Any Ideas for Starting a Gaming Club?

[mriverakc]

Any ideas for starting a gaming club in a city with no LSGs? I live in King City CA and the closest LSG is in Monterey. I have thought of starting a gaming club with my kids so that we could play more often and with different opponents. Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Omenbringer]

I am trying something similar down in my neck of the woods. Basically my plan is to start doing demos in the local public library and the teen centers. Once I have inticed a few into the game, hopefully they will intice others, then after awhile I'll have a nice thriving community. Thats the plan anyway.

[notmikehill]

We have a local game store in my area, and I try very hard to entice the local players of other games to work their way into Malifaux and about 60% of the time it's easy, while other times it seems like a lot of people buy the figures, and don't want to come up and play the nights I can make it up (Which is 5 out of 7 days a week)

[Chucklemonkey]

I can't gve you ideas as such but as a member of a local club I can run down a few things.

We operate out of a local hall

£3 a visit for non members, there is a membership fee of £10 which subsequently drops the single visit price to £2.

It also gives some other benefits, 10% discount at the closest Games store.

The hall used is unusual for clubs round our way in that it has lots of storage for scenery and the like.

People do seem willing to come from a fair distance so a website would obviously be a good idea.

Also, speak to the store in Monterey and see whether they will put your details up there, if that is the closest store then you can be sure others from near you travel through.

(That is of course assuming King City and Monterey are anywhere near each other, American geography has made a fool out of me before.)

Good luck in any case.

[KenStorm989]

Its alot easier to start a gaming club with malifaux than other game systems simply because you can have just about everything you need to play for under 100$

My closest LGS to play in is about 45 minutes away, which isnt too bad of a drive but with a infant at home and my crazy work schedule its hard to get out.

What i Did was build a 6x4 gaming table in my garage, i built it 6x4 so i could play other games like 40k and its still a great size for malifaux you play on 1/2 of the board, and just add 6 inches to the deployment zone, and then you can use the other half for your deck and stat cards and such.

i've basically just spread my club by word of mouth, i was leary about inviting strangers from like craigs list or somthing to my house. So i have a few friends that play...and invite them and friends of friends. It may cost you a little extra in the building of the table and terrain, but for me its totally worth it, we have a blast.

hope this helped some

[greenstuff_gav]

after our games shop closed, we found a local pub with a function room and asked if there was a solid day of the week it wasn't in use.. luckily it was available every Wednesday and no charge (but had to buy drinks at the bar) !

so word circulated (several friends locally at first); people telling their friends and interested work colleagues.

Small posters in any local games shop help (even if they're 45 mins away!) and we began pooling our resources for terrain and A Website

now we get new members every other week and charge a club fee of £1 a night; the club fund is at the point where we've setup a bank account for it

[The Madman]

advertise

advertise

advertise

[The Madman]

Seriously

web posts on any and all sites that effect local communities-Keep them updated!(post something fresh bi-weekly)

Meet-Up website

Facebook

Libraries

Community Centers

College lounges and dorms

book stores

My personal Fav. I do some simple, tasteful desktop publishing... and stick mini Ads for my game store in new and current books related to the games I'm playing!

[DangerousBeans]

- Put notices up in Libraries and local shops where gamers might frequent (computer games shops seem like an obvious choice but also bookshops and bakeries ). Maybe even in the local paper.

- local schools, although this might not be a great idea depending on how old you are. Personally I hate young 'ins.

- open a games shop.

-hang about outside the nearest games workshop with some malifaux flyers hidden in your pocket, or maybe have a quick-foldaway table to play on up the ally.

Good luck!

[mriverakc]

Thanks for all of the ideas. I will keep them in mind as I continue to commit to such an ambitious project.

[Talos]

Advertising on forums is useful. That is how I found my current club. Its all about getting your name out there.

[Breten]

Haven't read any other posts, but here's how we did it:

There was only a comic/game shop (with no gaming space) where I am originally from (Medicine Hat, Alberta), so a friend decided to get a gaming club together. We started out by renting the basement of the Red Cross building every Tuesday night. In this place we had two large rooms and a couple smaller rooms. You could play Shadowrun (2nd), Dangerous Journeys, or other RPG's in the smaller rooms, and board games and Magic or minis games in the large rooms. Mike would come around and collect $2 from everyone coming to the club to pay for the rental fees. People grumbled, bt the majority realised he wasn't making money off it. In fact, he was often out of pocket for it.

We used that building for over a year, and then as the club started dwindling in size as people went off to school or such, we rented a classroom at an elementary school.

Up in Edmonton there is/was a game club that rented a building permanently, and people pay their club fees, etc.

Edited September 2, 2010 by Breten

[AntiZombie]

Create a yahoo group and spred it by work of mouth and by inviting people. I have done this three times and built three gaming groups from scratch ( warmachine back in prime, heroclix, and monsterpocalypse and am currently doing it as malifaux). I put it in my signature too just so people can go right to it and join if they are in the area ( in 1 week i have gotten around 10 people signed up). Its a great way to keep up with people and communicates easily without being annoying.