Their is an old Dervish story about Allah's gifts. "In this world no one can force Allah to give his blessings. In all of this world no can prevent Allah from giving his blessings!" That is how I look on recruiting to the hobby. Think you can force it to happen, live in frustration. Think you can prevent it from happening, live in frustration! I don't want to sound flippant about recruiting. It is work. But it does not have to be drudgery. In fact, if we play our games in public and are seen having fun at it, people will be attracted to try it out. What I want to do in this article is look at what we do as garners to recruit and how well the various methods appear to work.

DO NOTHING: By which I mean, not play any games ourselves, not talk to anyone about gaming, and not even dream about gaming. Obviously such a person is not a gamer. This is a person who needs to be recruited! Consequently he is unlikely to recruit anyone else to the hobby. I say unlikely, but not 100%. Such a person first got me interested in gaming by giving me an Avalon Hill game for Christmas.

PLAYING SOLO GAMES: Does little to attract new people unless one happens to leave the game set up when company comes over. Then other people see it and naturally ask what it is. Some of these will insist on playing it and may be recruited despite one's best efforts to not recruit! Others of course will only make small talk. My mother-in-law for instance. She visited a few weeks ago unannounced (the first visit since my wife and I were married five years ago!) I had been painted SYW Austrians. She asked what they were, so I told her. 'Toys. They're toys, I play with them." Not much she could say back to that. Consequently she is not a wargame recruit!

TALK ABOUT GAMING TO FRIENDS: This is a remarkably fruitful endeavor. Friends tend to listen to friends and want to do things with them. Gaming is as good a pass time as watching football together, and a sight better than drinking! Of course our bored spouses eventually get sick of hearing about military history or how we did in our last game, but that's life.

BE A PLAYER: When someone else sees you playing a game and having fun, it makes them want to do it too. This action takes no great effort on the persons part. All one has to do is answer the call to play a game when asked to.

RUN A SMALL PRIVATE GAME: Role play games are often done in this manner. One person identifies himself as a game master and starts up the game with a couple of people. By word of mouth the player's friends hear of the game. A few want to join. The group grows. Then as the game dies down, the gamers move on to another private game. A loosely organized community of garners can come into existence, who do things only when game masters organize them. But they are not public so new people in communities can not find them. So there are limits to how effective this way is at getting new people into the fold. Still it is a very comfortable way of doing things.

RUN AN AD FOR OPPONENTS: This is a way of finding garners who might be in your area who are outside of your circle of friends. Interested people will call you and want to do something. The advertiser is then on the spot. He can either run a game, or let the opportunity fall by the wayside. If he takes on the leadership role, then he is more likely to do more in the hobby in the future.

GO TO WARGAME CONVENTIONS: Going to cons is not for everyone. One has to drive for hours to get to the sight, pay for food and a room, and pay to play games. Poor high school and college students can seldom afford this. So if the con is not local many of the younger crew are cut out of the running. Consequently game cons have more adult gamers (save for GENCON, which is a world separate to itself). I like conventions. It is my chance to meet friends I only see a few times a year. And some of those friendships have really helped me when I moved to Indianapolis, two moves ago. I knew Rich Smith from conventions, so when I go into town I cailed him and met the group of garners I still game with. (We are now doing lots of Armati).

RECRUIT A WARGAMES CLUB: This is not as hard as it sounds. All one really needs is a regular public area to meet in. Libraries, back rooms at game stores, friendly restaurants with large back rooms, etc. all work nicely. When I was in college I recruited a game club by checking a room out at the college union building and putting up ad flyers all over campus. Ten people showed up and five stayed. The room was the forum for games to happen in. On the first day, I had a game ready to go when they walked in the door. Then others started up their games. Since it was public, other gamers were always welcome, but in many ways game clubs are as parochial as private game groups. In theory new garners can come in at any time but unless they are actively welcomed by the members of the club they do not stay. They more public the forum is the less likely this privatization is to occur.

RUN A CONVENTION GAME: As any who have done this can tell you, this requires a fair bit of planning and money. One has to provide all of the props to do a game. This is not cheap (unless you are Father Aelred, whose vow of poverty has flowered into wonderful scratch game props). Yet it is simple to do. All one needs to do is to send a short description of the game you want to run to the convention organizer (ie the person who name is listed as the contact person). They almost invariably want you to do the game so you just show up an do it. Sometimes they don't get you on the schedule, but even then one can generally run the game as a pick up event. Pretty miniatures help a lot in recruiting player.

WRITE ARTICLES FOR GAME MAGAZINES: Be the article for the local amateur rag or for a slick glossy, articles get read, and inspire other to emulate your gaming example. In terms of recruiting, one seldom sees the effects of one's articles. But there is an effect. I get inquiries about Matrix Games from people who have read articles about them. So, if people can be attracted to the radical fringe of gaming by mere words on paper then more will be attracted by mainstream articles.

RUN PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION GAMES: This is like running a convention game for the general public Schools' shopping malls, and game stores that lack back room game clubs are all potential venues for such games. The referee of such games needs to not only put on a good game but be good at handling the public. You must deal well with the owners of the venue, not offend public morality, and deal well with children (who will want to play with the toys). I think this is what most people think of as active recruiting of gamers. And in a way it is. Yet I don't see a lot of people doing such games. I think it is fun to do them, but then again I work with crazy people, so the general public don't seem that scary to me.

PUBLISH A GAME: It is a sure fire way to get you ideas out to a larger audience. If you can sell them! But do it because you love what you are doing and not to make a lot of money. Because if you love your work, you will do the article writing and convention events needed to make selling the game possible.

PUBLISH A GAME MAGAZINE: A labor of love, and never adequately praised. Just ask Hal. My hat is off to you. (EDITOR S NOTE: Thank you, Chris, but actually, MWANers are very vocal about their appreciation!)

OPEN A GAME STORE: Obviously not for most of us to do! Still I really respect Todd Fisher's store in Chicago. He made a promise that if he ever got rich he would open a truly great game store. He kept his promise. That makes him a leader. Good show Todd! I promise that if I every get rich in social work I will open a great game store! (Yea, I'll call it "Cromwell's Treasure Room" or "Time Wasters" yea.)

SERVE AS AN OFFICER IN HMGS OR SOME OTHER LARGER ORGANIZATION: Sound boring? Well it is. But it is also necessary for the growth of the hobby. Attend the business meetings of these groups (they are usually at odd times at conventions like Little Wars and Nashcon) Show interest and voice an opinion and you will likely get elected to something eventually. But for the sake of everyone, don't do it to feel important. It is not "important." It is really a thankless job carries less real power than a private game master has with his "flock." But if it is done well garners are linked together in ever larger groups (now HMGS is nationwide with conventions happening everywhere). It occurs to me that recruiting is not necessarily the critical issue of the hobby. The critical issue is recruiting leaders. Where there are leaders, there is recruitme almost in spite of itself Without leadership, nothing happens. As a player enters into the hobby, we need to be aware that they are the future leaders of the hobby. We can make it easy for them to show their leadership or we can not encourage it and let it whither on the vine. I am personally grateful to everyone who has helped me along in the hobby. When I started out as a thirteen year old boy, fresh out of D+D, I was welcomed as a human being. I saw examples of club organization, article writing and encouragement to run my own games. Each action a person takes moves them further along the further towards leadership. I hope that we can be more aware of this in the future.