Picked up "Hero Kids" and two modules, and "No Thank You, Evil" today, for the kid. Even his mom is going to play, at least once.
Sadly, my group has started the inevitable "Sorry, cannot make it this week, have to take the kids to dance recital." or "Sorry, work has me busy right now." Have only played once in the last 5 weeks. Ah the old days of being a teenager and playing every week without break for 4 years.
NTYE got dropped off yesterday, and my mistake, I told the kid about it. And we got hammered all day. So I had to read the rule book last night. It translates, but changing the language is tough. But the kid made a "Creature" character, a T-Rex named Gar, who has an invisible friend companion named Rachel. Wife rolled a boring rogue named Maeve, with a direwolf named Queen Sansa, because even some slights must be carried beyond this realm.
In this system, with the medium and more advanced character sheets, the companion's get skills called "cyphers." The invisible friend's starting cypher makes the entire group invisible, and the effect lasts the entire session, or until another cypher is used by that companion.
Well. D&D is going down the microtransaction route that all my favorite gaming companies have gone down. [uck fay] them and the horse they rode in on.
I had a 1st edition manual. It was a dm guide, player guide, and monster manual all in one. They've been trending this way since wizards of thr coast bought them. If they can figure out how to dole the game put in booster packs, they will.
My group a year ago went back to playing 1e and haven't looked back. In fact, the game has only improved since we made the switch. So again, [uck fay] them and any company that just wants to squeeze the ever loving hell out of it's clients.
After Hasbro's stock dropped 5% in one day, Paizo (makers of Pathfinder) sold out 8 months of stock in the last two weeks and DnDBeyond lost 10s of thousands of subs (including mine), Hasbro waved the white flag. They have made the original OGL irrevocable, and placed the SRD under the Creative Commons license that is not maintained by them but a non-profit organization and they cannot revoke. That said, the damage has been done, and I am sure most companies are going to go to some other license or rules system. They have really hurt the brand with the core audience.