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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Transformer" data-source="post: 6237882" data-attributes="member: 70008">Copy the Pathfinder Beginner Box beat-for-beat. It's basically perfect.Or some do's and don'ts:DON'T think of the starter set as nothing more than an advertisement for the full game. That will just make it limited and unappealing.DO think of the starter set as a full game that a group should be able to play for a long time without feeling limited. Seriously: giving people a nice full gaming experience in the starter set isn't going to dissuade people from buying the core rulebooks. Having a paltry starter set will. If people really like the game, they'll want to buy more. So give them a great game right in the starter set.DON'T stop at level 2. It's not high enough.DO go up to level 4 or 5. That's enough to give people a real sense of progression.DON'T forget to include friggin' character creation rules. Seriously, I don't know what you were thinking with the 4E Redbox, but only having a solo adventure for character creation was a disastrously bad idea.DO include pre-gens, full character creation rules, and a solo adventure for character genertion. More options is better, and a couple more slips of paper isn't going to drive the cost up that much.DON'T half-ass the included adventures.DO put a lot of effort into the adventures. Make the stories good; include interesting NPCs; include interesting monsters and traps.DON'T include miniatures. They're just too darn expensive to go in a reasonably priced starter set.DO make a smart decision about grid-based vs. theater-of-the-mind combat, and stick to it. If you go with grid-based combat, include a nice wet-erase battlemap, and use stand-up figure flats ala the Pathfinder Beginner Box. If you go for theater-of-the-mind combat, use that to keep the price really cheap. A $15 price point would be spectacular; that would make an impulse buy for someone looking for something cool in target for their nephew.DON'T try to include the full version of the player's handbook, or provide support for all 20 levels. Keeping the price down is essential; it just isn't worth the increase in cost, and it makes the game excessively complicated for players who are brand new. The point is to draw in new players who do not want to drop the cash and put in the effort to tackle a 300+ page rulebook. If you make the starter set the full version of the rules, then you effectively don't have a starter set, you just have two different ways of buying into the full rules.</blockquote>

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