5E's original Starter Set, Lost Mine of Phandelver is still a great way to start a D&D campaign

GamesBoard GameDungeons & Dragons5E’s original Starter Set, Lost Mine of Phandelver is still a great way to start a D&D campaignWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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A party of adventurers faces a green dragon

Most of the introductory adventures written to ease new players into Dungeons & Dragons over the years have been pretty rough. They’re often just dungeon crawls, which might teach you the rules for combat and disarming traps, but don’t bother demonstrating what’s actually exciting about roleplaying games. Which is the roleplaying. Even when beginner modules leave the dungeon, they tend to dump a lot of work in a young Dungeon Master’s lap.

TakeKeep on the Borderlands. This introductory module from 1979 gave players a home base in the Keep of the title, full of NPCs they might want to befriend and do business with, and not one of them had a name. They were just job titles like “the provisioner” and “the castellan”, with a sentence of description if you were lucky.The Village of Hommlet, published the same year, did a slightly better job providing a detailed location full of characters you might want to have a conversation with, though even that spent more time telling you how many gold and silver pieces every villager owned and where they hid them than who they actually were.

Lost Mine of Phandelver quickly becomes a sandbox, with some obvious influence from open world videogames. There’s a clear distinction between the main questline—where you’re trying to rescue a dwarf and rediscover a mine with a magical forge in it—and a string of optional sidequests. Some of the questgivers turn out to be members of factions like the Harpers and Zhentarim, which you can join once you’ve proven your worth in a very Oblivion touch. (It would seem unrealistic if you found out how many townsfolk are members of these factions, but in play any given group is likely to only discover the ones relevant to their characters.)

Lost Mine still gives you what you expect from a classic D&D game. One of the first challenges you face is a cave full of goblins, real level-one stuff, but with plenty of personality. The goblins have two leaders, and depending which way they explore, the PCs might end up deciding one’s the lesser evil and siding with him to defeat the other. It’s not just a bunch of rooms with bad guys in them—though some of the later dungeons do slip into that—it’s a space where players can express their characters. Do you try to sneak past the wolves, tame them, or kill them before they alert the goblins? Do you trust the goblin who offers to free a captive if you kill the bugbear he’s got beef with?

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A gaggle of goblins in D&D 5th edition gather to ambush unruly adventurers.

Elsewhere, Lost Mine serves up classic monsters like skeletons, zombies, and a level-appropriate beholder subtype, along with a few unusual picks for flavor like a nothic (a one-eyed psychic cannibal) and a grick (a snake with a beak that splits open like the Predator’s face). Then, for dessert, there’s a dragon.

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Every time I put a dragon in a game of D&D someone says they’ve never actually fought a dragon in D&D, even though they’re in the name of the game. I get it, people want to avoid the clichés. I hardly ever put dungeons in my games because there are more interesting places to tell stories, but dragons are worth it because they get an elemental reaction out of proportion with how tough they are—there are monsters with higher stats that make less impact, because they’re notdragons, man.

The dragon in Lost Mine is part of a sidequest that feels designed to be a capstone to the campaign, a higher-level challenge for players to work toward. (The main questline’s final dungeon even has dragon-proof magic armor you’ll want to collect beforehand.) Like several other encounters in Lost Mine it doesn’t have to be a fight to the death—the dragon will flee once you’ve taken most of its hit points. Last time I ran it the party’s wizard dropped but was healed just before dying, and the dragon escaped with a handful of hit points. It seems like an insurmountable challenge for adventurers who’ve just hit level five, but is actually carefully balanced.

(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)

A green dragon perched on a tower breathes toxic smoke toward a forest, startling several deer

All that stuff’s great, but it’s got to be said one of the main strengths of the Starter Set is that it was cheap and readily available. It got D&D into big-box retailers like Wal-mart and Target alongside Monopoly and at an affordable price, which I suspect is as much a reason for 5E’s success as the popularity of Critical Role or The Adventure Zone (who played Lost Mine in their first episodes, but infuriatingly skipped most of the good bits and sounded like they had a miserable time, though it did end hilariously).

The Life ( and death ) of Brian - The Adventure Zone - YouTubeWatch On

The Life ( and death ) of Brian - The Adventure Zone - YouTube

(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)

A dark elf with a spider-shaped staff, flanked by giant spiders who crawl over the statue of a dwarf king

(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)

Goblins with big heads and green, glowing hands to indicate they have psionic powers

While obviously that’s a nonsensical criticism—the second time I ran Lost Mine I used Shattered Obelisk’s versions of the NPCs to add a couple more women to the town and the world didn’t end—not all of the changes are for the better. Or even consistent. The dwarf bar owner who becomes an orc reverts to a dwarf in a later chapter, and useful sections on roleplaying Phandalin’s NPCs and the description of the town hall are missing.

It’s a shame the original version of the Starter Set, complete with its pregenerated character sheets, isn’t as easy to find as it was back when it was on the shelf of every big-box retailer. It’s still floating around, though—you can get it onRoll20and it was available for free onD&D Beyondfor so long that if you’re a habitual collector of anything with a zero-dollar sign on it like me, you may already own a copy.

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