TheRPGSite

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.

Fairly easy to find players, but I can't always get them to stop playing the rpg's I don't really want to play.

As with Haffrung, it's finding the time with my long time group.  As far as new players, I live in Portland, and it's near impossible to find a new group of players unless I want to play 4e or PF.

I'm overflowing with players. I hate having to turn folks down, particularly new players who want to learn more about gaming, but sadly I sometimes have to.

I have *way* too many players. There are so many players in our gaming group we split into two unrelated games and have a miniature convention on a weekly basis. I wish I could accommodate everyone who has the interest, but it's just not possible.

//Panjumanju

I can whip up a group of 4-6 people scheduling a week in advance.

Quite a few people say they want to play, get psyched when you tell them you're running something, but fail to commit to show up even once. It's a Brazilian thing, really.*

* This is, after all, the country in which, when two people who haven't seen each other since forever, one utters the formula vamos marcar um chope ("let's grab a beer one of these days") and the other responds, te ligo ("I'll call you"), and both proceed to never see each other again. Might as well be saying "fuck off and die" to each other.

Quote from: Bill;741396Fairly easy to find players, but I can't always get them to stop playing the rpg's I don't really want to play.

I find it quite hard to find players. I don't know if it's me or if it's the region I'm in, but lately there seems to be a dearth of players around here.

I've joined a few Meetup groups but IME they're not really willing to respond to most games.

I've had no troubles finding groups to play with. There's a monthly games day which has been a good place to connect... as well as various Meetup groups.
Finding players to games I want to run is harder, but that's because I'm probably too picky AND I live a fair distance out of town.

Easy. More players than have time to game with.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;741400As with Haffrung, it's finding the time with my long time group.  As far as new players, I live in Portland, and it's near impossible to find a new group of players unless I want to play 4e or PF.

Hey Sacrosanct, is that the Portland Oregon area? I used to live in Vancouver about 22 years ago and played with a good group of guys. Do you know Dean VV., Casey G., Des D. or Lee P.?

I've only lived in this area for a couple of years, so I have no history of playing or running RPGs around here.
Even so, what with a busy work lifestyle and raising 2 kids and on the occasions I DO find a couple of people want to play, it often breaks down to not everyone or even most people being able to turn up due to being busy themselves.

I've kind of given up on tabletop RPGs for now.
I no longer buy new RPG material and stopped looking for players or gaming groups and I've begun to box up my RPGs and store them.

I guess it's an age thing, as people get older and take on more responsibilities, it's harder to schedule things in for all concerned.

Most likely I'll be moving on from RPGs for now and get on with other things I'm into.

One day if the opportunity presents itself I might get back into it, who knows...

Quote from: Doughdee222;741506Hey Sacrosanct, is that the Portland Oregon area? I used to live in Vancouver about 22 years ago and played with a good group of guys. Do you know Dean VV., Casey G., Des D. or Lee P.?

Yes, Portland OR, no to those names ;)

The only guy I played with from Vancouver was Kurtis T, and that was very, very briefly.

Around here, I can find a Pathfinder or D&D game at one store. At another store, there is a different RPG Meetup going on every few days that I could join. Every kind of RPG is played.

The games tend to be for killing time more than anything else. They're more distracting than high quality events. The regulars of these games don't mind the stalling and lagging style of play.

Online is a bit hard, though I have certainly found super high quality online.  

Live groups have a waiting list.  Not enough time to start another game.

Quote from: Jame Rowe;741463I find it quite hard to find players. I don't know if it's me or if it's the region I'm in, but lately there seems to be a dearth of players around here.

I've joined a few Meetup groups but IME they're not really willing to respond to most games.

Keep trying; its pretty random.

I run Sundays with the same core group I have had for 10 or so years. Wife and kids came along after we were a group so Gaming was sort of part of the package so it has not interrupted gaming to any great extent.

Wed game grows and shrinks a lot. It is hard to get people to play for only 2-2 1/2 hours on a week night. But I still chug along.

Yeah most important is always have a session unless you know there is not enough people. I will run a board game night just to keep everyone in the habit.

I think also taking a break is important. We don't play most of December due to holidays and some of us working retail. It gives us some downtime and by Jan we are all dying to play again. But most important is that it is a known, annual, planned time off.

Harder than it used to be -- in so far as I'd like to have one more player than I do for my twice-monthly sessions -- but I chalk that up to (a) having moved from Boston to a rural hilltown, combined with (b) not playing D&D.

That being said, I echo S'mon: I've long thought THE most major cause of campaigns foundering/not getting off the ground, these days, is the unwillingness of groups or GMs to set a time and play that day no matter what, without a unanimous consensus to do so.  Hell with it, just say "We're gaming at 11 AM, second and fourth Saturdays, period," and go with whomever shows up.

Quote from: Ravenswing;741651Harder than it used to be -- in so far as I'd like to have one more player than I do for my twice-monthly sessions -- but I chalk that up to (a) having moved from Boston to a rural hilltown, combined with (b) not playing D&D.

That being said, I echo S'mon: I've long thought THE most major cause of campaigns foundering/not getting off the ground, these days, is the unwillingness of groups or GMs to set a time and play that day no matter what, without a unanimous consensus to do so.  Hell with it, just say "We're gaming at 11 AM, second and fourth Saturdays, period," and go with whomever shows up.

yeah, but there are like 9 of us here from Boston to you, or more.  Not like I have any time at all, but with 9 groups, we could do an epic one shot.

Well ... Greenfield's a hundred miles west of Boston, which does make things a bit tough.  (That being the case, one of my players comes from northeast of Boston, and another comes from Worcester.  I've got me some stone fans.)

I fully agree that a weekly commitment is best for a campaign. We used to do a x2/month for an all day session and that worked nicely too for several years.

Right now, I can't commit for a weekly or a x2/month so I am back do doing monthly game days and conventions. We have a semi-commitment among the monthly OD&D players to show up monthly to play OD&D with pregens. That's a win as far as I'm concerned. There is so little actual play in the OSR.

Unfortunately, all the game store groups (CCGs, 40k, RPGs) are greying and I'm not seeing teens. The little kids of gamers sometimes tag along, maybe play some D&D or Pokemon, but teens are sadly nigh-non-existent.

Quote from: Spinachcat;741731Right now, I can't commit for a weekly or a x2/month so I am back do doing monthly game days and conventions. We have a semi-commitment among the monthly OD&D players to show up monthly to play OD&D with pregens. That's a win as far as I'm concerned. There is so little actual play in the OSR.

Really? I don't do much with the OSR except play. I thought the superior playability of old school D&D was most of the point? It being so much easier to run, to create a character, to get a game going at short notice, etc.
I'm running an OSRIC game tonight, even though I'm on vacation, because I can run it in a chatroom. Whereas my 4e & Pathfinder games take loads of prep, minis & battlemats, etc.

Quote from: Ravenswing;741651That being said, I echo S'mon: I've long thought THE most major cause of campaigns foundering/not getting off the ground, these days, is the unwillingness of groups or GMs to set a time and play that day no matter what, without a unanimous consensus to do so.  Hell with it, just say "We're gaming at 11 AM, second and fourth Saturdays, period," and go with whomever shows up.

That's why my group plays every Thursday at 20.00h for the last 15 years or so. Everybody knows the day and hour, so most of the times we're able to plan other important (?) events around it and keep that Thursday evening free.
Works as a charm!
On occasion I play with other people; it's fairly easy to get a group together, but to play on a regular basis is the most difficult part.

Quote from: The Butcher;741459I can whip up a group of 4-6 people scheduling a week in advance.

Quite a few people say they want to play, get psyched when you tell them you're running something, but fail to commit to show up even once. It's a Brazilian thing, really.*

* This is, after all, the country in which, when two people who haven't seen each other since forever, one utters the formula vamos marcar um chope ("let's grab a beer one of these days") and the other responds, te ligo ("I'll call you"), and both proceed to never see each other again. Might as well be saying "fuck off and die" to each other.

Spain is the same.

On topic: I don't play online because I have far too many more players than I could game with,.

I regularly run through the Noumenara group at meetup.com. The people I run for their are in their 20s to 30s, and usually are happy to commit to gaming twice monthly. I've also run several groups online - twice monthly seems to work best.

I really don't find players any less available than back when I was in high school in the 80s.

I work weeknights, and my family is pretty demanding during the weekend, so organizing a regular game is pretty tough, especially since a lot of my long time gaming friends have conflicting schedules and their own lives to wrangle.

I'm now looking to organize a semi-regular online game for local pals with a rotating roster of whomever can show up, and run shorter 2 or 3 hour sessions. sometimes it's easier for someone with family commitments to jump on the computer for a few hours than it is to get yourself out of the house for the better part of the day or evening.

Quote from: Spinachcat;741731Unfortunately, all the game store groups (CCGs, 40k, RPGs) are greying and I'm not seeing teens. The little kids of gamers sometimes tag along, maybe play some D&D or Pokemon, but teens are sadly nigh-non-existent.

It may depend on the area.

I live in the county seat, but it's not a large town -- 16,000, and that's a quarter of the county's population.  Nevertheless, we've got a FLGS on Main Street. (http://www.greenfieldgames.com/) It's a large, cheerful, brightly lit place, with many board and Euro games, but there are three gaming tables in back -- two relatively small, and one huge one used for Warhammer.  Teens are in there all the time, and playing other games than CCGs; my observation is that they split their numbers between Warhammer and D&D, with a Savage Worlds group as well.  The place fills up big time after school lets out, it (and the high school and jr high school) being right on a loop bus line that's what our area has for public transit.  Parents are welcome, and sometimes in evidence.

I've seen, by contrast, game stores that were hard to get to without a car, ones that were cramped, dim, dingy and filled with Cat Piss Men, ones that were starkly intolerant of non-regulars or Those Types Of Gamers.  I was a college student before I was first in a FLGS, so I never had to solicit my parents' approval to patronize this one or that solo, but I can think of several of which my parents would not have been cool with me hanging around ... and where I grew up, I'd have needed a ride to get to any of them.

Back in the California Bay Area, it would just take a few phone calls.
Here in eastern New Mexico? Incantations from the Necronomicon would have difficulty summoning a stable group.

Though I'll be honest, age seems to be more a factor, than distance.

I could easily be running three campaigns right now, with 5 players in each of them, but I just don't have the time for more than one. I've had to turn prospective players away.

I helped one batch of them get their own game underway, but I'm not sure how successful it was.

I'm also seeing a lot of WoW players who want to come into tabletop gaming, which I think is an encouraging sign. But frankly, it seems like they are so used to having their computers crunch all the numbers that they have a hard time with anything beyond the most basic systems.

Quote from: Saplatt;741942I'm also seeing a lot of WoW players who want to come into tabletop gaming, which I think is an encouraging sign. But frankly, it seems like they are so used to having their computers crunch all the numbers that they have a hard time with anything beyond the most basic systems.

This is a great pool of interested people for OSR gaming. Simple systems with little or no crunch on the player side. All they need to do is tell the GM what they want to do and go. :)

Quote from: Exploderwizard;741945This is a great pool of interested people for OSR gaming. Simple systems with little or no crunch on the player side. All they need to do is tell the GM what they want to do and go. :)

Yeah, actually - in my experience - this group (mostly high-schoolers and college kids) was a lot more responsive to older systems and had the hardest time with 3.5 and Pathfinder.

They had mixed opinions about 4e, but we never got far down that road because they still depend on more experienced players to get them jump-started, and most of the older crowd rejected 4e.

I'm from sunny Australia and it is kind of hard to find players since we're far away from the robust gaming universe that is the US. That, plus the fact that Australia is a continent - so distance IS an issue.

I do have a trusty old gaming group but would love to meet others. The only way to find other players outside of my usual gaming group is online (Thank god for Roll20 and Google Hangouts!).

PbP is easy.

Online is .... flaky.

In person? Near unpossible. In a city of over 13 million people, some amazing game shops and at least 10 players I know of, getting together cannot be done. Even online.

And these are people in their 20s without kids.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;742101PbP is easy.

Online is .... flaky.

In person? Near unpossible. In a city of over 13 million people, some amazing game shops and at least 10 players I know of, getting together cannot be done. Even online.

And these are people in their 20s without kids.

What stops this happening?

Quote from: Warthur;742104What stops this happening?

"It's late"
"I'm tired"
"I'm busy"
"I have to/want to/need to spend time with my girlfriend"
"Uhm, well, err, maybe, uh...."

Prioritising basically.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;742108"It's late"
"I'm tired"
"I'm busy"
"I have to/want to/need to spend time with my girlfriend"
"Uhm, well, err, maybe, uh...."

Prioritising basically.

Oh, so Players In Name Only then...

Too many bridges burned locally.  No point anymore in playing offline.

Would have to move to another city, to start playing offline again.

At a convention this weekend, I am seeing a lot of Pathfinder and D&D Next playtest love from people in their 20s-30s. The people interested in Mongoose Traveller and d6 Star Wars are all older (40+) and vendors or presenters who do not have the time to spare to game at the con.

Quote from: jeff37923;742366At a convention this weekend, I am seeing a lot of Pathfinder and D&D Next playtest love from people in their 20s-30s. The people interested in Mongoose Traveller and d6 Star Wars are all older (40+) and vendors or presenters who do not have the time to spare to game at the con.

Which explains part of my difficulty - I want to play SW (d6 or EotE), Shadowrun or Traveller, and most of my age range (I'm 33) and younger don't know or don't listen.

Quote from: Jame Rowe;742545Which explains part of my difficulty - I want to play SW (d6 or EotE), Shadowrun or Traveller, and most of my age range (I'm 33) and younger don't know or don't listen.

The most common answer I got from the Pathfinder organized play group when I explained Traveller and d6 Star Wars to them was, "Oh! You like Sci-Fi! You should join the Pathfinder Society because the adventures are going to be set in Numenaria next year!"

Paizo is really getting their money's worth by staying with an evergreen game system.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;742108"It's late"
"I'm tired"
"I'm busy"
"I have to/want to/need to spend time with my girlfriend"
"Uhm, well, err, maybe, uh...."

Prioritising basically.

There ya go.

People make time for what REALLY matters for them.

I know many model railroads across the country that have a once a month meet and run trains session, and have been doing so for 20 years or more.  Hell, a friend of mine runs every WEEK... as in, 45 or more times a year... and has been doing so since 1977.

"Talk is cheap, but it takes money to buy whiskey," as my grandfather used to say.

Quote from: jeff37923;742566The most common answer I got from the Pathfinder organized play group when I explained Traveller and d6 Star Wars to them was, "Oh! You like Sci-Fi! You should join the Pathfinder Society because the adventures are going to be set in Numenaria next year!"

Paizo is really getting their money's worth by staying with an evergreen game system.

Numeria, the science-fantasy bit of Golarion?

I agree with you, Jacobs and co are geniuses; they have pretty much every popular RPG genre covered on their single campaign world. It's a bit silly, but it's brilliantly done silliness. Their Other Worlds expansion even allows for pretty conventional space opera in the Golarion solar system!

Its been stupidly easy for me to find players, the whole time I've been living here.  I've never needed to lift more than a finger to get a group together for pretty well any game I actually wanted to run.  This is because there's proportionally a lot of gamers in this city, and also they are very well-connected in way that in a lot of North American cities it just doesn't seem to happen.  I think most north american cities I've been too are chock-full of little groups of 4-8 people playing RPGs that rarely or never interact with anyone else in the hobby there.  They find new players by putting up notices or searching calls for players or whatever.  
Here, it seems like just about every gamer at least peripherally knows about just about every other gamer with maybe one degree of separation; and we're talking about a community of hundreds and hundreds of people.  So if you're in that network, its stupidly simple to find people who'll want to play what you want, when and where you want.

Quote from: S'mon;742651Numeria, the science-fantasy bit of Golarion?

Possibly, I have yet to see the adventures but that makes more sense than Monye Cook's setting.

Quote from: RPGPundit;742724Its been stupidly easy for me to find players, the whole time I've been living here.  I've never needed to lift more than a finger to get a group together for pretty well any game I actually wanted to run.  This is because there's proportionally a lot of gamers in this city, and also they are very well-connected in way that in a lot of North American cities it just doesn't seem to happen.  I think most north american cities I've been too are chock-full of little groups of 4-8 people playing RPGs that rarely or never interact with anyone else in the hobby there.  They find new players by putting up notices or searching calls for players or whatever.  
Here, it seems like just about every gamer at least peripherally knows about just about every other gamer with maybe one degree of separation; and we're talking about a community of hundreds and hundreds of people.  So if you're in that network, its stupidly simple to find people who'll want to play what you want, when and where you want.

How tolerant is that network of lawncrappers, compared to those in North America?

Whilst I can't speak for North America, I've been exposed to gaming networks in London and Oxford. In London the gaming networks I've been exposed to seem very fragmentary - lots of little groups, and a plethora of small-ish clubs. I drifted away from the clubs because they seemed to have too many lawncrappers, and in general the small groups have been averse to engaging too closely with the wider hobby locally precisely because of similar bad experiences. In Oxford there is an extensive network centred on the university's RPG society which I was involved with, and there's loads of gaming going on, and whilst I liked some of the folks in that network better than others I could tolerate gaming with most of them because there was a very low tolerance for awful/harmful behaviour.

The reason I ask about how tolerant your network is of awful people is that I suspect a failure to enforce a certain minimum standard of interpersonal respect and courtesy limits the extent of network growth once they hit a certain size - whilst a tolerant "everyone welcome" approach can at least seem to be helpful when your network is at its earliest stages of growth, I think it becomes difficult later on when "everyone welcome" ends up translating to "lawncrappers/bigots/drama-loving shit-stirrers welcome", a situation which seems to inevitably start driving out your better participants.

Easy, overall. Finding quality players? A bit harder, but we have a larger gaming circle (20+), which means there's a pretty deep player pool overall. For example, right now, in our larger gaming circle, there are games of RuneQuest 6, Hackmaster, a couple of Pathfinder games, and an on-again/off-again Castles & Crusades campaign. Having Gen Con here in Indy, it sort of helps us all network and find additional gamers. It's weird, though--all of us live just NE of Indy for the most part, but the overall gaming scene here is fractured into a lot of little groups. There are a lot of gamers, but not a lot of them actively search out other gamers. Whether that's an extension of just being happy with their group or something else, I don't know.

EDIT: I will say, there are a lot of lawncrappers out there. Having a wider gaming circle, a lot of times those folks simply don't make it past someone's one-shot adventure, where it becomes clear they aren't going to be welcome company, unfortunately.

Quote from: Jame RoweWhich explains part of my difficulty - I want to play SW (d6 or EotE), Shadowrun or Traveller, and most of my age range (I'm 33) and younger don't know or don't listen.

Quote from: jeff37923;742566Paizo is really getting their money's worth by staying with an evergreen game system.

I'm hearing that Ryan Dancey quote echoing in my head again, the one about the value and importance of tabletop gamers rallying (or being subtly herded) to one generally agreed upon default system for the good of our shrunken network and withered schedules.

That's why I'm frustrated by the lack of a clear no.1 generic (i.e. non-Star Wars) space opera game on the market. Paizo would do me a huge favor if they released an ACTUAL Pathfinder Future.

Quote from: Zachary The First;742735Easy, overall. Finding quality players? A bit harder, but we have a larger gaming circle (20+), which means there's a pretty deep player pool overall. For example, right now, in our larger gaming circle, there are games of RuneQuest 6, Hackmaster, a couple of Pathfinder games, and an on-again/off-again Castles & Crusades campaign. Having Gen Con here in Indy, it sort of helps us all network and find additional gamers. It's weird, though--all of us live just NE of Indy for the most part, but the overall gaming scene here is fractured into a lot of little groups. There are a lot of gamers, but not a lot of them actively search out other gamers. Whether that's an extension of just being happy with their group or something else, I don't know.

EDIT: I will say, there are a lot of lawncrappers out there. Having a wider gaming circle, a lot of times those folks simply don't make it past someone's one-shot adventure, where it becomes clear they aren't going to be welcome company, unfortunately.

For conventions, I usually run The Cheesegrater. It is an open table dungeon crawl using Basic D&D/Labyrinth Lord, you play until you die and then just grab another pre-gen. The lawncrappers really show themselves quick. Unfortunately, they do tend to turn off the potential casual Players who just showed up to try gaming.

Quote from: RPGPundit;742724Its been stupidly easy for me to find players, the whole time I've been living here.  I've never needed to lift more than a finger to get a group together for pretty well any game I actually wanted to run.  This is because there's proportionally a lot of gamers in this city, and also they are very well-connected in way that in a lot of North American cities it just doesn't seem to happen.  I think most north american cities I've been too are chock-full of little groups of 4-8 people playing RPGs that rarely or never interact with anyone else in the hobby there.  They find new players by putting up notices or searching calls for players or whatever.  
Here, it seems like just about every gamer at least peripherally knows about just about every other gamer with maybe one degree of separation; and we're talking about a community of hundreds and hundreds of people.  So if you're in that network, its stupidly simple to find people who'll want to play what you want, when and where you want.

The network you describe matches my own experience with the boardgaming scene in my Canadian city. Gamers know other other games, and it's not hard to reach out to someone you played with once at a convention once, or ask someone to bring a friend.

RPGs, however, are a very different beast than boardgames.

* There's something more intimate and potentially awkward about roleplaying in front of strangers.
 
* Committing to a single boardgame session is one thing. Committing to a multi-session campaign is another thing entirely. Even on the boardgame front, if I propose a game that will take more than one session - even just two sessions  - the number of interested players drops dramatically.

* There's a greater variety of ways people play RPGs. My sense is fewer than half of people who play D&D would like the way I run my game, and vice-versa. I don't have that problem with Puerto Rico or Small World.

* A greater proportion of the RPGers I've met are weirdos. Only about 5 per cent of the boardgamers I've played with over the years have off-putting demeanors. With roleplayers, it's more than a third.
 
So I'm quite content to play RPGs with my group of close friends. We're not short of members, and we get along well. The only problem is time commitment. Modern families typically don't have a lot of free time in large blocks. If you live in a large city where people commute, a weeknight gaming session is hardly worth the effort. And free time on the weekends is at a premium.

Quote from: Warthur;742734How tolerant is that network of lawncrappers, compared to those in North America?

Considerably less tolerant; I would suspect precisely because gamers are not in these tiny insular groups.  

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