Topic: Are you primarily a player or a GM?

[Warl]

On RPOL there aren't yet any "Ongoing" RM PBP games that I have found...

the One that was going tos tart a few months ago, fell apart after the first few sessions, first because all the players felt Rail roaded by the GM, more like we were jsut listening to him tell us a story than playing the game. then he rebotted, but after 2 weeks the gm stopped posting. (I think due to ridicule from one of the players involved.)

But, Like I said, I got one I am working to start.
MY Hackmaster game has been going for a Year now, And most the time, the players involved pot daily.

We had one combat that, due to the numbers involved, took about 2 weeks to resolve.

The AD&D game I started playing in recently seems to move fairly well also.

[jdale]

We have a strange set up where our group live all over the south and south west UK and we all gather a couple of times a year to play but then play all weekend.

The game I play is very much like this. Started in 1995 (quite a bit of turnover in the party, though, two original members, the next one joined in 1999). The game I have started running is a little better, I am aiming for monthly in the less-busy parts of the year. Perhaps 7-8 sessions a year. I also play a World of Darkness Mage game, which used to be every two weeks but turned into a monthly Google Hangout game plus a bit of PBP in between, as the GM moved out of state. And then there is also LARPing.

I enjoy playing and also enjoy GMing. The latter takes more time, which is why I put off starting my own campaign. But ideas build and you have to do something with them.

[Cory Magel]

If I wanted to run a Sci Fi game I would have to buy them all again. I would probably go with something Firefly universe based. I like the lo tech/hi tech mix in the firefly series.

Actually my thought is to start it in what would seem a Firefly-like setting and just have it a far flung place in space that the Empire hasn't bothered with.  As the group becomes higher level and things get more epic... you introduce... (queue the imperial march theme...).  Heck, maybe come to find our the Firefly "Alliance" were trying to consolidate systems in a misguided attempt by the local branch in order to help fight back.  Just not sure who's side the group would be on.  Maybe make them think the Empire is good because they are fighting the (locally) bad Alliance guys, only to find out things get worse...    Muhahahahaaa

[Spectre771]

I chose, "I am a GM but get to play sometimes" because a more correct option wasn't really available.

I GM by Choice, But would Like to play sometimes, but the chance to play for me doesn't happen very often.

RM groups are hard enough to find, let alone find time for, and I am one of those who finds it a Joy to GM, so I pretty much GM..
If there was a Good PBP game going on I could Join I would play, But I don't see any of those about either.

I am in the same boat as you.  I would love to play RM more, but the group from college is scattered across the US now.  The game shop near my home has shut down so the chance to get something going through them is gone.  My kids like to play, but that means I am the GM for those sessions.  I have been fortunate enough to play with a great group of guys for over a year now, about 3-4 times a month, but it's D20 systems.  Tonight, however, I get to introduce the group to RM2, which means I will be again GMing and not playing RM, but I'm hopeful there will be some interest generated to have someone else pick up some books to GM.

My youngest daughter wants to learn how to run a session, so I have been working with her to get some things going, but it's all fun, family bonding things.  She absolutely LOVES RM2, so maybe she'll take off with it and we'll have another GM in the family.  I've asked her on several occasions if any of her friends play any type and dice games and she sadly admits that none do.  What a crying shame.  Kids these days aren't staying in playing games nearly as much as they used to.  I blame the internet.

[Peter R]

In my year at school there were about 300 students and of those I was ne of five roleplayers. The year above me there were about the same number of students and also five players. In the year above that there were at least four players.

I make that 1.5% of all students or 3% of the male students.

Roleplayers are largely between 15 and 50 years old. They may be younger but I think you probably are not completely hooked until then. Very few are older than 50 because the games did not exist for them to play in their formative years before the late 70s.

That 35 year block respresents about 50% of the population.

If there are 6Billion people on the planet, probably 2 Billion English speakers, 1 Billion are Male.

At about 3% there should be 30Million roleplayers out there. In 2008 it was estimated that 5million copies of the D&D rules had been sold up to and including version 3.5. D&D is not the only fruit so that estimated 30Million is portentially not that far our as not everyone who plays D&D has the rules and not all roleplayers play D&D.

In my town statistically there should be 21 roleplayers. I know 1 other in my age group and there is a an active War Hammer group at the senior school that I know of via one of the teachers. I can proably account for about 8 of the 21. Given that most of us do not advertise the fact that our idea of a fun evening is to sit around with the guys and pretend to be elves, the chances of recognising a fellow roleplayers is slim at best. The chances of finding a GM in need of players is even less probable. The chances of finding a RM GM would be at an estimate of 1 in every 6000 roleplayers.

Mind you there are lies, damned lies and statistics as they say.

[intothatdarkness]

I chose, "I am a GM but get to play sometimes" because a more correct option wasn't really available.

I GM by Choice, But would Like to play sometimes, but the chance to play for me doesn't happen very often.

RM groups are hard enough to find, let alone find time for, and I am one of those who finds it a Joy to GM, so I pretty much GM..
If there was a Good PBP game going on I could Join I would play, But I don't see any of those about either.

I am in the same boat as you.  I would love to play RM more, but the group from college is scattered across the US now.  The game shop near my home has shut down so the chance to get something going through them is gone.  My kids like to play, but that means I am the GM for those sessions.  I have been fortunate enough to play with a great group of guys for over a year now, about 3-4 times a month, but it's D20 systems.  Tonight, however, I get to introduce the group to RM2, which means I will be again GMing and not playing RM, but I'm hopeful there will be some interest generated to have someone else pick up some books to GM.

My youngest daughter wants to learn how to run a session, so I have been working with her to get some things going, but it's all fun, family bonding things.  She absolutely LOVES RM2, so maybe she'll take off with it and we'll have another GM in the family.  I've asked her on several occasions if any of her friends play any type and dice games and she sadly admits that none do.  What a crying shame.  Kids these days aren't staying in playing games nearly as much as they used to.  I blame the internet.

This is pretty much where I sit, too. Interestingly enough, most of my games consist of people who either have never played an RPG before or have never played RM in any form, so I've gotten fairly good at working with new or inexperienced players. Most of those groups tend to stay together for at least a year, too, so we've had some good games and good characters. I'd love to be able to play again, but the handful of groups I've seen in my area either play systems that I can't stand or aren't looking to add new players. It was nice when we had a second RM2 GM...we'd more or less trade campaigns back and forth, but it's been some years since I've been able to do that.

I guess I got into GMing because I enjoy creating worlds or game setting (depending on genre). I'm also a bit of a compulsive tinkerer with rules systems, and it's obviously easier to do that when you're GMing.

[Peter R]

Has anyone ever placed a classified ad looking for a GM or players?

"RM GM looking for PCs. Must have good sense humour." It means something to us but would be fairly cryptic to anyone else I would have thought. I imagine it would work in a larger town or university city.

"Willing 46yr old PC desperately seeking GM."

[jdale]

In my year at school there were about 300 students and of those I was ne of five roleplayers. The year above me there were about the same number of students and also five players. In the year above that there were at least four players.

I make that 1.5% of all students or 3% of the male students.

WotC did a study in 1999 and found that, of people ages 12-35, 6% had played tabletop RPGs and 3% did so at least monthly. 19% of them were female. So, a bit more than your estimate but not by much. Of people who played RPGs, 47% had GMed at least 2 sessions, 41% never GMed.

May have shifted since 1999 but at least it is some real numbers.

[Peter R]

Obviously mine was just a guestimated calculation. Their study was 15 years ago and they top age bracket was 35. Mine was 50 so we are in line there.

With any sponsored survey you always have to be wary of who they asked and what they asked. If they asked a 1000 college students then they would come up with a very skewed result. WotC are not going to release a survey that says their product is generally reviled and only played by loners who have a high probablilty of going postal and killing all their college friends. Instead they are going to publish figures that show their product to be popular with a wide appeal.

I have worked in a statistical marketing function and one of the tricks they use is to ask a great many questions find the ones that support your arguement and then discard the questions that you don't like the answers to. Another method is a 'bucket' things. Q1 Have you played any sort for adventure, fantasy or roleplaying game? Q2 Have you heard of or played Dungeons and Dragons. The first question sets up a bucket that includes a multitude of games from simple facebook time wasters to Rolemaster. The second creates a bucket of people who may have just heard of D&D and lumps them together with the players.

When the marketing igors get hold of the stats you get something like "Nearly all students enjoy playing fantasy, adventure and roleplaying games and most were familiar with Dungeons and Dragons one of the most established blah blah blah." It sounds like all student halls of residence are littered with D4 all over the floor and you cannot walk around without shoes or suffer crippling sole injuries.

[jdale]

They were actually pretty good about sharing the details. I think the point was to inform their business planning, not to use the results for publicity purposes. Given our demographic here I would have liked if they went over 35, and the analysis of the age distribution is wrong, but otherwise it's pretty solid. Draw your own conclusions if you like. http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/wotcdemo.html

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

If there are 6Billion people on the planet, probably 2 Billion English speakers, (...)

Uh? Where do you get this figure? Two billions that may know English, mayhap, but most would only know it as a second or third language and wouldn't be likely to commonly read/play in English. There are 300 millions people in the USA, 25 in Australia and 65 millions in the UK, so you don't even have half a billion actual English speakers.

[yammahoper]

As GM, I get to play every minute of the game, and a CAST of characters at that.  I am involved in every action, every combat, every discussion. 

I GM by choice.  Granted initially, many years ago, it was pushed upon me, but I have come to eagerly embrace it, as I also get to determine the story the players will get to tell, the world they game in, the magic in the world, what is available, etc.  The game is always entertaining for me, the GM.  And OH how we laugh 

[Peter R]

I didn't get the figures from anywhere. I just made them all up. The chances are that if you over estimate one number you will under estimate another and the errors tend to cancel out. It is a technique popularised by Enrico Fermi, the physicist.

I was actually lumping in many of those that speak English as a second and third language. I know a number of Swiss and Norwegian gamers that buy the English language rule books because they are available first or only in English.

On the other hand I have only ever known two female gamers and I excluded them from my little numbers game as I thought a total sample size of two was too small to extrapolate from. So I over estimated the audience size and under estimated the gaming population.

[Peter R]

They were actually pretty good about sharing the details. I think the point was to inform their business planning, not to use the results for publicity purposes. Given our demographic here I would have liked if they went over 35, and the analysis of the age distribution is wrong, but otherwise it's pretty solid. Draw your own conclusions if you like. http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/wotcdemo.html

Their sample size was 1000 people who had returned a card stating that they were interested in gaming. This is a segmentation report based upon the games industry in the US.

I agree that it is to do with their business planning and they were identifying the major areas of gaming cross over in order to reach new roleplayers.

Someone in an earlier post said they blamed the internet and they are right to a degree. I blame social media. When I was 12-16 I would go around a mates house to hang out and roleplaying fitted into that 'mates together, what shall we do?' need perfectly.

My kids are now 16 - 23yrs old and only the eldest ever really used to hang out with mates. The others all spend too much time at home glued to facebook, instagram, whatsapp and snapchat. They just do not go out and socialise.

Even the WotC report notes that there were less new gamers coming through.

[Cory Magel]

If there are 6Billion people on the planet, probably 2 Billion English speakers, (...)

Uh? Where do you get this figure? Two billions that may know English, mayhap, but most would only know it as a second or third language and wouldn't be likely to commonly read/play in English. There are 300 millions people in the USA, 25 in Australia and 65 millions in the UK, so you don't even have half a billion actual English speakers.

Doing a little research puts it at 1.3 Billion.  That's includes ALL English speakers, even if it is a second language.
(And this is likely a little low because the statistic had a disclaimer that all "All eligible" regarding the populations. Not sure what would make you ineligible).

[markc]

  Yes a GM I knew in California placed adds in a newspaper, local game shops and online in the mid to late 90's looking for RM players. It was quite an interesting mix of people that he got with some staying and some leaving do to his style of game or I should say long running campaign (since the early 80's).
  BTW, he and his wife were involved in RoCo 1 to a fair extent by his telling.


MDC

[intothatdarkness]

  Yes a GM I knew in California placed adds in a newspaper, local game shops and online in the mid to late 90's looking for RM players. It was quite an interesting mix of people that he got with some staying and some leaving do to his style of game or I should say long running campaign (since the early 80's).
  BTW, he and his wife were involved in RoCo 1 to a fair extent by his telling.


MDC

Likely the primary author, I'd guess, if his telling is accurate. RMC 1 really seemed to be the product of one campaign (which in my view made it one of the strongest of the companions).

[Peter R]

If there are 6Billion people on the planet, probably 2 Billion English speakers, (...)

Uh? Where do you get this figure? Two billions that may know English, mayhap, but most would only know it as a second or third language and wouldn't be likely to commonly read/play in English. There are 300 millions people in the USA, 25 in Australia and 65 millions in the UK, so you don't even have half a billion actual English speakers.

Doing a little research puts it at 1.3 Billion.  That's includes ALL English speakers, even if it is a second language.
(And this is likely a little low because the statistic had a disclaimer that all "All eligible" regarding the populations. Not sure what would make you ineligible).

Maybe the popuĺation is regarded as English speaking but literacy level is not 100%

If we take it as 1 Billion people that would still give us a theoretical roleplayer population of 15 million people. It is quite a big market place. Does anyone know the rough marketshare ICE has?

[jdale]

Less than one percent. Also, not every player will buy a rulebook, much less an expansion. Typical gaming books do not sell a huge number of copies. 1000 is pretty great. Look at RPGNow, HARP made Gold, and Silver on DriveThroughRPGs (these are based on separate tallies). That means it sold something in the range of 602-1250 copies if what I read elsewhere is true.

I don't think randomly meeting people and asking them if they know RM is a good strategy to meet RM players. Better to find a way to interact with gamers, whether at your FLGS, a gaming con, a LARP, etc. And joining existing games even if they aren't RM. If they turn out to be people worth playing with, you can later run RM, or pitch it.

[RandalThor]

Ah, I always knew that as PBM play by mail.

It just isn't the same as real playing though is it?

Sorry Warl, but I have to agree here. I tried PBP once and loosing the social interaction part just made it feel flat to me. Sitting at the table with people just "feels" better. To me it is like the calling someone vs texting, sure texting is great for just shooting someone a quick message when you don't need a response, but if you are going to be carrying on a conversation, just friggin call, please. It is faster and "feels" better because I can hear them and that gives me inflections that are lost in texting. To get the same inflections in texting (or PBP) I have to do all sorts of "quotes", italisized, bold, underlined, and the ever popular "quotes/italisized/bold/underlined", all of which are a pain to do. Also, as I like long campaigns where the characters go far and do lots of stuff, but I rarely get to stick with any game/campaign for very long, the uber-slow process would really bug me.

A skype game might work, but only so long as the connection is good. It still wouldn't be as good as face-to-face, imo though.