Treasure Tables is on hiatus as of December 13th, 2007. After two years of daily posts, I needed a break; that break might turn out to be permanent. In the meantime, I invite you to check out the hundreds of GMing articles in TT's archives, and to join our friendly, active GMing forums. If you're a longtime TT reader, thank you for your support. If you're new to the site, welcome -- there's plenty of GMing advice here to keep you busy! -- Martin

Ways to Find RPG Players

Whether you’re a GM or a player, at some point in your gaming career you’ll find yourself looking for a group, or in a group that’s looking for new players. It’s part of being a gamer, and unfortunately it can be a frustrating process.

I created this page to try and make that process easier for GMs. These are the best tools and resources for finding players that I’ve come across, and I hope they’re helpful to you.

NearbyGamers

NearbyGamers is a free player matching tool based on Google Maps. You join, add yourself to the map, flag your profile with tags based on the games you like, and you’re off.

The map shows little pins for everyone who’s part of the site — and there are a lot of members, which is one of the things that sets NearbyGamers apart.

The RPG community needs one solid, broad-based site for finding players, and if enough gamers sign up, I think NearbyGamers could be that site.

Ten Ways to Find Players

Created as part of TT’s collaborative Wiki-to-PDF Project and released for GM’s Day 2007, this free PDF offers tips for finding players, interviewing them and using a trial period to make sure they’re a good fit for your group.

Download Ten Ways to Find Players & What to Do Next (272 kb PDF)

Player Interviews

Once you’ve found a new player, it’s a good idea to conduct an informal interview to make sure that they’re a good fit for your group, and vice versa.

Interviewing Prospective Players offers plenty of guidelines on how to make this process go smoothly. Give it a shot — you might be surprised how well it works.

Other Player-Finding Tools

Here are a variety of online resources for finding players:

• Access Denied (player database)
• craigslist (general classifieds)
• DnD Contact Worldwide Yahoo! Group (D&D-specific)
• Gamer Gatherings forum (on RPGnet)
• Gamers Seeking Gamers forum (on EN World)
• Google Groups (search in your area)
• Meetup.com (general meetup site)
• RPG Gamer Classifieds (Wizards of the Coast)
• RPGcontact Yahoo! Group (tons of links to local groups)
• RPG Registry (player database)
• Yahoo! Groups (search in your area)

I’ve tried several of these sites with mixed results, but you might have better luck than I did. Whatever approaches you take, the important thing is not to give up: cast a wide net, and try not to get fed up if nothing pans out at first.