D&D General Shocked how hard it is to get new players now-a-days

[AnotherGuy]

I'm in an online game. We use roll20 for the VTT and discord for the audio. My desktop won't run roll20 if any of the fancy bells and whistles are turned on e.g. dynamic lighting and won't run discord well at all (there's a known bug in discord that causes it to slowly hog more and more cpu space on some machines, but it took me ages to learn of this; discord also insists on messing with my sound settings without my telling it to). So I use my smartphone for discord, and there too it hogs the cpu (I get a system warning every time but don't see it until I shut the app down) and drops out constantly due to my not-always-reliable home wifi.

All of which makes the experience considerably less than fun, much of the time.

And that's just as a player. Hell only knows how bad it'd get if I ever tried DMing on it.

Good grief, you're worse off than me. I didn't think that was possible.

 

[Bedrockgames]

In a physical game at a game shop. I have no desire to play online.

I've been trying to get 2 more players for a while. A lot of bites but I bring next to nothing to shore.

I've tried friends and family. Had one cousin express interest but never show.
Friends, same thing. "Sounds cool" but don't show. Even when they lament about not having anything to do that day.
Online boards in my metro area. Made a post about what I'm DMing and wanting players. I've had 3 people say they wished to join. None of them actually show.
People at the store approach and ask if they can play next week. Sure! Don't show.

Closest I had was a co worker and his 2 friends. All 3 showed. Next week the co-worker was sent to another state for surprise job training and his 2 friends were MIA.

I asked my local store to put up a notice board so I can put a posting, can't be bothered.

Why is this so hard? I thought this was the RPG golden age?

I had a much easier time getting players to a table for 3rd and 4th ed. This is like pulling teeth. If my current group ever decided to break up, I don't know what I'd do.

Edit: Some seem to miss that this is less about "no potential players" and more "just don't show up after expressing interest".

It might be very geographically dependent. At game stores in Boston there seem to be tons of groups running games and it looks like it would be easy to find players if you can run things at the store. Outside the city I think it’s less the case. Most of the people I play with have shifted to online, which I imagine is one of the big changes affecting how easy it is to recruit live players

 

[Oofta]

Even harder if you are DM who likes to wing it and improvise with minimal prep work or runs very loose sandbox games.

That was my biggest frustration. I sort of got around it by building up a handful generic scenes like a city street, tavern, outdoors, a cave and so on. It's not like I have custom Dwarven Forge scenes for the tabletop either. Then I had generic tokens of different sizes. It was okay I guess.

I put a decent amount of thought into who's who and what they're up to, but actual combat encounters? Notes of how many and what type.

Even if everything works fine, you still end up staring at the screen for few hours.

Maybe it's just me, but there is something very rewarding in rolling fistful of real dices, shuffling paper, scribbling on sheets, moving real minis around.

Yeah, I still rolled physical dice, even with VTT but I also knew and trusted my players. It's not like I can see what they're rolling on the other side of the table anyway. Some of my players still use DDB to roll dice even in person and it can be so much slower I just don't get it. To each their own.

 

[Mannahnin]

Yeah, I still rolled physical dice, even with VTT but I also knew and trusted my players. It's not like I can see what they're rolling on the other side of the table anyway. Some of my players still use DDB to roll dice even in person and it can be so much slower I just don't get it. To each their own.

The folks I play with enjoy the virtual dice animations in Roll20. While they're occasionally incorrect or unclear, for the most part they do give a nice experience of seeing the dice results together. The excitement of all watching a critical save or attack, or group initiative roll in my old school games.

 

[Velderan]

That was my biggest frustration. I sort of got around it by building up a handful generic scenes like a city street, tavern, outdoors, a cave and so on. It's not like I have custom Dwarven Forge scenes for the tabletop either. Then I had generic tokens of different sizes. It was okay I guess.

That's what I do on my Foundry server. I have some generic maps setup just in case, such as a tavern, a river crossing in the forest, a mountain pass, and a grassy field. They might not 100% match where the players are, but they'll do if they end up in a combat that wasn't planned when I setup the maps for the AP I'm running.

 

[tetrasodium]

The kids call your PC a potato.

While that may also be true, roll =20 is known for creating extremely high cpu loadon larger maps & maps with lots of fancy bells and whistles like dynamic lighting. Browsers are not really capable of using the GPU & other tricks like occlusion(?) to the same degree that other vtts are. Workarounds like loading parts of the map in active chunks are kinda possible, but then you have what are effectively zone borders throughout your dungeon. VTTs that run in a 3d engine like unity or whatever like the one I use (arkenforge) can handle much higher map specs and solid in person gaming with minis.

Spoiler: like so

 

[Belen]

In a physical game at a game shop. I have no desire to play online.

I've been trying to get 2 more players for a while. A lot of bites but I bring next to nothing to shore.

I've tried friends and family. Had one cousin express interest but never show.
Friends, same thing. "Sounds cool" but don't show. Even when they lament about not having anything to do that day.
Online boards in my metro area. Made a post about what I'm DMing and wanting players. I've had 3 people say they wished to join. None of them actually show.
People at the store approach and ask if they can play next week. Sure! Don't show.

Closest I had was a co worker and his 2 friends. All 3 showed. Next week the co-worker was sent to another state for surprise job training and his 2 friends were MIA.

I asked my local store to put up a notice board so I can put a posting, can't be bothered.

Why is this so hard? I thought this was the RPG golden age?

I had a much easier time getting players to a table for 3rd and 4th ed. This is like pulling teeth. If my current group ever decided to break up, I don't know what I'd do.

Edit: Some seem to miss that this is less about "no potential players" and more "just don't show up after expressing interest".

DDB has a good forum for finding people too.

 

[Belen]

I've seen this a number of times in this thread, is COVID still a thing? Do people still care and treat it any more than a flu?

There are lot of people still masking and avoiding public interaction. I think that will continue for those folks.

 

[payn]

While that may also be true, roll =20 is known for creating extremely high cpu loadon larger maps & maps with lots of fancy bells and whistles like dynamic lighting. Browsers are not really capable of using the GPU & other tricks like occlusion(?) to the same degree that other vtts are. Workarounds like loading parts of the map in active chunks are kinda possible, but then you have what are effectively zone borders throughout your dungeon. VTTs that run in a 3d engine like unity or whatever like the one I use (arkenforge) can handle much higher map specs and solid in person gaming with minis.

Spoiler: like so

Sure I get that but my PC and work laptop never struggle with Roll20. They are about 3-5 years old so I’m guessing some folks really are rocking potatoes.

 

[R_J_K75]

There are lot of people still masking and avoiding public interaction. I think that will continue for those folks.

Yes I see it still too but very few and far between. Even when you hear about it on the news its literally a one or two sentence blurb