I'm planning to start my first online campaign as a GM (I've GMed in person, and played a bit online). Its been a long time since I recruited new players. I want a no-table-drama table, as much as possible.
I plan to go through the "consent in gaming" checklist and make a list of shit I intend to include / exclude. Romance no, Xenophobic response to the marauding hordes
of beastmen slaughtering your villages yes, etc; and try to clearly communicate GMing style - dice in the open; the world is the world, unleveled encounters, don't pick fights you can't win. Common sense > RAW, when theres a conflict. You know, clear communication so people know what they're signing up for.
What sorts of things do you guys check for when recruiting, to avoid table-drama, and what do you do to do it?
"No real world religion or politics" is probably a good table rule.
I'd like players who actually understand how their character works, so maybe I have them pitch a character concept at me, mechanically, and tell me what they see themselves doing mechanically to contribute to a party, to see if they understand their character abilities? (Or is there a better way).
I should ask them what they want both for ideas and to gauge if they're a good fit for the group, I'm sure, but beyond giving them a checklist and asking if there's anything they want me to keep out of the game, I'm not sure what specifically I should ask.
Any tips?
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>No xenophobic response to marauding hordes
So you want us to just LET THEM ransack our homes?
Damn you stupid
>yes means no
What kind of zoomzoom nuspeak is this?
Bump.
Nobody has any advice for getting better players at all? Just one guy who only stopped in to demontrate he thinks yes means no, and one guy who called him stupid for it?
Online gaming is awful, don't you have IRL friends?
Moved for work a couple months ago. All my IRL friends are on the east coast and I now live on the west coast.
Can't you set up an online game with your IRL friends?
Most of them hate online TTRPG sessions. When we had COVID lockdowns most of the group said they'd rather have no ttrpg at all than play online. I could get at least one guy that way though. Maybe 2.
Also moved from a mid sized city to a small town. So, not really, not anymore.
define small
Anything over 5.000 people I guarantee you can easily find a good irl group.
~70k people. I'm sure I could find a local 5e group, but frankly I hated 5e, and plan to run Eclipse 3.x this one around (and maybe GURPS down the road). I'm less confident I could find a new local group with an open mind. Its not 2011 anymore unfortunately.
Not unless my wife who doesn't like tabletop games, and our 1-year-old count, which, for thee purposes, I would say, do not.
>wife who doesn't like tabletop games, and our 1-year-old
Shit, are you me?
Are you the other guy who used to frequent GURPS general like a year and a half ago or so, who had a kid around the same time as me? I remember it came up in a "why has this thread gotten so slow lately" and two of us had just had kids.
I enjoy doing shit with my friends that doesn't make me realize how stupid they can be, frankly. I want to have meaningful RPG experiences, so I look for players who want the same shit. Makes for a better group long-term and I befriend the best players in the end so it works out. You sound like the homosexual, don't you have the ability to make new friends given any circumstance? Why limit yourself.
To top things off I work overnight, so even if my IRL friends gave a shit about RPGs, we could never schedule anything properly.
Run a few short-duration games at first, and take note of the best players (most reliable, most skillful, most attentive, similar game preferences). After finding a few good candidates, try to assemble those for a bigger campaign.
This is actually the way, cull and curate your gaming group. Don't commit to a full campaign with a group of randos, look at the one-shot or short term games as tryouts.
How long do they need to be, do you think? 6 sessions? 4?
I was in your position a few months ago and was dreading it.
What you've already listed is good? I've told people in advance that I want zero non-game related controversial topics because I want zero drama. I would give all the minor details, what day you're playing, session length, how many sessions they can miss before they're booted. It might seem minor but I'd make sure they have a solid internet connection and good quality mic. You don't want to discover problems like that after you've already accepted them.
I had three spots for my game and got eight people interested in three days. I had a 30-45 Discord call with 6 of them after some light messaging. One of the eight was poor at responding and another was giving weird vibes so I just dropped them. The 6 I had calls had varying strengths and weaknesses but I felt they all deserved a chance. I ran a oneshot for two groups of three to "audition" them so to speak. This was key as it let them display characteristics that I could identify as being a problem down the line. Two of them were never going to make it and then I cut the fourth player with the least to offer.
Months later, the game is stable, the players have gelled well, zero problems. I'm happy I overcame my laziness to do all the vetting. It was worth it.
I still had other people messaging me after I closed the application process and I would have been willing to entertain them but it was obvious from their avatars/previous posts that they were trannies/furgays/sexual deviants so I just told them they were going on a (non-existent) waiting list.
This is good advice. Don't settle for shit, unreliable players. You need to put the work in to find the good ones. And good players appreciate a stable and well run table.
What game is it by the way?
The screenshot? Dunno. Random hex map image on google image search.
But I'm getting ready to run an Eclipse (Distant Horizons, point based character builder for 3.x games) based (may make / collate some Dungeon Fantasy style class-templates for convenience, and some prebuilt abilities, but the main goal is more flexible character building and much simpler prereqs. If I assign some built feature a prerequisite, it'll be like "character level X". Or BAB/CL minimum, or a skill minimum I it's directly about the skill. But no /trees/) hexcrawl with town / fortress builder and cherry-picked mechanics from a variety of 3.x sources. So, it'll be fairly familiar 3.x based at-the-table-gameplay, but without the prerequisite planning autism or big six bean counting (because I'll be baking that stuff into level advancement, free in up wealth for doodads and consumables and base building and such). Haven't settled on starting level yet, but it'll be higher than 1. Going to use Talespire for maps and stream it over discord, just because I have it and it does 3d terrain, and do the dice and file sharing in a discord server. I think I found a decent dice bot that will let players make macros off their sheets. Nobody will need talepire to play, but that'll mean I'll have to move their minis for them.
Campaign isn't ready yet, but I've been putting all my spare time into it for more than a week at this point, and I've figured out a decent chunk of the details.