-colored. Give them to the cat.

Quick Start Rules: This 16-page booklet covers combat and ends with five pregenerated characters. Unlike the 3.x Basic Set, the rules aren't watered-down, and are pretty close to the combat chapter in the PHB (but lacks combat examples, ironically enough). The pregenerated characters are Dwarf Fighter, Halfling Rogue, Eladrin Wizard, Human Cleric, and Dragonborn Paladin. No rules for character generation are included, nor is there a table of contents or index (pretty necessary when you're a new player needing to look up a term). The classes are not described, and the races are mentioned in the monster section of the Dungeon Master's Book.

Dungeon Master's Book: This 60-page booklet has the same combat rules as in the Quick Start Rules, a short three-encounter adventure (good enough for an evening, but I wish there was more), DM advice, and a monster manual. The DM advice is close to the Building Encounters chapter of the DMG, and actually rather newbie-friendly, in my opinion. There's even a small section for Traps and Hazards. The last half of the book consists of statistics for classic monsters. Again, no index is included, although most of this book will be used in preparation, rather than play.

Target Audiences: So who should buy this product? I'd expect that the typical D&D player reading this review on RPG.net to have purchased the 4e Player's Handbook, at least, and may be considering purchasing this product for a nephew or friend who's new to roleplaying.

And, if you are, don't buy this product. As implied, the Quick Start Rules and Dungeon Master's Book don't contain information not already in the core books. Yet the Quick Start Rules pretty much start with the standard 4e rules on page one. If you're familiar with the 3.x Basic Sets, there's none of the introductory hand-holding here to help you learn the game. Likewise, if you've played H1: Keep on the Shadowfell, you've learned how to play 4e and played a full adventure.

But us fence-sitters who know about the D&D mechanics in 3.x (combat sequence, actions, powers, etc.) and balk at the price of the core books will have a reasonable time adjusting to 4e with this set. If you already own the core books, the rule booklets should also work as a "second copy" when some new player to 4e wants to look up the rules, has cheeto whiz on his fingers, and is staring at you and your pristine copy of the Player's Handbook.

Conclusion: With D&D characters playable at first-level, if you don't mind pregenerated characters, the D&D Roleplaying Starter Set is something of a low-cost "all in one" toolkit for play through third-level. It's not suitable as an introductory roleplaying game and won't get you as far as the core books, but casual gamers for a single-evening adventures should get something out of this.