My brother and I are starting a new tabletop campaign (Pathfinder) and decided to bring the new group to the theater to see it. Good stuff. Lots of laughs and some surprisingly snappy action at times. I really appreciated some of the practical costumes, too. Highlights for me were probably the 'escape' oner and Chris Pine's lute performance, lol.

Oh shit lol - I messed up lmao

For some odd reason when I made that post earlier - and saw the preview in the OP - I for some reason thought it was a Netflix logo (guess I was tired when I made that post).

Well either ways....replace Netflix with Paramount+ (I dont have either service lol...only have D+/Hulu, HBO Max and Prime Video...)

Are you starting Pathfinder 2e, by any chance? I switched about 4-5 years ago from DnD 3.5 and never looked back. 5th edition DnD never caught my interest, it's just too simple and the combat variation is bland and dull compated to PF 2e. Also, are you getting a written campaign/module? PF has some really great ones, I think Kingmaker has been converted to 2e as well now, if you want something really unique and different.

Yeah, Pathfinder 2e. First time for me (played one good DnD 5e campaign before that). My brother is the big tabletop aficionado and is running the campaign for us. I believe we're starting with Abomination Vaults.

PF2e is such a well written system, and so friendly for GMs. Unfortunately, I was knees deep into DnD 5e when it launched, so I never really got the chance to run any campaign in it.

DnD 5e is very weak mechanically (especially advantage/disadvantage, which Shadow of the Demon Lord does much better with boons and banes), yes it is simple and sort of friendly to beginners (which pretty much all of my players were), but unfortunately, it is way too simple and limiting and very DM unfriendly. We were thinking of moving to PF2e at one point, or more likely Hackmaster 5e (IMO, the best DnD offshoot that fixes DnD's nonsensical "Did I hit your Armor Class?"  naval inspired combat, that is unfortunately still around, even in PF2e), but eventually decided to move away altogether from class/level based systems, so we're currently running on a mashup of Runequest/BRP, Pendragon and dice pool system from Forbidden Lands (Year Zero Engine).

Would I like it going in without sufficient knowledge of D&D lore?

D&D knowledge not necessary. If you've played any kind of fantasy RPG before you'll be more than familiar with its tropes.

I know certain D&D races, and that the Beholder was in an episode of Futurama. Said monster was the inspiration for the Cacodemon in Doom.

One of the things I love about PF2 is the mechanics in place for things like chases. I use these quite often, there's even a handy deck of cards for the more improvised ones. And, as a GM, the XP budget system is brilliant for building balanced encounters. I was skeptical at first, especially about the 3-action economy system; but this turned out to be the best part about the whole system for us. It adds such layers to combat and encounters, and flows so well with the easy, but solid, +/- mechanics of skill checks, attacks etc. Getting accustomed to it from PF1 and D&D 3.5 was no trouble at all.

Your new gig sounds great, we used to play Vampire: The Masquerade (I had a campaign in Victorian Age London for about a year), it focused heavily on narration and roleplay and less so on mechanics and combat. TTRPGs are by far the best that ever happened to my life, as far as hobbies go, been at it since 1993!

Yeah, I've read through most of the PF2e Core rulebook and was really impressed at how well written and defined is PF2e, with a lot of GM tools at disposal - compared to DnD 5e it is on completely another level. As someone who passionately hates bonus action in 5e, I found 3 action economy of PF2e really great way to solve long-running DnD action economy problem (though I still think BRP's increasing strike ranks or Hackmaster's progressing 1 second clock are my favourite solutions to combat time and all that happens inside of it).

I never got the chance to play VtM (apart from VtM - Bloodlines on PC, which is still one of my favourite computer RPGs), but I'm somewhat familiar with the system (really like how attributes fit into 3x3 matrix). A friend of mine back in uni used to talk about it, but we never managed to get a group to try it out.
I've started playing back in 80s with AD&D, but then I had a long 2 decade hiatus from 90s to 10s in which only RPGs were of video game nature - fairly usual problem of Pen&Paper RPGs has always been getting the group together on a regular schedule. One of the reasons I've decided for my next campaign to run an equivalent of STTNG in fantasy setting - whoever is there that week, gets into action.