Steel_Wind
Legend
Erik Mona, Publisher at Paizo Publishing LLC, unveiled today a new "unboxing video" on the forthcoming Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box, with a street date of October 26, 2011.The Beginner Box, aimed at teens aged 13 and up as well as adults of any age, provides a large assortment of products intended to permit players to start playing Pathfinder about 15 minutes after opening the box. A solo adventure is provided so that a GM can get a taste for the game without having anybody else on hand to play with.
The Beginner Box includes: a full set of red polyhedral dice; 20 plastic slotted character bases; approximately 100 heavy cardstock “pawns” for use with PCs and monsters; a 64 page Hero’s Handbook for players; a 96 page Gamemaster’s Guide for GMs (with rules, instructions on how to run the adventure, magic items and about 100 monsters); 4 x pre-generated character folder sheets and 4 x blank color character sheets; a flip-mat with a pre-printed dungeon on one side and a blank pre-gridded on the reverse for use at the table.
The product is in glossy full color and is lavishly illustrated.
- Link to Youtube Video after the "Read More" Break...
In addition to the several adventures included in the GMs book, more are expected to be posted online at http://paizo.com/beginnerbox, including another character class for players, the Barbarian.
The rules set featured in the Beginner Box is Pathfinder RPG, albeit a slightly stripped down version. There are no attacks of opportunity and no combat maneuvers. Some spell descriptions have been simplified. Rules and spells are presented in the material to enable the players to play until achieving 5<sup>th</sup> level using the four core classes of Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard.
For the most part, the Beginner Box is a fulsome presentation of the Pathfinder RPG intended to teach people how to play the game and make it accessible in a way that the Core Rulebook, which is intended principally as a reference guide, simply does not accomplish.
The Beginner Box is intended to be set on its side when put on the shelf, with an illustration on the box cover in "landscape" mode, not in a portrait format as has been typical of such starter boxes in the past. Mona explains that "Part of the reason was that other games that we've done in a similar format--Kill Doctor Lucky, Save Doctor Lucky, and Key Largo--all had the landscape approach. So in a certain sense, when I think of boardgames, I think of landscape boxes. I very definitely wanted this product to have a "boardgame" vibe to it, so that connection was very important to me. I also thought a lot of retailers would display the box on its side, with the cover facing out, and I figured a landscape box would be less likely to fall over on bookshelves."
If there is anything which distinguishes the Beginner Box from its predecessors at TSR and WotC, it would be the philosophy behind the product. Erik Mona explains that previously, most manufacturers have set a price for the product and then determined what could go inside a box at that price level. With the Beginner Box, Paizo chose a different approach, electing to decide what needed to be in the box in order to present a good game experience, teach players the game and provide those players with everything they would need to play. The idea is to give them enough to get them playing for five levels of play and get them hooked. Only after determining everything that had to go into the box in order to achieve that aim did Paizo then set the price for the Beginner Box.
What won’t be included in the box are the new pre-painted figures from Wizkids. Releasing on or about November 9, 2011, WizKids’ Beginner Box Heroes provides 4 pre-painted plastic miniatures for each of the four pre-generated iconic heroes in the Pathfinder Beginner Box.
Check your local FLGS for bundled pricing on the Beginner Box and Beginner Box Heroes and you can expect an announcement later this October concerning promotional events at your local store to celebrate the release of the Beginner Box.
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