In which Doug whines

[gridlore]

Up front, a lot of this comes from my eagerness to get back to my life after my doctor's appointment tomorrow. I'm feeling much better and ready to get back to work, even if that eventually means moving to an inside job. But...

For the past ten years I've had multiple people tell how much they'd love to be in one of my games. I've been told in email, person, and in this journal just how cool it would be to game with me. Trust me, I've wanted to get back into gaming myself, but circumstances were always against me. My job was too flaky - I was working weekends most places and had odd hours, I had no good place to play since our apartment was a disaster, and I was still locked into my older game modes of thought. All of which led to me never really getting anything off the ground.

Now that has changed. I have weekends off. I have a great place to play. And a great set of rules and a good campaign setting that people have expressed interest in. I put out a call for players to meet once, maybe twice a month and get...

one player. Plus two out of the area folks who have volunteered to play as semi-NPCs (as they are a Russian and a Finn, I'm eager for their input.)

Is it me? Was everyone lying? Changed their minds? Really hate the idea of Ars Magica? I have the rules as a .pdf if you'd like to look them over. I'm looking for another 2 - 4 people who want to do a game that meets face to face once a month at Game Kastle in Santa Clara for a session, and does much of the rest of the play online through email and/or a dedicated LJ or FB group. Hell, if someone can make it work, I'd even be willing to do some of the gaming on KloOge. But I really prefer meeting to game, then adjourning for food and conversation.

Hell, if it comes to it, I'd be willing to offer crash space at my place to a player.

Not sure what I'm expecting out of this, but I'm really bad about holding things in and letting them fester. I want to game. I have a game. I just need gamers.

Comments

[seawasp]

Sitting on the outside as a non-local who hasn't made the comments, but as a GM with long-time experience --

If you're starting a game WITHOUT a group, you encounter more difficulty the higher the "bar" you make for the game.

Accurate or at least derived-from-accurate history is a very high bar (I've played in precisely two games of that nature, and they were very difficult for the GM and players).

New-to-players system is a fairly high bar. Ars Magica is an unusual system with some unique aspects which differs very much from the standard systems.

If you're all adults with adult responsibilities, availability becomes quite a bar to clear. If you already have an ESTABLISHED group (like I do) any member of the group can propose a new game much more easily -- but usually the group adults are already squeezing as much game time out of their lives as they can to attend the main campaign. I could game 6 nights a week, sometimes 7, when I was young and unmarried. Nowadays, one night plus some stuff maybe on other nights with a one-on-one talk session about characters or something like that.

So in short it's almost certainly not about people lying or trying to mislead you, but about it just being hard to start up new games out of the blue when you haven't got a core gaming group already set to go. If I had to do that (say, I had to move to California and leave all my old gamers behind), I'd look for people interested in "a game" and find out what kind of game they wanted to play, then negotiate something we could all work with. After we determined that we were a good group, then we could try new campaigns, new systems, etc.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

I love Ars, have for years. If I was local, I'd love to play. But since I'm not, I wasn't about to post and waste your time.

Sorry. Good luck finding more players.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

Never played Ars, but otherwise I totally agree with the good cmdr.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

I dropped out of a game due to an insane work schedule. Too busy trying to survive to waste time on fun.

[melchar.livejournal.com]

I'd love to be in it - but I don't have the free time. I ref the AD&D game Saturdays & the homebrew at least twice a month on Sundays. [another Sunday is taken up with one of my Sunday players refereeing his own game.] So that's 7 of 8 weekend days taken - except if there is a convention or holiday visit to So Cal eating those weekends.

What I suggest you do is -join- an already existing group. [Like my Saturday group.] Attend a few games, make sure you like the game you'll be in most of the time and the other players. This is important. Then offer to referee a game a month for said Saturday group [since you have expressed an interest in a once a month ref-ing].

For my group, I have actively encouraged the players to try refereeing. Mostly, they just look at me as though I am mad. MAD, I say! [clears throat]

... IMO the key to refffing is the group 1st, the game 2nd, because you need some reliable game attendees. Now you may say 'this is just a sneaky way for Barbara to play a game and not ref', but there's no need to bring the truth into this, is there?

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I think it would be really cool to game with you, but I'm a long way from local — hence no replies to your post.

[taeraresh.livejournal.com]

I'm in Oakland, and without reliable transportation, otherwise I'd be interested in playing.