The Beginner Box

[IronWolf]

Separate Basic and Advanced product lines seem to have worked from 1977 until they stopped doing that. Pay-to-preview products? They have apparently never worked in the history of the roleplaying industry. (And I'm unaware of any other industry even trying it.)

I really do wish Paizo success with this. (Just like I wished WotC success with their Starter Set.) But I really don't believe any pay-to-preview product is going to be successful. (The niche it tries to fill doesn't seem to actually exist when you analyze it critically.) So Paizo does succeed, it will be because the product somehow elevates itself above being a mere pay-to-preview endeavor.

This set will let you play the game from 1st level to 5th level. On the slow XP track that can take quite some time to play through. You will likely be able to pick up PFS mods, or other early level mods and supplement your playing with those mods. The set seems to come with everything needed to play the game - dice, tokens of some sort, flip mat and such. A buyer literally gets a game in a box at a reasonable price and for much less monetary commitment than going the core rulebook route and the additional things you would need to get started that way.

I think this is a great product - hello Christmas gifts! This product potentially gives a great way to expose th game to someone that you might not otherwise be able to teach the game to due to time or distance constraints.

Call it pay to preview if want, but that ignores some of the items inside the box that will continue to be quite useful even if you move on to the main core rulebook 6 months later.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

It's not like WotC was the first company to produce these pay-to-preview products. TSR produced something like a dozen of them in a wide variety of formats. All of them reportedly had mediocre sales.

Separate Basic and Advanced product lines seem to have worked from 1977 until they stopped doing that. Pay-to-preview products? They have apparently never worked in the history of the roleplaying industry. (And I'm unaware of any other industry even trying it.)

I really do wish Paizo success with this. (Just like I wished WotC success with their Starter Set.) But I really don't believe any pay-to-preview product is going to be successful. (The niche it tries to fill doesn't seem to actually exist when you analyze it critically.) So Paizo does succeed, it will be because the product somehow elevates itself above being a mere pay-to-preview endeavor.

But the Holmes edition, arguably the most successful, was for only levels 1-3 - it was itself a 'Pay-To-Preview' by that standard, expected to lead players to AD&D. It was later editions that were opened beyond that model, expanding Basic into its own full range.

Some of the later WotC starters did not even allow the generation of characters, being much closer to being naught but a paid preview.

As Pathfinder aims at something more akin to a month per level model it is likely that once a week play will take five months to reach the final level in the game.

So, again, not the same thing as the WotC paid previews.

The Auld Grump

 

[S'mon]

I don't regard the Holmes-Moldvay-Mentzer sets as "pay to preview"; they were all fully playable games with character generation, lots of monsters & treasure, and 3 levels of play; potentially months of entertainment. By contrast the WoTC 'Starter Sets' have had little more than a couple evening's play, even though they nominally go to 2nd level.

I want a game set that is simple but fully compatible with the main game. And with 5 levels of play, this set looks even better than the old TSR Basic Sets. With slow advancement ca 5 sessions/level that's around 25 sessions' play; for me that'd be over a year running mostly fortnightly.

 

[Treebore]

I still think they wold be better off giving a set of simpler and more basic rules that provide unlimited play to entice new customers into their Pathfinder lines of products.

I can only assume they will be fine with the small numbers they will get with a game going only to level 5. The majority of their sales will go to people who already have the main rule books, and we will use those main rule books to introduce the vast majority of new players to Pathfinder. Why? Because we normally only recruit one or two new people at a time, and they are indoctrinated through the rules set the rest of the group is already using.

So the whole purpose of this product, to draw completely new people in, will likely be as small as it has always been. Why? Because people don't like buying a "partial" game. We don't buy introductory versions of Monopoly, or Dungeons and Dragons, etc.... except maybe as a novelty. We all buy and play the full and real deal.

So if they really want this product to be truly different that the previous products, and to provide more sales and new customers base than the previous versions of this product concept, then they need to be truly different.

As it is they offer a couple of more levels of play, and give some cool looking bells and whistles, so is at its core the exact same product that has been offered many times before. They are going to get nearly identical results to every single one of those products as well. Which is sell the majority of the product to people already playing the game, and get very few truly new people, or groups of people, joining the ranks through this product.

Paizo has been ground breaking in a lot of ways, People said they were nuts to even start up the Pathfinder game. They were nuts to offer $10 PDF's (people still say they are nuts for this). So I was hoping/expecting yet another ground breaking approach to this type of product. I'm just sort of disappointed that Paizo opted to go the same old "done and done again" route.

Oh well. I'll still be like many of you, give Paizo the vast majority of their sales on this product, read it over, likely pull out the cool gizmo's to use with my real rules set, and put this box with its little rule books up on the book shelf, never to be used.

 

[dagger]

May be a partial game product but it can also be used as a gift for prospective new players.

 

[Treebore]

May be a partial game product but it can also be used as a gift for prospective new players.

Absolutely. Still doesn't change the fact that Paizo will get nearly identical results to every single previous "partial" game done for RPG's has gotten that was given as a gift to potential new players.

If they want different results, then they need to do a truly different product.

 

[S'mon]

contra Treebore, I have not bought the Pathfinder core rules, but I do plan to buy this Beginner Set. I like Paizo's modules but I'm pretty burned out on 3e above 5th level anyway. I'm quite likely to use this set as a complete game (if it's good), run several Pathfinder adventures I own (eg CoT 1 Bastards of Erebus, K1 Stolen Land) and possibly their sequels to 5th level as mini-campaigns, and never buy the big fat expensive books. I might use some kind of E5 rules; 5000XP for a Feat sort of thing.

 

[Treebore]

contra Treebore, I have not bought the Pathfinder core rules, but I do plan to buy this Beginner Set. I like Paizo's modules but I'm pretty burned out on 3e above 5th level anyway. I'm quite likely to use this set as a complete game (if it's good), run several Pathfinder adventures I own (eg CoT 1 Bastards of Erebus, K1 Stolen Land) and possibly their sequels to 5th level as mini-campaigns, and never buy the big fat expensive books. I might use some kind of E5 rules; 5000XP for a Feat sort of thing.

I don't play/run Pathfinder either. I was hoping for this to be something that would get me interested in doing so. I'm not going to bother with a 5 level game when I have very acceptable options for "complete" games.


Still, the questions isn't what people who are already gamers are going to do with this product, the question is, "Will this product succeed in its stated purpose of drawing in completely new people to the market."

My view is, since it is so identical to previous efforts, the results will be nearly identical as well.

I can only guess that Paizo is aware of those previous results, and finds those numbers acceptable for these efforts.

I was hoping for better.

 

[S'mon]

I don't play/run Pathfinder either. I was hoping for this to be something that would get me interested in doing so. I'm not going to bother with a 5 level game when I have very acceptable options for "complete" games.


Still, the questions isn't what people who are already gamers are going to do with this product, the question is, "Will this product succeed in its stated purpose of drawing in completely new people to the market."

My view is, since it is so identical to previous efforts, the results will be nearly identical as well.

I can only guess that Paizo is aware of those previous results, and finds those numbers acceptable for these efforts.

I was hoping for better.

IME these days completely new people are not brought into the fantasy rpg hobby by print games at all, they are brought in by computer games. Then they seek out tabletop gaming, like at the London D&D Meetup. This box looks like (hopefully) a great newbie-friendly way to run a game for new players; that's how I plan to use it. And 5 levels is plenty complete enough for me - and for them. That it's not the BECMI you seem to want seems irrelevant to me.

 

[Nikosandros]

Thanks to you two for the clarification. It will be nice that the minis are available to those who might not be interested in the PF beginner box.

As a further clarification, note that the minis won't be included at all in the beginner's box. They will just be available as a separate product.