[Off-Topic] Pathfinder Beginner Box

[Steveman]

I've had a chance to look over and play the beginner box, a friend ran it at the FLGS as demo.

First off, it is designed to be a gateway drug to full 3.P, while it never has anything that says "more found in the 3.P core rulebook". It does, however, make it very clear in the adventure and chargen booklets that this is simply a taste of what the full game has to offer.

That being said, I love how it handles 0-level spells. Casters have a limited selection of spells that they can use indefinitely. Thee selection is not overly versatile and is no where game breaking, and is something I am adapting to implement in my next campaign.

[billiambabble]

That Pathfinder set looks mighty handsome, it seems to be getting a lot of praise.

Boxed sets ... Yum. BFRPG box ... Double yum!

(okay, posting from phone here and so my linking is a little limited)

If you needed fold up figures for a set, there's plenty going for free on the Cardboard Warriors Forum (proboards), at least there's artists willing to be published for the credit alone.

With regards to the practicality of boxes, cards, dice and large maps, perhaps sites like The Game Crafter
https://www.thegamecrafter.com/
could at least provide some print-on-demand solution, thus cutting your outlay cost to zero.

Just random ideas.

[Archarzel]

Amazing that I've never made an account and posted here before, Oi. Long time fan of the system, followed along with the activity on the site for about 4 years now (crazy when you put a number on it)

Traditionally what should be in here is:

Game Master's book(let)
Player's book(let)
Introductory pamphlet and read-aloud-along
Introductory adventure with additional guidance literature
Pregen characters (Cardstock, glossy illustrations, presentation being everything)
1 set of dice
(Option: Blank character sheet pad and Fast-character generation guide)
(Option: Small pencils (Mrchips= $260 per 1000 sets of 4, probably another option elsewhere, maybe printed)
(Option: Playmat, printed figures and plastic stands for miniature play (card-stands, Mrchips, $60 per 1000, would probably need 10-15 per box)

Thegamecrafter.com's site is a little too clunky and their products seem... well, inferior to what could actually be done in-house by anyone with the desire to make it happen, even on the smallest scale. More so, their prices would make the boxed set way too expensive because of the one-off nature of the product. (Much like lulu's printing costs, If someone here could store and come up with the money up front, Basic fantasy could be distributed and sold at a profit for exactly the same price it is sold for now, just that the market is limited and print runs are large)

On the small scale, you could have those standard solid color dice sets for $110 for 50 sets worth of dice, just over $2 a set (Well, shipped to Alaska anyway, eaieducation.com)

The actual book is pretty well stripped down considering that it only takes one book to get going, but you could remove quite a bit of information, simply find the boundary where taking anything else out would harm the experience and leaving anything else in would scare off a new player. Also, splitting the Gm's guide and Players guide means that the GM can have a book to himself to figure out running the game while the players can explore their abilities and potential shopping options. Less fighting over the book and means you could actually buy the box, grab 3 friends and play in the same night.

The biggest problem I see, and the greatest disappointment that most of you will find: Printed boxes are just about impossible to afford for less than 1000 units. as a matter of fact, printed booklets are only just possible already.

This would be a $20,000-$30,000 project to even get started that way, minimum. That isn't talking about labor and cost for art design and so on and so forth, that is just the straight up packaging on such a short run.

Ouch right?

However: the solution I see, is more bare-bones, simple packaging with large printed stickers to make up for the box, brings the cost down and limits your quantities to more manageable levels. picture those expanding file folders that have an elastic band closing them with the stickers placed front, (enticing Logo and artwork) and back, (enticing wording to make you want it) but you can see the dice and pencils and books inside as well.

Hell, I'd buy it.

What does everyone think?

Could we set something up that would allow people to assemble their own starter kit?
obviously we'd make the print materials available on the site here anyway, so the envelope (or whatever is decided on) the stickers, the dice, card stands and pencils be sold as a set and the end user left to print or order through lulu the rest? practical or not?

Going forward regardless, the goal list would be:

Introductory pamphlet: Welcome to Roleplaying games written, around 10 pages with a simple glossary and blow by blow adventure covering all aspects of gameplay mechanics, skill rolls, combat, missiles, everything that will happen in their first adventure (Thief finds hidden door with roll, they have to break it down, monster inside looses initiative, mage uses magic missile, warrior gets injured, cleric heals, thief checks chest for traps, picks lock, etc)

1- GM's booklet, theories on beginner GMing, tips and tricks on having a fun game, following the rules, throwing the rules out, etc. Magic items, a condensed monster manual, all low level critters (This book will get you to level 3 blah blah blah)

2- Player's booklet, shopping list and descriptions, combat, knowing your roll, spell lists and descriptions

(Both of these will obviously borrow the majority of the core book's information, but re-written for speed and guidance)

3- Introductory Starting adventure: The best module here at the site re-written "for Dummies", footnotes and explanations, simple english for what's going on, etc. just written like they don't even know what a "Module" is yet.

4- Pregen characters: Paragons of the quintessential Fighter, Thief, Mage, and Cleric, distilled to their cleanest essence. Include starting equipment and artwork. (Anyone ever seen those two-sided card characters from the AD&D starter set with the audio cd? Those guys.)

5- Fast character generation, but written for newbies, explaining what it means and "Susan rolls a 14 for her Dexterity and it's her highest stat yet, so she decides to play a thief"

6- Design the official printable figures for Basic Fantasy. If not the same artwork, than artwork representative of the monster/class inspired by the original artwork. (This being the most art intensive / hard labor of the list, but would be a happy addition to the site anyhow, even without a Beginner Box project)

I'll let this post go for now, but I do want to see everyone's feedback on this, I'm seriously interested in working on such a project (Some might have suspected that I've looked into similar projects already.)