What do you think should go in a box set?
What would be the ideal, keeping in mind the reality of price-quality index (ie. the fancier the stuff you put in there the higher the price will be)?

Pick your favorite game, imagine it re-released as a box set. What's in it?

RPGPundit

Dragonquest 1e (only with the 2e rules updates) and the basic Frontiers of Alusia setting included.

Wilderlands of High Fantasy + Player's Guide to the Wilderlands in a single boxed set.

If Ptolus was a boxed set, it'd be my dream city boxed set.

Now, a game as a boxed set, it'd be OD&D, with the small booklets (love the actual size of the original books), dice, sample graph paper and character sheets, rewritten in a language similar to Holmes' and an organization similar to Mentzer's. That's it. That'd be the perfect game for me.

I've got 2...
MegaTraveller:
Based upon the original MT boxed set, plus ref's companion
Rules changes: better integrate aircraft design, use HG (via the T20 iteration) as the basis for design, not striker. Advananced CGen for all 18 careers. Slight alteration to the penetration level table. Add Initiative and Contacts out of TNE.

Books: include but reorganize. [list=i]

• PM should have character gen, tasks, skills, equipment lists, psionics
• RM should have combat, Research rules, and all the other rules material from the old Ref's Companion.
• Encyclopedia should include the library data, and the world list but for the domain), as well as the setting essays from Ref's companion.
• Design Book should include all the design sequences and sample designs, and all designs should include worksheets showing the maths.

Also included:
[list=i]

• Map of the domain
• 3+ different styles of character sheet
• pile of NPC cards
• five dice: 3 red with embossed black starbursts, 2 black with yellow.

Tunnels and Trolls 8
Rule Book, no spell list*, but all the rules from 7.5, with the missing bits that I've emailed Ken St. Andre about (race descriptions from 5.5 & MM, personalized monster combat dice, berserking, fencing, a few clarifications.)
Magic book*, all the magic rules in a separate volume
Elaborations Book: Clerics, magic items, magic research, enchanting, Trollworld and its history, horses & beasts of burden. (essentially, best of SA)
Monsters Book (Consolidates the two in 7.5, lists racial multipliers for those that mesh with CGen)
Solo Adventure
GM Adventure
more of FD's combat tokens, but in 3/4" rather than 1"
CD Rom with: T&T video Game & Mac, Unix, Linux, and windows versions of DosBox so you can run it; maps; out of print solos

Nice metal tin, slightly taller than 7.0.
Liz Danforth editing Ken's writing. (Ken writes good games, but isn't the best at organizing them. 5.0 lasted 25 years on the market by the combined strength of Ken's rules and Liz's editing.

Mix the awesomeness of the Warhammer Quest box set with the rules of Basic D&D.

Marvel SAGA...wait, that was already in a boxed set.

Buffy/Angel - Hmmm...I'd have to think about that.  Two-sided map, annotated, one side Sunnydale, one side Los Angeles.  Character creation/rules in one book, two smaller books covering the aforementioned setting, and a large Character Tome covering the major characters, monsters, etc.

Deadlands - Map of the US.  Blank hex or square map.  Good selection of cardstock cowboys.  Rules book.  Setting book (with NPCs).  Monster book.

Take Exalted:

Basic rules (i.e. how to roll dice, build dice pools) booklet. A booklet for each Solar Exalted caste. A booklet of enemies for the GM. A GM's guide (building baddies, relics, treasure, adventures) A large cloth map of Creation. 30 D10s.

Take All flesh Must Be Eaten:

50 Plastic Zombies. 5 Plastic people. A Zombie Masters Guide (building Zombies, Adventures and Deadworlds), a players guide(s), a set of dice. + 4 d10s.

What about a TMNT & Other Strangeness box with three separate books, Players section, GMs,  and one with some setting (mostly NPCs, foot clan, triceratons, utroms, etc)? It would need new covers for the GMs and setting books, Eastman and Laird's, of course. Throw in a reprint of TMNT Vol.1 #1, (black & white), and two set of dice, one turtle-green and one red. Now that would be mondo awesome.

My FRPG, High Valor, in a wooden box with wood burnt name and symbol. Leather straps hold it closed, inside is a hardback leather bound book, dice, pad of character sheets on faux parchment, cloth map of the setting, a bestiary of the monsters with no stats, just art and well typical classic bestiary stuff and a quill pencil. (A mechanical pencil disguised as a feather quill)

Of course this would be the limited edition set. (I Love the cover art, so it have to be in there too, as a wall poster.)

It is of course completely impractical.

Well, for Traveller, the boxed set would include a sprue with six multi-part figures for adventurers of each major race and a sprue of the core spacecraft, and a sprue with parts for an air raft, and of course, three little black books.

Similarly, for Barren and Desolate Stars, there would be enough multipart armoured trooper sprues to make six troopers for four factions (rocket rangers, pirates, patrol, and grunts) sprues for destroyers, maggot folk, the chosen, and robots, and a few, build your own vehicle sprues.

Yes, I strongly believe rpgs need repackaged to compete with the toy value of Games Workshop and FFG's board games.

I'd love to see a Dark Heresy box with an Acolyte's Briefing, containing all the knowledge about the Warhammer universe your average Inquisitorial Acolyte in your average DH campaign should know (most of the campaigns I've been in have assumed, fairly, that the Inquisition's agents are given a bit more knowledge about the universe than the standard "it's all bad, shoot now and ask questions never" line that the normal Imperial citizens are fed) plus all the rules the players need to know, a big poster map of the Calixis sector, a Calixis Sector guide full of juicy setting information, and a GM's Guide with all the rules that should really be the sole purview of the GM (like the Insanity and Corruption rules). Plus a bunch of percentile dice, some pregens, and some 40K-scale minis of a male and a female PC of each career path.

Sci-Fi wise, I don't think you could go wrong with the traditional Players' Guide/GM's Guide/Star map (or at least a map of some sort) and a bundle of the different types of records to be used like PC sheets, vehicle sheets and so on.  Cap it off with an adventure, any errata that exists at time of printing (if possible; the internet kind of takes care of this issue now, but it still is nice) and a nifty catalog full of stuff to drool over.  Oh, and don't forget the dice

Make all of the Guides and forms already punched out and ready to be put in a binder too.

The kicker is to put out something that is well written, evocative of the subject material, well illustrated and filled with enough "stuff," to launch the owner into any number of directions adventure-wise right off the bat yet still leave room for fleshing out further down the road.

To save on costs, do away with glossy paper, color illustrations and overly thick Guide covers (if they are used at all).

And have Dietrick (sp?) do the box cover and any interior illustrations he can; that fellow is who I think of hands-down each and every time good sci-fi game art comes to mind.

Actually, I like slim rulebooks with concise rules, solid advice on how to run the game and just enough backround fluff to set the mood.

I remember when I first got the Gamma Alternity book in one place they had provided a formal definition for what a blanket is (among another host of ordinary objects). Other than wasting 2 pages, what was the point of that?

Unless the game really calls for miniatures or custom props, I don't think the boxed set is really winning format.

TFT 2
In the Labyrinth, Advanced Melee, Advnced Wizard, a reversible map (hex one-side, off-set squares the other), an adventure (with a "dungeon" map more along the lines of a D&D adventure), sheets of good and thick counters with at least a complete set of the creatures in the adventure.

Danger, your avatar seems to really like the idea of that box set.