Treasure Tables is on hiatus as of December 13th, 2007 -- after two years of daily posts, I needed a break. If you're looking for GMing material, I have two recommendations: the hundreds of posts in TT's archives, and my new project, the multi-author GMing blog Gnome Stew. Happy GMing! -- Martin

Looking for Players?

Mon. March 19, 2007 

After exchanging a few emails with Peter Harkins, who runs NearbyGamers, I created a new page called Ways to Find RPG Players. It collects a range of player-finding tools and resources in one spot, with NearbyGamers front and center.

This is an evergreen topic for gamers in general, and for GMs in particular. Everyone has had to find a new group after they moved, or lost a player or two to work or school and needed to bring new folks into their existing group.

I highlighted NearbyGamers as the featured resource because I think that with enough members (and over 450 have signed up in the past week) this site could become the destination for finding players — and that would benefit the whole gaming community.

If you know of any player-finding resources that I missed, I hope you’ll share them with me in the comments.

More posts about: Players, TT Info and News, Tools

Comments

7 Responses to “Looking for Players?”

  1. VV_GM on March 19th, 2007 6:09 am

    I see you included FindPlay on your site and that is usually my first stop since moving to a rural area north of Chicago (it was so much easier finding players in the city obviously). I have already received an email from someone thanks to NearbyGamers, unfortunately it was for a GM whose game I left because it was bad. Yet that I’m sure is just the first of many emails to come. I think with these two sites it will be a lot easier to find people.

    I’ve had moderate success with business cards left at comic shops and FLGS. Over time I have learned to keep any postings, flyers, or cards system neutral. You get better results if you just talk about your group and schedule. If you mention a system sometimes the result is that potential players think “I don’t play that game.” and never bother to contact you. If it is a system neutral solicitation they are more likely to contact you thinking “Maybe they play my game?”. Since I encourage rotating GMs and multiple game systems I offer new players the opportunity to bring their favorite system with them. So we end up with a new player and a new game.

  2. Martin on March 19th, 2007 8:25 am

    I love the idea of FindPlay, and I signed up as soon as I learned about it. The problem I’ve run into is that it seems to be down as often as it’s up. If memory serves, it was down for several months last year, and that just doesn’t cut the mustard.

    Your point about system-neutral postings is a good one — wondering if “We play D&D” on a notice means “We only play D&D” lowers the chances that I’ll respond.

  3. Peter Harkins on March 19th, 2007 9:22 am

    The biggest reason I added forums was so that you could talk to someone and maybe they’d be near enough that y’all should find a common game.

    There are wide-open tags like “story games” floating around now, and the profile section exists just so you can say “Hey, I’m up for anything involving dice”, so hopefully everybody finds a good game.

    Thanks for the kind words, Martin. I’m hoping NearbyGamers is not only good for gamers, it grows gaming. I know I haven’t played for years because I haven’t had anyone to play with, and I figure there must plenty of other folks in the same situation.

  4. Telas on March 19th, 2007 12:51 pm

    Forums and group/lists.

    Yahoo and Google groups are great places for finding existing groups, or even individual gamers. Search for RPG and your town, and check out the groups you get.

    Also, a number of forums have “find a game” sections (ENWorld, WotC, etc), divided by state and/or city.

    Telas

  5. links for 2007-03-20 at James A. Arconati on March 19th, 2007 11:29 pm

    [...] Looking for Players? - Treasure Tables After exchanging a few emails with Peter Harkins, who runs NearbyGamers, I created a new page called Ways to Find RPG Players. It collects a range of player-finding tools and resources in one spot, with NearbyGamers front and center. This is an evergreen (tags: rpg rpg/d&d reference blogs) [...]

  6. Steve S. on March 22nd, 2007 8:10 am

    To echo Telas comment there are plently of Yahoo Groups for local group as there are a number of them to find local players.

    DnD Contact Worldwide
    This is the place to find Dungeons and Dragons players in your area. Members: 2701 as of 3/22/2007
    http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/DnDcontact/
    It also has state based DnDContact, in some cases county based DnDContact and groups for other nations.
    I have help to add a number (100+) link of a local group nature to this group and the following group:
    RPGcontact
    A nationwide group to contact other to play RPGs
    http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/RPGcontact/
    Only 32 members but has 100+ links to local and game-focused groups. I will add a link to Don Mappin’s blog about the UtahRPG list. (There is a Game-Utah Y!group listed there [59 members] if you are interested.)
    Yahoo membership is not generally required to join a Yahoo Group as you can join via email but you won’t have access to databases, files, links, etc. just function as a list basically. Both of the above Y!groups have contact databases.

  7. Martin on March 23rd, 2007 8:16 am

    I’ve added Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups and the Dnd and RPG Contact groups to Ways to Find RPG Players. Thanks for the links, Telas and Steve!