One of the most difficult aspects of gaming can sometimes be finding a good gaming group. The two biggest problems I’ve seen (and personally experienced) are not having a gaming store in your general area, or moving to a new area where you don’t know anyone. I spent a good two years in college where I was away from home and unable to find a good gaming group that I felt I fit into. Back then, there weren’t as many resources for finding a new gaming group as there are now. Here is a list of websites online that you can use to find a gaming group in your area!

Dungeons & Dragons Meetup Group
This website is actually part of the larger Meetup.com website. It pretty much is the largest meet up site of any kind on the Internet. Although this portion of the site is specifically for Dungeons & Dragons, you could easily find other roleplaying games as well. This is probably the largest, active database for gamers as it is a leading professional meet up site for all topics, not just roleplaying.

NearbyGamers
This website is for people who play RPGs, CCGs, TCGs, wargamers, board games – the works. It is actually one of the more active sites to help you find gamers, as it has been around for a little while. NearbyGamers actually has quite a lot of activity on an daily basis.

AccessDenied.Net Player Database
Another multi-player game center that has been around for over ten years. Since they’ve been around so long, some of the 13,000+ profiles they have are bound to be inactive, but the site is definitely worth checking out if you’re looking for other gamers.

Pen and Paper Games
Pen and Paper Games has been around for almost ten years. If memory serves me correctly, this website has morphed quite a few times over the years. Currently, it is listed as an ‘online community dedicated to bringing roleplayers together’. So if you’re looking to find other gamers, this site is going to be right down your alley.

RPG Gamer Classifieds
This is the WotC Dungeons & Dragons ‘RPG Gamer Classifieds’. They are obviously fairly active due to the fact that it is Wizards of the Coast. They also break the sections down by regions of the world in such a way that it is probably easier for people around the globe to find games (not just North Americans).

RPG Game Find
This is a newer website that actually inspired my research for this article. It is a website dedicated to helping gamers in the USA and Canada find each other (sorry rest of the world). Due to the fact that it is a newer site, there are significantly less profiles to browse through at this point in time. But the site is specifically designed just for the purpose of finding other gamers, so it is well-built for finding other gamers.

Roleplayers Wanted (RolePlayGateway)
This is a link to the RolePlayGateway forums where you can find other gamers. It is one of the more active forums for roleplaying, behind RPG.net and the WotC forums. If you’ve never been there, I suggest you check it out as it is a fairly active online roleplaying forum.

RPTools.net Forums
The final link is to the RPTool.net forums for finding Dungeons & Dragons games. I have never actually used these forums until I researched this article, but they seem to be fairly active on a daily basis. Definitely worth a look if you’re trying multiple avenues to find a gaming group.

If you’re looking to find new players for a gaming group, or you’re a solo player trying to get into an established group, using the shotgun approach with these websites will probably have the best effect. I would suggest using a couple of them, or even all of them, until you find a gaming group that fits you. Using just one website may not provide the results you are looking for, but I imagine that if you live in or near a city of any reasonable size you should be able to find a gaming group using these resources.

Kudos go to the Newbie DM for creating this original list.