consultingkaty replied to your post “I haven’t gone anywhere near Critical Role because honestly? I know…”
My boyfriend and I are interested in playing (bought a starter kit and all), but with only 2 of us, and being kind of introverted it’s hard. Are there such things as online groups that noobs can join?
There sure are! There aren’t exactly ongoing tutorial games, but there are ALWAYS people out there looking for gamers, including newbies. These days, my personal favorite place to look is Roll20.
Roll20 is an online platform for organizing and playing all sorts of roleplaying games. It’s one of the tools my own group uses when we manage to get together to play long distance. It holds your character sheets for you, provides chat functionality, lets you display digital maps, character figures and other useful visual aids, and even has a built-in dice roller.
But it also has a fantastic, vibrant and mostly really nice community, including a Looking for Group board and forums where you can chat about gaming, get advice and generally get to know other people in the community (for those of us who prefer to have some level of previous acquaintanceship with the people we game with).
You can set up an account for free, and game for free. But if you want the paid perks, only the game master actually has to have a paid account and all their players can benefit. My sister served as a volunteer mod and playtester for the forums there for about a year, and in thanks they set her up with a paid lifetime membership. I have a lot of respect for the folks running this company, and they work hard to keep their community boards kind.
ObsidianPortal is another roleplaying game support platform. This one is more passive than Roll20, meant as an archive and sharing system for character profiles and world-building information and resources for your group. But it too has a forum where many people advertise when looking for players or groups.
Sites and forums dedicated to finding gamers:
- Reddit’s /r/lfg/
- http://ift.tt/1IfwYEN
- http://ift.tt/2cit2I2
- http://ift.tt/1p2dpmo
- And a classic: the RPG.net Looking for Group forum: http://ift.tt/2citAxF
Searching and Search Terms:
You can search for games and gamers anywhere: Google, Twitter, Facebook, Craigslist… I’ve been hearing that Meetup.com is a really popular avenue for this!
“Looking for group” or “Looking for game” are the long-established key phrases used by gamers who are on the hunt for a gaming group. “Looking for players” is perhaps even more useful since it’s the call of the gaming group that is seeking to fill some seats. Unfortunately these days searching on these terms can get a bit cluttered, what with all the MMOs and things using the same phrases. There is also a popular webcomic called “Looking for Group” that will often come up. But if you’re willing to wade through all the irrelevant stuff, they’re still good to try. If you know what RPG you want to play, it can help. After all, “Looking for Shadowrun game” filters out all the WOW and Destiny gamers
by default.
Other useful terms to know when searching for online games are “tabletop game” or “tabletop RPG” (to distinguish from LARPs or video games) and “play by post’” or “play by chat” (as opposed to live/in-person, and depending on whether it’s chat-based, e.g. Skype or Roll20, or post-based, e.g. Livejournal or email–I’m sure people have done it, but I would not use Tumblr as a platform for an online tabletop RPG, although it’s not a bad place to look for gamers).
If you know the game you want to play, you can also often find communities and forums dedicated specifically to that game, and you’ll probably find games and gamers looking for groups on there as well.
Some more advice on finding a game:
I hope this helps, and that you find some awesome players who blow your minds with just how great roleplaying games can be!
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2ca1E2f