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

[R_J_K75]

Forgot

At the last company meeting, the biggest request from employees was more WFH days and the company says they are implementing more of them.

One of my neighbors has been working remote since 2005 or so. I worked remote for a period in 2009 because I slipped a few discs in my back. Demolishing office buildings to make way for housing and urban farming could be a good thing, so remote working could be a thing of the future

 

[DarkCrisis]

Around here (rural area) it's a very small number. I can't remember the last time I saw a mask... probably at the airport last month? I expect there's a lot of variation here depending on what nation, region, etc. you're in.

A lot of face to face activities saw a falloff in 2020 and have never recovered.


My computer is about 7 years old and I have no intention of updating any time soon. I have Opinions about what operating systems I'm willing to tolerate for personal use. Most of the games I play are 10+ years old anyway.

Yes! I've been WFH since before 2020, but I'm on commission so they don't want me in the office. It's a struggle to get anyone else WFH though. My boss says the CEO lives in the 1900s.

We're looking at hiring a position that's about 55% "reports to me" and I want full remote for talent acquisition/retention purposes. When I moved 2 hours away from the office & metro area to a rural area, I knew I might take about a 10% hit to my commissions in terms of missed business (meetings/walkthroughs I couldn't just pop over to in 1 hr) and decided it was worth it. Still is. WFH is the biggest possible perk of working at a company.

That said, it's obviously only for white collar roles, and you have to have the right person with self-discipline and drive. I think some of the "someone was using a mouse mover to fake working" jobs are jobs that probably didn't need to exist in the first place.

Yeah most of those who do the WFH thing, 90% of their job is on the computer.

We have one project lead who has a big office and has spent maybe 1-2 days per month in it. Mostly works from home.

Before Covid, she was in the office every day

 

[payn]

My computer is about 7 years old and I have no intention of updating any time soon. I have Opinions about what operating systems I'm willing to tolerate for personal use. Most of the games I play are 10+ years old anyway.

That’s fine but you can’t complain that VTTs suck when you willing refuse to leave the potato patch.

 

[Lanefan]

That’s fine but you can’t complain that VTTs suck when you willing refuse to leave the potato patch.

One of the primary appeals of D&D (and RPG-ing in general) is that in the end it's a very inexpensive hobby.

Having to lay down $1000+ for new tech just to play it kinda blows "inexpensive" right out of the water.

That, and I refuse to get on the treadmill that Big Tech has set up, where (in their ideal world) incremental "improvement", usually to software, forces us all to buy new tech every few years just to keep up even when the functional lifespan of the machinery is far longer.

 

[billd91]

One of the primary appeals of D&D (and RPG-ing in general) is that in the end it's a very inexpensive hobby.

Having to lay down $1000+ for new tech just to play it kinda blows "inexpensive" right out of the water.

That, and I refuse to get on the treadmill that Big Tech has set up, where (in their ideal world) incremental "improvement", usually to software, forces us all to buy new tech every few years just to keep up even when the functional lifespan of the machinery is far longer.

Well, you've met them at least part way. Unless this is being transcribed by a carrier pigeon, you seem to have a computer with a browser still capable of logging into ENWorld.

That's one of the things the VTT sites are probably counting on - people who have already invested a little bit in their home computing and internet tech. Divided across all of the potential uses for the computer (shopping, paying bills, games, general household document-keeping like taxes and budgets, porn, and social media), it's a lot cheaper than laying out $1000 just to get on Roll20 or D&D Beyond.

 

[J-H]

That’s fine but you can’t complain that VTTs suck when you willing refuse to leave the potato patch.

My complaint with VTTs is the lack of the face to face/IRL human interaction that lets me build relationships with real people.

Videoconferencing is not a substitute (although it's better than a phone call for sales work).

I guess a secondary complaint would be "My prep has to be more than notes and some dry erase markers and reusable wood tokens?"

 

[MichaelSomething]

How far are you willing to drive to get to a weekly live group? Twenty miles? Fifty? A hundred???

 

[tetrasodium]

My complaint with VTTs is the lack of the face to face/IRL human interaction that lets me build relationships with real people.

Videoconferencing is not a substitute (although it's better than a phone call for sales work).

Completely agree but.... There are VTTs & sometimes vtt plugins designed for use at a real physical table where in person play takes place. Multiple companies even make physical products to support doing so... I won't link to the four & five digit tables with built in displays I've seen (and would need to google), but I saw this tabletop vesa mount recently & might have considered it years ago before I spent about that much on wood plexi & supplies building a tvbox for use with one of those vtts during in person gaming.

I guess a secondary complaint would be "My prep has to be more than notes and some dry erase markers and reusable wood tokens?"

SecretLifeofPetsSnowballHuh.gif
What are you trying to say there? At least one VTT even supports linking digital tokens to those same physical minis on a touch enabled display.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, you've met them at least part way. Unless this is being transcribed by a carrier pigeon, you seem to have a computer with a browser still capable of logging into ENWorld.

Indeed. And it works fine for most of the things I use it for, which generally aren't all that demanding.

My view is that a computer should be similar to a car or appliance in terms of how it ages. A 1966 Falcon might not have all the mod cons but it can still drive down the road just the same as it always has and in nearly all cases keep up with the flow of traffic just fine. An oven built in the 1950s again might not have all the fancy modern bells and whistles but still does the job, and odds are it's far more robustly built - and therefore long-term reliable - than anything you can get today.

That's one of the things the VTT sites are probably counting on - people who have already invested a little bit in their home computing and internet tech. Divided across all of the potential uses for the computer (shopping, paying bills, games, general household document-keeping like taxes and budgets, porn, and social media), it's a lot cheaper than laying out $1000 just to get on Roll20 or D&D Beyond.

Most of those functions can be done with considerably lower-grade tech and some, e.g. simple household document-keeping, word processing, etc. can be adequately done with an offline computer from 25 years ago provided its hard drive still functions.

Games are the big tech-driver; I can live without those, and if online VTTs want to go that high-tech route I guess I'll live without those too.

 

[Lanefan]

How far are you willing to drive to get to a weekly live group? Twenty miles? Fifty? A hundred???

Same distance I'd be willing to drive to visit someone for any other reason.

Everyone I know well enough to want to visit regularly - including nearly all of our gaming community - lives within about a half-hour's drive of my home (I use time instead of distance as 5 miles on clear open highways is vastly different than 5 miles on the crappy congested-by-design roads we have around here).