Am I the only person that can't find any sane, rational people to play RPGs with? Be it IRL or online, I can't seem to find a party with even one rational, level headed, sociable person to game with.
Wargames and card games are a little better, if only because they happen at stores and conventions, so you can walk around and pick out the handful of okay people swimming with you in that figurative shark tank. Even if you end up not playing you never have to waste time testing to see if the people are worth playing with, you can just speak to them fore-hand, or stand around and listen to them talk.
With RPGs though you've basically got to reserve an entire afternoon to playing with a bunch of people who you may have, best case scenario, met one of already. Which, in my experience, the rest of them are "okay," at best, and one hundred percent anti-social sperglords at worst. So often even that one guy you've already met turns out to be a completely different person at home/at the table/in-game (if online).
Then you've either got to give them the benefit of the doubt and sit through another game or two, which they're going to expect of you (and I perosnally feel obligated to do if they were mid-campaign since the GM was nice enough to write me in), but you inevitably have to make that super-awkward call of excuses or flat out lies and then you think to yourself, "I'm never going to do that again; I'll just wait until it's a party of people I know."
And then weeks go by, then months, maybe even a few years. You get desperate, you've got that itch that needs to be scratched. You want to make a backstory, you want to roll some dice, you want to have those cheers and jeers of an adventure.
...so you call that one guy that said he needed a new player, and the cycle begins again.
Why is it so hard to just find normal funking people with my hobbies?
> inb4 they're not normal hobbies
> inb4 gtfo normal fag
Chances are you're the problem and you refuse to acknowledge it.
>>47334126
Jesus mate, I feel sorry for you. Of the 5 groups I've played in for more than 1 session, 4 have been good to great. They might have had the odd player or 2 that were a bit spergy but never so much as to make our gaming nights unenjoyable.
>>47334126
You're talking about a hobby that requires very little effort:
>sit a comp desk
>download skype or similar "social" program
>download pdf of game system
>pretend to be mighty hero
>roll to sex
Of course ttrpgs are going to appeal to the less social among us. If rpg nerds could make real friends they wouldn't be rpg nerds.
>>47334126
>You get desperate, you've got that itch that needs to be scratched.
Want to play a one-shot on rolz in one-two hours?
I have a couple of hours to spare on GMing a simple one-shot.
>>47334126
I'm gonna drop some knowledge on you.
There's an old /tg/ saying that goes "No Game is better than a Bad Game," but recently I saw it condensed into something that holds true even more.
No Game > Game.
The hard truth of our hobby is that the sheer number of That Guys, That Girls, Shit GMs and bad parties outnumber good players with good social habits to such a degree that any given game you join or try to run is almost guaranteed to be a bad game. And the worst part is this: the good gaming groups are not good enough, will never be good enough, to live up to the group that you want in your head or the headache of weaning through bad games until you find a passable one. It will always leave you feeling empty in the end. There's so many That Guys because we are That Community. The fact of the matter is, we might just be That Hobby. No game is better than trying to get a game together.
That doesn't mean you can't enjoy /tg/. He bright side is that you're enjoying the hobby right now in the best possible way: in theory, not in practice. Traditional gaming is infinitely more valuable as an exercise in theory crafting, the discussion and exploration of mechanical systems, world building, and vicariously enjoying the distilled highlights of other people's games. And don't let yourself be fooled, every last "RPG highlight story" and "epic greentext" is, when not an outright fabrication, the result of a desperate attempt on the writer's part to justify the sunk cost of hours and hours of shitty gameplay by extracting a handful of standout moments. The experience of playing tabletop games is almost invariably miserable, and the exceptions will always only be "good enough."
Don't feel bad about That Guy stories putting you off from finding a group. Accept That Guy as what it is. It's the norm, that Natural State of things, and then do what I did years ago: walk away, appreciate the concept of our hobby from a distance, and accept this is how it's meant to be.
>>47334126
What I've been doing for the past four or five years is making friends outside of my /tg/ related interests - you know, normalfags and stuff - and getting them into tabletop. I've gotten pretty good at selling people on the idea, pretty much by lying and saying that it's "fun," all the while minimizing any tropes or stigmas they have about the game. Of the five people I've been playing with for the past two years, only one other person had played D&D before.
The RPG club at my uni is pretty socially defunct, so I don't have another choice if I want to play.
You do have to remember that once people find a group that is passable, or even GOOD, due to the sheer prevalence of shitters and horrible subhuman degenerates polluting the hobby, they will rarely ever let go of that group.
Which in turn, means good groups have tremendously low turnover, and know not to use normal channels to recruit.
Any conventional means such as bulletin boards, IRC groups, in-store, whatever, is going to be the domain of people cursed to forever be in high turnover groups full of shitters.
Anyone who isn't an absolute goblin from the bowels of hell who gets trapped trying to join a game through these conventional channels is going to fairly quickly quit the hobby, so the odds of decent players coming together by chance is VERY low.
The long and short is you basically need to meet people and find out they like TTRPGs after the fact, or you are indeed going to be stuck with a situation where 90% of the people you play with are terrible.
Consider that, unintuitively enough, the fact that you are looking for a game at all is already a red flag for a group composed of sane, rational people. Because most people in that position are absolute omegas who don't have a game right now for a damn good reason.
>>47334279
I didn't know this was copy pasta. Neat.
>>47335007
Original thread where this was posted, the guy got torn to ribbons over it. Pretty entertaining.
>>47334126
I have, normally, played pick-up RPG's at conventions and stores too. I think the public nature of the events tends to keep the more antisocial behavior in check, even though I usually have some weird/cool people invite me up to their room. Usually that's okay, though. That's how I caught the local roller derby chicks warming up with their BDSM toys that one time...
Anyway, there is more to gaming than RPGs. Honestly, as long as there are dicing and enjoyment, I don't really care too much about the particulars. I guess I never really bought in to trying to re-create a FR novel in my campaign. It's really more like gaming improv. one-offs with a mixed cast of nerds than it is creating a long-running episodic series.
Put together one-offs. Build a prebuilt party for a dragonfight and recruit some noobs at your LGS DnD night against a dragon. Whatever!
The MMO-meets-novel-progression unrealistic-fantasy of a stable gaming/social group is what is throwing you off. That magic is already taken. Embrace the new ways.
>>47334126
Just play with your friends! If they really care about you, they'll at least be willing to give it a try for your sake, and they may even come to enjoy it!
That's how I got my 5e group - I recruited from folks I already knew.
I even found out that one of them had been in the hobby longer than me, but had never mentioned it due to a seeming lack of interest.And if they hate you forever just for /trying/ to show them something cool, they didn't deserve you in the first place.
