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Guide to Better Looking For Group Posts

Looking for groups to play with is the first step you will have to take to be a part of any game. This “guide” is my own opinion, formed from experience, on the best way to go about posting your advertisement for a group. I call it an advertisement because that is ultimately what it is, you are either advertising your game for others to play or you are advertising yourself as a potential player. This “guide” will be broken into two parts. First section will be focused on players advertising themselves, and second will be GM’s advertising their games. 1. The Player Looking for a Group: The first thing to remember when posting your advertisement is that this is not a personal add in a newspaper, you are NOT paying per word. Feel free to actually use words to get your information out there. You don’t need to write a book on yourself but two sentence posts are easy to forget and loose in the crowed. Also keep in mind that this is a hobby about creativity and role playing, if you are unwilling to use your words to make a good advertisement for yourself then why should we believe you are willing to use your words to role play in a game. First thing you need to have is a title of your post. This should say either “LFG” or “Player LFG” so it is easier to spot as a player looking for group over the other game posts. You will also want to put your name or some other tag line that is relevant to you as a player such as “Ready to Hack and Slash Goblins” or “Ready to Learn Any System” or “Plenty of Experience”. Now onto you’re post. Before you say anything else you need to introduce yourself. I know that your screen name is floating off to the left side of your post, but repetition makes people remember things, and you want people to remember your name when inviting people to their game. Along with this introduction give us some info about yourself. Keep this information relevant to the hobby though. You could have just had a great trip to the beach but we simply don’t care at this point, that is the stuff you talk about once in a group. This information should, at the MINIMUM, be what games you have played and are comfortable with the rules, what games you have been really wanting to try out, and your willingness to try other games or if you just want to stick to the ones you have already listed. Remember this is your advertisement so things like: “I really love playing higher level epic fantasy games” or “Will not play Shadowrun”, are all good and valid things to put here, it lets GM’s looking for players have a better idea of you and how well you will fit in their group. Next thing that you MUST have is the times you are available to play and what time zone you are in. The more detailed you can make this the better. Do not put “I can play pretty much any day from 3-11pm Eastern Time Zone” when you can actually only play on Thursdays at that time. Saying you can play more often than you actually can play will not get you in more games, it will just get more people mad at you because they now have to either find a new player or reschedule the game because you gave out incorrect info. If you really are flexible then it is perfectly fine to say that, I would also suggest that if there are a few hard times that you most likely wouldn’t be able to play than you at least put that down while saying everything else is flexible. (A quick note on time zones: If you are in the USA it is probably best for you to put your time zone in both notations: EST, CDT, PST; and in GMT). At the end you can put some more personal information about yourself that you are comfortable giving out. This could be specifics like your age or where you work. This info can be useful to again let GMs get a better feel for you to decide if they want to invite you to their game. If you have things like a Deviantart account, Posts in a play by post forum that you thought were particularly good, Short stories you have written or anything else that is creative, and some what related to the hobby, and would show your prowess as a players or general creativity, then this is the place to put those links. Tell what your links are obviously. Again always keep in mind that this is your advertisement, no one ever HAS to respond to it or ask you to join his or her game. There are a lot of other players out there that would be willing to play. If your post is easy to read, gives all of the information the GM needs to make a decision without asking you for more info, and conveys what you are like as a player than you will be in much higher demand. This will also lead to more agreeable matching of GMs to players.
2. The GM Advertising a Game As a GM it is your job to inspire the players, create an interesting and functioning world, and to provide the players with the information they need. If you can’t make a good game advertisement then why would they expect you to do any of that in an actual game? Your game add can actually set the tone of how your entire session/campaign runs. Yes you can probably get by with just listing basic info and you will have players sign up for it (Because lets face it there are more players than GMs). But if you go the extra mile and really make an interesting add for your game then you can start cultivating inspiration out of your players and create excitement before the game even begins. First is the title of the post. This needs to have the name of the game and the system it is being played with at the very least. If you know roughly what time you want to play you can put that in the title too as long as it doesn’t make it to long. Now down to the actual post. I would start off with some flavor. A cake might taste good but if the icing is done right it makes you even more excited to eat it. If you are running a Sci-Fi game don’t just say “Star Wars in the Rebellion Era” give it a little pop: “A long time ago in a galaxy far away… STAR WARS. The Empire holds the Galaxy in its grasp. The rebellion is starting to crumble under the weight of this strangle hold. Four unsuspecting heroes heading to a small planet on the edge of the galaxy could change the coarse of the war.” This flavored doesn’t need to the first chapter of the Hobbit or anything but you immediately start getting players in the mood and mindset of your game before it has even started. The other thing that this can do is it tells the players what the focus of the game will be. You will not be playing as a band of pirates in this game. There will probably be a fair bit of combat since the backdrop is a war. You start guiding players expectations instantly. Now that you have captured the player’s interest you need to show them the gears that hold everything together. Now is when you list these things: what rules system the game will be using, the style of game this will be (investigation, combat heavy, social, ect.) and what time you will be looking at running this game. These things can be listed as being flexible as well, don’t feel like you must have everything set in stone but at least tell the players that they are flexible still. I would say that when it comes to time to play you need to at least have an estimated start time (“Wanting to have first session next week”) and an estimated game length (“Will run 3-4 sessions, can go longer depending on players” or “One Shot only”). Next you need to give the players some info that they need to make characters. This is going to change greatly depending on the system that you are using so just use your judgment but the reason you should put this here is two fold: first it is so you can point to this page when asked questions on making characters rather than having to answer the same question 10 times. Second it lets possible players know what sort of game it is before they ask to join (a level 1 D&D game is going to be a lot different than a level 20 D&D game). You will also want to tack on any big rule changes that you are planning to make to the game such as house rules or omissions. Again all of this is to help get you players that really want to play your game. At the bottom you can put some inform about yourself if you want and/or and requirements that you might have that are not rules related such as requiring players to have voice capability or things like that. Hopefully this “guide” will be helpful to some people and help get some good groups together with solid games and players. I feel free to send me a message to my inbox or post here if you have any questions, suggestions, or requests about anything I said. Just a regular GM, Ellmo (Forgive me if there are some spelling errors. Im Dyslexic... this is as good as spelling gets)
Ellmo, this guide is top class and mods would be smart to set this as announcement. Thank you for this kind of contribution.
Tommy, I was looking for you to ask how well google hangouts work for you in playing a roll20 game. I have never used google hangouts and so am unfamiliar with it. Can you give me a small guide of what to do? I appreciate it if you can, if unable thanks for listening :-)
@Hector, sent you a PM.
Thanks Tommy
I am a little saddened that this is not getting more post to it, everyone should be reading it!
Well written, stickied! :-)
Thanks guys! I might expand this a little more as well soon. Probably add an example of each to use as a template for those that need to be able to see a final result.
And to think I am in a campaign with you ^-^ Overjoyed.
Ellmo, what don't you just make two Mock Pages, one for each, and link them here?
A quick note on time zones: If you are in the USA it is probably best for you to put your time zone in both notations: EST, CDT, PST; and in GMT. This! A thousand times this!
I often so badly want to link to this post when people put up a sparse or disorganized LFG post, but feel it'd come off as overbearing. Really though, I feel this is an excellent guide and should be a pseudo-requirement for anything going up on the boards.
PLEASE someone put a link to "Looking for Group" on the front page! Even if I know where to look it still takes me a while to find it.
This is a great post. I'd like to strongly encourage people to include their age, or at least age range, in their looking-for-group or looking-for-players posts. Needless to say, a lot of us on the site or old bastards who remember the golden age of role-playing, and nothing is worse than getting all pumped up for a game and finding out it's being run by a 13-year-old kid.
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Pat S.
Forum Champion
Sheet Author
Hello everyone. Joined awhile ago but just now starting to seriously look at the site. This is a wonderful beginners how to do LFG posts. I've been looking around and will be starting to dig into this site more in the next few days. I'm looking at moving to this VTT from another one and would like to do more research before committing to it.
Great post - i just wrote my first LFG here on roll20 and now am going to revise to match these suggestions. Thanks for putting this out there Ellmo!
also might want the dm/gm to add there time zone so players have an idea when they are going to play
"... heroes heading to a small planet on the edge of the galaxy could change the _coarse_ of the war.” Guess it is a little _rough_ out there?