How can killing 12 goblins be so entertaining?

Last Sunday was the first meting for my Pathfinder campaign. For those that don't know, Pathfinder is Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition. It's 95% or more the same as D&D. The reason I went with a Pathfinder campaign is that I'm sick of buying new editions of D&D where it feels the rules are changed so the company can make a buck. It doesn't seem like Pathfinder is looking to change it's core rules which I am happy about.

The group ended up with a dwarven cleric, a human fighter, a half-elf paladin, a monk, a ninja, and I believe another fighter type. All characters started at first level.

My Pathfinder world is pretty liberal. If a player wants to play a specific class, they can. I let any and all gods into my campaign. I also have a fairly generic city as a stage. It's on a river with some hills across from it. Diamonds and precious metals from the hills drive the economy. There is a decent sized forest below the city. Farm land to the north of the city and about 20 miles to the north is a dimensional rift that came into being about 10 years ago. From this rift have come many creatures and threats that have plagued the city.

Seeing how almost everybody was new to Pathfinder and I had played more 4th edition of D&D lately the first night was make characters and run a small fight to ease into Pathfinder. We had a blast. The was a simple set up: the player characters happened to all be in a tavern when some farmers entered and pronounced that they needed adventurer-types to seek out and stop a marauding group of goblins harassing the farmers. The characters all signed up and thus the group was born.

Some of the game developed 'on the fly' as the PC's first made a camp and then investigated some nearby woods were the goblins were suspected to be. Sure enough, the PC's found some tracks and set up and ambush. Due to real world time limits and also wanting to get the action going the goblins came down the path later that night.

And thus, dice and imagination took over and the fight began. The dwarf cleric made no attempt to hide and waited in the middle of the trail. The ninja and another hid in trees. Two of the fighter types hid in fox holes. Each side spotted one another and the fight was on! So, how could this have been so much fun? Seeing PC's try to communicate without alerting the goblins, the goblins hurling insults at the PC's making the death of the goblins that much more meaningful, and a ninja leaping out of trees plunging his weapon through the chest of his victim. The cleric hit with two confirmed crits splattering his teammates with massive amounts of goblin blood. And for comic relief, a goblin acting all big and bad slipped in some bat guano leaving himself open to be attacked and annihilated.

In the end, the excitement of just playing again, hanging with good people and brand new friends, along with crazy ideas and zany actions made killing 12 lowly goblins a very enjoyable event.

The campaign will attempt to meet every other weekend because Sunday nights are sometimes tough to make happen on a weekly basis. We'll see how it goes but the first night of adventuring turned out to be a blast with much swearing, killing and the quoting of movies and much fun was had by all.