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jamesk1973 wrote:
Hmm...

I am wondering where renting space hourly might be found in the US.

The only places I've heard of being rented by the hour is a prostitute's motel room...

There are tons of such place in the USA. A few you can try. These usually have a large meeting space, classroom, upper room, or basement that they will rent out for a reaonable fee.

VFW halls
Park District halls
YMCA
YWCA
Community centers
Churches :I've heard of quite a few churches that rent space to gamers.
Bars: You usually won't get storage space (but there might be some...) but they often have an upstairs or event room they will rent on slow nights.
Elk or Moose Lodges.
Any Non-Profit that serves the community ( Especially if they have evening hours) is likely to want the extra $ that comes from renting their space.

As others have said, you kind of have to give up the idea of every-day gaming, but a weekly gaming night is quite doable. It also creates a core of people who game together regularly and will probably result in more steady membership anyway.

I have a "Gaming Club" that's a bit different from what you are thinking about, but it might give you some ideas. We have been meeting for almst 4 years and have a very stable core membership of about 6 people. We game every other week on Thursdays, usually at member's homes, but also sometimes at an area FLGS. Each person owns their own terrain and tables, but we bring and share as necessary.

A small group like this is an excellent way to build a core group of gamer friends. If you want more gaming than the regular meetings, additional meetings or, a trip to the FLGS is always an option. Of course this relies on the fact that at least half the members have enough space to host 6-8 people gaming in their homes. As I understand it, this is not always the case across the pond.

My usual club rents use of a church hall, or Saturday afternoons. We get use the kitchen there, and the folding tables. We have a lockable cupboard in a side-room, and our scenery and club-owned games go in there.

The rent is paid from the £2 per person on the day, which usually covers the week, excess goes into funds for scenery and games, and shortfalls are taken out of that too.
The hall is used by the local scouts and Guides groups, I think, and various church/community groups.
We occasionally get parking problems when there's a wedding on next door, but that clears soon enough. There's maybe 2 weeks a year we can't open, for fates or church festival dos.

A main reason the club works is the forum (see my sig). Games are booked during the week, and people turn up with what they want to play that week. If there's anyone left over, they grab a table and play whatever.

As said, we have other clubs in working-mens' clubs, upstairs in pubs (over 18s only) or FLGS.

Ours is in a community hall connected to the parish council. The rent includes the cupboard for terrain and space for the tables.

Thank you all for answering my inane questions. It will take me a while to read all of the responses, links, and linked threads.

The input is much appreciated.

I'm in/have been in a couple of gaming groups, one that was large and pretty established, and one that is fairly small but that I basically ran from the ground up.

The former had a paid membership- they hired a village hall and supplied the terrain and boards (which were pretty top-notch, really) so it was fair for just a couple of quid a month. I think Facebook was their primary promotion tool, although I got involved through a friend. I haven't been in a while, but when I was there we averaged between 5-10 40k players, 3-6 Fantasy and I've also seen Zombicide, Dystopian Wars and some other games I can't recall. Basically, if it existed and you brought it, you could play it.

The other group, the one I run myself, is a little more contained, pretty much just a bunch of mates that meet in a Scout Hut I get access to for free through family. We meet as and when people are free, although it's usually me organising games and keeping people up to date. The advantage of this setup over a store/larger club is that we have a fair few House Rules (some that are pretty major) so we're all playing from the same sheet, and get very few rules disputes (that we resolve with a dice-off, the result stands for all future occurrences). As a downside, we don't have much terrain and sometimes lack variety (we're down to about 4 players at the moment) but we all know each other from outside the club so it's got a friendly atmosphere.

My advice for starting up a club: If you know any friends that play, bring them on board. More hands on deck is always good. Promote through Facebook if you have that, or maybe an ad in the local paper. If you can get a place free/cheap, then great, but don't go for somewhere crappy. You need a nice, accessible, clean and easy-to-find venue. Churches, community centres or scout huts are all good for this.

Don't be afraid to charge a small entry cost, it will cover the rental cost and any leftover cash can go into a terrain or even group rulebook fund. IF you fancy running a tourney, get the entrants to contribute a few bucks each to a winnings pot (so no one is paying too much and there's something to play for). That said, if someone can't pay the entry fee, go easy on them; this is an expensive hobby, and you don't want to exclude players over a bit of money.

Good luck if you go for it.

In the US we don't have pubs in a social sense. Bars are strictly for serving food/drink and not a hang out club.

A few places are available for rent but they are typically fairly expensive, $400-$800 for a single day. The local VFW hall rents out space and it's slightly discounted if you are a former military service member. My brother is an Iraq vet so he was able to rent the hall for a poker event but it still ran him the better part of $350 for a one day event. You can rent plenty of hotel spaces but cost is going to be $800-$1000, which works if you can manage to get sizeable mass of people interested for mini conventions but it doesn't work if you have a group of a dozen people (or less)

I've checked with the local civic center and library which you can reserve rooms with at a decent rate of about $50, and would work quite well for gaming if it were not for their restrictive hours, it can't run any later than 5pm on Saturdays and they are close on sundays. Churches in my experience don't tend to look favorably on gaming, part of it is a weird hold over from D&D the 80's and early 90's where a lot of churches saw D&D as having satanic and non Christian elements. Even though a lot of games nowdays are very different they have a stigma attached to them that the churches don't respond well to.

A few highschools and colleges offer gaming clubs but you typically need to be a student there to participate, my local community college allows people to organize a gaming club and reserve space provide at least one member is a student, but with my group of friends we're all mid to late 30's so none of us are students there. As a result we just game at somebody's house, it'd be much easier if we could find a centralized space to meet at so we wouldn't feel like we were imposing. As much as the host usually say it's ok you get the stink eye from their wife or girlfriend and they raise hell about it when the group isn't around. As much as they claim to be ok with their man hanging with his friends, in reality they aren't and they always get pissy about the time he's spending away or the house becoming a mess or whatever else they decide to latch onto.

As a result most of the gaming tends to happen in people's homes or at the game stores, which is why GW is really dumb for shutting down their bunker locations in the US. I don't think they understand how important they are in keeping 40k visible to the public in the US.

The problem is that available space for rent inside the US is simply too dang high.

jamesk1973 wrote:

There are a lot of commercial spaces to rent and I have often fantasized about renting an empty storefront to host games and hold gaming tables.

If everyone chips in for a specific event:

Hotels in the states have meeting rooms or Conference Centers.

Small towns (and big cities) have civic centers that they can rent space. For Example

 paulson games wrote:

Spoiler:

In the US we don't have pubs in a social sense. Bars are strictly for serving food/drink and not a hang out club.

A few places are available for rent but they are typically fairly expensive, $400-$800 for a single day. The local VFW hall rents out space and it's slightly discounted if you are a former military service member. My brother is an Iraq vet so he was able to rent the hall for a poker event but it still ran him the better part of $350 for a one day event. You can rent plenty of hotel spaces but cost is going to be $800-$1000, which works if you can manage to get sizeable mass of people interested for mini conventions but it doesn't work if you have a group of a dozen people (or less)

I've checked with the local civic center and library which you can reserve rooms with at a decent rate of about $50, and would work quite well for gaming if it were not for their restrictive hours, it can't run any later than 5pm on Saturdays and they are close on sundays. Churches in my experience don't tend to look favorably on gaming, part of it is a weird hold over from D&D the 80's and early 90's where a lot of churches saw D&D as having satanic and non Christian elements. Even though a lot of games nowdays are very different they have a stigma attached to them that the churches don't respond well to.

A few highschools and colleges offer gaming clubs but you typically need to be a student there to participate, my local community college allows people to organize a gaming club and reserve space provide at least one member is a student, but with my group of friends we're all mid to late 30's so none of us are students there. As a result we just game at somebody's house, it'd be much easier if we could find a centralized space to meet at so we wouldn't feel like we were imposing. As much as the host usually say it's ok you get the stink eye from their wife or girlfriend and they raise hell about it when the group isn't around. As much as they claim to be ok with their man hanging with his friends, in reality they aren't and they always get pissy about the time he's spending away or the house becoming a mess or whatever else they decide to latch onto.

As a result most of the gaming tends to happen in people's homes or at the game stores, which is why GW is really dumb for shutting down their bunker locations in the US. I don't think they understand how important they are in keeping 40k visible to the public in the US.

The problem is that available space for rent inside the US is simply too dang high

.

I blame the wedding industry in the US. There are plenty of private meeting spaces, but the culture of ridiculous lavish weddings(average cost $25,000) inflates the cost.

We got our own apartment rented and use it for all purposes gaming. Lots of space and even a good kitchen to cook stuff instead of relying on fast food and such. Rent is shared among all members, same as cost for cooking etc. We got one physical copy in the club and offer "digital" versions to every member as well. Having regular special events such as tournaments or refurbishing workshops, all often cooperating with 2 other gaming clubs.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I think the main problem (from what I am reading) is the need to own something for it to be good. It seems americans cant just step into a realm of sharing or having joint ownership of something. Maybe Americans need to pretend that the Club itself is a person and they will have an easier time.

Maybe

No, its because we're spread out. My state is more 2.5 times bigger than all of the UK, but less than half the population density (and 1/4 that of England). Australia is big, but almost all of its population is concentrated in small areas. So there's fewer people in a reasonable driving radius. I'd have to drive 60+ miles to hang out with the OP.

We also tend to have game stores which act more as de facto clubs than just tiny GW shops. Add in that more people own a home (therefore more space to play in homes than apartments) and you just need clubs less.

But hey, 'muricans are selfish dicks and all that. OK, we kind of are lol, but that's not why we don't have clubs.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ArbitorIan wrote:
One of the ones I go to uses the local church hall / scout hut, another uses the back room of a pub every Sunday afternoon.

I know that pub function rooms aren't really a thing in America, but spaces attached to pubs and bars are usually cheaper here as the venue know they'll be making money in the bar. Pick a traditionally quiet time for that to work. The disadvantage in the uk is that people have to then be 18 to attend.

We don't really have function rooms in our bars.Though I've always thought it might be fun to run a smaller game store in the pool hall model, where you rent the tables, sell booze/hotwings, etc.

jamesk1973 wrote:
Hmm...

I am wondering where renting space hourly might be found in the US.

The only places I've heard of being rented by the hour is a prostitute's motel room...

Having recently spent an hour in a prostitutes motel room I can tell you that they aren't worth playing in.

The terrain was awful, the noise all of the crackheads outside was distracting, and the lilac waterbed we used as a gaming table constantly had wobbly models falling over.

 mattyrm wrote:
The terrain was awful, the noise all of the crackheads outside was distracting, and the lilac waterbed we used as a gaming table constantly had wobbly models falling over.

Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "wobbly model syndrome".

On topic, gaming clubs vary a lot. It sounds like a lot of players here pay a fair amount for the privilege but I just pay £10 a year for mine. That includes free use of tables and scenery whenever, though tournaments and other organised events set you back about a £5 each. That's remarkably good value, and the reason is that we don't meet in, say, a town hall, but rather in a wargaming/trading card shop, that just has tons of spare space. The guy who runs the shop gives us the space for free, as obviously it's beneficial to him to have dozens of wargaming/card game players frequent his store on a regular basis. More footfall = more sales.

I'm surprised you don't have gaming clubs in the US though...

StraightSilver wrote:

Your club members will need to be DBS checked (used to be CRB) if there are minors present and I suspect this may be the case in the US.

I don't think that the members need a DBS check, just the organisers. DBS checks are required for so many jobs now, I have to have one and I will never work anywhere near children, that it should be fairly easy to find a least a couple of trustworthy members with them.

Personally I prefer the clubs that have set up in pubs or veteran's clubs simply because they have exclusively adult members. They are more likely to play the games that I am interested in and I dislike having a load of screaming kids interrupting my gaming. I live about 500 meters from a school with a gaming club yet I prefer to go to a club 40 minutes drive away simply because it has an entirely adult membership.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 mattyrm wrote:
Having recently spent an hour in a prostitutes motel room I can tell you that they aren't worth playing in.

That entirely depends on the game, I suspect that you were doing it wrong.

Might as well throw my thoughts in here since I help run a club.

We rent a classroom once a week in a local school. I think it's £15 an evening but I can't remember as I last properly looked at an invoice in January when we paid for the whole year up front (we had a rather large surplus of funds).

We generally keep things very simple. Membership is paid monthly and goes towards renting the room, scenery/other gaming supplies and prizes for any events we run. We also offer a weekly "pay and play" scheme for people who can't attend every week but still want a game every now and then. Currently we charge £10 for membership and £3 to pay and play which nicely covers the rent and gives up a nice bit of spare change for other stuff.

The club is run by three of us, we have a Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer. This splits the work load quite nicely, previously we found that having less people to run things caused a bit of burnout. If anyone wants to set up a club I really recommend finding a good group of people to work with in running it. One person on their own will get tired of it incredibly quickly.

Scenery is usually stored at the homes of the club's board members since we couldn't convince the school to let us have a cupboard, not ideal but it's something we can cope with.

Despite renting a school room we are strictly over 18s only as we can't be bothered with the DBS checks. For a small club (6-10 members a month on average) it's a lot of hassle we really don't want and there's also the screaming kids aspect. We did briefly allow under 18s and got swarmed by Tragic the Gathering playing teenagers who screamed at each other all evening. Whilst as the treasurer I miss the income they gave the club I definitely don't miss the noise they made. So yeah kids in a club environment can be a very bad thing (albeit profitable).

Mine is £2 per day only if you get to play and is located in the function room above the pub, so beers and gaming!

 Swastakowey wrote:
I think the main problem (from what I am reading) is the need to own something for it to be good. It seems americans cant just step into a realm of sharing or having joint ownership of something. Maybe Americans need to pretend that the Club itself is a person and they will have an easier time.

Maybe

I'd say that's not the reason we don't have clubs. In fact, in line with what a few others have said, I play most of my games at my FLGS, and I certainly don't own it. Pretty much every FLGS in the US has a scheduled game night, usually weekly, where people show up for games. It ends up being not hugely different from a club in structure, since the people playing are generally regular attendees, and it's not uncommon in my experience for one person to take the lead in suggesting organized events and then running them, but generally, it's just (for example), Saturday afternoon is the day the store has designated for people show up at the store to play 40K/WHFB (for example), that day is advertised as such, and people come and go as they please.

Usually you don't pay any kind of club fee or anything, unless it's a structured league or tournament. Stores usually keep a bunch of terrain on hand, and in general it's a good way to both have a regular group of opponents and meet new ones, too. I don't know, it's how I've always done it, the undertaking of finding and reserving space, paying fees, keeping a roster and charging people money, etc., etc. just seems like a lot more effort than it's worth when I can just go to the local shop on "Warhammer/Warmachine/Infinity/Insert Preferred Game Here Day" and play with the other people who have shown up for that purpose. Perhaps it's a space thing. In the US, in most areas, space is relatively inexpensive compared to similar space in European towns and cities (as I understand it) and thus it's not prohibitively expensive for a store to have enough space for half a dozen or more gaming tables, or alternatively, if I don't want to deal with lots of random people, most people probably have space in their basement or garage or a spare room, so why would I bother trying to rent a hall or a classroom?

Bossk_Hogg wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
I think the main problem (from what I am reading) is the need to own something for it to be good. It seems americans cant just step into a realm of sharing or having joint ownership of something. Maybe Americans need to pretend that the Club itself is a person and they will have an easier time.

Maybe

No, its because we're spread out. My state is more 2.5 times bigger than all of the UK, but less than half the population density (and 1/4 that of England). Australia is big, but almost all of its population is concentrated in small areas. So there's fewer people in a reasonable driving radius. I'd have to drive 60+ miles to hang out with the OP.

We also tend to have game stores which act more as de facto clubs than just tiny GW shops. Add in that more people own a home (therefore more space to play in homes than apartments) and you just need clubs less.

But hey, 'muricans are selfish dicks and all that. OK, we kind of are lol, but that's not why we don't have clubs.

You're kind of both right. The wider geographical distribution and the oft' held ideal of "american individualism" are closely related (though neither completely caused the other, there were other factors as well). You can't separate one from the other in american history.

That said, I think the size of the houses and prevalence of basements and multi-car garages does go a long way to explaining why public clubs aren't common. I can think of at least 4 long running clubs/groups in the Chicago area who that meet weekly in someone's home. Each of those clubs has one person who has enough space for a table or two (or 4 in two cases), storage for terrain and is willing to have folks in their homes once a week. These clubs do tend to have a relatively small membership, but as Bossk points out, gamers in the USA tend to be less densely populated.

The reason I thought that to be the case was because in NZ, we only have 4 or so million people in the whole country. Houses on the whole have garages and space and so forth.

Yet we in no way suffer from a lacking of clubs. We just prefer the ease of using a club rather than meeting in homes. More sense of community and new comers are more likely to show. More ages get together etc.

Its all because sharing in many cases is better than relying on a few people to for gear.

Also the questions such as who owns the terrain etc was something I thought was odd. I always assumed clubs never had people owning the stuff, just had people running it.

 Swastakowey wrote:
The reason I thought that to be the case was because in NZ, we only have 4 or so million people in the whole country. Houses on the whole have garages and space and so forth.

Yet we in no way suffer from a lacking of clubs. We just prefer the ease of using a club rather than meeting in homes. More sense of community and new comers are more likely to show. More ages get together etc.

Its all because sharing in many cases is better than relying on a few people to for gear.

Also the questions such as who owns the terrain etc was something I thought was odd. I always assumed clubs never had people owning the stuff, just had people running it.

Well, that kind of goes back to the "Playing in FLGS" thing. Still a sense of community since there are regular players at any given store, newcomers likely to show because it's a public place where they're going to buy their gaming stuff (unless they buy from internet retailers), there's generally a range of ages, with the added bonus (from my view, anyway), of not having to worry about finding and paying for a space to play, though I hear some stores charge a small "entry fee" to play on their tables. I have never been to a store that did this, though.

In fact, almost everyone I can say that I have regularly played against has been someone who frequents the stores I've played at, because that's where they regularly play, too.


As for the terrain thing, I assume in the case of clubs it's "Here, guys, I made some terrain, it now 'belongs' to the club" bit? I dunno, terrain ownership seems like a trivial issue to me, I just use the stuff that my FLGS has for that purpose and then leave it there when I'm done since it belongs to the store.

With the proliferation of condos and town houses, I've found that lots of buildings have event rooms or multipurpose rooms you can rent out for pretty cheap. A buddy of mine has a room in his building and we rent it out twice a month. Way, way cheaper than any community centre or hall rental. The only problem is that if he ever moves or stops gaming, we can't rent the space unless someone lives in the building. Fortunately I have a few other friends with similar event rooms in their buildings as back ups.

As I used to be a local club committee member I will give some advice about the formation of the club.

It is a good idea to have a written constitution that sets out the purpose of the club, the officers’ duties and term of office, the procedures for the annual general meeting or extraordinary general meetings, and elections of officers and members (possibly). You normally need a chairman, a treasurer and a membership secretary and can add more offices (social secretary, equipment officer, etc.) if the club is large. You can arrange to co-opt “lay” members if you feel a need to avoid the committee being too cliquey.

An annual membership fee has some advantages; it gives you a starting fund which may be useful for paying deposits or if weekly attendance drops periodically, it creates loyalty in the membership, and it enables you to distinguish between members entitled to vote and “guests”.

A small fee to attend a meeting is also a good idea, because those who use the club the most ought to pay the most towards it. Paid-up members can pay a discounted fee. Guests should be allowed one or two meetings free, then pay a weekly fee if they want to continue but not become a fully-paid-up member.

If the club decides to buy equipment it should be for long term use and as generic as possible. For example, basic terrain cloths, woods and hills are better than period or location specific items. If the club has closely focussed interests it is reasonable to address these directly, of course. So if you started a 40K club, naturally it would be fine to buy SF terrain pieces.

I believe it is better for the members individually to bring armies, rulebooks and terrain pieces. The best clubs are those with involved, enthusiastic members, rather than people who feel they can just expect to pay a fee and get everything provided for them.

My club has grown over the years, from a basement group to a church basement to a veterans hall to a community centre, just like "kronk" described we moved from a small room up to the banquet hall as we continued to grow. There were long stretches at each level as interest levels dropped and grew.
The community centre works well because it is central and has parking, as the club does not own terrain, the club is a "Tabletop Games" club so we play many different games. Put on by Hosts who put on a 40k game and bring our own terrain if we put on 6 tables we each bring some terrain for the night ( Once a month) or bigger games that cannot be played in basements (Apoc) etc...
Our club has been going for 40 years so any questions ask away.

 Overread wrote:
I think the other US to UK difference is that in the UK many stores don't have space for gaming clubs and tables, plus outside of very big towns they are very few and far between. Heck barring a handful about the only stores with gaming tables in the UK are GW stores.

I think this puts more pressure on starting up clubs, whilst in the US you've got more stores around which also have more retail space that they can use for gaming tables.

Agreed - in the UK local gaming stores tend to be focussed on board games, RPGs and (especially) MTG. Because GW stores are very common, this greatly reduces the potential profits provided by GW stuff as you're losing business to GW themselves. Wargames also take up far more space than magic games, so you make less per person for a given floorspace dedicated to gaming.

I also suspect that costs are a factor. Europe is a lot more crowded than the US, and running a large gaming store with table space is not generally profitable due to high rents. However there are also a lot of community spaces around (e.g. church halls, which don't actually have much to do with churches), making non-profit clubs with low cost use of space on specified nights far more economical.

I suspect that this is also the reason for the very different gaming scene in the UK - tournaments are not the usual method of getting games, and the majority of those that do take place are local affairs. I'd suspect that the vast majority of 40K gamers in here have little to no tournament experience.

Always great in a Pub, booze and gaming go nicely

In Canada, another place to talk to is your local Royal Canadian Legion. They are a veterans organization and wargaming has been a tradition in the armed forces for a long time. They make most of their money from a bar they run at each location and very much have the British pub feel. You may need either a current or former Canadian forces member as your contact point to get the best rates, but many will simply let you use a room for free provided everyone buys dinner or a drink there as well. Or failing that your group might have to volunteer for something or maybe actually join the Legion or something.

They're currently openly recruiting new members:
http://www.legion.ca/campaign/one-by-one/

Indeed - one of my clubs IS a club much like the Canadian Legion (we have one main organisation here, the RSL, Returned Services League, that runs a lot of clubs like this) - my club is based in the Gallipoli Legion club (It predates the formation of the RSL, and is AFAIK, the ONLY one of its kind).

Our club leader is ex-AF. We have several other members who are ex-AF. Most are not serving members, though.

For those in the US, there might be a similar organization that deals with veterans and volunteerism that could make space available for a club like the RSL or the RCL. And you might find great service opportunities there to help soldiers who fall through the cracks after they have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan.

My local club consists of 15-20 40k/whfb players, almost all of whom are friendly, pleasant and around my age (25-35). Club day is once a week, and we have one or two rooms to ourselves all day, with space for 3-6 tables. Membership fee is around $30/year. The club space is free and we get some grant money every year from the government. Usually we book games in advance through Facebook. Some people will be gaming, others painting or playing board games. I've never had an unpleasant experience or met an opponent I wouldn't play again. I've never played a casual pick-up game and never will, since the local community is so small. To me a club is the perfect way to play, and why I never have to worry about D-weapons, death stars or any other imbalances that seem to plague some environments.

One of my clubs, The Warchiefs is in a local Cricket Club on a Monday night. - They have a function room and bar upstairs. The bar is open during the cricket season. The club has space to store boards and a cupboard for terrain. Players are charged £2.50 each a night. I think the club originally started due to a member of the cricket club playing.

My other club, on a Tuesday at £3.00 an evening is at a pub / night club, The Two Pigs. This one started up recently due to the pubs landlord getting back into gaming.

 Compel wrote:
One of my clubs, The Warchiefs is in a local Cricket Club on a Monday night. - They have a function room and bar upstairs. The bar is open during the cricket season. The club has space to store boards and a cupboard for terrain. Players are charged £2.50 each a night. I think the club originally started due to a member of the cricket club playing.

That sounds like the makings of a great day. Turn up, watch a cricket match, then go and play Warhammer (other brands are available).