News & Opinion

Can a Roleplaying Game save a Film Franchise?

While the premise is arguable, it is obvious that the Star Wars roleplaying game contributed to the continued popularity of the entire Star Wars franchise.  If it weren't true then toys, cartoons and novels made today wouldn't contain names created for the rpg some 25 years ago.  You read that right.  Surprising though it might be, the roleplaying game and it's sourcebook had a far reaching effect on the original universe and it's canon.  

I'd recommend fans of Star Wars (and who isn't these days) take a look at Chris Baker's article over at Glixel.  You might find a few things that surprise you.

Source:  How a Pen and Paper RPG Brought 'Star Wars' Back From the Dead

Holiday Fun Time

Merry Christmas everyone.  Whatever your family holiday is this season, I hope enjoy it to the fullest!

Just a reminder to all of our gamer friends, this is a great time of the year to talk your family into a gateway game.  Try to get them into a game of Blokus or Fluxx.  Give it a shot!

AT&T and Bellsouth emails bouncing

Good morning gamers.  We just wanted to extend a little note to our members who've signed-up with bellsouth.net and at&t.net email accounts.  At this time it looks like most of the notification emails we're sending to you are not reaching your bellsouth.net and at&t.net email inboxes.  SendGrid, our 3rd party email delivery partner is already on top of the problem.  So the problem should be resolved in 48 hours or less.  

I'll update this blog article when it looks like things are fixed.  But this is also a great time to mention a few things related to emails.

• You can change their email address at any time.
• I'm not getting emails from Find Gamers.  Whats going on?
• Why am I getting emails from Find Gamers?  Can I turn them off?

If you have other questions, you can always send us Feedback.  Keep in mind that response time might be slow this week, it's a holiday in the USA.

Update:

It looks like SendGrid are able to get things fixed.  Emails should be arriving again.

Even More Postal Codes

A new update has gone live this morning (Sept 1, 2016) that should add support for our members almost anywhere in most of the english speaking world.  If you are a member in a location that we've not supported thus far, give it a try.  

However if your postal code is not unique, you might get the wrong results.  For instance, Germany uses the same postal code numbers as the United States.  In all cases, if you search for a german postal code, only an american one will be found.

Update (9/15/2016)

Country detection has been added to the postal code look-up.  This should allow more members from European countries to get the right information in their membership profiles.  As we have more members join from these countries I'll keep testing to make certain your player, group and local event searches are correct.

If you already have an account, re-save your postal code in your Gamer Profile to activate it.  https://www.findgamers.us/my-gamer-profile#personal 

I'd appreciate Feedback if you run into a problem.  Please include any errors, postal code and your country.

How would you like to be served?

Tabletop aficionados join sites like Find Gamers so they can find new opportunities to game.  However a large number of you don't like to use email as your primary method of communication.  So I'd like to start a discussion to find better ways to get notifications into the hands of our site's members.  Currently we use email to contact members if another member has tried to approach them.

So I'll ask you, is there a better way?  How would you prefer to get your notices?

Canada & GB postal code updates

Just a few minutes ago Find Gamers postal codes for Canada and Great Britain were updated.  Our members in these countries can now use their full postal codes in their profiles.  If you live in those countries, you should update your postal code asap.  The older, shorter postal codes no longer work.  Members with those older postal codes aren't searchable any longer.

Some examples: AL1 1AG or A0E 2Z0.  These are from Great Britain and Canada respectively, btw don't forget the space.

Within the next few days the instructions on your profile page and during sign-up will be updated.  Members in these countries should get an email notification within the week about these updates.  If you have an a Group, Convention or other Event, please update it as well.

This update comes because our members asked for it.  Hopefully it'll help our members in CA & GB find new gaming buddies.  If these updates are causing you problems, make certain to send Feedback to Maelish.

Update:

Wow, I ran into a whole series of unexpected bugs when the data went live.  Funny how it works on my home test server and blows up on the live site.  Many of them have been fixed but I've had to put some limits on the number of postal codes that show up in a search.  The problem with UK postal codes is that they are small, so there are ton of them.  That creates interesting new problems.  In the USA you'll see 300-500 postal codes show up in a search.  But with the UK searches I've seen 3000.  So I had to add some some limits until I work out those bugs.  But it does seem to work.

Update 2:

Searches using postal codes have now been better optimized.  They now only take fractions of second for a page load.  These changes only impact our members in Canada & Great Britain.

If anyone has any problems with this update, let me know through feedback.