How do you pick players, Veeky Forums?

Post 'em, we'll decide for you.

"equally good" doesn't mean "actually good"

Seconding this.

Immediately discard half the pile, because you don't want any unlucky players.

Here is a few questions for you to use, don't ask to many or you'll end up looking like a crazy.

1.Why do you want to join this game?
2.Show me something you think is funny.
3.Why do you like RPGs?
4.If wronged by another player In character how do you react?
5.Can you consistently be at this place at this time?

The fifth one is so important with online games. Keeping up communication to make sure that people don't just drup is essential.

Hey this is a legitimately good idea!

Sooooooo basically the same as Veeky Forums?

There was a thread a while back where some user was bitching about the retarded questions they had to answer like "which is better, Marve or DC?" and "who would win in a fight, Dr. Who or Dr. Strange?", but there were 50 or so questions like that. I thought that was a good way of doing it.
Essentially autism bait. If anyone expresses a strong opinion about any of those things, then you know that they'll probably be a little shit pisser at the table too.

acceptance speech
oglaf.com/gongs/

equally good is what optimist calls equally bad

Try and pick 5 people who will work well together. You can make a band with 5 fantastic artists, but if they're Freddie Mercury, Ozzie Osbourne, Swisgar Skwigelf, Paul Simon and Grant Kirkhope, it's gonna be a shitty band.

If its for online gaming, run the opening session 3 times with 6 players each time.

create a new link location at which to play, and forward that link to your groups. except for the jerks, make sure they gets a link to a dead room. if some jerks have a friend send him the right link, eliminate that whole group. if all 3 groups have this problem, pick the best 6 as a tentative group.

create a new link location again and send it to the group of choice. if you need to downsize the group, send broken links to half of them and see who gets shared, that should weed out extras. hth

Thunderdome.

Way to be passive aggressive

Get ready for an adventure.

Purge your applicant list of any autist or rules lawyer.

...

Firstly, take half of your applications and throw them out immediately.
You don't want unlucky people plaguing your game.

Technically a legal selection technique.

beat you to it

Administer to them a Big 5 personality exam and exclude anyone who's in the bottom 50% of the pools' Contentiousness. You don't want players who won't play.

H-how does this work?!?

I fucking hate this board

Your disgust is below our sun?

Doesn't even make sense.

>How do you pick players, Veeky Forums?
Pick related

Oh, we love you too Snookums

Hold a conversation with each of them about something

Go with your gut from there. If you feel you've "found" your players before you interview the rest of them, apologize and tell them they can be on a waiting list if they'd like if another PC drops out.

Conscientiousness.

Contentiousness would be a terrible thing to rate highly. I love Big 5.

Thirding this

To start are you GMing over the net or in person?

Since you said 20 applications are good you unfortunately need to start discarding based on finer details like whether or not they are familiar with the system you are going to run, has anyone else in the past had issues with the player, etc.

If it is able to be done in a reasonable amount of time you could give each of the remaining candidates a small set of three questions to evaluate them.

Example
1.) How would your character handle someone stealing their most important belongings?
2.) What is an event in your character's past that has had a lasting impact on them?
3.) What would your character be most likely to spend their disposable income on?

Good luck with your game user.

He might not by a liar. He could just be retarded.