I just bought the beginners box yesterday.
I played AD&D (first edition) in school (close to 30 years ago now), I've got 2 small children (ages 3 and 1) and after playing the Mountains of Madness forum RPG on RPGGeek I had an urge to get back into some roleplaying. I have the Warhammer rules and a few 3/4 painted armies, but I was looking for some proper roleplaying rather than wargaming. I also want something that I can get my eldest son playing, with a bit of help from me.
I had a hunt around looking for a suitable game. I saw AD&D was about to go into yet another edition, so that was enough to put me off. Then I read this review of the Beginners Box so started investigating Pathfinder. I saw all the material on the site, and the gorgeous artwork, so then I asked Twitter friends for advice. One of them recommended checking out DragonAge as well, so I did a quick comparison, but the content of the Beginners Box brought me back here. I also saw a comment on the Piazo FaceBook page from someone saying they had played with their 3 yr old daughter, so that gave me even more hope that I could introduce my son to roleplaying sooner.
So, I put it on my Amazon wishlist, and I kept looking at the material for the game. By lunchtime I had got itchy feet so I headed out to my local games shop and bought it, along with the Beginners Box miniatures.
I like the pawns, as it means I don't have to risk delicate miniatures in the hands of excited children, and they will help with visualisation of the game. I've been looking at the Wizkids figures and possibly overtime might replace the pawns with figures (although I have a lot of D&D CMG figures somewhere). I also like the GameMastery cards as another way of helping my kids visualise things in the game.
I've started reading the Game Master's Guide and so far it seems to be well laid out and well explained. I might start my son off with some simple encounters to get him used to things before I expand it to actually running the dungeon.
One quick question - One thing that put me off initially was that quite a lot of the Adventure Paths and Modules are out of print. I know I can get the PDFs but I prefer to have the nice glossy prints which do proper justice to the artwork. With the release of the Wizkids Rise of the Runelords range, is there a plan to reprint the Runelords Adventure Paths, individually or as a box set?
Excellent! I will start training my youngling in the art of roleplaying.
Perhaps my wife will get interested when she sees what fun we are having.
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One thing to point out is that while some of Paizo's Adventure Path stuff might be out of print, they are still available as PDFs. Although, for RotRL, it might just be easier to wait for the Anniversary edition as it will be updated to Pathfinder.
Good luck! I've played a bit with my 4 y.o. son, although without any rules as he was having the pawns have conversations with each other, then the good guy would smash the bad guys. It was fun in its own way, but very tiring to make sure he didn't smash too hard.
I've read through Black Fang's Dungeon and I'm moving on to the rest of the guide. I think there must have been a period of hyperinflation since my AD&D days as there seem to be a lot of gold pieces up for grabs! It's a shame the Wizzkids miniatures don't include a Reefclaw as (if you can find/afford the Black Dragon), all the pawns could be replaced by miniatures.
I showed my son the Game Master's Guide, he seemed interested but said "Is it Star Wars?" Maybe he knows me too well. I need to work on his numeracy a bit, he can mostly count to 20 but he doesn't recognise numbers yet (or he deliberately gets them wrong just to wind me up). I think I will start with a D8 and get him to recognise those numbers first, with the help of bribery.
I also need to introduce him to a fantasy setting. While there are trolls in a few of his books that's about as far as it goes. I don't think he's ready for the Hobbit yet.
Welcome!
You should definitely check out the Know Direction Podcast Episode 0, which is an introduction to Pathfinder/Paizo. Great stuff!