Lurker's Guide to rpG+

Incognito! Sorta.

So, +Courtney Campbell over at Hackslash Master made a post today about getting into/onto G+ for roleplaying. It's very good, and I, like his reader Charles had a hard time making the switch over to G+ from RPG forums (like /tg/ and /r/rpg and whatnot). You see, in my youth on the internet I would get on forums, run my mouth, and get banned, so over time, lurking has become much more my style.

G+ is tricky. You can't just hop on and see the conversation. There's a wall. A barrier to entry if you will, and for a while I found it to be relatively insurmountable and frustrating.

Blogs took me to RPG communities on G+.

The communities that "got me in the door" were:
DCC (Dungeon Crawl Classics)
2000 Coppers (of Tenkar's Tavern)

One day, +Moe Tousignant shared a number of his RPG circles (I've become convinced he's collected practically everyone in the RPG G+ scene) and by adding the circles he shared my feed filled up with gaming goodness. Moe's profile says he's a gaming ambassador, and it's completely true. His blogs and posts on good beers and good food are great too!

A couple hash tags have also worked out well for me (in terms of finding new people to follow):
#gygaxiandemocracy
#rollforinitiative

#rollforinitiative is particularly great 'cause everyone links pics of freaky (and funny) stuff, both natural and un making it light and enjoyable as far as I'm concerned.

A note on circle shares - be careful! Not all circle shares are created equally. All the RPG shares I've come across have been pretty dang great, but as I started to branch out more into G+ (there's a BIG photographer community, and while I don't take pictures, I like to look at pretty ones ^_^) I quickly learned that many of the frequently shared circles fill up with spam and bullshit. If you start blindly accepting shared circles be sure you isolate them to a new circle, and then parse out from there.

Like Courtney says in his blog post though, the best way to build good circles is to start reading, and engaging in the conversations that occur on active posts, and circle out from there. That said, a few good communities, and a circle share or two go a long way towards getting your foot in the door, especially if you don't want to dive into it running your mouth.