Previewing Dungeons & Dragons’ Nostalgic Starter Set ‘Heroes Of The Borderlands’

Welcome to the table,

There is something incredibly rewarding about seeing Dungeons & Dragons material in retail shops. They’re right there, alongside “Live, Laugh, Love” cheese boards and those tiny waffle makers that burn Grogu into your food. I think it comes from being a kid and feeling like at any moment someone was going to bust into your room and burn up all of your books about wizards and gnomes.

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I have most of, if not all, of the Dungeons & Dragons starter sets they have put out. The first time I saw one in a mainstream retail store was shortly after the Stranger Things collectibles started showing up. Now it’s commonplace to see at least one or two shelved alongside various sets of polyhedron dice, WizKids Icons of The Realms booster boxes, and various other card and board games that seem a far reach from the copies of Mouse Trap and Clue that lined the shelves when I was growing up.

The newest of the Starter Sets that D&D has coming up is titled Heroes of the Borderlands. As a long-time player and fan of the lore, the title alone conjures up nostalgic notes laced with days long past.

You see, back in 1979, Dungeons & Dragons released an adventure module called Keep on the Borderlands. This module was written by Gary Gygax and was designed to be used with the original Basic Set of D&D. Keep on the Borderlands allowed you to basically get yourself a cool little base and then go on adventures into the caves of chaos that were full of monsters and villains, and all that.

Heroes of the Borderlands is touted to be the biggest D&D starter set they have published yet. The set will come with maps, monster cards, spell cards, NPC cards, tokens, dice, and more.

The guides you get with Heroes of the Borderlands will help new players and Storytellers, or Game Masters, move through combat and the adventure, guiding you on your first adventures in the hobby.

While I have not had a look inside this box yet, it sure feels like they are playing on the classic Borderlands name, and this may be a new start using the newest ruleset in the D&D space.

I have always enjoyed these kinds of offerings in the gaming space, and I will give you my full deep dive when I finally get my hands on this one, but for now, this seems like it has all the makings of something really cool for newcomers to the hobby.

Until next time, Heroes of the Borderlands is available now for pre-order on D&D Beyond as both a physical box, a digital product playable through D&D Beyond, or a bundle including both physical and digital versions of the set. Pre-orders are also available at local game stores if you want to support local, and I think you always should, where you can.