Some advice please.

[MonkeyWrench]

I love Sorceror. I treated myself to Sorceror and Sword and Sorceror's Soul for my birthday and I devoured both of them. However I have a problem....I have never actually played Sorceror.

I've done all the usual stuff...posted ads up at my LGSs, posted ads on the internet, asked around, etc, and no one wants to play Sorceror where I live. My current gaming group thinks the idea is horrid and many of the other gamers I know do not have the time to play anymore. On top of all this I want to actually play Sorceror not run a game of Sorceror.

So now that I've whined and cried can anyone give me some advice for getting a group together? Going along the lines of groups are made not found how should I go about making a group from people who don't like the idea of Sorceror? Finding players in the area that I live that don't want to play DnD, Vampire, or GURPS is becoming a pain. Thanks.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

And welcome to the Adept Press forum!

People who frequent this forum, now is your chance. Offer good advice. How did you get your Sorcerer games going?

My question is this: where do you live? For all you know, there's a Forge member right down the block ...

Best,
Ron

[MonkeyWrench]

My question is this: where do you live? For all you know, there's a Forge member right down the block ...

I live in Austin, Texas. For those here that are familiar with the area I live south of downtown off of Oltorf.

[Ron Edwards]

I checked on the Texas page of the Sorcerer Player Finder at the website. No one in Austin, although you should consider submitting your information at the page ... and you might also contact the people listed from other parts of the state to see whether they got their games going. There might be some surprising connections possible, along the lines of "Hey, my brother just started at UT and he played Sorcerer with me all last summer," or that sort of thing.

Also, how about the campus groups? Most of them are closeted and insular, yes, but check out the gaming clubs. You can probably avoid the die-hard members who use it as a venue for their twelve-year Vampire or AD&D games, but the new people every fall are usually plain old you & me, looking for a fun game.

Best,
Ron

[Michael S. Miller]

Got any friends that aren't currently gamers, but are imaginative, fun, and like horror? You'd have to start off as GM, certainly, but it could be great fun....

Also, don't underestimate the folks who might be drawn to something different at a local gaming convention. Register to run Sorcerer. See what happens.

[Tim Alexander]

Hiya,

Are all the people you've spoken to not interested in 'running' a game, or not interested in Sorcerer at all? I think that as a general rule new groups get built around someone who both has a game and the initiative to at least start the process of 'running' it. I've been going through that myself, slowly building up a group and hoping to pass around the torch a bit once people get their feet wet. It's generally finding those first couple of players that's really tough.

Does everyone in the current group think the idea is horrid? Anyone show any interest, it might be a chance to take a piece of the group for something new. Have you found that it's the content of the game that is giving people pause, the ethos, the style of play proposed, or do you think they're just being xenophobic?

What kind of ads have you put up at the LGS and online? Sometimes a cool pitch can get a couple of bites where a bare description doesn't. Towards that end I second Ron's advice of local campus groups. You'd also do well to check out the indie gaming yahoo group, the address of which I don't have on hand, but shouldn't be too difficult to find. I know it's in Mike's sig as well.

I think the barriers that get put up in the name of habit are pretty hard to break down, but not impossible. It's a slow process to get the ball rolling, but once you find some likeminded folks it usually starts to snowball from there as one person knows another, who knows another. Before you know it, you've got a group.

-Tim

[greyorm]

You can always try the Indie Netgaming group on Yahoo.

Indie-netgaming is a community devoted to the organization of PBN (Play By Net) sessions of independantly designed, owned, and published role-playing games (commonly referred to as indie-rpgs or indie-games). Examples of play venue include IRC, PBEM, WebRPG, and http://www.playbyweb.com. For more information about indie-rpgs, game design, and role-playing in general, please visit the Forge: http://www.indie-rpgs.com

Group Purpose - The Indie Net-gaming discussion group primarily functions as a connection forum to facilitate the actual play of independently produced role-playing games via electronic venues. The definition of "indie" is left somewhat vague. If you have a question about whether a specific game is appropriate for the group, don't hesitate to ask. In general, any "non-mainstream" game is fine. This includes any and all creator-owned games - such as those found on the Forge - but it also includes games like Tunnels & Trolls and Nobilis.

I've offered to run a Sorcerer game before via IRC in the indie channel we have set up; all we need is a player or two more, a quick-n'-dirty discussion of what sort of game we'd all like to play, and we'd be good to go.

[Alan]

It's very hard to find people willing to run games.  More people are willing to test a strange game as players than GMs.  What worked for me was to get involved with the local RPG community and, eventually, organize some one shot game days.  I ended up GMing a lot, but I eventually got to play some of the indie games that interest me.

This process can take a couple years, and you have to be willing to organize and GM, so it's not an easy solution, but it's there.

[MonkeyWrench]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'll have to check out the Yahoo Group, I've always been interested in play-by-net.

As far as ads go the one I put up was definetly sub-spectacular. At one store I've put them up at they take them down after one week and at the other all ads sort of get lost in a sea of other ads. I'll have to check out the campus however.

I suppose that my underlying gripe in all of this is the fact that for 13 years all I've been able to do is GM and I feel it's high time I had my chance to be on the other side of the screen so to speak. And unfortunatly I've only been able to find people looking for DnD players.

Perhaps I'll just have to set up some Sorceror demos at the various Game Stores around town. Any ideas on how to run a Sorceror demo?