Fast forward a few months and the boy asked me out of the blue when we were going to game again. I told him I didn't know (because my last few attempts at getting a group together to play at the house haven't met with much success) but I'd see what I could do.
The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced we could just do something one-on-one with the PBB. After looking over the character sheets, I really couldn't see a reason why he couldn't just run all of the PCs and I'd do the GMing duties. With my wife out of town for the weekend, we sat down this morning and played through the module that came in the box.
(And yes, I said "played through." We completed the entire thing in about three hours. Four combat encounters and a couple of roleplay/diplomacy/problem-solving encounters. It played pretty fast.)
The heroes of Sandpoint braved the dark depths, slew goblins, a spider, a fell water beast, dispatched undead, and drove off Blackfang, a most vicious and vile black dragon. Along the way, they befriended a tribe of squabbling goblins by returning a treasured toy to them, and completely misunderstood the purpose of a magic fountain.
I've been impressed with the physical quality of the PBB from the beginning, but this was my first chance to put it through its paces. Of course, I've been playing Pathfinder for a couple of years now, but it was my first time GMing it. The adventure provides an excellent mix of combat and non-combat encounters, the challenges were appropriately threatening without being overwhelming (Blackfang got off one acid blast: it dropped the fighter to 3 HP and the cleric to 0, which created a rather tense moment). Even though the boy was playing all the PCs, each one had multiple opportunities to shine (or fail).
He wants to play some more. I guess I need to see about scaring up some more players (his age or otherwise).
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