Core has been a huge success in Northern Colorado

[Gnasher]

With lots of players citing "Rules Bloat" our attendance at our normal PFS games seemed to be declining over the past two years. Our multiple table events often condensing down to a single table or barely scraping by with two. Sure, some days it still worked out no problem, but it seemed the days of 4 table Sundays were gone.

A few weeks ago, we started running a Core table on an off night, and now we've already outgrown one venue and moved to another, so we can have multiple tables. New players who were were not part of the previous group started showing up and brining their friends with the barrier to entry gone. Now these players have also started attending regular games, not just Core ones.

Many of us are optimizers. Many of us can use the books with each other in ways that make the character classes sing with overpowered auras of destruction, but Core provides a unique challenge that we almost universally enjoy. It makes us approach missions with some thought and really can test our chops as players.

Sure we miss a few rules here and there, but Core has done wonders for our player base and revitalized the game for many of us. Way to go with this.

Would love to see more Core oriented stuff!

[Duiker]

That's excellent!

[GM Lamplighter]

That's great to hear. I think we don't hear the success stories nearly as often as the folks who don't like it.

[grandpoobah]

Glad to hear you are having success with CORE.

[Guy Martelle]

We are also having great success with core in SW Wisconsin and Eastern Iowa in our college town weekly games days. The new players appreciate being able to play on an equal footing with the other players without having to buy numerous books. They all have had to embrace the coordinate and teamwork aspects of Pathfinder and many have played through most of season 6 and 7, including the higher level scenarios, and have done very well. Many of the core players are also willing to DM, especially the season 7 scenarios since all the monster stats are part of the scenario. We are starting to get some good migration into PFS RPG as players but the newer Core GMs are still hesitant to GM RPG because of the many complicated player abilities.
We are also seeing participation by older, experienced RPG players who appreciate the challenges of playing core and the ability to replay every scenario.

[domyalex]

I had been considering joining PFS for quite some time, but was always put off by the steep learning curve. I was also afraid of being "that guy" who wasn't optimized well enough and was a drag to the party.

When I discovered that the local lodge has always a Core table, I jumped into it! Now that I have been playing for a few months I was brave enough to also generate my first non-Core character.

So yes, Core definitely helps!