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Qucalion of Celene
Sergeant
932 Posts
    
Salt Lake City, Utah
 | | 11/28/2006 9:54 PM |
| I'm working on getting a new gaming group together and I was thinking of the different ways of collecting my players.Â
One way was getting my friends that I know who play and seeing if they want to get together. This is a simple, time-proven way of getting people together, but you don't necessarily know if they will work together.
Another way which worked for a group I joined the Dungeon Master held interviews for his potential players. He found them on a web site that listed players and then contacted them individually. He then met with each of them and got to know them and decided if they would work together. While this is the most time consuming method, it worked fairly well  . . . for the most part.
So . . . my question is this . . .
What methods do you use to find your players?
If you use the Interview method, where do you find your players and what questions do you ask?
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Qucalion of Celene
Master Champion of the Dice Tale[http://dicetales.kuglerworld.com/]
Ringleader of the Magical Mystery Trade
Conductor of the MaxMinis Commuter Trade
Official Wizards of the Coast Delegate
King of the Caveats
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realmaster
Underboss
1952 Posts
Home of the 2002 Winter Olympics
| | 11/28/2006 10:00 PM |
| | I used to play with a DM that answered dm wanted adds and he told me horror stories about the weird players he talked with to get a group together and vowed never again will he go that route. | |
Thanks, realmaster. Let's split up!!!!!
RIP Gary Gygax 1938-2008
Unhallowed vindicated champion: van richten
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yack
Commander
3152 Posts
Ottawa, Canada
| | 11/29/2006 4:15 AM |
| I stick to friends and people from Flgs..... its just a game. That sounds like too much work up above.
But once you get hold of great group, grip onto them with your claws for dear life.  | |
Champion of the Peryton
Vindicated Champion : Pit Fiend, Devourer
ATG: Fog Giant
DW: Duergar Priest
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Soup13
Sneak
51 Posts
NL Canada
| | 11/29/2006 7:42 AM |
| I'm very lucky a core group sprung up around 2 years ago, and though ppl come and go over time, nobody gets in without the prior approval of at least 2 other long term members.
So a new guy needs a sponser so to speek with a second, and so far it has worked wonders. Ealry on when we didn't have this in place we ended up with a few chuckle heads .... who slowed things down a bit.
Dude 1) new the game preaty well but had no interst in roleplay at all and just wanted to attack stuff, when he did roleplay it was painful (no big issues with guy)
Dude 2)Â was in cadets growing up and as such thought he was some kind of genreal, yet came up with the worst battle plans ever, most involved the rest of party charging while he shot his bow into melee.
Dude 3) DM at the times brother in law, joined as lvl 12 wizard, who had never read the spell lisitngs !!! Can you imagine how much this slowed down combat.
After that debachery we came up with the current method of bringing in new ppl.
Cheers
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Champion of Mirt the Money Lender
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gss_000
Commander
3204 Posts
Baltimore, MD
| | 11/29/2006 9:36 AM |
| | I've also been lucky in that I have a central group that has been playing together for 7 years. However, I also play a lot of LG and that has been a great "interview" as well. You meet a lot of different players and you see how they interact with others and their gaming styles. If someone lives close to me, seeing how they playn a mod is like a 4 hour interview for whenever we need someone. | |
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For further info go to My Reference Thread and Trade Interface
Champion of Radiant Sevant | |
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Oryan77
Sergeant
954 Posts
| | 11/29/2006 11:40 AM |
| I've done the whole meeting people from website ads. It's the only way I could keep DM'ing.
I've had to blow through about 3 different groups, so I've met a lot of players from online ads.
My current group was put together over the summer and so far they are great. Not the biggest roleplayers, but that's ok, they are having a blast and are dedicated to playing as often as possible which is all I can hope for 
But if you meet people from the internet, it's going to be painful. But it's worth it, you just have to keep at it until you get a solid crew.
You name the stereotype, I've met him. And even when someone seems cool when you meet him, he may turn out to be a huge hassle to game with. But it doesn't matter as long as you are patient enough to keep trying until you get a good group.
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Star
Sergeant
978 Posts
New Britain, CT
| | 11/29/2006 6:18 PM |
| | However I meet a new prospective player - friend, someone I meet at the FLGS or over the internet - I usually invite them to play one game (usually as an NPC) and see how they work out. You get to see their roleplaying style, personality and teamwork ability. I suppose it's an interview of sorts, but an informal one. | |
Champion of Gromph Baenre | |
| Knight of Argenis
Corim Danex
Warlord
6594 Posts
West Valley City, Utah
| | 11/30/2006 11:31 PM |
| My challenge now is figuring out how to juggle all the players that could play in my group. Corbett and his brother Nathan just bought some books to start playing. They are learning the basics right now. I have no idea if the two of them would be interested in playing in your group.
I know what you mean about striking the right balance of players. It can be a sticky situation trying to figure out what to do with a person who doesn't fit one's gaming style. | |
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Champion of Something, I imagine I will think of something
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Bert the Troll
Commander
3829 Posts
Adelaide
| | 12/03/2006 6:45 PM |
| Posted By Star on 11/29/2006 6:18 PM
However I meet a new prospective player - friend, someone I meet at the FLGS or over the internet - I usually invite them to play one game (usually as an NPC) and see how they work out. You get to see their roleplaying style, personality and teamwork ability. I suppose it's an interview of sorts, but an informal one.
I do simialar.. kind of a probation
I run two different groups, and sometimes think that player A would be better in group B but too late to change.
Fortunatly I have never had to cold canvas players from ads or the like. I have meet poeple at con or and invited them for a game. | |
"Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don't look like mutton again tomorrer." Bert the Troll - The Hobbit
Semi-Secret sig business: Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason. ~ Seinfeld
Champion of Epic Lolth, Orcus, & Demogorgon and bring us Asmodeus! | |
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YRM_DM
Sergeant
902 Posts
| | 12/06/2006 8:15 AM |
| You name the stereotype, I've met him. And even when someone seems cool when you meet him, he may turn out to be a huge hassle to game with. But it doesn't matter as long as you are patient enough to keep trying until you get a good group.
LoL.
If you get a chance, describe a few of the stereotypes.
I've mostly only gamed with my current group, but, at conventions, I've gamed with players that I'd say are comparable to those in my group, but I've met some really odd, probably insecure, overcompensating gamers, these guys will debate almost violently about changing a horse from 5x10 to 10x10... really lazy gamers (I mean, sure, it's just a game... but if you play poker, you have to know what the cards are and what hands win right? I mean you have to put SOME effort into gaming.)
Once we had a guest NPC/PC in our gaming group.
To start, I provided the guy with 2 pages of bullet points so that his "guest" NPC (which he approved) could have important story points to share with the PCs.
We were doing a trial run to see if he liked our style and vice versa, so he'd agreed to play an NPC (as a PC, but, he could drop the character).
The guy didn't read any material I gave him, and, he became a part time player in our tertiary campaign where he promptly lost his character sheet before every session.
Odd guy, nice enough, but, if everyone is putting in a certain degree of effort to cause us all to have a better time, it's crushing to have a guy show up late without any planning, PC sheet, dice, etc. | |
Completed good trades with Demagogue, PigSnot, DoB, and Alepulp.
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Skyscraper
Sergeant
659 Posts
Montreal
| | 12/06/2006 12:33 PM |
| I guess the players i've played with are generally OK. I've had mainly two groups: my old group from 20 years ago, that i don't play with much anymore. The only problem there is one of my friends who argues over just about everything to death, but hey, he's my friend still.
The other group i found over the internet, and it came out really well. One player eventually dropped because he didn't fit in the group so well, but we're still gaming with the other four. The one that dropped was a bit over the edge for me, for example:
- he played a female elven ranger/rogue/fighter noble, and he wanted his PC to be good at everything essentially, except spellcasting. So he was always everywhere with everyone, stealthily following the rogue, up front with the fighter, and so on.
- he took about 45 minutes to haggle over the price of the horse he was buying, changing horses and horse dealers to get the point in that he wanted a good steed. It took forever!
- his plan to get orcs to come out of a cave where they're hidden: smoke the place with a bale of burning hey, and then wait for them outside with a home-made quadruple crossbow made from a tree limb on which four crossbows are attached in parallel and can be triggerred with a single rope.
- he wanted to find this and that distant cousin and a bard and henchmen and a ton of other followers, whereas the group of four other PCs (and 2 NPC allies) just wanted to do stuff by themselves
- when his PC died, he wanted to make an old mage PC, but his best score was 15 or 16 (although he had several good scores in the 14-15 range). With his modifiers for age, he ended up with 19 for INT and 18 for WIS and 17 for CHA (if i recall correctly), but that was clearly not enough as he wanted to be the uber-intelligent and wise and charismatic old mage and he gave loads of BS about his PC being a wimp and i finally invited him to find another group at that point (other players had issues with him also).
I mean, i can't say any single one of his undertakings were extreme by itself, but overall he always took time in-game for stuff that no one cared about or to follow plans that no one cared to pursue.
Back to the original poster's question , in the case of this role-playing group, we exchanged emails after posting on a newsgroup that we were all looking for players, and we ended up together with no one knowing anyone in the group at the outset. Six people, all new, and it worked out quite well! (apart from the above-mentioned player.) We initially met at one player's appartment, and never looked back, really.
Sky | |
The wise man doubts often. The ignorant, sometimes. The fool, never. | |
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Oryan77
Sergeant
954 Posts
| | 12/06/2006 3:16 PM |
| Posted By YRM_DM on 12/06/2006 8:15 AM
LoL.
If you get a chance, describe a few of the stereotypes.
Now I know everyone has different gaming styles, so I don't mean to bash anyone that fits these descriptions. These are just traits that I don't care to deal with in my own games.
Besides the well known creepy, awkward, bad hygiene, & grown man still living at home with mom stereotypes that I've met, here's the others I've encountered:
There's the "I remember this one time" guy...
 I love hearing about peoples past experiences, but when I'm trying to meet you to see if you would be interested in my game, at least let me take a few minutes to tell you about our campaign & my DM'ing style so you know if you'll want to play with me. When I say, "Let's meet at Starbucks & get to know each other", I don't mean, "Let's spend the entire 2 hours with you telling me about your old dwarf Chef PC & his wild & crazy episodes in the DM's campaign and me listening to you without being able to get a word in". This has happened with 2 different guys I met. Every sentence I would speak when attempting to describe our campaign would cause the guy to say, "Oh, that reminds me of when my old DM did this & that and my Cleric went off and did that & this". Only that story ends up being 15 minutes long each time I speak for 30 seconds. The good thing about these guys is that I don't have to ask them to tell me a little about their old games and playing style The bad thing is that they'll be doing this during our gaming sessions too.
There's the "no personality" guy...
For some reason, these guys still really enjoys playing a game that requires some social skills (like D&D). A guy from online contacted me & we met at a coffee shop. I could have sat there without saying a word while he also didn't say a word, and he would have been perfectly fine with that. He wouldn't ask me a single question and he acted depressed the whole time. When I'd ask him questions about himself or his old games, he'd shrug and give me a very brief answer. I always wondered if he was really an incredible roleplayer and I just screwed myself for not inviting him to our game
There's the "Slap-stick hilariously funny" guy...
He's not funny, but he thinks the more lame he makes the game, the funnier he'll be. These guys create characters that should be hanging out in Pee Wee's Playhouse rather than adventuring and killing bad guys. I can't remember specific examples for this guy, but it was similar to the Fighter Gnome PC named Aladda Guacamole that wears a pink bonet & fights with an umbrella. His DM was really "imaginative" too, making them fight Jell-O Golems or things like that.
There was the "Over-the-top" guy...
He wanted to make hand grenades by casting explosive rune spells on dice and expecting people to read the dice during combat to make them explode. He talked about how he could also blow down buildings with these things. He also wanted to play a Wizard with no fighting class, but still fought like a fighter. His idea was to cast Mount & then cast Expeditious Retreat on the mount and ride it while weilding a lance and cast shocking grasp so the target would take extra damage from the lance attack.
This leads me to "Bending the rules" guy...
The guy tells you his ideas before joining the game and you just know it's impossible but you aren't sure why yet. No amount of logical explanation will make this guy change his mind. So I'm forced to spend an hour flipping through my books making notes about how this tactic can't work because this spell will do that if you attempt to do this while you're already doing that right there. I had to do this with the "Over-the-top" guy and the "Usually wrong Rules Lawyer" guy.
"Usually wrong Rules Lawyer" guy...
I actually let him play in my game. I realized that whenever a person says, "I never argue with the DM........unless it's detrimental to my PC", he really means, "I'm going to nit-pick every little thing when my character doesn't get his way". A simple, "Sorry man, you can't do that" isn't enough for this guy. He'll tell you that you can because the book doesn't say you can't. Then you have to spend time rereading multiple rules until you get your answer as to why he can't. The bad thing is you think he might be right because he seems to know a lot about the rules. My favorite example was when he cast alter self as the Feyri ability and expected to look & SOUND like an NPC of mine. I didn't know the rules enough at the time so I let him look like her. But he argued that Alter Self would change his voice box to sound like her too. Come on now.
"Player vs DM" guy...
This was a guy & his gf. They both played D&D like it was a game of chess. Besides accusing me of sucking as a DM because my goblins were not expert tacticians when I was playing them as dumb creatures, they also accused me of making up abilities on the fly just to save an important evil NPC of mine when they randomly decided to attack her while she was guiding them through the Abyss. I forgot she had a Freedom of Movement ring on when the Monk grappled her. I said, "Oh wait! I forgot she can't be grappled! You actually fail to grapple her and she easily slides out of your grasp. I'm sorry guys, I forgot grapples won't work on her, it's been awhile since I've used this NPC." Then it was the NPC's turn and she cast Expiditious Retreat and ran away. They believed I was protecting a pet NPC since they almost foiled my plans even though I apologized for not refreshing my memory on the NPC's abilities. I reminded them that I have all of my NPC's info already written on custom made NPC character sheets. I doubt that influenced their assumption any.
and one more, the "Metagaming" guy...
Player A is in a bar talking to an NPC. I hand player A a note (it says after drinking her ale, she feels strongly in love with this NPC and she has to play along with it because she's now charmed). Metagaming guy sees me pass the note and after player A grins and hands the note back, Metagaming guy "randomly" decides to cast Magic Circle Against Chaos and walk over to Player A to "see if anything happens". Also, why did he prepare the Chaos version instead of Evil? Because they encounered a Satyr for the first time the session before and planned to hunt him down at the next game. He must have went home, looked up Satyr's to find their alignment, and then prepared that spell for the next game. They knew the Satyr was a rapist. Without detecting alignments or being familiar with Satyr's, I'd think a player would just assume Circle vs Evil would be the spell to prepare.
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Skyscraper
Sergeant
659 Posts
Montreal
| | 12/07/2006 9:42 AM |
| Haha. This is good stuff, Oryan.
The guy i talked about earlier, was a combination of "I remember this one time" guy and the "Over-the-top" guy. When we were not playing, including during any break for food, drink, whatever, he would tell his tale about a past feat in another campaign where he would use a combo of 4 spells and 5 feats and 3 weapons to have an entire city implode or something. Ok, slight exaggeration, but still. For him, a lightning bolt is not to be used to hit people with electricity, it'll be used in water or to transfer electricity through a metallic object to accomplish some doubtful effect, and so on. Thus, the home-made quadruple, single-trigger crossbow.
Sky | |
The wise man doubts often. The ignorant, sometimes. The fool, never. | |
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Qucalion of Celene
Sergeant
932 Posts
Salt Lake City, Utah
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