Finding a gaming group in my local area?

[fergo]

Hey all.

I have had extremely limited experience of RPGing.

I've GMed a WHFRP game online (mostly, after a bit of trial and error, via MSN) which was great fun, but hard to keep going over time as people had different commitments and even lived in different timezones.

When I came to uni, I joined the local roleplaying society and tried to join in there, but... I really didn't have much fun, and there were a hundred other things I wanted to do in my first weeks away from home, so I dropped out after only a few sessions. The main problem, though, was that one of the players (the president of the society) immediately took control, even when it made no sense for him to do so in-game, and shot down my ideas, and everyone else just let him--not the sort of game I really wanted to be involved in. Even the GM seemed to set things up so his method of solving problems always worked.

To be fair, though, I should have stuck around longer, I'm sure things would have got better in time.

So, yeah. In a couple of months I'm heading back to my home city for the summer holidays, and I'm thinking of trying to get involved in a RPG game, preferably some form of D&D, but I'd be up for anything.

I was hoping for a structured campaign, one with a definite start and end (save the world, get the girl, defeat the evil man-eating roti of the Punjab, whatever), calculated to last roughly for three months or so of weekly or twice-weekly sessions. Obviously with player freedom it may well be impossible to calculate it properly, but I'd like the campaign to have reasonable chances of coming to a natural end by the time I need to head back to uni (I wouldn't even mind if it was deliberately calculated to last less than the time available, just so we could be sure of finishing it).

I'm including the above because I want to know if that's a reasonable thing to ask of a new gaming group, or whether I should just accept whatever's available.

But my main problem is that I don't know any RPG players in my home city. There aren't even any gaming stores where I could hope to leave notices or whatever.

So, has anyone got any advice on finding a few players to start a short campaign? Any websites I could use?

Thanks for any help :smallbiggrin:.

[Grinner]

Meetup.com (http://www.meetup.com) can be useful.

I think the Wizards of the Coast website runs an Encounters game locator.

I keep thinking there's another website for this sort of thing...Obsidian Portal (http://www.obsidianportal.com)?

[dsmiles]

I use Pen and Paper Games (http://www.penandpapergames.com/). Register, put in the mileage you're willing to travel, and you get updates when a new member registers within that distance. You can search, too.

[Grinner]

I use Pen and Paper Games (http://www.penandpapergames.com/).

I think that's the one I had been trying to think of. :smallredface:

[bokodasu]

I second both of these - I used Meetup to find the group I've been with for four years now, and when I posted my campaign as "looking for players" on Obsidian Portal (which syncs with Pen & Paper Games) I had half a dozen responses within minutes. Partly it depends on your area, I think, but if it's reasonably populated you should definitely have options.

[fergo]

Thanks guys :smallbiggrin:. I'll check them out.