BB as present (possible spoilers for BB)

[DyasAlure]

I am giving my son the BB for his birthday. I plan on being GM, and was hoping to be able to get started with prep or something.

I'm not sure what comes in the box, but I understand there are some modules ready to play.

So, on that, is there anything I need to prepare for? Day of when we open it can we play right than?

I do want to do a zero day start, but I have no idea what I'm opening? I don't care about spoilers for the BB, just want to be prepared.

[Joana]

If you're reasonably familiar with Pathfinder rules, I see no reason you shouldn't be able to run Black Fang's Dungeon with minimal prep.

There are free downloads to go with the box available here. (Scroll down to Free Beginner Box Resources.) You might consider beginning with the Beginner Box Bash Demos before Black Fang's Dungeon; they're very short missions just to get newbies up to speed, and you can download them ahead of time so that you can be prepared for them while the shink-wrap's still on the box.

[CrystalSeas]

If you're not familiar with Pathfinder, try working through the Skeleton King's Crypt, in the Hero's handbook, to get a feel for the game.

It's a solo adventure that lets you walk through the game without a game master.

I'd actually go through Black Fang's Dungeon before I tried the modules.

The dungeon is designed to give you and the players an easy, step-by-step introduction to the game, each room building upon previous knowledge and giving you a taste of different kinds of encounters (underwater combat, being trapped by spider webs, etc).

The modules aren't so hand-holdy and you might miss out on ways to solve the problems if you aren't familiar with all your options.

But yeah, as soon as you unwrap it, you can start playing. You can just let your son run with one of the pre-generated characters included with the box. The pregen character sheets are very step-by-step for both the GM and the player.

[diemythtruth]

If you're a complete novice like me/my son, prepare to fiddle with the rule books/character sheets a lot during Black Fang's dungeon until figuring out that it's best to just start ignoring things for the sake of expediency/fun. The game really opened up for us at that point and now we like it a lot.

[Bard of Ages]

Welcome to Pathfinder! As other posters have said, run yourself through the solo adventure first. It gives you alot of the basics and then read the Black Fang's Dungeon book. The box comes with monsters, a map, and everything else you need, so if you know the rules yes you can run it same day as you open it.

if you don't know the rules, you can still run it the same day :) you just need to take some time reading the solo adventure.

The extra modules that you can download for free are great for running a longer game over several weeks.

And of course remember to have fun. As diemythtruth said, the rules are there to provide a framework, but if that framework keeps hitting you in the head, step around it and just ignore it for the sake of fun.