How do you curate your online groups as a DM?

[MarkB]

Why not recruit from Enworld? Aren't we the greatest collection of D&D players to ever assemble on the internet???

We do have a forum for that. It's never super-active, but it works for some people.

 

[TheSword]

We do have a forum for that. It's never super-active, but it works for some people.

To be honest, it’s less finding the people. The game I’m looking to run would be very popular. Unfortunately it would be highly susceptible to abuse.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Back in the days when I occasionally had players join in from the local (relatively large) game club, I'd just let them do some special-visitor things in an extent campaign, and get a feel for them. If they didn't work out, or bailed, no great loss.

 

[johndesmarais]

As several others has said, one-shots are a great way to see if new players are a good fit at your table.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Fantastic question!

I wrote an article about this called Interviewing New Players for Online Games. It offers a four-phase way of narrowing down players who fit your style, like your types of games, and give you a chance to play with them before a big commitment. It's a lot of work – making any great RPG group is the hardest part of the hobby – but hopefully it can help.

 

[bloodtide]

It is just like a live in person game.

Meet the person and talk to them and get to know them a bit and try to get a go feel for what kind of person they are.

I look out of all the 'cool buzz words' myself.

Really you just need to play a game with the people. Treat any new player as a temp.

What you really have to do is find five players and play a game.....quickly find four are not right and dump them. Then make a new new game with player five and four new players.

It takes time...but soon enough you can get a solid group.