PoP!
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I have drawn three pieces today, and this -- with no hint of irony or
self-deprecation -- is the best of them all.
Monday, June 27, 2011
question re: lack of group
This morning I'm just feeling curious about folks who don't have a gaming group at the moment. What do you perceive to be the main obstacles to getting a group up and running?
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Time. Definitely time.
ReplyDeleteTime is a factor but allow me to tweak that. I know plenty of people who find PLENTY of time to waste away at bars not once a week(a gaming group's dream) but sometimes every night! So it's not that we don't have the time, it's just a matter of coordinating that time with others with similar interests.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe existence of 4e and my unwillingness to play or run it.
ReplyDeleteTwo years ago I would have answer "because I'm ashamed to tell my friends what kind of a nerd I'm". Then apparently everyone started thinking that geekery is kinda cool. I still can't figure it out...
ReplyDeleteBTW, word verification: nonorsi. Sounds like "not bears" in italian :D
Time. Definitely time.
ReplyDeleteI know lots of people who'd love to play... but I find it's easier to schedule these as "events" than a regular weekly / bi-weekly thing.
finding players. My fault partly for being in France and not being willing to DM in French.
ReplyDeleteFor a while I was without group because I had a newborn. That makes it really hard to break away from the family on a regular basis. But now that he is older, I can do it again and I am back in play.
ReplyDeleteI've got to put in another plug for meetup.com, for those people who find their major obstacle is finding other players. Even if you're looking for non-4E players, it's definitely worth looking into. I manage my biweekly game through meetup, and I've regularly got a waiting list to get in (I limit myself to 7 players).
ReplyDeleteTime for me. I could get my group together no problem, but two bands, a wedding to plan, and a move are eating up my free time. Been gameless for about six months now...it sucks in a lot of ways, but I can still indulge my creative side in my other pursuits.
ReplyDeleteScheduling and persuasion. If finding time to game is not an issue, then its having to convince the other players to play the game, system, setting, or genre you what to play, or else get stuck playing some bland, vanilla fantasy, or lame-ass dungeon-punk fantasy, using some needless complicated, but popular system.
ReplyDeleteMost of the time, it getting people to play, when they are wasting their time with stuff like "getting an education", "starting a family" or "having a life" - they are such selfish bastards! :P
Getting people's schedules to line up consistently. I can make the time and I can find the players, but unless there's a semi-regular schedule that you can stake out on the calendar, people (myself included) just don't make the time commitment and the game/campaign falters.
ReplyDeleteTime for now (I just started a PhD), apathy (just tried to start a session and got few responses), where I live (Kyoto), and finally what I'd like to run or play (the OSR has stoked my fire to play something old school, but the major game groups are all into board games - as much fun as I have at their sessions, I'd also like to do mini-campaigns over multiple sessions again as I did at uni). So a congruence of things...
ReplyDeleteTime hasn't been my largest issue, but it is definitely up there. I've attempted more than a few play by post or even play over some medium like yahoo chat or skype in order to limit the time factor from being a big deal. My issue has always been finding the right group of people who want to tell a story together and not just roll dice around and gather loots. I can play WoW for that.
ReplyDeleteInterested parties. I've only got a few people that I can actively connive into playing. Most are newbies and it doesn't help that I've not GM'd in years.
ReplyDeleteI've played at the FLGS with strangers but it's a real challenge to get a regular group of folks together. Most drop out (myself included) due to some weirdness or another.
I have a group - two, actually - but there's something that has prevented us from getting people together in the past, and that's plain old logistics.
ReplyDeleteIf you have more than four adults, and they do anything else at all other than play games, it can be nigh-on impossible to find a regular night every week (or even every two weeks) that people can mostly make it to.
Sure, we can usually manage once a month. But by the time you account for summer holidays, Christmas, and maybe the odd other disruption, you're looking at games every two months. And so on.
My own lack of interest in devoting large chunks of time to the pursuit on a regular basis, honestly. I've been enjoying have a social life that doesn't *entirely* revolve around D&D. I could actually get a group together pretty easily if I wanted to, but... just not feeling it. If I could just do it whichever weekends I wanted to/felt up to it, it might be more doable, but I'm not interested in a regular campaign right now. Maybe I should get back to building my megadungeon...
ReplyDeleteFor me, I'm not interested so much in trolling the internet for a random group of strangers to come to my house and game. I am so tired of that. People put tons of effort into screening dates for, say, online dating, but it's not so easy to be selective with potential gamers. I am sick of years of spending time with people who I normally would have nothing to do with outside of the game.
ReplyDeleteIt feels hollow and lame and I think the gaming suffers as a result.
Time, a huge inability for Bible Belt gamers to crawl out of their holes and distance...
ReplyDeleteAs someone who lacks the confidence and time management skills to run a campaign/on-going game, my biggest problem is finding gamers who want to play stuff other than LARPs, D&D, and White Wolf. After than the problems revolve around scheduling.
ReplyDeleteVerification: burfr
Really? burfr? What on earth?
I think time and availability. I don't have a wide selection of people to game with in my area. There is no local game shop and no one here, that I know of, is on the net so connecting with local gamers is pretty tough.
ReplyDeletetime, general apathy regarding the games I offer to run, my general apathy towards the games people around here are playing.
ReplyDeleteFinding five adults who can all gather on one particular day of the week and remain so gathered for four or five consecutive hours.
ReplyDeleteThis is particularly maddening for me right now because I am a teacher and have only four hours out of each week where I am obligated to be somewhere until August rolls around.
Also, what Christian said.
Time again here too. Add in the whole edition and game genre bias against the old school. And like Christian said, there's a bit of distastefulness on my part of dealing with people with whom I would have nothing to do with except for gaming.
ReplyDeleteMeetup.com is cool though.
Time again here too. Add in the whole edition and game genre bias against the old school. And like Christian said, there's a bit of distastefulness on my part of dealing with people with whom I would have nothing to do with except for gaming.
ReplyDeleteMeetup.com is cool though.
I have a gaming group at the moment, but within weeks, I could find myself in a new and small town with potentially limited or no gaming at all.
ReplyDeleteThen I would have to find players who I wouldn't mind socializing with and who would be willing to play the OSR kinda' games I'm into.
Slim chance indeed.
Scheduling conflicts is a major hurdle. It's damn hard to keep a group playing consistently, especially in an ongoing campaign. The game starts to lose momentum when people can't make it all the time. Players start to forget things that happened in pervious games due to long absences.
ReplyDeleteI live in Saugerties, NY. Google it, we have been voted coolest town to visit this summer by AAA. We have lots of little girls on horses jumping over things (Horses in the Summer). We have hipsters from NYC coming up for the weekend. We have campers. We have liberals out the a$$ in Woodstock. Yes, THE Woodstock, the one that never hosted any of the Woodstock concerts. We have a dozen antique shops and a generally cool crowd but the one thing we don't have is PEOPLE WHO PLAY D&D. I have tried starting meetups, posting on craigslist, posting on boardgamegeek and even putting up psters in the local bookstore. NOBODY here wants to play D&D. I have to drive a minimum of 45 minutes to find anyone. So for me, the reason is the non-existence of D&D players in town besides myself.
ReplyDelete1. Time
ReplyDelete2. Other gaming obligations
3. Distance. Until recently, I've been having to do a lot of gaming online which, while fun, is a lot easier for people to blow off last minute.
4. System. It's hard to find a system that is going to draw new players in, I find, unless I just run what everybody else is already running, which I've no interest in.
5. Insularity. I've had a very hard time spreading word of mouth or interest about some open games I'm trying to host at the store, even with the store's help, whereas longtime Encounters patrons are having no problem rounding up players. And yes I tried going to Encounters for a while to drum up interest.
6. Crunch. My wife isn't a fan and when trying to ingratiate new unfamiliar players to a new unfamiliar system the more figures and formulas they have the remember, the more hurdles that requires them to jump.
7. Beef. Similarly, wayyy too much setting info required to play makes every session feel like an oral pop quiz.
8. Idiosyncrasy. I like a lot of games that should be drawing players being weird, interesting, familiar, simple, straightforward, free, and right in the wheelhouse of fantasy gaming fans especially. I also like a lot of weird games that I doubt I'll ever be lucky enough to find a party for.
9. Fundage. Just the gas to get to the store/my place is an impediment, not to mention the price point for books (I provide enough for players to play without owning the sourcebook but the collector-behavior in the community seems to rage against this).
10. Then again, maybe it's just me?
The intense resistance among people to let anyone new into their group, and their resistance to let anyone new run games for them.
ReplyDeleteI've tried multiple times to run stuff for people, being pointed to areas where "people usually join up for games", finding only apathy and disinterest.
Those where my main problems.
Made you kind of bitter some days.
I don't know. I have found a few other players through the net, but some how it never seems to result in a game. I'll even play 4e if its the only game in town! If there is anyone out there ihn Leeds UK, look for me on the ODD board, user name 'bert'
ReplyDeletehttp://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi
I'm lucky enough to have a gaming group, but lately, the scheduling dance has become almost impossible. Two of our group have children, four have professional careers that demand a great deal of time. The last time we got together was a month ago. *Sigh*
ReplyDeleteMostly due to having small children. My 2e group meets almost monthly and I can only stay for a few hours.
ReplyDeleteAdd in weapon speed and casting time with individual initiative and a bunch of first-time players and you can see why I tend to avoid combat. :)
Our old group died a natural death (people moved interstate). Followed up by two really bad (seperate) experiences with really creepy guys trying to hit on my wife at the table (at game stores/clubs) and we have been shy at further attempts.
ReplyDeleteMy children. I'm a single father raising two kids. Their mother sees them once a week for a few hours. Really isn't anybody else to watch them on a regular basis.
ReplyDeleteCoordinating time. Finding players who are willing to try something other than 4E. Finding players who don't make me want to strangle them, or them me. Lack of confidence in my GMing skills (due largely to some spectacularly unsuccessful attempts with my last group). Those are the main ones. I'm sure that I'll work them out, though.
ReplyDeleteIsolation. I live in a very (VERY) small town, and although everyone knows I'm a geek, trying to turn on the people my age to gaming would be, ummmm.... not good. The best I can do is get them into video games. Plus, I have dial-up, so playing online doesn't really work either.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to say "laziness to be honest", yet I have to admit... knowing the available pool of players in the local gaming community, and the compromises I am no longer willing to make (time, health, goodwill, sanity, etc), no gaming sure does seem better than bad gaming.
ReplyDeletewordverif: galiph - a geeky caliph
The logistical problems of finding time and players aren't really an issue for me. My problems are mostly creative ones.
ReplyDeleteThe primary difficulty I have in getting a game going is coming up with the details of the setting that are most necessary in the beginning of a game. I'm good at big-picture stuff - themes, nations, cosmologies, etc., but it takes me forever to come up with the details of say, a starting town with low- or no-level NPCs for the characters to interact with. Similarly, I'm great at coming up with ideas for high-level adventures and challenges, but not low-level ones. It's become a running joke among my friends that I'm always talking up campaigns that we never get around to actually playing, because I never manage to develop them to the point where I would actually be able to run them.
The wrong friends. Roleplaying is something I do with my friends - the social aspect is more fun to me than the game aspect. The Venn diagram of "my friends who enjoy RPGs" and "my friends who live within an hour's drive" has no overlap right now. And as an old man of thirty-something who's raising kids, I'm not moving to another town just so I can roleplay.
ReplyDeleteInstead, we're training the kids to do it.
Being at sea...
ReplyDeleteMy obstacle to gaming is gamers. Gamers being lazy and disorganised. If I don't make the session happen, it doesn't happen.
ReplyDeleteI could have a game group within 2 weeks of deciding to make it happen. But there'd be lots of nagging and persuasion, and waiting around on game night for them to deign to show up.
I'm a personal trainer nowadays. Part of my job is chasing people to ensure they show up on time ready for action, rather than just drifting away into idleness. I've simply not been willing to do it for my hobby, too.
For me, three factors:
ReplyDelete1) gaming buddies fleeing the state
2) Gaming buddies who can't get their boss to give them a fixed day off every week.
3) Gaming buddies unwilling to play what I want to run and/or run what I will play.
The hardest fits are finding players willing to try BW or anything Trek. It splits groups to suggest one or the other.
Verification: ultshipp
Which makes me think SFB Fed 2X CA...