It is, of course, old news that Paizo is releasing a boxed set, the Pathfinder Beginner Box, of their Pathfinder rules. The box, as one might guess from its title, is directed to new players. Given that I’ve been playing since before the 1st Edition DM’s Guide was published, I don’t think I’m exactly the target demographic that Paizo is looking to hit with this new product. However, that hasn’t stopped me from being rather intrigued by it. Intrigued to the point that I want to give Pathfinder another try. See, I got burned out on 3.5 near its “last” days and so I’ve never really given Pathfinder a good try. I’ve got the core books and a number Paizo’s adventures and setting stuff but I’ve only run a few sessions of Pathfinder using the Crypt of the Everflame.
While we have a regular schedule of gaming on most Saturday evenings, we’ve recently hit one of those rare situations where multiple players couldn’t make it to multiple sessions in a row. We’ve only played our Quail Valley campaign with Myth & Magic once in the last five weeks. This weekend we’re doing the annual Halloween one-shot so it’ll be like six weeks with one session. For me, that just isn’t enough to really keep my interest in a campaign.
So, my gaming thoughts were already straying and I was already thinking about a new campaign when I started to see a lot of good reviews and good press about the Beginner’s Box (like this review). I guess I just thought, wny not? Why not give Pathfinder, initially in the slimmed down version of the Beginner’s Box, a try and dust off some of those old ideas and old prep work I did for a Golarion campaign a number of years ago. As I noted in another post recently, I think a lot of my burnout with 3.5 wasn’t the system itself as much as it was the dynamics at the table…adversarial dynamics encouraged, at least to some degree, by the rule-set. So, yeah, why not…maybe I’ll get another Company H Campaign out of it (still one of my all time favorite campaigns I’ve ever run).
Hooray for Harvey and his minions!!!