MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
Which is is rather sad. I'm not criticizing, I have the same inclination. But I try to take myself out of my comfort zone. But I generally only play one-shots with complete strangers, on-line, at a FLGS, or at a convention. I never felt comfortable running games at a convention. Still, I believe that if I really want to run a specific system, I just have to put myself out there and meet people. Before my job made in-person play mostly impossible, I started putting up flyers at my local flags for running one shots of various systems I never get a chance to run. I enjoyed it. I think with conventions it is more that the players are paying for a slot, whereas the games I was running at my FLGS would only result in a loss of some time if the players didn't enjoy it.I think there are many people who don't ever play with strangers (home game exclusives and the like). I have a Discord game and two in-person games, all with friends.
Now that I'm moving back to the US, I'm hoping to run some one shots of Paranoia, DCC, InSPECTREs, and others, once I've settled into the new city.
Another thing I would like to do is run "let's learn together how to play this board game." There was a great boardgame group that met at my local FLGS in Minneapolis that I used to attend regularly until about 5 years ago. But they were pretty intense about not introducing a game that you were not very familiar with the rules. So I only played games, I never brought my own. Not sure if there would be much interest, but I would like to schedule a session where someone brings a new game and we all figure out the rules and learn to play it together. Otherwise you seem to have the same small group of people always being the ones to bring games and teach others how to play it. I think this makes more casual board gamers shy to introduce anything.