[Allstar]

Full disclosure: I am the secretary of Belgian's largest D&D non-profit organization organizing weekly sessions for around 200 players a month.

We do everything we can to make new players feel welcome and have built a very warm and inclusive community that we can be proud of.

Playing with complete strangers can be scary, but I cannot describe the beauty of seeing a new face return every week and completely bloom open and make new friends. It's - pun not intended - magical.

I would argue that taking the dive and try it out is the best thing you can do. All we can do is make you as comfortable as possible.

All you need is a good community. Let's all make that possible!

[ryandrake]

I'm not into D&D, but I've seen similar things with other non-D&D local groups, like poker and HAM radio. You stop by as The Newbie, and you're greeted by a big group of people who already know each other and have their own pre-formed cliques. Yes, there are always a handful of people who seem to be the designated "do everything we can to make you welcome" committee, but the newbies end up only hanging out with them, and not any of the insular "core" groups.

[Allstar]

Depends on the community I believe. I can only talk about how we are experiencing things, but all our players are really just happy to share the love for the hobby.

We have several things that helps break the "core group" problem in our case:

- We have several tables playing the same part of the adventure just with different players. This helps our players try out different DMs and their specific style of DMing as well as different player groups.

Did you not like the social interaction you had with a specific group? Just ask to be seated at a different table and try out a different vibe.

- We also organize regular (special) events. But D&D related an non-D&D related. This breaks down the "we're just here to play D&D" barrier but creating an actual community. We sometimes go for drinks, bowling etc.

- We actually encourage players to form their own groups outside of our D&D organized plays. And this is actually what we see happening. Players come in and play the campaign for a year and when the campaign concludes they just start their own private group and continue to play because they really like the group they are playing with.

Everything depends on the person of course, but all we can do is facilitate a nice and welcoming community.