HYPERBOREA / Curiosity: How DO you put your gaming group(s) together?

**Posted by francisca** 1/27/2020 12:56 pm

For the last 22 years (I started gaming in 1997 again, after about a 12 year layoff), it's been about inviting friends/coworkers over to game, in some cases, bringing former D&D players back into the fold, and in others, teaching people to game for the first time. In a few other cases, I've joined games which were started by people who I had been gaming with, who decided to spin up their own table/group. But in all cases of face to face gaming, I've generally already had some sort of relationship with people before I gamed with them, or they were a friend of a friend.

At conventions, I noticed me and several others gravitated to, and/or ran games which were similar to each other (within one standard deviation is how I term it). So I started noting names and making it a point to hang around with them.

In a few other cases, I've met with people for the first time face-to-face after spending years (in some cases, a decade or more) on the same messageboard/community. these have generally gone well, though there have been a few uh..."misses".

Anyway, for me, I am generally gaming (F2F and online) with people I already know or who have been vouched for. I only have a few experiences with gaming with strangers outside of cons, and they have not gone well. I'm not saying meetups, etc.., are bad, but I just haven't had to go that route to find people to game with.

How did your group form?

**Posted by rhialto** 1/27/2020 1:58 pm

My current group is an extension of friends since high school (ummm...35+ years ago now). Happenstance led several of us to wind up in the same geographical area through our disparate professions, so we resumed a couple of decades ago and have carried on since. And since we all have spawn we've introduced the Young Guard to gaming, the oldest of whom is now refereeing her own groups (and us, when she can tolerate our chaos).

**Posted by grodog** 2/07/2020 1:27 am

francisca wrote:
How did your group form?

I knew Jon via the NG message boards and when I was moving to Wichita in 2005 he had been circling the wagons among some old friends to get a game going again, so the timing was quite good. I didn't really know him, or any of his crew, when I first moved to town.

Over the years, we've lost several players due to changes in jobs, work shift hours, etc. so when I began planning out the Greyhawk game I'm starting to run now, I intentionally wanted to reach out and broaden our base of players via the local gaming community in Wichita. I've gamed with a number of folks at our local TsunamiCon and at quarterly game days over the years (not always RPGs, sometimes Aliens or board games, etc.), and started out the game there in October. Before that I ran a survey to get some input on what the possible players wanted out of a game---that netted ~18 respondants (which includes me, my son Henry, and several players from our regular campaign, but netted out about 10-12 new possible players), and pimped it more on FB. I also met a guy over the summer via my first posting on FB, and gamed some with him and his kids a bit (he was wanting to hire me to run a game for him and his kids, but I decided I didn't want to commit to that). He's in the current game now, and is the most enthusiastic player (perhaps excepting Henry ;) ).

Allan.

**Posted by Handy Haversack** 2/07/2020 8:23 am

We're pretty catch as catch can. I just make no secret of gaming in any of the various social worlds I move through, so those who are interested end up asking about it. Usually that's already enough screening to strain out the a-holes, but basically if any one player in the group is uncomfortable with someone, then they don't get to join in.

But most of the crew has been in the game FOrever now!

So I guess my only technique is to have lots of different social worlds: canoeing, music, work, local bars, beer-league softball. It's a funnel!