I had the chance to run a game last night using the new Essentials Red Box adventure. I ran the game over Gametable with some fine folks from the twitter #dnd community, and we used the pregens that Wizards of the Coast had made available for their Essentials Game Day.
The adventure is fairly easy to run (as should be for a starter set), and is made up of 7 encounters. Beware if you plan to run this though, as there is a way to avoid going through all the encounters and reaching the final boss, Kalare–oops, his cousin Malareth or something like that… and that’s the path that my players took.
They beat the adventure after just 3 encounters, which worked out nicely for me, since I was running it fairly late at night and was tired, but I wonder about the design of the adventure and leaving all those other encounters open to never having to be faced.
There were some goofy moments, like a white dragon inside a small room in the dungeon… the zombie hulk who instead of protecting the final necromancer dropped by way of a critical in the first round… but we had fun.
I did feel that the players breezed their way through the encounters, but overall everyone had a good time. I guess I can take the tokens out and put the box away, I can’t foresee when I’ll run it again, as the adventure is a little on the boring side (but fine for an intro I guess).
This isn’t a review of the box, I did that already. This is just to say that yes, I ran it, and yes it was fun for what it was.
www. Newbie DM .com 
Rasmus
October 7, 2010
I’m currently playing it as an “Encounters” style game, 1-2 encounters every Monday with a small group, and I completely agree with your observations. We’re 3 encounters in, it’s easy and fun. And totally silly. But in a good way.
Level1Gamer
October 7, 2010
When I looked over the adventure, I thought it was decent. I did notice that you could end up bypassing several of the encounters. I think the dungeon would benefit from adding several extra rooms. I wouldn’t add any extra encounters, but a few rooms that have some interesting elements to explore. Maybe a room or two with traps. It would make for a more interesting dungeon and round out the experience a little more.
I do like the conflict between the dragon and the wizard. It makes for some interesting RP possibilities with the dragon and wizard.
Mark Gottselig
October 7, 2010
As a note, there’s a version of the game table specifically for 4E- Virtual Daivve. It allows easy access to 4E statuses, stats, and dice macros, auras, difficulty terrain markers, etc. It’s much nicer than the generic Gametable. I use it in 3 campaigns and we all love it.
Gilvan Blight
October 8, 2010
It could have been very easy due to the fact that the game day chracters are level 2 and you ran them though a level 1 adventure. Remember that level 2 is an even level so pretty much everything the characters do gets +1. Also they have utility powers they wouldn’t have had at level 1.
Hobbit Hubby
October 8, 2010
How did running it over Gametable? I’ve never used it as a DM or player.
Charles Ryan
October 14, 2010
What did you think about the way skill challenges are presented in the Red Box? Was there a skill challenge in the adventure as you ran it?