Thursday, January 29, 2009

A Roleplayer's Mailing List

I got another crazy idea the other day, and I'm just getting around to implement it. It's an attempt to solve two simple but common problems: How do I find games to play in? And how to I find players for games I'm running?

I solved both problems by making friends with people who turned out to be interested in roleplaying, but especially here at college I wish there was an easier way to get in touch with people who share my hobby. The traditional solution would be to start a club, but I don't really have the time or the patience to deal with the college bureaucracy required to start and maintain such things. I might get dragged into one anyway, so we can reserve rooms and post flyers and such, but for now, all I really need is a way for potential players to identify themselves and potential GMs to contact them.

Thus, I've created a Google Group -- a mailing list. Even if it doesn't take off in the way I hope, it'll make it easier for me to manage recruitment for my games. And if it does succeed? If other people start using it to recruit for their games? Not only would it now be much easier for freshman and the curious to get into games (one reason I might end up creating a club anyway: advertising) the roleplaying community in the area would really be a community, aware of each other and what people are doing, rather than a bunch of little sub-groups that don't talk to each other much.

What's going on now works, so far as it goes. I've got players, most of the GMs I know have players. But things could be better, especially since one of my longer-term gaming goals is to get to know enough people to run an irregular player group dungeon crawl, and something like this would be great for scheduling sessions. At the very least, it'll be an interesting experiment

1 comment:

  1. I helped restart a gaming club while I was in college (the first time). The best games I ended up joining weren't through the club, though it was good to have a consistent place on Saturdays that I could find a game.

    The weird thing I discovered is that there were two types of gamers: club gamers and non-club gamers. There were plenty of people in regular D&D games, but they had no interest in coming to the club or doing any gaming outside their regular game. Likewise, there were people who had no interest in starting up regular games, but would always be there on Saturdays to play.

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