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Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition

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Author: Wizards Rpg Team
Brand: Wizards of the Coast
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$104.95~~
Buy New: $66.02
You Save: $38.93 (37%)

New (33) Used (8) from $54.09

Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

170 reviews
Sales Rank: 784

Format: Box Set
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 4th
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 832
Shipping Weight (lbs): 6.9
Dimensions (in): 11.6 x 8.7 x 2.4

ISBN: 0786950633
Dewey Decimal Number: 793
EAN: 9780786950638
ASIN: 0786950633

Publication Date: June 6, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 6-10 of 170

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SOME THINGS ARE BETTER LEFT UNCHANGED! September 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Dungeons and Dragons 4.0 should, in theory, introduce new concepts and ideas that augment already existing rules and make them better.

Regretfully, though, it starts gutting established Dungeons and Dragons rules and procedures that have been in existence for decades.

Certain alignments are done away with, certain character classes are let out to pasture, the whole thing comes across as change for the simple sake of change. The 3.5 version was a lot better.

Some things are better left unchanged!!!

5 out of 5 stars

Beautiful September 17, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Hi, I'm 37, been roleplaying for years.
Introduced to RPG with Runequest (Chaosium) long time ago, later moved on to Call of Cthulhu and AD&D, it was 1989. In 1991 high school moved me out of the RPG tables. In late 90s I heard news about the new edition of D&D, the famous 3.0 (3.5 later) and months later I started buying the core books (DM guide and Players guide) but...this is not the AD&D I was used to play with!!! Dozens of confusing rules, dozens of updates and a extreme slow playing because it was too rule dependent...I spent more time consulting tables than playing...weeks later I quit and sold my core books on Ebay and went back to AD&D (and Runequest sometimes). Since today, I've just received the D&D 4th edition gift set...all I can say is WOW!!!

What a big improvement this edition is.
What a BEAUTIFUL job Wizards has done! to me this is the best D&D edition ever.
Love the design, love the art, everything looks clear and easy to understand and you almost can play it right out of the box, I'm very excited about the new rules (probably because I've never really liked D&D 3.5) because this edition looks more like the classic AD&D I was used to play with.

I'm starting tonight with H1-Keep on the Shadowfell...I'll send a report soon.

1 out of 5 stars

No longer Dungeons & Dragons September 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I have been playing incarnations of this game for ove 20 years. I can honestly say that I have had the pleasure of playing each edition including the original boxed sets that came out before the "Advanced" series. Having done so I can report that the current 4th Edition is the worst system yet developed for the game.

Where 3rd Edition took many aspects of 1st and 2nd Edition into consideration and re-imagined some of the rules for more interesting game play and better character development, this edition does the opposite. It ingnored the fundamentals of the game (Role Playing, Story Line, and Imagination) and gave us a stripped down version of what a computer game like Warcraft or Everquest might feel like if it was simplified for table top playing.

The Character classes now have defensive and offensive roles as if this were a simple strategy game or computer simulation. I cant believe that the writers, editors, and designers agreed to butcher the concept of D&D in order to try and tap into the computer game market.

The people at Wizards should hire some new (or re-hire the old ones they got rid of) Research and Development staff to re-discover what made this life long Roleplaying legacy so worth playing and interesting for the millions of D&D fans out there.

Have they realized how many people they have put off of roleplaying by this debacle? I'm not sure they will recover from this as I have gone around many local hobby shops and stayed in touch with many of my friends around the US and from what I understand many bought the books and just threw them away. Wizards might report big gains but they will not be able to sustain this game for as long as they did 3rd Edition which is not my favorite but I am willing to admit was a good overhaul of the system with better rules, artwork, and larger emphasis on role playing than this attempt.

Dont waste your money. Seriously if you are new to Dungeons and Dragons and want a good system to play I recommend looking for the original 1st Edition books or go sraight to the 3rd Edition. Pass this one over.

4 out of 5 stars

D&D in name only, but still alot of fun. September 16, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful

This rule book set is really the best way to go economically. As a Dungeon Master running this edition I had a good time with the monsters. The creatures are more like quality over quantity, with that said the new edition flaunts about half as many as the previous 3.5 monster manual. Newer players may really find this edition exciting due to the fact that pen and paper gaming seems foreign to them due to age bracket and new technology. Which is actually a shame. Player races are consolidated by lumping elf types into 2 instead of various subraces. Dwarves have lost their dark vision, and dragonborn seem to be the rage. Tieflings are nothing like their older counterpart and in some ways they are a little more interesting however their aesthetic quality is too uniform in my opinion. Gnomes are gone and so are Half-Orcs. 8 classes and 8 races total with more in future books (more money). Everything feels compartmentalized and trim, like D&D on a diet. The biggest difference seems to stem from the fact players are choosing "powers" for their characters now and combat seems to run quicker, rules are dumbed down for some and for DM's like me the rules seem to flow quicker and turns around the table are quicker. All this new fangled stuff however unfortunately takes some of the older character and feel away from old style D&D. Despite 3.5's rough edges I think it resembles original (AD&D 1st) D&D allot more than this edition does, and that kinda kills it for me. 5 stars I just couldn't do, so my suggestion is try and play it before you buy only because the changes may be quite shocking and might kill the "feeling" of old fashioned Gary Gygax styled gaming.

3 out of 5 stars

Too Slick for Its Own Good September 15, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

If I were starting out a group of 10-15 year olds in role-playing, I might chose this system, but I do not recommend it to gamers that have been playing a while. It is not inherently bad, but it is not really D&D.

The D&D 4th Edition is a beautifully produced work. The artwork is fantastic, and the layout is beautiful. The quality control is not all that it could be. My copy came with a huge gouge, fold-over that makes a good part of my Players HandBook (PHB) unreadable.

It is a game that will feel familiar to the 10-14 year old crowd that has grown up on Anime and MMORPGs with a Japanese animation world with cartoon physics and matrix-esque battles where everyone is special in the same way with little differentiation.

It is a game that will probably appeal less to the older, traditional RPG core demographic that bought books on plate techtonics to design worlds and adapted myths and classic literature to RPG adventures.

That is not a Bad Thing (tm). It is just not a thing that appealed to me.

The gaming system itself is:

* Heavily, heavily influenced by WoW and other MMORPGs.

* Only D&D in name and in the use of some familiar monsters, spells, and names (e.g., settings, modules). It is really an entirely different gaming system and concept.

* Nice layout and presentation (albeit a bit pricey)

* Basically all classes are homogenous at this point -- they just have different, but about equally powerful "ways to break the core rules." In days of yore, the parties carefully protected the mages, monks, and bards at low levels to allow them to do super cool things at the higher levels that the other classes simply could not do and that were typically extremely useful. Now the diversification occurs through the choice of various combinations of "game cheats" (as the PHB calls them) within each career/class/profession.

* The game no longer has a clear lineage back to specific literary works. You could hear: Tolkien, Vance, Howard, Dunsany, the Bible, and even the Great Old One (H.P.L.) as you rattled the dice in 2nd Ed. and earlier. You heard a faint whisper in 3 & 3.5, but you only hear the roar of Euros and WoW now. Maybe reading is pass� in the population writ large. My kids (21, 19 & 19) still read a lot (though none of them would willingly admit this).

* D&D still has franchise recognition, but the product is undifferentiated at this point. If you look at the WoW RPG and at D&D 4.0, the similarities are legion. If I liked WoW then I probably would not choose to play D&D 4.0 over the WoW RPG.

* The pay-to-play on-line tie-in is either brilliant or disgusting, and I'm not sure how I feel. I don't want to be a purist and dismiss on-line applications and see the game line go down the tubes financially. On the other hand, I do have a special place in my heart (emotional attachment) to D&D and would hate to see it become merely a thinly disguised marketing tool for an on-line franchise. In the most recent Game Explorer magazine (June 2008), the editor said that he and his staff had a confession that they still liked gaming around a table best and so should the readers.

Here is how I generally evaluate games and how D&D 4.0 rates.

GO/NO GO criterion

* Complexity: some strategy (decisions should matter), but not too many rules (should be able to learn ALL the rules within an hour). D&D 4.0 is simple enough that you can learn the rules in 15 minutes. You might not understand all of the subtle bits, but you can surely learn all that you need to know in 15 minutes.

* Balanced: any side can win, no single strategy dominates (related directly to re-playability). In the case of an RPG, every class/background has its own pros and cons. D&D 4.0 is almost over-balanced.

* Chance: some chance (a newbie should have a shot against a grand master of the game), but not so much that skill is irrelevant (the grand master should still win the vast majority of the time). I like games where daring is rewarded, but comes at some substantial risk. In the case of an RPG this translates into the ability of a junior character being able to occasionally succeed against a higher level adversary. I did not get a definitive out of the rules, but my gut is that (in D&D 4.0 like in WoW) that chance only exists within limited level bands. In the 1st Ed. AD&D I have seen some amazing rolls and a little player bravado allow a low level character to beat a much higher level challenge. Given the quantum level of the "cheats" in 4.0, such an occurrence is highly improbable if not down right impossible in 4.0.

* Clarity: it should be obvious who is winning each turn, and rules should not allow for large interpretation. Games that routinely involve rules fights or long discussions about who won after the game is over are bad, bad, bad for me. I could not judge this one from my reading of the Core Books for 4.0. Like balance, a judgment would have to be based on playing over a period of time.

* Reasonable Time: this is a criteria that varies by stage of life; now days I can only spare 3-4 hours at a time, and shorter (2 hours or less) games are better. It does seem like 4.0 lends itself to easy set-up in a limited period of time. If there are many, free on-line resources, even better.

BONUS criterion

* Social: games that allow for multiple players and enable conversation are best for me. Almost always a plus for RPGs, and D&D 4.0 is no exception.

* Unique/interesting Mechanic: games that approach things using a unique rule are better for me than ones that use a universal mechanic. D&D 4.0 has become more homogenous and generally only uses 4-5 mechanics.

* Inform: games that teach me something are more fun than games that don't. Original 1st Ed. AD&D was head and shoulders above 4.0. Like WoW, 4.0 is all about learning about a created world. Just look at the AD&D DMG and see all the sections on nature, herbs, and even a color chart. Many of us went out and learned about plate techtonics to do a good job at world design, or as a player you read a book about U.S. Army ranger tactics to improve your tactics. $.0 (that was actually a typo, but I *LIKE* it) is so far removed from the real-world or even a literary parentage that it does not drive a DM or a player toward any outside knowledge.

* Rewards Throughout: little victories within the game is a better approach than all or nothing at the end, but best is a combination of little rewards with bigger rewards. AD&D certainly had both. If you ever played a low level mage or a monk then you knew the joy of both level advancement as well as reaching that golden level when you got (__________) [fill in the blank).

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