How do you select your player
Following the everlasting complaint on the rpg reddit about player being entitled and GM struggling between player not doing anything and players leaving without notice. I am curious about how do you select your player, and what are your trick/tips to identify the problematic ones before problems occurs
Well, a lot of the time, it's difficult to know who will be a problem player before any actual play has occurred, but there are always a couple red flags you can look out for:
Step 1 : post about the game with every info I would like to know as a newcoming player Step 2 : a form to weed out people not interested enough to fill it and with a few questions about their style. Step 3 : vocal interview. A must ever since I okayed a player per writing and found out at session 1 that their voice was so fucking annoying to me. Step 4 : session 0 where you check if everyone is on the same wavelenght or not and where you set your boudaries abour your table Worked pretty well for me.
With desperation.
Not completely a joke unfortunately. Often if someone is interested in the niche game I want to try running and is available when I can run it I'll take them. There is of course some vetting: a light conversation about the system, their interest in it and then I'll judge their reaction and openness to safety tools. After this I can be fairly certain they aren't complete asses.
Also it is easier to endure that player if you don't plan for the campaign to last beyond 5-10 sessions. A dip into the system to try it out and then onto the next one.
Everyone's situation will be different of course, but here is mine.
I have a long-standing gaming group with 2 buddies from high school and have been playing with them since the 90's. The 3 of us are the core of the group. Over the years, other players have come and gone. For those players, we invited them to our regular group after first playing with them in one shots or short campaigns ran for new players or similar. If we have a seat open (our group is usually 6-7 including whoever is GM), we will invite them if they are good people. In the 30 years we've been playing together, we've never had a problem. The only reason people tend to fall out of the group has been people moving or having kids.
I ask my existing friends if they're down for a game, choosing players who I think their personality would match the campaign concept. Even if they've never played before, if they're at least lightly nerdy, I don't work with them, they live within 40 minutes, and have some free time in their schedule, I ask. Then we spend 6 months scheduling a session, spend half of every session trying to remember what happened last time, do that 3 or 4 times until the campaign peeters out because someone's scheduled changes or they move or have kids or something ¯(ツ)/¯
Interview with my existing crew present. I'll throw out some oddball questions then trust my buddies judgement.
Thanks all for your feedback, Here is my typical technique
Run a couple of "discovery" one shots, the goal is for me to get some practice with the rules, and for the PC to discover the game without any other request.
Do a long post on the forum (my club still use those), where I explain the kind of campaign I plan, including duration and agenda, and no show policy
Based on the answers, the one shots, sometimes feedback from other people, I set a group. (Usually, it's not that much choice anyway)
Session zero is a last "cleaning" moment, where sometimes we see that people aren't aligned
But I already got group exploding mid-flight.
Also sometimes, I take the freedom to remind the shy players that "XXX talks a lot, but feel free to stop them" so they don't feel left out
Ask my friends who wants to play. I'm not friends with people who cause problems ¯(ツ)/¯
But you are friends with people that want to play dnd and you have at least 3 that are available. 3 things that become rarer the older you get :(
The older I've got the more people I've found want to play! Availability, on the other hand...