Hey there, Pinjata!

I can feel for you - absolutely. Especially with the "approaching new tables"-phobia. Got the same. After gaming with wonderful bunch of people for some years I wanted to widen my circle of players and the newbies were a catastrophe.

However, then I remembered our first games and told myself I should give them time...and the same lessons I received/I gave my players. I did and they were still something to behold...

I'll just pick the part that caught my interest the most:

Quote Originally Posted by Pinjata View Post
I remember "the old days" (i'm 35) when i gamed mostly with students and people new to the game. Heck, with girls too, as funny as that may sound, but this "4 optimizers meet at a table and kick ass" has lost some of its shine for me. If I DM, I want someone thinking what color clothes he/she wants and perhaps be a tad interested in a random NPC instead being all "That is surely a quest giver, that is at least CR 10 dragon, red, so Fire resistance and DR5/ magic, lets bring out our wands of frost".
The "4 optimizers meet at a table and kick ass" would bore me to death . And when I thought about the things that you wrote you want at table - my players regularly go shopping for clothes, have fancy dinners just because they were too long in wilderness, and always catch me unprepared by thinking about something I didn't think about... (e.g. "an astronomer? that sounds swell, how does he look like? and will he prepare me a horoscope...?").

My suggestions would be:

- communicate it to the group. Maybe they think you're completely content - they are not mind-readers. Or they shouldn't be. Maybe they would like to give something a try.

- switch to a system you never played (and they don't know), asking them to do just 3 games and then it's back to usual bussiness if they don't like it.

- propose that everyone switches to something they always wanted to play for 3 game sessions (e.g. CoC? Shadowrun?).

- use the advice from daremetodareyo - let's say they encounter a reddish dragon (not red...). It's not your standard issue fire-breather...

- try out diceless system or one that is more focused on roleplay.

If this were Shadowrun, I would say "go read Blackjack's guide to bitter gamemastering". Especially the part about downtime. However... go read it . There is lot of good advice.

Other than that - I wish you luck.