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I am thinking of starting a gaming club in my local area and am looking for a bit of advice on a couple of issues.

For reference I am in the UK, Essex to be precise!

1 - How much is too much to pay for a venue? I have been informed that my first (and so far only) choice venue will cost in excess of £100 to hire for 6 hours!

2 - Venue, What sort of places should I be looking for?

3 - Age limits, I was thinking something like a minimum age of 16 to get around child protection issues. How much more agro is it to allow them in from 12?

4 - Is it worth getting GCN membership?

5 - Subs / club fees - How much is a reasonable amount to charge per meeting / year for membership?

Thankyou for your help in advance.

£100 for an evening is fairly typical but it can be had for much, much cheaper. Look to community halls, local colleges and universities, etc. If you can scrape enough students together to form a university society then you'll probably get a venue for free.

The two most important things in a venue for a wargames club is that they will provide a sufficient quantity of tables and that they will give you some on-site storage. Dragging tables and scenery in every time is a massive drag. Plus, if they're stored at someone's house and they can't make it then club is cancelled.

Allowing under 16s means you need to have disclosures done on some of the members. If any of them work in a field that requires disclosures already then great. Otherwise you'll have to pay for them and if none of the people with disclosures can make it to a meeting then club is cancelled again.

Your fees need to reliably cover the operating costs. Got to figure that out before you can think about fees.

1+2. Do you have British Legion hall, or Electoral Party based club locally? As getting a room to hire from them can be much cheaper.

British Legion have been very good to me in the past, even going as far to allow storage of terrain on their property.

Previous to that I joined the Liberal Club, mainly just to gain access to a room in the building once a week, at a very cheap rate.

3. I'd probably go for 16 if its your first club, back when I started my first (1990) at the Secondary school there was no checks required or insurance to worry about, parents where just happy for a place for their kids to hang out.
I've run three more since then leading up to 2001, not sure I'd try to mess around with all the legal requirements to run under 16's now.

4. Possibly, need to see what your weekly turnout is for a preriod of time before you'd know for sure though.

5. Depends on venue, if you want to have a fund to make Club terrain, Prizes etc. I've had two clubs that cost nothing, and two that cost a minimal £1 fee to cover hire costs/prize support.

You can get free Child Protection training from various NHS PCT's. Child Protection training is intended for people who are working with, supervising or responsible for anyone under 18, not 16, and also includes vulnerable adults. PM me if you wish and I can email the link tomorrow when I get to work.

You also need to be Enhanced CRB checked too and that costs £36 at the moment although the process is under review you still need it in the interim until they decide to keep it or scrap it and spend a fortune making a vaguely similar scheme.

One idea is to find the local scout huts or youth clubs and see if you can use their rooms on non scout/youth club days. Just a thought.

Try to keep the membership as low as possible, it attracts new members, and having extra money just means you can get taxed for it. Try to keep the mebership enough to pay for the room and buy any neccessary equipment but no extra.

I reccomend looking at venues which are owned by other organisations and aren't built for renting out. Many organisations will let you rent out a room quite cheaply if the aren't using it.

Setting the age at 16 would probably be best just to start. Not all under 16s are screaming children but it would be difficult to deal with any that are.

Also where abouts in Essex will the club be? I may be able to come and pay a visit if you get it started.

The lounge at our college dorm was fairly large and empty on the weekends. I talked to our RA and held a Star Wars CCG tournament there once. Had about 20 people show up and it was free.

Best of luck.

Edit: not sure about the legal requirements for UK clubs. Can't help you with any of that, man.

As you are UK based there are some good options unavailable to our US cousins.

Pub function rooms
Parish/church halls
Community centres

Pubs will often let you have a room for free, since they expect to sell more beer. It restricts you to over 18s, and there probably won’t be any storage for terrain, but there should be tables.

Parish/church halls are usually crying out to rent their space -- it depends on the day of the week -- but may be constrained by insurance and so on. The storage space will be excellent.

Community centres are usually required to give serious consideration to any reasonable proposal from a local resident, but are often already well booked up.

I wouldn’t try to charge more than £20 a year membership, and £2-3 per session, discounted if you are a member. However, it depends on the cost of the space, and if you want to buy club equipment such as terrain.

If you do intend to amass any significant amount of money and/or kit, then you should have a proper constitution and treasurer and so on, to make sure everything is above board.

Running and being a member of a congenial club can be excellent fun, so good luck!

Kilkrazy wrote:Pub function rooms

Pubs aren't ideal for most wargames as you need to haul scenery, tabletops, etc in but they can be great for board games like blood bowl, etc.

I've played in a few pub beer-garden hosted blood bowl tournaments. 12 hours of joking and drinking. (don't drink myself and being sober is a big advantage by the time you get to the semi's)

I'm not sure if you have this option in the UK, but we use the basement of a local public library. It's free and they love having us there and even post pictures of our events on their website. The library has folding tables which we cover with gaming boards that we made and scenery. We've had around 30 people so far and still have plenty of room to grow. It's a great set up for us and I hope that there is a similar option that you can explore. If you get the venue for free then you can pass that savings on to the participants.