I'd love to run a pathfinder game. I thought I had a group of people who wanted to play. They're a family that I've been friends with for a couple of years. I went over there the other night and when we got to the part about how you can bee any type of character class like a bard, cleric, sorcerer or wizard when the mother stopped me saying : We're Christians, I can't have my kids playing a game that has magic in it.
WTF!? What does playing a game that refers to magic have to do with Christianity? To be offended in any way you'd have to
A) Believe that magic is real
B) Think that it's somehow harmful
C) Think that a game where a spell is essentially just another way to say "hit for X points of damage" is somehow an evil corrupting force.
I was pretty surprised. I tend to live a rational, evidence based life and that just blew me away. There was no logic at all to her argument, but it's their family so I let it pass and we played a different game.
In any case, I need to find some players. Meetup.com charges about $20 a month to create a meetup group and all the other D&D groups on the site are 40 to 50 miles away. I may have to just pay the money and build a meetup group for my town.
There's also a very small game shop in town and I'll ask the owner if I could put a flyer up on his bulletin board.
I'm just a little worried about inviting random people into my home.
I should mention that I'm in my 40's and my wife and friends kind of think that the whole D&D thing is pretty geeky and weird. So it's a tough sell to try to get them to play.
So how do you folks find new players that are compatible? How do you "screen" them?
Ahhh the age old question.
First off many christians do think magic is real, they just think it all comes from the devil. I don't say this to put down their faith, being Roman Catholic myself I understand the conviticon. Just because I don't see the game as a threat to my faith does not mean others don't.
As to the problem, local game store is a good place to start, at lest you have like minded people. I'll give out the warning however, I learned 3.5 from a group at a store and while I learned the system and liked it, I did not like the group (mainly the DM). However I clicked with one guy, got him to join a seperate group of mine that formed due to my best bud brother wanting to play D&D again (for the record we're all in our mid to late 30's).
Best advise look to join a group rather then start one.
A. its less reponsiblity on you.
B. you'll find one or two players you like and will become frineds with.
c. you can then have them join you in your own game.
Don't limit youself to just Pathfinder or even DnD games when you look to join.
If you have a lot of frineds who look down on role playing, I would still ask them to play, one or two games. Make it easy on them have characters pregenerated if you want, but to me creation is half the fun. In any case in my group we looked to get more and more players in, most were not intersted but gave it a try and are now regulars. Remember video games are very popluar and respected and not looked down on as pen and paper, if you know someone who likes that, get them into this. But show why pen and paper is better, because you can do whatever you want in pen and paper as oppose to video games.
Example: MY nephew playes a lot of WoW video game. I got him to play in my group, just so happens I like WoW rpg, but he was amazed that one could play a greedy goblin in pen and paper. Myself I was amazed you coudn't in a video game. Things like that make pen and paper experince more uniuque and leads to drawing in more players.
I hope this helps some, and really hope you find a good group to play with.
TTFN Dre
I have a couple of suggestions. First, I found the group I am playing with now on this set of boards. Under the Gamer Connection Thread I saw a post for Gamers in Houston. When I posted on the thread I got an immediate response. There is that option. The idea of posting a flyer at the local gaming store is also a good idea. I have received some responses by doing that here.
Now as to how to meet them, when Houstonderek and I wanted to see if we would be compatible we met at a local Icehouse (tavern). If that is not an option for you then choose a fast food restaurant or coffee shop. That way you don’t have people that are totally incompatible knowing where you live. I know that might sound sort of paranoid, but think of it as protecting your family.
Is there a college or University in your town or near by? They usually have gaming groups that meet in the Student Union building. These are a few of my ideas. I hope this helps.
Just my 2 cp.
One of the best groups I ever played with had only 3 people, for the most part.
I found them through the bulletin board of a local game shop. We played a number of DnD games, the most memorable going from 1st to 21st level!
If you allow each player to run two characters (what we did), a small group can play like a bigger one, with the added advantage of fewer no-shows and cancellations. The bigger the group, the harder it is to get everyone in the same place at the same time.
Ah, the memories! Ian McShamus; Human Bbn2/Clr1/Ftr7/Hunter of the Dead10. My other was a Cayma (Tiny-sized lizardfolk from the Red Steel setting) Sor21. That little sucker had a mean streak! Good times...
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penandpaper.com has a gamer finder. It's linked to a map with little icons of where the people are, it's pretty slick. I got a few players from there recently. (Last July.)
I also put up a flyer at a game shop and got some players that way.
I put an 'ad' here, on the WotC site, and over at ENworld.
Also another local game shop has a it's own forum which I posted to.
I think meeting at a Starbuck or somesuch place is a great idea. My old GM and I used to meet prospective players there several times. (He also didn't want to bring a stranger over right away until he could get a good feeling about them. (He also has 2 young children.))
I also found some people on Meetup. I posted messages in other groups, that were too far away for me, to see if someone was in the middle and could/want to play in my game. It worked.
Post as many places as you can, it increases your odds of finding players/groups.
I wonder if investing in a board game like Runebound or Talisman could be a good way to work non-RPG-playing friends into RPGs. With Runebound, you have the familiarity of having game pieces and a game board and a goal set by the game and competition between the players, but it also seems to cry out for elaboration in the role-playing direction.
Of course, you want to be sure that you understand the rules very well, because I played Runebound last New Years with some guys, and we did not realize that you rolled two dice to fight the monsters, not just one. We found it very frustrating because the monsters kept killing us.
I like the idea of going in as a player instead of a DM. The idea of "less pressure" appeals to me.
I discovered that on meetup.com you can email other people interested in playing without having to pay to start my own group. So I emailed a couple of folks locally to see if there's any interest.
The tavern or coffee shop idea is also a good idea. I've played D&D with several really highly educated, interesting and intelligent people. But let's face it, RPGs also attract a certain fringe element that I'm not sure I want to invite to my house. The coffee shop meeting sounds like a great way to find a middle ground.
I'll check out penandpaper.com as well. Also, my friends do enjoy board games and I just bought Settlers of Catan on ebay for $29 (Whoo hoo! Cheap). So maybe that will be a way in.
There is a group of folks at work who play, several of them are in my department and are friends of mine. But they live down in Sacramento and I live way up in the mountains. It's a 45 mile drive to work each way for me. In any case, they play every other Saturday from 6 to midnight but it's in a town almost 50 miles away and I'd be driving back up into the mountain roads in (occasional) snow after midnight. But I like these folks as friends and I think I'll try a few of their games anyway.
Thanks for the advice.
penandpaper.com has a gamer finder.
Fray, are you sure that's the right address? I plugged in the addy and it gave me the site for a web design firm.
penandpaper.com has a gamer finder.Fray, are you sure that's the right address? I plugged in the addy and it gave me the site for a web design firm.
I second the motion of local universities or colleges as a good place to trawl for gamers. A lot of my best gaming buddies I met at college.
Posting at gaming related hobby/book stores is good.
Wearing an obviously D&D or Gamer type shirt on Casual Friday can be surprisingly effective too. My wife snagged a great player from the Juvenile Detention facility she worked at, when another guard noticed her D&D 30th Anniversary shirt when she was leaving after her shift. He played 2nd edition back in the day and felt a surge of nostalgia, and has been a rock solid addition to our group.
Also, this one is a left fielder, and is completely dependent upon your comfort with your fellow faithful, but a church social or other casual grouping at a church event, could be a good one to try. Now, if you think this is the sort of thing that might get you excommunicated, then don't do it (and why are you still with that curch, no offense, but seriously?) I realize this can fly fine at some, at others it would be a huge mistake. My wife, while talking to some of the other recent parents at her church, when asked about hobbies mentioned that we played games. When asked if she meant card games or video games, she replied, "Yeah, stuff like Uno, Catan, Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons". Most of them just nodded, recognizing a few of the names, but one family ended up coming back to it after the others had left, and that brought a great set of players to our group. The advantage to fishing in the church pool is the knowledge that you should have a fairly solid common ground, and probably a good relationship or at least foundation for one, already.
'O_o' umm... what ? [goes off to look for a familiar]
the age old question.
First off many christians do think magic is real,
Hehe, perhaps a better way to have said that would have been, "most christian faiths believe magic is real". Whether the majority of the members of a given christian denomination hold that belief to be true or not is subject to debate. ;D
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I recommend throwing random d20 references into casual conversation while in public places. It is a truly genuis way to find gamers. One of the members of my current gaming group threw out a d20 reference while at my workplace, and, as I was starving for a game and overheard said reference, I jumped on the opportunity. I have now been gaming with this group regularly for over two years, and it is the best gaming group I have ever been a part of.
I'd love to run a pathfinder game. I thought I had a group of people who wanted to play. They're a family that I've been friends with for a couple of years. I went over there the other night and when we got to the part about how you can bee any type of character class like a bard, cleric, sorcerer or wizard when the mother stopped me saying : We're Christians, I can't have my kids playing a game that has magic in it.
This is perhaps a more typical reaction that you'd expect. My mom once watched a TV special on the local Christian channel that "exposed" D&D as a dangerous force that could lead children not only to Satan, but also suicide. Their argument was that kids get so attached to their characters, when the character dies, "it's like a part of them has died." *cue blood-curdling scream in the background* Seriously. It's the same thing with some Christians and Harry Potter.
I'm just a little worried about inviting random people into my home.
I should mention that I'm in my 40's and my wife and friends kind of think that the whole D&D thing is pretty geeky and weird. So it's a tough sell to try to get them to play.
So how do you folks find new players that are compatible? How do you "screen" them?
I'm in a similar situation. I've been a closet D&D freak for a long time, and have just recently convinced my wife to sit down with me and learn to play. However, the game isn't really designed for a single player, and it can be hard to find adult players. Maybe it's just in my head, but it seems that there is often a D&D stigma to overcome; or if not that, it can be difficult to approach people about it.
I recommend throwing random d20 references into casual conversation while in public places. It is a truly genuis way to find gamers. One of the members of my current gaming group threw out a d20 reference while at my workplace, and, as I was starving for a game and overheard said reference, I jumped on the opportunity. I have now been gaming with this group regularly for over two years, and it is the best gaming group I have ever been a part of.
Geeky kewl!! And smart. I'll have to try that.
I just tried penandpaper.com and got two interesting invites the next day. I just talked to one guy who's a game designer. They're looking for another player, and he wants to GM with Pathfinder rules.
Too early to say, but joining pnp lets others know you just joined, so you might find a game or players for your own that way. YMMV.
Thanks for the link!
No problem, and thanks for the acknowledgement. I was pretty sure your situation was as you later described; I was mostly throwing the Church Social idea out to the generic "you" of the gaming community at large, rather than the specific "you" of, well, you.
Hope you have much luck finding a good group!
And regarding dropping hints at work (which it sounds like you have already done, so this is another "generic you") my wife said a great way to snag attention from veterans or pique interest of potential recruits is to put a D20 on your desk. "Normal" people often can't resist asking what that funny shaped die is. And a lot of those "normal" people are often very easily turned! Mwa ha ha!
Finding players is an arduous task. We usually do it like this:
1. Range about for interesting individuals in the vicinity.
2. Narrow our range of promising candidates for people who won't be missed much for some time.
3. Study their behaviour.
4. Make a choice based on who is best accessible.
5. Make the Plan.
6. Execute the Plan, making sure no one witnesses the abduction, and leave a false trail of information suggesting he* went on a surprising holiday.
7. Brainwashing
8. Indoctrination
9. Brainwashing
10. Forcefeeding RPG rules, setting information, trivia about the game, all our humorous stories related to the game, and so on.
11. Some more brainwashing
12. Hypnosis to make him forget, consciously, what we did to him, and think that he was on a voyage.
13. Release him into the wild again.
14. Wait until he shows up for the session.
This is, of course, not the whole procedure, as there are two more lines in there, but I cannot tell you where they belong, obviously.
x. ...
x+1. Profit.
*Women, of course, scare us.
the mother stopped me saying : We're Christians, I can't have my kids playing a game that has magic in it.
Yeah. We real Christians are embarrassed about them. And by real Christians I mean the people who really think that Jesus was a nice guy and had some decent ideas there. You know, with the tolerating people and opinions and not being so judgemental attitude he had. According to our holy book, he kinda came to a bad end when people who preferred to be judgemental and intolerant had him killed. It's really unbelievable that there's actually people that are just like that and they can call themselves Christian without spontaneously combusting out of shame.
WTF!? What does playing a game that refers to magic have to do with Christianity? To be offended in any way you'd have toA) Believe that magic is real
B) Think that it's somehow harmful
C) Think that a game where a spell is essentially just another way to say "hit for X points of damage" is somehow an evil corrupting force.
You know, most people, even Christians, know that the whole magic part in the game is make believe, and it doesn't mean you're not a Christian if you do.
Christian belief does state that all magic that doesn't come from God is evil. Since I, personally, do not believe in actual magic, I have no problem with that.
But I do know that it's all just a game and that when I play a wizard, or even a cleric of a god that is not God, I'm just playing a game, I'm not committing blasphemy.
Chief Technical Officer
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[moved to Gamer Life forum]
You might want to check out our Gamer Connection forum.
Finding players is an arduous task. We usually do it like this: <snip>
Strangely, this is (almost) exactly how I was brought into LARPing back in college, and into attending & planning sci-fi & anime cons over the years. I guess it really does work, you just have to be good around the brainwashing & hypnosis parts. *heh*
To the original question, you might try taking a step back from PnP RPGs and try to get a gaming group together based around card/board games, especially stuff like Munchkin, *Foos* of Catan, and the various storytelling games. We're in kind of a renaissance of board games for adults/families (in the US), and from my experience, people are interested in playing those games and have no prior misconceptions/stigma about them, like with D&D. And once you've got a sense of who digs it and who's got the time/motivation, float some Pathfinder mods & APs by 'em. There's your foundation gaming group right there.
Also, it depends on your job, but a fantasy-art desktop/screensaver can subtly find gamers, too. You've just got to watch out for the NSFW-Vallejo-type stuff. (I'm lookin' at you, Seoni...)
It's really unbelievable that there's actually people that are just like that and they can call themselves Christian without spontaneously combusting out of shame.
Fire would harm those helplessly caught nearby. It's enough for me to know that many "reverse-Christians" live angry, mean-spirited lives devoid of contentment. I mostly lament for the children, esp. the home-schooled ones.
WTF!? What does playing a game that refers to magic have to do with Christianity?
My mind took a ride on that crazy horse when a proto-gaming buddy of mine posted this "reverse-Christian" pamphlet. It's nothing to do with D&D, or gaming, or even having fun with friends - it's about control. Most totalitarian/sectarian authorities focus a good deal of effort on controlling how people have fun, b/c it's a short hop from there to controlling how folks interact with others and think (see: sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll).
Maybe you might rehabilitate your worried friends by offering some positive anecdotes (personal or from the boards, esp. the threads after Gygax died) about how gaming helps people socially/professionally/personally. It could work, or at least get them to open their minds a little.
I have had success with this method lately. Join a rpg/d&d group on meetup.com that is near you. then send emails to other people near you on that same list. Don't bother with the forums, do messages to people. Especially email those that have been on recently.
Try leaving trails of Mountain Dew and Cheetos towards a box held up by a stick, with a DMG inside. Works like a charm.
WTF!? What does playing a game that refers to magic have to do with Christianity?
Nothing. Some people are just crazy.
Do your friends let their kids play pretend with toy guns or toy swords? If so, point out that the 'magic' in the game is really just that, pretend. As far as I know, playing D&D, or any other RPG for that matter, does not involve actually casting real spells. It really is no different that playing soldiers, cowboys & indians, or even princess tea party. It's just pretend. Only with a whole lot of rules, and funny little dice.
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I went over there the other night and when we got to the part about how you can bee any type of character class like a bard, cleric, sorcerer or wizard when the mother stopped me saying : We're Christians, I can't have my kids playing a game that has magic in it.
WTF!? What does playing a game that refers to magic have to do with Christianity?
I once had a parent ban his daughter from my English class as I was teaching Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. He is a Christian minister and felt that the book promoted the use of magic. While I assured him that I had read some of the spells out in class, as part of class reading, they failed to have any obvious effect. The failure was probably a result of using a whiteboard marker instead of a wand. Next time I will use a magic marker.
Anyway, He didn't find that funny at all, but I was pissed that someone had given him my home number. Later, he even e-mailed (again, this was not my work e-mail) me a load of stuff on how there was magic in Harry Potter and that J.K. Rowling was encouraging people to consider alternate religious practices.
The situation must be dire for Bible churches if they believe that J.K. Rowling's books are a threat to Christianity.
In the end, his daughter had to study Roald Dahl.
I am still mystified with what some Christians believe and will claim is 'evil' or 'corrupting'.