How Do You Find Players?

[Retreater]

It's been a long time since I've had to recruit players, but slowly over the past 5-10 years, my gaming group has gone from a high of 12+ players to 2-3 reliable players.

I live in a community of around 100,000 people. The local gaming stores don't have much of an RPG presence, focusing on money makers like Magic or 40k. Posts in our area's tabletop social media groups go unnoticed. There is no organized play. The couple of coworkers who are interested in the hobby already have games they play.

Every time I've tried to play an online game, enough of the players (or GMs) are flaky and forget to show up - so we can't play.

We're at the height of popularity for the hobby, but I'm unable to find reliable players.

Do you have any recommendations?

 

[pickin_grinnin]

Have you hit all of the area social media groups in the general region?

The last time I went looking for players I put announcements on several local Facebook groups (anything within an hour drive) and Reddit groups.

 

[dragoner]

Yes, I would put ads up on social media like facebook; I'm not a big fan of it, it is what it is though.

 

[Retreater]

Have you hit all of the area social media groups in the general region?

The last time I went looking for players I put announcements on several local Facebook groups (anything within an hour drive) and Reddit groups.

I mean, I tried our immediate area's FB group for tabletop games and roleplaying. I didn't go outside the city. And I haven't looked on Reddit groups.

 

[LordEntrails]

Local players or online players? I hear Meetup is good for local players, but I haven't put together a new local group in ~10 years.

Online play, I find it pretty easy. But...
Here's how I do it, I run a bunch of one shots for various online cons. (You could also do an 'open table' game for a few months). then after you have 6-10 players that you know and like, then you reach out to them saying you want to setup a permanent campaign and find a time etc. I have one game I'm a player in that the GM did that and we've been playing for ~12 months with reliable players. I DM a game that I did that with and we are somewhere around 2 years with the same players and probably a 98% attendance rate.

 

[lordabdul]

It's the height of the hobby, yes, but a lot of it ends up happening online, it seems (I'd be curious to know if anybody tried to estimate how much online vs offline games are played... it's probably tricky).

Anyway, I think depending on your area there might be different media that gamers typically use to communicate. I know that around Vancouver here it's kind of a mess -- there used to be only a few places to check 10 years ago (or at least that was enough for me to setup a couple groups back then) but now it's all spread out from Meetups to Facebook groups to Reddit to Discord servers (all plural, yes)... so really, just search all those platforms with the name of your town.

The sad thing, I find, is that more and more of those communities are specific to a game (generally "Vancouver D&D" or "Vancouver Pathfinder") and so there's less opportunities for people to try out other games than when all LFG messages were mixed together... oh well.

A few other places that sometimes get me in contact with gamers, although it's very hit and miss: NearbyGamers, FindGamers.us, and RPGGeek.

Good luck!

 

[ccs]

I run a game at a local shop.
Overall group composition ebbs & flows a bit, on about a yearly cycle, but there's 3 regulars who form the core. And I intentionally use a lot of minis/terrain at the shop. That's largely enough - people SEE the game running & that starts the process.
There's two - three other groups running RPGs there as well.
I also play miniatures games (WWII/40k/Sigmar/X-Wing) at the same shop.
So I'm always BSing with more/new gamers.
And there's always somebody coming in looking for a group. So the shop owner points them to myself & the other groups. Depending upon what they're looking to play & the days they can play, most find a game.

For the "Home" (PF) game it's a combo of:
* letting people in an existing pool know. Including inviting any interested friends, co-workers, SOs/family.
These only need vetting by whoevers inviting them as considerable times already been spent with them.
* sometimes inviting a new player from the shop.
There's quite a few who're fine to play with at the shop but will never receive an invite to the Sunday game.
But sometimes....
So if I find someone at the shop that I think could fit, someone else from the group will drop in on the shop game for a few weeks for a 2nd opinion. Likewise for recruiting from another shop where one of the players does a lot of his minis gaming. I'm a miniature war-gamer, I can throw dice in almost any genre. So he sets up some multi-player games with the potential & lets me know what case of minis to bring.
Afterall, we're only spending 3-4 hours with these people every week/every other week.

 

[StormbringerAUS]

May not be helpful or relevent to your situation and you may already have tried it.
When I started up D&D 5E campaign when it was first came out I had not run a game for 25+ years, I was still good friends with a couple of my original group, but some Ihad not seen for that long - I reached out to be a bunch some I never heard from (Probably out of date contact details moved away etc) some not interested but 3 of them had been wanting to get back into it so with the 2 a was still friends with (Their daughter) and the other 3, we have now be playing every second Friday since. I was just lucky I guess.

 

[GreyLord]

Family and friends are a good resource for recruiting. Friends who may not show an interest in RPGs normally may surprise you if you invite them.

Other than that, if you volunteer to run games at local organizations and other places at times, you may end up with no players at some of them, but other times you may be surprised at how many show up. Things like a Church group, or the Library, or YMCA, and other locations that sometimes sponsor groups and activities. Even your local FGLS can be a good place, though it may appear that there are not many players. It could be that they just haven't had the opportunity. Devote 8 weeks to recruiting where you run a regular game at an easily accessible time (not DURING the work day for example but perhaps during a weekend or in the evening AFTER work hours and dinner). At first not many may show up but as time passes you probably could get at least a decent sized group to appear if you do a decent job DMing.

Just some ideas on how to recruit more players locally that have worked for me.

 

[jasper]

I surf the forums here and when I see an excellent poster, I send out a kidnapping team.