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It is said about the first encounter in Burnt Offerings that „the point of this battle isn't to test the PC's resources but to set the scene and flavor for the insanity that is the goblin.“ (pg.12)
Here is how it worked out in my game. We play online (post-by-post) over at a german board and my group consists of seven players so I decided to boost the encounter a bit by adding three additional goblins to the initial assault. And at the beginning of the fight and of round two I let them hear the warchanters singing the first verses of the Goblin Song.
At the start all of the characters (with the exception of the two halflings) spotted the dog-killing goblin an got quite nervous cause he seemed to be the only opponent (which they couldn't believe). So they weren't too surprised when I brought the other goblins into play.
One of them jumped off a roof and landed next to a PC in a brewer's booth breaking his dogslicer while backstabbing one of the town guards. He totally ignored said PC and decided to drink as much beer as fast as possible. He had just found a bottle of rum when he got blasted by the Dragonfire Adept's breath weapon, which resulted in a nice darting flame coming out of his mouth.
Another one tried to ambush Father Zanthus at the podium but fell under a sleep spell cast by our wizard.
A third one, instead of attacking, first searched another booth for some valuables. He found a bottle with some easily inflammable content and threw this bottle, immediately followed by a burning torch at one of the halflings. Without success. The bottle hit another goblin (I swear it was accident, I used my dice according to PHB) while the torch fell harmlessly to the ground). This goblin was successfully charged, as was another one. The dog-killer died through a lucky blow of the group cleric.
So at the beginning of round Two, five of six goblins were already dead/sleeping, the sixth followed soon. Easy victory.
Normally I would have expected some criticism for the boring encounter, but not this time. Instead, they are so concerned about „the insanity that is the goblins“, that they are actually discussing if it is even worth questioning the sleeping and so captivated goblin they assume to be totally loco. And though I didn't gave the slightest indication of what will happen next, you can see they are a bit nervous. I'm looking for their reaction if the next group of goblins lits the fuel wagons..
But the best thing is to see how they play their characters. I have some experience running post-by-post-games and it means usually a bit of work to get the players excited about the game and their characters if you cannot use mimic and gestures, but are totally limited to the written word. But this time it was one encounter and they cannot wait to see what happens next and better yet, have begun to develop their characters by simple interaction with their environment.
So I'd like to thank the contributors to these boards, especially Erian_7 for his great map and smashthedan and all other contributors to the Welcoming Speeches Thread, whose ideas I stole and adapted for my own speeches. You greatly helped me to flesh out the setting and make it appealing for my players.
But first and foremost, I'd like to thank James Jacobs and the Paizo stuff for what may be the best introduction into a new campaign I've ever seen. Things develop exactly as you suggested and I cannot wait to present them Gresgurt to give them a taste of the scary things to come.
P.S. I'm generally interested in how this encounter played out at other tables. How did your players perceive the Pathfinder goblins at the end of encounter one? And how did this perception change over the run of Burnt Offerings?
My player found the goblins amusing during this first encounter, but that totally changed in the later scene at the glass foundry. (The goblin-in-closet scene didn't go as written for us, because the PCs enlisted men with dogs to scour the whole town for goblins in hiding, and they found him before he could kill anyone.)
The sight of the bodies, the glass, the fire, upset the PCs profoundly and they are still in shock. They made some decisions about which NPCs to alert and what to say to them which they are likely to regret later--but it flowed perfectly out of the characters' reactions. (The Beguiler should probably have kept her powers hidden rather than questioning Tsuto in front of the Mayor. She knew it, too, but she wanted to know what was going on *right away*, she was so badly freaked out.)
The PCs had no trouble with either fight--Sleep is hell on goblins--but that hasn't stopped them from being badly by the ongoing situation.
I am really liking this module, and looking forward to #2.
Mary