caramida | We're one seat down...

...in my local gaming group. We meet Sundays. Below is the ad we're posting at local gaming stores. If you are interested, feel free to comment or follow instructions below. Even if you aren't interested, I'm interested to know what you think about our recruitment strategies, as evidenced by the ad below:

MATURE ROLEPLAYER WANTED
Five college-educated professionals, mid-20s-to-late-30s, w/backgrounds in humanities and non-gaming interests & commitments (i.e. lives), looking for 1 mature roleplayer to round out our weekly RPG group.

Current games include: Delta Green (modern Call of Cthulhu, run with GURPS), Earthdawn, L5R

We've also played: Ars Magica, GURPS Traveller, Pendragon, Star Wars (d6), TORG

Also interested in: Castle Falkenstein, Space 1889, 7th Sea

We do NOT play: D&D/d20, Palladium, World of Darkness, homebrews

We play Sundays, ~3-8PM, in SF or Oakland. We GM in rotation for ~2-3 months. Experience is not as important as attitude. We want people who:
Can describe their character w/o referring to a statistic or goodie on their character sheet, but don't try to "be" their character.
Learn & follow rules, w/o abusing them.
Do not dress up and pretend they're vampires.
Are looking for a creative outlet, but aren't "artistes."
Enjoy politics, drama, literature, art, and history for their own sake.
Don't take gaming (or themselves) too seriously, but aren't goofy.
Will commit to regular attendance.

More info: http://home.covad.net/~spankyg/Gaming/MrGamesAd.html

Contact:
* screened comments will get you an email address or contact info *
We'll want to meet with you at least once in person before we invite you to play, to get to know you and make sure our styles are compatible. If you're the kind of person we want, you'll probably want the same.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Please understand, we ARE there to have fun. But you have enough experience gaming to know that there are lots of gamers out there whose gaming habits are inimical to just that. This ad has been crafted specifically to attempt to select for the sorts of people who have gotten frustrated with Power Gamers/Munchkins, People-Who-Think-If-You-Can't-Play-Sixteen-Hours-In-A-Sitting-You-Aren't-A-Real-Gamer, Artistes, kids, Hack-n-Slashers, Rules-Lawyers, and Drama-Kings/Queens.

At no point do we believe that there is 'only ONE right way of roleplaying'. Most definitely, we have gamed enough to know that there are MANY different right ways to do it, and we have found (sometimes the hard way) that some of those ways are basically incompatible with each other.

To that end, we seek to find gamers who understand this, and incidentally, are not offended that we should seek to maximize our own enjoyment of gaming in the small amount of time we have to play each week.

Yes, we specifically filter out a lot of people. This is intentional, because there are a lot of people (who are fine people) who just don?t match our gaming styles. Those who do, we must work harder to find, often because they themselves have gotten pickier due to their own frustrating experiences with incompatible gamers.

If you are gaming to get your +8 HackMaster sword, then you probably will have the most fun with other gamers of the same sort. In that case, you might not have a great time with our interaction-based, character- and story-driven role-playing games. If you read the description above and opt out as a result, you've saved yourself time and trouble as well as us. Life is to short to not have fun at your fun. What's the problem there?

I'm not saying your desires are bad or good. I'm strictly questioning the specific style of wording. Please understand that I actually agree with most of your playstyle decisions, and generally I'm up for the kind of roleplay experience you guys seem to like. I'm neither judging that nor your desire to separate the wheat from the chaff. I'm strictly saying that I would not respond to this ad. Too many "thou shalt nots" and conditions for a game. I wouldn't want to game with people who seemed so inflexible before I even knew them.

Anyway, I know from experience that some of those hackmaster +8 types can roleplay up a storm given some encouragement.

You have a list of provisos including time, playstyle, game systems, and even interests that seem geared towards excluding people. "If you don't like X, have Y time availible, only play A, and B but not C, and don't ever do Z then maybe will pencil you in for an interview" is how it reads.

If that's the impression you want, great. You have achieved your goal and kudos to the writer. But if you're looking to entice people, I think you may have missed the mark. This doesn't have me drooling and ready to take a chance with people I've never met. In fact I'd sort of expect to see a list of MS program knowledge and a compensation package at the end of it. RPG's are games, and no one isn't in them to have fun. I see this, and I don't think good times. I'd rather play WoW. But understand that is only my impression. It's only *my* response. Your millage may vary.

Very well. I appreciate the feedback. Thanks.

You are absolutely correct. I'm 38 years old, I have a full-time job, a wife, a mortgage, other time-consuming hobbies, and a 5-hour window for gaming every week. I hate computer gaming. I've got no time for gloomcookies, munchkins, rules-lawyers, and gaming dilettantes, and so I put on the scariest mask I could think of and went "booga-wooga-wooga!" to scare them all away. If I inadverently scared away some people I might've like to game with, I accept that loss.

I think there are many gamers who, because of the difficulty of finding people to game with, will tolerate a lot of things they wouldn't put up with in regular friends just to get people to play with, who'll play with anything that breathes and can roll dice, and respond to any call for gamers that they see. I'm not one of them, and I don't apologize for it. Considering the number of people I've had to filter out despite the tone of this ad, I suspect I haven't scared away all that many that I'd wan't to game with.

I take it you're not interested? ;-)

I'm 38 years old

Geezer.

I prefer "old fart."

We're one seat down...

I appreciate your thoughtful response.

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