Treasure Tables » Interviewing Prospective Players So how does your group handle this? If you’ve interviewed prospective players before, what are the highlights of your approach? Would it bug you if you were…

I don’t see any reason why this interview framework souldn’t work for prospective GMs, as well — why not give it a try?

At the time, I wasn’t in a position to run a second game, or I would have with the new guy and some others in our group that would have liked to play more. (I had run the previous campaign for two totally separate groups and enjoyed it immensely.)

I guess I’m a softie on the player question. I hate to turn someone away, and hate even more to tell them that they are out, when it is nothing wrong with them. Which is strange, considering that I’m hardnosed with the players actually in the campaign.

I did interview for a game once, in my eternal quest to actually play some instead of DM all the time. It was very clear to me 15 minutes into the interview that I did not fit into that group.

Heh. What I really want is a way to interview prospective DMs to expand my group into a larger one with multiple DMs. I could easily add another 4-5 players to the mix.

Being from NY ourselves, we can especially appreciate the public place meeting. Never know what kind of people will latch onto you once they’ve been invited into your house.

As to the “bring a friend/the group” thing, it really does have to be a group decision. Not necessarily a unanimous one, but everybody needs to weigh in. We always send the 2 main DMs to the initial meet. He and I have been doing this longer than anyone else in the group, and we’ve gotten a good feel for what the group dynamic is; and we discuss everything from game rules and experience, to sports, politics, music, literature, food and beer.

But if we decide the new player is worthy, we still bring them by for a test game. You don’t buy a car without taking her for a spin, right? And at the same time, the player gets to try you all out. That way everyone has an idea of what they’re getting into.

They did the invite & watch/ create a character thing. Your method would have worked out much better.

I agree with both you and Shank; if they’re not already friends or acquaintances, an interview and a test game is the way to go. (Even if they are friends, it’d be good to introduce them to the whole group without a need to “fit in” right away. Especially so you can have player relationships develop (a little) before worrying about character relationships.)

I also once has a DM interview (prospective player wanted to interview me). That was a little odd.

I have tried to get prospective players to talk about what they want in a game, and it doesn’t always come out.

I also admit that at times I’ve been a little too desperate for players, and invited players that I probably shouldn’t have because their styles just didn’t match mine. Of course my current campaign has two players who my initial reaction was to stay away from (though in some ways it would be easier without them, but they are also some of my most loyal players and they aren’t actually destructive to the game).

Frank

Overall, I’ve found that for some strange reason, suggesting to meet before actually getting together to play tends to draw a lot less interest. Not in, “I meet them, then they’re not interested”, but rather, they just don’t even want to do the initial meet. But if you say you’re going straight into play, suddenly the floodgates open.

If I had a stable group, I’d probably be more picky in that way, but seeing how I’m doing short runs, I’m not too concerned, I’m more filtering through and meeting people and trying to decide who I’d actually want to play with for long term.

Overall though, I’ve found talking about gaming to be so much less useful than just getting to know someone personally and seeing how they operate in play.

Most people I know usually go on something like this, “Oh, I like story, more than hack-n-slash…role playing, not roll-playing…blah-blah-blah” and though every single person says the same thing in actuality, their play styles are vastly different, including being completely contradictory to whatever was said. Usually I’ve found people are so disconnected from what actually occurs in play that they are very poor judges of saying what it actually is that they really like.

So instead, I look for maturity as individuals first, and then look to see how they operate during games.