Animal Adventures: RPG Starter Set

I have been trying to get my kids into Dungeons and Dragons for about 5 years (since my oldest was 10 or 11). The problem is that I grew up knowing next to nothing about D&D and all my attempts at learning how to play left me ridiculously overwhelmed. At the time, I bought a D&D Starter Set (The Lost Mines of Phandelver) and we had a good time with it, but I really spent 60% of the campaign feeling really lost. If I had known about this Animal Adventures starter set way back when I was trying to learn, I think things would have gone a lot more smoothly. The character sheets are far less intimidating, the rules are stated a little more clearly, and there are a lot fewer of the overwhelming details that leave newbie game masters (hi, it’s me 👋🏽) feeling incompetent.

Animal Adventures: RPG Starter Set Details

Product: Animal Adventures
Company: Steamforged Games
Website: https://steamforged.com/collections/animal-adventures
Recommended Age Range: Box says 14 and up. This seems a little ridiculous to me. I think that any child that can read has a decent shot of being able to solve some of these puzzles with adult help. We’ve done several of the puzzles, and I don’t believe there is any “adult” content that would prevent a child from participating. All of my kids, including my 9 year old, had a lot of fun with this.
Price Range: ~$30
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Review

Overall, I am really glad that we purchased this box set, as the instruction manual is of a reasonable length, the story line is fairly simple, the character sheets are cute and easy to understand, and my family had a lot of fun. I also really enjoyed that it came with a map and actual miniature figures that we could move around. I will say that my family did eventually give up on moving so many spaces per turn as is outlined in the instructions. I have enough experience attempting to be a game master for D&D that I now have confidence to just throw out the parts that are holding you up and move forward with what’s fun.

One issue I had when I first opened the box is that it comes with 7 character minatures and character sheets, but of those 4 were girls and 3 were boys. Since I have 2 younger boys who I didn’t think would want to play girl characters, the very first thing I did when I opened the box was laminate the character sheets, then use a sharpie to cover up the name and gender. I told each person in my family to pick a character and then give their character a name and gender. It might have been unnecessary, but this worked well for us.

My only other complaint with this game is that it that it can only be played once. Once you have worked your way through the campaign, it probably wouldn’t be very fun to do the same storyline again, at least with the same people. I feel like I’ve already missed the window with my teenagers, but I’m hoping that my younger two kids (9 and 11 years) will use what we did as inspiration to write their own campaigns. That has always been my goal…to plant the seeds in their heads to get them writing for fun.

I didn’t realize this until just now, but the company that makes this starter set has actually written other adventures. I just ordered this Gullet Cove sourcebook which sounds like it has “3 additional adventures.” It does also say it introduces new animal characters and monsters/villains, and I see that the company website sells additional minifigs, but I’m cheap, so I’ll see what I can make work using the ideas in the book without buying anything additional. I assume the book will not have a convenient map the way the starter set does.

Anyway, despite that diversion into other products produced by the same company, I can say with confidence that this Animal Adventures: RPG Starter Set comes with everything you will need for your first adventure. If you are already a fan of D&D and familiar with campaigns and the rules of D&D, this will probably not be extremely interesting to you, but if you are D&D curious and want to encourage imaginative play in your kids, this is a great place to start!

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