Advice on advertising a home game?

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm looking to expand my circle of roleplaying friends, and want to try something a bit different. Up till now I've played at FLGS and with work colleagues, but now I want to run a home game (initially) populated by strangers and especially people new(ish) to the hobby. My plan would be to host and DM, running a custom campaign in my personal setting.

I've thought about trying to have the first session/session 0/session -1 (logistics and planning) at a neutral location like a coffee shop or something to avoid the "going to a total stranger's house" fear, but I may just be paranoid.

I'd rather not play at my local FLGS because their only open time is Wednesday night, and I can't do late nights on a weekday. Also, the noise level is too much on those nights.

Any advice on how to go about advertising this? Things to be concerned about?


I’m an experienced DM looking for 3-5 people interested in playing in a 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons campaign set in a custom, living world. No experience necessary. I can provide materials if you don’t have your own. Characters will be created at session 0.

Time: Friday evenings after 6:30 or Saturday (day or evening). Weekly or biweekly.
Location: My home near <landmark>
Contact: <Redacted, but both email and phone #>
World Information: https://www.admiralbenbo.org
Character Creation Rules: https://www.admiralbenbo.org/index.php/player-s-guide
Some Possible Campaign Directions: https://www.admiralbenbo.org/index.php/117-open-adventuring-requests

[Mike Miller]

Generally, games at game shops are a good place to meet players and find a number of like minded individuals to fill out a group.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Generally, games at game shops are a good place to meet players and find a number of like minded individuals to fill out a group.

That's the problem. The only games at my local FLGS are

a) on Wednesday nights (not an option for me due to work the next day)
b) heavily oversubscribed. There's an AL (supposedly) game with like 12 players.

[HMS Invincible]

You don't want to stop by and steal a few players? That's generally how it works, you form connections, take them away and then never come back.

[hymer]

I had a player of mine use Facebook to find interested players in our area. Not sure exactly how it worked, but it quickly got us a load of prospects. Mind you, most of them were not new to roleplaying, at least not alltogether.

[Algeh]

Is there a a reason you've settled on both a group of total strangers and launching into what appears to be a long-term campaign?

My biggest concern with that combination is that group chemistry can be a tricky thing, and it's much more awkward to un-invite someone from an ongoing campaign than it is to simply not extend an invitation to them for the next campaign. A group of all strangers also has less invested in making the group dynamics work out than people who already know each other and presumably hang out in other contexts. (I'm also, personally, much better at being part of a group with offensive behavior from a character when I can clearly see that the person playing that character does not share those views/tendencies because I already know them.)

It might be better to try to generate a group of potential invitees from playing or GMing one-shot games either at the game store or any place else public you can find that will let you do so. (Around here, libraries often have meeting rooms that you can book for various purposes as long as your meetings are "open to the public" to attend, which might or might not be the case where you are.) This would let you get a sense of who approaches RPGs in a way that meshes well with the kind of game you'd like to run before you start telling them to show up at your house every week for the foreseeable future.

(My only "home game with strangers" experience was when a buddy of mine happened to run into some other gamers on a city bus and we both ended up joining their new campaign. It went badly because they were the "burning down the inn is hilarious" kind of players and we were the type who write complicated backstories and have characters make non-mechanically-optimal choices for character reasons. It did not inspire me to see out future groups of random strangers for long-term campaigns without prior vetting.)

[Thrudd]

I did that about 15 yrs ago. I put out an ad on a classifieds site specifically advertising games (rpg, board games and war games), and some people responded. I wrote a generic ad saying that I was a GM looking to run any of a number of games I was interested in (I listed them).
Now there are probably 1000 more sites to do that, so you could look for one connected to a community that seems to mesh with your style. When I did it, I had no idea what to expect. I was single, living alone, but I was also young and unafraid - I barely owned anything worth stealing, and I reasoned that RPG gamers were probably one of the least threatening groups of people to take a chance on.

I invited respondents to my apartment, I had a table set up and treated them to pizza and snacks, showed them the games I had and decided what we would play.

I lucked out, my first respondent brought a friend along, and they were mild mannered and friendly and amenable to try anything. We did a session 0 and made characters, and they liked what I had to say enough (or liked getting free pizza enough) that they came back to actually play. I got another responder in time for the second week, and he turned out to be funny and personable and great, also down to try anything.

The third person who responded didn't mesh with the rest and he wasn't really into the game we were playing- so he declined to come back unless/until we decided to play D&D.

I took down the ad after that, and invited a coworker and their spouse to play with us, and that turned into a good group of friends. Eventually a couple more people got added, a roommate and an SO, and we moved the location to someone else's place that was bigger.

I suspect, if you have a single really specific thing you're wanting to play and you've done a good job describing it, that the people who respond will be likely to be into it. So it's just a matter of personalities. You might have a period of time where people come to try out your game and then don't come back (or you don't want them back). This is where the session 0 may not work out as intended, exactly- you can have session 0 with your first responders, but you may have some turnover in the early part of the game. You'll need to be flexible enough to allow new people in if you didn't get a lot of responses right away, and be ready to possibly have players leaving and being replaced. And the only way you'll really know who's working out and who doesn't mesh is after you start playing, so you probably don't want to have session 0 and then make them wait forever to start playing. If you wait until you have your preferred number of players before arranging session 0, you might have to wait a while and people could lose interest, so I'd try to get together as soon as possible with however many reply at first. If you meet some nice folk, they might have friends or people they've gamed with they can bring in that will fill out the group with people who may be more comfortable together than perfect strangers.

[MoiMagnus]

Most of my RPG group where first board games group. (helped by the fact that a lot of board games are halfly RPG, with either the technical part of RPG, either the improvisation part of RPG)

Starting a board game group is easier because you can progressively include new peoples, rather than needing everyone at the same time.

Look for board game and RPG convention, that's a good way to have the first game not being at someone home.

Oh, and as said by other, long term campaign with a group of stranger is a bad idea. Players may have contradictory expectation on the game. If you really wish to make a long term campaign, build it as a film series:
+ The first film (so the first part of the campaign) is a stand alone story. (It is important for this story to be "completed". So that player do not feel forced into continuing past this first part, nor feel betrayed if they are not invited in the following parts.)
+ Some characters of the first film may be in the sequel. Some other will not. New characters may appear.
+ If the first film worked, the second film no longer need to be "stand alone", since there will be a third film to conclude (or announce another trilogy)

[Lord Torath]

FLGS sometimes have bulletin boards you can advertise on.

You also might check to see if there is a D&D Meetup (https://www.meetup.com/find/games-sci-fi/) in your area. If there is one, that's a good place to look for players.

[Geddy2112]

Personally, I would not have a group of strangers over and second the idea of having a few one shots in public, then recruit from those for your home group. Do a campaign that is short but can continue, so there is less pressure to continue or keep people you don't want in the group.

My group has never had good luck with this, and now we only recruit from friends or friends of friends and even then, we are very selective. I have also had bad luck joining random games, as they either fizzle out or there is a VERY drastic mismatch of playstyle, etc.