When it comes down to it for this product, the questions are; can it attract new players, and will they enjoy it?
Last night I ran the game for four members of the family boardgame/poker card game group (30-40's). Usually when I bring up the idea of D&D or roleplaying, they scoff at the idea. They tried Talisman once.
Last night, they oohed and aahed about the box. "That looks interesting." "Ok, but I don't want to read a bunch of stuff."
Boom, out of the box and we are running. Characters in hand, looking over the sheets, they seemed to really like the linking of the inner character sheet to the discussion paragraphs on the outer sides of the sheets. For once I was not telling them everything about the game and how to play it, they could read along easily and knew what all those numbers meant. Don't get me wrong, they still asked questions, but they were more informed questions and showed they were getting the system. Rather than some of the "What are we doing?" "What is this now?"
So we are in and running. I figure I might get them to do a few rooms, just to get the feeling for it. Nope, a few turns into half the dungeon, and then *they* are telling me that they want to go back to town to rest and get their daily spells back. Really? You understand they are daily spells? Yeah!
"How do we take out these goblins?" a wife asked her husband. After some discussion, they sneaked up on the goblin king and his cohorts. Oh it was great to see the strategy, even if they could have just talked with the goblins, seeing the mage just run in and cast his burning hands spell was a nice from a near 30 year old that never played a roleplaying game before. At 1am, well past our normal gaming time, they finally finished off the dragon (which rolled a few "1's") and couldn't stop discussing their heroic actions as we left my friend's home.
Great product, outstanding even. Success for at least four newbies. Now I'll see if I can get a few to join our other Pathfinder group.
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