Quote from: _kent_;499734Two can play at that game,
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu arts student R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

I wasn't really sure if I liked you or not, until just there.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Justin Alexander;499878(I'm not saying there's anything wrong with finding fellow gamers to form a group with. But I am saying that making that your default method of finding people to play with even when it isn't working feels really problematic to me.)

If the friends thing works for you, I think that's great.  Certainly for people in their 20's or earlier, it's a viable option.

The problem is, as you get older you tend to get together with friends a lot less.  Friends move away, get married, have kids, get busy in their careers, etc.  Their tastes also change over time and you start to have a lot less in common in what you want to do with your leisure time.  I'm not saying it happens to everyone, but it's pretty common.  

Before you know it, it starts being a major effort just to keep in contact with people.  Not only is a "movie night" off the table, but just getting together for a dinner takes a month or two of planning.  Trying to get more than one together for a 3+ hour gaming session would almost require an event planner (for example, my gf has spent the last six months trying to get her friends together to no avail - the 4th of July party turned into a Christmas party which will likely become a Memorial Day party by the end; and I've spent the last 5 years trying to organize a vacation with mine only for it to always fall apart at the last minute).

Honestly I think that for anyone in their 30's or older, finding a dedicated group of gamers is the way to go because I know they will try to make time once every two weeks to come to a session.

Quote from: jgants;500869The problem is, as you get older you tend to get together with friends a lot less.

At 32, this is actually why I play games with my friends. It's an easy, open social lubricator.

I can set-up a board game night, invite 15 people, expect 4-5 to show up, and hang out with people. (If I instead tried to set plans with those specific 4-5 people, we'd probably cancel twice and then give up on it.)

I've had similar success with open tables for RPGs, although the number of my friends interested in that is a more focused group. And from that open table I've been able to "recruit" people into my regular, dedicated campaign who I would never have thought of playing with previously. (Because neither I nor they knew how interested they would prove to be; nor how dedicated they would be willing to be.)

Consistency and enthusiasm are the critical qualities I recruit people for these days. Everything else they can learn, those have to be brought to the table.

I am in the process right now of divesting myself of what has otherwise been the best gaming group I've ever been part of, because since the guy who used to DM moved away, their willingness to actually show up, and their enthusiasm for playing have been flickering out. I'm scheduling every Saturday off and playing maybe 1 in 4, without adequate prior notice of whether we are or aren't (in one notorious case, one of the guys notified us an hour before the game was supposed to start). This isn't an age thing, since these guys are my age (late 20's), and I game with a bunch of older guys (late 30's) who are more reliable.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;501073Consistency and enthusiasm are the critical qualities I recruit people for these days. Everything else they can learn, those have to be brought to the table.
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Well put.

These days I find it's good to have multiple groups at a time. Most of the people I game with are in the 35-50 age range, so scheduling games Can be tricky.