I recently ordered the new Starter Set for D&D 5th Edition. In part to get a cheap look at what the new version was like. In part to check it out before I tried buying one for my niece. It’s a pretty big box, and looks like it’s filled to the brim:

After a cursory glance at the stuff on top, I dug out everything to see what all they included. And I ran into this:

It appears that the majority of the box is really just that filler box. The actual contents are just two booklets (the basic rules and an adventure, which has some GMing tips), a set of polyhedral dice (though only one d10, even though it notes you’ll need to do percentile rolls in the book) and a few pre-gen characters.

Somehow I thought they’d include something like a grid mat, maybe some cheap cardboard miniatures, something. Nope. This box is mostly filler.

I’ll probably still buy it for my niece. It looks like it’s an approachable intro. I’m just underwhelmed by the presentation.