How do I find people in my local area?

Is there a way for me to search users by area?

Nothing is jumping out at me and that stupid bot is asking me to post links and now emojis.

Thank you.

I have no idea if PPG has the ability to search users based on area.

However, if you’re looking for ways to find other gamers in your area, I could possibly recommend a couple things.
Not knowing what area you’re in, it’s hard to gage what resources you may/ may not have accessible.

  • First thing I’d recommend is the local game store, especially if it’s one that has space set aside for gaming. Nearly the best place to meet fellow gamers.
  • Next, I would research online if and what “organized play” is available in your area. For 5e, I believe it’s called Adventurers League. Pathfinder/Starfinder Society. Etc. I’m not super familiar myself, but I believe you can view and register to attend games online.
  • Another thing I’d recommend is meetup.com. If there is a presence in your area, it’s likely there is a game/gaming affiliated group already established that you can join. For personal reference, I’ve been gaming consistently with a person I met via meetup since 2014.
    -Another possibility could be your local bookstore. Assuming it has a gaming section, if you hang out there, I imagine you’d encounter some other gamers.

I’m sure there are other options that I’m not familiar w/ that others might know, but I hope this might help.

Typing in your city in the PPG search is one way, but that’s a pretty specific and not sure how useful in some areas.

Then there’s clicking on the Game Finder pulls up a map of games.

Thanks, this is about what I expected when I signed up for this site. Maybe in a few years, it will be worthwhile, but right now, there is no one even in my province, let alone my city.

The gamefinder map is very useful for verifying that.

I admit, I had higher hopes for the social aspect of what PPG was promising, but right now; I couldn’t even filter out the groups that are hive-mind only: same politics, same philosophy-only groups…because I can see there are no players near me, let alone groups.

Does not appear there is a tool for user search as-such.

All great suggestions, thanks for your time. But does not work for me.

And I’ll throw out here; I’m not remotely as interested in finding a group as much as I am in finding people who share my interests in gaming. I don’t recall signing up for the past incarnation of PPG, but the relaunch email made this sound at least as-much of a social media platform as one for gaming.

-I live north of a major city and I have a home and job; I don’t have the time to drive into town and just hang out at a game store hoping someone comes in.
-I don’t really care about organized play, frankly after my last experience; I’ve been taking a break from gaming and going forward I’d like to take a break from DnD and similar. I’d be interested in playing other settings and systems.
-I’ve done meetup.com. Never again. Message after message and no response and then ghosting.
-Local book store does not have a gaming section and same issues as the gaming store.

@Beachhead1985 I suppose this is your opportunity to spread the word about the GameFinder feature to what sites/ groups/ stores/ colleges/ clubs do exist in your region and hope for or make it happen that more people will sign up.

A lot of work, but it might be worth your while and help gamers in your region.

Hard pass.

I’ll check back once in a blue moon to see if anyone else joined, but I don’t have time to be unpaid marketing for a place I may as well be the only member of.

I work. I have a home. I live 15-20 min outside of town.

To be 100% honest; I wouldn’t recommend this place anyways when FB and Reddit do the same thing, but better.

Sorry. The draw for me was as a social media platform for gamers that I could meet women on. But as it is; it’s still a better use of my time to look on established platforms for women who share my interests.

You need to have that draw in offering what FB and Reddit do not. Your GameFinder feature is visually pleasing, but useless outside of major US cities. But people can do without that, if FB and Reddit work just as well (and they do). If you offered for-real what certain paywalled dating sites claim to offer with bots and scammers, you’d have something…as it is, I am not seeing the draw.

Don’t get me wrong; the game-finder is neat and I’d love it if it worked for me and I was really jonesing to join or run a game. But every bit of effort I’d be making selling this place for free, is the same effort I could use for doing that myself. “Hey, want to game with me?” vs “Hey, want to join this site no-one but me in the area uses? It helps you find people to play with.”

Understand; I am on one major gaming forum and that pretty much does me for talking about gaming. I don’t need another unless it gives me something I can’t get elsewhere.

Privacy concerns are one reason you aren’t able to search all users by area. Or by gender, for that matter.

You can post something here in one of the other sub-forums – looking for group, looking for players, looking for like-minded people in XYZ geographic area, looking to meet women gamers, something like that. Maybe someone will respond and then you can see if you’re compatible or not. The site is still fairly new/small, so don’t get your hopes up, though.

In real life, you can hang up physical flyers somewhere and/or post in one of your local-area general-purpose social media sites. Libraries sometimes run regularly-scheduled games, as do game stores.

There are ways, but all take a bit of time and patience and working your way through a mix of bots, spammers, and people who aren’t good fits mixed in with the few people who will end up being compatible.

PPG is still starting up. It’s not clear what direction the forum will go in and what its eventual strengths (and character) will turn out to be.

Good luck with your search. I hope you find what you’re looking for. If you stick around here, your posts can help shape how this forum evolves, and that can definitely include topics such as women in gaming, should you have opinions and viewpoints you’d feel like expressing.

I’m sorry that you appear to be in a location that is apparently dry of gaming-minded individuals. That definitely sucks.

I understand that mileage may vary for different people using different approaches. I am fortunate enough to live in a large city with a rather robust gaming community, so nowhere near the same as you.

I am really not sure what other approaches might be viable, but i do wish you the best of luck in finding the kind of people you’re looking for, if there are any near you to be found.

I’m so glad this isn’t a dating site. Not opposed to folks meeting each other and such, but the emphasis on gaming vs dating is super important.

See if you FLGS has a message board or place that you can put up fires with your email or phone number. Old fashion LFG style from the pre internet era. Worked for decades, might still work now. Hard to say as it depends on how active the FLGS is.

Odds are this site isn’t going to take a broader approach to why folks want from it and not be tailored to what you personally want. Best of luck to ya though.

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This site will become what its members make of it, combined with the features that the owner can and will put in place. As a new (albeit relaunched) site, this site still needs time to gain traction/momentum. Someone coming in, not overly willing to contribute to the community and get out of it what it is not designed or intended for is probably not going to have a positive experience.

Typical social media sites are fire and forget - ill suited to any collaboration or anything beyond very near term coordination. For people that aren’t actually interested in gaming, I have to think that dating apps/sites allow one to enter gaming as an interest. Forums as a (useful) type of social media site are well suited to discuss, search, organize, and archive various topics. Hopefully this site will get better and better over time as more and more people hopefully realize that FB, Meetup, Reddit, etc. are not valuable tools and are not meeting their goals of finding like minded people - fellow gamers.

Eventually it would be nice if members could opt into having a push-pin on a map AND choose where that pin is in order to have further control over their privacy/paranoia levels. I think expanding the capabilities of the site, while defaulting to opted-out on any privacy related setting (i.e. default to private/hidden), and letting people opt in to disclosing more would be a good thing. I am privacy conscious, but I too want to find local gamer types and get to playing some TTRPGs. There are not, I don’t think, nearly as many tabletop gamers as there used to be, most people are content with computer games, so it is harder to locate people with a lower per capita of TT gamers. Plus, I think that more folks than ever are complacent and generally expect things to happen for them, as opposed to being proactive and making things happen.

In my experience doing the things you love is the best way to meet people that enjoy the same things as you.

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https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/a-list-of-player-finders.372312/
The web sites of Nearby Gamers, and Access Denied are no more.
I have some UK-specific links, if anyone cares.

I posted in that thread that we are active again.

This was the response I received:
“We’ve got a Game Finder Map that you can use to visually search for games and players. And you can add yourself or your game in the #looking-for-players or #looking-for-group sections. !
I do want to expand the functionality of the map in the future to have some of the same searchability that the old one did. We’ll get there.”
See if that helps you out.
Generally I look at the map close to me and look for people that might wish to play, however that is assuming they are “visible”.
Cheers,

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