Pathfinder 1e Beginner Box

Digging through my garage, I found my original Pathfinder Beginner Box for the game's first edition.

Wow.

This was a fantastic time.

The rules, the typical 3.5-isms, and I will say the 2e Beginner Box has a better presentation, fewer rules, and feels easier to learn. You had to learn a subset of the 3.5 combat and spell rules, and the basic set feels a bit heavy when feats and skills are thrown in here.

But the box, the art, and the presentation were incredible.

The game wasn't afraid; in ways, it spoke to the fans of fantasy with muscled warriors, beautiful heroines, sudden violence, and fantastic monsters. The art was kinetic. The game felt savage and unforgettable.

I loved this game.

My brother didn't.

We spent a lot of mornings arguing D&D 4 vs. Pathfinder 1e.

I wanted to go all-in, and since he was my primary player, he liked D&D 4 better, so we went with that. I was a fan of the battle-chess aspects and play of 4E, but not much else about the game captured my imagination. I had to build much of the lore and world myself, which was excellent, but Wizards let us down with unfilled promises and more broken promises. Pages of errata weeks after a book was released. The dependence on online tools. No official game world. Broken balance at high levels like the game wasn't even play-tested. Multiple balance revisions and an Essentials line felt like a 0.5 edition but needed the main books in a half-brained reboot.

Even he said in the end that D&D 4E let us down. It failed us.

We played a little Pathfinder 1e after the fact, and I enjoyed it. Still, the steam and our energy had lessened in fantasy due to the 4E disappointment, and it lasted longer than I expected, but it ground to a halt around the 6th level. We moved on to sci-fi which is where things ended.

But Pathfinder 1e was always excellent. Trapped in a bottle, it is still ultra-cool and still speaks to me. It screams adventure. It challenges you. It dares you to create heroes you would expect to see on the covers of fantasy novels. The monsters scream wicked, evil, fierce, and encompass the forces of darkness.

The game is Metal.

Today, I can't say the same about Pathfinder 2e Beginner Box. Even the art feels restrained and held back, and we have many pictures of people just floating in space. Mechanically the game feels better; everything is logical, streamlined, and well put together. But the game feels afraid of challenging us or upsetting us. When I say challenging, I don't mean difficulty, as 2e is the more demanding game, but the world and art feel overly filtered and safe. And there are very few action pictures in the 2e set urging me on.

On page 61 of the 1e Beginner Box Hero's handbook, there is a bottom page spread of the iconic bard shot full of arrows and bleeding out. On almost every page of this 1e boxed set, something damn cool is happening, an action picture in your face screaming, "This could be you!"

This could be you.

Just pick up the dice.

Pathfinder 1e had something to prove back in the day, and that came through in the art.

The use of light and shadow, negative space, shapes, and figures just sings to me. A lot of the new stuff seems mashed together, confused and muddled. Compare the beginner box covers. The dragon on the new one does not even feel like a threat; he is smaller than the characters and in the background. You don't need to explain the old cover much; you feel it.

Maybe I am asking too much, and there is no replacing the original art team. Maybe.

I suppose I am happy Savage Pathfinder is out because they use the original art, and all those initial feelings are back. I can buy the original adventure paths and have that old-school fun again. When I returned to Pathfinder 1e recently, I did not know why, but I feel I know now.

I still support and keep my subscriptions to Pathfinder 2 going, and I hope I can find that spark of inspiration with the new game again. I hope the new game's art and presentation go from mildly inoffensive to an epic metal band level. If I let the subscriptions lapse, I will regret not having the books someday. I am not pessimistic and have hope.

But I see Savage Pathfinder or even the original messy 1e rules, still capturing my imagination. I still have issues with Savage Pathfinder in the amount of conversion needed to make it work, but Savage Worlds is like that, hand wave the details off and have fun. Close enough is good enough.

The adventures and feelings that never really left us are back.