How to get into a Tabletop game?

[Drakmorg]

So I find myself lacking for real life social activity, and playing Dungeons and Dragons (3.5e, if anyone cares) was the most enjoyable social activity I have experienced thus far, so I now fancy myself finding another group to play with.

I have played the game once before, I managed to luck into it by joining a club at University. However, since I no longer attend any sort of University, and no longer keep in contact with my old group, this option is now closed off to me.

And so, I now turn my attention to you folks, the most civil people that I believe I can ask for helpful advice on this subject. How do I go about finding a group of like-minded individuals to play this game of paper and pen and imagination and dice with?
Oh, and I'm not actually picky about it being D&D in particular, I'm willing to learn and play just about any tabletop game, if that helps even the tiniest, slightest bit.

 

[DoPo]

Well, you should start a cult, get followers, and get them to play with you. I see no other option.

OK, OK - your best bet is gaming stores, though keep in mind that's second hand advice I'm giving you. From what I know, you should be able to hang around and just find people. Also, there is D&D Encounters, which most, if not all, stores host regularly. Basically, it's sort of an introduction to D&D with sessions being free to drop in by anyone - you'll get a character sheet and probably some dice then play. You just have to find a store that runs them (and since they are mandated by Wizards of the Coast, any non-minor one that carries D&D products should have it) and look up their schedule.

Other than that, there is online as an option. I'll copy paste something I've posted before:

For online Play by Post games, I'd recommend Myth-Weavers [http://www.myth-weavers.com/]. It's one of the best PbP websites out there. It's full of useful RP features - character sheets for multitude of systems, a variety of dice rolling variants, even automatic linkage between a roll and a specific character sheet (well, I think it's only for D&D games) and so on. There are a fair bunch of D&D groups and a even n/oWoD players. I don't know how many WoD games are there right now and how many look for people but it's usually at least a couple. Just PM the people running the games you're interested in. At the very least, just hang around the game advertisements.

Another good option would be RPoL [http://rpol.net/]. It's a website custom built for PbP games. It even has IC PMs and character associations with games. I'm not sure of the state of the games there, but, again, you can hang around the game recommendations.

There is also Roll20 [http://roll20.net/] but I don't have much experience with it. All I know is that it's about...roleplaying games, probably specialised in D&D, maybe not, dunno. Also, it has an active community. As I said - can't say much.

Well, I've heard that the Giant in the Playground forums [http://www.giantitp.com/forums/] are a good place to look for D&D games but I've never been interested in those, so I'm just relaying other people's advice here.

Finally, if you just get interested people, you can run a game over Skype/IRC/other messanger or even Maptools/OpenRPG/whatever virtual tabletops.

As for the software for playing online

I've heard people have luck using Skype + Google Docs for communication and map/sheets respectively.

But as for actual software:
MapTools - I've heard it's the best
iTableTop - one of the most popular
OpenRPG - another of the most popular virtual table software
VirtualDaivve - I don't really know much about it
Gametabe is another one of the most famous programs

I don't have any experience in them but I've seen them mentioned in topics such as this one.

Hope it helps.

 

[hazabaza1]

M-M-M-MEGA SNIP

Yes.
This.

This is a smart man.

Just started my first Pathfinder campaign a few weeks ago, we use Mythweavers to make our characters and Google Hangouts with the Roll20 app. Everyone's got a webcam on, there's good banter, the DM can make loads of maps and there's character pogs and stuff.

If you're outgoing enough and enjoy meeting new people go and check the stuff out.