Pathfinder 2E Beginner Box Adventure (advice)

[Retreater]

So my group that is kinda struggling with WFRP's Enemy Within, I'm contemplating running PF2's Beginner Box with them. Something more straightforward, encounter-focused rules, with more customization and tactical options than 5e, with good implementation on Foundry.
I haven't had excellent luck with PF2 with other groups, but I hope this meets what my group wants.
What sort of advice would you offer? Either specific to the Beginner Box, introducing new players to PF2, or anything else you think would be helpful.

 

[kenada]

Don’t feel like you have to run everything rigidly by the book. That was a recipe for failure before. Feel free to change and tweak things so it’s fun for your group. There are some good threads here on ways to run PF2 that embrace all modes of play (not just encounter mode).

 

[Philip Benz]

One nice thing about the beginner box pre-generated PCs is that they have all their combat options right there on the character sheet. Makes things easier for folks new to PF2.

My only advice would be to lean heavily into the RP aspect with NPCs. Otherwise it may seem like a pointless dungeon crawl. Use any details on Otari that you can glean from Troubles in Otari and other sources to add in more NPC interaction, or just make stuff up on the fly. The dungeon crawl should just be one small part of an intro adventure.

 

[!DWolf]

I don’t know my about the beginner’s box so it might be different using pregens, but I have been having great success using Decuma (got a pdf of drivethru) during session 0. It really works great to pull the party together and kickstart roleplay.

 

[GreyLord]

Use theater of the mind and open the spaces up a little.

Retrospectively looking at it...

Part of the problem I think with the BB when I was part of a game with it was that the rooms presented were too small at times for effective tactics for the entire party. This caused problems as it made some of the creatures a tad harder as well as a group could not be as effective at grouping against them as a party making more one vs one scenarios.

That makes it an unfriendly opener for PF2e (about stopped our entire group from even looking at it sideways again) rather than a good introduction for those giving PF2e a try.

So, instead I'd say use theater of the mind more and give them more space (not every place, but there are some locations in the adventure) to actually do things and do group tactics more easily.

 

[JmanTheDM]

may not be advice for the BB - but here it is anyway. if you have Abomination Vaults - use the BB to plant some seeds for AV. foreshadow it as looming in the distance. maybe have one of the necessary [redacted] found within the BB adventure instead of the way book2 of AV presents finding it? meet and introduce some of the AV characters from Otari during the BB adventure to create a bit more rapport and history together? some of the side quests in AV assumes town interactions with those NPC's which could be done during the BB adventure. Anyway - if the game ends at the conclusion of the BB adventure - no big deal, you've sprinkled some facts that indicate a bigger world and a deeper story but still being able to conclude the adventure. if you decide to continue on, AV is a great natural part 2 of the BB adventure and those seeds you planted now will pay dividends for you later.

Cheers,

J.

 

[kenada]

Part of the problem I think with the BB when I was part of a game with it was that the rooms presented were too small at times for effective tactics for the entire party. This caused problems as it made some of the creatures a tad harder as well as a group could not be as effective at grouping against them as a party making more one vs one scenarios.

The BB map is really terrible. It’s mostly linear with little space for the PCs to make use of exploration mode. My first suggestion would be to Jacquays the dungeon to make exploration mode more interesting. Otherwise, a quick and dirty fix might be to treat all squares on the map as ten foot squares. It would require tweaks to make sure some objects have the right dimensions, but it would make the room sizes a little more reasonable. (I was going to suggest trying to take advantage of allowing encounters to happen across multiple rooms, but almost everything is connected by hallways, so that seems like it would be difficult.)