Save/Promote the Hobby!? Use ENWorld

[Belen]

In the discussion on the prices of gaming books, we started to get into the lack of promotion that the hobby receives and how the small influx of young players entering the hobby will not sustain it in the long run:

My solution: Use ENWorld. As a collective effort, why don't we create flyers, organize game days, do local promotions, and work with game stores to hold D&D games for newbs? I think we could pull together to do this. We have enough GMs across the world to really make an impact in the local markets. For not a lot of money, we can promote the hobby. In many cases, we'd only need an info sheet, create pre-gen characters, and eat the cost of flyers to promote the game.

I think that this is something that we could organize through ENWorld. We already have Gamedays popping up around the country because of people here wanting to get together, why not take the concept further? We love this hobby and a lot of us enjoy teaching new people to game. There is a LOT of expertise here at ENWorld that we can use as a talent pool. We have people who can program excel sheets, datebases, create flyers and ads to be posted around communities, work as GMs in game stores every so often to show people the game. We could really make a difference.

The effects:

1.) Reach out to the local communities and bring more people into the hobby.
2.) Help FLGS by getting more customers in the stores

What do you all think? Would anyone be interested in making this happen?

Dave

 

[diaglo]

this is what i have been doing for welllllllll over 2 decades.

i've been pushing OD&D(1974) everywhere, every time, every place, every....

 

[BiggusGeekus]

What do you all think? Would anyone be interested in making this happen?

I'll be at Origins. I'm willing to work a shift if ENWorld has a booth there or whatever.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Got to be honest here.

I dont' have a lot of time for conventions and recruitment. That's a game for people who have time on their hands.

More power to those that want to help and all that but I think EN World is a great resource for those already playing or for those interesting in playing. Making it a recruitment branch would be great but time consuming so hats off to those who do it.

 

[Belen]

I am not talking about conventions. I am talking about putting up flyers around colleges or other local schools, community centers etc. Then running a one shot with pre-gens at a local gamestore for new players.

Or doing the same things for the ENWorld game days that pop up. The target would be teaching new people how to game. IMO, a "convention" would really scare away most people new to the hobby.

This would only work for people willing to volunteer their time and effort. Heck, using ENWorld, we could have a central source for flyers, ads, pre-gen characters, fact sheets, etc. The goal is to go out in your community and promote the game when you have the time.

 

[Hand of Evil]

The future is D&D, cutting edge medicial studies are showing the benefits of board games, strategy games, and card games have on Alzheimer’s. The more this information is made public and promoted the better the industry and hobby will be.

The only exercise that seems to help: dance.

 

[Arnwyn]

Would anyone be interested in making this happen?

Nope, not me. I couldn't care less - I certainly have no interest in what happens to "the hobby" in the long run. I'm just interested in sustaining my own group for as long as I feel like playing this game (in which a constant influx of new products is not a requirement).

 

[Ferret]

I help as best I can, more recruits for the army of darkness.

Also if you use the [bq ] tag you make highlighted block quotes (which is what you wanted, I think).

[bq]Highlighted blockquotes[/bq]

 

[punkorange]

Yeah, we will run games and demos at our FLGS, but first we have to open one (in which a couple of my groupmembers plan to try and do). The local FLGS from here is almost two hours, and I don't have time to promote somewhere other than my hometown. We will accept donations to help get our store started though, hehe

Also worth mentioning we want to have a convention, open to all ENworlders, when we do eventually get open.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

...small influx of young players entering the hobby will not sustain it in the long run:

I STILL don't believe that.

I am younger than the average ENWorlder. When I was in High School(little over a year ago now), there was a HUGE number of pen and paper players. There still is from what I hear, and I'll admit most of that is because I recruited many underclassmen to play in my games and now they're spreading the hobby.

Just because you don't SEE them doesn't mean they aren't there. One thing I've noticed is that many of the younger players don't go around on websites looking up things for D&D. Why, I know not, but its what I've seen from the many players I've brought into the hobby.

It WILL be sustained without any problem at all. People continue to discover this game just fine, and I think its foolish to think that just because you don't see the younger players here on ENWorld of all places(where the age is generally averaging around 30), they aren't there. Look at the WotC boards again.