Contacting players in 2022

I sometimes miss the good old days, before Facebook, WhatsApp, Discord and a million websites and apps scattered players to the four winds. In those golden days, we had email and that’s how we communicated.

(Well, even then it wasn’t that simple. There were discussion forums, bulletin boards, usenet and maybe more. Please don’t expect me to be logical.)

Why do I bring all this up?

Well, I’ve been chasing casting forms for All Flesh is Grass, a first-contact freeform.

I advertised the game in three places:

• By email, to those who had played in The Roswell Incident. (All Flesh is Grass is set a few years later and some characters reappear.)
• On the uk-freeforms mailing list.
• On the UK-Freeforms Club House Discord Server.

I didn’t use Facebook for two reasons:

• First, I know quite a few of those on the mailing list who aren't on Facebook, and I wanted to give them a chance to sign up. (That was the opposite of what I did with The Roswell Incident.)
• Second, I’m frustrated with how Facebook decides what you see and what you don’t. So I didn’t use Facebook this time.

If I hadn’t filled All Flesh is Grass I would have advertised it on UK-Freeforms and Remote, Digital Larps, and Live Action Online Games, but I didn’t need to as I filled the game.

Signing up and casting

I asked everyone for their email address when they signed up. I then used that to send out the casting form.

I gave everyone a few days to fill it in, then I started chasing the four or five stragglers. And as I had everyone’s email address, I chased them by email…

The problem with email

Everyone has an email address. Some people have more than one. (I have at least three.)

But email doesn’t always get through: aggressive spam filters, blacklisting—or simply not checking your email. And some people don’t check their emails much.

Or something will go wrong with the reply (like being stuck in draft folder, as just happened to me).

With email, you don’t know if an email has arrived or not. Read receipts aren’t reliable (if available at all—my Gmail account doesn’t include them). At least with a Facebook or WhatsApp message, you can see whether the message has been read.

One last player

So I had one player for All Flesh is Grass who hadn’t filled in the casting form. They hadn’t replied to me, so I didn’t know if my message hadn’t got through or they were no longer available for the game. It wasn’t someone I knew, so I couldn’t message them on Facebook, WhatsApp, or anywhere else.

I wondered what to do—until I remembered Discord.

While I posted All Flesh is Grass on Discord, I honestly hadn’t thought anyone would sign up for it that way. That’s not how I use Discord—I use it for playing games (RPGs and freeform larps). I don’t use Discord as a discussion forum or a chat area, and I switch off the notifications because I don’t like distractions.

But just because that’s how I use Discord doesn’t mean that’s how others use it…

So I logged back on, and, luckily, someone with a very similar name to my missing player had also posted in the UK Freeforms Club House announcement section. So I direct messaged them—and found my missing player. Phew!

Next time – amending the sign-up form

My lesson from this is that next time, I need to add a backup to my casting form. While I collect email addresses, I might need to collect their Discord ID or some other way of contacting them.