Finishing The Lost Mine of Phandelver | A Final Review of the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set

[@stephenmartin1982]

It's awesome to hear stories about people, new to the game having such a good time. Please update us on the new characters and their adventures

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

I think our plan is one of my players is going to run his own one-shot so I get to take a turn at being a hero, and also to buy me some time as I flesh out my own campaign. I am sure I will update on how things go!

[@stephenmartin1982]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Nice. BTW, any plans on what setting it's going to be placed in or are you going home brew?

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

I had briefly considered setting it in the world I created for my novels, but I'm keeping things relatively small scale and the world itself will just be the backdrop, so I will probably end up riffing on Forgotten Realms.

[@stephenmartin1982]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring coolness. Nothing wrong with the standard setting.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Yeah, I felt it would just let me focus more on the story I wanted to tell rather than worrying about things that probably won't even matter anyway.

[@SupMamma88]

Ah man, having the Essentials Kit along with this module makes this story so much more engaging and becomes easier to make the story your own

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

No, I wanted to move on and do something entirely my own. This was a great introduction, though.

[@SupMamma88]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring then May your future adventures be glorious and prosperous!!!!

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Let's hope so. The Phandelver campaign was a real learning experience, and my heroes made quite a few mistakes and were not always the characters great ballads are sung about. I am sure glory awaits after a clean slate!

[@Mailed-Knight]

Interesting way of DM'ing.

[@timd4524]

The adventure is made somewhat in the old school fashion when people enjoyed some combat over 5 hours of talking. It is one of the three pillars of the game and this helps by making stuff stick in the head. That way you don't become someone playing D&D for 6 years still saying " how do I do this again ". As is seen on some unnamed channels. Really cool sticking to the dragons deal. That's the abnormal part. Usually characters in these low levels never encounter dragons. It pretty much leads to a TPK if the players fight. 5e has some balance issues which can be worked out with experience at DM'ing. The Hit Die system was actually much more easier to use to balance encounters than the CR system with its mathematical formulas but it's workable and a decent edition of D&D. Congratulations on being able to get your group together for a finish.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

I feel the balance of combat to other activities is pretty good through the whole campaign until it gets to Wave Echo Cave at the end, when it just seems to be packed with monsters. It was noticeable to me, at least. Coming up with Venomfang's deal and managing to pull it off successfully was definitely the highlight of the campaign for me. Not sure the heroes feel the same way though...

[@timd4524]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring You can only really trust the lawful type dragons. I have a buddy who wanted to try DM'ing once. He threw a black dragon in and we were 1st level. Of course we all died. It was about a 30 minute session lol. I asked him " why would you put that there for 1st level characters ". He explained that it was actually the end part of the adventure, but he really wanted to use the dragon. Then I had to explain the whole balance thing to him. He's really a good player but couldn't handle the DM power.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

The fun thing with Venomfang was the players were made aware that the dragon would stick to the word of any deal exactly. They would be spared, and would be given all the information they needed, but the dragon would take half of everything they found in the castle. I think they didn't realise how mean I could be, or how important stating "half of all the treasure they found" was!

[@TheFatalT]

One thing I’ve noticed about D&D is how the edition you begin with is the edition you will always go back to. In my case that’s the 1981 Basic Set edited by Tom Moldvay, a vastly different game from that of today. It’s still what I think of as D&D today. Would you say D&D is your favorite RPG or do you have another favorite system. I have lately enjoyed the Star Wars/Genesys system from FFG but my current RPG of choice is the 2d20 from Modiphius - Conan in particular, but also Star Trek and Dune. Excellent narrative gameplay, well worth checking out if you get a chance. Really enjoyed this, looking forward to the next one. Would love to see a campaign journal if you’re up to it.

[@TheFatalT]

I’d also recommend the Alien RPG from Free League - really captures the spirit of the movies extremely well. Their One Ring RPG is also excellent as well.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

The Alien RPG does look cool. That's one I might try one day. At the moment I only play D&D and Labyrinth, which are two very different styles of RPG, and I'm not really looking at getting involved in any others right now.

[@scoutingtheweb]

I’ve just started playing myself, only made a character so far but going to enjoy watching this tomorrow, was thinking of picking up the starter set to play at home with the kids, are your other videos still up?

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Yeah, all the videos are on the channel in my D&D playlist. We recorded the first four or five sessions, but I had to stop because they took so long to put together.

[@scoutingtheweb]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring really enjoyed that video I’m definitely going to be picking this up to play at home and already excited to get the players handbook and some bits for the group I just joined

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

I hope you have as much fun with D&D as we've had.

[@stevenray8737]

So glad you've given this a try! Sadly I've not had the opportunity to play D&D, but regardless I still bought this set, the Players Manual and Curse of Strahd as I'm a bit of a game designer at heart, and just enjoy reading the rules and appreciating the provided campaigns. I think it must have been watching too much Mazes & Monsters that got me wondering "whats the big deal with D&D? How does it even work?", and how it compared to the Fighting Fantasy books and The Way of the Tiger series. But yes, this was a very enjoyable review of the starter set and wonder if you'd be looking at the follow up Essentials set as well? I might just be able to rope my brother into that one as its just a DM and a single player, and apparently connected to the Phandelver campaign?

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Thanks for watching. The essentials kit does dovetail with the starter set, using the same region. I've heard good things about it, but we're not going in that direction in our group. I really want to do more of my own stuff.

[@stevenray8737]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Thats cool beans. Sometimes you surprise us with games that we'd never have known about. Definitely a good thing.

[@lergof0202]

Love D&D. This starter set is what got me into the game. Side question: are there any plans to continue your Rangers of Shadowdeep campaign?

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

I will be continuing that adventure. I mentioned in my New Year video that I did play the next scenario, but when I was editing I realised I had made a massive, stupid mistake that had such an impact on how the game turned out I wasn't prepared to upload it. So, I now need to replay, reshoot, and redit that mission. I'm hoping it won't be too long until I can get on with it.

[@MortenHaggren]

...and so another "forever" DM was born ;) If I was to give only one piece of advice for 5E it's to not get overly hung up on the whole 'challange rating' for encounter building and instead silently adjust it on the fly by adding/subtracting enemy reinforcements so it become interesting but not too interesting. Encounters should mostly always be 80/20% in the players favor, the trick being making it feel like it the reverse ;) Anyway welcome to the hobby it's great fun - I still DM for the same group on going on 28 years now :D

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Good points. I think I'm pretty good at adjusting things on the fly. Obviously its a long journey, but I consider myself to be relatively quick-witted, and since the beginning I've been adjusting fights and adding in my own character and story beats when the opportunity arose. I know there were definitely several occasions where my heroes thought they were done for, but the peril was mild at best.

[@jonathanhall3338]

What are your plans for a campaing? Are you going to record it for your channel?

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

I will be focusing on horror stuff. Not sure about featuring it on the channel. My D&D stuff gets hardly any traction but the playthroughs take a crazy long time to edit together which takes me away from working on all the other stuff I want to do (and which people will actually watch).

[@danielkochis5133]

LMOP is easily twice the starter set than the more recently produced D&D Essentials kit. Thanks for the cogent review. Think you might try other rpg starter sets?

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

It's a really solid starter set. At the moment I only play D&D and the Labyrinth RPG, both of which I have reviewed on the channel. I wouldn't mind picking up the Call of Cthulhu starter set when they redo it later this year, but I don't plan on going too far down the rabbit hole with RPGs. I have enough board games and miniatures games to fill my time as it is!

[@danielkochis5133]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring If you have have too many miniatures, you can send them to me. I will make sure that you never see them again. :D

[@eldritchmorgasm4018]

Is it possible to combine the D&D Starter Set & Esential Kit with the D&D Adventure System Boardgames?

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Well, I use all the miniatures and tiles from the board games in our D&D sessions because our group likes to have visual props to visualise layout, but that's about it really.

[@eldritchmorgasm4018]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring That's totaly fine, using the boardgames is probably the best way to get stuff kinda cheap, but I was thinking more of making it a bit more RPG-ish, heroes leveling up rised max, putting in the separate available cards for magic items & other weapons/armor, and that might be interesting, if you play solo, using sidekick-characters that could give you extra benefits

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

You'd have to come up with all of those rules yourself. You could take cues and inspiration from how it's done in the RPG, but almost everything would have to be changed in some way to fit into the board game.

[@johnmiddleton4291]

The dungeon at the end is just supposed to be an example of said type of adventure. I think this package tries hard to introduce all three main aspects of D&D to new players, npc interaction, exploration , and combat. Or towns, wilderness, and dungeons, alternatively.. I think the Essestial Icemist adventure and the campaign adventures on the Beyond app are generally better stories. You would probably like the Strahd campaign book, if only for ideas.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Oh I'm sure it's intentionally created that way, rather than lazy execution, considering how well constructed the campaign is (for an introductory campaign). I just think other areas of the campaign have a much nicer balance of different activities. Also, Cragmaw ended up being quite combat heavy for us after a few poor decisions and some failed stealthy stuff, so it would have been back-to-back dungeons with lots of combat.

[@1000jjwalker]

I kinda love combative dungeons and dragons. I sometimes just really need that kinda thing. But true there must be a good balance. It's hard to get that balance just right.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Combat is fun, and I do have one party member who loves to swing a sword, but too much of it can get old, and can really drag out a campaign. I guess, as I play a lot of dungeon crawlers where combat is the main focus RPGs also serve as an opportunity to do some other stuff as well. I feel one big scrap or a couple of little skirmishes is more than enough in a session.

[@1000jjwalker]

There's always that chance that it becomes just exchanging big bags of H.P back and forth.

[@carlwoods4564]

Good to watch. The problem I have with D&D is the combat. Its Too vague and abstract. Theres no tension. Its just rolling d20s over a an AC. Theres no tactics. I personally prefer 4th Edition. However with how WOTC has been conducting itself recently im moving away from D&D. Ive just purchased The One Ring and intrnd to use Strider Mode for solo play.

[@blackraptor311]

How about: "You have enough dice to clog a dice tower with".

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Ha. Good one.

[@zombiedad]

Weirdly my phone won’t let me like this video. Every time I hit like dislike lit up sorry. Venom fang was dead killed by his own trickery. Lol. Felt a bit guilty as a DM did you?🙂

[@zombiedad]

Yay! I got it to like

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Didn't feel bad at all - pulling off the Venomfang deal was the highlight of the campaign for me, as I came up with it and managed to get them to agree to it without seeing through what I was planning. If we had continued with these characters Venomfang would have been a recurring villain, but we were putting the campaign to bed and retiring the characters, so I wanted to make sure all three heroes achieved the goals presented in their character bios.

[@zombiedad]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring excellent story telling then and a fun emotional journey too.