You walk into the tavern. Your sword and shield clinking together as you walk makes everyone in the tavern turn and look at you. Being somewhat new to this you try and act tough and scowl at everyone. It doesn’t come off well and you look sort of foolish. You walk over to the bar and wait patiently for the bartender to come talk to you and ask you what you want to drink. He doesn’t. Instead he serves all the other patrons who keep shouting at him. 

“It seems the squeaky wheel does get the grease,” you mutter under your breath. You raise your hand and shout at the bartender and finally he comes over. He’s a large half-orc fellow who looks like he’s no stranger to a brawl.

“Heyo, what’ll it be?” He asks with a quizzical eye at your armor and clothing.

You brush it off and say, “A simple ale please, and I was wondering if you could give me some direction?” The bartender stops and gives you more of his full attention. 

“Yeah? What did you need?”

“Well, I’m looking for sort of a group of companions. Do you know any mercenary groups that are open to a new member?”

The half-orc smiles and says, “you must be new to this whole adventuring thing. Well these groups don’t just accept complete strangers in. You’ll have to prove yourself and they don’t really go about looking for new compatriots.  Now, with that in mind,” and he turns you to look at the rest of the tavern, “over in that corner, yeah those dark elves, they are the Right Harvesters. They’re a group of crow come up from the Underdark seeking the quell those who follow any demon or devil. Bunch of rightoues pricks you ask me. Over there with the ogre, they’re the Blade Speakers. Mostly just ruffians and vagabonda really. Lastly, the group to your left here are the Whisper Wraiths. They’re tied up with the Zhentarim pretty tight. So adventurer, here’s your drink and I’m mighty curious what you’re going to do.”

So what would you like to do?

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. I’m your host, Justin Lewis and I’m here to help you create better stories as you DM sessions of Dungeons and Dragons 5e.

Today, let’s talk about one of the first things that you’ll do as a DM- finding your D&D group.

This is going to be my hypothetical list for what I’d do if I wanted to find players for my D&D campaign. You might try different things, but this is what I would do first.

The first thing I do when starting a D&D campaign is ask my friends and family. For me personally, I try to start with my family just to build that relationship better but that’s just me. I also don’t just ask friends who I know would be interested. I ask any friend because D&D is a great way to build friendships. I’ve also been highly surprised at the people who’ve said yes and have even been extremely excited to try D&D. You just gotta ask.

I think this is the best place to start because D&D can turn an acquaintance into a friend and a good relationship into a great one. Often D&D sessions turn into much more. 

Every single one of your friends has friends who are not your friends. What better way to meet someone who might like the same types of things you like than by asking someone who likes the same types of things that you like?

“But I don’t really want to meet new people…”

I get it. We’re all introverts and we’re all extroverts and we all like staying home and binging Netflix and we all like going out and partying. Sometimes you don’t want to meet new people, but sometimes you don’t want to be lonely. The fact of the matter is that you do have to put yourself out there, especially as a DM. You have to give so many invitations and most of them will naturally be no’s. That’s ok. Just ask your friends and family who say no who they might know who would say yes or even be interested in hearing what D&D is all about.

The next thing I do is head over to the social media Lords and bow down before them begging for the gift of friendship. Just kidding, but seriously, the social media palaces are great places to find new adventurers. There are basically two methods of approach.

The Craigslist Method

This method isn’t as productive as the next method I think. Virtually, you go online and you post essentially a want-ad. In fact here’s a quick template that you can use:

Hi, I’m looking for anyone interested in trying something new.

There’s a game that I’ve been wanting to play for a while (called Dungeons and Dragons). I’d love to try it out with you. If you’re interested, send me a quick DM.

The parentheses are optional but you just put out your desires to the universe and let the universe get back to you. I’ve done this and it’s worked pretty well, but not as well as I would have hoped.

The Spy Method

Instead of sending out an advertisement on a feed that most people won’t see or will disregard, there’s a better way. Naturally, this way will take a lot more work and intelligence, but you’ll get better results.

Start with the list of people you follow or who follow you on the social media platform of your choice. Now go down the list one by one. Look through their photos and posts and look for something that would indicate that they’d be open to playing D&D with you. Next, send them a simple direct message about what you noticed on their profile and then ask if they’d be interested in playing. You’re looking for signals that they’d be receptive to the invitation.

Next, you can try frequenting places where the type of person you’re looking for frequents. Go to your local game store or comic book store. I know here in Utah county we have Dragon’s Keep, the Game Grid, the Gamer’s Inn, and a few more. Go there and hang around for a while. You can try sparking up a conversation with anyone perusing the D&D section of the store. If you’re too afraid of doing that you can ask the person at the front counter if they know of anyone looking for a D&D group. They’ll likely have some sort of resource available or just know someone who’s asked them the same question. They’ll be able to put you in touch. 

Next, you can look through sites like Roll20 for a group. You can also put yourself up on sites like startplaying.games where you can list games that you’d like to host as a DM. This option really works the best when you have a lot of experience and lots of compelling images that catch people’s attention and draw them in. The other way is to play as a player in one of these settings and then ask the other players if they’d be up for playing again but with you in the DM seat. Make sure not to steal the group away from the original DM or there may be bad blood.

When everything else fails you can just post a free ad on Craigslist or wherever there are classifieds and hope for a response. To be honest, I would not even try this method because you will likely get responses from a lot of creepy people. Instead, reach out to us on Instagram @howtobeabetterdm and we’d be happy to try and set you up in a group with anyone we know. We don’t have a huge community of friends and peers but we’d be happy to open it up to you so you don’t have to keep looking through Craigslist.

Thanks for listening to today’s show. Stay tuned after to hear some announcements but until next time my friend, let’s roll initiative.

Music from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgLjYsVP4H0&t=36s

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