Panny explores their love of tabletop gaming starter sets from childhood to the present day.
I love tabletop games starter sets, they hold within their box sets the promise of an entire new world of gaming experiences to explore, all at a budget price that allows new players a simple entry into a new hobby, whilst appealing to veteran players due to the value in the box and promise of new content.
It was circa 1999 when with £50 of birthday money in my hands, I picked up my first starter set, the Warhammer 40k 3e box set with the gorgeous John Blanche art on the cover. Games Workshop stores dot the landscape of the UK, and as a young nerdy lad in the 90s they felt like a place of wonder, this vast universe of games to explore.
The 3e set came with, 10 Tactical Marines, a Landspeeder, 20 Dark Eldar Warriors, the 40k 3e Rulebook, a set of dice, reference sheets, range rulers and some terrain. That's the start of two whole armies! In true wargaming starter set tradition I'd end up trading the Dark Eldar to my friend.
My first Warhammer 40k army was the Ultramarines, an army even at the time players held in derision, nicknaming them 'smurfs'. They were quite literally the poster boys of the setting which drew them immediate ire from gamers who often pride themselves on being contrarian, especially in the 90s era of post-punk rebellion.
I think I was drawn to them because of their simplicity. Space Marines are one of the easiest armies to play, with resilient units that have clearly defined roles, and don't punish mistakes too hard. Ultramarines had a clear and simple colour scheme to paint, and a versatility that meant I could pick and choose whatever miniatures I liked the look of, rather than worrying about having to buy an army of all jet bikes or tanks.
I still find a Human Fighter is my favourite DnD class, and I like playing Goblins in Magic the Gathering, even better if they're in a pre-constructed theme deck. I'm what the player profiles call a 'Timmy.' Even in the 90s Warhammer was an overwhelming hobby to get into, with a huge range of armies to choose from, many of which were trap options in having small miniature ranges, requiring specific units to be viable, or simply being difficult to glue and paint. Space Marines were a safe pick and enabled me to have formative wargaming experiences. I suspect if I'd gone for something more complicated I may have dropped the game entirely for being a bit too much.
To further prove that point, when I tried to get into Warhammer Fantasy I initially wanted to pick Empire but after dealing with being mocked for playing Ultramarines, told myself I wouldn't pick the 'boring' humans, and picked Vampire Counts instead. It was a cool army, but I regretted it after buying a Blood Dragon Vampire Lord, a Skeleton Warriors box set, and their Army Book, and realising I'd need hundreds of skeleton and zombie miniatures to make a viable army. This was entirely out of my budget range as a kid. I should have gone with Empire, and may have even managed to get a proper game in or two if I had.
Which is to say there's no shame in choosing the simplest option, it's often the correct pick for someone new. We talk a lot in the community about different forms of gatekeeping and how damaging they can be, and I think giving new players shit for choosing options designed to make it easy for them to play a game is detrimental overall, even when it's poking fun at someone for playing Ultramarines.
Jump to 2016, I'd been roleplaying lots throughout university but had taken a long break as adult life started to properly happen in my 20s, and it proved harder to get a dedicated group together when you weren't all unemployed living in the same building.
I'd heard whispers of 5th Edition but wasn't paying much attention to it, then saw the DnD 5e Starter Set sitting on a shelf in a local game store and thought I'd give it a punt for 20 quid. It sat dusty for a while until Stranger Things happened and my friend group at the time suddenly wanted to play DnD. I stepped in to surprise them with the fact I'd been running it in some form or another for over 5 years at that point, and happened to have the new edition starter set under my bed.
So I ran it, and honestly it was really good. I'd played a lot of Pathfinder and 4e prior to this, and 5e felt like a breath of fresh air at the time. Both those other games had a issues in my mind with over complexity, bloat, and slow combats, that 5e stripped away. It's 'rulings not rules' philosophy meant I felt more empowered to just make stuff up during play rather than worry about the specifics of the rules text.
Looking back it may well have been the simplicity of the starter set that I really enjoyed, as 5e would end up suffering from many of the same issues.
We played through the Phandelver adventure, and transitioned that to a campaign set in Neverwinter, which I used the 4e Neverwinter Campaign setting book for, still one of the best designed city based campaigns I've played. I loved it so much I'd eventually run a full Level 1 - 20 campaign in 5e using it as a basis.
Jump to 2018 and I'd been delving into the 'OSR' scene. Having grown tired of 5e by this point as it began to suffer the same issues of bloat as other editions, I was looking again for something simple. The majority of OSR systems in one way or another derive from the DnD 'Basic' Red starter box. I'd pick up Old School Essentials (when it was called B/X Essentials), which condenses the simplicity of B/X into an easily accessible tome. The OSR tied together that simplicity I loved with a wealth of evocative ideas, that the rules set gave room to breath.
The original red box contained the core rules for level 1-3 play, a set of dice, and 'The Keep on the Borderlands' a quintessential Dungeons & Dragons adventure that would grow into a classic.
You can read some more indepth thoughts on B/X here.
Lot's has been written about The Keep on the Borderlands, but I am also rather fond of the starting 'Haunted Keep' dungeon in the Moldvay Basic Set. It was designed only part complete, to encourage DM's to fill in the rest themselves, and has a simple structure. Most of the keep is populated by Hobgoblins, but one room they avoid has a Shadow, hence 'haunted.' This is the type of content that's invaluable, down to earth design engineered to teach new DM's how to design for and run the game, produced in a time before 'How to DM' YouTube videos were ever a thing.
Jump to 2019 and Free League had just released the Alien 'Chariot of the Gods' Starter Set. My friend Steve ran it for us at Modiphius and It proved to be one of the best narrative based roleplaying experiences I'd had. I'd end up running it multiple times myself. The starter box came with a plethora of awesome stuff that made it easy to get the game to the table, and showed me that a starter set could be elevated beyond simply 'an intro to the game' into a unique experience.
Jump to 2023, and I'm browsing Orcs Nest in London when I see the RuneQuest Starter Set. I already have a copy of Mythras that I never brought to the table, so I technically had no need for this, but it was well designed, and gave me the promise of getting RuneQuest to the table in a simple way, so I picked up a copy. It had really premium production values throughout the set, and broke up the complexity of the RuneQuest rules set into a series of booklets that made it easier to understand.
That's when I had the spark of the idea to create something similar for Salvage Union. We were working hard at that point getting the Core Book completed and were thinking of ways to expand the game after release.
We'd always designed Salvage Union to be simple and accessible to play, but there's still only so much you can do with a Core Book to make that possible. Accessibility also involves how you present a game, and a Starter Set allows you to package together multiple quality of life features such as rules booklets, handouts, printed pre-made characters, and maps.
Jump to 2024 and we're getting ready to launch the Salvage Union Starter Set on BackerKit for Oct 1st.
On top on making the set accessible, we really wanted to include a campaign that would be designed to guide the GM, and players, into the world of Salvage Union.
The 'Reclamation of the Wastes' campaign is set within the Central Wastes, a classic, post-apocalyptic sandbox. It's built to guide GM's running Salvage Union into how to run a campaign, and provide a engaging experience for the players.
Inspired by Free League's Forbidden Lands box set, we wanted the campaign to have a huge fold out map, as there's just something about about being able to unfold a map, place it on the table, and open up a realm of possibilities for exploration and adventure.
I can only hope our starter box provides as much joy as other tabletop gaming starter sets have provided me over the years.
Thanks for reading this rather personal foray into my history with starter sets and why I love them so much.
If you're interested in the Salvage Union Starter set you can follow the BackerKit Campaign here. We're launching on October 1st and would really appreciate your support.
Follow the Salvage Union Starter Set Campaign here.
The Salvage Union Core Book, and adventure modules, are available to buy here.
You can download the free QuickStart here https://leyline.press/products/salvage-union-beta-quickstart-digital-edition-pdf
You can join the Salvage Union Discord here - https://discord.gg/gmM6jTT8qm
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