With other bloggers posting their thoughts on 2009, and their resolutions and predictions for 2010 a theme I see a lot of people mentioning is how hard they find it to get a regular gaming group together. I’ve seen people share various ideas for finding people to invite to join their games ranging from asking at their local gaming store, to putting up posters, to posting on gaming message boards. What I found worked very well in 2009 was using Facebook.

Despite it’s various shortcomings with privacy, or annoying invites to goofy applications, Facebook is very likely where most of the people in your local community are posting stuff online. RPG blogs and message boards are great, but they tend to bring together a more international community and represent only the more enthusiastic gamers. Out of most gaming groups only 1 or 2 members are usually active posting to blogs or forums. Facebook on the other hand has a wide variety of people for whom gaming is an occasional interest – or perhaps even something they’ve never really gotten into but would be interested in.

Unlike meeting your friends and neighbours at the grocery store or the office, Facebook profiles usually share more information about people’s interests. You might not have known the guy living next door is a big fan of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, or that he’s really into boardgames – it’s the sort of thing that often doesn’t come up in conversation. People seem much more open to sharing that sort of info on Facebook though, and a friend (or friend-of-a-friend) who posts lots of updates about playing Dragon Age online might be someone who might be interested in coming out to a game night.

So if you’re hoping to add more gamers to your regular group, or just hoping to run a few one-off game nights, consider spending some time exploring how Facebook might help with your gaming resolutions for 2010.