Beginner Box vs. Full Rules to Start New Players?


Advice


I'm a new GM jumping into Starfinder. Yesterday I purchased the Beginner's Box, Core Rulebook, and Junker's Delight. I'm excited to be running this system for my group of players - who are predominantly teenagers who are pretty new to RPGs (have played a bit of 5e.)

I saw really high marks for the Beginner Box (and I think the components such as the pawns and battlemat are very valuable). I also have used the other Paizo Beginner Boxes for Pathfinder 1 & 2. I feel like the streamlining used in the Starfinder Box is more extreme than any of the other Beginner Boxes, and it might cause confusion when expanding to the full game with the Core Rulebook.

The Beginner Box has a different method of generating Hit Points, doesn't use EAC or KAC (only one AC), doesn't track ammunition, doesn't use Stamina Points ... and that's just what I picked up with a cursory glance.

In your opinion, should I just skip the Beginner Box and dump the players into what will easily be the most complex TTRPG they've ever played? Or do the Beginner Box - and if they like it - figure out how to "translate" the rest of the game to those specifics? (Because if they don't like it, we won't continue the game. And if they do, I don't want to "pull the rug out" and tell them to relearn the game and make it more realistic - aka "less fun.")


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Skip the Beginner Box. Starfinder Beginner Box is the worst of all Paizo BBoxes - instead of just limiting your number of options, it cuts away whole swathes of rules that are absolutely vital for the full Starfinder 1ed experience, forcing you to re-learn (or re-teach) the ruleset once you graduate to the full rules.

Or, if you want to put some work into it, run the BBox adventure using full SF1 rules.

Wayfinders

Junker's Delight is a good adventure to start with. It should be playable with just the core rule book. Anything else you need to look up is free online at the Archive of Nethys.

The beginner's box adventure is mostly a short dungeon crawl teaching "some" of the basic rules, without much if any opportunity for RP. And is not the full rules as you correctly point out. If you decide to run it I'd suggest let everyone it's just to help them learn the rules, and just use the pre-gen characters. then Start completely over making your own characters for Junker's delight.


The Starfinder Beginner's Box adventure is technically sanctioned for Society play, but only if it's played under the Beginner's Box rules. That's the only reason I haven't tried running it myself yet, because my wife and I (and our home group) had been playing SF for a few years at the time we acquired a copy cheaply through a bundle deal. Having to learn new rules for a single adventure before going back to regular SF doesn't seem worth the effort.

On the other hand, we haven't shelled out for any of the Alien Archive pawn sets, so the small but nicely diverse selection in the Beginner Box were a godsend, and we use them constantly.

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