Set Recommendations: 2024

I write my recommendation posts to help people develop a good 'GM tackle box' of characters, terrain, and monsters, and I assume a budget of about $100 a year. I recommend things that are useful out of the box, and that help level up your building skills, so you can make similar things with loose bricks.

My top recommendation this year is the $15 Alien Planet Habitat:

The key to running an interesting game is to have the ability to put many different settings on the table. This set delivers an environment that could either the the Feywild, or something mutant and corrupted. It is also very useful to have things that could either be monsters or NPCs. Put those terrain and critters on a gridded map, and you have an intriguing encounter. Can you communicate with those things, or will you end up fighting them?

The second recommendation is Jay’s Mech Battle Pack, $10 for 4 people and a large humanoid. 

Those 'mech suit' things are very useful and versatile. They work well out of the box for things like ogres and trolls, and you can also use them for character transformations like polymorph and wildshape. It takes a bit of work, but making a build for the druid's favorite Large wildshape is fun. Put their mini in the torso when they transform, and take it our when they revert.

Next is the $16 Izzie’s Narwhal (review).

This one is fun and unique. Never underestimate how useful a whimsical Lego build is at generating a fun and memorable game experience. It draws the players in and gets them involved in the storytelling. Don't let the PCs have the sword or pauldrons at character creation; make it a treasure reward later in the game. And it's probably best to keep the hairpiece back to signify the effects of a spell or potion.

I don't usually recommend paying the licensed set premium, but the $30 Forbidden Forest: Magical Creatures is a good mix of exotic terrain, creatures, and minis:

You will end up using that spiderweb piece a lot if you put it on a separate base so that can be dropped into any scene as dungeon decoration, web spells, etc.
 

The $30 Shiz Uni set is also a good mix of terrain, magical boat, and unique minis. (review).

Those five sets together are about $100 for ten useful minis and a good mix of monsters, terrain, vehicles, equipment, and decoration. They give you many of the essentials that you will use over and over, like a flying mount and a small boat. And after assembling them from their instructions, you will have the experience you need to make more terrain, dwellings, and dungeon dressing from random bricks.

Some other sets worth getting if you see them on clearance or you prefer a more mundane and low-magic aesthetic are Baby Cow Shed, Baby Gorilla Encounter, Archery Range, and, if you want a treetop village, Adventure Camp Tree House.

On the other hand, if you want a wild and magical aesthetic and like the idea of large creatures and exotic locations, many of the sets from the Dreams line are worth grabbing if you get a good deal. I don't recommend them highly because large complex buildings are both more expensive and less useful in a game. But they have good elements and a lot of potential for rebuilding into dungeons and dungeon dressing.

Also, this year, Lego released official D&D sets. There are several glowing reviews of the D&D collectible minifigs. My opinion is that they are okay. It is about like any other collectible minifigure set; there are some things you will use often and others that you will not. (The number of RPG sessions where the party sees the Lady of Pain going down the street is smaller than the number of sessions where someone dresses up as a dinosaur, and definitely smaller then the number of sessions where the druid wildshapes into one.) But there are better options than paying $5 for a mini.

There's also the $360 Red Dragon's Tale, which also got glowing reviews from hardcore Lego bloggers. While I agree that it is good by the standards of expensive Lego sets that you display on a shelf, it is not good value for actually running a campaign. For that kind of money, you can get a much better variety of smaller sets that allows you to put many more environments on the table.