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Here in the US we don't seem to have this phenomenon.

So, lay it out for me what it is the pros, cons, and anecdotes of belonging to a gaming club.

For instance, do you pay a membership, which you use to pay the rent on a gaming space?

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.

Is that what gaming groups do?

If not...where do you meet?

Does everyone store their stuff their?

Do you pool resources (money, time, terrain) to buy new games and reinforcements for the old ones?

If so, how do you divvy up the stuff when someone joins or leaves the group?

Membership is a small weekly fee on one yearly fee. Weekly is for the building, yearly is to have some money in the account and get prizes/fund terrain and events.

In NZ they are all at peoples houses, at schools or in libraries/community centers. Well all the ones I know of. Doesnt mean you cant use a store though. It might be cheaper to use a place full of tables and chairs already with no real commitment etc.

We are just a bunch of people who have a regular gaming scheduled that's consistent and well organized. Every thursday and a few weekends a year are wargaming days. At first its like playing pick up games. Then the community develops and small groups emerge. Games become organized and people start to share armies and terrain. People become friends and we battle other clubs. Eventually many games start showing up and people branch out.

If we game outside the club its on my floor usually.

We all store communal terrain in a large cupboard provided by the local authorities. If you where at a library they may have cupboard space for you to use too. At the school we also had a small room to house our goods. The key is to maximize storage to get full use from it. Our cupboard is cram fulled with terrain.

The school had a club army in which the club funded using our money. We all painted and assembled them together and they where for anyone to use. My current club meets up every few saturdays to build/repair terrain and we have part of the committee dedicated to terrain accumulation, repair and organization.

Once the club has the terrain etc, it belongs to no body. It legally belongs to the club. A certain number of votes is legally needed to do anything with the stuff. If the club breaks off then it gets divided as per the current group with an active membership decides. Its actually legally a club or group and thats why we have a committee which everything is recorded and so on. Although a very relaxed one.

Trick is, nobody has any ownership of it. It belongs to the club who belongs to nobody but is run by a temporary and rotating committee through a yearly vote. Financed by members weekly and yearly contributions along with local stores and the mayor of the town etc (we get the community hall for dirt cheap because of this). Nobody really owns anything but their armies. Someone is a member until their yearly fee runs out. Once it runs out they need to rejoin to have a say in anything or even show up. Although we are relaxed and people have a fair bit of time to pay up etc.

Thanks for the information.

jamesk1973 wrote:
Here in the US we don't seem to have this phenomenon.

So, lay it out for me what it is the pros, cons, and anecdotes of belonging to a gaming club.

For instance, do you pay a membership, which you use to pay the rent on a gaming space?

Exactly, we took our average attendance, divided that by the weekly cost of the hall, and that's the entry fee, per person, per week. We offer new members their first week free, as often they won't be able to get a game in (but can organise some thing for the next week) and to be friendly.

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.

Is that what gaming groups do?

If not...where do you meet?

Finding good, affordable space is probably the hardest thing. You can find commercial space, but they'll want commercial rent, ideally you want to find a community space which you can rent per hour on a regular basis (we have our hall every monday from 7pm for instance)

Does everyone store their stuff their?

Do you pool resources (money, time, terrain) to buy new games and reinforcements for the old ones?

If so, how do you divvy up the stuff when someone joins or leaves the group?

We have storage on site, but that's not a gimme. When starting up, we offered weeks of memberships in exchange for terrain (purchased or made) donated. Now we're established, we have plenty, and having made some surplus cash recently, are looking to invest it back I to some decent mats to supplement the ones we have. The terrain belongs to the group, and as we operate the whole thing on a very casual basis, nobody really leaves, they just don't come any more, but I'd advise against assigning specific ownership of club stuff to individuals, it can only really end badly.

Clubs down here in Oz tend to use gaming space in stores, or church halls and the like that are hirable by the hour.

The club that I (sort of, every now and then) hires the function room at the local pub.

Payment to cover room hire and terrain and the like is usually either a yearly membership or a fee per session, depending on the club.

People generally bring their own stuff, although some clubs will have a pool of terrain and sometimes rulebooks for everyone to use. That stuff would belong to the club, so someone leaving isn't an issue...

Not sure what the situation is in other countries, but clubs in Oz generally need to be registered entities with a listed organisational structure (so a club president, treasurer, etc) for legal reasons... although that may just apply to groups over a certain size - I've never really looked into the specifics. But it would be something to consider looking into if you're planning on anything more complicated than just getting a few guys together at someone's house.

The clubs I'm in (I have two, one is every other sunday of the month and the other is monthly on the last sunday) both are run from rooms hired from local licensed clubs (sports club and a veterans' club).
Both charge a meeting fee.
We do have a membership fee for the first one to cover a membership card (this gives a discount at a FLGS) but that's it.

The second also has a membership fee - but this grants you cheaper meeting fees AND a refund on tournament entry fees if you represent THAT club at a tournament (club shirt, photos as proof required).

For the first one, we run a tournament once a year - and the gear we have that isn't needed for it week to week gets stored in a lockup (we have about 30 boards and terrain to fill them) of which about 8-10 boards worth gets used at the club weekly. We also loan this stuff to the other club's yearly tourney (Castle Assault) to help out.

For the second, Our boards and some terrain is stored at the club, with more terrain bought in as required.

We used to be registered as a community group at local govt level - to get a subsidised legal liability cover (needed for hiring of many venues). We since moved into the licensed clubs and became members of those - where we are covered by THEIR liability without needing to have our own coverage.

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...

Still I will keep an eye out.

I wonder if some of the empty strip mall storefronts would be rental by the day or weekend?

Thanks for the information so far guys!

Church halls, meeting halls, private members clubs (not those sorts!)

I'd imagine church or school halls would be your most fertile furrow to plough initially.

Dont you guys have places that cater to business meetings and organization meetings etc?


Sounds dumb but on south park they regularly have meeting places with chairs and tables etc in which they gather to talk about whatever. To me those would be ideal. And since south park is very american I just assumed that you would have them.

Youth centers, small sports centers, someone with a storage container or garage, heck put an add in the local paper. The list goes on.

My local club gets a hall with storage and some grant money from the government. We have about 20 tables plus terrain. No membership fees. Expenses beyond the subsidies we get are covered by the income from two annual tournaments.

Sounds like Norway gets the hook up.

3 pounds a week and it goes into a budget. Using this money we rent the hall, buy terrain and use it for tournament prizes among other things.

In the US, some towns will have community centers that rent out space- we used to do Halo tourney's, MtG tourneys. and New Year's parties at one near a friend's house. Should be veteran's halls just abou everywhere, and you might check to see If a local Elk's or Moose lodge would rent out some space. Most strip malls would rather have a business that might share an interest with other shops to bring in more customers instead of renting the space to a club. Although some indoor malls are really hurting right now, they might be willng to rent...but I'm sure the cost would be extravagant. Not to mention either type of mall would require a contract for a set amount of time; it would be best to avoid those places.

jamesk1973 wrote:
The only places I've heard of being rented by the hour is a prostitute's motel room...

Hey, at lease those odd times when someone doesn't have an opponent he'll have something to do.

jamesk1973 wrote:
Here in the US we don't seem to have this phenomenon.

So, lay it out for me what it is the pros, cons, and anecdotes of belonging to a gaming club.

For instance, do you pay a membership, which you use to pay the rent on a gaming space? [b]Yes, the rent is fairly cheap and its mostly for lights, power etc.. there is a bar though and they make some money off that.[/b]

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.

Is that what gaming groups do? Basically yes all though we rent a space in a non commercial area less like a store front and more like a sports club area

If not...where do you meet?

Does everyone store their stuff their? We have built shelving in a cupboard space for our stuff no one stores armies there but terrain, markers etc are there.

Do you pool resources (money, time, terrain) to buy new games and reinforcements for the old ones? Not for specific models for peoples armies but yes for terrain, objectives, rule book etc.. people also make terrain themselves

If so, how do you divvy up the stuff when someone joins or leaves the group? If someone has bought something like a landing pad or an ADL they are free to take it, if they donate scenery it is accepted that it now belongs to the club however if someone wants to take it im sure they would be able too. If someone poured days into a piece of terrain for instance they could take it.

surely you have these in Merica?

bodazoka wrote:

jamesk1973 wrote:
Here in the US we don't seem to have this phenomenon.

So, lay it out for me what it is the pros, cons, and anecdotes of belonging to a gaming club.

For instance, do you pay a membership, which you use to pay the rent on a gaming space? [b]Yes, the rent is fairly cheap and its mostly for lights, power etc.. there is a bar though and they make some money off that.[/b]

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.

Is that what gaming groups do? Basically yes all though we rent a space in a non commercial area less like a store front and more like a sports club area

If not...where do you meet?

Does everyone store their stuff their? We have built shelving in a cupboard space for our stuff no one stores armies there but terrain, markers etc are there.

Do you pool resources (money, time, terrain) to buy new games and reinforcements for the old ones? Not for specific models for peoples armies but yes for terrain, objectives, rule book etc.. people also make terrain themselves

If so, how do you divvy up the stuff when someone joins or leaves the group? If someone has bought something like a landing pad or an ADL they are free to take it, if they donate scenery it is accepted that it now belongs to the club however if someone wants to take it im sure they would be able too. If someone poured days into a piece of terrain for instance they could take it.

surely you have these in Merica?

Not that I am aware.

Most gamers play at home or at their local store. Usually at the local FLGS where you can usually find a pick up game and the stores themselves schedule events, 40k nights, WarmaHordes League play on Thurs. night, etc.

Essentially we let the FLGS provide the physical location, terrain, tables, etc. No one bands together to pool resources or anything like that.

We Americans are fiercely independent- even to our own detriment.

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

We use the function room of a local Pub on a Sunday night - because it's generally a very slow night for them, they're usually happy just to have the business. We're actually just moving this week, but our last Pub charged us $50 a night for their function room, and our new location is giving it to us for free, as 10-20 extra customers is worth it to them, as most of us buy dinner or drinks there.

As for costs, while we were paying $50 a night, we had a $5 cover charge per night, to cover room hire and terrain upkeep. Now that it's free, we're going to work on a $2 or so donation to go into a kitty, for buying new terrain, and any other club costs.

As for Terrain, well, that's been built up over several years, starting with donated stuff from a few people, a few pieces bought using kitty money, and a few terrain drives and working bees to get some more. As for storage, it's split up into boxes and held by several members during the week, as it can be a hassle finding storage space and transport if it's all kept together. As well as that, some people have their own terrain collections that they bring in to use as well.

If you're interested in starting a club, start by finding an appropriate location. Either someone with a large house/garage, a pub/bar that has a function room and would like the business, and be prepared for a fair bit of work to get it running.

Also, check this thread for ideas/experiences about starting clubs:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/578145.page#6510525

 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

Years of fighting Communism and Socialists!!

haha

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.

The best one I've seen recently, in London, actually hired a nightclub on a Monday night (when the club was usually closed). They had someone at the door charging a cover, the bar was open, and then they filled the space with folding tables. I guess as long as the entry fees cover the cost of the bar staff, the landlord was happy to let then use it and make a bit more bar money than usual....

Arbitorian, I'm guessing that was HATE Club? At Elektrowerkz?

Unfortunately we got a bit stitched up by the night club so are looking for an alternative venue but will be back soon.

And from that experience I would stress that a written agreement with the venue up for front is a must.

There are some really good resources from Games Workshop via the GCN (Gaming Club Network) and they can send you a pack with lots of helpful information.

However there are a lot of specific criteria that you have to adhere to be a member of GCN and so in the end HATE decided against it.

The main one in the UK is to do with Child Protection.

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.

Therefore you need to decide what demographic you are looking for.

HATE runs an adults only policy mainly for this reason (DBS checks are £90 each in the UK) but also means we can drink beer, and we all love beer!!

It may also be necessary to have a First Aider, Public liability insurance and a Fire Marshall depending on numbers.

Public Liability Insurance in the UK is very cheap, and often here the venue can provide that sort of thing and may be the same in the US.

You will need a Club Secretary and and somebody to look after the money.

I think a pay as you play policy is the easiest way to do it rather than a monthy subscription, but in London we can guarantee 50+ people per month so this isn't an issue.

But if you can get a venue that sells snacks or beer etc the venue can take those takings. The club where HATE was running was making more on the bar than on a weekend night (we gamers like our beer), but unfortunately they got greedy and started to try to charge loads of extras.

We currently use the function room of a local pub. We’re very fortunate in that they don’t charge us for the room hire, and they have sufficient space to store our 6 by 4 boards and boxes of scenery.

The downside is there is only space for eight tables, but its quite nice having a close-knit group, and its also good to not have to worry about whether you cover costs or not.

We charge our members £1 per night if they play. We don’t actually need to charge, but just don’t feel entirely comfortable not charging at all, plus we quite like the buffer of being able to replace everything the club owns should something happen.

Previously we’ve been hosted in a local shop, then in a café. Normally clubs are in community halls, church halls, or pub function rooms. Finding somewhere that can actually store the tables and scenery has always been the toughest challenge. Pubs are good as they are open late anyway, so its really easy to administrate, as opposed to going through the process of opening up and closing down your venue, which works well when you are essentially lazy like me.

For instance, do you pay a membership, which you use to pay the rent on a gaming space?
Normally, as many people has said, it'll be a community centre, village hall, church hall, members club etc. so no rent rather a nightly fee. This is pretty much the norm for any "club" type group, for example the martial arts "dojo" I used to attend was the same deal. The church hall we use for gaming is also used by a Salsa club, zumba and the like.


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.
Commercial space can be very expensive particularly with sufficient floor space to use as a gaming area. In order to pay for something like that you have to turn it in to a viable enterprise such as the Northwest Gaming Centre, Firestorm Games, The Sanctuary ect.

Does everyone store their stuff their?
Nope, the "club's" stuff is stored there (tables, terrain usually) but the games and miniatures are owned and looked after and brought to the place by the attendees

Do you pool resources (money, time, terrain) to buy new games and reinforcements for the old ones?
Normally there is a kitty funded by subs (the attendance fee) to buy stuff for the club

If so, how do you divvy up the stuff when someone joins or leaves the group?
You don't as it is the club's. Normally if a club dwindles to too few people to be viable then those few members will store the stuff until they join/found a new club. If a venue becomes unavailable then normally members will store the stuff until a new venue is found.


I think the difference between the UK and US in this is a combination of houses being smaller and commercial rent higher in the UK than the US. There also seems to be an assumption in the US that gaming is a daily thing, in the UK a club is weekly, fortnightly or monthly in most instances. As such renting a space all month when your only going to use it 4 times is a bit daft.

jamesk1973 wrote:
Here in the US we don't seem to have this phenomenon.

So, lay it out for me what it is the pros, cons, and anecdotes of belonging to a gaming club.

For instance, do you pay a membership, which you use to pay the rent on a gaming space?

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.

Is that what gaming groups do?

If not...where do you meet?

Does everyone store their stuff their?

Do you pool resources (money, time, terrain) to buy new games and reinforcements for the old ones?

If so, how do you divvy up the stuff when someone joins or leaves the group?

Here are some websites of well-established local (to me) clubs:
http://www.nwa.org.au/
http://www.leagueofancients.org.au/
http://www.wargamerau.com/forum/index.php?showforum=150

And a good general overview:
http://www.wargamerau.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18982

Ooh, I'll roll out my (incomplete) map of UK Clubs.

This has the website of the club as part of the Pin information so you can see what they say they do.

https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=z9ckp23slKm4.khp_vX3GQgi0

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.

 Koppo wrote:
Ooh, I'll roll out my (incomplete) map of UK Clubs.

This has the website of the club as part of the Pin information so you can see what they say they do.

https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=z9ckp23slKm4.khp_vX3GQgi0

You may want to have a look at this thread and append it with a few new entries (I dinnae see nout in Scotland, including my own club the Glasgow Gamers Group).

Another source of rooms that could be hired by the hour if public space is less common would be restaurants, small hotels, pubs, masonic lodge, whatever, which might have function rooms - the kind of places that would host a (cheap) wedding reception. You do get married in the States don't you (j/k! ). Storage of terrain may be an issue, but you all have cars over there don't you (again, with the American stereotype!) so humping your stuff about shouldn't be an issue.

The best thing you can do is find a couple of like-minded friends and make it happen! You will come across lots of obstacles, but if you really want to make it happen, it will happen.

 Wyrmalla wrote:

 Koppo wrote:
Ooh, I'll roll out my (incomplete) map of UK Clubs.

This has the website of the club as part of the Pin information so you can see what they say they do.

https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=z9ckp23slKm4.khp_vX3GQgi0

You may want to have a look at this thread and append it with a few new entries (I dinnae see nout in Scotland, including my own club the Glasgow Gamers Group).

Cheers, It's primarily based on the Warhammer Forum, (http://warhammer.org.uk) but I'll try and get more added on when I can.