So this is completely obvious. But I'm going to say it anyway.
Generally speaking, D&D is the hobby. It is damned easy to find players. Also, in my experience, it is damned easy to find good players (by which I mean, people who are fun to game with). There are a lot of people to choose from, so a lot of them are fun to game with. It's the numbers.
I run an open table, and I use an email list with about a dozen names on it to announce weekly games. For about eight months last year, I ran a Mage: The Ascension game as the main campaign. One time we had eight players (I'm not counting myself in these counts). A number of times, we had five to six. Fairly often, we had four. But most weeks we had three players. Over the last few months of that campaign, we were consistently seeing the same three players making it to each session. They were the Mage audience.
Once Mage wrapped up, I pitched D&D. The email list lit up. Last week, we had eight. This week, having announced the game mere minutes ago, I'm already seeing the confirmation emails pouring in. I expect a good-sized group again.
One more thing to love about D&D.
Very true what you're saying, but I suppose it depends on the edition. Which one are you running?
ReplyDeleteThat's a good question. It's kind of a 3rd edition Frankenstein with a heavy dose of TSR D&D in terms of procedures of play.
ReplyDeleteSo, for example, I have the 3.0 core books, which we're using for character creation and so on. We're also hacking together classes from other 3.x/PF sources as desired. Basically, 3rd edition is the baseline for character creation, combat, and magic.
All the procedures are from classic D&D. Specifically, I follow all the procedural rules from Basic D&D (tracking 10 minute adventuring turns for movement in the dungeon, wandering monsters, morale, trap activation, etc.). I've also slashed XP from monsters to 10% of the 3rd edition values, and we're using Gold for XP. Encounter levels are not keyed to the party but rather depend on the area, dungeon level, or whatever.
I basically pitched it as D&D (first and foremost) and "Edition X" as a secondary thing. I think it helps that 3.X has a large recent footprint. But in the group, I know we have a combination of folks who have played a lot of and/or favor 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder, 4e, or BECMI/RC. They're all coming to the table.
Sounds fun! Thanks for sharing that.
ReplyDeleteNo problem. Always happy to talk shop!
ReplyDelete