Ok so watched the Paizo future videos and also watched the general commentaries in the comic book industry about the aging fan base and how to get new blood in the industry.
I have a couple of ideas for getting new players.
1) Go to where the players potential players are. I am not talking about Paizo. I am talking about you the person who is reading this. You have to be proactive about this. I mean yes Paizo will do its own research and have its own initiatives. But we also have to do things.
Go play yugioh, Magic the gathering ect. Games that kids like to play. Join the community get to know the kids and then introduce them to RPGs. I know that most of us was at one time or another that kid that just wanted to be taken seriously by adults. Not only will you be adding new players but also you will be giving some kids a sense of value by having adults take them seriously. That is more valuable than gold.
This means yes playing games that you may look down your nose at, but remember that one of the reasons that RPGs exploded was that Wargamers looked down there noses at kids when they were interested in the hobby in the late 70s early 80s.
It is past time for us to go where the kids are that we want to get into the hobby.
Maybe carry a set of rules with you and have the rule books with your stuff when you are playing cards so when some players are waiting to play they can look through the rulebooks.
I would like to recognize those members of the paizo community who introduce people into the hobby in the last 12 months so if you reply to this please put at the bottom of the post a number and the ages of the players. EG. 4(15,17,22,27)
2) Direct people toward Paizo.com. I did a blog post http://www.itsallgeektome.net/elves/ where i directed people toward the website and the pathfinder RPG. If you have a blog use it to talk about RPGs and fly the flag a bit for your hobby and offer people a way to find the games. If you are on facebook mention when you are playing on your status and give people a place to find RPGs.
Lisa if you read this, I know how swamped you guys are but I would love to have a website or portal that was designed just for newbies. A site that I could link to and looked flashy and maybe had a video that a 12 year old kid could log into and was brought up to speed on the hobby and Paizo and why RPGs are cool.
The site is cool, but really it is just a shop with social aspects bolted on. The social aspects work well but still when you go to the home page it is just a store.
We all found RPGs once we knew that they existed and where to find them.
So they are just a couple of ideas that I had.
Oh and 3 (31, 33, 30) Yes they were all over 30 but I am still proud that I introduced more people to the hobby.
