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We are thinking about setting up a wargaming & roleplaying club and we wondered if anyone has any advice they could share with us or any useful experiences they have had with clubs in the past. What worked well, what to avoid kind of stuff.

In my experience most clubs are started so that events that need planning are easier to plan, finance, and execute. This preexisting organization makes tournaments, campaigns, leagues, and massive battles run much smoother and have much higher turnouts.

Getting these things to go off requires some competent leadership. Without strong leadership, clubs fail. At minimum, most clubs have a president, a secretary, and a treasurer. You can expand from there.

Also clubs that have different gaming interested tend to not do so well, so perhaps separate table topers from RPG people or have chapters within the club.

To get started you will need to find a core group of players who are well respected and willing to lead the club. Sit down with them and explain what you are trying to do and get some ideas going for the first month or two. This is the best time to start a league or a campaign and will help to drum up membership. The best way to kick off a club is with a tournament. By including the club dues in the tournament fee players can easily get started. As a store owner, you would probably need to arrange for or front the prize support until the club has a solid financial footing. (great time to get rid of those boxes of penitent engines and swooping hawks )

Once the club is established, the best thing you can do as an owner is give them their own night or nights are their club night. In my club it is Thursday nights. We have priority on all of the tables downstairs and can ask non club members to play upstairs if the gaming area has enough club members to warrant it. This reinforces the notion of being in the club and creates a status that helps the club gain new members.

After that you should be good to go. Make sure to help the club advertise its presence and help to make any leader boards or campaign maps as impressive as possible to enhance the image of the club.

Some ideas for events are: Story driven campaigns, escalation leagues, ladder or king of the hill leagues, mega battles, team tournaments, multi-platform campaign games (creating a galaxy map and have BFG games affect 40k games)

Lastly, perhaps something to strive for.
Adeptus Windy City is a Chicago based 40k club. They have the capital and player base to rent out 16 tables at the Chicago battle bunker every month as part of their own 11 month tournament series that culminates at their own, invite only, 4 round knockout final at Adepticon.

Thanks, most helpful. I was thinking of seperating the RPG crowd into a different evening, and if we get enough interest the PP guys on one night and the GW guys on another.

Do you seperate the club identity from the store identity or do you keep them the same? As in our case Blue Boar Games Club or do you think it better for the club to have a seperate identity?

Thanks for taking the time to reply and in such depth, most appreciated.

Hi panshandle.
I would advise having a seperate name for the games club.As any corespondance for the games club will probably be sent to the venue.This can cause confusion !

Also I would NOT artificialy seperate gamers.But let them look at what other games are available to play.
(Some gamers are only aware of one or two games ! )

We operate an open door policy to games.Anyone can bring a rule set in to try out ,and we would give it a reasonable chance to gain popularity.
(Having 14 RPGs and 28 TTG to chose from stops gaming from getting stale! )

razorlead covered all the important stuff rather well.

TTFN
Lanrak.

First rule I would say is have elected leaders. These needs to be people that can take charge and others will listen. The problem clubs starting out get into is either that have too mant leaders or no one is taking charge. When we startd out our club 4 of us sat down a talked about did we need a club. From there we determined our goals for the club. We also knew that if we did not have one person leading the way then others would not follow and that if two many people lead then it be chaos.

This is great! I don't have advice, I clicked hoping you would be in my area. But, er... you're not even in my country

Thanks again for all the advice, it is most helpful. I will be getting together with some guys in the next few weeks to talk about many of the above topics (I am going print these answers and use them to get the conversations going). So thanks again everyone!

Let us know how it turns out.