Anyone who's into RPing...
 

Looks like there's a lot of people who play dice, pen, and paper RPG's around the web.. I'm feeling kind of left out, because my school days are long behind me, and so are any chances of hanging with the D&D groups.

How does someone usually break into this? I mean, I don't really know anything about it.. Do they have "newb" groups forming all the time? Or am I gonna be expected to know the ins and outs on my first day...? Are there internet sites dedicated to forming groups in whatever you want in your town? What if I want to try, say, Exaulted, but don't know anyone who's into it?

Or are they usually by invitation only? If you don't know people into this stuff, you don't play?

...and I just noticed the RP forum. Whoops. ^_^;

Well, this is "kind" of a general thing too.. Isn't everything?

Moved to Playing Games, the RP forum is more for actual games.

From what I hear gaming stores usually have a messageboard where groups look for players, players look for groups, etc. or the owners know people personally and may know of vacant spots in a group. That's the first thing I'd do if I didn't know anyone at all, go to a gaming store and ask around. If you don't have a gaming store nearby things might get more complicated. I'm sure there are forums where players are looking to form groups, but I don't know any off-hand.

Another option is, of course, just to ask your friends if they'd be interested in trying this roleplaying thing and make an entirely new group. You'd probably be off to a very slow start as you get used to RP basics and stop every few minutes to discuss rule interpretations, but it's certainly a way.

Or since we're already mentioning the RP section, that would of course be another way, although I imagine it's a lot different than actually meeting with people and playing in real time.

I just played with my friends. we all learnt together.
If you interested they probably will be too

Well it does help to be involved in other nerdy pursuits as a nice segue into Role Playing. I myself was introduced into the community one day a decade or more ago when I was playing Magic: TCG with my friend at the local gaming store and he had to go home early. Bored out of my mind, I accepted the invitation from one of the two or three gaming groups playing at the time to sit in on their little game thing. It was fun. I had just come off a Conan/Kull the Conqueror marathon on TV and was ready to give this RP thing a shot. My character died an hour later. I moved over to one of the other groups and kept on playing.

Anyway, that story aside, the best place to find an open gaming group is a gaming store. Especially on the weekends.

Or you can do what my girlfriend did. She was mildly interested in the idea of Role playing but instead of getting in with my group, she grabbed a handful of her friends and started a new little all girl gamer group around some independent spin-off game based off of some manga they all read. I've been having a blast monitoring her little journey into the gaming community. Now she's gone from independent works to poking around with Exalted and some old RP property that Wizards dumped back in early 2000.

Meeting People? Real Time? What is this thing that you speak off!

I've seen a few people try to start a D&D thing here and they never seem to get off the ground. They end up dieing because people loss interest or the GM runs out of time.

if you are lucky and live in a well populated area the forum idea works. Otherwise your only option is to get a bunch of people together and start from scratch. You'll want to study up and GM it yourself because its unlikely you'll get someone else to do it. I suggest being abit pushy, I got exalted group together by basically going up to people and saying "there is this Exalted game, I want you to try it." Little psychological trick, most people are atleast abit passive. Set up a time to play and ask people specifically to play then a general "who wants to try this". People are naturally hesitant to jump into something new