I was wondering how the wider RPG community found games nowadays. Do you reach out to your non-RPG friends? Go to your FLGS? Use online RPG groups? Something else?
OBLIGATORY PLUG: This community has it’s own LFG section. Nobody’s posted any game ads there yet, but it’s very new. If you’re looking to start up or join a game yourself, I might recommend starting there. And while you’re there please consider clicking “subscribe” because new folks checking it out are more likely to post games there if they see a bigger number in the sidebar.
I haven’t played an in person game of D&D in over fifteen years. The last time I played any sort of TTRPG in person with people gathered around a table was a Werewolf: Dark Ages one shot at a Fourth of July party in (I think) 2010. I had signed up on an interest sheet left at my LGS where I played MTG weekly for a game someone was looking to start up, but this was in March of 2020 and our scheduled first meeting and Session 0 was set for two days after the COVID lockdowns went into effect, closing the LGS and pre-emptively ending that game.
I do play D&D online via VTTs (mostly Roll20 but I’ve also used Foundry) and have done so regularly for several years now. I found my longest running game, which has been going for about two years now, on a D&D centered Discord server with a LFG channel. Lots of such servers exist and I recommend checking some out (just do a search for “Discord dungeons and dragons” (or a different game if that’s what you’re looking for). The other long running game I’m in actually spun off of that first one and includes mostly the same people just playing a different campaign on a different day. I also joined a third game that I found on r/lfg but I’m avoiding that right now because of the API bullshit. Did I mention this community has it’s own LFG section that works pretty much just like r/lfg but with 100% less u/spez related bullshit? I have also in the past found games, mostly for one shots, on the D&D Beyond and Roll20 forums, both of which have LFG sections that are fairly high traffic.
Thanks for the response! As a follow up, do you mostly stick with dnd or do you sometimes branch out to other systems?
I just play D&D mostly because it’s popular, I know it, and I like the way the mechanics work. That being said I’m not strictly opposed to other systems (though I’m not really interested in PF2E as I’ve looked at it and think it’s mostly just a clunkier and jankier modification to the core mechanics of 5e that many people no doubt think is better just because it’s needlessly complex for the sake of “more options”). A while ago I bought a hardcopy of the core VtM v5 book and want to, at some point, try joining a game for that to explore the significantly different playing style it’s designed for.
I run only online so that flavors my methods
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I’ve run all my games the last five or so years on the same discord server. When games have ended some have left it while others have stayed. So I have a base pool of players already vetted once and are (was) available when I run my games.
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Generic group finding communities. The LFG here for example, but also various discords.
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System specific Discord/forums. Here there are folks already invested in the strange system I want to run, only need to find those available.
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VTT specific channels
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I found my two groups (both online, play vis VTT) through the /r/lfg community on Reddit. Not sure where I would look now.
I have a regular group of family and friends I’ve been playing with for years. And if we’re short on people who want to play a particular game, it’s pretty much guaranteed that someone in the group has another friend who’s willing to join for that run. I haven’t had to go group hunting for a very long time. Doesn’t really help anyone else LFG I suppose, but I can say it’s really nice when you have a solid long-term group.
The first campaign I’ve ever played advertised on a community related to a play podcast, tangentially related to D&D, and It was incredibly fun! It fizzled out, but it opened a whole new world for me.
I invited the GM and some players from that campaign, my best friend and advertised it on the same community. That campaign I started like 3 months after I first played TTRPGs, and is the longest campaign I’ve played, over 2 and a half years long! Very invested players
I’ve directed a campaign by responding to a group looking for GM but it fizzled out because I didn’t prep as much as I’d want, though mostly because players realised they didn’t have enough time to play. All others I’ve directed have been with the same people, or extended group related to the first campaign I’ve gm.
Looking for them was a bit harder, and I I used any and all tools; roll20, internet forums, discord, Reddit, you name it, I’ve probably used it. My most played was in like 2021-2022 with a different game every day, gm every Saturday and other Sunday, and player all days minus Sunday (yup, double dipping).
I had a lot of fun but I don’t think it was that healthy in hindsight because I was dealing with depression and It was my main way of socialising, and it drained me playing so much yet I always wanted more. Now I have a much more healthy and casual relationship, which I’m happy with
WHEW THAT WAS QUITE LONG TL;DR: I’ve used everything I could to find games as a player, but as a GM it has been very easy and with my usual friend group.
Where do I find players? I ask my friends who wants to play - often invite newbies but there are usually more people interested than seats!
Where do I find games? My players want to run them!
Never played online with randoms, and from the comments I see about the experience I don’t think I ever want to!
Sounds like you have a pretty healthy rpg group! As a follow up: what kind of games do you play/run?
It’s multiple groups with some overlap really (perhaps there’s some kind of federation analogy…), I think we all started on 5e but have since branched out to all kinds of things. The crunchier group is trying things like pathfinder 1 and eclipse phase, the more rp-focused group is doing more PBtA and FitD, and there’s been plenty of one-shots in all sorts of systems too.
I never expected this, but the majority of my players are co-workers. Before, my players were a mix of friends and “friends of friends.” I’ve also had luck with game specific discords (e.g. Blades in the Dark) that have their own channels for finding players & games.
Local discords have been the best places for me to find players. I live in a smallish city in Washington and am part of two regional discords. From them, I’ve had enough success that I recently hosted a mini-con which had 3-4 GMs running one-shot adventures for ~15 players. It was a good time, organized entirely online.
Thanks for the response! As a follow up what kind of games do you usually run/play?
Lots of things that aren’t d&d/Pathfinder. Currently I’m running a monster of the week game and playing in a game of Fallout 2d20. I’ll probably switch again when my campaign wraps up to something new.
So, this gaming group started a Me, My Wife, Friend A, Friend B, and a couple that friend B met more recently.
For various reasons, Friend B dropped out about the time I started running a new game for the group. A little later we decided we wanted to slowly increase our numbers to buffer the ability to play if someone was missing.
I picked up a player from Reddit who had never had a chance to get into a PF2E game, all his attempts had met with DOA groups and I wanted to improve his experience. Later on, I picked up another player from Royal Road, she and I both publish serials there and follow each other’s stories, and started chatting.
Edit: Oh, and all this is online, excepting the couples none of us live within convenient distance from each other. Though ironically, the other couple moved last year and are now only two hours away from us.
My family, friends, local hobby store, my VTT of choice Fantasy Grounds (forums & Discord), and resources focused on FG e.g. Fantasy Grounds Academy.
Thanks for the response! As a follow up, does system choice affect where you look for groups/games? Like if you were playing dnd would you look in a different place than if you were playing an indie rpg?
No. As a mostly forever GM, my recruitment pattern is the same regardless of system. However, availability and other factors may dictate how I play it (in person vs VTT).
First are friends and family. I always ask if they’re interested in trying some new TTRPG especially if I know it’s something they’re interested in. (Newest being tried is Pokethulhu).
Second, if someone in my VTT group has indicated an interest in something, I’ll reach out to them to see if they’re interested or just announce I’m trying something new. If needed, and then if it’s a system my VTT supports, I’ll announce to the VTT population in general that I’m trying something and see if anyone is up for it.
Third, if I still haven’t reached my preferred player count and the existing players don’t mind, I’ll post something at my local hobby store to see who’s interested. Though, it almost never gets to this point.
If I actually get a chance to play, it’s either family/friends or VTT. It’s also usually one-shots or short adventures. I don’t want to commit to a long running campaign as I usually can’t commit to something that long and don’t want to cause issues if/when I drop from it.
I have learned through many years and many tears that it is better to find people who want to play RPGs and make friends with them than it is to try to make your friends play RPGs.
RPGs are a bigger commitment than many people realize. It’s more like joining a sports team than playing a board game. Most of them require you to show up several times a month, learn some rules, and remember what happened last time. That’s too much for some people, but your friends are more likely to over extend themselves because they want to be nice to you. So you get the perennial scheduling problems. It should surprise no one that people who didn’t go out of their way to find the game are less reliable than people who did.
So my greatest successes have been playing with strangers who became friends. One pandemic crew were from a band’s fan discord. One was put together from the reddit /lfg post. Another was from a fan discord for the specific game I wanted to play.
It also doesn’t help that D&D is so mega popular it sucks the air out of the room for everyone else. For a long time I wanted to play Fate, but I couldn’t find players and trying to convert D&D players was an uphill battle. I would go directly to a fate fan site or discord if I wanted to do a game of it now.
There is at least one resource on this (server? instance? I’m still not sure on the nomenclature, and only just now figuring out how this stuff works)…https://ttrpg.network/c/ttrpglfg
- at my FLGS where I’m a regular store DM
- I am one of the organisers of a local indie RPG club that meets every 2 weeks
- on Discord for whatever game I want to run. If I need additional players for Mausritter I’ll post on the Mausritter discord, additional players for OSE I go to OSE discord, etcetera.
I ran my (P1e) game in a game store for years so I recruited there. I actually had a huge turn-over of players because people wanted to try it then didn’t stick with it. One session had 11 players because everyone that was interested was interested THAT DAY for some reason. Next session was down to eight, then we settled on seven basically until the store went under.
I occasionally get someone referred to me, but it’s rare. I scout anyone and everyone that even hints at playing TTRPG, though I don’t necessarily recruit them if it’s obvious we don’t want to play the same game or same style of game. (I’ll certainly invite people who play mechanically adjacent games though as long as they’re interested in the same style of game.)
I just had a player inform me today that he’s not going to be available to rejoin the campaign for at least a year, if at all, so I’m probably going to be visiting the local game store to try recruitment there. I may need to run some one-shots at the store or something to get people interested in my game since it’s presently a home game and I don’t want to move back to a game store (too much stuff to move as I use a lot of materials). I have one guy I might try to recruit as a player as well, as I was introduced to him as someone who could help him with exposure to the system a few years ago. His schedule doesn’t seem open enough to join a regular game though.
When I first started playing, I played my first D&D3.5e game with people I met through meetup. This was back in 2004. Meetup might still be an option though.
I would not be above online recruiting but I only run face-to-face games, and I’m in Charleston, WV so it’s rare that I’m in online groups with anyone within a two hour drive outside of Facebook. Facebook is an option, of course.
I also am not above trying to convert friends and family, though my immediate family has made it abundantly clear that they’re not interested. I had an old friend in my previous campaign for awhile but I’m pretty sure he would have rather gone out to dinner, watched a movie, or played some video games, so he didn’t stick around.
Really, I’d recruit just about anywhere. I’d not be above recruiting strangers that I just heard mention TTRPGs, though I might be more discerning with a home game than when I was running the game at a game store.
