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Falling attendance can be very worrisome, and there have been some awesome ideas up - it's great to see so many voices chime in.
The small village where I live and run most of my games has a permanent population of less than 3,000. We have one stoplight downtown, 5 bars, and - at last count - 7 churches all within about ten minutes of each other. I don't think that your immediate-vicinity population is super-important, to be honest. It's all in how you work with your community; the schools can be a huge boost if you address them respectfully and appropriately.
That said, we run the following in my store:
*) 1 table of PFS every Sunday (sometimes 2)
*) 1 table of Kingmaker, twice a month
*) 1 table of Shattered Star, twice a month
*) 2-3 homebrew games every week
*) plus all sorts of other systems several times a month
Creating tracking tools, like what nosig pointed out (nice description, btw; happen to have a doc you can share?), can be incredibly helpful. Some other things that I've discovered that have really helped us:
*) run We Be Goblins! at least once per quarter. It's a great "learn to play" tool, especially or younger players or for spouses that aren't quite sure what this gaming thing is all about
*) run WBG2 soon after if possible - this helps show that these games can maintain a narrative continuity
*) talk to your gamers, encourage them to bring snacks; this promotes social interactivity!
*) if you are the store owner or organizer, take time to sit with the players and play every so often, it's a huge morale boost
I've done some crazier things, as well. For example, when we were running a ton of D&D Encounters (5-6 tables each slot, 2 slots, for an entire season) I challenged my players to not miss a single game. They didn't. I picked up a pizza party, and a local pizza shop actually chipped in at $4/ pizza. For Pathfinder stuff, I challenged my players to help me set up a local miniconvention: last year, I scheduled 15 tables thinking I'd run 11 of them (ran 30!!); this year, I've got 50 tables scheduled.
If you work to build the community, the social side of the game, the players will flock to you. You need to ask yourself, though, how you plan to define that success:
are you successful when you run ALL THE TABLES in EVERY SLOT?
-or-
are you successful when your core group shows up regularly?
Good luck, all!
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One thing that I've noticed about the lodge I play in is that our "GM's choice" weeks are by far the least attendance. I think this is because people want to be guaranteed that there's going to be something available that they haven't played, even if they've only played 10 scenarios or so. Those players who are close to running out of things to play may really be reflecting their insecurity and not wanting to drive to the shop only to find that the only thing being offered is something they've already played.
Venture-Captain, Netherlands
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Falling attendance can be very worrisome, and there have been some awesome ideas up - it's great to see so many voices chime in.
The small village where I live and run most of my games has a permanent population of less than 3,000. We have one stoplight downtown, 5 bars, and - at last count - 7 churches all within about ten minutes of each other.
Ha! Sounds exactly like where I come from. Only we dont have a stoplight, just a roundabout, and only five churches. We do have a swimming pool ;)
Anyway. Our playerbase is so small currently, we just use a google spreadsheet where we can mark who played what. Works quite well to quickly figure out what to offer.
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Drogan I Disagree completely
In my area we run quite a few games on different days and locations and we are running into the problem of getting scenarios that a group of 5-6 players haven't played.
Lets face it there are only so many scenarios and If you have several characters ( example I have 2-12's, 1-11th, 1-6th, 2-4th, and a 1st)...you've done a good job of exhausting the available scenarios.
I'm sure you have run into the problem of having 5 players sitting at a table trying to find one scenario in common that none of them have played...an almost impossible task.
Paizo makes money by selling product and storeowners make money by selling product....period... no disputing this fact, therefore why set a meaningless rule in place to prevent people form coming to a store and spending money?
Now if I were GM'ing a game for someone and they were acting on their prior knowledge of the scenario and not their PC's knowledge I would give them a warning about it, but in my area we have a lot of good players and this would be a rare happenstance.
Anything to enhance attendance and spending is to be encouraged...anything detrimental to that does not make sense.
If you play 1 or more times a week eventually you WILL exhaust the amount of scenarios you can play. Paizo will never be able to keep up with that type of schedule nor should they. What a player like you should keep in mind though is that it is not just about playing PFS but running it too. As a veteran player you know that GMing is important and that without you or whomever as a GM there will be no events to play them. Someone needs to step up regardless if you have played the scenario before or not.
I agree anything to enhance the experience to encourage attendance. GMing is a MAJOR part of that experience. I know you do GM as evident by you having one star. But on the same token there are many that do no GMing at all and complain that there is not enough scenarios out there to play and it is not fair as well.
We as players of PFS have got to step up and GM as much as we can especially when you have played it before, and lord knows even if you haven't played it before.
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One thing I noticed about stores that continue to have good PFS crowds is the organizer GM's every week at the start and later he only takes weeks off when there are enough other people who have stepped up to GM. This makes players comfortable that if they show up they can play. Of course that GM has to be a likable also. I think it's a sacrifice a store organizer has to make to insure a good consistent crowd.
I also know of one store where this works the opposite way, the store organizer always GM's and goes out of his way to kill PC's. Players don't like to die due to vindictive GM's. Locals stopped going and chose other stores instead.
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I also know of one store where this works the opposite way, the store organizer always GM's and goes out of his way to kill PC's. Players don't like to die due to vindictive GM's. Locals stopped going and chose other stores instead.
If that's the store I think it is, I'm not allowed to GM there because I'm too stupid.
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I started GMing PFS this past March and at first I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of number of players. My first game I had just 3 players and just barely a 3rd player cause one of my players coerced a person passing by into into playing. In the course of two and half months I have seen 15 different players. Some came and tried it once and vanished (I suspect not all were fans of the idea of organized play) but the majority has been pretty consistent. I now have 2 tables and 2 GMs. I do understand over time some people might get burned out and disappear and in a few months I might be down to one table again.
But when I started, I worked with the shop owner. He advertised it on facebook. He talked to people that had expressed interest in Pathfinder in the past. But what really drew people in was people stepping into the back to see what was going on, people asked about pathfinder and when they were explained that it was similar to 3.5 D&D some of them were here playing the following week. 4 weeks ago I had a father and son come in and watch us play Destiny of the Sands part 2. After a bit I turned and asked if they had any questions, the father said they were just interested in getting into pathfinder and wanted to watch first. They've been coming ever since.
Talk to your game shop too if you need more GMs. Having more players requires having more GMs, and having extra GMs can mean having people that can GMs different days to draw in players that maybe are unable to play the days you do PFS. My shop gives a free 20oz pop to GMs with 3 or more players. He also awards points to people that play RPGs but GMs get double points (the points can get you a discount or be traded in for stuff depending how many you got, its awarded for any type of game playing at the store but GMs get extra points). Store owner might also know a few people that have GM'ed in the past that could be lured back.
You could work with your Game shop owner over ideas to draw players. After all it is in their interest too, more people playing would mean more people to buy game material. Maybe a difference day could help or different time. My local game shop stays open an extra hour on Wed for PFS. Its been a mutual benefit. We really needed the extra hour since we start a little late and he gets some extra sales now.
I leave a sign up sheet for PFS at the gameshop now. We play PFS on Wednesday but I've also been doing other Pathfinder stuff on Mondays there and I can see what to expect 2 days in advance when I look at the sheet. Not everyone signs up that will show up and vice-verse but it gives me an idea what to expect. The sign-up sheet also serves as a form of advertisement for PFS since someone might see it and ask about it.
And there is also word of mouth. Talk to people you know that have a Geek-side or RPG experience or any type of game experience. A few of the people in my group never played a d20 rpg before March and one of them is now my 2nd GM. We work at the same store and our breaks/lunch fall on the same time table and I talked to him about it, told him it was similar to D&D. He showed up first time, 2nd time he dragged his brother along. Both have gotten into it.
