Is it just me or.. [Archive] - Wizards Community

Is it just me or.. [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
TerasMagx
11-28-06, 09:28 PM First the disclaimer, this is'nt a 'omg i need a game! I've just become curious if others are experiencing the same phenom as me. There seems to be a distinct lack of ebberon games for offer around. Given oklahoma is one of the worst places in the usa to find a group to play with, I could chalk it up to just lack of dnd but even online the trend seems to continue.

I love the setting, I realy do, but without the ability to find poeple to play with I am begining to question wether I should continue buying the books and such.

Is this a lack of interest? Or an over abudance of players without alot of dms who like dming the setting? What is your experience finding or starting a game in the setting, was it easy, hard? Would be good to know what others are experiencing so i can get a better feel for where I should go from here in my own search.
Identitystolen
11-28-06, 11:12 PM Yeah, I noticed this... I think its a lack of decent DMs willing and/or able to put forth the time and effort needed to run a campaign. I ran a campaign for a few months and I had about 7 people wanting to join, and the guy who runs the local comic shop has 12 players in his Eberron game.

Also there is a stigma about P&P games it seems (or at least around here. If you play one, you are the geeks of geeks on par with the 40 year old virgin and very few can tolerate being pegged as that geeky. :D
Moody Loner
11-28-06, 11:16 PM I finally found a game here that would accept my wife and daughter as players as well.
ressurrector
11-28-06, 11:46 PM We've only got 3-4 Eberron games in the area.
No FR though.

Used to be none, then I gave in and started one, now I've got a waitlist and other DMs started popping out of the woodwork.
goblin_pride
11-29-06, 09:42 AM I don't know, I think P&P has been seriously overshadowed by the video and card games. The younger players aren't of the same caliber as the old days. When we were young, first learning the joys of crowding around the table in a friend's basement to play, the computer as we know it was still a dream, the Atari 2600 was the best we had for video games at home and card games were played with a bicycle deck made by Hoyle. I know it sounds like the old "back when I was young" rant, but sadly as I get older, I find it more and more true. Without the visual hook or the immediate gratification of being able to play right out of the box the P&P market seems to be dwindling. I know, it sucks.

We have the ability to change that, we can go down to the game stores and find those impressionable young minds and try to dig deep into their addled brains and find that secret "on" switch that kicks the imagination into high gear. Once we get them into the games, we start them thinking and creating, after that, finding a game shouldn't be difficult.

Or we could just say "bugger it all" and go play Magic.
Jagermeister
11-29-06, 12:05 PM I can't really speak for anyone outside my circle of ten gaming friends, but we all live in Oklahoma and run Eberron regularly. In fact it's really all most of us run at all.

That being said, we have all been friends since college for the most part. This makes continued gaming easy, and we're all laid back enough to pretty much just play whatever someone is into at the time. I can understand how it would be difficult to start a group from scratch and hope that you're all into the same thing ( in this case, Eberron ). And as goblin_pride was getting at, it's hard lately with MMORPGS and such. I know our D&D has been slacking lately due to World of Warcraft swallowing our souls. :devil: Anyhow, good luck finding a group to explore Eberron with.
lordalm
11-29-06, 03:58 PM My game, that Goblin-Pride joined, was started by me because I wanted to run a game. I actually was running another game system using the web Darksun material. That proved [I]interesting[I] so I decided to go to D&D and run Darksun. But I got to looking at Eberron and said "I had to do this." And after starting with about 5 players I now have 7 and have had to turn away a couple. Some of course have appeared like shrooms when a vacancy occured....
SilvercatMoonpaw
11-29-06, 04:09 PM I try to find online games, but so many want to start at times I can't join them, especially late in the day. A lot of the people playing the game may have commitments like work that force them to play at night. But it's also the choice of chat system, the kind of game (hackslash, immersive-roleplaying, etc.), and some people who play D&D may just not like Eberron's less medievil feel.
Deekin
11-29-06, 05:31 PM At UC Davis, There are at the Moment 6 D&D games going on. 2 Are Eberron, one is Pirates, one is steampunk, and one is Wasted Lands.
goblin_pride
11-30-06, 09:40 AM I can't really speak for anyone outside my circle of ten gaming friends, but we all live in Oklahoma and run Eberron regularly. In fact it's really all most of us run at all.

This really scares me, I was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Guess going home is out if there's no bloody D&D 'cept that one group.
TerasMagx
11-30-06, 03:41 PM It appears to be just a bad location on my part. Oklahoma never was a great place to try and find a group. You ususaly either have to already know poeple willing to vouch for you being a good player, or have a group of friends willing to play. Saddly for those of us lacking one of those options its -alot- of work to try and get a good group together, and too boot it can become frustrating when said work fails to turn anything up.

Also seems I was right on the point about it being a lack of ebberon dms. Of course players poping out of the wood-work is nothing new, it just seems the setting would be -great- to play in, but not so much fun to dm. I admit I would love to host ebberon regularly, but the work I would want to put into a good campaign is astronomical compared to the responce I may or may not get.

Thanks for the replys everyone. For those of you with groups, I'm glad to hear not everyone is experiencing my problem, for those of you without them, I feel for you I do.

Oh and for my fellow oklahoma players, hang in there! We will all find gaming groups to play with yet!
Cutlass
12-01-06, 06:17 PM There are times and places when it can be hard to find a good gaming group period. Play by post can be ok, but it tends to lack some of the things that you can get out of a good face to face group. However, it does do a decent job of solving the problem of people with different schedules who can only throw small chunks of time at a game, as well as solving the problem of having to get together in one place to do things.

I have been playing around with Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO), but that is essentially a video game. Learning how to properly use the interface in order to make a "character" that is a virtual electronic puppet do what you want it to do when you want it to is about 95% of playing the game well. It has been frustrating to have the sort of character that I can work well with in a pen and paper or play by post format literally fall on its face in DDO because I haven't gotten the "knobology" of running the character down properly yet. Through time that problem slowly solves itself, but there is a learning curve that has to be dealt with.

While it is possible to do more with it than what I have seen most of the other players doing with it, the group interactions and character development seem to be minimal at best. I will grant that may be at least partially because I haven't been there long enough to develop a good circle of people to game with consistently. But so far I have seen too many "parties" that consist of individual characters in continuous semi-random Brownian motion that only happen to be occupying the same part of the same dungeon at the same time.

Oh well, there are no perfect solutions. At least part of the attraction of DDO is that you can always log on and after a while find somebody who is willing to try to do something somewhere, or run through various areas with your character solo.
Uller999
12-01-06, 10:16 PM First the disclaimer, this is'nt a 'omg i need a game! I've just become curious if others are experiencing the same phenom as me. There seems to be a distinct lack of ebberon games for offer around. Given oklahoma is one of the worst places in the usa to find a group to play with, I could chalk it up to just lack of dnd but even online the trend seems to continue.

I love the setting, I realy do, but without the ability to find poeple to play with I am begining to question wether I should continue buying the books and such.

Is this a lack of interest? Or an over abudance of players without alot of dms who like dming the setting? What is your experience finding or starting a game in the setting, was it easy, hard? Would be good to know what others are experiencing so i can get a better feel for where I should go from here in my own search.

Just FYI for the OP, I'm a DM in Norman Oklahoma and I've got two games running, we got away from Eberron for a little while but starting next semester I know we have one starting up. My FLGS has said that Eberron is doing pretty well around here. So I don't know maybe you just have a drought going on in Mustang but I've got a glut of available players around here. If you don't think the drive is too bad you could ask around at the wizard's asylum here and see what you can get hooked up. But right now I've got a grand total of 10 players in my two games. So around here at least D&D and Eberron is doing fine. I also know of another group of like five people that a friend of mine is running though none of the players in that game play in any of mine. This isn't to make you jealous my friend, just to point out that it isn't hopeless, I went through a spurt of two years or so during high school where I didn't have a good solid group of people and its been amazing to me the number of players I have had pop up locally so seriously don't get down, D&D is on the rise and you'll be able to find people just give it some time, and I don't know how old you are but once you get to college it gets stupidly easy to get into or put together a group. Hand to god
Archangel62
12-02-06, 02:20 PM Well, I have a decent number of players at home and on campus, though I'm going to guess that part of it is also the fact that I'm a college student so I'm in higher density of gamers anyhow.

As for Eberron games, some guys don't like the flavor of the world. Other reason is that many DMs are unsure how to run Eberron, I had similar problems. On the Eberron board you had people arguing heavily about the 'proper' Eberron game. I got told at one point that PCs should never get beyond 8th level because that was how the world was meant to be.

I've learned more since then and am now more comfortable with it but it can be hard to find players, and even if you do find them some don't like Eberron, some had bad experiences, and some just want to play something else more.
mhacdebhandia
12-02-06, 05:14 PM Hell, before I could even get my Eberron Savage Tide Adventure Path game off the ground, Eberron games have started popping out of the woodwork. One of the women in my university geek culture and gaming society is in one now, and I didn't even realise she was interested in roleplaying (besides knowing that as a massive Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan she was willing to try out the licensed RPG from Eden Studios).
lordalm
12-03-06, 04:00 PM See I don't put any work at into GMing. I come up with a general idea, a general cast of characters (that I don't stat) and then watch as the players trying to do anything that isn't associated with the plot idea. One of the reasons I didn't start of with the published stuff right away is because I needed to get a feel for how to handle the group when they get off mission. Now that I do I have fleshed out the NPCs and the group is pretty much going ahead. They keep trying to do the lemmings at cliff bit, but a gentel nudge at the tiller o' gaming and they turn away before tpk.
goblin_pride
12-03-06, 10:11 PM They keep trying to do the lemmings at cliff bit, but a gentel nudge at the tiller o' gaming and they turn away before tpk.

You'll never have to worry about that TPK, I ain't dumb enough to stand and fight after the whole thing turns south on me.
lordalm
12-04-06, 04:23 PM Didn't Tim "used his words" a session or two before only to have you say something famlatory that resulted in a butt kicking coming your way, that was neutered when everyone else showed up after Thanksgiving? I mean if it had only been you 4 things would have been a lot dicer wouldn't have been?
goblin_pride
12-04-06, 04:36 PM Didn't Tim "used his words" a session or two before only to have you say something famlatory that resulted in a butt kicking coming your way, that was neutered when everyone else showed up after Thanksgiving? I mean if it had only been you 4 things would have been a lot dicer wouldn't have been?

Might have been dicier, perhaps, but running is always an option. I'll be the first to point out that by running away we have time to regroup and think of a slightly better strategy. Conveniently it's during these little regrouping exercises that we usually get to do a bit of recruiting.
lordalm
12-04-06, 05:33 PM Conveniently it's during these little regrouping exercises that we usually get to do a bit of recruiting.

:uh-huh: :fett:

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
TerasMagx 11-28-06, 09:28 PM	First the disclaimer, this is'nt a 'omg i need a game! I've just become curious if others are experiencing the same phenom as me. There seems to be a distinct lack of ebberon games for offer around. Given oklahoma is one of the worst places in the usa to find a group to play with, I could chalk it up to just lack of dnd but even online the trend seems to continue. I love the setting, I realy do, but without the ability to find poeple to play with I am begining to question wether I should continue buying the books and such. Is this a lack of interest? Or an over abudance of players without alot of dms who like dming the setting? What is your experience finding or starting a game in the setting, was it easy, hard? Would be good to know what others are experiencing so i can get a better feel for where I should go from here in my own search.
Identitystolen 11-28-06, 11:12 PM	Yeah, I noticed this... I think its a lack of decent DMs willing and/or able to put forth the time and effort needed to run a campaign. I ran a campaign for a few months and I had about 7 people wanting to join, and the guy who runs the local comic shop has 12 players in his Eberron game. Also there is a stigma about P&P games it seems (or at least around here. If you play one, you are the geeks of geeks on par with the 40 year old virgin and very few can tolerate being pegged as that geeky. :D
Moody Loner 11-28-06, 11:16 PM	I finally found a game here that would accept my wife and daughter as players as well.
ressurrector 11-28-06, 11:46 PM	We've only got 3-4 Eberron games in the area. No FR though. Used to be none, then I gave in and started one, now I've got a waitlist and other DMs started popping out of the woodwork.
goblin_pride 11-29-06, 09:42 AM	I don't know, I think P&P has been seriously overshadowed by the video and card games. The younger players aren't of the same caliber as the old days. When we were young, first learning the joys of crowding around the table in a friend's basement to play, the computer as we know it was still a dream, the Atari 2600 was the best we had for video games at home and card games were played with a bicycle deck made by Hoyle. I know it sounds like the old "back when I was young" rant, but sadly as I get older, I find it more and more true. Without the visual hook or the immediate gratification of being able to play right out of the box the P&P market seems to be dwindling. I know, it sucks. We have the ability to change that, we can go down to the game stores and find those impressionable young minds and try to dig deep into their addled brains and find that secret "on" switch that kicks the imagination into high gear. Once we get them into the games, we start them thinking and creating, after that, finding a game shouldn't be difficult. Or we could just say "bugger it all" and go play Magic.
Jagermeister 11-29-06, 12:05 PM	I can't really speak for anyone outside my circle of ten gaming friends, but we all live in Oklahoma and run Eberron regularly. In fact it's really all most of us run at all. That being said, we have all been friends since college for the most part. This makes continued gaming easy, and we're all laid back enough to pretty much just play whatever someone is into at the time. I can understand how it would be difficult to start a group from scratch and hope that you're all into the same thing ( in this case, Eberron ). And as goblin_pride was getting at, it's hard lately with MMORPGS and such. I know our D&D has been slacking lately due to World of Warcraft swallowing our souls. :devil: Anyhow, good luck finding a group to explore Eberron with.
lordalm 11-29-06, 03:58 PM	My game, that Goblin-Pride joined, was started by me because I wanted to run a game. I actually was running another game system using the web Darksun material. That proved [I]interesting[I] so I decided to go to D&D and run Darksun. But I got to looking at Eberron and said "I had to do this." And after starting with about 5 players I now have 7 and have had to turn away a couple. Some of course have appeared like shrooms when a vacancy occured....
SilvercatMoonpaw 11-29-06, 04:09 PM	I try to find online games, but so many want to start at times I can't join them, especially late in the day. A lot of the people playing the game may have commitments like work that force them to play at night. But it's also the choice of chat system, the kind of game (hackslash, immersive-roleplaying, etc.), and some people who play D&D may just not like Eberron's less medievil feel.
Deekin 11-29-06, 05:31 PM	At UC Davis, There are at the Moment 6 D&D games going on. 2 Are Eberron, one is Pirates, one is steampunk, and one is Wasted Lands.
goblin_pride 11-30-06, 09:40 AM	I can't really speak for anyone outside my circle of ten gaming friends, but we all live in Oklahoma and run Eberron regularly. In fact it's really all most of us run at all. This really scares me, I was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Guess going home is out if there's no bloody D&D 'cept that one group.
TerasMagx 11-30-06, 03:41 PM	It appears to be just a bad location on my part. Oklahoma never was a great place to try and find a group. You ususaly either have to already know poeple willing to vouch for you being a good player, or have a group of friends willing to play. Saddly for those of us lacking one of those options its -alot- of work to try and get a good group together, and too boot it can become frustrating when said work fails to turn anything up. Also seems I was right on the point about it being a lack of ebberon dms. Of course players poping out of the wood-work is nothing new, it just seems the setting would be -great- to play in, but not so much fun to dm. I admit I would love to host ebberon regularly, but the work I would want to put into a good campaign is astronomical compared to the responce I may or may not get. Thanks for the replys everyone. For those of you with groups, I'm glad to hear not everyone is experiencing my problem, for those of you without them, I feel for you I do. Oh and for my fellow oklahoma players, hang in there! We will all find gaming groups to play with yet!
Cutlass 12-01-06, 06:17 PM	There are times and places when it can be hard to find a good gaming group period. Play by post can be ok, but it tends to lack some of the things that you can get out of a good face to face group. However, it does do a decent job of solving the problem of people with different schedules who can only throw small chunks of time at a game, as well as solving the problem of having to get together in one place to do things. I have been playing around with Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO), but that is essentially a video game. Learning how to properly use the interface in order to make a "character" that is a virtual electronic puppet do what you want it to do when you want it to is about 95% of playing the game well. It has been frustrating to have the sort of character that I can work well with in a pen and paper or play by post format literally fall on its face in DDO because I haven't gotten the "knobology" of running the character down properly yet. Through time that problem slowly solves itself, but there is a learning curve that has to be dealt with. While it is possible to do more with it than what I have seen most of the other players doing with it, the group interactions and character development seem to be minimal at best. I will grant that may be at least partially because I haven't been there long enough to develop a good circle of people to game with consistently. But so far I have seen too many "parties" that consist of individual characters in continuous semi-random Brownian motion that only happen to be occupying the same part of the same dungeon at the same time. Oh well, there are no perfect solutions. At least part of the attraction of DDO is that you can always log on and after a while find somebody who is willing to try to do something somewhere, or run through various areas with your character solo.
Uller999 12-01-06, 10:16 PM	First the disclaimer, this is'nt a 'omg i need a game! I've just become curious if others are experiencing the same phenom as me. There seems to be a distinct lack of ebberon games for offer around. Given oklahoma is one of the worst places in the usa to find a group to play with, I could chalk it up to just lack of dnd but even online the trend seems to continue. I love the setting, I realy do, but without the ability to find poeple to play with I am begining to question wether I should continue buying the books and such. Is this a lack of interest? Or an over abudance of players without alot of dms who like dming the setting? What is your experience finding or starting a game in the setting, was it easy, hard? Would be good to know what others are experiencing so i can get a better feel for where I should go from here in my own search. Just FYI for the OP, I'm a DM in Norman Oklahoma and I've got two games running, we got away from Eberron for a little while but starting next semester I know we have one starting up. My FLGS has said that Eberron is doing pretty well around here. So I don't know maybe you just have a drought going on in Mustang but I've got a glut of available players around here. If you don't think the drive is too bad you could ask around at the wizard's asylum here and see what you can get hooked up. But right now I've got a grand total of 10 players in my two games. So around here at least D&D and Eberron is doing fine. I also know of another group of like five people that a friend of mine is running though none of the players in that game play in any of mine. This isn't to make you jealous my friend, just to point out that it isn't hopeless, I went through a spurt of two years or so during high school where I didn't have a good solid group of people and its been amazing to me the number of players I have had pop up locally so seriously don't get down, D&D is on the rise and you'll be able to find people just give it some time, and I don't know how old you are but once you get to college it gets stupidly easy to get into or put together a group. Hand to god
Archangel62 12-02-06, 02:20 PM	Well, I have a decent number of players at home and on campus, though I'm going to guess that part of it is also the fact that I'm a college student so I'm in higher density of gamers anyhow. As for Eberron games, some guys don't like the flavor of the world. Other reason is that many DMs are unsure how to run Eberron, I had similar problems. On the Eberron board you had people arguing heavily about the 'proper' Eberron game. I got told at one point that PCs should never get beyond 8th level because that was how the world was meant to be. I've learned more since then and am now more comfortable with it but it can be hard to find players, and even if you do find them some don't like Eberron, some had bad experiences, and some just want to play something else more.
mhacdebhandia 12-02-06, 05:14 PM	Hell, before I could even get my Eberron Savage Tide Adventure Path game off the ground, Eberron games have started popping out of the woodwork. One of the women in my university geek culture and gaming society is in one now, and I didn't even realise she was interested in roleplaying (besides knowing that as a massive Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan she was willing to try out the licensed RPG from Eden Studios).
lordalm 12-03-06, 04:00 PM	See I don't put any work at into GMing. I come up with a general idea, a general cast of characters (that I don't stat) and then watch as the players trying to do anything that isn't associated with the plot idea. One of the reasons I didn't start of with the published stuff right away is because I needed to get a feel for how to handle the group when they get off mission. Now that I do I have fleshed out the NPCs and the group is pretty much going ahead. They keep trying to do the lemmings at cliff bit, but a gentel nudge at the tiller o' gaming and they turn away before tpk.
goblin_pride 12-03-06, 10:11 PM	They keep trying to do the lemmings at cliff bit, but a gentel nudge at the tiller o' gaming and they turn away before tpk. You'll never have to worry about that TPK, I ain't dumb enough to stand and fight after the whole thing turns south on me.
lordalm 12-04-06, 04:23 PM	Didn't Tim "used his words" a session or two before only to have you say something famlatory that resulted in a butt kicking coming your way, that was neutered when everyone else showed up after Thanksgiving? I mean if it had only been you 4 things would have been a lot dicer wouldn't have been?
goblin_pride 12-04-06, 04:36 PM	Didn't Tim "used his words" a session or two before only to have you say something famlatory that resulted in a butt kicking coming your way, that was neutered when everyone else showed up after Thanksgiving? I mean if it had only been you 4 things would have been a lot dicer wouldn't have been? Might have been dicier, perhaps, but running is always an option. I'll be the first to point out that by running away we have time to regroup and think of a slightly better strategy. Conveniently it's during these little regrouping exercises that we usually get to do a bit of recruiting.
lordalm 12-04-06, 05:33 PM	Conveniently it's during these little regrouping exercises that we usually get to do a bit of recruiting. :uh-huh: :fett: