Is "finding the right players" a solvable problem, or just luck?

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think its just either. You can put your thumb on the scale by watching for certain traits and trying to help people lose bad ones, but you don't have an infinite number of options, and various things can narrow the ones you have, so there's some random elements that you may just not be able to get around.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Reliable?

You are talking about reliable methods of predicting the behavior of specific, poorly-known individuals.

Good luck with that.

Personally, I suspect you could have removed "poorly-known" from that and still been more right than not. One of the things that makes psychology such a difficult discipline is there are so many moving parts.

 

[Thomas Shey]

No idea.

I don't have gaming tables; I have tables of friends where we choose to play RPGs as a fun activity. If those tables decided to just do board games instead, it's RPGing that gets punted, not my friends. I'm not that attached to the hobby.

This is one of those things that can vary immensely. I've seen the sentiment before, but I've had people I've known for decades who I not only met through gaming, I don't really have any contact with outside it. We'll chat about things before the game, but barring occasionally going out to movies with them (and that was a long time ago), all our contact is gaming-related.