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Howdy folks, this may be in the wrong place if it is feel free to move/scrap this as necessary.

Basically, I come from a very small town at the very.... very north of scotland. We are quite a remote little community north of the middle of nowhere.

I've been attending/helping run a local wargaming group for roughly 7-8 years, we play/operate on every thursday and whatever weekends we can get in a local community hall, me and all my friends joined at the same time and we all grew up together with this club and the people there. I've made several great friends and even made some new best friends thanks to our little club, it's been good for and to all of us in some way or another.

Within the last year or two however things have started to turn a little south..... several of my friends (especially the more senior members) have all either moved away, gone to university or to some new job or have moved on frmo the hobby, which does suck, but life goes on etc.

Now from the good old days, we usually had a floating roster of 15-25 people regularly attending week to week, we are now down to I'd say 8-10 at best. In hindsight, I wish I'd done more to promote the image of the club when we had plenty of members, but like most things in life you never really thought the good times would end or you just didn't want to accept that they would.

So my qusetion really is this, how would you promote the image of a local gaming community, we've tried posters etc in schools and other noticeboards around the local towns but have found very little success and for those who do show up I think they feel it's pretty poor considering there are so few of us left. Another problem we've had is with some of the new younger members who show up, they worry that people will think they are a 'geek' or get picked on for playing, which I admit can be true, when I started playing in high school there were quite a few who found my hobby as something they could make fun of me for, which while I never really understood or cared what those people thought, I can understand why people would find it distressing/upsetting.

So what would you suggest would be a good way to get some new blood into our local group or at least to improve our image?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. (Also if you live in the highland area of scotland get in touch )

Thanks
-Rysaer-

*EDIT* It's worth noting that the closest GW store is 200+ miles away, we have one independent stockist in town with a poor selection, he does it as a side buisness to picture framing/model railways etc.

Talk to the independent stockist and see if you can cross promote his store and your group. Maybe have a demo day or something to that effect.

The reason demo games are used is because they are effective at generating interest and excitement.

Heck I thought the idea of gaming was stupid when my friend told me about it. It was only when he convinced me to go to the FLGS with him, and I saw the games and the excitement and actually played it that I found out I had been a gamer all along.

TL/DR version: Get out there and demo the game.