Do you find it hard to find games?

[Ahnehnois]

Thankfully, I've never had to look, seeing as how I inherited a group and have been working with various offshoots of that group since I started. I imagine if I were looking it would be hard, because the bar is pretty high for finding someone that's worth doing this hobby with, given how much goes into it.

 

[Gilladian]

I live in a fairly small town, with one FLGS. I can recruit gamers there, but the problem is that there are a few (2-3) people who regularly participate in any and all rpg games on offer up there, whom I very much dislike and would not invite into my home/game if they were the only gamers on the planet.

So when I want to refresh my pool of gamers, I tend to be very low-key about it, go hang out at the shop for a week or two, meet a few people at pick-up games, then just invite the ones I like to discuss a game away from the shop, and THEN invite them for a one-shot to get to know them better before inviting them to join a campaign.

Yes, I'm very fussy about who I game with; I've had the misfortune to game with a few really rotten people, and I won't inflict that on my husband, best friend, brother and mother willingly. They're my core game group, and they deserve my best efforts to set up a good group.

 

[saskganesh]

Well, I'm able to fill a table when I advertise among my friends that I'm GMing.

Apparently, however, it turns out I'm the only GM in Toronto. Like, the only one I know. I've tried through Meetup sites, but I can't pay people to run games that I'm able to join. I've advertised for GMs for my group with that in mind, btw, so I can play with my fave players on a given date, but no takers respond. Lots of promises from people I know, but nothing's panned out. Odd, as I'm a parent, husband, etc, and have several writing projects, and can still find the time... Meh.

According to ENworld, there are 430 gamers within 5 miles of downtown TO. You must be a very busy GM to run for 430 people.

Or no-one is gaming.

Do people really not want to DM/GM ... for money? I am astounded.

and with that, PM me, maybe we can work something out.

 

[Stormonu]

My problem isn't in finding a game, it's in keeping it going - and I'm generally the one at fault for that. My current Star Wars D6 game is on a 6-week hiatus right now. I just have been either busy with other projects (weatherizing my back porch to make into a spare war room) or been feeling too blah with the cold weather.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

It doesn't seem to work if you put in a ZIP code. I finally took it out and got some results, but only if I searched on Dallas, rather than the suburb I live in. Doing that gave me a huge number of results, even when I limited it to 5 or 10 miles, so it was fairly useless. They need to add in the ability to search by type of game within the geographic area you give it.

Okay, got it to work. Nothing going on in my current area.

I'm going to take a look at roll20 and Paizo. Any other more general sites? I'm interested in checking my options both for in-person and online. My FLGS has apparently ditched all it's RPGs in favor of comics and CCGs. *sigh*

The first site that pops up on Google (rpggamefind) is borders on offensively useless. There is no search capability, the site navigation is horrible, and I'm not even sure there is much of anything to navigate to.

 

[Oryan77]

Since I still DM 3.5 rules, it has been harder to find players since they usually look for 4e games. I don't think PF players care since the rules are so similar (and I use PF core classes converted to 3.5 anyway).

The biggest issues for me have always been the following:

1. Players that don't fit in because they are either pricks, or they want to powergame/minmax (which isn't acceptable in our group). Then they quit or are not invited back.

2. Good players that are also flaky players and eventually stop showing up because of a new interest that now takes priority over their D&D gaming.

3. A legit situation comes up that keeps a good player from being able to game (work, family, relocation, etc, etc).

It's kind of amusing to me. I'm an extremely dedicated and hard working DM. I work on my campaign every single day and have done so for 10 years. It's relaxing and fun for me. I rarely ever flake out on a game and I'm the one asking the players every week if they can make the next session. Yet, I always here people complain that there are no DMs around, or that the DMs around don't commit to a game and it fizzles out. And here I am, waving my arms around saying, "Hey, I've got a game and I'm really dedicated to running it" and it's still hard to run a regular game with a full group every other week.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

A problem I have been encountering recently that I didn't see as much in the past is people who show up but don't seem to want to actually play the game. I left a CoC game last year because half the players simply wouldn't pay attention to the GM.

 

[Lwaxy]

The not paying attention thing is probably worth a thread on its own.

Yes we would really need a dedicated site to set up games, like Roll20 of Fantasy Grounds etc have, just without the need to stick to one platform. I do not think EN World could pull this off though as quite a few players only care for getting a game and not in forum discussions, and for some reason they don't seem to manage just to ignore what they don't want to see.

 

[dd.stevenson]

A bit of flakiness is par for course with gamers in general, I find. Internet games only enables this behavior further.

However, I have had pretty good luck with my online networking. When in doubt, I just offer to run a pathfinder module for new players and then pick the best players from that game to invite to my regular group.

 

[delericho]

Do people really not want to DM/GM ... for money? I am astounded.

Speaking for myself... no thanks!

Two reasons:

- The amount you'd have to pay me to actually make it worth my while is almost certainly more than you'd be willing to pay. Because either you'd need to pay enough for me to leave my other employment (and, since there's no real job security in paid-GMing, pay contractor rates), or you'd need to pay me enough to give up a very large portion of my valuable leisure time. Either way, we're not talking a few bucks an hour.

- Much as I enjoy my job, I did find that when I started doing it as a job, it was no longer something I enjoyed in its own right. So now I draw a fairly tight division between "stuff I do for money" and "stuff I do for fun". I could probably make decent money playing my bagpipes at weddings (the going rate is £120 for half a day's work), but since that's on the 'fun' side of the equation I would actually rather not. GMing is likewise on the 'fun' side; I'd rather not move it to the other.