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May 14, 2012 -- 10:33AM, Ator wrote:

I guess I will have to caution the table of new players that D&D Insider is not for beginning players.  I was hoping for a newbie-friendly experience for them, drat.

Beginning players probably won't have the character builder anyway and yeah, I would caution them not to spend their money on Insider until they know that they really want to pursue the hobby.  Besides, it's better as a newbie if you learn how to make a character on paper first.  But if they don't have time to do that,  that's why pregens are provided with the module - for the newbies.  As a matter of fact, when I DM Encounters, I INSIST newbies use the pregens unless someone took the time to walk them through making a legal character.  Too often, a newbie will show up and say "I brought a character" , without ever having opened a 4e book, and it's incomplete, illegal or even for another edition or even better yet, they will show up for session one five minutes before it starts and ask that they be allowed to make a character ... nope ... you can use a pregen until you learn enough to make your own.  (And Session Zero is pretty helpful for that.)

Also, some players are shocked when I actually enforce the available game elements for this season.  In other words, if it says you can use the Heroes Of books and the latest hardcover, and and the supporting elements from Dragon or whatever, that's what you can use and nothing else.  No CharOp hybrid munchkin builds.  I told one guy, well, if you're smart enough to come up with this munchkin build, you can surely come up with something awesome using the season-legal game elements.  He took it as a challenge and proceeded to have fun with it, which was great.

As for this season's campaign setting, it's scheduled to be in the builder sometime today and hopefully it will actually have all the options that are supposed to be there.

UPDATE:  Looks like the setting is in there. Whether it is totally complete or not remains to be seen.  Sources allowed are the Heroes Of Books, Into The Unknown:  The Dungeon Survival Handbook, Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium, Dungeon Master's Book (Not Dungeon Master's Guide) and Dragon Magazine articles in support of these books.  I would imagine the season's character sheet will list the allowed Themes and Backgrounds if any.