As a college student about to graduate, I'm looking for a quick gaming fix with little time commitment this semester. The idea I had would be to form a "GM's circle," where people take turns running 1, 2 or 3-shots from games that are not usually played around here (ie, White Wolf oh god please no more).

If I bill it as a discussion roundtable for critiquing GM style/method we could even get $$$ from the school for supplies...

Does this fit within your idea for Game Circles?

Yes and no. Seems like you're using a different method, but with the same aim - to have more varied gaming with different people.

The ideal for many gamers is the Grand Epic Campaign with the same players and the same GM meeting at the same time every week with the same characters for years and years. This comes to us right from the beginnings of the hobby, with old Gygax in the DMG telling us that players aren't allowed to look at it, ever. What, so once you're a GM you can never be a player again? Strange.

Anyway, that's the ideal it seems, but the reality is "campaign which begins open-ended with 4-6 people but fizzles out or someone leaves the group after 6-15 sessions." Since we're playing closed-ended campaigns with changing membership, why not plan for it?

The idea of a game circle is that as well as the gamers in your group, you might know a few other gamers, or potential gamers, and could game with them, or someone in your group knows them or another group. Directly or indirectly you might know about 20 people who'd like to game. So you draw up a list of campaigns you'd like to run, and get people to say which they're interested in. This really is just a more formal way of doing what lots of groups do anyway - lots of groups sit down and have a chat about what to play; this is just more formal, and makes the discussion into "multiple choice" and asks the input of 20 or so people, instead of just 4 or so.

From their interest, you organise a game group. You might just organise one and leave it at that, or you might get a few together, to run campaigns either at the same time or in sequence.

Maybe you run four different campaigns at once, each one meeting once a month. Or maybe you'll run one in spring, one in summer, and so on. Or maybe you'll just run one then start the process again.

In this way, you get closed-ended campaigns with membership changing between campaigns. But because you're planning for it, it's a good thing not something you're settling for while waiting for the Grand Epic Campaign. What we've found is that people are more reliable with this approach, and they make more effort, put more into the campaign. It's because it's closed-ended - if you know it's just going for say 6 more sessions, you're more likely to stick it out and make the best of it than if you know it's going to keep going on forever.

And with the changing membership, people don't get too comfortable. You have to know people well before you can be a lazy slug and turn up late all the time and so on. They tend to focus on the game rather than "my job sucks" or "look at this cool comic I got" or whatever.

Also, if people are unhappy with the campaign and can't stand it, they can leave and know they can come back with another one later. Because you're expecting people to come and go, someone can go when they're bored and know they won't cause offence. Whereas if it was the Grand Epic Campaign, they know if they go they'll never game with you again! That'll make them hang around even when miserable, and things can become bitter. Okay, that doesn't happen often but it does happen.

I just find the whole approach makes people more open-minded, more likely to enjoy different types of games and different people.

I don't know about 1-3 session campaigns where people try things out. If that's combined with people doing a Grand Epic Campaign (or aiming at it), then what I've found is that their attitude is, "that was nice, but now we have to go back to the real campaign." They'll try out the new one, but they'll never stick with it. If your aim is just to have a few fun game sessions, that's fine. But if your aim is to convert them away from some game they love and you hate - and it seems that might be your aim, since you complain about WW games - it won't work. You have to get them for at least six sessions to get them to want to stay with you.

Incidentally, when we post the game prospectus, the list of different campaigns, we don't usually mention the game system. Systems rarely capture people's imaginations, it's settings and characters. If I say, "we're playing GURPS," whatever people think of GURPS it doesn't really thrill anyone. The line of people applying for that campaign will be short. But if I say, "we could play a game in which explorers in the Amazon discover ancient cities filled with gold, and dinosaurs, and shoot Nazis in search of relics, also there will be zeppelins," then that might interest some people.

So if you want people to try some other games just once or twice, I'm sure you can manage it easily. If you want them to try another campaign and stick with it, then you might go for the "campaign prospectus" method. Don't be afraid to ask for a commitment of 6-15 sessions. Sometimes when we're trying to get people to try something new, we instinctively ask for less commitment, "just a session or two... please!" But unless everyone you know is completely unreliable and lazy, then you'll be able to get a few together who are willing to commit to several sessions.

Is this making sense? I'm trying to draw a lot from your few words.