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> You could instead buy the D&D starter set,

Yeah, that. WotC has released three so far, two of them still available on Amazon. Each of these sets has a *lot* of content. Then the PH is under $20 on sale. WotC's D&D other hardbacks have a lot of content for the price as well.

As for acrylic standees, not all roleplayers want to paint miniatures. Standees also have an advantage that they're cheaper than mini's and can be stored more easily. Of course, with 5e being "theatre of the mind", you don't have to have either.

Sidebars aside, each issue has the same cover image. That is so lazy. D&D has plenty of art they could have used. Doesn't bode well for the interior contents.

Games Workshop is the only company Hachette have every looked at and said "yeah, that's too expensive, we're going to have to charge less for that".

Do bear in mind that outside of the hobby bubble, the GW partworks look the same as all the other rip-off partworks. "Nine quid for a single little model?!" is what the response the regular world would give to half the issues. Trying to explain that yeah, it seems expensive but normally you'd have to pay £25 for that little model doesn't really help.

I think the one difference though is if you show off a big photo of the whole subscription of GW models you get - THAT looks impressive as heck; even more so if they actually used painted models in the promotional material showing it all off.

As a complete collection for what you get (which is often what they market early on when advertising these) the GW ones do look very impressive.

Anyone remember the old Dragon or Dungeon magazine. This seems to be a similar price, adjusted for inflation, but with less value.

WotC has been going the way of Activision for years now, so it makes sense that they'd try something like this. Not really sure what Hachette was thinking.

deano2099 wrote:
Games Workshop is the only company Hachette have every looked at and said "yeah, that's too expensive, we're going to have to charge less for that".

Do bear in mind that outside of the hobby bubble, the GW partworks look the same as all the other rip-off partworks. "Nine quid for a single little model?!" is what the response the regular world would give to half the issues. Trying to explain that yeah, it seems expensive but normally you'd have to pay £25 for that little model doesn't really help.

I don't mind others thinking that especially when it's allowed me to impulse buy a Conquest/ Imperium/ Stormbringer when browsing in WH Smiths.

Even better if the issue has something like the Necron Royal Court in it.

Do we still have no release date for this yet?
Or did I miss one somewhere

deano2099 wrote:
Games Workshop is the only company Hachette have every looked at and said "yeah, that's too expensive, we're going to have to charge less for that".

Do bear in mind that outside of the hobby bubble, the GW partworks look the same as all the other rip-off partworks. "Nine quid for a single little model?!" is what the response the regular world would give to half the issues. Trying to explain that yeah, it seems expensive but normally you'd have to pay £25 for that little model doesn't really help.

Rebellion Publishing too. £9.99, now £10.99 for hardback collected Judge Dredd and 2000AD volumes, including many which I don’t think ever saw a trade paper back.


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 Breotan wrote:
Anyone remember the old Dragon or Dungeon magazine. This seems to be a similar price, adjusted for inflation, but with less value.

WotC has been going the way of Activision for years now, so it makes sense that they'd try something like this. Not really sure what Hachette was thinking.

My opinion may change if we later find some models are included. But I’m doubting it, unless it’s more of the acrylic standees, when the value is gonna swing to being more subjective.

Danny76 wrote:
Do we still have no release date for this yet?
Or did I miss one somewhere

Issue 1 will be available to buy in UK stores on 13th September.

Hmm ok. May have to nip to the one newsagent I know has Hachette starters normally then tomorrow.

Picked up a copy from WH smith - dice are nice enough for £1.99. Magazine about what i expected, similar to warhammer ones. Incredibly poor value at full price

Will nip down mine on lunch, as I could do with dicicles

Worth getting two?

I did actually get two - the tins are big enough that i can fit enough dice for 40k into one, and then all my sets of dnd dice into another

Aside from getting the tinned dice set for a couple of quid this looks terrible value, and even if you're new to D&D I'd say there are a load of better and cheaper ways to get into it than this, really poor, although this might mean a slight break before the next GW/Hatchette collaberation.

I've bought issue 1, here's what I think in a bit of detail:

- The dice are OK. I was a bit wary because the GW hachette partworks had terrible dice but these are fine - slightly worse than a lot of the stuff you find online but about as good as you'd get in a starter set (although it is noticeable that they're a few grams lighter than a standard set of chessex dice!)
- The tin isn't great. The lid comes off easily so you can't use it for transporting dice unless you wrap an elastic band around it.
- I like the premade character sheets. They're printed on thicker paper than the rest of the magazine and are in full color, casters have all the spell details on the back. I'm going to file these away in case I ever need premade characters for a short introductory game.
- I only skimmed the 'how to play' section, it seems to be enough rules to run the included encounter.

The adventure content in the magazine is sparse. Four paragraphs about the town of Phandallin (nowhere near enough yet for the party to explore the town), and three pages for an encounter (including maps and several pieces of artwork that seem to be specially made for this encounter). If this is representative of how much adventure you get in each magazine then you'd probably use up 3-5 issues per session, a new DM would want to bank up a bunch of issues before starting the campaign.

Here's what happens in the encounter:

The encounter is actually OK for introducing new players (custom artwork in the adventure is a nice touch) but I've not changed my mind on the value - £8.99 per issue makes this far too expensive. I will probably buy issue 2 (£5.99, comes with another set of dice and a map) but there's no way I'm touching the rest.

EDIT - I grabbed an old copy of Dungeon magazine to compare like for like and there really is no comparison. The issue of Dungeon I grabbed a PDF of had three entire adventures that could probably last a couple of seasions each (level 3-5, a level 5-7 and a level 7-9), you get so much less content here.

I like the look of the dice bag that also has a d20 in it, but I think that’s by issue 3 is it? So hitting £9 which I wouldn’t pay.


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Found two copies at my nearby newsagents so grabbed them.
Yeah Tin looks ok for what I’ll use it for.
Might swap out my main set of dice into a tin instead of the small Chessex plastic boxes.

Seems a bit of a shame and waste of time tbh. Price that high for...er...dice? Okaaaaay...... Wait, Premium's incentive is silver coins? Ooof.

And the miniatures are...uh....card/plasticard cutouts? OOF.

Especially when you consider that the D&D license actually has a solid miniatures range in not one, but two forms - you have the prepainted and unpainted Nolzhur range from WotC and the blind box prepaints as well. Would it hurt to use one of those ranges perhaps? Or is it seriously just trying to convince me that £36+ a month for some occasional dice is worth it?

I saw a few TV adverts for it yesterday so Hatchette are pushing it as if they think it will be a hit

We don’t know the miniatures are just cutouts. Only that the ones in the first issues are.

Yeah I also saw adverts online, albeit it the middle of the night on a random film channel.
Someone said one of the YouTube adverts came up with this also

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I saw a few TV adverts for it yesterday so Hatchette are pushing it as if they think it will be a hit

Yeah, for the last few mornings, ITV4 of all channels has been getting absolutely flooded with adverts for this.

It's not for me, but at least it doesn't sound like as much of a rip-off as their new Aliens figure part-work (Instead of the usual 100 issues at £12 to disguise the full cost of these things, this one is 12 issues at £100).

Picked up the first issue, because why not,

Like many others I picked up the first issue for this as £1.99 for a nice set of dice in a tin is worth the purchase. However as someone who has never played D&D but has always been curious about it this series should be for me, but it just isn't. Whilst it seems aimed at the beginner magazine wise the cover mounts seem aimed more at people already invested in D&D.

From what I understand for D&D you need very little to start playing so the £20 starter set really is all you need to get a decent taster. So why then would I subscribe to a mag that ends up at £700? So I can get more dice? Having a collection of special and interesting dice is not something a beginner is looking for. Compare to the various Warhammer partworks, to start playing Warhammer you need and army which will cost several £100s to collect, plus £75 in rule books (BRB and codex). £700 for two armies, a bit of terrain and all the rules, as well as curated starter missions to teach concepts is a much more understandable prospect.

It also seems weird to me unlike the Warhammer partworks I can't find a whole collection photo showing what we will end up with by the end of the run. I guess a pile of dice is just not very photo genic but it doesn't inspire confidence in what you are buying.

Finally I find it interesting how much has changed from the trial run. The trial run had every issue coming with dice and the premium expansion to be model kits of adventurers. Following feedback they seemed to have changed the premium offering to coins (why? what do coins do?) and now instead of kits the main mag had adventure cut out tokens. They look pretty goofy but I can understand it's not meant to be a hobby mag so they are sticking to something that can be used out of the box as it were.

£20 gets you started, but then you'll quickly want a bunch of rulebooks and scenarios to play.

The vast majority of what you spend on D&D is on books. Not on minis or dice or tokens. So trying to assess the value of this partwork by looking at the extras stuck to the front like we do with the GW partworks just doesn't work. The value, such as it is, is going to be in the actual magazine contents.

I'd certainly agree that at £9 an issue the value isn't there. But if it's anywhere then that's where to look.

I think it depends. Certainly DnD is going to generate a lot of book buying, but I think the use of boards and models in DnD has grown over the years. Heck the 3D print boom during the Pandemic was initially with almost every designer doing DnD style models and many are still doing them.

Yes you can RP without models, but I think its slowly creeping more into that market. In a different way to Wargames though, since with a Wargame you tend to stick with the same army long term; whilst with an RPG many of the models might only appear once as a monster and then never again.

Spending on any RPG is going to be tied to how much DIY the individual is up for.

At the extreme end, you only really need the core rule book, and everything else you can make up as you go along. Setting, creatures, spells, equipment, all sorts.

But even then, expansions serve are ready made stuff, and further inspiration.

I don’t think the concept of a part work for this is inherently flawed like. But the price seems excessive for a weekly purchase.

Of course, I’ve no idea what sort of pocket money kids get these days so I can’t speculate whose pocket may or may not cover this.

 Overread wrote:
I think it depends. Certainly DnD is going to generate a lot of book buying, but I think the use of boards and models in DnD has grown over the years. Heck the 3D print boom during the Pandemic was initially with almost every designer doing DnD style models and many are still doing them.

Yes you can RP without models, but I think its slowly creeping more into that market. In a different way to Wargames though, since with a Wargame you tend to stick with the same army long term; whilst with an RPG many of the models might only appear once as a monster and then never again.

That's true. I should probably have phrased it differently - the vast majority of what WotC sell for D&D is print media.

Issue 2 is out today, £4.99.

The magazine comes with a single sided fold out map of the region used in the first 5ed starter set (and the Essentials Kit & Phandelver and Below). This was a nice surprise as it's actually decent quality - I'm going to find uses for this.

The dice aren't anything to write home about, transparent yellow with some sparkles, just normal dice.

The magazine has the same ratio of rules/background/art/adventure as issue 1. The encounter is again a nice little encounter, but only a few pages long and will probably be finished within an hour or two.

Hachette also have some details on issues 1-9 up on their website. No indication of what issues 5-9 come with, but it looks like they're all 24 pages long, with the party hitting level 2 in issue 6.

This is where I'm out - with the nice map this issue is worth maybe £4.99, but not £8.99 and there's no indication that future issues will be. D&D is primarily sold as print media but it's usually an order of magnitude cheaper per page, and I don't think the items that come with the magazine are worth enough to make up the difference.

Anyone been keeping up with this?

Hachette’s website doesn’t show the gubbins that come with each issue, so I’m curious to know.

My WH Smith still has about 5 copies of issue 3 left, and I don't think ever got issue 4 in, or anything after.

Can see what comes with issues here: https://www.fauxhammer.com/partworks-magazines/dungeons-dragons-adventurer-contents-list-issues-1-80/

It's all just dice, dice and dice. i can't imagine they have that many subscribers for it. the dice of course will be cheap as crap for them, but making the contexnt must cost a bit, even just for 24 pages