How to get lazy friends gaming

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How do you encourage your lazy friends (ahh...playing is too stressful for the mind...) to play RPG with you?!

Or do you have just cool friends, willing to game all the time...

Have tried everything with mediocre sucsess. Most of the time I promise I let 'em play whatever character they want to and I lure them into settings that they know: Have done Trek, are preparing LotR and I want to do a Babylon 5 one day...

[LUGTrekGM]

If you are a die hard gamer, only get frends from gamers. Recruiting the non gamer is too much work.

If the person is not a gamer, usually we have nothing to talk about. I have only met the friends I have, from gaming.

Might be boardgames, wargames or RPGs, but that's true across the board.

If you have a friendly local gaming store put up ads there. if not, you might be able to enjoy some online games.

I met a few dozen people (that live all over the world) by running a neverwinter nights server for a few years.

If you are not a die hard gamer, then just decide to do what you normally do, and have games with whatever gamers you can find, whenever.

Or go to conventions, and game there.

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I have done something in the middle over the years: Have been friends with a lot of them since school days. Never could develope into a pure die hard gamer in that environment. As I said before, I manage to play RPGS with them ewvery now and then in worlds they now. It's just hard to get 'em into new settings. Even D&D is new for them, let alone something more exotic like say Lone Wolf.
Recently I convinced my people to game on a regular basis (thursday nights are gaming nights) but so far it's more board games and card games. Though we have had a RobbyRally evenig (that game is a real amazement!) and plan to play some HeroQuest for nostalgic reasons in the near future. I might try to jump into a full fledged RPG with them after the HeroQuest session.

Putting up ads in my FLGS might be an option, but I have shyed away from that so far. Yeah, not die hard material I'm afraid.

And there are little Cons that I now of in my vincinity.

[Tobian]

I've gone down the route of pandering to friends before - letting them get away with murder, and then severely regretting it... (The Ferengi Vulcan science officer with a Varon T disrtuptor springs to mind - ARGGHHHH!)

As a GM I tend to me be very lenient, in terms of allowing things, so long as a) it's possible in the rules and b) In the spirit of the genre (the above example being neither! )

Rather than try and recruit new friends or looking for pastures new, maybe focus on revolving stories exclusivelly around your players characters... have them be alowed to be the hero, make sweeping changes in your world and.... have that bite them on the ass! Also try and leave each story session finished on a cliffhanger, so they want to find out what happens next! having a character you care about is as important in movies as it is in games... if it's just a case of 'oh well I will have to re-roll a new PC now!' then you are doing something wrong!

I was rather disapointed in a friend of mine's character recently.. He made a simple, but as it turns out monumentally stupid mistake, and rather than live with it, he decided to write out his character from the story, and make a new one.. which is a bit of a cop out if you ask me! Regardless though, the other characters still have now to live with what he did, and you can be sure that his new character is going to know not to do something like that again: That and it's going to make their playing world just a little more dangerous!

One danger I have always found with games is that with one simple act of stupidity the players can really mess up your adventure... they have the main vilain in their sights and for some reason blow him up, rather than capture him. You need to think long and hard on how to keep yoru bad guy alive and menacing.. again, to give them something to strive for. It's like when Lore reappears in Descent.. recurring vilains make the players want to play more too - especially if he really pissed them off the last time!

[tonyg]

I'm pretty much in agreement with LUGTrekGM here.

A player is only going to be an asset if they enjoy playing the game. In my experience running games with non-gamers usually leads to the campaign disintergrating after a sesson or two. In gneral, if the player doesn't want to game, don't fast talk, cajoile, pander, trick, barbain, blackmail, or force them into doing so. THey won't be happy, and eventually neither will you.


I learned all this the hard way several years back. In fact, I recently disbanded a group when I realized that the players just wanted to get togther and hang out, and that they would have been equally happy watching DVDs or playing video games as playing an RPG. If it made no difference to them, there was no reason for me to put the work and effort into a campaign.

Your best chance of getting players is to look for other players or find newbies who express an interest. Someone who is into Star Trek or LOTR is an exceelent canditate for "recruitment" into a CODA campaign. Even so, be prepared to be disappointed. In my experience, only about one-third of the people who joined my RPG groups. THe rest didn't work out for one or more reasons. I also noted a better success rate with newbiews then with experienced D&Ders (the ones who pretty much play D&D exclusively). Newbies are more opn and willing to learn, where as the experienced players seem to get frsutrated and feel cheated when things to donk out the way they thought that they should have.

[Jem'hadar]

I've had an extremely hard time finding anyone interested in RPG gaming. Most of my friends are not interested except for one old high school chum who regularly plays in my Star*Drive, Dark*Matter, Gamma World & Star Trek campaigns. We keep rotating which campaigns to play. However, he lives in KY & only visits NJ (where I live) once every few months.

We did find one woman to play in my Star Trek campaign but she's often busy w/ family & work so she rarely joins us.

I know of no other place to look for gamers. I live in Jersey City, close to NYC.

So if anyone reading these boards lives in my area & is interested in either Star Trek, Star*Drive, Dark*Matter, or Gamma World, then please email me at jcalternity@aol.com.

[Liquidator Queeg]

Jem'Hadar,

Have you tried the Access Denied website? You might be able to find local gamers there.

Access Denied

LQ

[ryushima2011]

I think it depends, but a good way would be encouraging competition within your friends!

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I think it depends, but a good way would be encouraging competition within your friends!

Interesting idea, but what would you try to encourage competition about? If the lazy friends aren't into gaming, how could you get them to compete in that regard?

I myself suffer from lazy gaming friends, and am open to new ideas how to get them gaming (again), so please share your thoughts

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Have one not-lazy friend who does all the organizing for you.

Alternately, live in a big city with lots of nerds.

[ryushima2011]

the competition would depend on the game, you can bet or set up goals, but if you do everything and they still don't want to play then look for another players who are interested to play.