In your neck of the woods; that is, not by G+ or something.  Are you able to get a gaming group together on short notice? Are you regularly able to get a full group for a campaign?  Or is it very difficult?  If the latter, do you think its because of your own situation, conditions in your life? Or do you think its a regional issue about where you're located?

RPGPundit

I do okay .I've generally managed to have a couple of groups with which to play, with mixture of life long friends and new faces. It takes a bit of work to maintain this balance and one has to periodically rethink and readjust things. If I liked D&D getting games would be trivial, I could probably play every day of the week if I really wanted to.

The catch is that in all of these groups I am not the only GM. So while I'm confident I can get some gaming going I may not necessarily the one who ends up be running the game. That's not all bad. At the moment, having run a lot of game last year, I'm enjoying taking a break form the GM role.

Its a little bit difficult for me, but I think its more my situation than anything.

I work for a company in Japan, though I do not live there, and I work a lot. So most of my socialization is with work colleagues. Who live all around the globe. Great people though.

I still have about 10ish people though in my gaming circle, from old friends to my brother, to my wife, to friends of friends. But I've had to cut down who I do ongoing games with because of scheduling issues (my wife is a hospital secretary with a set 3-9pm every weekday schedule, one of my oldest friends works retail so hardly has a weekend off, etc.)

I manage to play about 2 times a month if I'm lucky, board games more because it matters less who can show up and who can't.

I occasionally worry about it, but I've been at the London D&D Meetup since June 2008, an organiser (the most active organiser) since I think 2010, and the scheduler since Sept 2012, so I'm probably in one of the best positions in the whole world for getting players. :cool: I was able to start Beginners Tuesday and get 40 or so players attending weekly; recruiting GMs is far more a challenge when there are usually large numbers of GM-less players eager to play.
It can still be a bit of a worry getting a brand new campaign off the ground, if I'm not rolling over a group from a previous campaign. I had to commit to my Curse of the Crimson Throne Pathfinder campaign when I only had 2 players, for instance, luckily I got three before starting the game. I guess if I were more active in PMing former players from other campaigns rather than hope they spot my board advert I'd be safer.
BTW I used to worry about lack of demand if I ran OSR/old school, in practice that is not the case at all, there is a lot of specific demand for simpler games, and a lot more players who don't care about the system and just want to play. Probably more of the latter than there are hardcore powergamer types, who mostly play PF/3e.
My current fortnightly campaigns are
1) 4e D&D Loudwater (since April 2011) which started by me taking over the group of a GM who kept cancelling sessions - the group was better than the GM.
2) Pathfinder Curse of the Crimson Throne (since Jan 2014) which was cold-recruited off the message board; three of the four current players had played with me before, one as far back as 2004.
I'm also running Rise of the Runelords weekly using AD&D/OSRIC on Dragonsfoot via text chat. My next tabletop game I intend will be the same, a Pathfinder AP converted to OSRIC or similar, but I may not be starting it until 2016, after at least one of the current campaigns has finished. It will be my first time running a full tabletop campaign with old school rules since the '90s, but I think it should work.

The key to a successful campaign IME is definitely to set a schedule and stick with it; no cancelling just because a player flaked, and definitely no cancelling by the GM. Inability to commit a regular weekly or fortnightly schedule is IME by far the most common source of campaign failure. The GM who tries to schedule around all his players' other priorities will usually fail. Even worse is the GM who puts the campaign a lower priority than his other social activities.
Conversely, a player missing a session is no big deal and can easily be worked around.

Out here in Singapore there is no RPG store. There is a game store that has some rpg related stuff and there are book shops with RPG books.

But I used Meet up and then after some banter round 4e games basically pitched a something other than 4e game at anyone interested. I now have a set group of 4 players. We only play bi weekly though as I have a job and a wife and kid so needs must.
The guys would play every weekend no doubt so its me that puts the brakes on.

 The players I have are new to RPGs. So the side effect is I will always be DMing and I can use the whole thing as an extended play test of my heartbreaker. Trying new stuff and mixing the pot a bit looking for a perfect balance.

I think I could find another group using meet up very easily and if I leave Singapore maybe for the US or whereever I would definitely use it again to build another group.

I think I could get a DnD game going in probably under a day (though it's not my preference) and I could probably get anything else reasonably popular in a few days (Shadowrun, WoD, SW).  It might take me a week to get something less popular going.  I have had a few dry spells since moving to this area because a slight majority of my players are military and it's happened that almost everyone transferred at similar times.  All of these would probably be around 6 players.

More than anything else, having kids has made gaming the hardest, though the wife being a gamer helps.  Sometimes only one of us can game due to babysitter issues however.  Once the kids get older I intend to bring them into the fold, if they desire.  I have had to cancel my current game (as a player) due to some scheduling issues related to the kids, though I am shortly going to start another on a different night and there is another couple with kids we are working on gaming with, so we can bring the kids to the game without driving non-parent players nuts.

The second biggest hassle is I live very rurally and though I have a dedicated gaming space, either I/we have to travel 30+ minutes to a local gaming shop or the players have to travel to me.  This hasn't been as big a deal as I thought it might and I have had weekly games for decent periods of time at my place because of the dedicated gaming space being available (though I do have gamer friends who can't or wont' travel that far).  It could also perhaps be that I am almost always willing to GM if desired (and as I have noted in at least one other thread, I often end up doing it anyway).

I could probably swing a game with a few days notice at a central point with good public transport. So many folk I know don't have cars and those that do have family commitments/new borns. I could get a game together but they wouldn't be the A-team.

Getting the A-team, the core group I've gamed with for the better part of a decade, together takes careful planning these days. We manage once a month.

Family commitments, and to a lesser extent distance (1 hr drive each way) makes it hard to get the A-team together. For the public transport reliant B-team its all about a central location.

Not terribly difficult around here. I have one group of friends, some of whom I have been gaming with for 26 years or so and we have a regular bi-weekly game.  I meet on the off weeks with some folks I met through the FLGS.

Then there is the the weekly Tues night game at the FLGS with some other folks I met there. This is the gang I really get my old school gaming fix with these days. I run OD&D and another person in the group runs AD&D 1E and we switch on and off every few months.

There are also regular posts by folks on the FLGS message board looking to start groups, or people looking to join groups, so I'm sure I could easily get into more games if I had the time for them.

Between existing gaming friends and reaching out to interested newcomers I could fairly easily put a group together. Main challenge would be scheduling since I already have 3 on the go...

I've never, ever had a problem pulling a large number of players in for the AD&D games I've run publicly.  For the home games it's pretty easy since I have lots of gamer friends...

I've been blessed to have been playing with nearly the same group since I've started almost 30 years ago.  

That being said, if for some reason if the game stopped, I don't know if I'd try to continue on with it or not.  I know in the past when the group dissolved, we'd just take an extended break from it.  

Although it doesn't seem like it, "all you need is paper, pencil, dice and your imagination!!!", rpg's are a pretty intensive hobby.

The group isn't the problem. I have a group of 4-5 mostly lifelong friends who I enjoy playing with. The problem is finding the time. We're lucky if we can find one Saturday night a month when the minimum quorum of four players is available.

It's a modern lifestyle (or rather parent) thing. My buddy's dad wants to have all the 'boys' over to his basement bar for some pints (he's known us all since we were kids). He's been asking for months and months, and thought he was getting the cold shoulder. My buddy had to point out to him that the guys get together as a group maybe three times a year. His dad and his buddies got together every Saturday night.

I blame the social norms around parenting today, and the dramatically increased expectations of parents to attend, assist, fundraise, and transport their kids - even teenaged kids - to all their leisure and sports activities.

Quote from: S'mon;741316The key to a successful campaign IME is definitely to set a schedule and stick with it; no cancelling just because a player flaked, and definitely no cancelling by the GM. Inability to commit a regular weekly or fortnightly schedule is IME by far the most common source of campaign failure. The GM who tries to schedule around all his players' other priorities will usually fail. Even worse is the GM who puts the campaign a lower priority than his other social activities.
Conversely, a player missing a session is no big deal and can easily be worked around.

This needs to be highlighted again, and again, and again. The show must go on, or the show won't go on at all.

I'm running a campaign once every two weeks for the last year or so. The key factor is that we are all in agreement that as long as I have a couple players, the session is a go.

I'll parrot the stick-to-a-schedule mantra. It makes planning ahead easier and also allows for the build-it-they-will-come effect. Don't cater to the time whims of the flakes, as they will *always* let you down. Better to identify out the more motivated players and plan with them.

I live in downtown Toronto and there's a likely few thousand gamers who live nearby and thousands more who would like to play tabletop but really haven't had the opportunity. Adult schedules are the biggest challenge to maintaining the game.

There's always going to be a degree of player churn, so I am always kinda recruiting. I farm this out my players as well. We've done pretty well for the past 3 years. One fellow who played in his first game yesterday I first spoke to two years ago. I don't think he's played anything at all for 20. And now he's a Half Elf thief.

I currently have three parents in my group. One of my logistical tricks is to play at their houses.