The Ten Percent Threshold

[Onix]

There's a recent article on How Stuff Works about the 10% threshold. It explains that for some reason, when you have a community with a minority opinion (RPGs are fun) if 10% of that community starts to share that opinion it quickly flashes over to a majority opinion.

This rang a bell with me with making an RPG and getting people to play it. If you can pick a small enough community, say the frequenters of a game shop, and get at least 10% involved in a game it might happen that more people in that community will pick it up.

Then move up that scale with a slightly larger community (which I can't think of one, local con?) and repeat the process. It's possible the same could be true with forums etc.

[trodgers]

Or simply divide and conquer.

I don't know whether 10% is a magical number, but the principle sounds reasonable. People don't like to be loners...or at least not too "lone." So get a group of people together, have people see them, and others might want to join in. Soon enough it becomes normal (for that shop). Expand. I like the idea.

Local con is a good second step. Or depending upon your setup a particular building on campus...or a particular campus.

[J.K.Mosher]

Guess I'm going to have to open a shop, and start a con up here for this to work . . .

But seriously;
It sounds like a good idea. Slow build up to get people interested. Once a core of "supports/fanatics"
is generated expand out ward and get somemore

[Rob Lang]

Hang on, are you say we, The Monkeys, should invade on a community that is 9 times our size and get them all roleplaying? A guerilla (gorilla) action to spread the word?

That's genius!

There's about 20 of us here, allowing us to hit a site of roughly 200. Where can we go that has 200 users?

[kumakami]

Monkeys going gorilla just to ape other human activities.....huh

[Onix]

[trodgers]

Some of you might be in a position similar to mine...I'm a member of many communities.

I'm a college instructor.
I'm a Tweep (I use Twitter).
I'm a moderator on a web site that has more than 3 million posts in its 8 years. I'm not sure of the active membership, but if it's even 1/20 of the total registered user number it's nearly 1000.

Some ideas:
I could start a gaming group if there isn't one at the university (I start at a new one in 3 weeks).
I could spread the word a bit via twitter (but I'd be careful to keep volume low. Don't want to offend!).
I could start a thread on the website.

I think there are many ways to go about this.