question-circle How are you getting new players and converts?

06 Feb 2011 02:25 #1066 by Adonai

How did you get organized? I live in a small city where we have 2 gaming stores and a lot of attitude between gamers. Magic and Warhammer rule tourneys and the people I can get together don't want to be bound by the rules. Also no ~local~ V:EKN members even play. Most thought it was the Camarilla LARP they joined. Any advice would be appreciated.


I get asked this question from time to time, in email and in forum messages. I think it strikes to the heart of what should be the goal of V:EKN, gathering and maintaining players.

Here's one historical answer:
www.thelasombra.com/interest.htm

I've collected some responses from the Usenet newsgroup community here:
www.thelasombra.com/demoing.htm

I've been very fortunate to not have any playgroups fall apart until after I've left town, one of the benefits of moving every few years. The Seattle-area had multiple groups so multiple nights of V:TES was possible, with a little driving, back in the mid 90s. Austin and Dallas were both good to me, with Wednesday play in Dallas and weekend games in Austin. Those were the post-Sabbat pre-White Wolf years.

I've spent ~10 years in Atlanta now. While the playgroup has changed radically during that time, we still seem to be doing well compared to other areas that have had bigger changes in the last few years. We did lose players with the layout change/grouping rules in Camarilla Edition, some due to Gehenna events, and certainly children have also played their part in distracting former enthusiasts. Others have certainly given up playing with the group I'm in, as I'm known to be an asshole, with players in Austin and Atlanta both avoiding events and drifting away because of my attitude or comments.

The players that have continued to play to this point, are ones that enjoy the game for itself, for the give and take of the multi-player dynamic. In the current group, there are some that only play during tournaments, as they enjoy the game and are willing to overlook personality differences a couple of times a year but not on a weekly basis.

One of our players drives 2 hours each way to play every chance he gets. He and players like him are certainly the future of the game.

We haven't played in public locations in quite a few years, since the last convenient gaming only shop closed down. There are quite a few comic shops that also sell gaming supplies, and two or three game shops have sprung up since then, but we've gotten pretty insular, playing at our set times in our set homes.

Getting people to join the game to replace the ones we lose to other games, or graduations/moves, will be a particular challenge.

We do always run multiple events at our local gaming/Sci-Fi convention, DragonCon, and I blanket the internet so that anyone that moves into the area knows how to get a hold of us to play.

What is your story? How is your playgroup doing? What are you doing to maintain it? What are you doing to grow it?

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12 Feb 2011 14:16 #1319 by Adonai

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14 Feb 2011 02:29 #1395 by Adonai

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14 Feb 2011 03:53 #1397 by Juggernaut1981
Our playgroup seems to be growing more as an avenue for a bunch of friends to spend time doing nerdy things together.

The fact that we happen to play VTES when we're together is almost incidental. When we were really running low on players (only having enough for a game every fortnight) in the off-weeks we'd be sitting around playing boardgames, telling lewd jokes/stories and complaining about life/work/family/bosses/ politics/universe. Now we're sort of expanding our numbers, and hopefully it will turn into a larger group over time by building on the social networks. I'd like it to grow faster and more steadily, but its okay. We're almost at the point where we can have around 2 games every weeks.

:bruj::CEL::POT::PRE::tha: Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

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18 Feb 2011 23:28 #1739 by Adonai

What is your story? How is your playgroup doing? What are you doing to maintain it? What are you doing to grow it?


Response from WW forum:

forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=43359

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19 Feb 2011 10:06 #1746 by DeBomas
I've been prince of Nijmegen, The Netherlands since about 2002. Since 2002, i've always 'struggled' getting a reliable 5 persons turn-up every week. It was managable through those years, but the FLGS didn't support vtes, and had it's gaminspace on fridays and saturdays reserved for Mtg and Warhammer kids, so there was no room for playing there. Games were conducted at my place usually.
We started out with 4 friends buying into Sabbat War & Final Nights. Through university and M:tg-friends we expanded that playerbase about as fast as we lost players that moved to other city's / moved abroad / got children, so our playgroup always hovered around 5-8 players, with a weekly or biweekly turnup of 4-5 for a game or three.

Earlier this year i moved to a neighbouring city. The FLGS there has loads of space and a group of long time CCG'ers just picked up Vtes the week i moved there, by buying some leftover stock the FLGS had (mostly LoB and CE). That group consists of 6 or more players, and is gradually pulling in more over the past few months. We've mixed my former group with this new group, so we now have a weekly game always with 6-10 players, usually allowing for 2 simultaneous tables. This really works great, because with 6+, there's the critical mass achieved that (in my experience) you need to consistently get 5 together for a good table every week.

My advice:

- don't introduce them 1 at a time. A lone individual starting up a complex game like this, facing a group of veterans knowing and having all the cards can be very intimidating, even if those players are all very nice. The incentive to make the investment in cards is not very large when you know if will take you #K to get onto the same level. If you're the one individual facing this 'challenge', odds are big you're not going to do it. If however a group of 4-5 friends (say m:tg friends for example, or WW-roleplaying friends) are introduced at the same time, they can play amongst themselves, and have some competition amongs themselves. They'll be looking towards their starting peers for recognition, succes in the game, and comparing sizes of collection. In that envirnmont, it's much more fun for them to buy that extra boosterbox / starterset, since it will, in comparison to the others, give them much more 'bang for their buck'.

- Have large boxes of free commons at the ready, and generously help starting players out with 'hard-to-get-cards'. CCG-nerds need to build decks, and need the opportunity to do so. Do you really need to have 30 decks ready at the same time ? 5 is more than enough, and the villeins / sudden reversals / parity shifts / direct interventions / pentexes that come from those 25 decks you just trashed can be given out, or generously traded to those new players to make for a more interesting field (for them, but also for yourself !).
I've given out parity shifts, villeins, eyes of arguss's, washes, and all that sort of cards to help people get started. It really helped.

- Keep it fun !
Don't flame / critices players for making mistakes, or making decks with little forward motion, or decks that just don't work. If they want help with their decks, they'll come to you. Don't kill their starter decks with your heavily tuned killer. Slowly introduce them to competative playing seperating 'tournament style'-games vs. 'fun & experimentation'-games, so the competative players can go all-out, while other players can still enjoy the game on their own tempo. Keep answering questions. Help people out. Don't D.I. every cool action they take, even if you can. Play a control type deck (rush / eagle's sight) to make sure that every new player get's a vp once in a while.

- Thomas
The following user(s) said Thank You: Amenophobis

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