On Roleplaying Clubs (2)
[Mash's fascinating post yesterday dovetails very nicely with what I'm saying here. There are some big lessons in what he's saying as well - particularly about the nature of leadership in a club context. If you scanned past it intending to jump back and read it later (like I did), I recommend doing the jumping back now.]

As before, I'm going to talk about my experience first, then pull some lessons and recommendations out at the end...

The first post talked about the initial steps I took to get people interested in a club when I was in Edinburgh in 2003. At the end of the first post, I'd run a demo day and picked up some small interest. I wanted to build on that, and there seemed enthusiasm to see what would come.

I decided to try getting some of the interested people together for a game, and potentially making it a regular event. This, I hoped, would become a regular event - a club, more or less.

Before going forward, I reminded myself exactly what my goals were, and what my target audience was. My target audience was twofold: lapsed gamers who would respond to a chance to get involved again; and young novices who had heard something about gaming and wanted to give it a try. This audience informed everything I did at the early stages. (ORC ended up with a prominent third audience, namely people moving to Edinburgh looking for a gaming club. This crowd had been a major focus for community discussions in Wellington before I left to Edinburgh, but strange as it seems I didn't even think of them on this occasion.)

I knew we had the bookshop noticeboard. Everyone who came into the well-stocked SF/F section of Ottakars would see the noticeboard, and I was the only one using it. That was the starting point.

First thing I did was think about a venue. The bookshop we'd used for the demo day wouldn't be appropriate for a regular event - it was too small and we'd be likely to burn out our welcome in the shop soon. I needed something public, because I was targeting young teens whose parents would be concerned about safety. It needed to be all-ages for the same reason. It needed to have a table around which six or so people could gather with ease; ideally it would have several of these, to allow for expansion. Ideally it would be within striking distance of the bookshop that was hosting our noticeboard, so we could meet by the noticeboard and move to the venue. And, to top it off, it had to be incredibly cheap.

Luck was with me again. Only two minutes walk from the bookshop was a combined internet cafe/real cafe, which had an upstairs cafe seating area surrounded by internet terminals. The upstairs cafe was rarely used by anyone - most coffee customers stayed downstairs, and the internet customers went off to their terminals. It had a bunch of tables, was in a public space, and yet was private enough that we could do our gaming thing without bothering anyone else. It was perfect. As long as we bought a few coffees, we had our venue.

After the venue, next thing to think about was content. What gaming fun could or should I offer the punters? I settled quickly on D&D. There were a bunch of reasons - it was well-known, it was what the store carried the most, I knew it inside and out, and it was an easy sell to the young teen and the lapsed gamer both. More importantly, it offered a good mix of continuity and independence. That is, for their first time people would get to make their own character (and over the years I got really good at making characters in five minutes flat) and play that character through an adventure, and then know that they could bring the same character back another week and play it again through a different adventure. That continuity, I figured (and found) was appealing. Independence was the other requirement - every game had to be a complete story, so we could have a different group of people each week. So I set myself the task of running (mostly by improv) a short D&D adventure every session, for whatever mix of people turned up.

Also, at this point, I pledged to fight hard against the idea that RPGs=D&D. I would use D&D as the baseline, but would throw in other games (indie, trad, and all points in between) when the opportunity arose. I was determined that people who came into RPGs through ORC would know the breadth of the RPG hobby.

So, content was sorted. Next thing: support. I went to Claudia at Ottakars and told her what I was planning, and of my intention to meet each week by the noticeboard instore. That way anyone who came across the notice during the week would know where to come to find us. Claudia got her store manager to give this plan the nod, and that was how things went. Gamely, the store kept on putting up with us even when we had twenty rowdy teenage boys turning up and crowding out the back of the store.

Also I went to the wonderful Edinburgh game store, Black Lion, to chat to Liam. I didn't know Liam at that point, so I introduced myself and told him what I was planning to do. I was pleased to hear that he wasn't concerned with me sinking energy into a retail competitor - as he noted, "we're serving different customers". Our mutual plan that recruits from Ottakars would evolve into hardcore gamer customers at Black Lion also proved true. It was great to have backing from Liam, who sent the occasional curious person our way, and gratefully received the custom of ORCers who wanted to delve deeper into the hobby.

I also had support from other people around Edinburgh, but this was mostly support-in-waiting - very important to have, but not needed at this early stage. (It was called upon soon enough!)

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These are the lessons, then:
Think hard about your audience and the purpose of your club. Everything you do should come out of this.

Work hard to find a suitable venue. I got very lucky - odds are good that you won't have it so easy. Think about what you need, what your audience expects, what the future might hold, and try every avenue you can think of to meet those needs. To go all metaphorical, don't jump until you know where you're trying to land and that it can hold your weight.

Sort out your content in advance. You don't need to be overly specific, but you need to think about what kind of RPG you will support. If I did it over, would I go to D&D again? 4E's reliance on minis and a battlemap would make it much less suitable for the kind of pick-up play we enjoyed. Think hard about what you can offer and what your audience might respond to in both short and long term. Never underestimate the power of a cool character to bring people back to the table a second time - but don't underestimate the power of a straight-up awesome one-off to do the same. And, most importantly, make sure you're doing something you're good for. If you're running a game every week (or fortnight or whatever), make sure you're confident with it and know how to show people a good time, fast, because you'll only get one shot with a lot of them and you have to make that first time count.

And don't forget to get support from people. Talk to everyone who might be of use to you. Its good manners to tell people with an interest what you have planned; even better, they might actively throw some knowledge or help your way. Even if you're doing this alone, you can't really do it alone - so make the most of whatever help you can grab.


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So it began. For many weeks I would turn up, stand around by the sign, and then wander off again because no-one had turned up. Eventually we did get something happening, but we were only a small bunch at first. For the first proper session we had only two players and me. Slowly, over the weeks that followed, our numbers grew. Claudia joined us for a game, and others who were at the demo day turned up. One or two new people spotted the signage and came over. The venue worked well, as did the D&D aspect - people liked the continuity, and we began building a continuing story bit by bit as each improv'd game expanded the world. We even ducked out of D&D once or twice in those early days to try something different. And the venue worked like a dream.

Things were off to a fine start.

Next: Scaling, marketing, culture, legalities, and anything else I remember. Probably the last part of this series.