Over the years, I have seen guides to classes, help guides to adventure prepatration, guides that help GMs design encounters, guides that help GMs design whole adventures, books worth of advice on how to make your plot interesting, engaging, unique and derail-proof(in a way that doesn't piss off your players), a breadth of information published by Paizo and other companies...
But I have never seen an actual, thrice-damned properly-designed tutorial. The sort you see in modern videogames, where the player is introduced to gameplay mechanics piece by piece, without becoming overwhelmed by the whole thing. And by "player" here I mean both players and the GM, since either could be new to this system.
Beginner's Box doesn't really serve this purpose, since it includes 160+ pages of paper to read through by itself. That's...just too much for a tutorial. I have once read a book that properly explained quantum electrodynamics, and it was only 149 pages long. Perhaps more importantly, it doesn't include a small adventure to give players some practical experience with the mechanics. It doesn't have to be big, just 5 to 10 rooms of a "dungeon", in each of which some small facet of the system would be emphasized, like attacks, AC, flanking, cover, and so on. Same thing woud happen on the other side of the screen-one room would have some environment GM has to describe, another would have an NPC they would have to roleplay as, a third would call for some basic battle tactics or improvisation, and so on.
Then you could expand it over time-maybe in the next part of the dungeon players get to change their attributes, even further along they get to select some feats from a limited pool, and so on.
So...why? It seems like a thing that would be quite necessory to get more players, and thus customers. Have I just managed to completely miss it? If so, could someone point it out to me?
I found that the Beginners Box tutorial worked fairly well. There is a small adventure in the first eight pages of the Hero's Handbook, and it walks you step by step through a fight.
Then it steps you through character creation and other things you need to know to get involved.
The adventure "Black Fang's Dungeon" in the Game Master's Guide is also a good tutorial.
You don't have to read everything at once. The entire box is set up so that you can read one page at a time and move forward slowly using only the material that has been introduced up until that point.
And, there is a lot of hand-holding for leveling up in the first five levels. Everything you've asked for is already available.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/basics-ability-scores/character-creation
That one by D20 is pretty good for character creation. I usually tell new players to start with Core rulebook only so that its not overwhelming. If they still need something simpler and less complicated as a starting place try DnD 3.5. PF is a better version of DnD than 3.5 was but 3.5 is much simpler and more new user friendly.
Video Games guides are a lot easier because you do certain things that pretty much work. Many home games vary by play style, so how someone plays factors a lot into how this would work.
Paizo does have the GMG, and the Ultimate Campaign Guide, but none of that, much like the advice on these forums applies to every campaign. It coming from Paizo employees, who I am sure have their own style of playing won't make it any more legit. Seeing as how likely know the rules
The game can be complex due to options and strategies(this more so than the strategies to me). I really don't get what you are asking for. Could you give an example of the type of breakdown you would like?
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the Strategy Guide is actually really good for stepping someone through character creation and understanding basic rules.
the Strategy Guide is actually really good for stepping someone through character creation and understanding basic rules.
In addition, p. 13 of the Core Rulebook has the "Example of Play" that also serves as a good introduction to "what happens at the table".
The main issue is, as Wraithstrike noted, that style varies from group to group.
Why do you discount Beginner Box again? The Hero's Handbook includes a single-player choose-your-own-adventure type thing that acts as a tutorial of sorts, slowly introducing you to various mechanics such as HP, weapons, damage types, attack rolls, AC, potions, and such. While it doesn't cover every mechanic (not even every BB mechanic), it does a decent job of getting you into it and learning the ropes. From there you can run the pregens through Black Fang's Dungeon, where the GM is hand-held on what to do and what not to do throughout the entire module, taking time to explain things as they first come up.