When I started this blog, I knew that I wanted to interact with people and that I wanted to create the type of content that I enjoy reading myself. Over the course of the past year, I’ve written a couple posts about how I go about running my games and each of these has performed quite well.

As with those, I’m not entirely sure that what I’m about to share will land with any of you. However, it’s something that I enjoy, so here we are. I believe I’ve been clear about this in the past but I’m not here to preach to you. I’m simply sharing things that I enjoy, in hopes that you will find something that is useful.

As a GM, sometimes you just know what you want to run. You just purchased a published adventure path or maybe you have a homemade campaign that you have been dying to share. However, on some occasions I find that the process of starting a new game is more about hooking the players.

I find myself in that boat fairly often. I am older guy (53 at the time of writing this) and solely play in-person games. My groups tend to consist of people who are already friends, or at least friends of friends. While these individuals are people I know, they are rarely gamers, or diehard gamers at any rate.

Some of my players join my game because we have played before, some briefly dabbled with TTRPGS back in college, and others have always been curious but have never been exposed to the hobby. Ok, probably a few of them also get dragged along by a spouse or significant other.

While I don’t want to sound desperate, I often feel a great deal of pressure to give the folks a good time. Nobody wants their players to feel like game night is a drag. However, there is also the fact that if I don’t have a group of players, I’m not going to be able to play myself.  

When I am ready to start a new game I get excited. I don’t know about you but I find that I start daydreaming about it while I’m at work, when I’m going to bed at night, and all through the day. At this point I will start “fishing” for players. I might start with an email to former players or this could take the form of floating out that fact I’m interested in getting a game together while at a dinner with friends. I’m actually going through this now, as I find that running from October – March or April (with a couple weeks of over the holidays) seems to yield reliable players.

Having discussed the impending game ahead of time, I like to reach out to my players via email and get a feel for them as I am putting a campaign together. This accomplishes two things; it helps me to get a sense of the type of game these people would enjoy but it also allows me the fun of seeing what kind of feedback I receive. I’ve found over the years that I really enjoy this step.

Usually, I will start by polling players on different fantasy franchises and how they feel about them. For instance, it might look something like this:

Following this I will often go back and hit them with another poll about types of plots. This just gives me a general sense of where the interests of my players lie. The second poll might look something like this:

I use the information that I receive from each of these to decide both what type of campaign I think would best suit them but also what kind of adventures I want to start with. I’m not claiming that it’s a magic formula but I have always found it useful. Again, the key fact here is that I ENJOY this. I find it very interesting to see the choices people make. When Bob from accounting is playing and you suspect he’s only playing because his wife dragged him into it, it’s pretty fun to see his responses come in during the middle of the work day and to also see that he added two pages of explanation. This is the stuff that GMs live for.

I may be odd but I don’t give a damn whether my players know the rules, buy a bunch of game books, or anything like that. That will all come with time. In my opinion, a role-playing game requires no more knowledge or skill than simply being able to convey how you would react, if you were an imaginary person, faced with an imaginary situation.

What I want is players who have fun and keep coming back. When I hear that on of my players who never played a TTRPG before drew up plans for assaulting the enemy stronghold during her staff meeting, I know I’ve won.

Wrap Up

That’s all for now. What about you? Do you usually play with people that you know or is it usually total strangers? Do you have any little rituals or traditions that you do before you start a new game? Please let me know in the comments and thank you for stopping by.

If you’d like to see my other posts about how I run my games, here are the links:

Consider a Who’s Who for Your Campaign

Consider Creating a Player’s Guide for Your Campaign World

For more maps & plot hooks, go here.

For some random tables, go here.

Finally, for a bit about me and some general stuff, this is the spot.