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I'm sorry your table didn't make. Please let your thoughts be known to the organizer. They have a tough time juggling their sign up tables.
I personally like the core option for two main reasons. It lets new players sit down an play on a level playing field and not feel like are "over shadowed" by players who have spent hundreds of dollars on many different options. After playing for 4 years its kind of nice just bringing my core book, dice and my character. I also don't think this hurts Paizo from a business sense.
The players who get hooked on core will branch out at some point.
I have two characters I have made now, so I can sit down and play when a core table is presented. (It doesn't hurt to make a back up core character just in case.)
The second reason I like core is for players and GMs who have played most of the scenarios.
Now we can play or GM them again in core. I remember very little about scenarios that were played 3 years ago. I play or GM twice a week, and our lodge has many players that do the same. We have problems setting up scenarios that have not been run before. Core helps us extend the "life" of PFS.
Regards,
Baronjett
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My options were to play a character with 20 hp and level 1 spells in a 6-7, run a pregen in a 6 person table, or bow out since they had 5 people without me.
You don't mention if the other person with a 3rd level character played, and if they survived.
In that situation, I typically play my character. Stay at the back and contribute where you can. Be prepared to run away if needs be. Consider an Aegis of Recovery (if you have sufficient fame), and plenty of buff/cure potions at the start of the scenario. It's certainly possible to survive a 6-7 at level 3, and it's fun to play as the junior Pathfinder who has been sent out with an experienced team. The extra gold you make for out-of-tier is usually enough to compensate for the extra consumables you need to buy at the start to make yourself safer.
That said, I agree with the useful advice above to make your comments known to your local coordinator. There is a demand out there for core, which I also typically don't play myself. However, the intent is to get more people into the hobby rather than to drive existing people away. So you'll probably heard with a sympathetic ear.
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In my experience, Core has pretty much tanked in Local gameday play but has been hugely successful in Online play. We have had a few Core tables at my local gameday, but the feedback I've gotten is that people like to have more options for their characters. Running more Core tables would make life easier in trying to find something everyone can play, though ;)
Overall, the introduction of Core campaign has made life as an organizer a bit more difficult but I think that it's beneficial. Personally, the challenges it brings aren't much larger than trying to accommodate higher level play.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Core hasn't really taken off here. That said, the issues the OP describes sound to me like they might have more to do with a poor scheduling process than being the fault of Core.
Your scheduling process sounds rather top-down. We do it differently; we use Warhorn so everyone can see what's on offer and decide where to sign up. If no scenario has been chosen yet for some slot we put up a "To Be Determined" session. People sign up and fill in their level, and we try to pick something that works out, or negotiate people selecting different characters so there's some convergence.
After a table's setup is announced, changing it so that already-signed-up people can't play anymore is frowned upon and can usually be avoided.
Also, using a mailing list so that people can ask "does someone want to run X?" helps to make sure everyone gets what they want.
I suggest you talk to your organizer; he (inadvertently) treated you badly. Point it out politely and ask him to try to keep these things in mind?
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I was the organizer in question. When I changed the game to CORE, I had four players that had specifically requested a CORE game, and I was discussing with the GM running if he was willing to run CORE. At the the time I was making the change (by talking to those signed up on the meetup at the time), I didn't see anyone signed up for RPG on that table. Unfortunately, our paths crossed, and I messaged you immediate (as you stated) to see if you could play in the 3-7. I honestly wanted to make sure that you had a game to play, since you signed up.
I even put a call out on Friday (this was for a Sunday game) for an experienced GM to run the game (experienced, because I didn't want a new GM to run with 1 day to prep. Nothing against any new GMs, but I'd prefer to give any GMs as long as possible to prep any scenario -- had someone that had already run this volunterred to run an RPG game, I would have gladly scheduled another table!). AS to the 2-4 players that had to be "turned away", they signed up well after the game was listed as CORE. We also made sure that they knew that the only table with seats was a CORE game, and they chose to not come, rather than make a new CORE character.
I am sorry that you were not able to play. At the time you asked, the table could have gone either way for Rivalry's End. Soon after I had messaged you, others signed up with level 7 characters, changing things. Even then, most of the players seemed to have a mix of characters.
I am personally still up in the air about the Core Campaign. I have a group that I call my "Workfinder" group, because they are all coworkers, most of whom have never played Pathfinder before. We went CORE to limit the options so that they could more easily learn the game. I have found it to be sort of interesting. However, there is not a lot of interest in the area.
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I like campaign because I it allows me to play again and keeps me interested in the campaign. We also have a few locals veterans (myself included) who actually *prefer* campaign around here. There is one player (not me) in particular that pretty much only plays now, and several people who play both.
We have also had newbies join tables, and while there is an extra bit of explaining to do to them, they still have a good time. What's great about that is that the veterans can now play alongside those newbies that try out campaign. I know when I GMed a table of a special that was , we had a mix of extreme veterans and brand new newbies, and everyone had a blast. Mind you, this was actually one of the original intended purposes...get newbies and veterans at the same table again, leveling the field so they have the same tools to work with. And I have to say when it works, it works beautifully.
I will admit it does make scheduling more of a hassle, and it sucks what happened to you on that gameday, but I feel we would be losing out on so much more by not having it. I will also admit that there are many players who never want to play campaign, and that's fine too. I still feel that it would be a big loss for it not to exist.
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I'm a huge fan of Core, but I've seen it mustered incorrectly. And I've seen incorrect reactions to said mustering (usually blaming the Campaign rather than the organizer).
We have different days for Core and Standard, and the slots we added for Core were in addition to those for Standard. We didn't want it to seem like we were replacing Standard slots with Core slots.
Where I've seen things fall apart is during Conventions. I'm not sure how to suggest organizing Core at Conventions, when limited slots means inevitably offering fewer Standard games for every Core game being offered.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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We actually discontinued core for a while outside of occaional games. However we added it back as it's own regular game day at the request of one of our players who wanted to GM but who didn't want to have to deal with as many options as he was seeing at the table on a regular basis.
It seems to be doing pretty well.
I am curious to see how mustering at the upcoming con works out. That always seems to turn into a bit of a scramble.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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I would be interested in hearing more about places where CORE has worked well, and the best way to grow it.
I know that if you do mixed tables, it becomes much more complicated for organizers. At larger venues where you can regularly fill four or more tables it may work. Other than consistently scheduling something once a month, I'm not sure how to make it work at a small venue that may have trouble consistently filling a second table.
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We have been playing a bit of CORE with our home group. We have a mix of players who have played a ton and some that have only played a little. Because of this we are not always able to offer a scenario that allows everyone to play with the characters that are available.
CORE has given us more flexibility. It is not an option that we use a lot but it is a nice tool to have for when we need it.
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Locally, we offer a handful of Core tables per month, but its a small fraction of what gets offered over the course of a months time in the area (4 of 23ish).
They go off, with varying number of players, Id say about half the time, maybe a bit more often than that. Sometimes it depends on the weekend and what people have going on. Sometimes it's the one we schedule. Sometimes its cause we schedule RPG things people who play Core want to play.
As an Organizer, Im glad to have Core as an available option, as it makes the game of 'Player Sudoku' (trying to make sure there is always something that everyone can play) much easier, as we only one have local who adamantly opposes Core (and he doesnt even have a good reason :P ).
As an organizer/GM/player I view it much the same way I view PACG Org Play. It's a thing that many people will enjoy doing when they come to our game days, but most people would just prefer to play regular PFS over this, so this wont get as much love as it would if it wasnt offered alongside RPG events.
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The store I play at has games every Friday. They replaced standard games with Core games. When they've added tables beyond what the store can provide, we've had to play at the restaurant next door to have a place to sit. This means we've got to spend money on food/drink that we hadn't intended to spend. There have also been nights that I couldn't play because they were no standard games available that I hadn't played and core games that I could have played standard.
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I would be interested in hearing more about places where CORE has worked well, and the best way to grow it.
I know that if you do mixed tables, it becomes much more complicated for organizers. At larger venues where you can regularly fill four or more tables it may work. Other than consistently scheduling something once a month, I'm not sure how to make it work at a small venue that may have trouble consistently filling a second table.
I would argue that not having both types of tables available has huge benefits for starting up . Specifically, the best thing you can do is add a gameday (never take a regular gameday away or transform it into mixed at first) that is advertised as only. That way, if people don't want to play , they don't have to come to the gameday, and it's no skin off their back since all the normal games they are playing are still there.
This way, you can get people playing who will begin to see how awesome it is, and get people who would choose STANDARD over will come to help make tables. Once they actually have a character with XP on it, they start getting invested and interested in it. And then the following begins...
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Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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We organized our gamedays in the following manner (via Warhorn):
On the first Saturday of the month we offer 2 sessions, one starting at 11:00 am when our FLGS opens, and one starting at 4:00 pm. We only offer non-CORE games at this gameday and usually offer 2 different current year adventures, which works out pretty well since there are usually enough new adventures to make that work out almost exactly.
On all of the remaining Saturdays we offer only a single session in which we have 1 Core and 1 Non-Core game available. Popularity is mixed on the Core games with something like a 60/40 preference towards CORE when we offer it. The CORE mods we offer are almost all olds ones (first 3 years) while the non-CORE offered in the single slot Saturdays are a mixed. If turn out is low, like it is currently, the CORE table is more likely to make than the non-CORE, though some people simply won't show up if the non-CORE doesn't look like it is going to make on Warhorn. We also try to limit CORE tables to 5 players in order to give a gaming experience closer to what was intended when the adventure was written.
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Manager - Archangel Games
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Tomas I am sorry you didn't get to play. I think you made a very smart move to bow out rather than possibly ruin others game. That says a lot of good things about you.
Here is how we make the core vs reg work.
Every Wednesday we have a core table and a reg pfs table scheduled. They are not the same scenario. They are not necessarily the same tier although at times it works out that they are. A third GM is scheduled as a back up GM. The back up GM may at their discretion prepare one of the scheduled scenario's, an evergreen, or a 1-5 tier that we haven't ran in the last 6 months.
We have a monthly scheduling meeting that the whole lodge is welcome to attend. We figure out what tier and what scenario's we are running for the next month (The meeting to plan November's scenario's took place Oct 13. They were posted by Oct 16) If you can't attend we welcome input via email or facebook.
We use warhorn for our sign ups. The players know that if they are waitlisted their options are to join the other scheduled game if seats are available or play whatever the back up GM has prepared. This encourages folks to sign up early so that the organizer has some idea what they are looking at in advance.
Once the scenario's are posted we don't change them. EVER!!!! We have played the "try to please everyone" game, it ends in stressed GM's & organizers and half your player base feeling as if you don't care about them because you did what the other half wanted. Is there complaining that we aren't running the right tier, campaign, storyline, ect? Yes there is, some of it legitimate and some of it because there are people who feel the need to complain regardless. We then start a dialog about what they are unhappy about, what they would like to see, and then WE ASK THEM HOW THEY WOULD LIKE TO ASSIST IN MAKING IT HAPPEN. Suddenly the legitimate ones are volunteering to GM or showing up at planning meetings. The complainers shut up which is equally beneficial.
I want to make sure that Jack Brown understands that I am not criticizing how he handled the situation. I have done the exact same wrangling trying to make tables work and at one point I ended up crying in the store's back room because I couldn't kill the players who were pissed no matter what I did. This is why I don't do it anymore.
As a lodge we recommend every new player makes both a core and an reg pfs character so that their chances of having a table to play at are maximized. We frame using an iconic as a chance to play something "different and more powerful".
Since Core came out we have had a total of 2 tables not go off because no one was willing to play at them. One was core the other was regular. For us consistency seems to be the key. Our players know what is available and what to expect. The split between core tables and reg PFS tables is even. I hope this helps.
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Our PFS group has switched to Core almost exclusively. In fact, I am not sure when we last played "regular" PFS. We have a mix of veterans and new players, and Core works well for both. The new players have only one book to deal with, and we grognards can replay scenarios.
I cannot speak for anyone else, but my favorite part of the Core campaign is non-core items on chronicle sheets. I like the fact that chronicle sheets now have things that I could never acquire otherwise.
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I've tried getting core games up at my shop, but to-date we've had 0 actually get off the ground. Even my new players would rather pick up an extra book or supplement so that they have a few extra toys - and my veterans would rather do the same than try to play through on "hard mode" (they prefer the art project that is full-scale Pathfinder).
I can see that large markets have some core appeal, and I'm happy to see those tables going off, but maaaaan, we've had no luck and a number of disappointed faces. We've totally discontinued core games in our neck of the woods.
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Biggest problem seems to be the switching of the game type after it's already been advertised as the other.
In general, don't do it. Set the schedule and stick with it.
-j
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I find areas play core more where the DMs enforce the own the book option more. I play at a variety of places. Some demand you own the books, some places encourages buying the books, and some encourage you to NOT buy the books.
The popularity of core range from frequent core play, to some core, to no core.
I am not here to debate owning the books rule. Just to show some difference I found in the different gaming areas in regards to core i found interesting.
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Starting a group from the ground up in North Bay, On. Core has been great for us. Those of us who have been around for a while can replay in Core so we round out the table. Also, we have two people who are willing to try their hand as GM because they can run Core. In my old group we have a few people who like to try and break the game. They like core for the challenge.
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A couple of new players had to be turned away since they did not want to play core.
Sounds like they chose to not play, not that they were turned away. People make choices and do have control over their own lives. They chose not to play. That's not the fault of Core.
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Sounds like they chose to not play, not that they were turned away. People make choices and do have control over their own lives. They chose not to play. That's not the fault of Core.A couple of new players had to be turned away since they did not want to play core.
No. It sounds like the game was changed at the last minute to something they were not interested in. It isn't the fault of Core, but it was not a good outcome for those new players. And it is unfair to then say that they need to take their own responsibility for that.
If I invite a vegetarian over for a pasta dinner, and then change to steak at the last minute because I don't have enough pasta, I can't really be surprised if my vegetarian friend leaves unhappy. It is even worse if I say, "Well, you chose to leave; we all have control over our own lives."
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Sounds like they chose to not play, not that they were turned away.No. It sounds like the game was changed at the last minute to something they were not interested in. It isn't the fault of Core, but it was not a good outcome for those new players. And it is unfair to then say that they need to take their own responsibility for that.
For the new players, there was not a 'bait and switch' happening. When the 'new people' in question signed up, the table was labelled [CORE] as is our policy. They were then asked in the comments section if they noticed it was [CORE] (many people do not comprehend, some do not understand CORE, and of course some don't read the description at all) and asked if they would like to play at one of the other, non-Core tables. Given the choice, they decided 'no, I do not want to play a different non-Core scenario' and withdrew their RSVP.
This was also not a matter of turning them away at the game store, but they were given an option on our Meetup site and chose not to take it, prior to the day the event was happening.
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It's a game. If people don't want to play a game that's their own deal.
It's like complaining that the Organized Play for 5e Dungeons and Dragons doesn't offer Pathfinder. People should take ownership over their choices and stop trying to blame other people, it just comes off as whiny.
If people in a particular area want to play Core they should. It's selfish to try and force an entire group of people to play non-Core just because one person refuses to play it.
We're all trying to play a game together, and sometimes things have to change in order to accommodate everybody. The best response is to remain flexible. Instead, people respond by blaming volunteers because everything isn't being catered to their specific needs. It'd be like inviting a vegetarian over for steaks, and having pasta as an option for them. But then they whined because they actually wanted a portabello mushroom instead.
Instead of always looking to try and blame others, heaven forbid you try and have some empathy for people who are going out of their way to set up events. If you're flexible and willing to work with coordinators you'll be able to play. But stop creating obstacles for yourself and blaming other people for their existence. Stop thinking of yourself as somebody who is entitled to free entertainment and work with people in your life.
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At our shop, we run CORE on the last Thursday of the month. It's always labelled CORE or Warhorn, but new players get a little turned off when they arrive (the new ones hardly check the schedule). We always have low scenarios running (usually a 1-5) so they tend to choose to hop in and make a CORE character rather than skip out.
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Hey, bought a ticket to see star wars 7? Sorry, we're showing star wars prequel. We won't tell you this till you get to the theater. If you don't like jar jar, take some responsibility for your life.
Except it was more like... you are trying to buy a ticket a week (or several days) in advance... and at that time were reminded that this showing was for A New Hope, not the new movie, and asked if that was what you really wanted.
There was absolutely no "bait and switch", and the event was changed almost a week before the date. It was labeled very clearly, and each person that signed up was contacted though multiple channels. And those people (other than the OP) signed up well after the event was changed and clearly published) as being CORE.
On hindsight, I wouldn't do this again... rather, I'd try and find an additional GM to run an extra table. But, that's not always the easiest thing to do, get GM volunteers.
