Finding new players

[badger2305]

For some time now, I've heard people say in various places and in various ways, something like this: "I used to have a great gaming group in college and now I can't find any players." (This is sometimes accompanied with sighs and groans.)

This seems weird to me. Maybe because I was a community organizer for a dozen years, but finding new players has not been difficult for me. What I am interested in are ways in which people have found new players, and built successful gaming groups. If we get enough good answers we could build a guide for others on How to Do It.

What's worked for you, particularly if you want to introduce people to OD&D and other "old school" games?

[carjack]

If you have a local con or game gathering, run events for OD&D and see who you get. This can be a great way to "try out" players to see if you like them well enough to want to be in a group with them. My current group sat in on two or three of my local con games until we all just finally started to game together on a regular basis.

If you have no local game gathering in your community, start one! I helped start a very successful game gathering that meets about 4-6 times a year at our local library. A big bonus for our gathering is it is free of charge. (Check to see if your library has a community room that they allow non-profits to use for free. That's what ours does and it has been a huge boon!) Post flyers, put a note about it in your sig line on whatever message boards you post to and start a yahoo group or something similar to help organize and promote it. We've had a lot of new game groups form out of meeting at these gatherings.

Also pay attention to where people are from on message boards. You sometimes will find you have a conclave of players in your area that you post to the same boards with!

[badger2305]

carjack said:

If you have a local con or game gathering, run events for OD&D and see who you get. This can be a great way to "try out" players to see if you like them well enough to want to be in a group with them. My current group sat in on two or three of my local con games until we all just finally started to game together on a regular basis.

That's a good way to do things. And if you don't have a local con, then consider starting one. It can be simple - a one day event, charge a minimal amount to cover your expenses, and get a bunch of GMs to sign up with their event in advance and use that to advertise.

If you have no local game gathering in your community, start one! I helped start a very successful game gathering that meets about 4-6 times a year at our local library. A big bonus for our gathering is it is free of charge. (Check to see if your library has a community room that they allow non-profits to use for free. That's what ours does and it has been a huge boon!) Post flyers, put a note about it in your sig line on whatever message boards you post to and start a yahoo group or something similar to help organize and promote it. We've had a lot of new game groups form out of meeting at these gatherings.

And if not at your local library, your local community college, college, or university. Forming a student club to get rooms is a proven way to set up a club. And make sure you advertise - you will always want to bring in new players.

Also pay attention to where people are from on message boards. You sometimes will find you have a conclave of players in your area that you post to the same boards with!

Yup. These are all good. They all require a little effort, but as long as you make sure to use the "reporter's W's" - who, what, when, where, how, and why - in your promotional materials, you should be good.

Thanks!

What other successes have people had?

[carjack]

Oh, and I forgot one more: Don't be afraid to let your geek flag fly. T-shirts with gaming phrases or jokes on them can be a good way to casually advertise your hobbies and can strike up conversations. I often get comments while wearing my "Curmudgeons & Dragons" or "Grognard" shirts.

[jdrakeh]

badger2305 said:

This seems weird to me.

It will seem a lot less weird if you find yourself with a family and a 40+ hour a week job (provided, of course, that those things take precedence over gaming, as they should). I just have the job and that alone has limited my freetime severely. If you lump in my responsibilites as a supporter of various non-profit groups, daily chores, and bank account balancing -- I have just enough time to watch a movie once or twice a week (if I'm lucky).

[badger2305]

jdrakeh said:

badger2305 said:

This seems weird to me.

It will seem a lot less weird if you find yourself with a family and a 40+ hour a week job (provided, of course, that those things take precedence over gaming, as they should). I just have the job and that alone has limited my freetime severely. If you lump in my responsibilites as a supporter of various non-profit groups, daily chores, and bank account balancing -- I have just enough time to watch a movie once or twice a week (if I'm lucky).

I hear what you're saying, but that's not exactly what I'm getting at. I'm in a PhD program, in a long-term relationship, and volunteer myself for two different non-profits as a member of the board of directors, so I'm not speaking from a position of a lot of free time, myself. And I understand that having enough free time can be an issue.

People in similar positions to you find ways to have a regular "poker night" or watch football on Sunday afternoons, so making the time isn't the issue, or so it seems to me. Even so, making enough time available is an issue to be dealt with on a personal level.

What I'm talking about more so than that is the difficulty that some people seem to encounter in finding other players, once that free time is shaken loose. That's what seems odd to me. A little patience and a bit of work ought to result in fellow gamers being found, or so it seems to me.

[Deleted]

All the above methods sound pretty good to me. I just happened to be blessed by the fact that 99.9% of my life-long friends enjoy the hobby, so finding players has never been an issue. To be honest, I've never had to advertise for players (I've answered them, however), but, in our apartment complex (in the laundry room, of all places), I just noticed a flyer for a 3rd. ed. game on Tuesday nights: only (2) tags were left, so apparently, this method works (I'm not interested, though). Some bookstores (even big chain stores), have a community board, so maybe try there. Or hobby shops, even those that don't sell R.P.G.'s (like model train stores); I've answered ad's at those, too.

And yes, take the advice of carjack: never be afraid to let your "Geek Flag" fly--it's your hobby: who cares what anyone thinks!!

[Finarvyn]

In general, I don't think it's hard to find players. They're out there. I constantly find people in bookstores browsing RPG materials and start conversations -- most of them seem to be interested in playing. And just striking up conversations with non-gamers, often they will express the interest to give the game a try. I'm constantly turning players away becasue I don't have time to run a game. (My son's friend wanted to play, and then his dad piped up with "hey, if you run a game let me know, too.") I'd say that it seems to be a lot harder to find anyone willing to GM on a regular basis.

I suspect that the problem is the "good old days" issue, where people fondly remember their high school days when they had all this free time and could play every weekend for hours. Now I have a job and kids and commitments such that playing regularly is difficult.

So ... I bet that when most people say they can't find players it doesn't have much to do with not being able to find willing participants. Maybe I'm wrong about this?

[greentongue]

Yes, I would have to agree. Finding people that were available for the exact same time you are, for the same length of time, consistantly, that is far more of a challenge then finding interested people. It only gets harder with each additional player added.

This is one of the main reasons I have turned to "On Line" games.

Also, Play by Post games are asyncronous, so that everyone doesn't have to meet together at the same time. (Their biggest issue is maintaining interest.)
=

[carjack]

I would definitely agree. One of my biggest hurdles for gaming was "When do I have the time?" Thing was, I did have the time, I just hadn't realized it.
I found I was still in the "all-day Saturday epic crawl" mindset leftover from high-school and college. I found I needed to schedule my gaming like an adult and not a teenager. That meant short sessions (3-4 hours) on a weeknight, because any of you that are married know that you often require the weekend for family and life in general. This means less "oh I have to cancel this week" and more " So, you're in the well-room. You smell a rank odor as a slimy tentacle reaches out for you from the darkness...".

It also meant finding a game that I could get around quickly without a lot of bookwork. OD&D can fit that role perfectly, if you let it. Once you have your initial dungeon set up, you can let it have a life of it's own and it will only require minor maintenance now and again.

Now, because my gaming schedule fits into my life as it is now, I'm getting faaaar more gaming done than I ever did as a teenager.

[badger2305]

carjack said:

I would definitely agree. One of my biggest hurdles for gaming was "When do I have the time?" Thing was, I did have the time, I just hadn't realized it.
I found I was still in the "all-day Saturday epic crawl" mindset leftover from high-school and college. I found I needed to schedule my gaming like an adult and not a teenager. That meant short sessions (3-4 hours) on a weeknight, because any of you that are married know that you often require the weekend for family and life in general. This means less "oh I have to cancel this week" and more " So, you're in the well-room. You smell a rank odor as a slimy tentacle reaches out for you from the darkness...".

It also meant finding a game that I could get around quickly without a lot of bookwork. OD&D can fit that role perfectly, if you let it. Once you have your initial dungeon set up, you can let it have a life of it's own and it will only require minor maintenance now and again.

Now, because my gaming schedule fits into my life as it is now, I'm getting faaaar more gaming done than I ever did as a teenager.

(nods) That's true for me as well. I find it is a lot easier to plan an evening for gaming than to take ALL DAY SATURDAY for gaming. Conceivably, I could make a Saturday afternoon free on a regular basis - but there's a lot competing for that time.

That having been said, I have fond memories of spending Tuesday evenings at the U of MN student union gaming quite happily. Because it was not at home, and had a closing time, there was a definite end to each session, and without all of the other distractions that can be found in any home. YMMV, of course.

[crimhthanthegreat]

All of the guys in my original group have from 5-7 children each and all of our kids have 4 or more children and the great-grand children are starting now. Most our families live close by, it's that Scottish clan thing and our families moved here from the Mountains. So we just raise our own players for the most part.

[dwayanu]

My getting back to D&D started with running into one of the old local AD&D DMs. Turned out he'd been converted to TETSNB, so it looked as if I'd have to sucker someone else by taking up the mantle myself. Along the way, I dug up my once-familiar D&D frame of reference. My view now is more like, "Advanced? We don't need no stinking Advanced ..."

The FLGS was far from hostile when I broached the notion of borrowing a couple of their tables for one of my homebrewed Napoleonic wargames with1/72 scale plastic models (which they don't carry).

My "plan A" is to post a notice on the shop's bulletin board and then show up ready to "open the dungeon doors." If no players turn up, I'll take the time to add to the mapped and keyed levels (or else get updated on "Magic" or "40K" or whatever).

In the past, I've found a "first come first seated" plan quite suitable. Someone who pops up once we're underway gets to play monsters.

With OD&D, we can be in deep trouble while the modernists are pondering their "character builds."

Someone who gets hooked on OD&D (or 1st ed. Metamorphosis Alpha, or Classic Traveller, or 2nd. ed. RuneQuest) probably won't be buying many "D20 System" books. On the other hand, someone hooked on FRP is more likely to buy models, paints and so on than someone who got turned off by the latest fad in rules-sets.

[serendipity]

crimhthanthegreat said:

All of the guys in my original group have from 5-7 children each and all of our kids have 4 or more children and the great-grand children are starting now. Most our families live close by, it's that Scottish clan thing and our families moved here from the Mountains. So we just raise our own players for the most part.

That is soooo the way to do it! If you raise them in an atmosphere of gaming, they don't know any other life. My niece and nephew began by sitting with the gaming group and rolling dice (sometimes for no reason, sometimes for a particular action someone was taking). As they got older, they slowly got put in positions of more gaming responsibility until they became gamers in their own right. Now just try to stop 'em from gaming! Next step: to lure them into DMing. After that, trying to sneak them into a position of power on a board of directors....

--Sere