D&D meetup question

[Fake Healer]

Has anyone used the D&D Meetup to meet other people to game with? How has it worked out? I was thinking of sponsoring a Meet-up. Any feedback would be helpful.

FH

[Haun]

Fake Healer I didnt ever use the meetup section because no one is from california or Redlands so yeah and yeahhh

[Fake Healer]

Haun wrote:

Fake Healer I didnt ever use the meetup section because no one is from california or Redlands so yeah and yeahhh

I have a ton of people in my area waiting for a meet-up and I am looking for a new bunch of gamers, I just don't wanna get in over my head with being a meet-up coordinator. Anyone have any good experiences with this form of meeting?

FH

[The Shining Fool]

I met one of my players on that site, it's pretty all right. I wouldn't pay the 20 dollars or whatever, just search through posts until you find people who included an E-Mail or phone number.

[jthilo]

Fake Healer wrote:

Has anyone used the D&D Meetup to meet other people to game with? How has it worked out? I was thinking of sponsoring a Meet-up. Any feedback would be helpful.

FH,

I used meetup.com to find players in Allentown, PA. Over the course of twelve months, there was exactly one meetup held. In the other eleven months, too few people registered an intent to attend (the minimum was five people to hold a meetup).

The one month it was held, seven people said they would attend. On the day of the meetup, only three showed up including myself. The other four never bothered to say they weren't coming after all.

One of the attendees brought a couple of friends, but that group was there to socialize and was not looking for a game. The other guy (and his wife) are in my gaming group now, and they've worked out well.

All of this was before meetup.com started charging fees to the group organizers. Thanks to that there is no longer an Allentown D&D Meetup group and the same can be said of many other cities. I volunteered to be the organizer for the group for a time (I had some "credit" left over from my Meetup+ membership so it didn't cost me anything). I would have continued (and paid the monthly fee) if people actually went to the things. They never did.

There seem to be a few cities where the D&D Meetup thrives (or at least thrived), but from reading other accounts I would guess my experience was more typical. The common complaint is the serious lack of commitment/attendance. Right now meetup.com says there are 150 people waiting for a D&D Meetup in Allentown. Many of them are left over from the disbanding (due to lack of a paying organizer) of that and other nearby Meetups. I would be surprised if even 10% show up to an event--if anyone ever organizes one.

In short, you'll probably be happy with the people who do show up, but there won't necessarily be many of 'em. Your mileage may vary of course, and I hope it does! Good luck going through with it; if you do, please share the outcome. It might inspire me or others to give it another shot.

(Edit: one thing I was trying to say, that I didn't really get around to saying clearly, was that people came to meetup.com with different expectations. Some just want to socialize with other gamers, and some clearly wanted to show up with dice and Player's Handbook in hand, ready to play on the spot. Yet others, like me, were in the middle of that road.)

[Ender_rpm]

I just met up last night with a group here in Tampa after using the meetup board to arrange things. Everyone was cool, no one was really scary, and a good time was had by all. It helps that we all came with the intention to play right away, but there is another meet up @ a local shop that looks like its just to hang out. Good stuff, IMO.

[Fake Healer]

The Shining Fool wrote:

I met one of my players on that site, it's pretty all right. I wouldn't pay the 20 dollars or whatever, just search through posts until you find people who included an E-Mail or phone number.

I didn't see a price listed, you mean I have to pay to host something? No wonder there are 150 people in my area and no meetups. Who wants to pay for that? I just wanna find a new group to game with. Guess I'll just scan for email addresses and hope.

FH

[jthilo]

Fake Healer wrote:

I didn't see a price listed, you mean I have to pay to host something?

They certainly don't trumpet the fact. It caused a big stink when it was introduced. Here are the fees:

http://www.meetup.com/help/aboutgroups/#aboutgroups_cost

Fake Healer wrote:

No wonder there are 150 people in my area and no meetups. Who wants to pay for that?

They emphasize that it's a group fee, but since they collect from you, the organizer, they're splitting the hair mighty thin.

[Takasi]

My suggestion is to get a real URL from a host like namesecure and either forward it directly to your meetup or create an intro page with a link to your meetup like we did:

http://www.rpgyubasutter.com/

Post a flyer with the URL in all your FLGS's. We've had pretty good success at keeping our numbers up.